Since democracies are of, by and for political parties (or, a single party), the citizens are not entitled to enjoy independence: each citizen must be fully dependent on and committed to one political party at any point of time. One can change sides once in a while and de-link one's dependence and full loyalty/commitment to political party X and link one's dependence to another political party Y or Z, but at any point of time one must be completely subservient to a specific political party. Otherwise, you can only be treated as a queer animal without political consciousness and a citizen not worthy of democratic rights. No citizen worthy of a democracy can have the right to criticise all political parties at the same time.
This principle is very fundamental to the success of democracy and its sustenance through oppression and exploitation. A person who does not depend on a specific political party is useless because no party can count on him for his votes. Second, a person who is not willing to show allegiance to a specific political party can not enjoy the right to benefit from favors granted by the political party to him. Third if such independent, non-conformist persons become a significant percentage of population, its a threat to the sustainability of the business of politicians in democracy as such independent citizens will grow in number and treat the politicians as slaves rather than being slaves of a political party or another.
That is why political parties are very active in promoting multiple trade unions affiliated to them, students joining political parties and forming the nucleus of the brainwashing and indoctrination of young minds to dependence on political parties. Even if the citizens realise that the political parties are useless, they must continue to how allegiance to one political party or another. Politicians cannot effectively oppress and exploit the citizens unless the citizens feel dependent on the political parties. It is somewhat similar to the dependence of religious minded people on the priests. Unless there is a strong attachment of people to one or the other political parties, they can organise political agitations, demonstrations, movements, struggles against so-called undemocratic and foolish policies of the ruling party in power or support blindly whatever the ruling party does. Democracies are meant to be for continuous wars and battles among political parties - continuous Kurukshetra war: war cannot be fought with dependent armies led by the hierarchy of political leaders.
Just look at the history of Independent India and its any province, say West Bengal. It will be easily seen that the greatness and success of Indian democracy is essentially due to dependence of citizens on political parties for every thing. Political leaders help citizens to get educated, get jobs, get weapons to fight, to get protection against police interference, to get important positions in State appointed committees, to get preferential allotment to state-owned land, to organise film festivals to make money, to organise sports events to make money, to run business without much labor problems or problems arising from violations of law and regulations concerning businesses, to get reservations in jobs, to get state grants in aid, to get admissions to schools and colleges, to get etc etc. That is why every citizen including prominent businessmen and the small ones, the talented actors, the super sportsperson, the novelist, the intellectual, the government officers, the doctors and paramedical staff, the students and teachers,the traders and the transporters, the policemen and the newspaper editors and their reporters, the TV anchors and newsreaders are now fully and publicly attached to one or the other political parties - sometimes publicly supporter of one party and secretly supporter of another party. You will be always running the risk of being oppressed or exploited or both, but allegiance and dependence to political parties is a lottery ticket to get some favours from political parties time to time. See what happened in land acquisition for SEZs all over India, what happened in Nannur, Nandigram , Singur, Rajarhat, Lalgarh etc in West Bengal, Common Wealth Games mismanagement in New Delhi, massacres by armed political party cadres in different parts of West Bengal, political intervention in the love and marriage affairs of young couples through the oppressive police machinery, the circuses of inauguration events with speeches by politicians at so-called mass rallies (how much time politicians spend on giving lectures to people in different stages/ rallies vis a vis the time they have for serving the people), and so on. To be in democracy, one has to learn to live with the political consciousness that in a rule of, by and for political parties, citizens have only to choose the masters - one of the political parties, they have to accept the destiny of being dependent on political parties. There is no right to human life of dignity if you choose to be abnormal and there fore independent of political party connections, affiliations.
It is sad that the scientist have not yet been successful in inventing a childhood shot that protects citizens for life against possible attacks of the virus or bacteria of apolitical or political party independence syndrome!!!
How would a democratic country function if most of the citizens became completely independent of slavery to one or the other political party? Would that mean democracy sans exploitation and oppression citizens? How can there be legislatures who do not belong to any political party?
