CRIME IS DEFINED BY THOSE WHO EXERCISE POWER IN SOCIETY
CRIME IS DEFINED BY THOSE WHO EXERCISE POWER IN SOCIETY
The view that a criminal act is one that conflicts with views that are widely held within society regarding right and wrong conduct are challenged by a view that defines a criminal act as one that is passed down by those who wield power within society. They are able to use their power to impose their views as to what constitutes unacceptable behaviour on rest of society.
#see power tuesdays: Tony Benn in front of Westminster
It is Tuesday, time to #see power on my blog. Above is Tony Benn in 1961, in front of the mother of all parliaments, Westminster, the then undisputed seat of British political power.
I have chosen this picture of Benn, a life-long critic of British membership in the European Communities/ the European Union, to highlight one rather significant aspect, or element, of post-democracy - the transfers of national sovereignty to a supranational European level.
I apologise that this post looks a bit like #explore power mondays. I just think Tony Benn’s “democracy test” is a vital contribution to this week’s exploration of the post-democratic times we seem to live in.
“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person--Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler--one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”
Speech to the House of Commons, 16 Nov 1998 (Hansard volume 319 column 685 fom 7.20pm, Debate on: European Parliamentary Elections Bill)[1]
“A post-democratic society is one that continues to have and to use all the institutions of democracy, but in which they increasingly become a formal shell.”
Globalisation has made us more vulnerable. It creates a world without borders, and makes us painfully aware of the limitations of our present instruments, and of politics, to meet its challenges.
Anna Lindh, Swedish foreign minister (19 June 1957 – 11 September 2003)
Yesterday would have been her birthday. She was murdered on the day she was supposed to participate in a debate on Swedish euro membership (a pro-euro politician, she was a spokesperson for the campaign). Sad echoes...
“...for more than a century we have been caught up in machinic processes that have caused us to stop believing in our own experience, and – like a colonised people asserting themselves in the oppressor’s language – we feel a surge of dignity with each new word we learn of the machine’s own tongue.”
Rana Dasgupta, *1971, British Indian novelist and essayist writing on globalisation, on our novel, warped ways of living our lives through technology
#explore power mondays: Power and the European Union
“Politics is the art of the possible. And reality is that Europe is currently composed of nations. And it is from these nations that one needs to build, and if need be, defend Europe.”
Charles de Gaulle (1890 – 1970)
“European negotiations are a bit like love-making of elephants. They take place up high, throw up a lot of dust – and then, it takes a lot of time before you see any results.”
Willy Brandt (1913 – 1992)
“Europe is composed of states, which do not want to be told to do what they have themselves decided they would do.”
Werner Schneyder (*1937)
“Reporting from Brussels, one moves in the realm between dream and bureaucracy.”
Wolfgang Klein (*1946)
"We Europeans must understand that soft power alone is really no power at all. Without hard capabilities to back up its diplomacy, Europe will lack credibility and influence.“
Most people living in rich, stable developed countries have no idea how Denmark itself got to be Denmark—something that is true for many Danes as well. The struggle to create modern political institutions was so long and so painful that people living in industrialized countries now suffer from a historical amnesia regarding how their societies came to that point in the first place.
Francis Fukuyama, *27. October 1952
Origins of political order : from prehuman times to the French revolution (1st paperback ed.). New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
see also Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2014
