Posted: 26/06/2012 by zandtao in Insight, ONE planet, Struggle
Tags: , , , ,

Many people are now recognising the power of the 1%, but this awareness is trickling through slowly. The problem is that we have all had lifetimes of indoctrination into a different way of perceiving the problem, and hence why it is much easier for some young people to see the power relationships.

As a retired person I have grown up with the notion of government as power. To be quite honest for most of that time I have ridiculed the politicians but recognised that these opportunists become the public face of the power of the civil service and military. This is a political dynamic that was brought out well in the TV mini-series “A Very British Coup” in which a democratically-elected socialist clashed with civil service and military. Whilst I still found the series relevant, as I previously mentioned it cursorily mentioned the City, a significant part of the British 1%.

Who employs the civil service? The 1%. Who pays for them? The tax-payer. What is the function of the civil service? To maintain a society that exploits the British people on behalf of the 1%. And they have another significant function, they are receptionists. When you walk into company offices you walk up to a reception area, where you are met usually by a pretty woman who directs you to where you want to go. If you are not wanted you are redirected or politely asked to leave. If you make a scene what is the point? It is only a receptionist. If you get beyond the receptionist you have to be in the know, but even then there is the secretary. There are basically echelons of people who keep you from the actual power – I am giving these echelons a generic term “the receptionists”.

At the same time as there are the receptionists there are designated people whose job it is to deal with complaints – complaints managers whatever. And these people have access to security so that if they cannot fob off your complaints security can easily eject you. These roles I include in the generic “receptionists”.

So in the UK the civil service are responsible for daily business on behalf of the 1%, they are “receptionists”, do they make decisions? No, “receptionists”. In the TV series we then have the military. Now they have a dual 1% function. The most obvious is what they were setup for – to protect the 1%. Initially in the UK that protection was for the aristocracy. And at that time they had an inter-related secondary function, to fight wars. Let’s consider the Crusades, here is a documentary that does so. Ostensibly to protect Britain, the Crusades also used the pretext of religion to invade, rape and pillage. Since that time we have used security, democracy, religion as excuses for fighting wars, but in whose interests have those wars been fought in the second half of the 20th and this century. Two-fold interests. The first is obvious – oil industry. But the second almost as obvious – the weapons industry. Do the people gain in either of these interests? No, they were not meant to. The military are there to protect the 1%. Who pays for it? Tithes or the taxpayer originally. Now fiat money. Where does this fiat money come from? Nowhere. Through their revolving door the banks tell the government that they have fiat money to pay for whatever they want the government to pay for. As the civil service the day-to-day government does what their employer wants, and we have the galloping inflation and recessions that cause the austerity policies British people are now suffering.

And who do we blame? Who do we rant and rave at? The receptionists. What for? What can they do? Or we blame the public faces – the politicians or the complaint managers.

We have examined one aspect of security – the military, but there is another internal branch – the police and the law. Let’s start with the law as ostensibly this is what the police are there to protect. So we need to examine the functioning of the law, never examine the theory or ideals because that is not the purpose – that is the disguise, examine the functioning. Once we examine the functioning we see the law acting as a means of maintaining the status quo, and what is that? We have a society run by the 1% profiting from the earnings and labour of the 99%. When the 1% arrive in courts they are protected because the best lawyers can be bought. Parliamentary law does not say we will protect the 1% but through judgements the law does establish precedents which function as that protection. They establish laws for their profiteering such as copyright law and patenting law, when you examine how Monsanto have exploited patent law effectively starting a process of criminalising organic farming – criminalising healthy food, you can see the function of the law in action.

When Occupy wants to exercise their human right to protest, the law protects the 1% and turns these citizens into criminals. In order for the 1% to continue their exploitation they need a stable society, so civil laws are passed – you might consider these as the laws for the 99%. Many of these are common sense laws that would allow civil people to live together such as most criminal law, and through this disguise we accept another instrument of the 1% – the police. These are the security at the office that the complaints manager calls in, it matters not whether the complaint is valid the security ejects you if you continue to threaten the 1%. And of course the security is legitimised when their role is to imprison criminals – criminals that we would all designate as such. But when it comes to fraudsters on Wall Street the police are powerless, of course who employs the police?

But what would happen if all the 99% went to the “receptionists”? There would not be enough receptionists, complaints managers and security to deal with the 99%. So there are two other pillars of the reception area. The first is the media. Now the media makes huge profits out of the 99% through the entertainments industry. But whilst entertaining the people they also make sure that the people are not aware of who has the power and how to access them, in effect they ensure that all activity is carried out in the reception area. Blue Bloods is a cop show that considers the dilemmas of a caring NYPD, and whilst it is good entertainment it never once addressed the issue that the NYPD were criminalising Occupy at the bequest of the 1% (particularly the $4.6 million donation of Morgan Chase).

Now the media deals with the majority of people, but what about those who have the ability to make change? Every generation of society has a lifeblood of change, its youth. If you do not control this youth then their power can overthrow any establishment. Traditionally this youth was controlled through respect for the Elders, but as part of their exploitation the 1% recognised that the Elders were a detriment to their exploitation. Elders knew interminable debt ie a fiat economy was destructive so when, post second world war, the 1% started to increase their exploitation in the West they took advantage of a stagnating post-war culture and introduced a youth culture dominated by fashion. Rather than respect for Elders there developed fawning for celebrity, and those celebrities became tools of 1% corporations promoting fashion and the latest costly technology. This left youth chasing their tails and rejecting the voices of experience.

But that was still not enough because these young people could still effect change. So here is where an integral platform of neo-liberalism (neoliberalism discussed by Chomsky here) was introduced – apathy, the belief that what is wrong could not be changed an important corollary of that – those who are trying to effect change are crazy and misdirected. And if there was still energy left they dissipated through academic divide-and-rule. They rewarded some idealists with positions in academia by buying off the more malleable, and then other idealists promoted their ideals vying for similar positions. Or idealists who told people, follow my ideal this way of change is the best (see this blog for the way such idealism can induce division). Through education they presented a 1%-view of society. For most people this education didn’t matter as they were only to be failures but for some there would be success. They needed to educate senior management who could be bought off with senior positions in their systems – sophisticated complaints managers, others became professor being bought off in academia. Others fought the system as idealists, demanding people follow their framework and creating dissension if this following was not 100%, ensuring that the one thing the 1% feared – consensus amongst the 99% – could not happen. So the media law and education are pillars of the reception area – part of The Receptionists.

You can talk of these people as being Receptionists, you can talk of them as puppets or opportunists, or simply describe them as family people putting their own first or peasants trying to make ends meet. You can talk of them as civil service, soldiers or police. But what needs to be recognised is that until strategies get beyond these fronts and are directed at those with the power there is going to be little change. Meanwhile we can work within our communities. The church group doing good, trade union activism at the grass roots level, these communal farmers in Kenya, Vandana Shiva’s seed protectors, Community-Supported Agriculture, Horizontalidad and the initiatives that are coming out of Central and South America – Beyond Elections, all of these things are change in progress – not change driven by a common idealistic agenda. These are people who are compromising with each other to reach consensus, but not compromising with the 1%.

And what is important is that when these people are doing their “thing”, they are happy. Whilst the wage-slaves work for the new car and lose their souls, community activity brings its own soul and happiness. Compromise for consensus, do not compromise with the 1% and do not compromise with your own Path because that is where there is the greatest happiness.

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