NEW (ROYAL) BLOOD
Meanwhile, geographically but not sentimentally far from Australia, a royal couple is about to give birth. “Things are progressing as normal,” the couple's spokesman said. This utterly mundane event – human childbirth, an occurrence which happens every other minute – being newsworthy only because we need the monarch and royal family as foci of emblematic wealth and power (hence their celebrity).
But the power of the monarchy is not merely symbolic – though it performs a significant function within the (so-called) ideological state apparatus.
“If you follow the progress of inequality,” writes Rousseau, “you find that the establishment of law and property was the first stage, the institution of monarchy the second, and the conversion of legitimate to arbitrary power the last.” These stages are evidently cumulative, rather than sequential. But I think our political leaders should heed what Rousseau predicts will happen, and might happen – might already have happened? – to us:
… the importance of wealth in a society is a measure of its corruption. The universal desire for wealth and prestige leads to catastrophe; division is sown beneath the surface of society. From this disorder arises despotism, which devours all and tramples laws and peoples underfoot.
Do we not detect today – yes, right here in sunny Australia – the continual rise of state despotism, in concert with that of corporate tyranny? The routine trampling of laws and peoples underfoot? If it is true that wealth corrupts (even Adam Smith held this to be true), and that the importance of wealth in our society is the measure of its corruption, then Australia is, in our opinion, well and truly corrupt.
Here, down under, even the pallid aura of wealth exuded by monarchy is enough to capture the media’s attention. They'll be milking that royal baby and its mother for all they're worth.
And so, the social order continues ...
P.S. Rousseau warns us not to throw the baby out with the bathwater (he means God, an overarching sovereign the idea of which limits the extent of human bloodshed and misery; but I digress). An Australian Republic, divested of umbilical attachment to the monarchy, would be no less corrupt than a constitutional monarchy maintaining colonial ties.
But the power of the monarchy is not merely symbolic – though it performs a significant function within the (so-called) ideological state apparatus.
“If you follow the progress of inequality,” writes Rousseau, “you find that the establishment of law and property was the first stage, the institution of monarchy the second, and the conversion of legitimate to arbitrary power the last.” These stages are evidently cumulative, rather than sequential. But I think our political leaders should heed what Rousseau predicts will happen, and might happen – might already have happened? – to us:
… the importance of wealth in a society is a measure of its corruption. The universal desire for wealth and prestige leads to catastrophe; division is sown beneath the surface of society. From this disorder arises despotism, which devours all and tramples laws and peoples underfoot.
Do we not detect today – yes, right here in sunny Australia – the continual rise of state despotism, in concert with that of corporate tyranny? The routine trampling of laws and peoples underfoot? If it is true that wealth corrupts (even Adam Smith held this to be true), and that the importance of wealth in our society is the measure of its corruption, then Australia is, in our opinion, well and truly corrupt.
Here, down under, even the pallid aura of wealth exuded by monarchy is enough to capture the media’s attention. They'll be milking that royal baby and its mother for all they're worth.
And so, the social order continues ...
P.S. Rousseau warns us not to throw the baby out with the bathwater (he means God, an overarching sovereign the idea of which limits the extent of human bloodshed and misery; but I digress). An Australian Republic, divested of umbilical attachment to the monarchy, would be no less corrupt than a constitutional monarchy maintaining colonial ties.