Either We Kill That Entanglement, Or It Will Exterminate Us.
“Oligarchy” means the rule of the few. In representative democracy, as only a few really rule, it’s a pleonasm. So why do the Main Stream Media use the word “oligarch” so much? To hide a terrible concept with a more mundane one.
“Plutocracy” is what is really going on, what the word “oligarchy” hides. The rule of the invisible Pluto, of Satan, the Dark Side. And of the wealth found by mining underground.
Small minds ardently believe that “plutocracy” is only about the rule of wealth. That allows many of them to adore the “Golden Calf” in peace.
However, plutocracy is much more than the rule of wealth. It’s the rule of hell.
It’s empowering to know what we are dealing with.
Thus, naturally “The Economist”, organ of the plutocracy, and tax evasion, obfuscates the situation in its main editorial in “The New Age Of Crony Capitalism”: Political connections have made many people hugely rich in recent years. But crony capitalism may be waning (March 15th 2014).”
It’s hard to see how it could be waning as in the USA, the leading country (de facto), people have been conditioned to pay for everything. And first of all, politicians (Obama is always asking for money). There thrives a legalized system for injecting giant amounts of money in a hyper professionalized political class trafficking influence through revolving doors between private and public.
Part of the problem with Putin, just as with Hitler, is the certainty of those dictators that they had the world’s plutocrats as their tools (instead of the converse). Thus the leaderships in the Kremlin, Ukraine and London are deeply entangled now, just as they were in the 1930s (with Berlin, Washington and Wall Street thrown in the mix). This theory that I loudly promoted for more than a decade, is starting to get some traction, as The Economist admits:
“AS THE regime of Viktor Yanukovych collapsed in Ukraine, protesters against it could be found outside One Hyde Park, a luxury development in west London. Their target was Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and a backer of the old regime. “Discipline your pet”, they chanted.”
Ukraine’s troubled state has long been dominated by its oligarchs. But across the emerging world the relationship between politics and business has become fraught. India’s election in April and May will in part be a plebiscite on a decade of crony capitalism. Turkey’s prime minister is engulfed by scandals involving construction firms-millions of Turks have clicked on YouTube recordings that purport to incriminate him. On March 5th China’s president, Xi Jinping, vowed to act “without mercy” against corruption in an effort to placate public anger. Last year 182,000 officials were punished for disciplinary violations, an increase of 40,000 over 2011.
As in America at the turn of the 20th century, a new middle class is flexing its muscles, this time on a global scale. People want politicians who don’t line their pockets, and tycoons who compete without favours. A revolution to save capitalism from the capitalists is under way.”
Apparently, The Economist is not following the news: Crony capitalism has basically been made legal in the USA, in the last two decades: watch the flow of money from the government to the political class revolving between filthy rich compensation in the private sector, and the government’s levers. Crony capitalism is becoming best business practice.
It’s rather saving capitalism from thieves, The Economist! Yet, as long as there is no revolution in the USA, nothing will happen. And the USA is asleep under the seducer-in-chief, the languid, self-described “navigator” who nominated to power again, exactly the same teams that made Clinton and the Bushes’ presidencies.
Legalized corruption is the problem in the USA, not the illegal type. And that’s worst.
To undermine plutocracy, one has to undermine the nature of the economic activities that foster it, such as the secretive, unregulated nature of the public-private fractional reserve, money creating system. All tax evasion, tax havens, shell companies and lack of transparency have to go with that.
Why have we been unable to get rid of plutocracy? It is not just that it holds the Main Stream Media. It’s more general than that.
The principle of plutocracy is intrinsically sadistic and cruel: there are its rewards. So its practitioners, followers and servants call for a society reflecting those values. It makes psycho sense, and the economy to reflect that.
Beyond this, we have to impose real, that is, direct democracy. It has gained in Switzerland in the last three decades, and has contributed obviously to the success of the Swiss economy, by creating a much more equalitarian, meritocratic and caring society, with fairer rules and regulations (hence the 3% unemployment rate in Switzerland, the lowest anywhere).
Direct democracy makes oligarchy, a crucial element of which is professional politics, difficult, and plutocracy, impossible. So to reduce plutocracy, one has to reduce oligarchy, and, in particular professional politics, the intrinsic enemy of direct democracy.
That’s the future we need, because plutocracy’s ultimate hide-out is war itself. And this, in full, neither we, nor the biosphere, can afford.
Understanding that plutocracy is not just the rule of wealth, but the reign of hell outright, is of the essence. One cannot understand Putin, Hitler, or World War One, without it.
Weirdly, Obama pontificated that “we are not in competition with Russia”. Of course, not. But the better angels of our nature are in competition with hell. And this starts with the oligarchs our political system consists of, at home.
Patrice Ayme
Note: That plutocracy is the definition of hell is not a new insight. That hell thrives on the Dark Side, far from the light, and “enlightenment” was already central to the ancient Babylonian religion (“Zoroastrianism”). That ancient version of the devil was called Angra Manyu.
The Greek birth of the concepts of hell with Hades and Ploutos (or “Pluto”), and how Pluto came to replace Hades was a purely cosmetic replacement, because Hades had such a terrible reputation. I guess you would not be familiar with the hellish conditions of deep silver mines in Ancient Greece, or Rome.
