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The real politics of the future will be anti-oligarchical - it will require a new right and a new left. For increasingly, from the perspectives of those who are shut out, the elites of authoritarian and democratic states will look remarkably similar. The West used to produce self-sacrificing elites; now it has those who are assiduously self-serving. Too many of our institutions are corrupt, and too many of their leaders rest easy in the falsehood that their interests are ours. A revulsion against oligarchy will soon define both eastern and western states, and it will of necessity draw on new and unexpected resources to shape a new political idealism.

This new idealism will be romantic, ethical and quite possibly religious. It will craft a new political economy that multiplies ownership and maximises market entry. It will insist on life-long education and it will replace representative with participative democracy. Its means will be human association and its method will be relationship. Its foundation will be trust and its transmission will be fun. Its resources will be global but its response and concretion will be local. It will be the triumph of the micro and the defeat of the macro. It will be the horizontal over the vertical and the mainstreaming of the peer to peer. It will be periphery as the new centre. It will be consumer becoming producer and the client becoming the advocate. It will be ethical trade and moral market. It will be ends not means, and teleology not anarchy. It will be virtue not utility, and it will be hierarchy blended with democracy.

And it is coming sooner than you think.

Phillip Blond is an internationally recognised political thinker and social-economic commentator. He is the founding director of the award winning public policy think tank ResPublica and author of Red Tory: How the Left and Right have broken Britain.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/08/13/3566932.htm?WT.svl=featuredSitesScroller

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"Quite possibly RELIGIOUS?" Where from? Whose religion?... Dream on, cobber... "Hierarchy blended with democracy"?... "Teleology"? From Wikipedia: Since the Novum Organum of Francis Bacon teleological explanations in science tend to be deliberately avoided because whether they are true or false is argued to be beyond the ability of human perception and understanding to judge. Some disciplines, in particular within evolutionary biology, are still prone to use language that appears teleological when they describe natural tendencies towards certain end conditions; but these arguments can almost always be rephrased in non-teleological forms.

Oh I see, teleology could mean "intelligent design"... Creationism with fluffy extensions... 

One has to only read again that ghastly book — the bible — or its equivalents in the other Abrahamic religions to know that democracy is non existent there, in any religious evironment, even in Buddhism in which one climbs oligarchic echelons of "enligtenment"(not the 18th century kind) via reincarnation... Read the First Book of Kings for Gus' sake... It's full of god appointed kings that in their benevolence demand submission to them and a constant supply of fat cows, dears and apple tarts... And when their fancy takes them to war against someone else they don't like or "god tells them to kill", they will wave a godly contract for you to go and die on their behalf... The game of chess isn't for democracy you know...

The rite wing "of democracy" isn't really "democratic" and it has broken the system, because the ideology of the rite is underpinned by individual greed... And for the ritewingnuttery: the greedier the better...

The left has broken Britain (and Australia?) not so much because of wrong ideologies of fairness but because of that already mentioned ordinary human greed and pure selfishness (and let's not forget Blair, who is a — religious — ritewinger in disguise) that permeates the trading system...

We need to share better. But try to tell the mining companies. Try to tell Tony Abbott and his "charitable" greedy idiots. So far, despite shortcomings, Julia Gillard has, at great expense to herself, slowly enforced a greater "sharing" at a local level, at a country level and on a planetary scale (carbon tax)... But it's hard yakka... to make one pace forward, one has to run ten paces then retreat nine at a rate of knots, because of the ningnongerry of the rite... 

And of course the "important clues" to deal with our humanity come from that great country, the US, — where more than half the population still thinks the world was created in six days and evolution is a dirty word... Lucky for us, a lot of those fallen angels are asleep on fluffy clouds or are drugged to the eyeballs with alleluias... Meanwhile, some proper glory can still be gained, for example, by the scientific community and the engineers who placed a slow car like mine on planet Mars... Well done... 

"The West used to produce self-sacrificing elites?"... Hello? May be I missed that micro-second of time in history but I can't recall, even looking through all my books anywhere anytime, a chapter when elites did not send the underlings to fight their glorious battles or underpaid the builders of cathedrals. This fellow, Phillip Blond, is writing a massive pile of shit. 

"It will be consumer becoming producer and the client becoming the advocate." Hello? I though that was the system we were in now... It's all related to what kind of consumption and of production he's talking about? Basket weaving for oneself? Potato cultivation and noodle-pie making for the local knitting group?

"virtue not utility..." Blimey! What does THIS means?... I have no idea... Thus I've decided this fellow is writing "romantic" crap. If there is such a thing. Phillip Blond, "the internationally recognised political thinker", forgot to read the imbecilic contradictions he wrote, without second thoughts...

A renewed political idealism?... Sure we need one. But it ain't going to happen under such sloppy thinking.

Britain may be able to teach us about winning gold medals, but Australia shouldn't be taking lessons on how to run our government.

Professional pontificator Phillip Blond, the intellectual force behind the Cameron government's social policies, is currently touring Australia trying to sell his vision of a "Big Society" where government gets out of the way and communities take care of themselves.

The question of what happens to communities that can't help themselves might best be answered by a trip to the declining former industrial towns in the north of England, or the housing estates of London.

The "Big Society" has been seized on by the Cameron government as its feel-good justification for massive public sector job cuts in the United Kingdom, as it tries to implement an austerity program which has seen the UK economy stuck in neutral for two years.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4200650.html?WT.svl=theDrum

Yep, well said, in better words than I did above... Blond is a fraudian thinker... He thinks crap.