A Socialist Manifesto
Eric v.d. Luft
Published by Gegensatz Press at Smashwords
ISBN
978-1-933237-54-1
Copyright © 2007 by Eric v.d. Luft
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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2007
"For Toby"
Contents
Prologue
Principles
1. Freedom
2. Nonviolence
3. Democracy
4. Expansion of Suffrage
5. Elimination or Flattening of Hierarchies
6. Global Confederation of Sovereign Nations
7. Universal Access to Due Process
8. Abolition of Torture, Unfair or Cruel Imprisonment, and the Death Penalty
9. Education
10. Enhancement of Civilization
11. Respect for History
12. Regulation of Capitalism
13. Redistribution of Wealth
14. Elimination of Poverty
15. Public Ownership, Management, and Funding of Essential Services
16. Recognition of All People's Natural Human Rights
17. Outlawing Conscription
18. Dismantling of Religious Hegemony and Elimination of Theocracy
19. Stewardship of the Environment
20. Universal Health Care
21. Decriminalization of Marijuana
22. Ownership of One's Own Body
23. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative
Prologue
Manifestos throughout history have shown themselves to be relatively short-lived. They tend to address specific situations of their respective times; so, when these situations change, either for better or for worse, their corresponding manifestos become obsolete. Each manifesto may have philosophical or theoretical content that transcends its age and makes it still worth reading even after its practical or immediate recommendations have faded into present irrelevance. Examples of leftist manifestos that fit this description are Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776), The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America ("The Declaration of Independence") by Thomas Jefferson et al. (1776), The Manifesto of the Communist Party ("The Communist Manifesto") by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), The Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society by Tom Hayden et al. (1962), The Radical Women Manifesto (1967, revised 2001), and the Youth International Party Manifesto! ("The Yippie Manifesto") presumably by Abbie Hoffman (1970).
Accordingly, given the situations at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the time is right for a new leftist manifesto to build on the legacy of these previous works.
Its title is "A" Socialist Manifesto rather than "The" Socialist Manifesto because socialism is not a fixed ideology, but an ongoing conversation open to all people. Maybe someday another socialist manifesto will be written to supersede it, or perhaps this one will be revised. Either development should be warmly welcomed.
This manifesto pertains to the United States of America, because that is what the author knows best. Readers from other nations can make the appropriate adjustments, according to each of their own home political situations.
True socialism - unlike true communism and true anarchism - is not utopian. That is, the aim of socialism is not the best possible result under ideal conditions, but the best result possible under actual conditions. Accordingly, we take a Fabian, "brass tacks" approach to the betterment of all society, with the practical recognition that in ordinary reality not everything can be given or achieved all at once. Our quest for the best result possible rather than the best possible result demands a gradual revolution, not a sudden or shocking upheaval. The gradualness of the socialist revolution keeps people safe, secure, and tolerably comfortable, winning converts to our side as it wins small battles here and there; but the massive revolutionary upheaval, on the other hand, would threaten, endanger, and alienate them, disrupt their everyday lives, and give them false promises and unrealistic expectations, thus creating violent reaction and counterrevolution, as it did in the cases of the French and Russian Revolutions. It is better to have occasional tiny victories than to reap frustration by trying to achieve all at once more than is humanly reasonable. Moreover, because we cannot see into the future, we cannot yet name exactly everything that we want, so the prudent course is to implement one improvement at a time, stand back, find out how well it works, make any necessary adjustments, then add the next improvement. Even the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World), who had far-reaching and extremely radical goals for a general proletarian revolution, adopted a practical, realistic, gradualistic strategy and strived incrementally in the early twentieth century to achieve basic rights for workers, such as the eight-hour day.
This manifesto repudiates both communism and anarchism, the former because is incompatible with democracy and freedom, the latter because it is incompatible with civilization and progress.
Communism is the enforced assurance that all will be shared equally. Communism does not work politically because its enforcement entails that its enforcers are above the general equality, economically because no logistical system could support such sharing, or spiritually because the people are not free.
Anarchism is the deliberate rejection of all political authority except the natural sovereignty of each particular person. Any decisions that do not involve the group are made by the individual alone and any that do involve the group are made collectively, ideally by consensus. Anarchism works very well in small groups. It is in fact the best way to run very small groups, unless quick or emergency decisions are routinely expected. Domestic cohabitant adults, whether traditional husband-wife, gay partners, unmarried heterosexuals, threesomes, or moresomes, must each be absolutely equal as decision-makers in each household. This is anarchy at its best. Very young children in the household must initially, but decreasingly as they get older, be ruled by dictation; yet after they grow to an age where they can understand and contribute meaningfully to discussions, anarchism becomes the best way to run the whole family. This age of sufficient maturity will be different for each child. The parents, guardians, or other adults in each family must monitor and respect each child's ever-changing level of emotional and intellectual development and allow him/her into the family decision-making process as early as possible. Such substantial micropolitical involvement at such early ages shows children that adults trust them, enhances their sense of self-worth, and contributes mightily to their becoming solid, ethical citizens.
