History Matters

Yes it does.

I was just talking to a friend about an old British TV documentary about the making of modern Britain. Basically it’s a history of British society from about 1900 through to 1945. As a program it’s pretty good. But that’s not its relevance to us.

What it reminds us is that our societies – western industrial nations – have changed enormously over the course of the past hundred years.

In 1900 urban poverty was rampant, inequality and social distress was the norm, health and living conditions were, on average, truly bad, working life was terrible, unemployment frequent and devastating, diet was worse than it had been prior to industrialization, and life was almost Hobbesian in its nastiness, brevity, and brutality.

The genteel images of Edwardian Britain and its counterparts elsewhere were thus illusory. Underneath was a seething and angry populace not sharing in the nation’s obvious and burgeoning wealth.

Something had to give.

Which it did in the populist unleashing of democracy upon a highly resistant and disbelieving elite.

The result?

Political and electoral reform, the rise of trade unions, social welfare programs, increased taxation on the wealthy, improved health care and education for the masses, workplace reform, and what appeared to be the irrevocable rise of a middle class built on all this reform.

Except we now know it wasn’t irrevocable.

A couple of generations along a complacency set in amongst the descendants of those who fought against privilege. The belief spread throughout our society’s elite that, somehow, this new social construction was a ‘natural’ phenomenon and that all that government interference in the operation of so-called ‘free markets’ was an impediment to further progress and wealth.

Thus came into being the radical shift we now call the Reagan/Thatcher revolution, which was designed to throw off the shackles of government and unleash the constructive energy of the people. The result was said to be another leap forward for us all.

It didn’t turn out that way.

It would be more properly called a counter-revoluion. Privilege fought back. Privilege won. The middle class whose existence depends upon government interference was predictably undermined. And some of those century old problems have begun to re-emerge in contemporary guises.

So other populist cycle is inevitable.

The ‘establishment’ has to be taught that its error has betrayed the battles and victories of previous generations. Democracy has to be returned.

In political theory there is a classical tripartite division of governance: government by the one, by the few, or by the many. But in all circumstances, I believe, governance depends for its validity on the willingness of the governed to remain quiescent. The masses have to oblige in being governed. Government is thus a gift given by the masses to their leaders. Betray that gift and you lose the right to govern. It is a timeless truth.

What we are suffering through is exactly a moment of questioning: the masses have been betrayed. They want the government to represent them and not just a few.

Hence Trump. Hence Carson. Hence Cruz. Hence Sanders.

What was accepted practice is no longer acceptable. In business. In academia. In politics. In society as whole.

Now we have to discover what the new ‘acceptable’ is.

Social unrest lies ahead. Take care.