In politics and business -- and, indeed, in any organization of serious
intent -- significant decisions are always taken by a small group at the
top. It's a delusion to imagine that our much applauded one-person one-vote
at general elections gives us a workable democracy. It doesn't. It gives us
a political system in which most people are disinterested most of the time
and will only vote for the party which can offer the best benefits to their
particular class (or their particular job or income stream), not the
country as a whole. Most people are only interested in politics in so far
as it affects their tax rate or their welfare benefit.
But, if democratic institutions such as the House of Commons or Congress
don't live up to their original democratic expectations then, in a
paradoxical way, small groups do. In today's complex society we have many
quite powerful small groups who not only take decisions to benefit
themselves but also try become as infljuential as possible in the private
deliberations of the most powerful small group of them all -- the three or
four individuals who comprise the small group which the are closest to the
government's (or MNC's) leader.
For example, in the UK today there are probably a dozen such small groups
who are more or less in competition for David Cameron's personal attention
and favour. These would include a small group of the most senior people who
are judges or civil servants or media personal or food supermarkets or
airport/plane or railways or farmers or oil drillers or armed services or
sports or royal courtiers or ecologists or accountants or medics.
Go back as recently as a century. How many small power-groups then? A lot
fewer. Maybe half-a dozen. Go back another 300 or 400 years and we have a
smaller number still -- for example: a small group of the leading
land-owning aristocrats (all trying to angle their daughters into the royal
family!), a small group of leading churchmen/monastics, a small group of
goldsmiths,
So let's go back further to pre-agricultural times, and further still to
the earliest time when man's predecessors were thrust into the savannah
from a rainfores. There we have the ultimate -- one group only, tne power
group being only two or three. One small group containing, if anything,
little more than one extended family. There'd be the grandfather with maybe
his brother, his two sons and a daughter plus two or three other women
who'd come over from other groups when they want to partner a male and
raise a family. (Incest taboo in order to avoid in-breeding.)
'Democratic' practice as we have known it has nowhere to go now. There
isn't the faintest chance that governments, we we know them today will ever
be able to pay their national debts. However, as increasing number of
specialized power groups develop then something resembling Athenian market
square politics is actually taking place beneath the surface.
Keith
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