The imperial Past

It is just what minds do.....
We generalize our pasts to form abstract nets to capture presents if.
We have a past, where local rebellion, classical education, and a movement of wealth fro land to good helped create a society which aspires to allow individuals to be part of the choice about you govern. a system which is then abstracted as 'Free' (thanks hegel) - and unwound across the planet It becomes the only system we think is fair- the only system thaw feel can handle the economic free for all which was part of the ideal in which the original system was created.
We instinctively assume that the two elements free for all, and political freedom must be linked into each other. in a sense this aspiration is not daffy. the point of the free for all system of economics is that it tends to create individuals who manages the system to become very wealthy though bending rule. Markets then are rather easy to corrupt, and rather easy to manage (it is their natural state).
It makes theorectical sense then to have a rival pole to this freedom - namely a system of political control that is free from economic and can investigate it freely - and using its own powers. The double democracy of money and votes the could well make sense of a capitalism. there i is hard and fast rule here- many capitaliams through the world have flourished in oppressive regimes (including our own at its birth)- idea of the double freedom is then a relatively recent one.
But what is clear that this doubling of freedom is never simple- and it makes little sense to abstract it and then impose that abstract. That is if we simply impose the two models one and the other, and hope then will jangle around and get regulating- the process is really not going to work. the system in the West is after all carried by the elements that rule between the double freedoms- in both directions at once
so that successful democracies need established political parties with their feet in both worlds. That is parties which need to draw both funding and members from the econmic world, and then articulate these two into real politik. The economic then becomes translateble into an political vision. But these parties of course also need to be plural. that is there needs to be competition in the political world, and real competition at that. Parties must then actually look for and articulate real economic difference and make those differences matter and real.
the point then being that in the West (well Britiain at least) the parties are older than real parliamentary democracy. they were always there clamouring fro freedom, reflecting economic and political freedom one at the other. a presence that then permuated the entire system, be it educational or economic. the parties and the freedom they were part of, were everywhere.
And the system does not make that much sense without it.
the point sit then that freedom itself without pre-existing parties or at least their nub - their ideal does not make sense. If political freedom is then forced on other cultires, they will need to find these parties from within themselves and do so at once The point of course is that the parties they will- nay must find will reflect their current culture (and not the economic culture we hope to fo(i)sture on them. The parties will then be ethnic or religious
once again this actually no surprise- the same was true in Britian and the West where political parties in their inception where parties originate in religous turmoil- and are shot through by religion (even to this day). The problem is though that around the time of mass democracy our political parties sate also the deal with the free for all, as its partial critique and rival power. the point then for the of having a mass democracy was this move- it allowed another pole, nationalism or else socialism trivial the powers of the business classes (or else complement those powers, and make then feel more natural). Our political parties then evolved with the economic system - a system we then force or oblige or perhaps merely coerce other nations to accept in full (and with themselves in the one role thank you very much- supplier of raw materials). We thereby ensure that their political system has not got a hope. religious parties group around in the politics we think of as art of our histroy (whigs and Tories) and yet have to cope with problems imposed them, which are very modern, and highly complex. The system the mutatess way from any dreams of freedom, and into either a plutocracy or a enthnocracy (or often both). One political party/ethinic group/ league of corrupting business folk cease control. in a sense what else can they do? The system they are operating under simply cannot work it juxtaposes to very different times: The theorectial time of the eighteenth century and the creation of political parties within religious struggle, with the complexity and wealth of the current epoch - and the two do not work together the result is what we get an assortment of ethnic parties and little increase in actual freedom.
more than that - parties might form (even those that resemble western parties in countries where we share a history - I mean India) - have a deep problem with addressing the grinding poverty of the states. This poverty which is in part at least a lack of empire (we crashed existing orders to create the poor as labour class), is the rather deep rooted, and the parties shallow based on the modification of existing ethnic divisions). These parties are then unable to articulate their won economic situation adequately - and we are likely to not want them in the west to do so (as it limits our profits). We will encourage each nation to create a wealthy class, like us and ignore the very poor, whose political representation the west, ad those parties that come to represent images of that west actually fears). Parties then form which organize very effectively the middle classes and democracy will operate- but deep poverty remains beyond the system, and cannot be articulated within it - it si simply beyond its pale.

In short the world is caught in a very odd place. the logic of economic is that the West actually has to share its economic system with the world. it needs to trade somehow or other. as part of that trading, and perhaps to ensure freedom, in wishes or craves a would that shares its political system as well - and so desires other nations to have had a different history for the one it has had. history in then abstracted and elements of it imposed across the world under the ethic of freedom It does nto work very well. that is no surprise. the problem tough is given the economic necessity to advance capitalist production, no other ideology tends to gets the time to work - well not until china stared to work out other ways to do capitalism and perhaps eventually other voices in freedom ......
A hoc that the West might find rather hard to bare(or even understand).