The End of Capitalism
Today is accepted the capitalist economy in which the means of production are privately owned. The capitalist form of production, based on the competition of private entrepreneurs has created the most efficient allocation of economic resources ever. Thus, capitalism has achieved the highest productivity of the economy in the history of humankind, 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 unnecessary because the current production is strong enough to meet the needs of people efficiently.
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 fair labour market where workers may choose their jobs and the one where they must take jobs because they have to earn money for a living is exploitation. Unemployed workers must accept any job to feed their families. That is why capitalism deliberately maintains the level of unemployment at around 5 percent. 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 demand for work. Capitalism swears by the free market, but it consciously reduces the labour market to exploit workers more.
Exploitation can be eliminated by removing unemployment through a state regulation. If governments establish shorter working hours for workers proportionally to the unemployment rate, it will make the number of job posts and workers equal. 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 better relations in the process of production, a more stable income of 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. Capitalism is immoral, and that is the reason we live in immoral times. Such immorality must end if humanity wishes to have a good future.
Capitalism is very demanding in depriving the freedom of people. In today’s society, virtually only capital is free. People have developed only consumer freedom on which capitalism bases its survival. Therefore, excessive consumption is established in the modern world, which is mainly its own purpose. I don’t understand people who buy carts full of useless, cheap goods, mostly produced in China, 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. In the developed world, consumption has reached its limit when it cannot objectively bring consumers a better life, the same way as a full-fed man cannot enjoy eating more food. However, due to significant alienation, the consumers aren’t aware of it.
Economic Crises
Economic crises are an integral part of capitalism crisis arises as a result of an insufficient balance between supply and demand. Capitalism doesn’t have a solution that can prevent crisis because the entire production is based on the free competition of manufacturers in an unpredictable market. The cycles of production expansion and recession accelerate faster so that economic instability and a 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 exploits the natural resources of our planet Earth on mass. The limited resources of the planet Earth are the final limitation for economic growth as well as an insuperable obstacle for the survival of capitalism.
Capitalism cannot escape economic crises, but disasters can be reduced by sound economic policy. Such a policy is not popular in the capitalist world because it diminishes the freedom of capitalist entrepreneurs. The big financial crisis occurred in 2008 in the U.S. To ensure economic growth, its survival and maximize profit the U.S. banks started offering loans to virtually all people who have requested it. The banks have decided that providing credits with insurance companies is a sufficient guarantee for their investments. People found the possibilities for quick profits and massively demanded relatively cheap bank loans with which they were buying, building and selling houses. In the beginning, the entire U.S. economy benefited greatly.
The most prominent economic experts of the American capitalism have enjoyed the proper business of the economy, and they didn’t want to pay attention to the fact that a significant expansion of production naturally brings culmination, saturation, and stagnation of production and often ends in a recession. It just happened in a relatively short period. Overproduction of apartments and houses from the high-profit business encountered difficulties in finding buyers. The recession of production is equal to a catastrophe for the debt based economy. When manufacturers cannot earn enough money to pay the bank loans, they go bankrupt.
Individual cases are not a problem because banks can recover their claims by selling the debtors’ mortgages. In the massive manufacturing recession that began in the United States, a vast number of debtors appeared who could not pay their money loans and were forced to declare bankruptcy. Banks were no longer able to recover money loans from debtors because they couldn’t sell the ownership of the mortgages even by reduced prices. The massive recession has led banks to the threshold of bankruptcy. To make things worse, a liberal economy has expanded throughout the entire world almost, so the whole world has become mutually dependent. This is how the world economic crisis started.
The American economy
Banks lead the economy of capitalism. The bankruptcy of banks would trigger the liquidation of the economy. That is the reason states prevent the bankruptcy of banks through bailouts. It should be said that rescuing banks deviates from the basic principles of liberal capitalism because a company that doesn’t preserve liquidity in capitalism disappears. One can even say that the states rescue capitalism by using socialist measures.
USA rescues private banks in the U.S. by borrowing money from the U.S. Federal Reserves. The U.S. Federal Reserves are the Central American Bank, which is also privately owned. This means that the U.S. rescues private banks by getting into debt with the largest private bank in the world. The U.S. Federal Reserve is the owner of the U.S. national debt. The total U.S. national debt is a sum that presents all the domestic annual costs reduced by the income taxes citizens of the U.S. pay yearly. So, re-borrowing with the Federal Reserve Bank renews this debt. The U.S. Federal Reserves don’t have enough money to loan to the U.S., so the bank additionally emits money from “thin air” for the needs of the U.S. The U.S. federal debt returns American citizens from the income taxes. Does it mean that the U.S. bails out private banks by using the money that American citizens return to the central bank? It is quite possible.
The bailout cost somewhere around one trillion dollars. The banks were supposed to return the money but were they did so? The banking system is very complex and as such creates grey zones where corruption rules. The wealthy people have such a power in the US that they are capable of legalizing what would usually be considered a crime. After the bail out the national debt rapidly increased for about one trillion dollars almost immediately and it never rapidly decreased. Instead, it continued to grow which tells that the debt was not being paid. The Federal Reserve Bank helped private banks but not the people, and I firmly believe the American people will pay a good part of it through taxes. This is a big injustice.
