A Modest Proposal for Global Egalitarianism

By Hank Pellissier

Editor’s Note: The ideas and proposals expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Hampton Institute.

Walking under the freeway past the homeless encampment, you hear a voice, “I need 50 cents.” Ignoring the beseecher, you scan the news on your smartphone: Jeff Bezos now has $300 billion. Ahead, you see a struggling woman forced into an ICE van, next to signs promoting two candidates you despise but realize will control your future.

Does society have to be like this?

No. This essay will present an option, grounded in justice and liberty.

Global Egalitarianism is a political philosophy structured on the moral ideal of truly establishing all human beings as equals. 

We believe that concept, don’t we? All humans are equal in importance. This maxim inspired American and French revolutions, abolition of slavery, the women’s suffragette movement, gay rights, and every effort to overthrow a tyranny. 

All People Are Equal is the compassionate principle of modern, democratic civilization - we embrace this belief and expect others to react with anger if this ethos is violated. 

Earth should be an Egalitarian Planet. But it isn’t. 

Equality is distant dream today due to economic, social, and political institutions that divide rich and poor, powerful and powerless, bordered nations from bordered nations. 

In our 2020 world, people aren’t equal. The power of a rural, single mother in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is insignificant compared to a man addressing his cabinet at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. 

• The richest 1% earn 26.3 times more than the bottom 99%.

• There are 2,095 billionaires, but 71% of people live on less than $10 a day.

• There are more slaves on Earth than ever before.

• One person has visited every nation on Earth but millions have never been out of their village.

• 750 million people would emigrate, if they could.

• 52% of people are dissatisfied with their democracy, and 71 nations aren’t democratic.

• 4.5 million Americans have PhDs, but 775 million people in the world are illiterate.

Let us obsolete these depressing statistics and establish global egalitarianism instead, using the tools of Wealth Redistribution, Open Borders, and Pure Democracy. 

WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION

Robin Hood is an egalitarian champion because he ‘robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.’ Many others - like Juraj Janosik (Slovak folk hero), Phoolan Devi (‘Bandit Queen’ of India), and Jose Mujica (President of Uruguay) conducted illegal philanthropy similar to the fictitious yeoman of Sherwood Forest. Today the most laudable proponent of wealth redistribution might be Kshama Sawant of Seattle; she spearheaded the movement for $15/hour minimum wage and she’s presently seeking to nationalize Amazon.

“Redistribution” evokes fear and rage in the upper class; clutching their pearls they hiss, “I worked hard for my money” despite 60% of US wealth being inherited. Most middle income people also bristle when ‘leveling’ is considered - it’s derided as communist thievery to support ‘lazy people.’

Truth is, economic history is a long tragedy of powerful entities enriching themselves by stealing from the poor and middle class. Ethical people are appalled that peasants worked 4 unpaid days a week for their landlord, but today’s situation, where Warren Buffett ($82.47 billion) pays less taxes than his secretary is identically unjust.

The rich don’t need all their money; they just buy unnecessary toys with it, like 169 cars, or giraffes ($40,000 - $80,000) and platinum Arowana fish ($300,000), or a kitchen remodel every three years. I know a man living alone in a $40 million house; his beach town has 147 homeless people. Money doesn’t even ‘buy happiness’ - researchers discovered that more wealth simply creates more want. 

The “Happy Nations” list exhibits the smallest divide between rich and poor. Happy Nations have a smaller ratio between CEO & worker salaries - in #1 Finland the average CEO salary is $99,515 - in #18 USA it is $820,616.

How rich or poor would everyone be if wealth was divided equally, amongst the world’s inhabitants? What’s the PPP per capita? The answer is $17,110 - similar to China and Costa Rica. Plus - if the world had ‘open borders’ - economists estimate global wealth would elevate 50%—150%. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just double the first figure, for $34,220 - a digit between the economy of delightful Slovenia and popular Portugal. 

This figure would lift 2.7 billion people out of their present-day poverty, and of course, lower spoiled others to a more modest standard of living. Solid gold toilets would lose their customers - egads!

How can money be redistributed? Multiple methods exist; let’s quickly discuss a few:

Reparations - Fairness requires that assets stolen from a region are returned, in full, even if the assets were stolen many years ago. Unpaid labor should also be recompensed. It’s evident that Africans and Diasporans of African descent deserve retribution for the enslavement, exploitation, and colonization of their continent. India also deserves to be paid back ($45 trillion?) for the precious treasures the British overlords robbed during colonization, plus the 15-29 million Bengalis who starved to death in the World War II era famine, due to food diverted by Winston Churchill. Similarly, the Dalits (untouchables) deserve compensation from their oppressors for the subjugation they’ve endured. 

Armenians and Greeks deserve reparations from Turks; Congolese deserve reparations from Belgium (King Leopold enslaved the populace on rubber plantations and killed 10 million); South Africans deserve reparations for apartheid; Native Americans deserve reparations from European invaders; Jamaica deserves reparations from Britain; South Korea deserves reparations from Japan; Vietnam deserves reparations from the USA; Serbia deserves reparations from NATO, and Haiti deserves reparations from France. 

Land Reform - Property is overly-owned by the already-prosperous, who enrich themselves further via rentals and extracting resources. Revolts are launched to distribute land fairly, but not often enough and they aren’t always successful. (Model land reforms occurred in Cuba and South Korea.) Oftentimes, land reform is stymied by foreign powers who want to continue gorging themselves with the status quo. Guatemalan and Chilean leaders, for example, wanted land reform but were overthrown by USA-instigated coups. 

Land could be distributed equally, globally. The figures on this are fantastic. If 7.8 billion people divided all the habitable land on Earth, there’d be 2.3 acres per person, claims a University of Texas study.

The Federal Land Dividend strategy of Zoltan Istvan is also worth considering. His idea is to lease USA public land (the government owns 40% of USA acreage, worth $150+ trillion) to provide $1,000 month dividends to citizens. This proposal is a fusion of UBI, Nationalization, and Land Reform tactics. 

Nationalization - Public ownership of a region’s resources and industries is a sure-fire way to equitably distribute profit. Norway’s nationalization of its North Sea oil serves as an exemplary example; the profits guarantee the citizenry with free health care, free education, and pensions. Similar situations are evidenced elsewhere: Bolivia nationalized gas, petroleum, hydroelectricity, and lithium - the latter move led to Evo Morales’s ousting in a coup engineered by US shenanigans. Cuba nationalized all private businesses and factories, including 36 US-owned sugar mills; this led to its decades-long pariah status. Chile nationalized copper; Mexico and Venezuela nationalized oil; Pakistan nationalized steel mills; Quebec province in Canada nationalized hydroelectric; Sri Lanka nationalized tea, rubber, and cocoa; Italy nationalized Italia airlines; India nationalized banks, etc. 

Nationalization exists worldwide, but still, only a small fraction of resources are publicly owned. Far more could be done. The Socialist Alternative party has an egalitarian agenda: they want the 500 biggest corporations in the USA to be publicly owned. Nationalization is fairer than today’s system where products are created by billionaires who pay workers demoralizing salaries. (Apple workers in China work 60 hour weeks for low pay in unsafe conditions). 

