04 Aug '10 01:00>1 edit
What is politics, or more specifically, what purpose do political systems serve? The answer is that they are a means to organize and regulate the distribution of a nation's economic resources. Those with political power are in the preeminent position of deciding the rules governing the establishment and maintenance of a nation's economic system. To win political power, therefore, is to win the right to influence the trajectory that economic system will subsequently take. That, in a nutshell, is the primary purpose of any political system.
With a vast inequality of wealth, however, the rich have an inordinate amount of power to make sure that an ostensibly democratic political system does not end up serving the will of the voting majority, but rather that it serves the undemocratic purpose of continuing their economic dominance. When a political system is so contrived, continued participation in it serves merely to legitimize that mode of economic dominance under the guise of popular participation. The poor, that is to say, help perpetuate their own economic servitude by giving such purely political elections legitimacy.
The objective will be to get people to realize that effective control of a nation's economic sphere comes not through the election of one or the other pro-corporate political candidates, but through their own direct participation in, and the eventual appropriation of, the economic system itself. The way to build a more equitable economic system is not through the indirect and hopeless method of political democracy, but through the direct method of economic democracy. With that accomplished, politics will eventually become superfluous and wither away.
Make no mistake, the evolution of democratic systems is still in its infancy. The move from absolutist monarchies to political democracies controlled and manipulated by the rich is but the first step. The next step will be the broadening of the democratic impulse to economic institutions as well as political ones. Only then will the people have a fully functioning democratic system.
With a vast inequality of wealth, however, the rich have an inordinate amount of power to make sure that an ostensibly democratic political system does not end up serving the will of the voting majority, but rather that it serves the undemocratic purpose of continuing their economic dominance. When a political system is so contrived, continued participation in it serves merely to legitimize that mode of economic dominance under the guise of popular participation. The poor, that is to say, help perpetuate their own economic servitude by giving such purely political elections legitimacy.
The objective will be to get people to realize that effective control of a nation's economic sphere comes not through the election of one or the other pro-corporate political candidates, but through their own direct participation in, and the eventual appropriation of, the economic system itself. The way to build a more equitable economic system is not through the indirect and hopeless method of political democracy, but through the direct method of economic democracy. With that accomplished, politics will eventually become superfluous and wither away.
Make no mistake, the evolution of democratic systems is still in its infancy. The move from absolutist monarchies to political democracies controlled and manipulated by the rich is but the first step. The next step will be the broadening of the democratic impulse to economic institutions as well as political ones. Only then will the people have a fully functioning democratic system.