Romila Thapar silencing the Public Intellectual

Sonia Gandhi knew little about the country it fell to her to rule. One of the experts she consulted regularly to remedy her ignorance was Romila Thapar.

Clearly, the distinguished historian was a 'durbari' intellectual- a courtier savant- was she also ever a 'Public Intellectual' like Emile Zola who condemned the injustice done to Dreyfus?
Of course she was. She condemned the imprisonment without trial of a host of Politicians and Trade Unionists and Journalists during the Emergency. Her book 'J'accuse Madam Indira!' was a best seller.
I'm kidding. She wrote no such book.

What she did do was attack the policies of the party opposed to Sonia Gandhi, whom she herself regularly visited and advised.

In this partisan exercise, what helped her was her long history of writing highly communal attacks on one particular type of Religion- Brahmanic as opposed to Shramanic- which she castigated as intolerant and backward. The fact that the other sort- Shramanic Buddhism- was sheer money-grubbing, elitist, misogynistic, casteist  stupidity, special pleading and magical thinking, most of whose practitioners happened to be Brahmin males- she glossed over. Instead, she affirmed that Indian history is only 'communalized' if reference is made to antagonism between Hinduism and Islam. This is because whereas India is now divided between Buddhistan and Vedistan, Muslims live happily with Hindus in places where they are the majority. Thapar, as a Hindu, may be right in saying that Hindus had no antagonism to Muslims- the Muslim population of India is now a higher percentage than at Partition- but she is surely wrong to say that Islam in India wasn't hostile to Hindus.

The facts speak for themselves. Hindus and Christians, but also Muslims deemed insufficiently orthodox, have been either ethnically cleansed or subjected to continuous intimidation, harassment and terror in areas where Muslims are either numerically stronger or feel themselves at an advantage.

For Thapar, the true story of India is one of resistance to stupid and needy Brahmins by less stupid and more greedy Brahmins who decided it paid better to pose as Buddhists. Islam was an irrelevance, except in so far as it killed off all the Hindus, in which case it was actually only avenging Buddhism and thus on the side of the angels.

Thapar explains that 'Buddhism was edged out of India by, among other things, Brahminical orthodoxy. In India, the State of Bihar derives it name from 'Vihara', the term for a Buddhist monastery. What about Naobehar, near Balkh, in Afghanistan? Its name derives from 'New Vihara'.

Who destroyed Buddhism in Balkh? Did Brahmin orthodoxy play a part? Or is it not the case that Viharas in Balkh were destroyed by the same people, for the same reason, as the Viharas of Bihar were destroyed?

Who 'edged Buddhism out' of Afghanistan and Central Asia? Who is edging Christianity out of Iraq and Syria today? Who 'edged out' Hinduism and Sikhism from Pakistan?

It certainly wasn't Islam. Perish the thought! Probably it was neo-liberalism.

Even suppose Lord Buddha was stupid or self-serving enough to commit to the theory given above, was it really the case that 'private property' alone gave rise to 'confusion and conflict'? Was there really never any invasion by an aggressive tribe to be countered? In addition to an elected Magistrate, was it really the case that no Military Chief was required?

Apparently not. Lord Buddha said-
31. 'And, Vasettha, whoever of these four castes, as a monk, becomes an Arahant who has destroyed the corruptions, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained to the highest goal, completely destroyed the fetter of becoming, and become liberated by the highest insight, he is declared to be chief among them in accordance with Dhamma, and not otherwise.
 Dhamma's the best thing for people
 In this life and the next as well.
32. 'Vasettha, it was Brahma Sanankamara who spoke this verse:
 "The Khattiya's best among those who value clan;
 He with knowledge and conduct is best of gods and men."
This verse was rightly sung, not wrongly, rightly spoken, not wrongly, connected with
profit, not unconnected. I too say, Vasettha:
 [98] "The Khattiya's best among those who value clan;
 He with knowledge and conduct is best of gods and men."'
Thus the Lord spoke, and Vasettha and Bharadvaja were delighted and rejoiced at his
words.

In the Agganna Sutta, quoted above, the Buddha explains to 2 Brahmin monks why his own caste is superior to theirs, just as their caste is superior to that of the Vaishyas who in turn rank above the despicable Shudras. The argument he uses is foolish and utterly false. It is not true that an 'Abhassara Brahma' world ever existed or that it will exist. The whole thing is a myth- like the Sea of Milk or the Celestial Tortoise or Jesus rising from the Dead. Buddha was a stupid fuckwit who thought sex was bad, eating was bad, and Warriors who can actually fight, Kings who can actually govern- like King Pasenadi- were also bad. He himself, he considered to be very very good because he simply went around telling stupid self-serving lies about his own greatness which was why King Pasenadi had become his disciple.