Taxation - Progressive income tax, wealth tax, property tax, inheritance tax, sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and other levies can be used to encourage wealth redistribution. The USA rich were taxed up to 91% in the 1950’s, an era with far better economic equity than today. French economist Thomas Piketty believes “billionaires should be taxed out of existence”; his viewpoint is supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “No billionaires”, in my opinion, is a very permissive limitation. I personally think no one needs more than $10 million - this easily guarantees you ‘never have to worry about money again.’

Wages - Minimum wage and maximum wages policies can be used to level the financial field. Luxembourg has the highest minimum wage in the world per nation - $14.12 an hour - but in the USA, that’s topped in at least 17 cities that offer $15/hour or more. If personal wealth, globally, was capped at $34,220 annually, as I previously suggested, $20/hour in a 36-hour work week would be sufficient. Maximum wages only exist in Cuba - this strategy was voted on in Switzerland in 2013 but it failed to pass, receiving just 34.7% of the vote. An obviously target for maximum wage limits is the USA, where corporate CEOs are paid 361 times more than workers.

Universal Basic Income - UBI has accelerated quickly from ‘crazy idea’ to ‘practical solution.’ Early implementations in Canada, Namibia, Finland, Alaska and Stockton, California, suggested its potential. Andrew Yang campaigned for President with UBI as his signature goal. 20th century proponents like Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon suggest UBI’s major party appeal; Libertarians also appreciate its ability to reduce welfare bureaucracy. UBI guarantees citizenry - either all or selected segments - a monthly check to spend as they please. The Covid-19 pandemic sharply increased interest in UBI; by September 2020 policies were planned for Spain and 20-30 USA cities. 

Corporate Sharing & Worker Power - Germany gives workers significant representation in management, with 50% of the supervisory board of directors elected by labor. Their seat at the table guarantees they won’t be mistreated, like warehouse workers at Amazon, who are automatized and “treated like robots” - or at Tesla, oft-accused of racial hostility and discrimination. Strong unions also provide “higher wages, better benefits, increased economic mobility, and reduced poverty.”

Communes & Cooperatives - Numerous egalitarian communities exist, where members live and work together, sharing labor and profit from their enterprises. Examples include Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia, Hutterite colonies in Canadian and US prairie states, and kibbutzim in Israel. Cooperatives and collectives also thrive worldwide, with research indicating they are more productive than hierarchal companies. Spain has more than 18,000 co-operatives, a legacy from the anarcho-syndicalist movement that preceded the Spanish Civil War. 

OPEN BORDERS

Open Borders are essential in creating Global Egalitarianism. Allowing free and easy immigration to every corner of the planet will deliver these benefits:

• People with specific job skills can relocate to an area where their potential can be maximized.

• People seeking education in their field of interest can move to receive the training they want.

• Commercial items can be transported easily without punitive tariffs and inspections.

• Economists claim Open Borders would elevate global wealth by 50% - 150%. This seems obvious: today millions are unable to produce their potential because they live in environments unsuitable to their skills.

• People with an aversion or disinterest in the culture of their homeland can relocate easily to other cultures where they can intellectually and emotionally thrive.

• People trapped in an overpopulated region or an area ‘going underwater’ due to climate change, can settle smoothly into a safer or less-crowded geography.

• Dangerous mindsets like patriotism, nationalism, and xenophobia will be avoided if everyone can relocate internationally, establishing cordial relationships across the globe.

• War between hostile nations will become increasingly rare if individuals see themselves as global citizens, instead of warriors for a single state.

• Understanding and empathy for all humanity will be elevated if borders are eliminated. Today’s demarcation of WE vs. THEM promotes dehumanization and suspicion of the ‘other.’

• 10. Cultural forms and intellectual ideas will flourish if access is enhanced.

Arguments against Open Borders are listed below, with rebuttals. 

Criminals will escape their homelands and invade unsuspecting neighboring nations!

   — Easily preventable. Access to international travel can be denied to those with a criminal record.

Immigrants from impoverished lands will migrate and seize all the best jobs in foreign lands.

   — Studies indicate most people choose not to move. Example: residents from the impoverished state of West Virginia ($24,774 per capita) seldom relocate 500 miles to the wealthy state of Connecticut ($76,456 per capita). This objection also lacks the morality that global egalitarianism requires. Is it ethical to deprive someone of livelihood because they didn’t grow up as your neighbor? Should their value be lessened because they’re categorized with the subhuman label of ‘alien’? Thirdly, immigrants are generally hired in employment niches the natives lack sufficient numbers to fill. Example: USA needs computer engineers, who are subsequently hired from China, India, Russia, etc. 

Local Culture will be destroyed. 

   — This is the weakest argument of all, as anyone who has eaten a juicy fish taco in Minnesota can testify. Culture survives because it provides joy and speaks to the human condition. Ghanaians celebrate both Christian and Muslim holidays, because they’re all fun. Music, art, cinema, literature and cuisine always borrow across borders: Cubism was inspired by West African masks; the violin (invented in Italy) is instrumental in Chinese concerts; spicy peppers, originating in Peru, are essential in Korean cooking; Nobel Prize novels and Oscar-winning films are applauded everywhere. 

PURE DEMOCRACY

Global Egalitarianism requires huge improvement in politics so all people are truly equal. Most democracies in the world are terrifically flawed; many have been re-classified as ‘oligarchies’ - rule by the rich. Pure Democracy is a goal no nation has yet attained, or is even close to. Achieving this has to be done incrementally. Below are suggestions in approximate order:

• Abolish Anti-Democratic Institutions. Many systems today subvert the will of the majority. These institutions need to be eliminated, or drastically reformed. In the USA this initial step requires abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College, electing Supreme Court justices, and transferring commander-in-chief powers from the President to the House of Representatives.

• Campaign Finance Reform. Political contests need to be publicly-financed - no outside money at all. Candidates abusing this must be disqualified.

• Abolish Lobbyists. Politicians cannot accept funding or favors from corporations and special interest groups; this obviously influences their votes. Washington DC needs to cleanse itself from all potential bribery.

• Ranked Choice Voting. This helps select politicians the majority can at least tolerate, and it eliminates the need to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils.’

• Adopt the Parliamentary System. Presidential government (adopted by 52 nations) is far less democratic than the Parliamentary system, enjoyed in 102 nations. The Parliamentary system enables smaller party representation, it reduces the power of the Executive branch, and it encourages multi-party collaboration.

• Encourage Secessions. Individual political power is elevated if the citizen belongs to a smaller group. A voice is more likely to be heard if it is one voice out of 100,000 - 10,000,000 instead of one voice out of 300,000,000 - 1,300,000,000. Eight of the Top Ten “Most Democratic Nations” have 10 million people or less, and none has more than 35 million people. To guide the world towards this, support separatist groups in Catalonia, Galicia, Flanders, Scotland, Chiapas, California, Texas, and Darfur - and support the desire of Berbers, Kurds, Yakuts, Batwa, Canarians, Balinese, Karenni, Assamese, Uygurs, Punjabi, Rwenzururu, and dozens of other ethnicities to govern themself.

