Post Liberal Democracy

The players that led to the development of modern Western liberal democracy…

The Conservatives; large landowners, and particularly those making use of repressed labour, were almost everywhere authoritarian opponents of democracy.

The middle classes, defined in occupational and educational terms rather than by level of income, tended to support the liberal part of liberal democracy. That is, they wanted legal rules that protected their rights and particularly their property from predatory governments.

Conversely, the working classes were more interested in the democratic part of liberal democracy, meaning their right to participate in politics.

Peasants, where they perservered, were socially conservative and easily led or bribed into action against their own interests. Racism and nationalism were always good standby tactics to coopt their ill-will; still are.

In this age of full voting franchise and rampant technology, thr working classes are devolving into a new under-employed peasant class of easily led and easily bribed voters. And it’s the conservatives that are doing the leading and the bribing.

So when it comes down to it, despite appearances of fragmentation, the political landscape is shaping up to be a dog fight between the conservatives and the middle classes.

With each political or technology battle lost by the middle classes, more of them will be pushed into the bog with the nouveau peasants.

That’s the plan anyway. The conservatives want their land and their cheap labour, whether they need the latter or not. It’s how they define themselves.

If they get what they want then it’s back to the future. The last hundred odd years of liberal democracy may eventually be seen as an historical aberration enabled by an unbridled use of finite resources.