Can we think of a society where citizens are the masters and political parties and politicians are their servants? Lets explore that dumb anti-democratic idea later.
Sep 24, 2010
Sep 21, 2010
Of, By and For the Political Party(ies)
Some great person defined democracy as the rule of the people, by the people and for the people. In Monarchy's the rule was of, by and for the King. In the Hindu epic Ramayana, Rama's rule was of Dharma (Righteousness), by King Rama and for the people. In the later Hindu Epic Mahabharata, the rule was of the Royal families, by the crooked of the royal families and for the royal families and the warrior class. In history throughout muscle power dominated : the earth for the enjoyment of the brave, talented fighters. There were times when small kingdoms were ruled by democratically elected leaders (must have been voice votes for the smartest or the most physically powerful (with or without weapons) men. Even Napoleon got elected to rule and turned France into his Kingdom. Some monarchs were just plain dictators: some enjoyed a court of physically weak learned men and men of arts. Dynastic rule by royal families became accepted as the just rule of, by and for the royal families. Some kingdoms were ruled as a collection of oligarchs, each a king of a given territory and they combined to have a lead super king of the conglomerate of consolidated territory.
Modern democracies have been founded on the same principles of the past but principles are couched in words that have magical powers to fool the common citizens. Multi-party democracies have allowed leaders to emerge along a hierarchical chain. Parties are nothing but instruments to throw new people's representative kings up. Party is a machinery to collect votes in favour of leaders they happen to get and market them to the electorate. The marketing literature of parties talk of various ideologies ( which generally are lot of verbose and slogan the citizens do not understand but like them to be couched in attractive enough words and phrases that one would consider to be fashionable), tall and hence inherently false promises to the citizens (that are seldom capable of being fulfilled by any party in power). But parties need workers and they get them - a few get fooled by ideologies, some aspire to become leaders one day and enjoy like kings did, most others work against compensation in monetary or other material terms. Let alone the ruling party functionaries, the opposition party functionaries in modern democracy have their share of power to abuse and can provide benefit in terms of getting commercial contracts, access to State funds ostensibly earmarked for great social, cultural, sports, academic research and etc work. Most party workers work for getting these doled out by the party leaders.
Leaders are generally those who have failed to succeed in any kind of economic activity or interested in using political clout to beat rivals in competition that can only be distorted by the abuse of the power of the Government or legislation. Except for a few exceptions, most political leaders have failed to compete for the top positions in academic career, sports, acting, professional or vocational skill acquisition (however, once they come into leadership, they find that the media and the public have found in them lot of talents and skills in sports, culture, painting, singing, literature, etc and even some of these political dullards with public oratory skills manage to get recognised as intellectuals and philosophers). Some great person had said democracy is the rule of the idiots. The business of Ruling (administration, law and order, policing, is best done by idiots only: the skilled and the talented are best used for actual productive work and scientific/ technological advances.
So, the business of democratic politics offers a good avenue of building a financially successful career with lot of name and fame including for being philanthropic and benevolent (at the expense of tay payers' money). Bulk of the money collected through taxes are essentially coercive levies of thee type collected by hooligans. The businessmen of productive economic activities like manufacturing, banking, insurance, other services and construction, transport and trade, if they have to continue, their business must pay both official taxes to the Government for the comfortable living of the people' elected representatives and donations ( charges?) to various political parties.
The business of politics require very little owners/ promoters capital. It does not require borrowing at all. Monies flow to political parties from the citizens because they cannot live peacefully if they do not pay the political party charges.
All parties swear in the name of the people at large and promises to do only good for the people. But most people complain that political parties did nothing for them. Yet being in democracy, they have to pay the political party levies either through the government or as donations/ subscriptions to the political parties directly. When in power, the ruling political party gets the most of the donations and subscriptions./ political party charges.
