Politics in this country has always consisted of ideas of democracy and liberty and these are founding principles of all political notion, even communism, and I will explain why later.
However, the notion of liberty worries me because enveloped in the criterion for liberty is the essence of total individual freedom and I would suggest that such a notion could be applied in a religious sense, i.e. it makes a good argument for atheism as opposed to Christianity; atheism is a sense of lifebound liberty overriding any kind of spiritual containment that may affect others. Religion is a uniting force outvaluing atheism.
So it is suggested that liberty is not a totally free concept because within it must come overriding moral and spiritual containment which is to say that man is not governed by what he freely thinks, but the level of conscience and spirit within him imposes management of what he freely thinks; consequently by degree he is never truly at liberty, i.e. society generally finds a level of acceptable freedom of thought leaving unacceptable thought as to be contained or rejected.
Mentioned above were the main political parties who are democratically elected, but that is not necessarily true to say that they reflect democratic opinion. What is more likely true is that they do or do not get elected because they are there, i.e. they channel the ideological thinking of the public into 5 or 6 bodies of political interest, so whilst it is democratic it is nevertheless narrow insofar as to think that millions of voters can only share 5 or 6 bodies of thought. I suppose in true democracy there could be thousands of bodies of thought whose election or lack of it would throw parliament into chaos as different independent views were expressed.
The fact is that politics has evolved out of need for a particular aspect of thinking to reflect the country's direction and this evolutionary process is the main reason we now have a Green Party - because there is a need to reflect growing political opinion that all cannot be well with our established style of life.
At the start of the chapter I made reference to, on the one hand, politics of self-interest and on the other, politics of shared interest. This is to suggest just on which side and how the political parties stand up in my view.
Conservative
The Conservative Party are a party manifestly built upon the value of self-interest. Every effort made by the Conservative government is to "privatise" both economic and social activity. I may argue that private means that it is owned by the public who take a shared interest in private development. However most private wealth in the economy used in activity is in the form of companies. These companies compound the notion of share into a self-contained unit. That unit is an artificial self with one aim "wealth". The unit relies on the self-interest of consumers to buy goods and services. The Conservatives argue that private creates competition which keeps prices down. All that is created is feudalism, feudalism in pin-striped suits, whereby some companies will be successful and some will not the weakest to the wall. There is no cushion for failing companies and no cushion for employees of failing companies - the casualties are always human who receive no help when they are struggling. In many small companies where owners may have committed themselves to outstretched mortgages as security for their venture, they find themselves on the streets and ruined as a result of the kind of Conservative thinking that prevails.
What is in evidence is separatist thinking whereby everyone fights their corner for survival, relying on the development of pockets of strength. This kind of thinking is self-defeating insofar as such are drawbacks of starting a private business and many people, and rightly so, are afraid to develop their ideas beyond blueprint stage.
In an economic sense the Conservatives destroy the concept of a unified Great Britain, going simply for great, as any notion of a united form of economic activity is nonsense.
As was written in the last chapter, government should be about using the assets of the country, namely the people and its capital holdings. The Conservatives reject the notion of government in this sense, relying solely upon the capital appreciation of wealth creation. As a result they are self-rejecting in a sense, as they see it as the government's role less to govern and more to separate. They collapse any framework that should exist in a capital sense which the country should hold for the benefit and ownership of the people. However they are unable to escape the value of shared interest and need ministries to maintain a shared interest, particularly in health care and defence - but they only keep them as a shared interest because they cannot think of or would regard as politically unacceptable, any alternative.
Labour
The Labour Party whilst socialist in principle is a self-interest party, however as we know, totally opposite in interest to the Conservatives. The Labour idea, born out of a concept of share of wealth creation for the workers, i.e. the self-interest of the workers. However the Labour Party has always had problems with the economy, both in maintaining interest in investment and containing spending to match revenue. The real problem for Labour has been the notion of a completely free economy. On the one hand if they try to influence the economy too greatly they frighten off investment which finds its way overseas. On the other hand, if they were to try to influence too greatly the wage rate upon production costs, the result would be increased prices which may or may not be met with alteration to demand.
