Can We Be Governed?

There are many sociological and performance indications that the systems of Representative Democracy government (RDG) as practiced in many parts of the world are failing. We have tried alternatives – absolute monarchy; various dictatorships – military and other; communism and its variants; and all have ultimately failed. Many are now also questioning whether RDG offers any hope for the future. To make matters worse we vote-in RDG but what we often get is  Neo Representative  (party filtered) Dictatorship. 

Indeed at a post election victory meeting following a major local election, the Leader of the winning party  was criticized for making an undemocratic suggestion. His response, not entirely in jest was; “Democracy happens on one day every four years. You had your day of democracy yesterday; now you will do it my way.”

We elect Members who are supposed to represent our interests and wishes yet once in parliament they have to follow the party whip as dictated by their cabinet. On many occasions in recent years, both in  Capitalist and Socialist administrations  strong leaders have imposed their personal views, often overriding cabinet and party. With the sword of dismissal, loss of income and status hanging over their head the Cabinet is forced to accede. This is dictatorship, pure and simple. But this is only one of the issues compounding the problems of governing today.

First there is the magnitude of the difficulties facing most nations and the UK in particular. Secondly people generally are demanding increasing involvement in issues of how they are governed and managed, and thirdly and most significantly because the solutions now required to meet national and global difficulties could not be introduced without the full co-operation of the majority of the electorate; a parliamentary majority is no longer enough. RDG can never deliver the level of involvement and commitment now required.

We each have our own views of the priorities of the problems facing us. Amongst the besetting ones are debt – national and individual; the overall uncontrolled mess  created by our economic management systems;  global warming; and third world poverty. Linked to these are issues of energy provision, oil and gas, actual and impending drought, bonuses and expenses, redundancy and unemployment, transport, health care provision etc.  

The list of specifics is massive and governments are looking for instant fix solutions to each of their own priorities. Unfortunately this could make some problems considerably worse.  In fact most of the difficulties  are  totally interlinked, and, indeed are global. They all have their root in a single driver problem that could well be labelled   ‘Consumption’ or ‘Consumerism’. The only real fix will be found in coming to terms with the root cause. Our current problems are the inevitable product of  uncontrolled (market forces driven) consumption – it is consumption that has created the debt mountain, it is the production required to meet consumption that is gobbling the oil, it is the effluent of the production that is  generating global warming, and it is consumption  that directly causes many to starve.