In this section we will look at some stuff that highlights the systems; tools, and devices unchanged through recent history (last hundred years) to restrain and subvert public opinion. (Propaganda being the main one, we will study in detail latter)
2.1
Protecting the system
Maintaining the division
Some people deny that there is such a thing as the class system especially in government .There are good reasons for this. To understand the workings of the class system is to unlock the toolbox that can tackle a great many of our social ills and inequalities.
Citizens managed to abolish slavery. (rich people invented it) Black people, women, children have gained rights and liberty’s which where once only the privilege of elite and mostly rich white males. The extent of these rights we will keep to later, suffice to say these rights were fought hard for. But it must be remembered Governments only gave-way so far in these hard win reforms – While still protecting and maintain the structure of power at the top.
So we don’t send children up chimneys any more but we are still ruled by the same structures of government which did allow it. And still allows the poor children of Arab states an even worse fate.
Through out history the whole gamut of civil unrest, social change, wars, uprisings, tumults riots, reforms and social progress the one factor has blighted the liberty of the citizen is. The overall hierarchy of power always remains the same.
Among the tools for sustaining the class system are race, nationalism, gender, competition, chauvinism, propaganda and armies The fundamental idea of preserving a class system ruled from the top is to:
1. Maintaining the division between rich and poor while the rich get richer. (this is the obvious bit)
2. Organizing and understanding each other ie corporations, conglomerates, governments, in their strategies for the upkeep of this disparity between the upper and lower orders. (The people who rule us are very organized therefore to counter them needs organization.)
3. Dissuading the underclass from becoming aware of such strategies through – controlled education and the illusion of a democratic process.
Links
The class divide Cynthia Peters
When middle-class activists approach organizing with the assumption that they need to enlighten and educate the duped and the unaware, they may be contributing to the class divide that exists in current social change movements.
In scarcely more than a century education has become a basic human right and the school as major social institution. But has the learning industry contributed to social equality? Wayne Ellwood reports.