From 'Brave New World Revisited', written in 1958.
Hat tip, Andrew Dickie
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Tax Research UK Blog is written by Richard Murphy unless otherwise stated and published by Tax Research LLP under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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The ruling classes, the wealthy and too many of the “intelligent elites” have never had any desire, respect or tolerance for political or economic democracy – an inconvenient idea that must never be allowed to flourish!
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” ― Winston S. Churchill
And let’s not forget this battle between autocracy and democracy has been going on for a very long time (quote below gleaned from Varoufakis’ new book):
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
― Thucydides
“There is no equality between the armed and the unarmed”
Machiavelli – repeating Thcydides +/- 2K years later – funny how things don’t change – I think Graham Greene also used Machiavelli’s quote in the Quiet American.
Do you remember your O level history and the wonderful Robert Owen. Early socialism, some may say a failed man, but his ideas of cooperative movements and early years education were remarkable. Those early philanthropists did help with raising ages for child labour albeit a couple of years and they fought against those who were afraid of losing profits. Not suggesting things are as bad today, of course they are not, but that attitude of superiority over an ordinary working man is alive and well. I suppose if you are very rich you are terribly afraid of losing all, so find ways to ensure it does not happen. They can never have ‘enough’ . And they decide who the undeserving poor are. To watch as we lose the best healthcare system, the best education system, to push us down to know our place is very hard. We should reward effort, there are many differences between us, but always we must protect the vulnerable with every need met, for comfort, not just to exist. We all may fall and have need, it should be our right not charity. Sorry, pontificating over.
These are issues I address in The Courageous State
WE have very few contemporary novelists who as deeper questions about the nature of our society and its economic life-in Huxley’s time this was very much to the fore. Today, there seems to be more concern about who wins the Booker Prize and how it will help their career than than the quality of ideas- the neo-liberal mind set has infiltrated even this far.