Rudolf Steiner On Why Plutocrats Love Democracy

“It is interesting that the excellent statement was made in 1910 [by Francis Delaisi, La Démocratie et les Financiers, 1910]: ‘… that big capital has succeeded in creating out of democracy the most wonderful, the most effective, the most flexible instrument for the exploitation of the population as a whole.

We usually imagine that the men of finance are opposed to democracy – the author in question says in his book – but this is fundamentally mistaken. On the contrary, they lead it and consciously promote it. For it is this – meaning democracy – that provides the screen behind which they conceal their method of exploitation, and they find in it the best means of self-defence against any popular resentment that may arise.’ This shows how someone who has woken up sees that the main thing is not to make loud speeches proclaiming democracy; the main thing is to see clearly the reality of the situation … namely, from how few centres of command events in the world today are steered and directed … [The average person] cannot attend [to these things], because they are smothered and buried under the – well, the same public life that is ruled over by the press.”

—  Rudolf Steiner (Oct. 28th 1917):

3 thoughts on “Rudolf Steiner On Why Plutocrats Love Democracy

  1. I am compelled to put up this quote from Albert J. Nock in The Criminality of the State, March 1939:

    In this way, perhaps, our people might get into their heads some glimmering of the fact that the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation—that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class—that is, for a criminal purpose.

    No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient. In the last analysis, what is the German, Italian, French, or British State now actually doing? It is ruining its own people in order to preserve itself, to enhance its own power and prestige, and extend its own authority; and the American State is doing the same thing to the utmost of its opportunities.

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