This short .pdf file should be required reading across the nation (background here).  It’s called “Unelected Oligarchy: Corporate and Financial Dominance in Britain’s Democracy”.  And it has something to do with what’s happened here in England recently.

Here’s a Wikipedia definition of “oligarchy”:

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία, oligarkhía[1]) is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words “ὀλίγος” (olígos), “a few”[2] and the verb “ἄρχω” (archo), “to rule, to govern, to command”.[3] Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who pass their influence from one generation to the next.

Throughout history, most oligarchies have been tyrannical, relying on public servitude to exist, although others have been relatively benign. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as a synonym for rule by the rich, for which the exact term is plutocracy, but oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by bloodlines as in a monarchy. Some city-states from ancient Greece were oligarchies.

And here we have a definition of “corporate oligarchy”:

Corporate oligarchy is a form of power, governmental or operational, where such power effectively rests with a small, elite group of inside individuals, sometimes from a small group of educational institutions, or influential economic entities or devices, such as banks, commercial entities that act in complicity with, or at the whim of the oligarchy, often with little or no regard for constitutionally protected prerogative. Monopolies are sometimes granted to state-controlled entities, such as the Royal Charter granted to the East India Company, or privileged bargaining rights to unions (labor monopolies) with very partisan political interests.

Now whilst the right is blaming a generalised moral decline for the recent disturbances in England and the left attaches the responsibility for such a decline at the feet of the rich, in general (at least according to this tweet tonight) no one really knows exactly what’s going on – nor really why it’s all happened.

I suppose I also have felt something similar these days – as I guess most people who consider themselves thoughtful will have had no alternative but to conclude.

And yet, after reading the .pdf I link to above, a short document of little more than twenty-four pages, I feel that a whole host of realities have slotted into place.  I cannot emphasise enough its synthetic importance in summarising and pulling together awful threads of reality which our business leaders and government servants have striven to hide from our sight.

Or, perhaps, not even that: they are so certain of their ability to game the system in their favour that they really don’t care who finds out or when.

Here are some choice phrases from its stream of unhappy truths:

“In the case of the UK, where the ratio of FTSE company directors’ pay to their average employee in 1989 was 19:1, by 2006 it had risen to 75:1, and by 2010 it was 145 times the median national full-time wage.”

“The increasing ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid taxation, and the enormous effort expended on devising ingenious schemes for doing so, is damaging to democracy at each of these levels.  It means that those doing so are able to take advantage of the infrastructure necessary to their wealth and profits while escaping the responsibility to pay for it. [...]“

“[...] An investigation by the National Audit Office in 2007 discovered that a third of the country’s largest 700 businesses had paid no corporation tax in the previous year.  The UK tax liability of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is minimal, while in 2009 Barclay’s Bank only paid £113m in UK corporation tax on profits of £11.6bn, a rate of around one percent. [...]“

“[...] An investigation in 2006 by The Sunday Times found that the 54 billionaires living in Britain paid income tax between them of a mere £14.7m on their estimated total wealth of £126bn.”

“[...] As a study by Democratic Audit has shown, ‘just 224 donations, originating from fewer than 60 separate sources, accounted for nearly 40% of the three major parties’ declared donation income between 2001 and mid 2010′.”

“The number of former ministers ‘revolving out’ raised particular concern in Parliament and the press in 2008, when the list for the previous two years revealed that no fewer than 28 former ministers had taken jobs in the private sector.  Of these, thirteen were still MPs.  Paul Flynn, a member of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee (PASC), commented that ‘he could not remember ministers hopping into the private sector like this……It is a way of buying access.’  This number of 28 compares with a total of 31 in the list published in March 2011, which covered the previous twelve months.  A smooth transition to the private sector could now be said to be the normal expectation for a government minister.”

Even as the circle of corrupting behaviours is now complete, there’s plenty more I could quote from – but, to be honest, I really think you should go back to the original document and read it in full for yourselves.

There are no easy connections to be made between the street violence in England over the past week or so and the realities the document under discussion in this post contains.  But I do honestly feel, and even more so in the light of the above data, that even where the violence has been entirely apolitical, the causes lie most firmly in the field of our system of government – especially where this system justifies the inequalities that this paper makes patent for all who choose to read it.

Where democracy becomes a mere façade which allows those in charge to game the system and rot it from within, we are surely on a long-term journey to nowhere particularly productive for anyone.

Except, that is, for the short-term interests of the super-rich who can hide behind their security measures – and look down on the rest of as simple pawns in their games of stratospheric chess.