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https://theduran.com/the-fraudulence-of-political-theory/

The Fraudulence of Political Theory

5 June 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

The highly respected political philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays — Second Edition, (2013), contains a revised version of his paper “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” and it opens:

Is there still such a subject as political theory? This query, put with suspicious frequency in English-speaking countries, questions the very credentials of the subject: it suggests that political philosophy, whatever it may have been in the past, is today dead or dying. The principal symptom which seems to support this belief is that no commanding work of political philosophy has appeared in the twentieth century. By a commanding work in the field of general ideas I mean at the very least one that has in a large area converted paradoxes into platitudes or vice versa. This seems to me no more (but also no less) than an adequate criterion of the characteristic in question. 

30 pages later, at the end, he closed by saying:

There exist only two good reasons for certifying the demise of a discipline: one is that its central presuppositions, empirical, or metaphysical, or logical, are no longer accepted because they have (with the world of which they were a part) withered away, or because they have been discredited or refuted. The other is that new disciplines have come to perform the work originally undertaken by the older study. These disciplines may have their own limitations, but they exist, they function, and have either inherited or usurped the functions of their predecessors: there is no room left for the ancestor from whom they spring. This is the fate that overtook astrology, alchemy, phrenology (positivists, both old and new, would include theology and metaphysics). The postulates on which these disciplines were based either were destroyed by argument or collapsed for other reasons; consequently they are today regarded merely as instances of systematic delusion.

In the standard way of philosophers — which is to ask questions but fail to answer them — he indirectly said Yes to his title question; and even that is bolder than is customary for his profession.

He was admitting that, for example, in the nearly 2,500 years of political ‘science’, there still is no answer yet as to what a “democracy” is or would be, much less of what the likeliest way to achieve one is. Anybody who studies or teaches philosophy (the field that includes political theory — and this is the reason why any political ‘science’ that is based on philosophers is no science at all, but just yet more of philosophy) is wasting that person’s, and any student’s, time with pointless verbalizations, devoid of empirical credibility or evidence. (That’s sad but true.)

Do public elections among competing political Parties and their respective nominees constitute a “democracy”? If so, then I suggest we should consider this, in order to get some understanding of what “democracy” means and doesn’t mean:

Germany had elections when it elected Hitler in 1933. Elections don’t necessarily produce democracy — rule by the public instead of rule by only the wealthest. (There: I’ve just defined what a democracy is or would be.) The BBC respondent who tried to correct the almost universal misconception that Hitler was not a product of such ‘democracy’ as comes from elections was correct when saying:

“The plain fact is that Hitler was elected in 1933 on a popular vote and from then on went from strength to strength with the full backing of a clear majority of the German people. He would have undoubtedly won with a massive majority, had he not so despised democracy, even as late as 1943 and was strongly supported by the German people to the end.”

For example, on 20 August 1934 the New York Times headlined its lead story “HITLER ENDORSED BY 9 TO 1 IN POLL” and reported “Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval.”

Just think about that: After Mein Kampf and Hitler’s numerous speeches saying that Jews aren’t a religion but a race, one whose presence in Germany had caused Germany’s problems, not ONLY did he become elected Chancellor, but a year later the German public voted 90% to make him all-powerful: The Leader (Fuehrer). Even many Jews publicly supported it. Supporters of our own fake democracy claim that the 90% figure was itself rigged, and it might have been, but so too are some of ours. Rigged elections aren’t necessarily uncommon. The public can be deceived to believe, and to do, anything that the super-rich want them to come to believe and to do — and if that fails, then rigging the vote-counts can be the “plan B”.

Someone objected to my “Germany had elections when it elected Hitler in 1933”: “This is a common myth. His party got something like 35% of the vote. Fearing the Commies, he was appointed Chancellor and gradually seized more power and became widely popular as he reunited the German people.” I replied: “In Parliamentary systems such as Germany, it is common for the head-of-state to get only a plurality not a majority of the vote. It’s still called ‘a democracy.’ But it isn’t any more of a democracy than America’s system is.” Furthermore, Hitler actually won 43.9% of the vote in his last election, March 1933, not 35%.

Anyone who thinks that democracy can be achieved via elections and political Parties competing (to deceive enough voters so as to win power) is naive if not stupid, because the billionaires end up spending enough money to ensure that their political candidates will win — even if this means pitting many of the billionaires’ candidates against each other. The public are simply deluded by the political theorists and by the propaganda from the billionaires’ ‘news’-media, to think they live under a democracy — a Government whose policy-priorities are the same as the public’s policy-priorities are. In a country where the Government’s policy-priorities are controlled by the billionaires instead of by the public, then (regardless of what philosophers say), that is actually a dictatorship by and for the billionaires, not a democracy by and for the people. Since the policy-priorities are by and for the billionaires, it is a dictatorship BY and FOR the billionaires, and is therefore NOT a democracy by and for the people. The extent to which a Government is a democracy is the extent to which the Government’s policy-priorities are the same as the public’s policy-priorities. The extent to which a Government is a dictatorship, is the extent to which that is not the case. This isn’t philosophy; it is the logical and empirical — the only fact-based scientific — political theory — something that doesn’t yet exist, but must come to replace all existing political theory (all philosophical political theory).

Political theorists lie to say that public elections between competing politicians are necessary in order for democracy — if it exists at all — to continue to exist. Is it a mere coincidence that political theorists assume that that (the philosophical) method of obtaining or continuing a democracy (public elections) is easily corrupted and transformed into dictatorship by and for billionaires who have more than enough spare cash to be able to pump in enough money to deceive voters to nominate and then to elect ONLY legislators and heads-of-state whom billionaires find to be ACCEPTABLE to themselves? The billionaires have veto-power to exclude anyone from public office, whomever they want to be excluded, by that method which is so favored by philosophers — the electoral method. Is it a mere coincidence that this HAPPENS to be THE METHOD that political theorists assume to CONSTITUTE what democracies ARE? Or will philosophical political theorists also simply assume that this IS a coincidence?

I have proposed and argued for a very different method, in which there are no competing politicians, and no competing political Parties, and no elections by the public. You can see and consider that method here. As you will see there, the public are heavily prejudiced against it. After all, a whole lifetime of having been deceived about what “democracy” means, can make difficult one’s coming to accept the reality about this matter.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.