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The use of the word "democracy" is about as powerful an agent of confusion, double-talk and sheer fakery as the rhetoric used by the spokesmen for religion. We have seen how they, the "religious", appropriate words such as kindliness, gentleness, love -words that call to something very deep in us all-and then use them to justify actions that altogether contradict their meaning. "Love your enemies," they say, and then demonstrate their love by supporting and blessing the use of high explosive on them. In the same way, and causing much the same emotional and intellectual confusion, those who control our political destinies use words that carry an immensely powerful positive appeal but which have no relation at all to the real intentions of those who use them. Words such as equality, brotherhood, government of the people by the people, representative government, the sovereignty of the people, and so on, have a profoundly moving effect on us for they correspond to the deep longing which is in all of us for a life in which we can co-operate with each other rather than compete, a society in which we feel we belong as participating members of a true community. With these words, in combination with the ritual that accompanies them, those who possess the real power confuse and bamboozle us. The great democratic swindle - the passing off of fake democracy as genuine - has succeeded so well precisely because of this very hunger for a genuine democracy. One cannot sell a fake unless there is a demand for the genuine article. So the first necessary step, if we are to clear our own confusions, is to sort out the reality from the idiom, to learn what kind of "democracy " we now have and to see how far it not only falls

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short of what a true democracy might be, but how in many essential ways it represents the very opposite. Fake democracy really goes back to the original Greek use of the word, for their "democracy " represented a participation in government of the minority of free men in a slave society. Even then it was a tactic, a device, to help the really rich and powerful in a small city-state to manipulate the middle strata of society. Fake democracy found a new lease of life nearer to our times with the development of bourgeois society. Its essential function was (and still is) to consolidate the power of the few by creating in the minds of the many the illusion that they control their own destiny, that they have a real place in the decision-making process of government. In Britain, the institution of Parliament was a powerful weapon of the new capitalist class against feudalism, and as such had a progressive character. Parliament later developed as a direct reflection of capitalism: it served, and still serves, the needs of capitalism; and maintaining the outward forms of Parliamentary procedures is one of the ways in which the essentially exploitive character of capitalism is concealed from the people. In the United States "democracy " - as in Greece-began within the context of a slave society and thus it, too, was from the start a tool of the propertied class. The French Revolution also was a bourgeois revolution directed against the feudal aristocracy and, under the enormously appealing slogan of' Liberty, Equality. Fraternity, it ultimately gave "freedom " and unbridled licence to the newly emerging commercial and financial oligarchies. The "Marseillaise " was a hymn of triumph of the bourgeoisie. Democracy in Britain, France and the United States did at first provide a means of participation and equality in the governing process but only for the bourgeoisie and within the bourgeois class. The glowing descriptions of the "democratic process" which sound so splendid are descriptions written (as are our history books) by the bourgeoisie. During the nineteenth century, with the growing centralization of capital and monopoly, Parliament lost its function as the decision-maker for the bourgeois class. From then on the focus of political power shifted from Parliament until today Parliament has lost almost all its power and its meaning. Its members ( "our " representatives!) troop obediently through the division lobbies

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voting as they are instructed to, often not even knowing what they are voting about. Parliament's main function is now largely ceremonial; it provides the means (like a seal on a legal document) of formally validating decisions that are made elsewhere. The constitutional theory is that the House of Commons representing the electorate, acts as a watch - dog over the Executive. That function has long been abandoned. It is not Parliament (as Lloyd George was one of the first to say publicly) that today controls the Cabinet; it is the Cabinet that controls Parliament. Lord Justice Dennlng endorsed this view:
Over one hundred years ago Parliament was, no doubt, the supreme power in the land both in law and in fact ... In practice sovereignty no longer rests with Parliament. It rests with the Executive and in particular with the Cabinet... Once elected, the leaders of the party are the sovereign power in the land. And what is the Cabinet? It has no place in law. It is essentially "the Executive Committee " of the ruling class, whichever poIiticaI party happens to be in power. Who knows how the Cabinet functions? As the British constitutional lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings pointed out in his book Cabinet Government: The most important parts of the Cabinet system function in secret. Information is rarely made available until the persons concerned in particular events are dead. Yet this extra-legal committee acting in secret and controlling the Parliamentary processes is not elected by the people and is under no legal or public control.
How far the Cabinet itself is under the control of the big industrial and financial centres of power is indicated by the continuity of basic national policies in spite of professed differences of political philosophy. Wilson, as the leader of the British Labour Party spoke out bitterly against the Vietnam war until his party took over the Government; whereupon he announced that the war had, in some miraculous manner, undergone a "qualitative change " and it was therefore now right to support America's involvement. There is nothing more sadly revealing than to see the Labour Party (which claims to be a socialist party!) obey the bankers and prop up the capitalist system.
The shift of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch is also a noticeable feature of the American political scene. So independent and powerful has the Executive become that today the President can with impunity, as in the case of the war in Vietnam, defy all the supposedly fool proof constitutional restraints and commit the people of the United States to a long, enormously costly and bloody war without the sanction of Congress. In both countries the apparatus and ritual of representation has been scrupulously maintained. As a result millions of people in the United States and Britain remain, as of course they are intended to, under the illusion that they can change the course of events by sending this man or that to Parliament or Congress, electing this man or that to the Presidency. But in both countries the "choice " the electorate is given is hardly a choice at all. In neither country do candidates represent significantly different political philosophies whatever they may say, for they are all supporters of capitalism and the major capitalist interests. There are marginal differences: minor differences in the order of national priorities, differences of "style", differences as to which of the capitalist interests they will primarily favour. But those at the real centres of power lie far beyond the people's influence, and they remain constant whoever the electorate happens to choose as the temporary managers. The first essential step in the understanding of so-called democracy in capitalist nations is to grasp the fact that "our " representatives in no way represent us. After the violent and squalid happenings during the Chicago Convention in 1968 an increasing number of Americans are beginning to have second thonghts about their so-called democratic procedures. They sense that something has gone wrong. They are beginning to see through the fakery. Even many of those who are still working actively for this party or that are having to resist as best they can an overwhelming sense of futility. And not only in the United States. The people in Britain, France, Italy feel equally disfranchised. It isn't that "our man " has been defeated; it is rather that our man almost never turns up to be elected. And when on a rare occasion some candidate talks sense instead of nonsense, who instead of speaking to us in terms of cliche and banalities directs our attention to the real questions that concern us and asks the questions that we think should be asked, such a man hardly ever