Beyond the nuclear family, anarchy is workable only in very small groups, and not for long. Even if it is wonderful at the outset, anarchy soon becomes nihilistic and terrifying, as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's analysis of the French Revolution in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) teaches. People living in anarchy can take care of each other, but they cannot create, sustain, or manage the intricate, geographically extensive network of economic and communication systems that facilitate and encourage a nuanced worldwide exchange of ideas and cultural products. In other words, without outside support from non-anarchists, anarchy can give its participants only the gray lives of peasants, albeit free peasants; but it cannot foster the higher development of art, literature, science, music, or culture. Ultimately anarchy is parasitic on civilization without contributing anything worthwhile to it.
Only free market socioeconomics, which is not necessarily capitalism, is capable of developing the variety of complex ideas, theories, systems, and products that ensure the progress of civilization. The free market encourages innovation, but offers no protection for the poor, the oppressed, the exploited, or the unlucky.
Socialism steers an Aristotelian middle course among these three, preserving to the greatest possible extent the freedom of anarchy, the fairness of utopian communism, and the ingenuity and vigor of the free market. As such, it eclectically takes for its own whatever it sees as the best aspects of both the left and the right.
In politics, the right is the group of parties and ideologies that espouse order, rules, dogma, conformity, authority, tradition, religion, class systems, militarism, and hierarchies; while the left is the group of parties and ideologies that espouse flexibility, egalitarianism, social innovation, tolerance, democracy, general welfare, basic human rights, demilitarization, and secular humanistic values. Both claim to espouse the ideal of freedom, but for the right this means freedom for the ruling class and the opportunity for others to gain that freedom by joining the ruling class; while for the left it means actual freedom for everyone, including but not limited to the "Four Freedoms" listed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his speech to Congress on January 6, 1941: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Both also claim to espouse cultural development, but for the right this means the culture of the rich, so that only those who can afford to patronize culture have access to it; while for the left it means art, music, literature, poetry, and other cultural products for everyone at affordable prices in accessible places.
The left and right sides of the political continuum are in constant oscillation. This is healthy. It keeps the political process alive and ensures that the people are best served. Each side keeps the other honest and prevents it from becoming complacent or arrogant. The left and the right need each other.
The duty of the left is to protect the people from the right. The duty of the right is to prevent the left from descending into chaos. Both are vital to maintaining a stable civilization with justice for all. But neither alone suffices to ensure justice. The life of the body politic is in the oscillation.
Nevertheless, despite the need for this oscillation, we can assert that the right runs counter to the human spirit. It is indeed necessary, but its necessity is only to keep the left from running amok. It serves no other beneficial purpose.
The ultimate criterion of the value of any given political ideology is whether or not it works. We must therefore ask respectively whether each ideology would be universalizable if it were implemented. Would it work? What if everyone in the world were an anarchist? A communist? A fascist or a nationalist? A socialist?
We have already seen the chaos that would ensue if everyone were an anarchist.
If everyone were a communist, then life, culture, and economics would all stagnate, because communism overregulates industry, agriculture, commerce, science, art, and even leisure in the name of equality. The internal systems of each communist society would work, but slowly and undependably, and the people would be grumpy.
The difference between communism and socialism is that the former is doctrinaire, inflexible, and undemocratic. By these critieria, communism is further toward the right than socialism, insofar as communism needs to use rightist methods, such as military coercion, to establish and sustain itself. A communist leader could be autocratic; a socialist leader, never so. Socialism needs nothing more than free elections in a free society to achieve its ends. Communism needs force.
Fascism or nationalism is the militant belief that one's own national or ethnic group is naturally superior to all others. If everyone were a fascist or a nationalist, then all the internal systems of each nation would work, probably very well; but fascists and nationalists by their very existence as citizens of one particular nation commit themselves to separation from all other nations and thus eventually to distrust, prejudice, paranoia, belligerence, and war.
In the usual course of events only four kinds of people start wars: religious fanatics, power-hungry autocrats, greedy tycoons or merchants, and nationalists or fascists. We cannot imagine true socialists starting a war. Nor can we imagine them as religious fanatics, power-hungry autocrats, greedy tycoons/merchants, or nationalists/fascists. They might defend themselves in a war if attacked, but they would never start one. They tend to be secular humanists, but if religious, then they are gently and tolerantly so.
