Parliament

[Subversive Pessimist]

I've never really understood the role of the parliament, seriously. I feel this is silly, but I really don't know. I've searched a whole lot now, but I haven't found any useful information.


Anyone care to explain?

[Invader Zim]

the role of parlaiment is to be elected by the people based upon polcies they promised before the election, and then either amend laws or create new laws to support this policy.

[Morpheus]

The role of parliament is to dupe workers into thinking they have a say in what the government does when it's really controlled by the elite.

[Essential Insignificance]

I've never really understood the role of the parliament, seriously. I feel this is silly, but I really don't know. I've searched a whole lot now, but I haven't found any useful information.

Anyone care to explain?

Morpheus (interesting choice of a username; why would a committed and cultured materialist resort to Greek mythology for a username?) has, although in few words, explained the necessity of the state and the role in plays within a social order, based on the production and exchange of private property.

The topic of the state -- the chief concept of the political -- was, meant to be a major part of a planned treatise that Marx was to write by the end of 1857 on political economy... which, in "good" Marxian tradition didn't even get so much as sketched down -- quite a shame really.

Marx's writings in relation to the "state" are a little "hazy" and "undeveloped" -- only so, because he didn't set himself the task, of dedicating a serious study on the subject -- but, even so, it really doesn't matter all that much, because we can decipher and extract from separate works to "coagulate" a general paradigm, of Marx's thoughts on the "state"... both bourgeoisie and proletarian.

The state is tied to civil society as its necessary complement. This is so, because there is a sphere in which human beings are totally at odds and disconnected, perusing their -- only in appearance -- individual aims, that there has to be one which claims to represent the "common character" of those individuals as members of the "human-species".

But in the form of the state the "species-beings" of human-beings is represented as actually separate from their real, individual lives... it is estranged from the real people. More specifically, it is another sphere of particularity... the communal being of people exists only in the sphere of the imaginary!

Insofar as civil society is the presupposition of the state, and insofar as private property is the foundation of civil society, it is private property that is the secret, although presumably obvious, for the existence of the state.

Marx in his early writings "restricted" (so to speak) the state to being primarily related to private property, through the idea that the latter generates a sphere of pure particularly in which everyday life is actually lived, a real sphere which requires a ideal sphere of complementary universality to satisfy humanity's need for a representation of its "universal character" as a species.

The above in more so, about the "state" and not the parliamentary system that prevails within liberal (to be generous) democracy's (to be incredibly generous)... but the two are tied profoundly, the former presupposing the latter.

The parliamentary systems, that is for the most part, endorsed, supported and more importantly used as a "tool" of the ruling class to build up a illusionary consciousness -- "false consciousness" -- is immersed within the political and social consciousness of the general populace within liberal democracy's.

The parliamentary system is "tool" -- in which the ruling class -- tricks the subordinated class's into thinking that they have a "real say" about the future of the country, about their own future, about their own socio-economic prosperity... choosing one candidate or the other is not going to make the slightest difference to the present class-structure, their social prosperity, or unhinged future.

[RedAnarchist]

Parliament is simply an hot air factory. You cant be an MP there unless you swear to the Queen, you cant be an MP unless youre over 21 and if youre not a white, male, English Christian, youve got little chance of being an MP.

Its just a capitalist club in reality.

[Essential Insignificance]

Its just a capitalist club in reality.

Correction: a petite-capitalist "club".