Thapar's own anti-Brahmin vitriol is perfectly understandable. Like the Buddha, she is a Kshatriya. Her Uncle was a dud as Army Chief. Clearly, her people would have been better off sticking to making money or pretending to be Marxists.  Naturally, possessing neither intelligence nor capacity for learning, she resented the Brahmin reputation for both. Thus, she is not a historian but a victim of her history. Her Punjabi Hindu Khattri ancestors, though good at making money, failed in defending their own homeland. It falls to their obedient daughter to claim that this involved no disgrace since there was never any Islamic threat in the first place. The only evil that existed in India was that of the Brahmins. Since Soniaji, being a foreigner, came to her for 'tuition', she herself had a duty to her Client which she could easily discharge by pretending that Hindutva is some sort of Brahminical conspiracy. The fact that non-Brahmins, like Modi and Amit Shah, have made it attractive to the voter probably has something to do with 'neo-liberalism'. Public Intellectuals have a duty to speak out against it. The fact that 'neo-liberalism' doesn't exist- and that those members of the Public who have intellectual inclinations can easily find this out for themselves- means that Silence is the only valid Parrhesia in this context.

Thapar, speaking of the Silence of the Public Intellectual, so nakedly reveals her own ignorance and stupidity as to stun, if not shame, her audience into silence.

The Economic Theory of killing Eric Garner.

Eric Garner was a 44 year old African American man suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes. He was unlawfully killed by a member or members of the New York Police.

Prof. Steven Landsburg, impelled no doubt by the spirit of Hanukkah, has a marvelous Christmas present for Eric Garner's family. He says that Econ theory proves that Garner couldn't have been hurt more than a tiny bit by Police harassment.

'Suppose you are a typical street vendor of an illegal product, such as, oh, say, untaxed cigarettes.

Suppose the police make a habit of harassing such vendors, by confiscating their products, smacking them around, hauling them off to jail, and perhaps occasionally killing a few.

I have good news: The police can’t hurt you.

Here’s why: Street vending can never be substantially more rewarding than, say, carwashing. If it were, car washers would become street vendors, driving down profits until the rewards are equalized. If car washers were happier than street vendors, we’d see the same process in reverse. (The key observation here is that it’s very easy to move back and forth between street vending and other occupations that require little in the way of special training or special skills.)

Because police harassment of street vendors has no effect on the happiness of car washers, and because street vendors are always just as happy as car washers, it follows that police harassment has no effect on the happiness of street vendors.
…

So if you’re a street vendor, the police can’t hurt you. On the other hand, when the police go around putting people in deadly chokeholds, they’re clearly hurting someone. So the question is: Who?

Answer: Not the vendors, but their customers. Fewer vendors means higher prices. That hurts consumers, and the sum total of that harm adds up to the harm that we see in the viral videos.

Landsburg himself has corrected himself in a subsequent post. He now says- 'I  stand by the claim that individual workers are hurt insignificantly by harassment. But I’m backing off the claim that the total harm to all workers is insignificant. Consumers in the harassed industry do bear a large burden — and perhaps even more than the entire social burden, because their losses are partly offset by gains to consumers elsewhere. But my simple accounting of yesterday (“the burden on the workers is effectively zero, so the social burden falls entirely on consumers”) was far too simple.'

Does Economic Theory endorse Landsburg's claims?

No. Harassment and Unlawful Killing, like Rape, may appear to give rise to Utility for some agent but have such a large negative external effect (by definition, this is received outside the market) that such Utility becomes Socially repugnant and worthy of punishment. Where pleasure is seen to derive from a crime, that pleasure is denounced as vicious. When the State unlawfully takes life, even if it is so as to protect its own Revenue, it loses legitimacy. Its actions become repugnant. Resources are not wasted in combating a repugnancy market. Indeed, it is compliance with the Excise Man which now carries a dead weight loss for Society. 

Ramachandra Guha mad at Malviya pick

Bhagwan Das got a Bharat Ratna for founding the M.G Kashi Vidyapith. Now Malviya has got one for founding Benares Hindu University.

This makes Ramachandra Guha very very angry.


“Giving Vajpayee a Bharat Ratna is fine but one should not award it to people dead or long dead. Awarding Malaviya is a mistake..,” he tweeted. (To be clear, Vajpayee may be dead or as good as dead but he is not long dead. Malaviya died before Independence.)