Socialism is the political and economic belief that the best society promotes and, to the greatest extent possible, embodies the highest standards of individual autonomy, universal human freedom, legal fairness, socioeconomic and sociopolitical justice, general respect for persons regardless of their differences from any perceived "norm," the suffrage of all competent citizens, high intellectual and artistic culture, impartial scientific inquiry, widely beneficial technological progress, egalitarianism, internationalism, peaceful civilization, and good health; and that such a society can be created only by cooperative effort on the part of all people. Socialism allows free market competition, private ownership of the means of producing and delivering goods and services, and other socioeconomic institutions that communism would not allow, but it watches them closely and regulates them when necessary.
The whole world would work just fine if everyone were a socialist.
The goal of socialism is general human happiness - not the hedonistic happiness of mere pleasure or shallow amusement - nor the Epicurean or Benthamite happiness of "the greatest good for the greatest number" - nor the guaranteed but artificial and meaningless euphoria of drugs, trances, obsessions, and other substitutes for reality - but the deeper, more substantial happiness that Aristotle called eudaimonia, literally "the state of being guided by a good spirit," or more idiomatically, "well being" or "flourishing." Eudaimonia depends upon cultivating intellectual, ethical, and cultural virtues to the greatest extent possible for each individual as well as for society at large.
Specifically, the following twenty-three principles should each be considered as valid components in the gradual creation of a socialist state:
1. Freedom
Our first and foremost goal is to achieve genuine freedom for all people. This goal is tantamount to building civilization, insofar as civilization can be regarded as the sociopolitical system that gives as many people as possible the opportunity to experience or to have access to the conditions under which they could achieve fulfillment to the greatest extent possible. But civilization is not necessarily the system that would embody Jeremy Bentham's goal of "greatest happiness for the greatest number." Rather, to build civilization means to create the conditions of general economic and political security; artistic, musical, and literary culture; intellectual recreation; human kindness; and personal freedom under which happiness is more likely to be possible. Whether or not any particular person actually is happy is up to that person alone. No sociopolitical system, not even socialism, and no political philosophy, not even utilitarianism, can guarantee individual psychological or spiritual results.
The ruling class and the working class have different conceptions of freedom. For the rulers and owners, freedom is the luxury that derives from being on top of the socioeconomic, sociopolitical, organizational, corporate, religious, or other hierarchy that sucks sustenance from those who exist at lower levels of that hierarchy. In other words, their freedom is the capability to ride roughshod over those whom they regard as their inferiors, and the privilege not to be ridden over roughshod by those whom they regard as their superiors. Their freedom is greater when this capability is proportionately less restricted and when this privilege is proportionately more secure. Freedom for the ruling class typically involves the curtailment of freedom for other classes.
Conversely, freedom for the working class is consistent with freedom for all humans. It is essentially freedom from want and from the oppressive conditions that contribute to creating that want. Freedom is not easily possible for anyone living in poverty. Economic security, dependable subsistence, and disposable income liberate people.
Rich rightists are rich because they have taken or inherited more than their due from their respective enterprises and they are rightists because rightist theory and practice provides them the means to stay in control of society and to maintain their peculiar brand of "freedom." Controlling society ensures that wealth will continue to flow to them. In order to control society - because they are the minority of all people - they must cajole the greater part of the people into supporting them. In order to stay in power they must convince the common people that what is in the best interest of the rich is in everyone else's best interest too. Gullible common people believe these lies. Such gullibility and the occasional use of military or police power to engineer coups d'état or to suppress dissent are the only two ways that the rich right can either gain or keep power.
Because what is in the best interest of the rich right is not generally in the best interest of workers, intellectuals, artists, writers, musicians, the poor, or the middle class, the common people should not have to be cajoled into supporting leftist causes. Leftist theory, by both inclination and design, is in the best interest of the common people. Putting it into practice would free people and help them. But because the cajoling propaganda of the rich right, particularly that which is couched in fear, has historically proved to be so successful in winning popular support for wars, denials of essential services, and other rightist favorites, the left must often seem to be on the defensive against moneyed interests instead of projecting its natural, positive message of liberation, broadly shared wealth, and general well being. In order to stop the controlling few from herding the controllable many like sheep, the left must struggle to uncajole or countercajole the common people and bring them back to the ideology that could really help rather than fool them.
