Subverting Civil Society 101: Managing The Masses

[Magda Hassan]

Swans want me to direct you to their site and not post here in full but I do recommend you read this article. Has it all summed up very succinctly and one could swear this is from the text book that 'they' use to manage 'us'. I'm going to check out Susan George's book now also.

Subverting Civil Society 101: Managing The Masses

by Michael Barker

Author's note: Inspired by Susan George's excellent book The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 2003), and adopting the satirical style of activists like The Yes Men, the following essay presents a fictitious management lecture intended for all budding members of the ruling class.

(Swans - July 27, 2009) The ideal political climate is one in which the public are engaged in democracy to the barest possible extent; that is, they should only periodically turn out to vote. With the tick of a box, citizens will be able to feel part of the political system, while right-thinking policymakers can be left in peace: in this way, the policymaking process runs smoothly, and can react efficiently to contain the public. Having too many people engaged in democracy would encourage unnecessary bureaucracy and overload the political system.
Usually when left to control their own destinies people demonstrate a strong preference for organizing collectively to promote their own interests. This is a problem; such unsupervised aggregations of citizens can prove disruptive, especially when dissident organizers encourage the correct belief among the populous that the public can exert a powerful influence on democratic processes. This belief needs to be countered, as policies that benefit the masses tend to be antithetical to those that are in the best interests of capital. Given that such troublesome feelings of cooperation are impossible to prevent (under democratic arrangements anyway) it is critical that we act to control any coordinated mass participation in democracy to the largest possible extent.

Step One: Every effort should be taken to discourage people from believing that they stand to benefit from working cooperatively with their fellow citizens.
Here our educational and mass media systems serve a vital function. Although such educational activities generally prove to be effective in limiting the organizational capacity of the majority of people, there remain a small percentage of persistent organizers who strive to disrupt the democratic norms of the day. Our goal must be to delimit the egalitarian tendencies and influence of this minority.



... the rest can be found here: http://swans.com/library/art15/barker27.html

[Mark Stapleton]

Excellent stuff. I've never heard of Barker but I'm going to have to have a look at the Susan George book too, Magda.