Humanism Extensively
Capitalism
In capitalism, the means of production are privately owned. The capitalist form of production has created the most efficient allocation of economic resources ever, based on the competition of private entrepreneurs. Thus, it has achieved the highest productivity of the economy in the history of mankind, which has established the highest growth of living standards for people. However, the competition of private entrepreneurs has considerable disadvantages. The better producer wins and pushes the losers out of the market. Winners take all, and the losers get nothing. That is why capitalism is brutal. Its side products are fear, greed, and struggle for survival on the market. This struggle is objectively very irrational because the current production is strong enough to efficiently meet the needs of people.
Economic crises are an integral part of capitalism. Crises arise as a result of an insufficient balance between supply and demand. Capitalism doesn’t have a solution that can prevent crises because the entire production is based on the free competition of manufacturers in an unpredictable market. Also, capitalism cannot survive without continuous economic growth. It is forced to continually seek new forms of consumption in which the companies would realize profits as a condition of their survival. Through the development of technology, the cycles of production expansion and recession accelerate faster so that economic instability and the crisis of capitalism occur more often. I think that the frequency of crises will soon force people to seek a better solution than capitalism. Finally, I would like to say that capitalism massively exploits the natural resources of our planet. Limited resources are the final limitation of economic growth and an invincible obstacle to the survival of capitalism.
Capitalism is very demanding in depriving the freedom of people. In today’s society, virtually only capital is free. People have developed consumer freedom on which capitalism bases its survival. Therefore, excessive consumption is established in the western world, which is mainly its own purpose. The people buy useless, cheap goods, which then very quickly become trash, which even then brings new expenses because it has to be transported to waste. Regardless, the citizens of the developed world consider consumption as a maximal value. This is the alienation that capitalism has deliberately imposed over people by using enormous propaganda. Today, many companies dedicate more work hours in finding consumers than in the production of goods. This is an irrationality of capitalism which suggests that capitalism cannot develop anymore and therefore it prevents the development of civilization. In the developed world, consumption has reached its limit when it cannot objectively bring consumers a better life, the same way as a satiated man cannot enjoy eating more food. But due to enormous alienation, consumers aren’t aware of it.
Democratic regulation may improve capitalism but not enough
Capitalists systematically exploit workers by taking a part of the income that should belong to workers. Although there is no objective method for determining the level of exploitation, one may say that the difference between the cost of work freely formed in the labour market where every worker has a job, and the one where workers must take jobs to earn money for living, is exploitation. Unemployed workers forcefully agree to accept any job to feed their families. That is why capitalism deliberately maintains the level of unemployment at around 5%. There are various ways to regulate such an unemployment rate from importing workforce up to raising interest rates. High-interest rates increase the cost of production, reduce demand for goods and then, of course, decrease the need for work. Capitalism swears by the free market, but it consciously reduces the labour market to exploit workers more.
Exploitation can be significantly reduced or even eliminated by state regulation. If governments establish shorter working hours for workers proportionally to the unemployment rate, it may make equal the number of job posts and workers. This measure could lead to full employment. The workers could then request wages they consider appropriate for the work tasks they perform, and then they wouldn’t be exploited. This measure would establish a fair relations in the process of production, more stable income for workers, and therefore, of course, more stable production. The entire society would gain a lot from this. So why has nobody ever proposed such a simple measure? This is because increasing the incomes of workers reduces the capitalist profits and that is the reason capitalism opposes it.
Another significant improvement for capitalism is going to be based on tax policy. States plan and order their spending. State leaders plan state consumption which makes the most stable production based on the state orders. The governments are supposed to create a tax policy and use the tax money following the interests of the people, but they don’t. The control over the accumulated money collected through taxes gives the most significant power in the state, and the governments tend to spend the tax-collected money in the way they like. However, even governments do not have the most significant control over this money. The western world has invented a very developed mechanism that gives rich people control over everything, including the tax-collected money. The mechanism starts with friendly advice and lobbying of governments and representatives in parliaments and ends with corruption and blackmailing. They are very successful in it, and that means the collective spending follows the interests of a few and not of the people. This is not fair. We all pay taxes, but only some have control over it. That must be changed.
The future of democracy will no longer be based on privileged elected representatives in parliaments and leaders. The development of computer technology allows people to directly participate in making all key decisions of common interest. Individuals will directly create a policy of society, and in the first place, economic policy. People will be particularly interested in deciding on the macroeconomic policies of society. People will directly determine how much money they will want to single out for taxation from their gross incomes. The sum of all such decisions from all people will form the total tax in society. Please, do not get me wrong. This does not mean that each person will pay as much tax as he or she wishes. It says the people will participate in the formation of the state budget and then they will pay taxes according to the heights of their incomes.