The rich right tries to convince the common people that they lose their freedom under leftist government because then they are ruled by an intellectual elite. But the rich right is a commercial elite. Its own degree of freedom is directly proportionate to its wealth. It does an efficient job of convincing the common people that their voluntary enslavement to commercial interests is really freedom. By awakening, through advertising and other forms of persuasion, the greed of the common people; and by numbing, through saturating culture with mass-produced schlock, their more subtle aesthetic and intellectual sensibilities, the rich right claims kinship with the common people. The rich right works very hard to convince everyone that everyone wants money and the things that only money can buy - and that true earthly happiness can be based only on such accumulation.
The left, on the other hand, values brains above money and things. It aspires, through education and non-commercial, non-commodifiable culture, to improve the brain power of all people. The rich right fears allowing people to think too much. That is why it, a genuine, exclusionist elite, denies being an elite and instead accuses the left, which is not an elite, of consisting of intellectual elitists who are out of touch with the common people. Intellectual, yes; but not elitists. Genuine elites welcome those who would gladly a join private club with an annual membership fee so high that it would make a comfortable annual income for an average working-class family. Leftists do not join such clubs.
The more people think, the less they buy, except perhaps books and other "brain gear." The more the left thinks, the more freedom the common people gain, because leftist thought heightens their ability each to make their own decisions and to determine their own lives without direction from advertisers and commercial interests. At the same time, the more the left thinks, the less freedom the rich right has, because its source of ready money dries up.
2. Nonviolence
We are absolutely committed to nonviolence in all dealings with all people. This does not mean that we are pacifists. We will defend ourselves if attacked, and we will maintain a standing armed force to deter any attack. But we would never use our armed force to meddle in the internal affairs of any other sovereign nation. That would be an immoral act such as America committed by using the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 to escalate hostilities in Vietnam and by invading Iraq in 2003.
If any chain of reasoning, train of thought, or line of argument leads to advocating, recommending, or promoting violent action, then that reasoning, thought, or argument is ipso facto faulty, and must therefore be reconsidered and revised before any action is taken. Three examples: First, if a revolutionary party decides that bombing should be part of its strategy, then that strategy is, to that extent, ipso facto wrong, because it might kill innocent people. Second, if a religious organization decides that heretics or blasphemers should be burned or stoned to death, then that religion is, to that extent, misguided, because heresy and blasphemy are only exercises of free speech, and thus are not punishable at all, but laudable and constructive. The religion would do well to take the criticism of so-called heretics and blasphemers seriously. Third, if a country decides that the best way to influence the internal affairs of another country is neither diplomacy nor economic pressure, but to invade the other country, then the policy of the first country is, to that extent, evil, because starting a war is the lowest, basest, most uncivilized action that any country can ever take. Moreover, the first should mind its own business and allow the other country its full right of internal self-determination.
The underlying culture of violence must be changed to one of universal respect and, if not cooperation, then at least healthy, honest, fair competition. This re-education process toward everyday nonviolent human interaction must begin as early in each child's life as possible. School bullying, for example, must be eradicated. In general, school administrators, teachers, parents, and other adults give young bullies only mild reprimands. This will not suffice. These adults see bullying and being bullied as natural phases of growing up. This view is worse than wrong; it is pernicious. It undermines the very basis of society itself.
Typical school bullies are not only physically larger, but also less intellectually gifted than their victims. Under the present culture, with mild reprimands for the bullies and hardly any sympathy or justice for the victims, the big stupid tormenters emerge triumphant and, having gotten away with extortion, assault, battery, robbery, or other crimes that would land them in jail if they were adults, feel encouraged to continue bullying. Thus the bullies' instinctive and fundamental belief that "might makes right" is reinforced. They learn that physical strength is greater than intellectual power. This attitude makes such bullies ripe for induction into the national war machine when they turn eighteen.
Meanwhile their smart little victims become sullen and bitter. They will likely be part of the ruling class when they grow up, and will nurse a lifelong hatred of their bullies, who will likely be part of the working class. This hatred easily translates into a hatred of the working class in general. They get their eventual revenge for their childhood sufferings by perpetuating upper class oppression of the lower classes - and they smirk with sadistic glee while they are doing it. The country and the world do not need a contingent of resentful geniuses who feel, as adults, that adult society did not give them justice when they were children.
Some people enjoy inflicting violence on others. For some it is even their recreation. They look for any excuse to inflict it. They instinctively and mechanically attack anyone different from them, just for fun. They choose their targets based on race, gender, sexual orientation, stature, or any other superficial and readily noticeable characteristic that is different from their own analogous characteristic. They may attack, harass, or berate anyone whom they do not understand. They are more likely to commit such acts of random, pointless, and gratuitous cruelty when they travel in groups, because, then, according to the standard findings of mob psychology, the factor of individual conscience is less likely to deter violence.