Class and Xenophobia

Since the various campaigns for working class and women’s suffrage, voting has been almost universal. The problem with representative democracy is that it is a fixed sphere: a specific amount of people can vote, but the scope of governmental action is not limited.

With regards to foreign policy, the limited sphere of apparent universal suffrage affects an unlimited number of non-voters. Universal suffrage also provides a democratic cover for the real rulers of a modern industrial country: (large) property owners, banks and corporations. It provides an artificial veneer by which a propertyless British worker feels opposed to an immigrant labourer or a seeker of sanctuary and on the same side as his boss or landlord.

In a consumer society “Britishness” can then be further commodified so long as people are fed the illusion that they are running the country and that they have some stake in its economic growth, now that birth or property are no bars or qualifiers on voting.

This “limited sphere” is of great benefit to the new political elites in Iraq and Afghanistan. One justification for keeping troops in both countries is the increasing political violence, and in the case of the latter, heroin production, over there. The reality is that the leaders of the sectarian parties in Iraq often know who is responsible for sectarian violence but are unwilling to do anything about it, while in Afghanistan the largest heroin producers are elements of the new administration, facing competition from small farmers too poor to produce anything else.

Foreign troops are needed by both elites for protection from their own people, not to establish democracy. Foreign troops are there to stop the western stooges from ending up hanging from lampposts, as larger and more empowered local armed forces (the establishment of which would admittedly create jobs and which the West could easily afford) would simply not be trusted.