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7 July

Hardly any time at all for blogging at the moment. I am up to my ears in work. This is the way it goes when you're freelance: nothing happens for month, then ten pieces of work come along at once and you end up getting no sleep for weeks. This is how July is looking for me. But at least it means I can pay my rent…

Just one very short observation about Jonathan Freedland's column in today's Guardian. He's talking about Bush and Kerry (prepare yourself for far, far too much more of this sort of thing over coming months). There was one sentence that stuck with me as I read it: 'Even if Kerry's official platform were identical to Bush's, Democrats would work hard to get him elected.'

This says all you need to know about the nature of 'democracy' in modern states. The lesser of two evils, the more interesting of two bores, the slightly less gung-ho of two neoliberals. This may not be an original observation but it's a crucially important one. What does democracy mean when the market is the real ruler?

I'm writing an article for the New Internationalist magazine soon in which I want to explore this issue in more depth. If I can find ten minutes of my life do it in, that is. Watch this space…

Posted by paul at July 7, 2004 10:55 AM

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