• Demand Initiatives and Referendums (also known as Proposition or Plebiscites). “R & I’s’ provide ballot measures to the citizenry, so they can directly vote on reforms advanced by other citizens. (Surprisingly, 24 states do not even offer this option) Switzerland and Ireland offer the most referendums in Europe. In Asia, The Philippines is prolific with plebiscites.

• Poli Sci Education Required? Fear of ‘mob rule by idiots’ is often just elitism, but it would be alleviated if citizens has to pass information and logic tests for the right to vote.

• Abolish Politicians. Representative democracy is flawed because politicians are often narcissistic, authoritarian, and corrupt. If direct democracy referendums are in place, there’s no need for conniving intermediaries.

• Emulate Rojava Communalism - Rojava - the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria - governs itself with a ‘communalist’ structure, designed by American political philosopher Murray Bookchin. Rojavans enjoy enormous power at the community level; its ‘bottom-up system’ provides a voice to everyone. The long-term goal of communalists is to organize Earth’s inhabitants into thousands of self-governing communities that are intrinsically linked into non-competitive, ever-large confederacies.

CONCLUSION

Do you find these utopian ideas preposterous? Science fictional? A wonky, cringe-inducing re-write of John Lennon’s “Imagine’?

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Disillusionment with the status quo, twinned with social media, can create rapid change.

Global Egalitarianism is the future we need.

References

Introduction

Jeff Bezos - $300 billion https://www.ccn.com/jeff-bezos-300-billion-amazon-becomes-worlds-8th-largest-economy

Global Egalitarianism https://globalegalitarianism.wordpress.com/about/ https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_96 https://simoncaney.weebly.com/global-egalitarianism.html

equality inspires revolutions, etc. https://www.nps.gov/revwar/unfinished_revolution/01_all_men_are_created_equal.html

richest 1% earn 26.3 times more than bottom 99% https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/07/29/5-mind-blowing-statistics-about-the-richest-1.aspx

2,095 billionaires https://indianewengland.com/2020/04/forbes-releases-34th-annual-list-of-global-billionaires-includes-several-indians-and-indian-americans/

71% of people live on less than $10 a day https://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-income/index.html

more slaves on Earth than ever before https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/slaves-time-human-history-article-1.3506975

One person has visited every nation on Earth https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/man-has-visited-every-country-in-the-world/

750 million people would emigrate, if they could https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx

52% of people are dissatisfied with their democracy https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/satisfaction-with-democracy/

71 nations aren’t democratic https://www.reference.com/world-view/countries-democracy-8f9e05f7d96a76e7

775 million adults are illiterate https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/global-rate-of-adult-literacy-84-per-cent-but-775-million-people-still-cant-read/article4528932/#:~:text=There%20are%20775%20million%20people%20in%20the%20world,in%20their%20footsteps%20because%20they%20aren%27t%20attending%20school

Wealth Distribution

Juraj Janosik (Slovak folk hero) https://www.slavorum.org/juraj-janosik-legendary-slovak-thief-turned-hero/

Phoolan Devi (‘Bandit Queen’ of India) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phoolan-Devi https://medium.com/@mishra18tanvi/phoolan-devi-the-real-bandit-queen-of-india-2fb09b35d17f

Jose Mujica (eventual President of Uruguay) https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/jos%C3%A9-mujica-uruguays-robin-hood-guerrillas-9066

Kshama Sawant of Seattle - $15/hour minimum wage https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/05/kshama-sawant-seattle-socialist.html

nationalize Amazon https://theoutline.com/post/6587/nationalize-amazon-make-bezos-our-bitch?zd=1&zi=ys72jrku

60% of US wealth inherited https://evonomics.com/americans-get-rich-stay-rich/

peasants had to work 4 days a week unpaid for their landlord http://www.lordsandladies.org/serfs.htm#:~:text=The%20daily%20life%20of%20a%20serf%20was%20dictated,the%20lord%27s%20mill%2C%20and%20pay%20the%20customary%20charge.

Warren Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary is identically unjust https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/338189

unnecessary toys… like 169 cars https://www.thethings.com/priciest-cars-jay-leno-owns-and-cheapest/

giraffes ($40,000 - $80,000) https://www.exoticanimalsforsale.net/giraffe-for-sale.asp

Asian Arowana fish ($300,000) https://nypost.com/2016/06/05/this-fish-is-worth-300000/

beach town has 147 homeless people https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2019-10-01/aliso-viejo-denounces-federal-judges-statement-alleging-it-dumped-homeless-in-laguna-beach-shelter

more wealth simply creates more want https://www.livescience.com/10881-global-study-money-buy-happiness.html

“Happiest Nations” https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/#29f843517850

#1 Finland the average CEO salary is $99,515 https://www.payscale.com/research/FI/Job=Chief_Executive_Officer_(CEO)/Salary

#18 USA it is $820,616 https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-executive-officer-salary

per capita income - $17,110 - similar to China and Costa Rica https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/

Open Borders - global wealth would elevate 50% - 150% https://openborders.info/utilitarian/#:~:text=Utilitarian%20justifications%20for%20open%20borders%20hinge%20on%20the,economic%20production%20%28see%20our%20double%20world%20GDP%20page%29

Reparations

Africans deserve reparations https://nehandaradio.com/2020/05/25/tafi-mhaka-europe-should-pay-reparations-for-colonising-africa/

India deserves reparations https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33618621

Dalits (untouchables) deserve compensation https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-dalits-reservation-representation-suraj-yengde-6523483/

Armenians deserve reparations from Turks https://ahvalnews.com/armenians-turkey/turkey-may-face-reparation-demands-after-us-recognises-armenian-genocide-turkish

Greeks reparation from Germany https://breakingnewsturkey.com/world/greece-demands-germany-pays-war-reparations

Congolese reparations from Belgium https://www.africanexponent.com/post/9792-will-belgium-ever-apologize-to-drc-and-pay-reparations

South Africans reparations for apartheid https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/south-africa-reparations-for-aparthied

Native Americans reparations from European imperialists https://study.com/academy/lesson/native-american-reparations.html

Jamaica reparations from Britain https://moguldom.com/189262/jamaica-wants-britain-to-pay-billions-in-reparations-for-slavery/

South Korea reparations from Japan https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-08-17/japan-korea-and-the-tquestion-of-how-to-pay-for-historic-wrongs

Vietnam reparations from the USA https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/18/opinion/the-forgotten-debt-to-vietnam.html

Serbia reparations from NATO https://europediplomatic.com/2019/09/15/moscow-suggests-us-reparations-for-yugoslavia-bombings/

Haiti reparations from France https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/haiti-reparations-france-slavery-colonialism-debt/

Land Reform

Cuba land reform https://cubaplatform.org/land-reform

South Korea land reform https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/12/for-asia-the-path-to-prosperity-starts-with-land-reform https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/opinion/sa-could-model-its-land-reform-on-the-success-achieved-in-south-korea-10450729#:~:text=South%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20land%20reform%20is%20regarded%20as%20one,impact%20on%20agricultural%20productivity%2C%20which%20later%20sustained%20poverty-reduction