In a series of tweets, Mr. Guha said, “If Malaviya, why not give Tagore, Phule, Tilak, Gokhale, Vivekananda, Akbar, Shivaji, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Ashoka, Bharat Ratnas too?” The answer, obviously, is that they don't 'match' with Vajpayee. By coupling Vajpayee with Malviya, a graceful assertion about their cultural salience, at least for Hindi speakers, is made.


“The more I think of it, the more the award of the Bharat Ratna to MM Malaviya strikes me as parochial and indefensible,” he said.


Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tweets that Malaviya got the award for his scholarship and patriotism, Mr. Guha said that “in both spheres, there were far greater Indians...”.


Guha has given himself the job of measuring greatness in things like 'scholarship' and 'patriotism'. This is because he has shit for brains. He isn't a 'historian' but a kid who gets into arguments as to whether Spiderman can beat up Robin Hood.

“Gokhale, Tilak, Kamaladevi, Bhagat Singh, contributed far more than Malviya to the freedom struggle, Tagore far more to education/literature.' He says

But Shantiniketan aint a proper Univesity. B.H.U is. Kamaladevi contributed nothing very much to the Freedom Struggle. Scarcely any one has heard of her. Malviya, however, was a heavyweight compared even to her more famous sister-in-law. Bhagat Singh was killed before he could make much of a contribution. There is no suggestion that he was a political heavyweight.


“But Gokhale/Tilak/Bhagat Singh/Kamaladevi/Tagore and other such stalwarts did not work or live in the Prime Minister’s constituency,” he tweeted. Nor does the Prime Minister.


Modi chose to fight from Benares for a reason easily legible to Indian people. Pairing Malviya's name with Vajpayee's, similarly has a certain not particularly flattering cultural valency. Old Brahmins who dragged themselves up by their bootstraps are passe. Honor them by all means. If not dead they are not long dead and de mortuis nihil nisi bonum.

More foolishness from Feisal Devji

In an essay for the Hindu, Dr. Devji makes 2 fatuous claims

1) The Indian State is unwilling or unable to monopolize the use of violence in its own name. 

2) Hindu Nationalism has never possessed a theory of the State.

He writes (my comments are in bold)
'We might argue that secularism remains a polemical category because it is deployed in order to capture the state while never fully inhabiting it. We might, indeed, argue precisely this but only if we had not only captured the State but also thrown it down into a pit and were now saying- 'It rubs the lotion on its skin, otherwise it gets the hose again'. 
In other words, if the purpose of 'capturing the State' is to skin it alive to make a body-suit for ourselves, then it makes sense of speaking of 'never fully inhabiting it'. This is because though we wear the skin of that which we captured, the fact that we had to get rid of a lot of messy internal organs means we don't 'fully inhabit it'. 
For as in colonial times, during which its exclusion from state power made for a nationalism grounded in society and its cultural and religious languages, Indian politics today continues to be divided between state and society. Why? There was no Democracy under Colonial rule. There is now and has been for 5o years. Why doesn't this make a difference?  This is nowhere more evident than in the way in which even the most powerful of India’s governments have never been able or indeed willing to monopolise the use of violence in the classical form, as defined by Max Weber, that is meant to characterise nation states. Was Nehru or Patel or Shastri or Indira or Morarji or Vajpayee 'unwilling or unable' to assert the State's monopoly of legitimate violence?Vajpayee sent in the Army after Godhra. Hindus were killed by Army bullets. On the contrary, they tolerate and even rely upon what we might describe as “social” violence, whether or not it is encouraged and even organised by agents of the state. When did this happen? The anti-Sikh riots? But the boy Rajiv scarcely counts as one of the 'most powerful of India's' rulers. Narasmiha Rao, similarly, was a senile has-been who only go the P.M's job after if was turned down by Shankar Dayal Sharma. Congress, latterly, might be totally shite but Patel wasn't shite, Shastri wasn't shite, and as for Indira, she didn't muck around mate. R.A.W was too a State Actor and it had its bumboo up your proverbial just so you'd remember.

