******************************************************************* Mike B) Just as they are educated just enough to become employed to produce surplus value for the capitalist class and at their unionized best, to clamour for fairer levels of exploitation, people are given all the facts they need to re-endorse the rule of Capital during each election. Mencken’s “mob rule” is really upside-down thinking. It’s the ruling class mafia who rules the herds of wealth producers (who they see as consumers/ “the market”–a role almost too readily accepted by the throngs of the “middle-class), some of whom lie more comfortably within fine stables, not under trees in the fields. Democracy in its purest form would be classless, an association of free producers. *****************************************************************
Wojtek So the bottom line is that people will not make rational political decisions, not because they are incapable of making them, but because of the way human mind works to overcome the imperfect information problem. This is why democracy almost certainly degenerates into a mob rule unless some mechanisms are put in place that (i) limit the choices people can make based on the "stock knowledge" AND (ii) implement an effective alternative to "stock knowledge" to provide adequate information. ****************************************************************** Mike B)
I rather think that we try to cope with reason, a reason which has been corrupted just enough to keep the System and most importantly, its machinery of production humming along at a profitable level. The rational choices, which we are presented with by the corporate powers (who have purchased them in the marketplace of political commodities), all lead, in their bi-partisan ways, to the same place : their Rome--some with whips, terror and messages from on high, others with a handful of dimes.
Best, Mike B)
===== ******************************************************************* Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch03.htm#c14 Karl Marx http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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