Guatemalan coup https://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/historylabs/Guatemalan_Coup_student:RS01.pdf

Chilean coup https://foodfirst.org/publication/agrarian-reform-and-counter-reform-in-chile/

7.0 billion people divide Earth - 2.3 acres each https://foodfirst.org/publication/agrarian-reform-and-counter-reform-in-chile/

The Federal Land Dividend - Zoltan Istvan https://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-with-federal-land-dividend-2017-7

Nationalization

Norway nationalization https://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-08-oil-together-now-nationalisation-lessons-from-norway/

Bolivia nationalization https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/bolivias-nationalization-oil-and-gas https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-power-nationalization-idUSTRE64013020100501

Bolivia coup engineered by US for lithium https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/morales-claims-orchestrated-coup-tap-bolivia-lithium-191225053622809.html

Cuba nationalizes 36 US-owned sugar mills http://en.cubadebate.cu/news/2015/08/10/cuba-nationalizes-us-companies/

Chile nationalized copper https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Chilean_nationalization_of_copper.html

Mexico and Venezuela nationalized oil https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-venezuela-mexico-three-ways-nationalize-oil-150004780.html

Pakistan nationalized steel mills https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/pakistans-nationalized-steel-mills

Quebec nationalized hydroelectric https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/hydro-qubec-why-nationalize-the-electricity-sector

Sri Lanka nationalized tea, rubber, and cocoa http://teasrilanka.org/history

Italy nationalized Italia airlines https://www.businessinsider.com/alitalia-nationalized-by-italy-history-2020-3

India nationalized banks https://www.oneindia.com/feature/full-list-of-nationalised-banks-in-india-2718000.html

Socialist Alternative wants the 500 biggest corporations in the USA to be publicly owned https://www.socialistalternative.org/about/

Apple workers in China work 60 hour weeks for low pay in unsafe conditions https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/electronics/9174900/Apples-Chinese-staff-work-60-hours-a-week-independent-audit-finds.html

Taxation

US rich were taxed up to 91% in the 1950’s https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-taxing-wealthy-americans/

Thomas Piketty “billionaires should be taxed out of existence” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html

‘no billionaires’ - Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/politics/bernie-sanders-ultra-wealth-tax-billionaires/index.html https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/02/aoc-billionaires-should-not-exist/

$10 million - ‘never have to worry about money again.’ https://www.getrichslowly.org/is-10-million-enough/ 

Wages

Luxembourg minimum wage - $14.12 an hour https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-countries-with-the-highest-minimum-wages.html

USA 17 cities with at least $15/hour minimum wage https://time.com/3969977/minimum-wage/

vote in Switzerland 2013 failed, receiving 34.7% of the vote https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/24/switzerland-votes-against-cap-executive-pay

USA CEOs are paid 361 times more than workers https://popularresistance.org/why-are-ceos-paid-361-times-more-than-their-average-employees/

Universal Basic Income

UBI in Canada https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/mincone-experiment-in-dauphine-manitoba

UBI Namibia https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/ubi-in-nambia

UBI Finland https://basicincome.org/news/2019/04/finland-further-results-from-the-famous-finnish-ubi-experiment-published/

UBI Alaska https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/alaskaubi

UBI Stockton, California https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-extends-its-universal-basic-income-pilot

UBI Martin Luther King Jr. https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/martin-luther-king-jr

UBI Richard Nixon https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/

Libertarians UBI https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income

UBI Spain https://www.businessinsider.com/spain-universal-basic-income-coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4

UBI 20-30 USA cities https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/08/universal-basic-income-gains-momentum-in-america

Corporate Sharing and Worker Power

Germany worker representation - 50% of the supervisory board of directors https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-08-24/why-german-corporate-boards-include-workers-for-co-determination#:~:text=Wherever%20on%20that%20spectrum%20your%20views%20lie%2C%20it,or%20require%20some%20such%20form%20of%20employee%20%E2%80%9Cco-determination.%E2%80%9D

Amazon workers “treated like robots” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse

Tesla accused of racial hostility and discrimination https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-12/tesla-workers-claim-racial-bias-and-abuse-at-electric-car-factory

Union benefits https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/reports/2016/06/09/139074/unions-help-the-middle-class-no-matter-the-measure/

Communes and Cooperatives

Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia https://www.twinoaks.org/

Hutterite colonies http://www.hutterites.org/

Kibbutzim https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement

collectives more productive than hierarchal companies https://cccd.coop/news/%EF%BB%BF-worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-normal-companies

Spain 18,000 co-operatives https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2012/mar/12/cooperatives-spain-mondragon

Open Borders

Open Borders General Info https://openborders.info

Open Borders elevate global wealth 50% 150% https://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

USA imports computer scientists   https://www.prb.org/usforeignbornstem/

Cubism inspired by West African masks https://www.pablopicasso.org/africanperiod.jsp

Pure Democracy

Abolish Anti-Democratic Institutions https://hankpellissier.com/sixteen-reforms-to-improve-usa-democracy

Ranked Choice Voting https://www.fairvote.org/rcvbenefits#:~:text=%20Benefits%20of%20Ranked%20Choice%20Voting%20%201,more%20voices%20are%20heard.%20Often%2C%20to...%20More%20

Superiority of the Parliamentary System https://lebassy.blogspot.com/2006/07/superiority-of-parliamentary-system.html

“Most Democratic Nations” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries

Separatist and Secessionist groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession

24 states do not have Referendums and Initiatives https://ballotpedia.org/States_without_initiative_or_referendum

Switzerland and Ireland offer the most referendums in Europe https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/switzerland-held-9-referendums-already-2016-11727#:~:text=Switzerland%20has%20been%20holding%20referendums%20since%20the%2018th,to%20the%20polls%20more%20often%20than%20the%20UK.

Rojava Communalism https://itsgoingdown.org/the-communes-of-rojava-a-model-in-societal-self-direction/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2020/08/20/the-two-faces-of-kurdistan/ https://roarmag.org/essays/communalism-bookchin-direct-democracy/

Murray Bookchin https://www.britannica.com/biography/Murray-Bookchin

Revolution in the Twenty-First Century: A Reconsideration of Marxism

By Chris Wright

In the age of COVID-19, it’s even more obvious than it’s been for at least ten or twenty years that capitalism is entering a long, drawn-out period of unprecedented global crisis. The Great Depression and World War II will likely, in retrospect, seem rather minor—and temporally condensed—compared to the many decades of ecological, economic, social, and political crises humanity is embarking on now. In fact, it’s probable that we’re in the early stages of the protracted collapse of a civilization, which is to say of a particular set of economic relations underpinning certain social, political, and cultural relations. One can predict that the mass popular resistance, worldwide, engendered by cascading crises will gradually transform a decrepit ancien régime, although in what direction it is too early to tell. But left-wing resistance is already spreading and even gaining the glimmers of momentum in certain regions of the world, including—despite the ending of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign—the reactionary United States. Over decades, the international left will grow in strength, even as the right, in all likelihood, does as well.

