Journalists have named it the Arab spring, a spate of uprisings in the middle east that saw one dictator after another get ousted after decades of what seemed to be unassailable power. For decades Western Governments did business with these dictators (especially oil business) condemning the nature of their rule but never moving against them – because they claimed any attempt to do so, or impose sanctions (…as if we'll ever see real sanctions against an oil producer) would only harm their beleaguered citizens further. Ultimately those citizens got fed up. Too much money in the pockets of the elites while their citizens got hungrier and poorer. Finally a generation grew up that was ready to risk their lives, take to the streets, and oust their oppressive former leaders.
That was, the Arab spring in a nutshel – it's not quite over yet (the latest casualty – Gadaffi still hasn't officially relinquished power) and it's likely to keep on for a little longer. From the start it was clear that other dictators were afraid of this spreading into their countries. China made defensive moves, and there is much speculation that Kim Yong Ill's recent visits to China and Russia was really about securing allies after Gadaffi's fall – built on a fear of a similar public insurrection in North Korea.
What nobody seems willing to suggest is that this could also spread to Western Nations. The (and indeed the more Westernized African nations like South Africa) imagine themselves immune – after all, we're not dictatorships we are free democracies. I beg to differ. The London riots despite all the claims by politicians and popular media to the contrary was not just criminality. It was the beginning of a similar spark of revolt I believe.
The idea that having a democracy makes you immune from such uprisings is just wrong. It's based on the idea that if people have a peaceful way to oust bad governments (through the vote, court systems etc.) they wouldn't risk doing so in unlawful ways. There are three major flaws in this reasoning however.
The first is that democracies are always free. At the risk of getting myself Godwinned I must point out that Hitler originally came to power through an election. You can elect a dictator who is then very hard to get rid of again. Many other dictators around the world throughout history originally came to power in a free election. Robert Mugabe is a more recent example.
And you don't have to be called a dictator to be one. When there is only one way an election can go – that is a dictatorship, and when all the election will do is shuffle a bit between two parties that are both sold out to special interests then all you have is a structurally fluid dictatorship.
There are very few free democracies left in the world and America, Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa are not among them. They do have various degrees of individual freedom but in many cases this has been twisted to make the dictators and their wealthy cronies simply more powerful. Instead of those freedoms being used against cronyism, it is used to protect cronies.
South African's love to complain about our government and blame it on the ANC, declaring how things are falling apart but there is nothing special about us. We call it Tenderpreneurs, American's call it Lobbyists, the results are the same. The rich gets richer with the help of goverment corruption and the poor get poorer.
To claim capitalism is working you must prove that the poor actually gets richer – those who argue this generally show long timelines and try to prove that the poorest in society today lives better than they did 50 and 100 years ago. That is not a very difficult thing to prove – technology advanced, science advanced these things raise quality of life even for the poorest of the poor, but there is nothing either of those statements that depends on capitalism and no proof that capitalism helped this process. Even if it did, you are not proving that it will continue to do so today. More importantly is to see what happened to the quality of life of people today compared to ten and twenty years ago. That shows a marked decline worldwide.
As the age of corporatism reached it's greatest scale, the poor got more poor, and now with the coffers of the economy plundered they are stealing the only thing those poor had left – the social safety nets put in place by our grandfathers. Their welfare checks, their public education, their pensions, their medical assistance and all the other things that potentially offers and escape from poverty is being ripped out from under them by governments who can almost legitimately claim that they cannot afford them anymore. Nowhere is those governments suggesting paying back the money that people already paid into these funds and from which they will now never benefit again. This leaves the middle-class robbed and the poor with even less recourse to ever be less poor.
Many captialists defenders imagine otherwise but the reality is that big gaps between rich and poor breeds contempt, protest and ultimately violent revolution. If we don't learn that from history we are doomed to repeat it. As we strip away these safety nets, the poor is feeling the pinch, their youth lose their last prospects and lash out. The London riots were immature. Stealing a TV from your neighbour doesn't help -but they were not simply "lawlessness by lesser people" as was suggested and implied. They were protest by inexpereinced protesters (after all it's been a long time since Westerners had practice). But as one protester said: "Two months ago we marched on a police station with a memorandum. 20 thousand people marched, peacefully protesting police behavior and we didn't even make the local paper. We loot a few shops for 2 days and we have international media attention".
Does that excuse violence ? Not at all, but it does explain it. Western governments are now in real trouble – they have allowed their cronies to plunder the system until there is nothing less (some economists predict American inflation rates will hit 30% within two years), so they actually cannot afford to maintain the safety nets that worked for decades. That provided a means of self-upliftment and a way out – and kept the poor at least hopeful that some of them may grow to better lives, gave them a reason to be peaceful. Now they take those safety nets away, to the glee of their cronies who get to offer their for-profit versions (annuities for pension plans, medical insurance instead of medicaid) to the middle class for even more profit and couldn't care less that the poor could never afford it, while the middle class as they switch to these things get robbed. For years they paid into these schemes and now they never get to be paid out.
In 1992 Brazil tried to do the same and ended the government pension plan (this was a democratically elected government long after the dictator years). Protests broke out with everyone from young teenagers to the elderly in the streets, risking arrests, but standing by their point – this was the money we had put away for our old age in schemes you demanded we pay into, you cannot end those schemes without giving it back.
The protesters won. The experiment failed and the pension plans were reinstated. Why do we think that America, England and South Africa are immune ? Why do American's think they are ? Why does Cameron think that he can stop what happened in London with propaganda ?
These nations have the same situation now that Brazil was in in 1992, but it's aggravated by the fact that it's not just the middle-class who paid in that are losing out, they aren't just taking the pension payments away. They are destroying all the safety nets at once, robbing the middle class of their money and the poor of their hope. There can be only one outcome: violent revolution.
I hate the idea of that, but it's an inevitable consequence of these actions. It may not be too late to prevent it yet. A change of course may yet be able to. I doubt one will happen though. The denial of the democratic dictators is too strong, like their unelected middle eastern compatriots they will pretend all is well until they protests become revolutions and then claim to be winning and crushing those revolutions every day until the revolutionaries are standing on the rubble of their mansions.
Anybody who thinks that what happened to Gadaffi cannot happen to Cameron needs to read some history books, it can and most likely will happen. The trends begun under Reagan are reaching their inevitable conclusion. We can still change course but the time left to do so is very short.
We can listen to those protesters while they are still looters in a few neighbourhoods, or we can keep pushing until the White House is burning. Never for one moment imagine it cannot happen. America was born from a violent revolution against an unpopular British government who impoverished it's citizens remember.
The truth is, even if Milton was right about everything and you suddenly figure it out now… he was wrong about one thing. There isn't a population in the world that is equalized enough to do capitalism his way without being instantly at war with the poor.