Furthermore, every person can decide on how the tax money is going to be spent. Each person will determine how much of his tax money should be allocated for: the defence of the state, public security, education, health, housing, recreation, building infrastructure, etc. Theoretically, people can decide on a collective consumption within the groups as much as they want. All these groups of shared consumption will have a far greater overall impact if they are democratically allocated. Following the living experience, people will learn how much money should be collected for taxes and what the best way to spend it is. Thus, this spending will follow the needs of people in the most efficient way. Collective consumption will no longer be alienated from society. In such a way, the people will become active members of society and so; they will accept their community a lot more. Once people get the power to directly decide in society, they will be so satisfied with it that they will not allow anyone to take such power from them.
Technically, there is room for democratic improvement for capitalism, which might bring betterment to society, but capitalism is very close to its limits. Capitalism is not a good enough system. Capitalism is immoral. Capitalism is based on the privileges of authorities and the powerlessness of ordinary people. Privileges are unjust and create alienation. As long as there are injustice and alienation in society, it cannot be right. Capitalism is not a rational enough system because it requires too much unnecessary work and excessively exhausts natural resources. Capitalism cannot establish a stable production and therefore cannot form a stable society. That is the reason capitalism cannot prosper. That is the reason capitalism is a bad enough system and should be replaced. But in today’s society, no idea exists that might remove capitalism. There is no alternative to capitalism. Good leaders who try to restrain capitalism by reforms cannot achieve significant success because capitalism cannot be improved enough to form a good and sane society. After good but unsuccessful leaders, disappointed people often choose a strong right-wing leader who makes the situation worse.
Capitalism suffers in production-saturated societies but prospers well in scarce societies. That is why capitalism often searches for help in wars in which it destroys everything and practically runs its development from the beginning. Capitalism may always withdraw from the crisis; however, one should not think about how to help capitalism survive, but rather about the creation of a far better system for all people. Such a system must take power from authorities and give it to the people. I have proposed such a system, but it is so different from all existing models that people cannot readily accept it even though they would all live far better.
The New Social System: Humanism
All political and economic measures, which I have mentioned so far, can be applied in capitalism. The new system that I have proposed accepts the model of the market economy. Private companies will continue to operate in the same way as today. Significant changes will occur in public companies.
In capitalism, the opinion is built that states are lousy businessmen. In fact, so far that is relatively true. The reason can be found in more privileged working positions of workers in the state sector concerning the ones in private companies. Following the philosophy that inadequately interprets the working rights of workers, jobs in the state sector are generally more protected than in private companies. The workers can hardly lose their jobs even if their work performance is weak, contrary to the workers in privately owned companies. Privileged positions create the lower efficiency of state companies, and as a result, the state companies lose the productivity battle against private enterprises. However, by the structure of production, the state-owned companies are hardly different from the capitalist system of production, and therefore the result of work in state-owned companies should not be worse than the privately owned companies. However, it may be much better. The state-owned companies will organize new production based on more market than capitalism can afford. In the first place, a permanently open labour market will be established, and that will make the economy more productive than the private companies may achieve.
The new division of work is a necessity
Privileges of all kinds must be put to an end. A good economy requires the complete abolition of privileged work positions. One should protect the economic existence of workers rather than jobs. The reform of the new economy will firstly affect the division of labour. There is no fairer or better distribution of employment than an open market competition of workers for every position. The worker who envisages and offers the highest productivity for any public work post at any time will get the job. Productivity could be measured by earned money, by quality and quantity of produced goods, or by the productivity evaluation of workers by other workers or clients. A worker who offers more profits, manufactured goods, better, cleaner, or cheaper production will get the job. That is an idea. How to make such changes to bring the most possible advantages and the least possible disadvantages to society is just a technical problem. I have defined a pretty good solution in my book Humanism, but that will probably have to be more developed by practice.
This kind of labour division naturally requires equality of the number of work posts with the number of workers. Otherwise, it could lead to unnecessary fights for jobs. The new system will make full employment a reality. If the creation of new work positions is not needed, full employment will be achieved by reducing work hours in all companies proportionately to the unemployment rate.
