The crown rules Britannia

international | anti-capitalism | other press

Saturday June 02, 2012 00:07

by pat c

The role of the elaborate jubilee is to draw attention away from the power and nature of the crown itself

Behind the pomp and ceremony of Lizs Diamond Jubilee lies the real power, the power of the Crown administered by the British Ruling Class and their CEO: Cameron. This article casts a jaundiced eye on both the Royal Family and the real rulers. Full text at link.

“Monarchy is only the string that ties the robber’s bundle” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

The jubilee is an obvious time to reflect on the distinction between queen and crown. Many people think these terms mean the same thing. It is much better to see them as opposites, albeit interconnected - the monarch and the state. Louis XIV famously said, “I am the state”, which is a definition of absolute monarchy. In contrast we see a hint of separation when Queen Victoria used the royal ‘we’: “We are not amused.” This means two of them are not happy - the person and the institution - me and my shadow.

This distinction has its origins in the doctrine in the middles ages that the king has two bodies. One is the ‘body natural’ - the living human being. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” said Shylock in The merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s reference to Jews also reminds us that monarchs are not deities). But the second body is the ‘body politic’ - the institution of monarchy, which never dies. The king is dead - long live the king. The English revolution of 1649 made that distinction sharper

I do like a peasant shoot.

Today we live in a capitalist world when everything is business. So our distinction is between two enterprises - the Crown Corporation and Royal Family Ltd. The latter is called “the firm” by the Duke of Edinburgh and has its HQ at Buckingham Palace. These are separate businesses which go together like a horse and carriage. The relationship between them is more like ‘state capitalism’ than the much vaunted ‘free enterprise’.

The Crown Corporation - hereafter simply called ‘the crown’ - is, like any capitalist firm, a separate legal entity. It is the largest and most powerful multinational ‘corporation’ in the country. It has offices, or embassies, in nearly every country in the world. It has power not only in the UK, but the various tax havens or secret banking jurisdictions, such as the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, the Cayman Islands, etc. It also has a very extensive information-gathering network, which enables it to keep ahead of most of its rivals.