This inability or unwillingness to monopolise the use of violence in its own name, I want to argue, illustrates neither the weakness nor backwardness of the Indian state, but instead constitutes its dynamic structural logic, one that has again come into its own after India’s liberalisation in the 1990s, when society, in the form of the private sector and informal economy, re-emerged as an important site of political contestation. Dynamic structural logic? There aint no such beast. You're just making this up.  We know Pakistan has plenty of non-State actors running around creating mayhem. Does the Pakistani unwillingness or inability to crack down on those nutjobs 'constitute its dynamic structural logic'? If so, is Devji saying that, post Bhutto, when the Economy was freed up, Pakistan's 'private sector and informal economy' re-emerged 'as an important site of political contestation'? Is that what the Peshawar School massacre was about? Contestation of private sector Schools? Is Devji completely off his head? Unlike Pakistan, India is not a country where private armies are officially tolerated or sanctioned. There are insurgencies and sometimes there are political settlements but it is not the case that India tolerates, as a matter of 'dynamic structural logic', any violation of State Monopoly of legitimate coersion. In this sense- i.e. nonsense- the non-Weberian character of the Indian state is as linked to neoliberalism today as it had been in the colonial past to the anticipatory politics of a nationalism based in society. India is not a soft State. It's a hard State. It will fuck you up if you try to fuck with it.  At the margin, no doubt, its potency is contested just as Westminster's potency was contested during the hoodie riots a few years back. So what? Like Britain, India has a unitary State with the monopoly of legitimate coercive power. Pakistan is a different story. It had autonomous Federally Administered Territories and then a terrorist State-within-a-State in the shape of ISI backed Lashkars and Talibans. Pre-independence Indian politics wasn't anticipatory at all. It provided rich pickings in terms of graft and had achieved all but its foreign policy objectives prior to 1939. Neoliberalism is a word coined by Marxist fucktards. It doesn't mean anything.And it is the BJP that is now in the position of traversing the path from social to state power, and wrestling, as the Congress once did, with the problem of striking a balance between the two, if one can indeed be found. Right! Coz that's what keeps Narendra Bhai up at nights! How to stop Sushma Swaraj and her crack team of Swatantra Stree Sainiks launching a para-military assault on Holy Angels Primary School. What is this guy smoking?

Hindu nationalism

Hindu nationalism, which in the form of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has repeatedly (thrice and very briefly each time) been banned, and thus not deprived of a political life in public institutions, has for a long time now represented the quintessential form that social power takes in India. Rubbish. Caste based Parties are the quintessential form of social power in India. Okay, the Bhadrolok did manage to terrorise Bengal by pretending to be Communists but those senile shitheads are now well and truly in the crapper. Devji isn't Indian. He doesn't know better. Still, the editors of the Hindu, who published this, do know better. What 'social power' does the R.S.S have in Chennai? In Hyderabad? In Kerala? In Bengal? In U.P? Even in Gujarat, an old school LSE type like me has complete impunity for bashing fellow Tambrams like Subramniyam Swamy. Indeed, it is probably the only State in India where I could get away with posing as a 'pravachak' albeit of a most ungodly kind. (Full disclosure- this is because I'm very dark, ugly and put on a hilarious Madrasi accent.)For by the time Indira Gandhi’s premiership came to an end, the once formidable social base of the Congress had been whittled away, as the party chose to concentrate its power in the institutions of the state. Nonsense. Indira split Congress in favor of a dynastic cult of personality. She concentrated power, not in institutions, but loyalist buffoons. Of course it continued to rely upon non-state actors, most violently during the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984, rely? rely? Are you saying Rajiv needed the Sikhs killed and he had to rely on Youth Congress thugs rather than just send in the Central Reserve Police or some other such bunch of jokers?  but these did not represent the kind of mass base that the Congress had possessed in colonial times. A mass base so small that Congress couldn't chuck the Brits out even with the Japs knocking at the door. Hindu nationalism, on the other hand, augmented its social power while keeping it separate from the fortunes of the BJP as a political party, though this relationship has been placed under strain whenever the latter has been in government. Really? Hindu Nationalism has a strained relationship with Narendra Modi in Gujarat? Are you out of your freaking mind!

More interesting than the shifting balance of power between the BJP and its “family” of non-state Hindu organisations, however, might be the fact that Hindu nationalism has never possessed a theory of state. Unlike the vision of an Islamic state, for instance, with its distinctive if non-egalitarian constitutional structure, Hindu nationalism has no alternative political model, apart from an insistence on the dominance of majoritarian culture and concerns. And this is its triumph as much as tragedy, since the absence of a distinctive theory of state repeatedly casts Hindu nationalism back into a social movement, one that can only make claims on cultural and demographic rather than constitutional grounds. And in this sense it is the most appropriate heir of a concept of secularism that had always been populist in its argumentation. If anyone has recognised this, it is, unsurprisingly, the Muslim “fundamentalists” who support secularism in India, but want an Islamic state where they are in a majority. They deny the hypocrisy of this position by arguing that since Hindu nationalism has no theory of state, and so no critique of secularism, it might be oppressive but is still capable of being secular.