Also, under the new system, each public job will be equally desirable. This will be achieved by giving the job with defined productivity to the worker who demands the lowest price for current labour and, consequently, a lower income. The price of current work will be one of the factors that determine the height of the salaries. Therefore, better jobs will realize relatively lower incomes and worse jobs will be compensated through relatively higher incomes. This way, the labour market will set objective heights of salaries and will balance the interest in all job posts. Since the workers themselves will be setting the price of their current labour, by the same token, they will be the most satisfied with their earnings.
The system would have no meaning if the workers, on their way to succeed greater competitive powers, offer productivities that they would not be able to realize. Today’s politicians do precisely that for example. The new economy will form a very effective system of accountability for the realization of productivities workers offer so that they would not dare offer productivities they cannot accomplish. I will talk more about that later in this essay.
No economy can be more productive than the one where the best available worker gets each job. Such an economy will easily become significantly more productive than the capitalist one so that capitalism will be forced to recede. Also, the workers will no longer be interested in working for private enterprises where they do not have enough freedom to choose jobs or decide on their incomes, nor do they have the opportunity to cut into the profits. In the new system workers will participate in the distribution of profits, which as a rule is not the case in private companies. Soon after this system is implemented, private enterprises will be forced to withdraw and join the new system.
Defining the value of man’s productive power is a necessity
To create a good society, one should define and accept all values that are or should be, relevant to the community. Then, one will need to determine which of these values each person possesses. The sum of all values that a person creates throughout his life, presented by a numerical value, may be called human productive power.
The value of human productive power will incorporate, firstly, capitalist values, such as real estate, money, shares, and all assets that capitalism recognizes as valuable. In fact, this measure will enable simple free association of private enterprises. Owners of private companies will receive stocks for their ownership of the integrated company. They will not be forced to merge their companies, but they will do it under heavy pressure from higher productivities of public companies. Besides it, they will learn that a greater merged company would be more stable to conjuncture changes. The joined owners of companies would realize smaller profits in good businesses, but also smaller losses in bad businesses because large companies will cover the disturbances of earnings on the market. The production of such companies will be very stable because it will be increasingly based on customer orders. If owners of private companies today could have an option to join such a company they would most likely do it because that would save more of their capital value in the frequently arising crises of capitalism.
With human productive power, the establishment of an effective system of responsibilities of workers will be possible. In publicly owned companies, workers will share profits proportionally to the numerically determined responsibility they propose for their work. This is an idea for which I just hint on here. It cannot be understood well enough without reading and analyzing the book Humanism. The same goes for most of the new ideas I am presenting here. The higher responsibility will naturally realize a larger share in profit, in the case that the company’s profit increases. Such profit will now be expressed in a value that reflects the workers’ human productive power. And vice versa, in case of production losses, workers who propose higher responsibility for their work will realize more substantial losses in value representing their productive power.
A good future of humankind cannot be based on the value of capital only. Man needs to become the most considerable value, and this orientation can be stimulated by the value that presents the human productive power. Besides the capital-based value that represents an element of human productive power, we need to recognize and include all other values that society accepts or should accept. Such values are the people themselves, their education, work experience, contributions that they have given, and awards that they have received for creating values to society, etc. The pooling of different forms of value will require a comprehensive study and – indeed – difficult negotiations in society. However, after some time, new, democratically regulated standards of all values that can be created in the community could be established. Such regulation will automatically be applied whenever necessary. This will be explained in more detail in the following paragraphs.
If the society would like to stimulate education, it might raise awards for higher education in the value that represents human productive power. If, for example, a region has too low a birth rate, people may decide to award parents with more children with this kind of value. And vice versa, if a region has too high a birth rate, people may choose to punish parents who have more children by a particular value representing human productive power.
The value of personal productive power will be especially affected by disobedience to the law. If a person acts against the law, they will lose a legally defined value from their productive power. Each crime may be easily judged by existing laws and recalculated into a value representing human productive power. If a person commits a severe crime, he might lose all the value from his productive power and even get a negative value. The proposed system can make the assignment of such a negative productive value much more painful than a prison can be so that prisons will not be needed anymore. Each person will avoid committing any crime carefully. If a person still gets such a negative productive power, he will try hard to fix it, and that will only be possible through hard productive work, and outstanding behaviour over a long period.
Taking into account that most people would probably not like to have their productive power compared to that of other people, such a value may be kept secret, known only to the owner of the value himself. But those who enter into negative productive power will have to take recognizable clothes, and this will force them to improve their behaviour.
Society may regulate whatever it needs through evaluation of human productive power. However, all values cannot be regulated, because people have varying individual needs. Therefore, the value representing personal productive power should also depend on unregulated values, based on people’s opinions about the free actions of others. This is an entirely new measure and, in my opinion, the most critical step of the future. I call it democratic anarchy.
