This year the working class of Britain were yet again urged to fly flags, put up bunting, join in with street parties, and generally do all they could to celebrate yet another royal jubilee, but socialists can’t find anything to cheer about.
As we see it, most workers have to struggle to make ends meet, put food on the table, pay the soaring costs of gas and electricity, the mortgage or rent, and council tax bills, etc. The cost of living keeps rising but average wages have stayed level for the last decade or more: so what on earth is there for us and the millions like us to celebrate?
Indeed, the fact is that a hereditary monarchy has little if anything to offer and really does not make any sort of sense. One of the most forceful arguments against the hereditary principle was put by Thomas Paine in his best-seller, the pamphlet Common Sense. This was originally printedanonymously in 1774, in Philadelphia, “addressed to the Inhabitants of America”, then teetering on the brink of their revolution against Britain, with its Hanoverian monarchy and their hereditary right to rule and tax.
With England’s history in mind, Tom Paine pointed out that many dynastic and civil wars had been caused by monarchical claims and counter claims. As he saw it, a hereditary succession was not just ridiculous but a dangerous evil: “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary” (HarperCollins edition, p70).
Consequently, even the most virtuous and wise can have offspring and heirs whose character and competence cannot be guaranteed.
The hereditary principle is dangerous since
“… it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked, the improper…
Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent, selected from the rest of mankind their minds are easily poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions (ibid, chap 2, p22).
Tom Paine, an Englishman who had only lived in America since 1774, had nothing but contempt for the corrupt British government under George III:
In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which, in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society … than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived (ibid., chap 2, p25).”
The King’s use of his power to meddle in government had led to the appointment as Prime Minister of the great-great-grandson of Charles II, the Duke of Grafton. This man was both an incredibly scandalous womaniser and utterly incompetent, and only lasted a short time, from 1768-70. When he became PM, he brought with him a lovely but shady lady, a Mrs Haughton.
He got a divorce by Act of Parliament in 1769 – as a modern Grub Street hack noted: “at the time of writing, he is the only prime minister to have got divorced while in office (Andrew Gimson, Gimson’s Prime Ministers, Square Peg, 2nd ed.,2019)”. Since then, in our own time, Boris has done likewise: moving in to Downing Street with nis new love while his divorce was still pending.
In our times, the world is divided into many nation-states, and a great many of these are ruled by men who came to power as William the Conqueror had:
“When William the Conqueror subdued England, he gave them law at the point of the sword (Tom Paine, op. cit., p67).”
Between those who see themselves as “born to rule” and the “fortunate ruffians” who seize an opportunity and grab power, whoever holds state power in the modern world of capitalist states, holds it by force – and retains it by use of their corrupting power of patronage.
Such rulers are obvious in states like Russia, China, N Korea, India, the Philippines, Egypt, Turkey, many African states, many states in Central and South America, and so on. Less obvious are the corrupt, all-powerful (but democratically elected so ‘legitimate’), temporary rulers in states like Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the US, etc.
A Prime Minister with a solid majority in Parliament can indeed, as Quintin Hogg warned, act as an elected dictatorship.
As both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have shown, holders of high office can also be scoundrels, disreputable in their private lives and with a scandalous contempt for political and social norms.
But, as for the modern Royals, few now would condone the exploits of Andrew, ‘Randy Andy’, the Queen’s favourite son. Or Charles and Camilla’s decades-long bigamous affair, even while two-timer Charles was married to Diana.
As Tom Paine in Common Sense argued “virtue is not hereditary” – and it looks as if the current crop of obsolete, redundant and disreputable Royals are determined to prove this point.
In short, Socialists have no reason to applaud this hereditary caste of ‘born-to-rulers’, with their vast inherited wealth. Let others be their lackeys and do their bidding. Let others put up their bits of coloured cloth, have bunting on show to display their servile loyalty, even put flagpoles in their gardens.
Such contemptible displays only show us how far we still have to go before finally the working class wake up to how this system is designed to enrich the few by exploiting the many.
But we do know that, one day, our day will come, when we can tell these parasites and their hangers-on to get lost. The sooner the better!
