ECONOMY VERSUS IDEOLOGY
© by Rob Ager 2007
For the average citizen much of modern history appears to have been defined in terms of clashes between political ideologies. Communism, Fascism and Capitalism are perceived as being the great ideas that create war and revolution.
This view that civilization is shaped foremost by ideology is not only false, but dangerously simplistic. Just like religious movements have for thousands of years been used to manipulate populations into accepting injustice, political ideologies have had the same effect. Mass religious and ideological movements basically achieve the same consequences – the perceived division of people into camps of good / evil (justification of war) and the acceptance of massive wealth gaps between the working and ruling classes.
The good / evil paradigm is flip-sided in that the people of each conflicting nation perceive themselves as the good and righteous, while labelling their enemy as the evil and wicked. Each competing ideology supports its own existence through carefully crafted semantics and selective, biased or even manufactured research. And so each conflicting party feels not only the justification, but an overwhelming desire, to fight fire with fire – to rule or be ruled – to embody the destructive and hostile role, thus reinforcing their own evil image in the eyes of the enemy. This spiral inevitably escalates into all out war.
The ironic thing is that neither ideology nor religion can protect you from a bullet. Wars are physically won through scientific and economic means. The nation with superior industrial, technological and economic capabilities invariably wins, but the victory is usually announced as an ideological one. So terms such as “democracy has prevailed” are misleading. The victors should be saying “science, industry and economics have prevailed”.
A clear indication that superior economics virtually always overrides ideology is the success of the “capitalist” west. First of all capitalism was never an ideology to begin with. Ideologies are philosophical, spiritual and moral doctrines, while capitalism is simply the natural operation of competing free-markets unimposed by such doctrines. Capitalism is actually the absence of ideology.
This power of economics over ideology is shown in western culture’s ability to financially bribe ideologists into betraying their principles. Simply by being able to offer a greater economic standard of living the west has continuously undermined and defeated every ideology on the planet.
So in effect “the west”, with its lack of moral and spiritual consensus, is simply a form of civilization that allows the natural laws of free markets to operate unhindered by ideology. This is capitalisms power and by comparison reveals a fatal flaw that most ideologies are infected with – they rarely help populations to develop their physical standards of living.
So why do organised ideological movements continuously fail to offer standards of living that can compete with raw capitalism? Well, it’s very simple … institutionalised ideologies are almost universally used as false justification to strip populations of their land and wealth … they are used to consolidate legal and economic power into the hands of the few … they are used to limit the choices of the people … they are used to enslave people so that the fruits of their labour are always transferred to those figureheads who formulated and promoted those ideologies in the first place.
Institutionalised (funded) ideologies are basically carefully crafted lies that hypnotise populations into accepting otherwise unacceptable economic and legal conditions.
As a glaring example let’s compare Communism with the Nazi ideology of National Socialism. These are perceived as being the polar opposites of the political spectrum – the simplistic left and right wing arguments. However, in terms of economics they each achieve the same result – the consolidation / monopolisation of major industries and the subsequent destruction of small business – in short, the elimination of free markets. As anyone with the slightest understanding of economics knows, monopolisation allows prices to be driven up and quality of goods and services to be abandoned.
Communism and National Socialism are the same in that they are false justifications for monopolisation of industry. They have both historically been used as justification for the physical enslavement, imprisonment and murder of competing political and economic opponents. The only real difference between these two ideologies is that one claims to offer protection from the dangers of capitalism and the other promises the preservation of racial and national purity. Same economic motive – different lies of morality.
The success of an ideological movement realistically depends on three things. First, the logic must be convincing enough that the average citizen will believe it to be morally sound. Second, it must have considerable covert funding. Third, it must be promoted continuously through favourable mainstream media coverage that does not appear to be biased.
To make an ideology convincing in the modern world requires application of the most powerful propaganda methods. The verbal semantics must be deceptive enough to disguise the fact that it will enable harmful consolidation of power and monopolisation of industry. Publicly viewed clashes with other ideologies must be scripted and staged to give illusion of superior logic. Just as goods are marketed in movies and television through product placement techniques, ideologies must also be promoted in the storylines of such media output. So if you have the funding to advertise your ideology across the board and its semantics are convincing then installing it in the minds of the masses is an easy task.
Now you may be wondering “if capitalism is not an ideology then why has it become so destructive in the modern world?” The answer is that it hasn’t. Capitalism has created the great industries and technologies that drive our civilisation. The destructive element is that governments have been passing economically fascist legislature that kills free-market competition. Legislature is now mostly designed to benefit the largest corporations only, and the more those corporations consolidate wealth the more easily they can bribe legislators into passing even more biased laws. In fact, in many instances key players in corporations also hold government office positions where they can directly design and vote in such laws.
The public are constantly caught up in the ideological rhetoric of party politics, not realising that the people who fund the parties are the ones who determine policy. They determine policy because the politicians know that to betray the wishes of their investors will ensure that their campaign funds will be withdrawn and given to more compliant opposition parties. And so party politics has become pure fiasco. Each party strives to give the appearance of being for the benefit of the public, while covertly competing to bow harder to the investors.
For these reasons people need to recognise that political ideologies are illusion. They are distractions from the genuine issues of the day – economic freedom for the individual … the right to compete freely in the business world, unhindered by stealth taxes and crippling legal burdens. This is what makes a society flourish.
Ideologies are deceptive devices. Citizens should always carefully investigate the language / logic, and especially the economic implications, of an ideological doctrine. They should examine the backgrounds of its promoters and the nature of its funding sources. Attention should also be paid to how the promoters of such ideologies treat their own opposition. If slander, violence or any other non-democratic means are used to neutralise disagreement then the ideology (or at least its promoters) should be distrusted and resisted.
Ideology can and should be a personal choice – not a legally and economically forced way of life. Free market competition, or capitalism, as demonstrated by the success of the west can provide populations with good physical standards of life.