The strategy of a political party is to get the maximum number of the party nominees elected as people's representatives. If the number they get in the elections is a clear majority, they enjoy a full term of five years to exploit the people. Even if they get fewer seats, they can still get into position of membership of various committees of the elected representatives which are associated with lot of pecuniary benefits and little work besides traveling and dining after meetings. Moreover, if no political party gets a clear majority, more than one party form a coalition to rule: the benefits are distributed in proportion of the relative electoral successes hey have and how critical they are for not allowing an alternative coalition government.
Almost all parties want to become the only party in the country. This has happened in the Democratic Republic of China: Communist Party is the only political and non-political party in that country. That is the ideal of democracy. But that ideal is seldom reached. In Countries like India which are federal democracies, some political parties try to concentrate only on one or two provinces and try to ensure that in the province no other party is able to win a single seat in the election to the provincial legislative assembly. The Congress Party did this in West Bengal for about two decades after independence, then the Communist Party Marxists did the same for the next three decades and is still continuing. Single party is best for democracy: there is no inter party fight and murders etc and corresponding law and order chaos. But one does not get the best situation all the time.
Political parties are seldom wound up: sometimes there are mergers and acquisitions in the business of political parties. Even those who do not believe in democracy and capitalism, form political parties and vow to struggle until both democracy and communism is established. In India there are many such political parties - they are nowadays called Maoists parties (somehow the Indian political parties get their names by borrowing from abroad: there is the Congress Party and Trinamul Congress Party, and there are many socialist or Samajwadi party, there a number of communist parties and now a number of Maoists parties: foreign ideas and names always get a premium value in the Indian market). The Maoist parties are capturing inaccessible, Forest areas and running their own governments in those places. They recruit young people, train them to modern weaponry to fight the police in guerrilla war fare, they collect their levies from the people in the locality even if they are poor, run ancillary smuggling and narcotic businesses, arrange for sexual comfort for their party men and even arrange insurance from Indian insurance companies for their terrorist party men if they die while fighting with the police or the other political party armed cadres. Most political parties in India has to raise some sort of armed cadres for the protection of their leaders and for collecting money from the people at gun point. Only the ruling parties enjoy the benefit of State police acting as their additional armed cadres to fight other political parties.
Indians think that democracy is the best thing in the World. And, they think that political parties are the pillars of democracy and therefore become politically conscious by being a blind supporter of one of the parties. Without political parties, Indian cannot live. There is no room for apolitical, independent citizens of citizens independent elected representatives. No one can be elected if he or she is not a nominee of a political party. India is truly a democracy of, by and for political parties. India is proud of her great democracy of, by and for political parties. People are dead.
Modern democracies have been founded on the same principles of the past but principles are couched in words that have magical powers to fool the common citizens. Multi-party democracies have allowed leaders to emerge along a hierarchical chain. Parties are nothing but instruments to throw new people's representative kings up. Party is a machinery to collect votes in favour of leaders they happen to get and market them to the electorate. The marketing literature of parties talk of various ideologies ( which generally are lot of verbose and slogan the citizens do not understand but like them to be couched in attractive enough words and phrases that one would consider to be fashionable), tall and hence inherently false promises to the citizens (that are seldom capable of being fulfilled by any party in power). But parties need workers and they get them - a few get fooled by ideologies, some aspire to become leaders one day and enjoy like kings did, most others work against compensation in monetary or other material terms. Let alone the ruling party functionaries, the opposition party functionaries in modern democracy have their share of power to abuse and can provide benefit in terms of getting commercial contracts, access to State funds ostensibly earmarked for great social, cultural, sports, academic research and etc work. Most party workers work for getting these doled out by the party leaders.
