Roberto von Archimboldi on Nostr: I have this strong sense that most people in this country, the UK, do not, like me, ...

I have this strong sense that most people in this country, the UK, do not, like me, feel thoroughly removed from power. I also feel that my sense of how power functions in this country is correct. I want to know if my first feeling is shared.

This is inspired by a chat with a woman from Shanghai. She was jealous that we could vote, but I think that whoever you vote for, the government gets in. It made me think that the struggle for democracy is really the struggle to realise the worse nightmares of Aristotle, ie rule by the poor, multitude or, as I would put it, the oppressed.

In the 18th Century we had a very Athenian democracy. The problem with Athenian democracy was that the franchise was very limited. Similiarly in the C18 the franchise was limited to land owners. As the franchise expanded, so did the democratic character of the constitution recede. Now the same small, wealthy ruling class runs an adminstrative state and the multitude are excluded.

That multitude includes much of the of the adminstrative class, the middle class. Hollinghurst in his 'line of beauty' really captures this brilliantly, but you see it in Boris Johnson calling his £200,000/year for a monthly column 'chicken feed' or a nobody like Hancock not blinking before naming his daily rate for 'consulting' as £40,000, and, of course, Farage taking £5 million 'gifts'. It is not just that they are obscenely wealthy. It is that this is their world.

It seems obvious to me, but then people like Monbiot start arguing that the political class has been captured by this lobby or that lobby. They must think that power is distributed evenly, but unfortunately some people been corrupted. Maybe I am just wrong afterall.

#UKPol, #GeorgeMonbiot, #AlanHollinghurst, #Democracy