Activism of various practical and ideological orientations is increasingly in a state of ferment—and yet, compared to the scale it will surely attain in a couple of decades, it is still in its infancy. In the U.S., for example, “democratic socialism” has many adherents, notably in the DSA and in the circles around Jacobin magazine. There are also organizations, and networks of organizations, that consciously repudiate the “reformism” of social democracy, such as the Marxist Center, which disavows the strategy of electing progressive Democratic politicians as abject “class collaboration.” Actually, many democratic socialists would agree that it’s necessary, sooner or later, to construct a workers’ party, that the Democratic Party is ineluctably and permanently fused with the capitalist class. But the Marxist Center rejects the very idea of prioritizing electoral work, emphasizing instead “base-building” and other modes of non-electoral activism.

Meanwhile, there are activists in the solidarity economy, who are convinced it’s necessary to plant the institutional seeds of the new world in the fertile soil of the old, as the old slowly decays and collapses. These activists take their inspiration from the recognition, as Rudolf Rocker put it in his classic Anarcho-Syndicalism, that “every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the old organism. Without this preliminary any social evolution is unthinkable. Even revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have made their way into the consciousness of men; they cannot themselves create these germs or generate new worlds out of nothing.” The Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the DSA is one group that identifies with this type of thinking, but there are many others, including the Democracy Collaborative, the Democracy at Work Institute (also this one), Shareable, and more broadly the New Economy Coalition. Cooperation Jackson has had some success building a solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi.

The numbers and varieties of activists struggling to build a new society are uncountable, from Leninists to anarchists to left-liberals and organizers not committed to ideological labels. Amidst all this ferment, however, one thing seems lacking: a compelling theoretical framework to explain how corporate capitalism can possibly give way to an economically democratic, ecologically sustainable society. How, precisely, is that supposed to happen? Which strategies are better and which worse for achieving this end—an end that may well, indeed, seem utopian, given the miserable state of the world? What role, for instance, does the venerable tradition of Marxism play in understanding how we might realize our goals? Marx, after all, had a conception of revolution, which he bequeathed to subsequent generations. Should it be embraced, rejected, or modified?

Where, in short, can we look for some strategic and theoretical guidance?

In this article I’ll address these questions, drawing on some of the arguments in my book Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States (specifically chapters 4 and 6).[1] As I’ve argued elsewhere, historical materialism is an essential tool to understand society and how a transition to some sort of post-capitalism may occur. Social relations are grounded in production relations, and so to make a revolution it is production relations that have to be transformed. But the way to do so isn’t the way proposed by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, or by Engels and Lenin and innumerable other Marxists later: that, to quote Engels’ Anti-Dühring, “The proletariat seizes state power, and then transforms the means of production into state property.” Or, as the Manifesto states, “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class.”

Instead, the revolution has to be a gradual and partially “unconscious” process, as social contradictions are tortuously resolved “dialectically,” not through a unitary political will that seizes the state (every state!) and then consciously, semi-omnisciently reconstructs the economy from the top down, magically transforming authoritarian relations into democratic ones through the exercise of state bureaucracy. In retrospect, this idea that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” will plan and direct the social revolution, and that the latter will, in effect, happen after the political revolution, seems incredibly idealistic, unrealistic, and thus un-Marxist.

I can’t rehearse here all the arguments in my book, but I’ve sketched some of them in this article. In the following I’ll briefly restate a few of the main points, after which I’ll argue that on the basis of my revision of Marxism we can see there is value in all the varieties of activism leftists are currently pursuing. No school of thought has a monopoly on the truth, and all have limitations. Leftists must tolerate disagreements and work together—must even work with left-liberals—because a worldwide transition between modes of production takes an inordinately long time and takes place on many different levels.

I’ll also offer some criticisms of each of the three broad “schools of thought” I mentioned above, namely the Jacobin social democratic one, the more self-consciously far-left one that rejects every hint of “reformism,” and the anarchistic one that places its faith in things like cooperatives, community land trusts, mutual aid, “libertarian municipalism,” all sorts of decentralized participatory democracy. At the end I’ll briefly consider the overwhelming challenge of ecological collapse, which is so urgent it would seem to render absurd, or utterly defeatist, my insistence that “the revolution” will take at least a hundred years to wend its way across the globe and unseat all the old social relations.

Correcting Marx

Karl Marx was a genius, but even geniuses are products of their environment and are fallible. We can hardly expect Marx to have gotten absolutely everything right. He couldn’t foresee the welfare state or Keynesian stimulation of demand, which is to say he got the timeline for revolution wrong. One might even say he mistook the birth pangs of industrial capitalism for its death throes: a global transition to socialism never could have happened in the nineteenth century, nor even in the twentieth, which was the era of “monopoly capitalism,” state capitalism, entrenched imperialism, the mature capitalist nation-state. It wasn’t even until the last thirty years that capitalist relations of production fully conquered vast swathes of the world, including the so-called Communist bloc and much of the Global South. And Marx argued, at least in the Manifesto, that capitalist globalization was a prerequisite to socialism (or communism).

All of which is to say that only now are we finally entering the era when socialist revolution is possible. The earlier victories, in 1917, 1949, 1959, and so on, did not achieve socialism—workers’ democratic control of the economy—and, in the long run, could not have. They occurred in a predominantly capitalist world—capitalism was in the ascendancy—and were constrained by the limits of that world, the restricted range of possibilities. Which is doubtless why all those popular victories ended up in one or another form of oppressive statism (or else were soon crushed by imperialist powers).

If Marx was wrong about the timeline, he was also wrong about his abstract conceptualization of how the socialist revolution would transpire. As he put it in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production… From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.” The notion of fettering, despite its criticism by exponents of Analytical Marxism, is useful, but not in the form it’s presented here. For to say that relations of production fetter productive forces (or, more precisely, fetter their socially rational use and development) is not to say very much. How much fettering is required for a revolution to happen? Surely capitalism has placed substantial fetters on the productive forces for a long time—and yet here we all are, still stuck in this old, fettered world.

To salvage Marx’s intuition, and in fact to make it quite useful, it’s necessary to tweak his formulation. Rather than some sort of “absolute” fettering of productive forces by capitalist relations, there is a relative fettering—relative to an emergent mode of production, a more democratic and socialized mode, that is producing and distributing resources more equitably and rationally than the capitalist.

A parallel (albeit an imperfect one) is the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Feudal relations certainly obstructed economic growth, but it wasn’t until a “competing” economy—of commercial, financial, agrarian, and finally industrial capitalism—had made great progress in Western Europe that the classical epoch of revolution between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries burst onto the scene. Relative to capitalism, feudalism was hopelessly stagnant, and therefore, once capitalism had reached a certain level of development, doomed.

Crucially, the bourgeoisie’s conquest of political power wasn’t possible until capitalist economic relations had already, over centuries, spread across much of Europe. There had to be a material foundation for the capitalist class’s ultimate political victories: without economic power—the accumulation of material resources through institutions they controlled—capitalists could never have achieved political power. That is to say, much of the enormously protracted social revolution occurred before the final “seizure of the state.”

