Weimar Britain ?
Nietzsche, Antichrist | 22.02.2002 16:08
The Weimar Republic provides the ultimate example of what happens when a political and economic system comes adrift and decays.
Modern Britain is starting to show similar symptoms, for the decline of the entire edifice is palpable.
Despite Blair's insistence on the 'New', he has brought nothing new whatever; no new ideas, no new class, merely amalgams and fusions of existing forces, but in decline. Political slogans range from the alarming ('National Moral Purpose') the meaningless (Third Way) to the absurd and ludicrous, as witnessed in the official acceptance of 'Meritocracy', a term coined in 1958 by a satirist [#] as an example of how a decline in Labour ideology could end up as a new oligarchy. Seems Brown and Blair read the whole work and missed the joke... In the economic sphere, policy has ceased to make any remote sense. Utilities and housing are sold off, only to go bankrupt 6 months later, knowing they can expect endless public funding.
The parallel continues. Weimar appeared after the end of a protracted wasteful war (1914-18) which in sheer cost left a whole ruling class without any rationale to continue meaningfully. In our own time, an even more massive conflict, the Cold War, has been waged across the entire world between 1945 and 1990, when the USSR and the Berlin Wall collapsed. The victory has left the West in something of a vacuum of its own making. Incidentally, modern Russia is also showing extreme signs of the Weimar tendency (and of course produced its own short lived version in 1917 with the Kerensky regime. Both Kerensky and Weimar were eventually toppled by ultra-forms of political parties)
The modern establishment is noticibly degenerating; having defeated the workers in 1984, and with no serious external enemies, it is now turning on its most loyal supporters, such as farmers, House of Lords, even the police. Every independent sector is now being broken up and the remnants fused into one tottering oligarchy.
Where this may take us is a cause for alarm. Weimar, or twilight regimes, are prone to toppling as referred to above. Unfortunately, the result is rarely democratic. What will happen is largely a matter of opinion, just as is the entire political- economic power structure.
[#] Michael Young "The Rise of the Meritocracy 1879-2033" Died this year, having reiterated his critique in 2000.
Despite Blair's insistence on the 'New', he has brought nothing new whatever; no new ideas, no new class, merely amalgams and fusions of existing forces, but in decline. Political slogans range from the alarming ('National Moral Purpose') the meaningless (Third Way) to the absurd and ludicrous, as witnessed in the official acceptance of 'Meritocracy', a term coined in 1958 by a satirist [#] as an example of how a decline in Labour ideology could end up as a new oligarchy. Seems Brown and Blair read the whole work and missed the joke... In the economic sphere, policy has ceased to make any remote sense. Utilities and housing are sold off, only to go bankrupt 6 months later, knowing they can expect endless public funding.
The parallel continues. Weimar appeared after the end of a protracted wasteful war (1914-18) which in sheer cost left a whole ruling class without any rationale to continue meaningfully. In our own time, an even more massive conflict, the Cold War, has been waged across the entire world between 1945 and 1990, when the USSR and the Berlin Wall collapsed. The victory has left the West in something of a vacuum of its own making. Incidentally, modern Russia is also showing extreme signs of the Weimar tendency (and of course produced its own short lived version in 1917 with the Kerensky regime. Both Kerensky and Weimar were eventually toppled by ultra-forms of political parties)
The modern establishment is noticibly degenerating; having defeated the workers in 1984, and with no serious external enemies, it is now turning on its most loyal supporters, such as farmers, House of Lords, even the police. Every independent sector is now being broken up and the remnants fused into one tottering oligarchy.
Where this may take us is a cause for alarm. Weimar, or twilight regimes, are prone to toppling as referred to above. Unfortunately, the result is rarely democratic. What will happen is largely a matter of opinion, just as is the entire political- economic power structure.
[#] Michael Young "The Rise of the Meritocracy 1879-2033" Died this year, having reiterated his critique in 2000.
Nietzsche, Antichrist
Comments
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Eternal return ?
22.02.2002 20:25
- Karl Marx.
Last Man
Weimar may be correct
22.02.2002 22:39
dh
managerialism
23.02.2002 15:10
this managerial tendency was first spotted by james burnham (not a leftist, i should warn) who noticed it in relation to the 1930s totalitarian regimes, particularly germany and russia, so there is an obvious link here.
labour has succcessfully merged the capitalist class with the old proletarian heirarchy, producing in blair an overlord, who spouts left-right in different proportions, and indeed has taken on the managerial mantle.
thing is, managerialism is by nature, a middle class phenomenon,, being neither rulers nor workers, thus to manage for its own sake is certainly liable to produce a 'weimar effect' as it were.
bill bore