A pretty uninspiring article I thought. The Uk and democracy would be better served by Proportional representation and the First past the post system seems it will serve up something of the sort on May 7th, with luck at any rate. The Author of this piece seems to find nothing wrong with A schumpeteresque version of democracy.
‘Democracy is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’.” Joseph Schumpeter, Quoted from Roy Madron, Super Competent Democracies who in turn Cites. “Participation, and Democratic Theory” by Carole Pateman. Dr Pateman says that Schumpeter and his followers: … set the current Anglo-American political system as our democratic ideal (with) a ‘democratic theory’ that in many respects bears a strange resemblance to the anti-democratic arguments of the last (i.e. 19th) century. No longer is democratic theory centred on the participation of ‘the people’; in the contemporary theory of democracy it is the participation of the minority elite that is crucial and the non-participation of the apathetic, ordinary man lacking in the feelings of political efficacy, that is regarded as the main bulwark against instability.”
Neo-Liberalism as the political wing of Financialised Capitalism is withering on the vine, along with Financialised Capitalism. Whilst America (USA) has influenced Western Europe since WWII through petrodollar hegemony the results of the disastrous neo-liberal ( fascist) experiment in the USA are there for all to see. At any level, as a society, the US is only represented as a success of Political Economy in Hollywood fantasy. Cinema the USA is La La Land and Europeans, Africans, and those from the Orient simply are not prepared to sleep through the Hollywood myth of the American Dream.
The UK has been F’cked, to use the article’s terminology. It has been Raped in fact by neoliberalism as has the rest of the Western and Washington Aligned East for the best part of 40 years. This election as with the UK parliament vote against war on Syria is actually a writ served on the Neoliberal (Fascist perpetrators of that Rape), In the court of democracy, Neo-Liberal Fascism will surely fail to plead successfully against the charges and be sentenced accordingly. Meanwhile, the people will rejoice and move towards a working direct democracy, I for one will be cheering from the rooftops!
