5 June 2013
A recent TV program focused on what a delightful treat it is to work for the royal family. Various examples of how nice it is were given, two of which should suffice for now. Prince Charles was reading a letter from his mother, that he accidentally dropped into the waste peper bin. He thereupon phoned a servant, who was one hundred metres away, to come and take it out for him, because, as a royal, it was beneath him to do so.
In another incident, a servant brought a royal breakfast to the bedroom and said, "Good morning, your Royal Highness, I've brought your breakfast." The royal, who was awakened from a deep slumber, angrily told the servant to 'fuck off'. The commentator said, "They have no choice but to suck it up." Another commentator on another program that dealt with royal marriages and infidelities, said, "Not the sort of people you would want to be moving next door to you." No Kidding!
It is obvious that a person who has been taught that it's beneath him to put a hand into a waste bin, knows nothing about life as it's lived by the majority. Nor is the family's moral character anything to write home about. By no stretch of the most lurid imagination can they be said to set a good example, yet we are exhorted to look up to them!
Initially, royalty evolved from the robber barons of old. The strongest man in the tribe became its head honcho then conquered a neighbouring tribe and killed its top guy and so on. After acquiring considerable power, he proclaimed himself king and, in cahoots with the priesthood, invented the Divine Right of Kings to rule in perpetuity as ordained by God. His next trick was to marry his kids to those of like people in exchange for territorial gains, so that after generations of interbreeding, the locals would be ruled by idiots whose decisions were often questionable.
After the rise of the capitalist system, the new capitalist class wanted political power to correspond to their economic power. Since royalty had originated in the days of chattel slavery and feudalism, it wasn't consistent with the needs of capitalism. Therefore it became necessary to abolish the institution or limit its powers, as happened in Britain.
Today, as we know, Britain functions as a constitutional monarchy, which, despite attempts to make it look like an integral part of the workings of government, really means a rubber stamp to approve the decisions of the British government. Furthermore, the capitalist class has found the institution of royalty useful as a public relations ploy by sending them on goodwill tours to countries where they want to sell their products or extract raw materials and as a jingoistic tool to promote loyalty to 'King and country'.
One wonders why the working class of the countries where royalty exists keeps them around. The answer being that the organs of capitalist propaganda insist people need something bigger than themselves to believe in. It's one of the many ironic contradictions of capitalism, that the media, that once covered up all of the royals' shortcomings, now expose them in their need to sell a product. This, though, has not stopped the majority in Britain and its dominions, in cheering their heads off for them.
We, as socialists, do not want to abolish the monarchy within capitalism, but to abolish the system itself that would address royalty and all other social ills of a private property-based society. Many countries have abolished royalty but the fundamentals of capitalism remain. As long as capitalism lasts, the working class will still feel the need to believe in something and someone above them, and that is voluntarily giving power to other people.
Perhaps nobody said it better then the exposed fraud in "The Wizard of OZ" when he said, in effect, 'Yes, I'm a big fraud, but so what - you don't need me. Everything you want me to give you, you already have, if only you think about it.' Hopefully the working class soon will think about it and realize they don't need capitalism or royalty.