Leaders are generally those who have failed to succeed in any kind of economic activity or interested in using political clout to beat rivals in competition that can only be distorted by the abuse of the power of the Government or legislation. Except for a few exceptions, most political leaders have failed to compete for the top positions in academic career, sports, acting, professional or vocational skill acquisition (however, once they come into leadership, they find that the media and the public have found in them lot of talents and skills in sports, culture, painting, singing, literature, etc and even some of these political dullards with public oratory skills manage to get recognised as intellectuals and philosophers). Some great person had said democracy is the rule of the idiots. The business of Ruling (administration, law and order, policing, is best done by idiots only: the skilled and the talented are best used for actual productive work and scientific/ technological advances.
So, the business of democratic politics offers a good avenue of building a financially successful career with lot of name and fame including for being philanthropic and benevolent (at the expense of tay payers' money). Bulk of the money collected through taxes are essentially coercive levies of thee type collected by hooligans. The businessmen of productive economic activities like manufacturing, banking, insurance, other services and construction, transport and trade, if they have to continue, their business must pay both official taxes to the Government for the comfortable living of the people' elected representatives and donations ( charges?) to various political parties.
The business of politics require very little owners/ promoters capital. It does not require borrowing at all. Monies flow to political parties from the citizens because they cannot live peacefully if they do not pay the political party charges.
All parties swear in the name of the people at large and promises to do only good for the people. But most people complain that political parties did nothing for them. Yet being in democracy, they have to pay the political party levies either through the government or as donations/ subscriptions to the political parties directly. When in power, the ruling political party gets the most of the donations and subscriptions./ political party charges.
The strategy of a political party is to get the maximum number of the party nominees elected as people's representatives. If the number they get in the elections is a clear majority, they enjoy a full term of five years to exploit the people. Even if they get fewer seats, they can still get into position of membership of various committees of the elected representatives which are associated with lot of pecuniary benefits and little work besides traveling and dining after meetings. Moreover, if no political party gets a clear majority, more than one party form a coalition to rule: the benefits are distributed in proportion of the relative electoral successes hey have and how critical they are for not allowing an alternative coalition government.
Almost all parties want to become the only party in the country. This has happened in the Democratic Republic of China: Communist Party is the only political and non-political party in that country. That is the ideal of democracy. But that ideal is seldom reached. In Countries like India which are federal democracies, some political parties try to concentrate only on one or two provinces and try to ensure that in the province no other party is able to win a single seat in the election to the provincial legislative assembly. The Congress Party did this in West Bengal for about two decades after independence, then the Communist Party Marxists did the same for the next three decades and is still continuing. Single party is best for democracy: there is no inter party fight and murders etc and corresponding law and order chaos. But one does not get the best situation all the time.
Political parties are seldom wound up: sometimes there are mergers and acquisitions in the business of political parties. Even those who do not believe in democracy and capitalism, form political parties and vow to struggle until both democracy and communism is established. In India there are many such political parties - they are nowadays called Maoists parties (somehow the Indian political parties get their names by borrowing from abroad: there is the Congress Party and Trinamul Congress Party, and there are many socialist or Samajwadi party, there a number of communist parties and now a number of Maoists parties: foreign ideas and names always get a premium value in the Indian market). The Maoist parties are capturing inaccessible, Forest areas and running their own governments in those places. They recruit young people, train them to modern weaponry to fight the police in guerrilla war fare, they collect their levies from the people in the locality even if they are poor, run ancillary smuggling and narcotic businesses, arrange for sexual comfort for their party men and even arrange insurance from Indian insurance companies for their terrorist party men if they die while fighting with the police or the other political party armed cadres. Most political parties in India has to raise some sort of armed cadres for the protection of their leaders and for collecting money from the people at gun point. Only the ruling parties enjoy the benefit of State police acting as their additional armed cadres to fight other political parties.
Indians think that democracy is the best thing in the World. And, they think that political parties are the pillars of democracy and therefore become politically conscious by being a blind supporter of one of the parties. Without political parties, Indian cannot live. There is no room for apolitical, independent citizens of citizens independent elected representatives. No one can be elected if he or she is not a nominee of a political party. India is truly a democracy of, by and for political parties. India is proud of her great democracy of, by and for political parties. People are dead.
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