But the fact that Hindu nationalism possesses no theory of state also means that it carries the non-Weberian logic of Indian politics to its conclusion, by refusing to depoliticise social life or condemn its concerns as “irrational” and “superstitious”.  Listen, Devji mate, you're a nice guy. You probably 'lurv' India way more than wot I do. Let me tell you something about 'irrationality'- it is fucking irrational to treat people who clean your toilets as 'unclean' and beyond the pale as far as Development goes. That's a recipe for endemic typhoid. 
Let's talk about superstition. Say you are on your way to deliver a lecture at Oxford or Cambridge or wherever it is that you teach. You see a sanitation worker. You stop in your tracks. You have to go home. You have to cancel your lecture. Seeing a 'bhangi' is inauspicious. You can transact no business this day. 
Is there a way round this? Sure. Indoor sanitation. Toilets for everybody. Modi, at Red Fort, saying 'make in India' was also was saying 'make in the fucking toilet for fuck's sake- not all over the fucking place'. That's Hindu Nationalism.
In doing so, it is not only heir to the whole history of nationalism in colonial India, but at the same time is also best placed to capitalise on the importance of “civil society” activism in our own neoliberal times. Fuck off.  I want an immediate crackdown on 'eve teasing' in my parent's Delhi neighbourhood, who am I gonna call? I want Madhu Kishwar to work the streets and Kiran Bedi to fix the Admin side. Fuck I care about their politics? True Daddy tried to fix me a play date through the RSS helpline after I was diagnosed with Alzheimers, but that's a different story.
Commentary on both secularism and communalism in India has tended to focus too readily on plots and conspiracies that are meant to illustrate the coming together of sinister caste, class and other interests with popular prejudice and fear. But while accurate in some ways, these modes of understanding may be too superficial in others. We should attend instead to the structural and historical factors that define Indian politics, which appear to show a much greater continuity between parties and politics than is usually recognised to be the case.

Wow! Devji is now saying only the BJP can be a Secular Party because...urm... well them Saffron types are stooopid. They don't got a theory of the State unlike those smartypants from Taliban Central.

But Hindu Nationalism does too have a theory of the State- it goes like this 'That which enables our 'Rashtra' (Nation) to quickly grow strong while observing Niti (ethical policy) is the form and content of the State we democratically call into being. Our self-sacrificing celibate leaders need to hold the high offices in the State. Immediately, corruption, weakness, ignorance, slavish attitude to West etc, all such things will disappear. India will turn into a Galactic Super Power. As a great scholar of Indian origin, we will do 'ghar wapsi' ceremony for Devji Sahib before appointing him our first Ambassador to the Horse head Nebula so that it too can speak to us through his donkey's ass.

Yashpal's Purdah & Premchand's Uryani

In Yashpal's Purdah, a Muslim clerk's female family members gradually become entirely nude because of improper cost of living adjustment perpetrated by evil Capitalist bastards. The Pathan money lender comes and decides to take away the door curtain. The nudity of the women is exposed.

We were forced to read this shite at School. One Hindi speaking boy, named Gupta, the son of a prosperous Tailor, put up his hand- 'Sir, this story is exposing bankruptcy of Progressive Writers Association aesthetic. It is allegory'.

Mr. Yadav beat the boy savagely but his eyes remained fixed mournfully upon me. There were others in the class- boys named Bannerjee and Chatterjee and Mukherjee- I too was accorded an honorific jee, becoming Iyerjee- whom Yadav had beaten, but not savagely and towards no great civilizational end.

But I alone had immediately got in my Dad to bribe Mr. Yadav, not with the whiskey he was angling for, but 'tuition'. This was his undoing. Say what you like about South Indian Brahmins but the paltry miserabilism of the cow belt can't intimidate us. Poor Mr. Yadav ended up not just teaching me some Hindi but getting me through my exams at far lower cost to Dad's wallet than would otherwise have been feasible. This was because I had just the one essay which I could tailor to answer any question. The other boys also had just the one model essay but their essays were well written in shuddh Hindi and included quotations from Manusmriti and Tulsi Das. Mine featured a mentally retarded young orphan, taken in by his maternal Uncle, whose one goal in life was to pass the I.C.S.E Hindi exam. On my mother's death-bed, Mamaji had sworn that he would make this dream come true for me. Sadly, this meant his daughter was forced into prostitution- that too on her wedding day (this was the denouement of my essay titled 'A marriage I recently attended')- just so I could pay the exam fees. However (vide my essay on  'role of Youth in National Reconstruction') his sons too were forced to do coolie-work and die of exhaustion. Indeed, the final conflagration ( 'Diwali- festival of lights') in which my now crazy Aunty set herself on fire and went running around the tiny room we all occupied was not lacking in joie de vivre.