Democratic anarchy is a necessity
Democratic anarchy is a new form of social relations, wherein every person exercises equal legislative, judicial and executive power in society. It is possible to accomplish it in a manner that gives each person the right to evaluate the activity of any other person. Let each person have the right to allocate a total of say three positive and three negative evaluations per month. Each positive assessment should automatically bring a small increase in the total value of productive power to the assessed person. On the other hand, any negative evaluation will result in a punishment of the same form. Let us say that awards and penalties of such assessments would have an equivalent value of one dollar. If the society were afraid of such power of individuals, the power of evaluation could be reduced. Even the assessment with the power equivalent to just one cent would be enough for the improvement of society.
Democratic anarchy will direct each member of society to create the highest possible advantages for the community and to diminish or abolish the creation of all forms of disadvantages. Such a measure will definitely decrease uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled individual power originating in privileged social status. I have to stress that the privileged status of individuals causes the greatest inconveniences and problems to society. Given that all individuals will have the equal right of evaluation, and that they will give their assessments independently of any written rules, such a democracy will assume the form of anarchy. In this straightforward way, the people will for the first time in the history of humankind realize a great direct power in society, which will result in highly harmonious and constructive social relations.
People will judge other people freely. That means an immoral person may evaluate other people dishonestly, but it will not matter much because an individual power of one dollar cannot produce harm to anybody. Individuals will not have much influence in society, but their evaluations joined together will be very powerful. A person who receives a large number of negative assessments would try hard to avoid doing anything inconvenient to other people.
Besides, the person who receives bad evaluations would never know who has evaluated him negatively so that he would try to improve his behaviour towards everyone. As a result, bullies will not harass children at school anymore, bosses will not abuse their employees at work, neighbours will not produce noise at night, salespeople will not cheat their customers, politicians will not lie to people, etc. They will all try to please other people in the best possible way. This is what will take privileged powers from all the people; this is what will eliminate social evil and form a good society.
The system of democratic anarchy will especially affect authorities. The higher the position an authority has in society, the greater the responsibility they would bare to society. For example, The President of the US might get 100,000,000 bad evaluations from the American people for bad policies, lies, and for criminal aggression on countries. That would cost him 100,000,000 dollars in only one month. On the other hand, I doubt that his supporters would certainly evaluate him positively because they might easily have higher positive evaluation priorities and would spend their positive evaluations elsewhere. Non-privileged presidents would not dare perform bad policies anymore. And if it happens somehow, they would run away from their positions very fast. Only the most skilful and brave individuals would dare lead countries. They will not be authorities anymore, but our servants.
Democratic anarchy is actually the most potent tool of justice ever. How come? The answer lies in time. There is a saying: “Silent water moves hills.” The permanent power of evaluation even with such a small force like one dollar will make people respect each other strongly. Human beings will become values. Everyone will try hard to please society in the best possible way. That will create a miracle no other tool of justice has ever been able to make. That will create a good and sane society. In the future, the system of evaluation will probably abolish state laws, police, military force, and very states. Nobody will need them anymore. A perfect society will be formed, and everyone will recognize that. Human society will become prosperous beyond the wildest dreams today.
It is understandably desirable that the value of human productive power becomes very important to society and therefore its acceptance should be additionally stimulated. That will be accomplished, firstly, by giving each person voting power in the community, proportionate to the value of his productive power. I am talking about a significant change in the democratic system. Today, people have only the right to choose their parliamentary representatives. They have neither opportunity nor right to participate in making other decisions that regard their interests in society. We need a compromise equally acceptable to all. Let each person have a right to participate in making any democratic decision in society, but let him earn this right by his productive contribution to the development of value in society. This system proposes unequal voting power, accepted by a consensus of political parties. In reality, it will contribute to the development of democracy because the people will, for the first time, get a chance to directly participate in decision-making for all questions regarding their interests.
Secondly, each person should get an income for work in publicly owned companies proportionate to the total value of his productive power. The value of human productive power will thus become a humanistic form of shares. This measure will additionally encourage residents of specific regions to voluntarily merge their private companies into one big “humanistic” company.
Thirdly, the value of personal productive power must be inherited through generations to be accepted. Through the implementation of such measures, every member of society will recognize the value of human productive power as a great value so that this will contribute significantly to the development of society.
