I seem to be feeling a bit better, finally, at least for now. And I came across this image while following links on a social inequality piece a few days ago. It’s from the time of Karl Marx. Boy, they dialed in that religious platform eh? In fact the whole thing It seems quite applicable today. It’s probably a good thing for the US that Marxists didn’t incorporate religion into their ideology. Had they woven in a Sermon on the Mount, with Jesus-was-a-hippy-commie religious justification, who knows how things might have ended up?
One of the big problems with communism was the mechanism for passing on power. In the USSR, uber sociopath Stalin got ahold of the reins and that was the end of that. But how would one prevent wealth from influencing and eventually taking a hold of democracy? It’s happened here many times and we’re smack dab in the middle of it again, with the usual dismal result for the vast majority of citizens.
Wow, I wish I was an illustrator so I could modernize this… the lack of actual Big Business representative figures is conspicuous, oddly, unless the faceless money bag at the top is meant to be that. I’d use a picture of tycoons from banking and energy and maybe throw in a day trader. For the clergy, I’d include different religions, including perhaps a greasy evangelist on the take, a terrorism-fomenting imam, a Scientologist with a fake personality chart, and one of those New Age gurus that preaches to the West. I actually think it’s unfair to portray the rank-and-file soldier/sailor as part of the oppression of the military/gun lobby, but it might be possible to throw in NRA lobbyists, ranting Tea Party fanatics, Homeland Security/TSA, and a SWAT team like the ones who raid the wrong house for drugs. “We Eat for You” should be “We Consume for You” and wow, we could bring in everyone from soccer moms driving giant SUVs to hipsters drinking civet coffee, from people making a hobby of supposedly prolonging their lives with expensive and unnecessary supplements to restaurants and shops throwing away perfectly good food; it isn’t necessary to beat up only “the rich” when there are so many obnoxious wastrels about. The common workers on the bottom tier should include more of the people we see and contact every day… the underpaid part-time fast food clerks, the delivery drivers on quotas, and the call center workers who don’t get enough bathroom breaks, as well as the farmers, laborers, and domestic workers. Just some ideas :)
I think the big business in this model would have been the “We Eat For You”. In current times, that group has become interchangeable with the “We Rule You”.
Back in Karl Marx’s time, big business was the problem (as noted in “We Eat For You”), but wasn’t in such a position of government control that it is now. Remember that large multi-national corporations were mostly used for colonizing until the 19th century when they shifted to hunting for resources for large factories. It was really around World War 2 that they took off to become what we see today where they have strong influences on government and policy (which surged in the late 1970s).
With that in mind, I think the pyramid has actually become smaller since “We Eat For You” is now really just part of the “We Rule You”.
The verdict of history is that you can’t. The advantage of democracy is that it is the system in which it is the most difficult for this process to occur, compared to all other government systems.
As Churchill once was said to say: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other ones that have been tried.”
“The advantage of democracy is that it is the system in which it is the most difficult for this process to occur,”
Where in so called western democracies does the government not rule to the benefit of big corporations and to the detriment of the working class? It is still the working class, no matter what euphemism one wants to use.
They now get even sucked in to gamble on the stock market for retirement for the benefit of financial institutions.
@ badgersdaughter
“I actually think it’s unfair to portray the rank-and-file soldier/sailor as part of the oppression of the military/gun lobby”
I have to disagree, though I would include all those who glorify military service.
….He’s the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war,
and without him all this killing can’t go on……. -Universal Soldier.
@ robertbaden #5:
I thought of that, to be sure, but I know many atheist and even Communist servicepeople who, though they have reservations about some of what they do, consider it their job to make sure secular thought and values are not taken out of the military completely. One young officer candidate actually seemed to think it was part of his duty to his country to be the “voice of reason” balancing religious oppression. I can’t really understand his reasoning, but I can respect it. I know that people join the military for different and often irrelevant reasons, such as wanting to gain job skills/college money, or having the option to join presented as an alternative to a jail term.
Funny, I’m almost everything you mentioned; badgersdaughter @6: a former soldier (Canadian), atheist, communist, who joined to gain job skills and university access to avoid the path which would inevitably have led to me taking a jail term or two. Not really relevant, I was just struck by how you described my life in a few keywords. :)
Anyway, awesome poster. I would totally hang this on my wall. And if I can kick the big D out of my head for a while, I could probably do a reasonable job of rendering this into a modern equivalent (including POC and people with disabilities and queerfolk and undocumented people and…)
Hmm. Next week, I will be having a dog (a very lovable and grunty little beagle of a friend of mine), and I’m hoping that having a dog around has the awesome effect it usually does on my depression. If I can get myself being arty, I might be able to do this…that’d be cool.
With 2014 coming up, and Armistice Day in a week, I’ve been rereading a lot of my books on WWI.
It seems like we never learn………
Where in ANY system of government at any point in history has the above not been true? In which of ANY of those other forms of government do the wealthy have less access to power and more checks on their access to power than in democracy?
I just realized, they had no television when the poster was printed. Maybe we need an entire new tier, “We persuade you”.
badgersdaughter #10
I’d say that’s just another element of ‘We fool you”