Before, the Communist,Yashpal's ludicrous Purdah, there was, of course Premchand's Gandhian Uryani most nakedly displayed when the great man went to Bombay as a Rs.8000 p.a. scriptwriter for 'Mazdoor'- in which he makes a cameo appearance as a Worker's leader.

Ironically, this film inspired the workers at Premchand’s own press in Benares were to go on strike because of non-payment of wages. 

Didn't stop the great man becoming the first President of the P.W.A. Sickness, not shame, led to his death a short while later.

Knightian Uncertainty, Class Domination & Market Democracy

Knightian uncertainty is risk that can't be measured. Ellsberg's paradox highlights our 'ambiguity aversion' towards Knightian Uncertainty.
If Markets capture all relevant information, and human beings evolved on a Darwin's, not Deuteronomy's fitness landscape,  it follows that Commerce will be characterised by hedging effects (i.e. comonotonicity is violated) and so no straightforward Choquet Expected Utility model can gain purchase.
Class domination in a Market Democracy can arise if inequalities in Income generate differences in asset endowments (including Human and 'Social' Capital) such that further Income inequality is generated.
Clearly, assuming Technology is ratcheted such that the production possibility frontier can't collapse, for this to occur, a class of assets (or hybdrid derivatives of a 'Parrando' type) must exist which always yield positive returns. If this is not the case then it is nonsense to speak of 'Class' because agents within it are both risk-taking and receiving rents simultaneously and there is no guarantee that this isn't a zero, or negative sum, game. In other words, there is bound to be intense intra-class conflict between gross renters and gross risk-takers. Thus, Trade Unions gain a rent for old members (under last-in-first-out) by putting more risk on new or non members. This generates a conflict. New members lose less if the T.U is radical and, short term, this can seduce old members who hope for increased rents. Middle to Long term, however, such a compact isn't stable and will rend apart Class cohesion. The same point may be made about any interest group- even those for whom price wage and service provision discrimination is easy by reason of a physical or costly-to-circumvent barrier between markets, because the dynamic and allocative dead-weight loss grows exponentially such that at the margin intra-class conflict increases.
There is a long established strain in Economics which assumes that there is always a riskless positive real reward for 'thrift'. Perhaps Providence has indeed arranged matters so. But in that case Darwin was wrong. If that's what you believe, come out and say so on Fox News. If not, you are obliged to accept that Knightian uncertainty is ubiquitous and therefore no riskless positive return assets can be assumed to exist nor is there any Coasian workaround for the Market (because hedging effects arise) 'internalizing' the Choquet integral.

Thus, though Class Domination under Market Democracy may or may not arise, we have no a priori way of parsing the question unless it is posited that 'ambiguity aversion' is an artifact and no Knightian Uncertainty actually obtains.
However, this is to throw the baby out with the bathwater because, absent Knightian Uncertainty, Market Democracy wouldn't be desirable. (If all Risk is measurable, the market solution is easily dominated and, instead of Democracy, we'd just have a once and for all Social Contract. This holds trivially if resources are used up in the functioning of the Market and /or the Democratic process.)
Thus Market Democracy can't 'sanction' anything including 'class domination'  because it is the Knightian future fitness landscape itself  which decides what outcome obtains. (All assets are hedges which could be wiped out. There is no way to both have a Market and also devise a Choquet type workaround. Factor in cognitive bias and being rich today could well be a recipe for being the poorest of the poor tomorrow.)

Now, we can still have a debate on this topic but it will have to be couched in the language of evidential decision theory and, at the margin, will cash out as speculative General Systems bullshit. It can't have any prescriptive or regulative role.

Ultimately as Alan Kirman points out, 'representative agent models' are worthless because no Social or Biological process can be modeled in that way provided we evolved by Natural Selection.

