In July of this year, before Johnson was elected as the new Prime Minister of the UK, some British people went to the streets to show that Johnson should not be in the European Union.(France -France -France -France File Photo)
In 2017, Britain released a war movie called Darkest Hour, Hong Kong translated dark confrontation, and the darkest moment in Taiwan).The background of the film was set during the Second World War in 1940. Western European countries fell off under Nazi Germany, and the British wasolated and helpless.Nazi Germany sees or lead British forces to fight against Germany.
Churchill made the right choice, otherwise there would be no Churchill who was later praised by people.However, the British who advocate freedom do not like political strong people like Churchill.As soon as the Anti -Fascist War won, Churchill's mission was also completed, and he was quickly driven down.
Today, when Britain is facing a deep Brexit crisis, people once again call for Churchill to reproduce.Les Echos published on January 16 this year, the editor -in -chief of the newspaper Finance and Marketing Department Ji Lam Middot; Guillaume Maujean, entitled Churchill to wake up, they are crazy!Article.The article states that Britain has a long history for European issues, but the twists and turns of Brexit have brought the entire political class of Britain to sweep the ground.
How does the United Kingdom have developed to this point as the mother of parliament democracy?On the occasion of only a few weeks before the last period, how does Britain fall into such a situation, causing no one to say how this country will leave the European Union?In a chaotic meeting, the voting results caused the Prime Minister to suffer a historic and shame failure, but received unanimous welcome to support and oppose the members of the Brexit.Churchill wakes up, they are crazy!
Right now, when the situation in the UK is more worse than writing this article.Treesa Middot; Mei swayed down, and was replaced by the radical Boris Middot; Johnson.Johnson also really wants to play the role of Churchill. As soon as he came to power, he formed a war -torn cabinet that was intended to Brexit (imitating Churchill's war cabinet).Everything is the highest and the only political goal for Brexit.
To this end, he also announced the suspension of parliament.British flexible constitutionalism has always been regarded as a model of democracy, but as soon as populist politics rises, it is easy to slip to a constitutional crisis.The harsh reality made people deeply question that the politician of the Trump, known as Britain, could lead the United Kingdom to get rid of the current dark moment like Churchill?Despite the future, the uncertainty that Johnson brought to the British people and the entire world was at least hundreds of times higher than that of Churchill to lead Britain to defeat Germany.
Britain may move to a darker era
If Johnson's determination to Brexit is as firm as he said so far, for Britain, there are only two options, namely, the conditional Brexit (soft Brexit) and unconditional Brexit (hard Brexit).But no matter what kind of, it will bring deeper disasters to Britain and move towards a darker era.If it is soft Brexit, a crisis of economic (finance) is inevitable; but if it is hard Brexit, then not only can the UK itself maintain a unified country, it will become a big problem.The relationship between large powers such as France) is more likely to return to the situation before World War II.
Whether it is the deterioration of economic issues or the deterioration of European geopolitical issues, mutual resentment between Britain and European countries will float on the surface again, and politicians with more and more political responsibility will use it, and even mobilize this nationalist emotion.Make a personal interest in yourself and continue to worsen the situation.At least as far as Britain is concerned, due to the manipulation of politicians, the people's resentment of the EU appeared from time to time.
Churchill has a famous saying that democracy is the most bad political system; or that democracy is the best system.So an important question that people must answer is: What happened to this best system now?In terms of experience, not only the United Kingdom, but almost all major democratic countries (the United States, France, Italy, etc.) are facing the dilemma today today.
Although each country has its own particularity, that is, facing different problems, and these problems have different roots, whether it is the problem of the problem or the effective solution to the problem solving, it seems that it can point to the same root, that is, that is,The ineffectiveness of democratic politics.If you can't see this, you can't find the root of many problems.
In summary, any society will face various problems when it is different, otherwise the state (government) will lose its reasons.If you have a problem, you need to solve it, and you need to implement effective policies and policies.The premise of effective policies and policies is effective power, and there is no effective power.Democracy was an effective means of organizational power in Western countries, but to now, democracy has evolved into an effective means to eliminate the power to eliminate the power.
Western political system aims to check and balanced power
What problem is the design of the Western political system?It is very simple, that is, to solve the problem of evil.In the West, the country originated from violence, that is, war and conquest.Theoretically, from Makiavili, Italy to Hobbes in the UK, people have provided the most powerful demonstration of the rationality of building a national path through violence (including war).Hobbes's Leviathan assumes that the original state of human beings is an anarch of war, others are enemies, and people have been in a state of war.In order to survive, this unsafe state must be ended.Therefore, people transfer power to sovereignty countries, and sign contracts with the state to allow ordinary people to preserve part of the right to cross.
At the practical level, modern European countries were born from the fire, and absolutely autocracy is the most important feature of all modern European countries.Only after the formation of modern autocratic countries can Europe began the process of softening and taming power, which was later called democratization.
If Hobbes establishes the theory of absolute power, then the British thinkers have also established the best theory of how to check and balance absolute power.Locke's liberal theory with a limited government began to soften the authoritarian nature of politics, and all the power of Lord Akton's famous saying has become corrupted, and absolute power is absolutely corrupted, and the design goals of the Western political system are exposed., That is power checks and balances.