If historical materialism is right, as it surely is, the same paradigm must apply to the transition from capitalism to socialism. The working class can never complete its conquest of the state until it commands considerable economic power—not only the power to go on strike and shut down the economy but actual command over resources, resources sufficient to compete with the ruling class. The power to strike, while an important tool, is not enough. Nor are mere numbers, however many millions, enough, as history has shown. The working class needs its own institutional bases from which to wage a very prolonged struggle, and these institutions have to be directly involved in the production and accumulation of resources. Only after some such “alternative economy,” or socialized economy, has emerged throughout much of the world alongside the rotting capitalist economy will the popular classes be in a position to finally complete their takeover of states. For they will have the resources to politically defeat the—by then—weak, attenuated remnants of the capitalist class.

Marx, in short, was wrong to think there would be a radical disanalogy between the transition to capitalism and the transition to socialism. Doubtless the latter process (if it happens) will take far less time than the earlier did, and will be significantly different in many other respects. But social revolutions on the scale we’re discussing—between vastly different modes of production—are always very gradual, never a product of a single great moment (or several moments) of historical “rupture” but rather of many decades of continual ruptures.[2] Why? Simply because ruling classes are incredibly tenacious, they have incredible powers of repression, and it requires colossal material resources to defeat them—especially in the age of globalized capitalism.

Building a new mode of production

What we must do, then, is to laboriously construct new relations of production as the old capitalist relations fall victim to their contradictions. But how is this to be done? At this early date, it is, admittedly, hard to imagine how it can be accomplished. Famously, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

But two things are clear. First, a significant amount of grassroots initiative is necessary. The long transition will not take place only on one plane, the plane of the state; there will be a tumult of creative energy on sub-state levels, as there was during Europe’s transition into capitalism. (Of course, in the latter case it was typically to establish predatory and exploitative relations, not democratic or communal ones, but the point holds.) The many forms of such energy can hardly be anticipated, but they will certainly involve practices that have come to be called the “solidarity economy,” including the formation of cooperatives of all types, public banks, municipal enterprises, participatory budgeting, mutual aid networks, and so on. In a capitalist context it is inconceivable that states will respond to crisis by dramatically improving the circumstances of entire populations; as a result, large numbers of people will be compelled to build new institutions to survive and to share and accumulate resources. Again, this process, which will occur all over the world and to some degree will be organized and coordinated internationally, will play out over generations, not just two or three decades.

In the long run, moreover, this solidarity economy will not prove to be some sort of innocuous, apolitical, compatible-with-capitalism development; it will foster anti-capitalist ways of thinking and acting, anti-capitalist institutions, and anti-capitalist resistance. It will facilitate the accumulation of resources among organizations committed to cooperative, democratic, socialized production and distribution, a rebuilding of “the commons,” a democratization of the state. It will amount to an entire sphere of what has been called “dual power” opposed to a still-capitalist state, a working-class base of power to complement the power of workers and unions to strike.

The second point is that, contrary to anarchism, it will be necessary to use the state to help construct a new mode of production. Governments are instruments of massive social power and they cannot simply be ignored or overthrown in a general strike. However unpleasant or morally odious it may be to participate in hierarchical structures of political power, it has to be a part of any strategy to combat the ruling class.

Activists and organizations will pressure the state at all levels, from municipal to national, to increase funding for the solidarity economy. In fact, they already are, and have had success in many countries and municipalities, including in the U.S. The election of more socialists to office will encourage these trends and ensure greater successes. Pressure will also build to fund larger worker cooperatives, to convert corporations to worker-owned businesses, and to nationalize sectors of the economy. And sooner or later, many states will start to give in.

Why? One possible state response to crisis, after all, is fascism. And fascism of some form or other is indeed being pursued by many countries right now, from Brazil to Hungary to India to the U.S. But there’s a problem with fascism: by its murderous and ultra-nationalistic nature, it can be neither permanent nor continuously enforced worldwide. Even just in the United States, the governmental structure is too vast and federated, there are too many thousands of relatively independent political jurisdictions, for a fascist regime to be consolidated in every region of the country. Fascism is only a temporary and partial solution for the ruling class. It doesn’t last.

The other solution, which doubtless will always be accompanied by repression, is to grant concessions to the masses. Here, it’s necessary to observe that the state isn’t monolithically an instrument of capital. While capital dominates it, it is a terrain of struggle, “contestations,” “negotiations,” of different groups—classes, class subgroups, interest groups, even individual entities—advocating for their interests. Marxists from Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin to Miliband and Poulantzas to more recent writers have felled forests writing about the nature of the capitalist state, but for the purposes of revolutionary strategy all you need is some critical common sense (as Noam Chomsky, dismissive of self-indulgent “theorizing,” likes to point out). It is possible for popular movements to exert such pressure on the state that they slowly change its character, thereby helping to change the character of capitalist society.

In particular, popular organizations and activists can take advantage of splits within the ruling class to push agendas that benefit the populace. The political scientist Thomas Ferguson, among others, has shown how the New Deal, including the epoch-making Wagner Act and Social Security Act, was made possible by just such divisions in the ranks of business. On a grander scale, Western Europe’s long transition from feudalism to capitalism was accompanied by divisions within the ruling class, between more forward-thinking and more hidebound elements. (As is well known, a number of landed aristocrats and clergymen even supported the French Revolution, at least in its early phases.) Marx was therefore wrong to imply that it’s the working class vs. the capitalist class, monolithically. This totally Manichean thinking suggested that the only way to make a revolution is for the proletariat to overthrow the ruling class in one blow, so to speak, to smash a united reactionary opposition that, moreover, is in complete control of the state (so the state has to be seized all at once).

On the contrary, we can expect the past to repeat itself: as crises intensify and popular resistance escalates, liberal factions of the ruling class will split off from the more reactionary elements in order to grant concessions. In our epoch of growing social fragmentation, environmental crisis, and an increasingly dysfunctional nation-state, many of these concessions will have the character not of resurrecting the centralized welfare state but of encouraging phenomena that seem rather “interstitial” and less challenging to capitalist power than full-fledged social democracy is. But, however innocent it might seem to support new “decentralized” solutions to problems of unemployment, housing, consumption, and general economic dysfunction, in the long run, as I’ve said, these sorts of reforms will facilitate the rise of a more democratic and socialized political economy within the shell of the decadent capitalist one.

At the same time, to tackle the immense crises of ecological destruction and economic dysfunction, more dramatic and visible state interventions will be necessary. They may involve nationalizations of the fossil fuel industry, enforced changes to the polluting practices of many industries, partial reintroductions of social-democratic policies, pro-worker reforms of the sort that Bernie Sanders’ campaign categorized under “workplace democracy,” etc. Pure, unending repression will simply not be sustainable. These more “centralized,” “statist” reforms, just like the promotion of the solidarity economy, will in the long run only add to the momentum for continued change, because the political, economic, and ecological context will remain that of severe worldwide crisis.