Beslan to Peshawar- one Professor's perspective

Children were butchered at two schools, one in Belsan a decade ago, the other in Peshawar today- and after the tears are shed a numbed world turns back to its quotidian tasks with some vague impression that dem Islamists be crazy.
The truth about Beslan, of course, had more to do with hostility between 2 small nationalities, both Muslim, the Ingush and the Ossettians, in a remote Mountainous region. Chechen Islamists masterminded the earlier atrocity and, it appears, some foreign Islamists (Arabic speaking it has been suggested) were involved in the one we are still reeling from today. 
This raises the question, is the incomprehensible attack on Peshawar similarly not actually about Islamic extremism but rather some internecine ethnic conflict among remote peoples whose identities we muddle together?
Peshawar was always part of British India. After Independence, it was integrated into the Pakistani State. The Tehreek-e-Taliban, however, which has claimed credit for yesterday's atrocity, is based in the 'Federally Administered Tribal Area' (FATA) where the writ of the Pakistani Govt. emphatically did not run. 
For 55 years, this area was independent in all but name. Then, after 9/11, the Americans put a nuclear gun to Pakistan's Military Dictator's head and his troops began a slow process of negotiating, with carrot and stick, some degree of authority. That project failed. Does the attack on the Army School in Peshawar signal the outbreak of total war between Pakistanis and those tribes whose recognition of Pakistani suzerainty was purely nominal or provisional?

As with Beslan, we will never know the truth because we aren't interested in the truth because it doesn't affect our interests. What about people from Peshawar, some at least of whom have relatives or ancestors in FATA? They may learn the truth, or already possess it, but it isn't their interest to cling to it. Instead they will tell us silly stories.
Here is an article about Pakistan by a learned Professor from that part of the World.  He tells us that the reason Pakistan is so fucked up is because it's like real insecure coz Partition was like so traumatic dude.
In an extraordinary display of ignorance, he describes Hyderabad and Junagadh as Muslim majority states.
'The partition protocols had given the subcontinent’s princely states the right to accede to Pakistan or India. Among these were three large Muslim-majority states: Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir. India forcefully annexed the first two - 'The third had a Hindu maharaja ruling over a 77 percent Muslim population. In a controversial move, the British had awarded India a land corridor to Kashmir. Fearing that Kashmir would suffer the fate of Junagadh and Hyderabad, members of Pakistan’s military and political establishments conspired to infiltrate tribal militants into the valley. Alarmed by insurgent advances, the maharaja appealed to India’s British governor general, Lord Mountbatten, who agreed to intervene if the maharaja signed the instrument of accession. In short order, Indian troops marched in and beat back the tribesmen, triggering the first shooting war between the two nascent states.'

Pakistan got nervous and invaded Kashmir, except it didn't really, it sent in tribal irregulars, but then the Indians got a legal invitation to march in and defend the Kashmiris who were being raped and massacred by those irregulars so the upshot was Pakistan got less of Kashmir than it felt entitled to which is why it's got a license to behave like a spoiled child for all eternity.
Still today, of all days, the question is urgent for the whole World,  how are we to avoid atrocities like Peshawar and Beslan?
If Muslims kill neighboring Muslims, who may differ somewhat in terms of clan or tribe or whatever, then clearly India must hand over Kashmir and like disband its Army and not get angry if terrorists turn up to bomb its Parliament or Taj Hotel or some other scenic spot where they can pose for selfies before blowing themselves up. 
Till Pakistan gets its hands on 4 million Muslims in Kashmir (there are about as many Ahmediyas being currently persecuted in Pakistan coz Bhutto suddenly decided they weren't actually Muslims) more and more atrocities like the Peshawar School atrocity are bound to happen.
Nothing to do with Genocidal Gangsters instrumentalizing Islamist Jihad at all. Nor bein pensant professors talking Civil Society Shite on the International Conference Circuit.
Nope, just hand over Kashmir and Palestine and Southern Spain and Coastal Thailand and any other place which has hot chicks and you just see everything will be fine.

I copy and paste the following from a comment on 3 quarks (since deleted) about this Professor's article.

1) Junagadh wasn't, as the Professor says, a large state. It was tiny. But the Professor wants to prove that Pakistan felt vulnerable at its inception. It didn't at all. It got a proportionately larger share of the British Indian Army and was in a position to use Muslims within India against the Congress regime. Indeed, Liaqat by a stroke of genius had opened the door to an alliance with the Leftists. The big tactical mistake was in not cultivating the Princes so as to give Congress a 'moth eaten' Hindustan. Jinnah's offer to the Maharaja of Kashmir might well have been accepted had the irregulars not invaded- though it must be said the Dogra regime had only been able to keep Poonch with British help and it's overthrow in that region was inevitable. What was not inevitable was that the Muslims of the Kashmir Valley would recoil so drastically from integration into Pakistan.  Here it was the indiscipline and savagery of the irregulars which was the clinching factor. Pakistan blundered hugely by using the tribal levies as a 'plausibly deniable' proxy. But, their use was not dictated by fear of India's might but rank opportunism and romantic dreams of glory.