The Labour Party has always worked to support the real notion of Great Britain Limited, i.e. more public ownership and greater social values for the population.
But the real problem is that they have had to force both ends, i.e. better wages and conditions and more public spending, all of which puts more pressure on prices, and unless the market can support consistent demands along with higher prices, there are two ends fighting against the middle. If as has traditionally been the case there is less capital support for the "middle", the whole system comes under strain.
In recent times Labour have tried to support their aim as an alternative government (and we need one) and has rejected left-wing policies, but in so doing has rejected much of its foundation in an evolutionary sense. I suppose it could be argued that it is trying to evolve further to meet the changed times in which we live but in so doing it is heading towards being encapsulated by the sort of social disease that this book has suggested, i.e. being bound up in the wealth creation phenomenon to the point where it loses its true identity.
Liberal Democrats
They represent the so-called centre self-interest group. The notion of self-interest in this party is based upon individual free thought having a bearing upon proceedings. This Party represents an alternative to blue and red but is principled around the free self-interest economy so insofar as this economic notion exists in both Labour and Tory thinking, there really is no centre ground. As the principle factor in any government is its handling of the economy,we can assume that Liberal Democrats will not be much different from the other two As far as affecting Great Britain Limited is concerned, there has never been much talk of less or increased public capital structure.
Communism - Shared interest government
Our current experience of communist government is that it is, I believe, a failure because it tries to belie human nature. However the important thing to note about Communism is that it is founded on principle - what I call "idealology" in so far as its notion of equality is its founding principle. However I believe for Communism to really work it has to be truly democratic, that is all the people have to believe in their individual value, coming from the conscience, and that the communist notion has to be a 100% democratic view. It is impossible to impose communism as the Eastern States have done. What arises is a juxtaposition of self-interest trying to contain shared interest, and shared interest wanting to become self-interest. I find it very hard to deny the communist maxim about equality but such a notion should be an inner opinion and find itself reflected in the way we express ourselves towards people, rather than being a notion for an unworkable style of government.
With the exception of communist, all the above types of party have expressed themselves as "The Green Party". What they pledge themselves to do is deal with environmental factors as a side issue, cleaning up litter, pollution etc, but what they fail to grasp apart from the Green Party is that it cannot be a side issue and in order to govern, the policies of government must be a commitment to work within a Green framework which takes the pressure off mother earth.
Green Party - Shared Interest Party
I believe that the Green Party represents a shared interest party of principle and ideology. The major influence upon the Green Party is man's relationship with the earth on a continuing basis and the principle of the party must be our equal responsibility to the health of the earth and the welfare of man.
As was written earlier in this chapter, much of any kind of response to the above statement has got to come from the conscience, consequently we have the evolution of a potential parliamentary party whereby its policies including that of the economy are subject to some constraint of conscience and that pure fore-brain thinking is both insufficient and unacceptable.
The Green Party is democratic and as with any "idealology" can only be so; it is impossible to impose Green Party principle, therefore Green Party policy, upon people who are unable or unwilling to see need other than by persuasion.
The Green Party is not only about what we do in our daily lives but how we do them. There is therefore by its very nature a need to impose upon our economy restraints, regulations, redirection, to transfer it from a one-track, no gearbox, wealth creating machine, into a sophisticated, well-engineered automatic- gearbox wealth-providing vehicle.
Consequently the Green Party has to work on two fronts redirecting the economy, and at the same time providing benefit through Great Britain Limited.
It needs to be recognised that government ministries amount to a tool of shared interest and their involvement in shaping a healthier Britain is paramount.
The dangers for the green party are on two fronts; firstly, capital, the capital structure in the UK being made up of British and foreign investment is free to rove throughout the world and hints of economic revision will scare off potential investors.
Secondly, it may take a long time to structure the economy in a wholly satisfactory way and if in the course there are as there probably will be; slow-ups, the Green Party could find itself with a first 5-year term in office never to be preceded.
The next chapter consists of ideas and measures that potential Green government could take to restructure economic activity.