Much of the ruling class will of course oppose and undermine progressive policies—especially of the more statist variety—every step of the way, thus deepening the crisis and doing its own part to accelerate the momentum for change. But by the time it becomes clear to even the liberal sectors of the business class that its reforms are undermining the long-term viability and hegemony of capitalism, it will be too late. They won’t be able to turn back the clock: there will be too many worker-owned businesses, too many public banks, too many state-subsidized networks of mutual aid, altogether too many reforms to the old type of neoliberal capitalism (reforms that will have been granted, as always, for the sake of maintaining social order). The slow-moving revolution will feed on itself and will prove unstoppable, however much the more reactionary states try to clamp down, murder dissidents, prohibit protests, and bust unions. Besides, as Marx predicted, the revolutionary project will be facilitated by the thinning of the ranks of the capitalist elite due to repeated economic collapses and the consequent destruction of wealth.

Just as the European absolutist state of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was compelled to empower—for the sake of accumulating wealth—the capitalist classes that created the conditions of its demise, so the late-capitalist state will be compelled, for the purposes of internal order, to acquiesce in the construction of non-capitalist institutions that correct some of the “market failures” of the capitalist mode of production. The capitalist state will, of necessity, be a participant in its own demise. Its highly reluctant sponsorship of new practices of production, distribution, and social life as a whole—many of them “interstitial” at first—will be undertaken on the belief that it’s the lesser of two evils, the greater evil being the complete dissolution of capitalist power resulting from the dissolution of society.

It is impossible to predict this long process in detail, or to say how and when the working class’s gradual takeover of the state (through socialist representatives and the construction of new institutions on local and eventually national levels) will be consummated. Nor can we predict what the nation-state itself will look like then, what political forms it will have, how many of its powers will have devolved to municipal and regional levels and how many will have been lost to supra-national bodies of world governance. Needless to say, it is also hopeless to speculate on the future of the market, or whether various kinds of economic planning will, after generations, mostly take the place of the market.

As for “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” this entity, like the previous “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,” won’t exist until the end of the long process of transformation. Marxists, victims of impatience as well as the statist precedents of twentieth-century “Communist” countries, have traditionally gotten the order wrong, forgetting the lesson of Marxism itself that the state is a function of existing social relations and can’t simply be taken over by workers in the context of a still-wholly-capitalist economy. Nor is it at all “dialectical” to think that a group of workers’ representatives can will a new economy into existence, overcoming the authoritarian, bureaucratic, inefficient, exploitative institutional legacies of capitalism by a few acts of statist will. Historical materialism makes clear the state isn’t so radically socially creative![3]

Instead, the contrast that will appear between the stagnant, “fettering” old forms of capitalism and the more rational and democratic forms of the emergent economy is what will guarantee, in the end, the victory of the latter.

An ecumenical activism

In a necessarily speculative and highly abstract way I’ve tried to sketch the logic of how a new economy might emerge from the wreckage of capitalism, and how activists with an eye toward the distant future might orient their thinking. It should be evident from what I’ve said that there isn’t only one way to make a revolution; rather, in a time of world-historic crisis, simply fighting to humanize society will generate anti-capitalist momentum. And there are many ways to make society more humane.

Consider the social democratic path, the path of electing socialists and pressuring government to expand “welfare state” measures. Far-leftists often deride this approach as merely reformist; in the U.S., it’s also common to dismiss the idea of electing progressive Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because supposedly the Democratic Party is hopelessly capitalist and corrupt. It can’t be moved left, and it will certainly never be a socialist party.

According to Regeneration Magazine, for instance, a voice of the Marxist Center network, “Reformism accepts as a given the necessity of class collaboration, and attempts to spin class compromise as a necessary good. One of the more popular strategic proposals of the reformist camp is the promotion of candidates for elected office running in a capitalist party; a clear instance of encouraging class collaboration.”

There are a number of possible responses to such objections. One might observe that if the left insists on absolute purity and refuses to work with anyone who can be seen as somehow “compromised,” it’s doomed to irrelevance—or, worse, it ends up fracturing the forces of opposition and thus benefits the reactionaries. It is a commonplace of historiography on fascism that the refusal of Communist parties in the early 1930s to cooperate with socialists and social democrats only empowered the Nazis and other such elements—which is why the Stalinist line changed in 1934, when the period of the Popular Front began. Then, in the U.S., began Communist efforts to build the Democrat-supported CIO (among other instances of “collaboration” with Democrats), which was highly beneficial to the working class. Leftists, more than anyone else, should be willing and able to learn from history.

Or one might state the truism that social democracy helps people, and so if you care about helping people, you shouldn’t be opposed to social democracy. It may be true that the Democratic Party is irredeemably corrupt and capitalist, but the more left-wing policymakers we have, the better. Democrats have moved to the left in the past, e.g. during the New Deal and the Great Society, and they may be able to move to the left in the future. One of the goals of socialists should be to fracture the ruling class, to provoke splits that provide opportunities for socialist organizing and policymaking.

At the same time, the strategy of electing left-wing Democrats or “reformists” should be complemented by an effort to build a working-class party, not only for the sake of having such a party but also to put pressure on the mainstream “left.” Anyway, the broader point is just that the state is an essential terrain of struggle, and all ways of getting leftists elected have to be pursued.

Personally, I’m skeptical that full-fledged social democracy, including an expansion of it compared to its traditional form, is possible any longer, least of all on an international or global scale. Thus, I don’t have much hope for a realization of the Jacobin vision, that societies can pass straight into socialism by resurrecting and continuously broadening and deepening social democracy. Surely Marxism teaches us that we can’t resuscitate previous social formations after they have passed from the scene, particularly not institutional forms that have succumbed (or are in the process of succumbing) to the atomizing, disintegrating logic of capital. The expansive welfare state was appropriate to an age of industrial unionism and limited mobility of capital. Given the monumental crises that will afflict civilization in the near future, the social stability and coherence required to sustain genuine social democracy will not exist.

But that doesn’t mean limited social-democratic victories aren’t still possible. They certainly are. And in the long run, they may facilitate the emergence of new democratic, cooperative, ecologically viable modes of production, insofar as they empower the left. Even something like a Green New Deal, or at least a partial realization of it, isn’t out of the question.

On the other hand, while mass politics is necessary, that doesn’t mean we should completely reject non-electoral “movementism.” As I’ve argued, the project of building a new society doesn’t happen only on the level of the state; it also involves other types of popular organizing and mobilizing, including in the solidarity economy. The latter will likely, indeed, be a necessity for people’s survival in the coming era of state incapacity to deal with catastrophe.

Not all types of anarchist activism are fruitful or even truly leftist, but the anarchist intuition to organize at the grassroots and create horizontal networks of popular power is sound. Even in the ultra-left contempt for reformism there is the sound intuition that reforms are not enough, and we must always press forward towards greater radicalism and revolution.

An ecological apocalypse?

An obvious objection to the conception and timeframe of revolution I’ve proposed is that it disregards the distinct possibility that civilization will have disappeared a hundred years from now if we don’t take decisive action immediately. For one thing, nuclear war remains a dire threat. But even more ominously, capitalism is turbocharged to destroy the natural bases of human life.

There’s no need to run through the litany of crimes capitalism is committing against nature. Humanity is obviously teetering on the edge of a precipice, peering down into a black hole below. Our most urgent task is to, at the very least, take a few steps back from the precipice.