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gets elected, and if he does his voice is smothered. What is more, many citizens feel they have something to say and have some contribution to make to the political life of their country outside the ranks of the large party organizations, but there seems to be no way in which they can actively participate. If some issue arouses them sufficiently they can, it is true, organize public meetings but when they do no one in the decision-making circles of government bothers to listen. Hundreds of thousands of aroused citizens come to Washington to let their feelings be known - and the President instead of meeting them watches a game on television. Several thousand of the country's most eminent scientists can write a letter to the Government but it makes not the slightest impact. The reason is that the Government isn't listening to us at all - or only to that minimum extent necessary to know how best to quieten us if we become too troublesome.

"Representative government ", in other words, is a smoke screen and not a functional reality. There is nothing easier than to let the people vote every few years and convince them that they are "free ". This single act of balIoting is supposed to be the sum total of what is required to ensure that we are a "democracy ".

It is the fashion today, even among some circles which consider themselves progressive, to denigrate the concept of a "power elite ". We are told that in the United States today decision - making is now so dispersed throughout the society and takes place on so many levels even in governmental activity, that there is no longer any single focus of power. That is essentially what is meant by a "pluralistic " society. The evidence, however, is ovenvhelming that real power still resides within a relatively small circle of the rich. This small group of men, socially closely related through family, school and business, carries a determining influence on national policies. It is a group nation-wide in its operations. This tightly knit class, with its fabulous inherited and corporate wealth, controls the most important agencies and departments of the U.S. Government-especially the Departments of State, Defense and the Treasury. Here we must notice an interesting difference between the United States and the European "democracies ". In Britain and France those who really control the important decisions usually

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work through the professional politicians. The upper business and financial circles find it more convenient to work through the Wilsons, Heaths and Pompidous--to allow them to be their spokesmen while they operate with less public scrutiny in the background. In the United States it is otherwise. There the representatives of big business and big finance expect to have a more direct involvement in decision - making. Mr Nixon's cabinet, for example, is composed largely of successful businessmen; many of them are millionaires. For firms such as Standard Oil with their vast international ramifications it is important to have a say in the making of foreign policy. For many years the Rockefellers (closely associated with Standard Oil) have supplied the man for U.S. Secretary of State, regardless of which party was in office. Dean Rusk was head of the Rockefeller Foundation when he was appointed Secretary of State; Christian Herter, a former Secretary of State had close family connections with the Rockefellers ; John Foster Dulles was from the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, one of the Rockefellers' legal advisers, and so on. Big business and big finance almost always are represented in the highest positions of defence - Thomas S. Gates, former Secretary of Defense was President of the Morgan Guaranty Trust; James Forrestal who was the first Secretary of Defense after the Second World War was President of the Wall Street banking firm of Dillon, Read and Company. With Charles Wilson and Robert McNamara, General Motors and Ford have both supplied the top defence position. The list of powerful business and financial interests that have through their representatives taken over the highest decision-making positions in the United States Government is endless. Nearly all the people, in fact, in these higher levels of this supposedly "democratic " government are appointed, not elected. In l966 Lyndon Johnson appointed 66,289 office holders to the Government. The little jobs, of course, were given to the party faithfuls - the political hacks and hangers - on; the big jobs were given to representatives of big business and big finance. When a serious national crisis occurs (such as the confrontation with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis) it is not the elected representatives of the people whom the President calls together; it is representatives of big business. The Foreign Relations Committees and the Congressional leaders are told