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John Rawls and Citizenship

we need to look at the ideological underpinning for this British citizenship test and ceremony: The ideas of the political philosopher John Rawls.

This notion of citizenship implies the notion of a social contract. A social contract with a government in which everyone has the opportunity to participate. But when a government acts on behalf of interests that are not expressed through democracy, advocates, or is manipulated into advocating, the private and overweening interests of multinational corporations that act through "market forces". Then that government cannot uphold its part of the bargain. It can't sign a social contract with its citizens. This contract is void.

Citizenship in the USA and UK, currently, is merely an agreement to uphold the status quo. To let the ring holders carry on running the show. To let the ruling class - the establishment entrench itself even more firmly. Hence in the UK we swear loyalty to the Queen. Yes, the Queen does indeed represent a chunk of British society. Unfortunately, we know, the chumk she represents is its ruling elite.

There is a vast undercurrent of willful ignorance, of self blinding, that goes hand in hand with proposing that citizens declare loyalty to a state that in itself, on many levels, does not actually represent its citizens.

But even the facade of real democracy can be a dangerous thing for a state like ours: a state that engages in wars we didn't want it too; a state that turns a blind eye to corrupt and vast arms deals with vile feudal fiefdoms like Saudi Arabia, and does so without our consent; a state that supports the war machine of the government of the USA and celebrates arms deals with that government as if Christmas had come early; a state that allows millions of people from reactionary Eastern Europe to emigrate to Britain with the aim of undermining the organising and bargaining power of working people in this country.
We DON'T all suck our thumbs and we know that forced declarations of loyalty and citizenship to a state like ours are going to solve anything.

If John Rawls had applied his "difference principle" at a global level instead of watering it down, the contradictions in his bootstrapped assertions about how wealth creating societies should be judged by how they benefit the least advantaged, would have been quickly exposed. Instead, Rawls fudged. He prevaricated and generated ideology not political philosophy.

But think about how having a "competitive" labour market in Britain means, in effect, the creation of more and more shitty jobs. More subcontracting, more temping. At all levels and in all sectors. There are far fewer guarantees of job security and welfare now in this society. How is Rawls difference principle actually supposed to work here? His political liberalism doesn't even hold true in a sheltered country, like Britain, a country that stays afloat by leeching profit off other peoples' conflicts and a fair proportion of whose surplus is generated by the city from skimming money off the flows of hyper-exploitation in the Far East and elsewhere.
Globalisation, in other words. So much for Rawl's principle of justice.

Even Lenin's, now century old, pamphlet "Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism" has more intellectual honesty and truth to it than Rawl's ideological intelligence trap, which catches so many of the future intellectual servants of modern capitalism in its scholastic fly trap.

Citizenship of what? What social contract?

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