The unfortunate fact, however, is that global capitalism will not be overcome within the next few decades. It isn’t “defeatist” to say this; it’s realistic. The inveterate over-optimism of many leftists, even in the face of a dismal history, is quite remarkable. Transitions between modes of production aren’t accomplished in a couple of decades: they take generations, and involve many setbacks, then further victories, then more defeats, etc. The long march of reactionaries to their current power in the U.S. took fifty years, and they existed in a sympathetic political economy and had enormous resources. It’s hard to believe socialists will be able to revolutionize the West and even the entire world in less time.

Fortunately, it is possible to combat ecological collapse even in the framework of capitalism. One way to do so, which, sadly, is deeply unpopular on the left, is for governments to subsidize the massive expansion of nuclear power, a very clean and effective source of energy despite the conventional wisdom. The rollout of renewable energy is important too, despite its many costs. Meanwhile, it is far from hopeless to try to force governments to impose burdensome regulations and taxes on polluting industries or even, ideally, to shut down the fossil fuel industry altogether. Capitalism itself is indeed, ultimately, the culprit, but reforms can have a major effect, at the very least buying us some time.

Climate change and other environmental disasters may, nevertheless, prove to be the undoing of civilization, in which case the social logic of a post-capitalist revolution that I’ve outlined here won’t have time to unfold. Nothing certain can be said at this point—except that the left has to stop squabbling and get its act together. And it has to be prepared for things to get worse before they get better. As Marx understood, that’s how systemic change tends to work: the worse things get—the more unstable the system becomes—the more people organize to demand change, and in the end the likelier it is that such change will happen.

The old apothegm “socialism or barbarism” has to be updated: it’s now socialism or apocalypse.

But the strategic lesson of the “purifications” I’ve suggested of Marxist theory remains: the path to socialism is not doctrinaire, not sectarian, not wedded to a single narrow ideological strain; it is catholic, inclusive, open-ended—both “reformist” and non-reformist, statist and non-statist, Marxist and anarchist, Democrat-cooperating and -non-cooperating. Loath as we might be to admit it, it is even important that we support lesser-evil voting, for instance electing Biden rather than Trump. Not only does it change people’s lives to have a centrist instead of a fascist in power; it also gives the left more room to operate, to influence policy, to advocate “radical reforms” that help lay the groundwork for new economic relations.

It’s time for creative and flexible thinking. The urgency of our situation demands it.

Notes

[1] Being an outgrowth of my Master’s thesis, the book over-emphasizes worker cooperatives. It does, however, answer the usual Marxist objections to cooperatives as a component of social revolution.

[2] If someone will counterpose here the example of Russia, which didn’t require “many decades” to go from capitalism and late-feudalism to a “Stalinist mode of production,” I’d reply that the latter was in fact like a kind of state capitalism, and therefore wasn’t so very different after all from the authoritarian, exploitative, surplus-extracting, capital-accumulating economy that dominated in the West.

[3] This is why I claim in the above-linked book that my “revisions” of Marxism are really purifications of it, eliminations of mistakes that finally make the properly understood Marxist conception of revolution consistent with the premises of historical materialism.

A Bayonet is a Weapon with a Worker on Each End: Rethinking Veterans Day

By Colin Jenkins

In 1885, the Knights of Labor organized a successful strike against Jay Gould's Missouri Pacific Railroad. In response to the strike, Gould famously growled, "I can hire half the working class to kill the other half."

Gould was right. In any hierarchical arrangement, where power and wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few, this tactic becomes available to those wielding this power over a vast majority. Among the masses of workers, slaves, and impoverished, there will inevitably be many willing to "police their own" in order to be in the masters' good graces. History is rife with these examples.

In ancient Greece, the "most prized" slaves were awarded authority positions over their fellow slaves, sometimes given special status as overseers. Masses of slaves captured or bought from nearby Scythia were transformed into an official police force, known as the Scythian Archers, and were "brought back to Athens to carry out the laws of the state," which basically amounted to controlling and strong-arming the slave population in the city. Naturally, their willingness to brutalize their fellow slaves was rewarded with special privileges.

On the colonial American slave plantation there were those who became actively complicit in the subjugation of their fellow slaves. In return for special privileges, these particular slaves agreed to stay close to the master, live among the master and his family, and report to the master any wrongdoings or subversive actions on the part of the masses of field slaves. William Wells Brown, a slave from Kentucky, later described the privileged status he was awarded for his "service": "I was a house servant - a situation preferable to that of a field hand, as I was better fed, better clothed, and not obliged to rise at the ringing of the bell, but about half an hour after."

In Gould's time, referred to by Mark Twain as "the Gilded Age" due to its insidious corruption and wealth inequality, social unrest among the masses of workers became commonplace. "New York City had 5,090 strikes, involving almost a million workers from 1880 to 1900; Chicago had 1,737 strikes, involving over a half a million workers in the same period." The economic elites of the time, like Gould, had two choices in addressing this unrest: (1) share a bigger piece of the pie with their workers, or (2) use force to beat workers into obedience. They chose the latter, taking Gould's words to heart, and proceeded to hire much of the working class to beat and kill the remainder into submission. Police forces and Pinkertons were amassed by the thousands to break strikes throughout the country. As consistent with history, Gould and his counterparts found plenty of workers willing to "serve" them in this role.

On a global scale, international warfare reflects this same dynamic. Throughout history, the ruling classes of each nation have utilized their working-class masses as tools of war, sending them off to fight and kill other members of the working class in remote parts of the world. The willingness of workers to follow these orders is preconditioned through various means, all of which stem from the need to maintain systems of hierarchy. The desperation that comes with being a worker in a coercive system creates immense pressure to merely survive. Today, those who find themselves choosing between minimum-wage jobs or unfathomable student loan debt are left with very little options in supporting themselves and their families. Material conditions force many into increasingly subservient positions. The mythological construction of boogeymen - savages, radicals, extremists, and terrorists - is all that is needed to create the illusion of an imminent threat. And grand tales of patriotism and "freedom" are all that is needed to persuade many to "volunteer" as tools of war.

So, we volunteer en masse. We literally hand over our bodies to powerful people whom we've never met, whose intentions and interests are not to be questioned, and whose authority over us is to be accepted as the natural order of things. We travel across the world, put our bodies in big metal machines, and take the lives of masses of working-class and impoverished people whom we've never met, whose intentions and interests are not to be questioned, and whose perceived threat to us is to be accepted as the natural order of things.

Much like the Scythian archer in ancient Athens, the house slave on a colonial Kentucky plantation, and the worker-turned-Pinkerton in Jay Gould's private army, we become willing tools of powerful interests. We choose to "serve" our masters. Many of us do this because we have no other options. Many of us do this because we are promised glory. Many of us do this because we hear the boogeyman coming. And many of us do this to simply "get in the masters' good graces." Whatever the reason, our unquestioned participation makes us complicit in maintaining the coercive systems of hierarchy that continue to dominate our world. And, despite the pats on our backs and choruses of "thank you" directed at us a few days a year, we remain collectively buried in this system, no different than our working-class counterparts throughout the world who we've been ordered to extinguish for the past two centuries.

The best way to honor Veterans is to question the system that creates us, uses us, and discards us. And the best way to honor our service is to ask ourselves who we really served and for what purpose.