The West has achieved the goals of power checks and balances through a series of institutional design, including the separation of constitutional government, agency, three powers (that is, the legislative, administrative and judicial) separation, the rule of law, multi -party system, free media and diversifiedism.At the American economist James K. Galbraith, even economic power is an effective checks and balance of political forces, that is, the separation of political and economic power is a prerequisite for Western democracy.One point must be pointed out that all these system designs were reflected in the social forces of Western countries at that time.
This carefully designed democratic system is quite effective for a long time.But shortly after Fukuyama announced the end of history (that is, Western democracy is the best and final system that humans can have), democracy began to fall into crisis and evolve to today's situation.So, how does the crisis of the Western political system come from?
To put it simply, the design of Western democratic systems is excessively emphasizing the evils of balanced political power, while ignoring the evil of capital, but also the problem of social evil.This kind of neglect at the time of the system design is easy to understand, whether it is the evil of capital or the evil of society.It didn't appear at the time.The problem is that when the evils of capital and the evil of society are required, the Western political system has lost its ability.
The emergence of modern western countries was originally inseparable from capital. As Marx said, capitalist countries were originally the agent of capital.When the country itself is an agent of capital, there will be no problem of capital evil.In addition, in Adam Middot; Smith's invisible hands, evil (pursuing private interest) is a positive element. He believes that people's selfish behavior can automatically lead to the appearance of public products.But others discovered the evil results of the evil of capital.The evil of capital revealed the theory of Marx, and French writer Hugo and British writer Dickens made a literary description.
Since modern times, countries have passed the socialist movement and have a certain checks and balances on the evil of capital.In this process, democracy does play a great role.At the primitive capitalist stage described by Marx, in the Western parliament, there are traditional nobles or new students (that is, businessmen and capitalists), but with the expansion of democracy, more and more people have entered the parliament and political process, and the foundation of Western government power.Gradually transfer from capital to votes.
The main source of social differentiation deepening
However, contemporary globalization has completely changed this situation, and capital sits again.The evil of capital can be balana by democracy is that capital is sovereignty, that is, whether politics or society can have influence on capital.However, globalization means that capital can be easily decoupled with sovereignty.Capital does not have national borders, that is, capital has no sovereignty.Once the capital is decoupled from sovereignty, the economic activities that capital engaged in, whether global or technological progress, has evolved into an exclusive economy, not the sharing economy in the past.
Globalization and technological progress has created a huge amount of wealth for humans, but wealth flows to many people, and most people have not been able to share.This is the main source of western income differences and deepening social differentiation today, and also makes various social conflicts floating on the stage.
Compared with politics and economy, society seems to be in a weak state anywhere.Whether it is an empire or a local government under the religious era or the worldly regime, society will always be ruled by the ruler.Since the emergence of modern democracy, although the status of social forces has improved, it still cannot change its weakness.
Although the evil of society is basically a reflection of its weak position, it also effectively restricts the operation of the Western political system.Today's West, society pursues its own rights on the one hand, but also tends to abuse rights.The welfare system is an obvious example.Democracy often evolves into a auction of welfare.
Although the democracy of one person and one vote guarantees one person, there is no mechanism to ensure that one person contributes one.However, it is difficult to ensure the sustainability of the welfare society without the contribution of one person.Capital is naturally required to pay a few more, that is, the government pursues social fairness through high tax policies.
But it is clear that once the capital can flow freely, you can escape the high taxes of your country.In fact, tax avoidance is also one of the powerful motivations for Western capital globalization.Furthermore, as society becomes more and more unequal, various radicals, extremism and violence caused by Western society to affect the normal operation of society.
Democratic democracy has been named and died
In the West today, an unavoidable reality is that politics is getting more and more democratic, and economically increasingly democratic.In other words, politically fully realized a one -person and one vote system, but economically increasingly inequality.In this case, the government needs to do it because the government represents the overall interests of society.However, reality is cruel. The Western government is not only powerless, but it is evil. It is manifested as no consensus between political elites.
What's more serious is that party disputes are often associated with populism with many forms, and even political extremism are linked, resulting in further social differentiation.Democratic democracy since modern times has died, because politicians have lost their sense of political responsibility, which has led to a situation of agency and no responsibility.Democracy has become the root cause of various social conflicts.If political parties are not ideological, between classes, between religion, between nation, between citizens and immigrants, the direct roots of conflicts will not help these conflicts.
This is the political background of the Brexit referendum, and it is also the background of various dilemma of Western countries today.This reminds people of a controversy about the governance of man and the rule of law in China in the 1980s.No one denys the importance of the rule of law, because the rule of law is the basic system of a country.But at the same time, we must also realize that all systems are manipulated by people.If the best system encounters irresponsible politicians, this system is powerless.
In the final analysis, the problem of a country is an elite problem, not a problem of ordinary people.If the rule of the rule is responsible, the system can be constructed without a system, and the system can be effectively operated; but if the elite is irresponsible, the best system will also have a big problem.Today's Western political elites not only do not have the ability to solve the problem, but instead make new problems by manipulating the so -called public opinion (populist) of ordinary people.
Although the crisis is getting deeper and deeper, people can't see where the way is.When all groups of politics, capital, and society have become part of the vested interests, and no group can stand on the vested interests, who will solve the problem?In such an era without the captain and the direction of the direction, people call on Churchill's regeneration to understand.There are heroes in troubled times.Today, people call on the appearance of heroes, which means that today is the troubled world, or does it mean that the worse chaotic world is coming?
The author is a professor at the East Asia Research Institute of Singapore's National University
The article only represents personal point of view