The Professor ignores all this. He pretends that Pakistan was as vulnerable as Hyderabad. Why? Was Jinnah as stupid as the Nizam? Was the Pakistani army a bunch of jokers like the Razakars? Was Pakistan 85 percent Hindu? Did any Pakistani seriously believe that India could do to their country what they had done to the Nizam's Kingdom?
Suppose the Valley had sided with the irregulars. Suppose they had risen up. What forces could India airlift to bring to bear upon the situation? They wouldn't have had so much as an air-strip in the Valley.
The Professor says Pakistan was born out of a calamity and so felt vulnerable. But its leaders engineered that calamity and felt stronger, not weaker, after it was shown to be irreversible. Afghanistan ceased to be a threat and itself became vulnerable- that's why they killed Liaqat- once Jinnah showed the Tribal belt that he was reversing the British 'Forward Policy' and was going to let them breathe free.

2) Pakistani existential insecurity in the face of a mighty neighbor did not starve the Civilian sector. On the contrary, it grew rapidly. So did the Military but there was no crowding out effect- on the contrary, Pakistan's well-trained Army coupled with its suave diplomats won generous support and not just from the West.

The fact is, West Pakistan developed far more rapidly than gerontocratic Gandhian India. Industrially, educationally and at the level of nutrition and development indices it was a far cry from 'nanga bhuka Hindustan' (naked, hungry, India). Fatima Jinnah, it is true, played a mischievous role in condemning the Indus Water treaty- which had removed the one existential threat to West Pakistan's continuing prosperity. However, it must be said, Pakistan failed to capitalize on its tremendous agricultural potential preferring PL480 shipments which harmed the agricultural class. The Kashmiri front of the '65 war was, it is true, a shambles. The Muslims of the Valley refused to join hands with the infiltrators because memories of the savagery of the tribal levies was still too fresh.
Pakistan needed to manufacture another 'hazratbal' incident or else spend money more lavishly prior to infiltration. But, Ayub Khan can't be blamed too much. The fact is Pakistan's position was never stronger on this issue than in '63/'64. Most people thought it the thing was in the bag. Perhaps, if Nehru had lived another couple of years, the Valley would indeed have come to Pakistan without a shot being fired. By then the Indians were looking fearfully towards their North East Frontier. Pakistani Generals who wanted to put pressure on the Siliguri corridor (which would have enthused the Bengali officers) were ignored. Still the fact remains, '65 was an error of over-confidence. It wasn't a panicked reaction to Indian military build up.

3) The Army did not 'intervene directly to subvert democracy'. The civilians held no elections. There was no democracy to subvert. Had Liaqat not been assassinated the story might have been different. Still, it was he who brought in Ayub as CinC. Iskandar Mirza, lest we forget, was that amphibious thing a soldier-bureaucrat typical of the Imperial Political Service. He died in penurious exile after his Curry House failed.

The Pakistan Army has a remarkable record for preserving esprit de corps and the chain of command. By comparison, the Bangladesh Army was a shambles. Dog ate dog with a vengeance. Wives of officers were not spared during the recent mutiny- one aim of which was the right to serve in U.N. Peace Keeping missions!

The Army has toppled elected men- scoundrels without exception- but only because not to do so would imperil its own ethos, its own chain of command. This is not an entirely bad thing. The alternative would have been internecine conflict within the armed forces- Generals shelling Generals.

People joke that Pakistan is not a State with an Army but an Army with a State. Yes, but at least the Army is united. Not till this ceases to be true will Pakistan be a failed State.

Contra the Professor, the Army did not suddenly 'begin to see itself the custodian of the Nation'. It had always done so. After the death of Liaqat, no one else did or had.

The Professor says that the Army needed all Pakistanis 'to feel as vulnerable as the Muslims of middle India'. Nonsense. In the josh session, does the officer say to his men 'Sound the alarm! The Hindu hordes are at the gate!'

Not at all. What you have is a sort of Mard-e-Momin or Islamic Superman philosophy based on invulnerability not vulnerability, attack not defense, asymmetric improvisatory tactical belligerence not in-depth strategic deterrence.

The fact is, in 1971 people in Lahore feared Indian bombs. In 2001 they didn't.

That is the Army's achievement.

Imran Khan may come or he may go or may be offered a follow on. Why speak of him as the Army's creature? Everybody is the Army's creature. Pakistan- tragically orphaned at too tender an age- is what it is for weal or woe thanks to the Army. Today, of all days, we should remember the courage and sacrifice of not just officers and men, but also their families. Even little children have not been spared.