Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
Eric Hoffer - The Temper of Our Time (1967)
Suppose we extend Hoffer’s observation to a claim that UK political parties have evolved a mix of cults and rackets. Not so much as a permanent viewpoint, but to outline a worst case scenario where UK political parties eventually lose whatever genuine connection to democratic accountability they once had.
In which case it could be said for example, that the Green Party is a pseudo-environmental political cult, as the Lib Dems have become, while Labour has always been a cult with a fondness for politically-inspired rackets. Tories struggle to know what they are now the democratic political charade has collapsed, so they seem destined to go under.
More generally, Net Zero is an unmistakable mix of cult and rackets. It has become a monster, so huge that it tends to obscure numerous other progressive cults and petty government rackets from featherbedding to vast and dubious networks of patronage, including cult patronage.
The cult/racket problem seems to be one reason why civilisations fail, too many political cults and rackets eat away at the social fabric which maintains a civilisation as civilised. They erode the importance of social norms and civilised behaviour which need to be widely understood if not always adhered to.
As stated at the beginning, to describe UK political parties as cults and rackets merely highlights a worst case scenario. Unfortunately it is also becoming more useful.
4 comments:
Another way of looking at political parties is as machines for dispensing patronage. The Conservatives, as a racket, dispense patronage to their supporters (and have now made a mess of it) while Labour dispense patronage to their believers (and are running out of clients).
Meanwhile the Blob has discovered that it too can control the dispensation of bureaucratic patronage, so reducing the value of purely political patronage. Perhaps the Blob is now a 'corporation'? A corporation of like-minded individuals.
It will be a huge task to get the show back on the road.
DJ - that's an insightful way of looking at it. In earlier times of course, dispensing patronage was more open, an accepted way to promote loyalty among the rich and powerful, not the plebs. It seems quite likely that the Blob and politicians see it that way now via different language and always have, but excessive patronage has become unwieldy enough to damage the ability to dispense it.
As you say, it will be a huge task to get the show back on the road.
Google's AI gives Hoffer's original remark as "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket".
Pretty good, I'd say. Yet you never see, for example, the Suffragettes analysed thus. Whereas people do apply the analysis to Martin Luther King's campaign to protect the Civil Rights of American blacks. Is it one of those rare issues where the American tradition is to speak more frankly than us?
dearieme - wist says the quote given by Google AI is a frequently used misquote of the original, although I haven't read to original to check apart from wist's link.
https://wist.info/author/hoffer-eric/
It is pretty good either way and it's a pity it isn't applied more widely here, the environmental movement for example as well as the Suffragettes. Lots of scope.
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