Who rules whom?

In 1935 in his book Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 the Great American writer, philosopher, and activist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote:

"For there began to rise in America in 1876 a new capitalism... Home labor in cultured lands, appeased and misled by a ballot whose power the dictatorship of a vast capital strictly curtailed, was bribed by high wage and political office to unite in an exploitation of white, yellow, brown and black labor, in lesser lands... The immense profit from this new exploitation and worldwide commerce enabled a guild of millionaires... to have left enough surplus to make more thorough the dictatorship of capital over the state and over the popular vote,..."

These words were true about the period of which he wrote; they were true when he wrote them; and they are true today.

Many, maybe even most people who live in the democracies believe that government is of the people and for the people. It's not a bad one as assumptions go. But it is more platitude than fact.  In order to answer our titular question "Who rules whom?" we must first ask "Whom does government represent?" Excepting all but the most despotic ones, governments represent a myriad of often conflicting interests. These interests include individuals, workers unions, political activists, lobbyists, protesters, business groups, chambers of commerce, journalists, cities, counties, states, religious groups, letter-writers, professional organizations, and fraternal orders and many others. This makes for a very confusing mix.

How to take this odd mixture and make it comprehensible to a mere human? We will use a tried and true technique, one which was known to the Greeks, loved by the Romans, and has survived to this day. It is used by every man, woman, and child living today (even those who say they don't). We shall generalize.

In general, we can divide the complicated mix of interests represented by the democratic governments into two large groups: those who vote, and those who influence those who vote. It won't take much imagination to see that in any given election those who have the greatest influence over the largest number of people will see their agenda carried. Typically the leaders of the influencers are a few people from the class of the super-wealthy who themselves vote but who are so few that their vote is statistically irrelevant.

That being the case, were they to leave the decision-making process to the majority of total voters, who are mostly of the working, poor, or middle classes, then they would quickly find laws passed and powerful social movements afoot which would be utterly contrary to their own economic self-interest. So it is of vital importance to the super-wealthy to find a way to pass laws which work in their favor despite their being absolutely and irrevocably outnumbered at the ballot box.

The super-wealthy don't have "jobs" the way people in the lower, middle, and merely upper classes do. That is, they don't depend on their "job" to keep a roof over their head or food on their family table. Their job frequently consists of running large multinational corporations. They may be bankers, industrialists, professional investors, lawyers, hoteliers, publishers, you name it.

The super-wealthy don't concern themselves with the price they pay for organic produce or gasoline at the pump. They concern themselves with larger issues: such as the market share of a corporation; or how a proposed law will affect their life of power and luxury by its likely effect on their industry. To protect their life of power and luxury, they cannot rely on their influence as a voting bloc, because as a voting bloc their influence is zero. They must find a means other than by casting votes to protect their interests. Typically when the super-wealthy make a move to protect or enhance their interests. It is done via a large organization such as a multinational corporation or an NGO.

If for example to protect their interests, they needed to influence the law as it pertains to a given economic sector, it would be important to be able to imperil the offices of elected officials; As a class they don't possess enough votes to do that. So instead they have to influence one or more large blocs of voters.

Would it be necessary to control a majority of voters? Not usually. In many elections, the voter turnout is less than 40%. To determine the outcome of such an election, it would be necessary to influence only 21% of total voters. Thus it is possible with the support of less than one fourth of voters to determine the outcome of an election.

From this we can infer that a well indoctrinated minority could be wielded as a very real threat against elected officials. And in fact, this is what actually happens. This has been a fact of American politics since the right to vote was extended to the non-landed classes.

Much of the general population hasn't the time, energy, will, or self-confidence to delve into the quagmire of facts, half-facts, and outright lies that surround any given issue. So instead of using carefully reasoned thought to make a decision; they turn to one pre-packaged philosophy or another; most of which are carefully arranged to sound beneficial but which often leech the wealth and energy of both its supporters and its opponents. These pseudo-philosophies are often a combination of marketing sound-bites and propaganda, which offer their constituents little more than a reassuring lie. Present-day examples are the arguments that "health care (insurance) reform" will reign in healthcare costs; or that government regulation of industry causes economic stagnation. Neither case is supported by historical fact. Since a majority of voters haven't the time, energy, will, or self-confidence to research the facts and decide for themselves (the world would be a very different place if they did) then it is easy to get them to buy into a pseudo-philosophy that plays to their pre-existing biases.

If such a pseudo-philosophy can be simplified and peddled in a way that people will not only accept it but voluntarily submit to indoctrination, then it could be turned into a coherent and potent political force. In American commerce, advertising agencies perfected this technique as far back as the 1950s. (Check out "The Waste Makers" by Vance Packard, -1959) in American politics, the neo-conservative movement caught on to this in the late 1970s and today their propaganda machine is so effective, that they have nearly extinguished the Classic Conservative movement. Classical Conservative beliefs are based upon Hamiltonian constitutional philosophy. Whereas the neo-con movement is based upon the mythos of uncompromising nationalism combined with an economic philosophy tending toward pure monopoly. Besides their name, the two have little in common.