The economic security of people is a necessity
Capitalists are not at all interested in how consumers will make money for the purchase of goods they produce, even though there is no survival of capitalist enterprises without it. Liberal capitalism does not want to take care of the losers on the market, and this is another reason why capitalism must go down in history. The new system will ensure the economic independence of each individual as a precondition for achieving freedom and survival of society as a whole. Only one individual who is not economically cared for enough may endanger the whole community. Also, the system of work competition needs a higher degree of economic security and stability than we have it today so that each resident will receive some kind of income. The height of individual income will primarily depend on the value that presents the productive power of man, then on the price of the current work taking into the account that every activity is a sort of work, as well as on the accomplishment of proposed productivity.
The people will also directly establish the level of minimal earning directly. If workers’ interest in performing their work is insufficient, the society may directly reduce the minimum income, which would stimulate workers to work more. If productivity is higher than necessary, society will then increase the minimum salary and thus lessen the income-based stimulation for work.
Society as a whole will guarantee the economic security and stability of each individual. This will remove the fear that rules throughout the world today. Capitalism finds the primary motivation for work from concern for the economic survival of workers, and that is the reason it cannot guarantee financial security to people. The new system will build motivation for work from the free choice of choosing work and in the satisfaction that comes from it.
To each according to their needs is the future of humankind
By that time, people will learn that collective consumption is significantly more rational and stable than the individual consumption, so that they will directly decide to allocate more money for taxes from their gross incomes. The more people allocate money for tax purposes, the more goods and services will be allocated for the needs of the collective consumption of society. This is the planed consumption that the most developed democracies in today’s world spend mostly on national defence purposes. Given that the new system offers stable and good relations among nations, people will no longer allocate money for the needs of armies and armies will cease to exist. In the new system, war will no longer be possible. People will direct funds for the requirements of the common social standard. I am talking about vast amounts of money that can significantly improve the standard of society. The new system will enable the introduction of free individual consumption. Some states today have free education, free health insurance; some states distribute some goods and services freely. Why would a new system not provide more?
People will change very much in the new system. I think that one far away day; in purpose to establish a more stable and rational economy, all people will freely allocate all the money from their gross incomes for tax purposes. Then, all of the goods and services will become freely available to all people. The products will lose their alienated market value, but the value of the use of goods will still remain. It will be worth the same as air is worth today. I am not talking about utopia or about the oppression of people, but about the advanced technical system that will follow the needs of the people. If only one man, however, would like to keep his own income, theoretically the completely free goods and services would not be applied.
The conclusion
The new economy will naturally step in; it will remove the shortcomings of capitalism and ensure further development of civilization. It will mainly base its production on customer orders so that it will be stable. It will level down the market competition from the level of companies to the level of work posts. There is no more productive economy than the one in which each position gets the best possible worker, and that is the reason why capitalism will go down in history. The new economy will eliminate the disadvantages of capitalism and will bring much more significant advantages to society. After capitalism, humanism will arrive, a system that will follow the needs of people a lot better.
The political and economic model described here will improve the efficiency and stability of production, introduce more justice into the process of production and distribution, and provide significantly higher advantages to all members of society. The open market of work posts will eliminate the workers’ privileges. This will further eliminate corruption, the main source of the immorality of today’s society. The market for labour will give people the freedom to choose jobs that they like more. Work will become an immediate value to itself, and people will enjoy working. People will be free. Freedom is a state when people do not have to ask permission for anything from anybody except their own conscience. Of course, freedom is dependent on the possession of a conscience. Conscience will be built on a large degree by defined responsibilities of people. Accountability will be so high that people will base their mutual relations in cooperation at all levels of human relationships, and in that manner, they will develop a productive development of society.
In general, this system will rid the people of authoritative pressure and give them the freedom to follow their own interests, while at the same time forcing people to mutual respect. Such experience will demystify alienated values imposed by authorities throughout history and will teach people to live following their proper nature, which will, in turn, free them from all types of alienation characteristics of present-day society. People will then realize where real values are. Furthermore, the system will teach people to set their needs following the possibilities of satisfying them. This is the chief prerequisite for overcoming destructiveness in society because people who permanently satisfy their needs are not destructive. The proposed system promises a natural, harmonious and highly prosperous development of society.
Once this system is adopted in a smaller community, the people will make this community a beautiful place to live. When the rest of the world sees that, it will not have any other choice but to follow suit. The new system will establish a good and sane society all over the world. It will build a bright future for humanity. Conclusively, I would like to point out that the system I have proposed not only represents the best solution for the future of humanity but also represents the only good solution. It will bring prosperity to society regardless of the level of economic development. The biggest problem is the time needed for people to understand the system, accept and implement it.
November 1, 2009