In hotly contested elections, it is the independent voters, who don't subscribe to one of the pre-packaged pseudo-philosophies, who cast the deciding votes. Or at least that is what the news media says happens. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In any hotly contested election, whether there are two or twenty candidates for any given office, in reality there are at most two. Those two are chosen during the Primary elections by the Republican and Democratic parties. Primary elections are generally decided not by independent voters, but rather by voters who willingly submit to political indoctrination. These indoctrination services are freely provided by political interests that have only their own self-interest at heart. And who willfully use and abuse their own supporters.  In truth, these political interests are only thinly disguised economic interests who, voting power, seek to manipulate the legislative process by influencing the populace to vote for the candidate who is most likely to support the class of the super-wealthy.

The influencers who provide indoctrination services to the masses work their magic through oversimplifying their message and then repeating it over and over. The basic message is always the same: "observe little, think less, act according to your conditioning." The message may masquerade as "conservative", "liberal", "progressive", "faith", "belief", "taste", or ironically, even as "independent" or as "choice". The peddler providing indoctrination services may come in the form of a "news" program, a talk-radio show, a television pundit, a newspaper columnist, an evangelist, a social liberator, commercial advertising campaign selling brand-loyalty. This indoctrination comes in a great variety of styles and flavors. But what most of them have in common is that they represent the economic interests of the super-wealthy; even if they say they don't. (They may not themselves whose interest they really represent.) The indoctrination service providers are the real decision-makers. By the influence of their effective marketing, they overwhelm the reasoning ability of the majority of people who haven't the time, energy, or will to truly decide for themselves.

Looking at it from this point of view it can be seen that the main election is not a contest between two candidates, but rather between two opposing economic interests. It is most often nothing more than a proxy battle for control of economic forces that confer upon the victor fabulous wealth, and at least temporarily, fabulous power (as opposed to their more usual merely enormous wealth and power).

So at last we come back round toward the beginning. We can answer our earlier question "Whom does government represent?" Since voters who decide matters for themselves are a minority, comprising only 15-20% of total voters; and candidates for office are chosen by voters, who willingly defer the decision making process to others whom they consider at least as able as themselves, and whose intentions they do not question; then it can be seen that most of the time government only really represents those to whom the partisan voters defer the decision-making process. In other words, government does not represent those who vote so much as it represents those who influence those who vote.

If this is true, that leaves us with the frightening possibility that instead of government of the people and for the people, we have government of the people and for the economic interests that can generate the most effective propaganda for the longest amount of time. The independent voters would not choose if or how the axe would fall, but only who swings it and collects the meat afterwards.

Is the economic/political landscape really as bleak as the picture I've painted here? While the picture, I believe, is an accurate one, it is NOT bleak. I've left out an important detail: the power of these controlling economic interests is neither monolithic, nor is it particularly durable. It is founded upon the long-term complacency and cooperation of the populace. Take those two things away and that power will dissipate like a puddle on a hot and sunny day. That power is essentially a house of cards covered in an edifice of reassuring lies, and guarded by paper tigers.

It remains only to find a way to knock down a house of cards and to wrestle paper tigers to the ground. And as luck would have it, this has been done before.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." (Hari Seldon, Foundation, by Isaac Asimov)

It's all about choices

"The word 'choice' is a fraud, while people choose only what they've been taught to choose." (Idries Shah)


People only have the choices that they are aware of.  If a choice exists that nobody is aware of it is a fair bet that nobody will make that choice. Likewise, if people can be convinced that a given choice is absurd, even if that conviction is based upon misinformation or outright lies, then most of them will avoid that choice without ever examining its merits.

Going one step further, if people can be convinced that a choice is somehow morally wrong; again even if that conviction is based upon misinformation or outright lies, not only will they not themselves make that choice, but they will compel others by persuasion or possibly even force to avoid that choice.

Choices can be and are taught to us since childhood. If our "teacher" should want to constrain our choices, for instance, if they should want us to only choose what benefits them, then it would just be a matter of teaching us that some choices are "good", while others are "bad". And if they are really skilled they can teach us to not even be aware of many choices .

Our parents did this when they took us to a particular church and taught us that our church was "right" and "good" while another church, which might have had the same core beliefs was "bad" or "wrong" or even "less right". This happens to us in a myriad of different ways by a myriad of different people who try to constrain our choices as to: politics, racial views, gender roles, musical "taste", etc.

As children our choices are constrained by the adults around us. This early childhood conditioning prepares us to dutifully accept choice-constraint. Most of us hit our heads up against it when we reach adolescence. It generally manifests itself in the form of "acting out". Usually that means "seeking to expand our choices beyond what others want for us." Then when we are grown we do the same thing to our children.

This early childhood conditioning sets us up to be prime targets for economic and political choice-constraint as adults.

This is the essence of marketing, indoctrination, and electioneering; which are nearly the same thing.