The owners of the U.S. Federal Reserve possess immense wealth. They regularly collect interest from the U.S. national debt, and of course, they do not have the interest the American national debt ever returns. In fact, their interest is for the debt to keep growing because that way, they achieve greater exploitation of the American people. The only concern that they have, stems from the fact that they do not want to kill the cow they milk. That is the reason they have almost eliminated interest, the symbol of capitalism. Does it not indicate the end of capitalism?
However, despite this, the American Government cannot use money from the taxes, because all the money goes to the loans return. So the current costs of the U.S. government are funded by new loans to the same bank. The owners of the Federal Reserve are legal pirates. They have managed to impose to the American people through the organized media propaganda and corruption of politicians, that their piracy is the most normal thing in the world.
The U.S. Government must take a right to issue money from the Federal Reserves because otherwise, the American people cannot escape the problem. However, it might be difficult to do it. President John F. Kennedy did precisely this by Executive Order No. 11110. Soon after that, he was killed. Executive decision No. 11110 of President Kennedy was revoked immediately after his death by the president Lyndon Johnson. The American debt is growing progressively and thus creates one massive problem that will encounter in the future.
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Capitalism is based on a debt economy, which is the leading cause of today’s economic crisis. However, in the media, the crisis is explained by greater consumption than earnings. I don’t think this explanation is good enough. There is a much larger quantity of produced goods on the market than consumers can buy. The market balanced it but anyway this is the source of the crisis. The crisis is the result of considerable disproportions in the earnings of people. Some people earn too much, and others too little. To be able to buy needed goods those people who have too little get into debts with interest with people who have too much. When the debts accumulate, the debtors can no longer afford to buy new goods because they have to return the debts. This debt restrains the economy. One can say capitalism suffocates itself.
The American industry is in big trouble as well. In the consumer-saturated society, one cannot produce goods for unknown consumers and expect they will be so thrilled with such products that they must buy them. Capitalism is based on the fear of survival. That fear works counterproductively for capitalism in the recession of production. When the recession comes, workers and companies are afraid for their future, so they keep their money because it is the highest guarantee of survival in an uncertain future. They then decrease their spending and do not buy goods. This strongly affects companies because they cannot sell their products so that they endure great difficulties up to the point when they collapse into bankruptcy. Workers lose their jobs massively, they do not receive income, do not buy goods and the crisis progressively deepens.
A similar economic crisis occurred as a result of deflation in the year 1929. There are some indications that behind the crisis, stood the most significant capital, which withdrew money from the market, which brought a vast number of the companies into bankruptcy. At that time, the state hasn’t even tried to save the economy. In this manner, the most significant capital took wealth from bankrupt people and increased their power.
The crisis today is different from the Great Depression in 1929 because the U.S. intends to save the American economy. The ruin of the American economy would remove the U.S. as the dominant force in the world and bring China or some other country to the top. This is the worst nightmare for the carriers of U.S. capitalism, so they cannot allow it. The American economy will be helped by the U.S. financial assistance this time.
Emitting money from thin air usually leads to inflation where money loses its value. Inflation encourages consumption, which renews the economy. Despite the massive emission of the U.S. dollar, inflation is still not significant. It is firstly because the U.S. gives the impression that it pays back borrowed money even though the debt is being recalculated all the time and grows. The inflation is also not high because payment transactions around the world take place mostly with U.S. dollars. Virtually all countries around the world maintain the value of the U.S. dollar through their economies, and this gives higher value to the dollar than America deserves. Emission of the U.S. dollar is, in fact, a form of exploitation of all countries around the world.
However, the emissions of the U.S. dollar needed to bail out the economy are so significant that they will undoubtedly lead to inflation. Inflation sounds horrible to those who have much money because it reduces the value of their money, but it is still a far better solution than the collapse of the American economy. Perhaps after that, the U.S. dollar will probably no longer be the only world currency. However, I think that the biggest problem for the U.S. economy is the U.S. manufacturers leaving the United States and going to cheaper production countries. If the U.S. does not re-establish its production well enough and does not reduce its costs, especially those imperialistic ones, it may perish. I think that the mistakes of the American policy have been so significant that the U.S. will in the foreseeable future, lose political and economic primacy in the world. It is not even wrong because more equitable countries, create more equitable people.
The American President
The new President of the U.S., Barack Obama has received significant support from the American people, and perhaps most importantly, from the media. It said to me that the considerable capital had accepted him as an appropriate person to resolve the problems coming from the economic crisis. Barack Obama will decrease tensions in American society by his human qualities and abilities. I think US President Barack Obama will reform the U.S. health care system and get the US closer to the health standard of the developed world.
Americans, like all other nations, are taught to believe that a good democratically elected leader can solve their problems. It should first be noted that there is no option to such beliefs, and secondly, these beliefs are wrong. First of all, power corrupts, and practically incorruptible people do not exist. Also, wealthy people have more power than American leaders. They perform much pressure on the US presidents from all sides including media and president’s who under their control, assuring the presidents that the options that the rich represent are the best. Under such pressure, Obama declared the war in Afghanistan righteous even though it can never be. Besides, U.S. politics in Afghanistan cannot achieve success. One cannot win people who are willing to give their lives for the goals in which they believe. The only good thing President Obama can do in Afghanistan is to stop the war, but it would confront him with wealthy people who profit well from that war and on which he very much depends.
Furthermore, President Obama is trying to find an escape from the crisis that the U.S. economy is in by improving. The rich people prevent it because every improvement of capitalism must take power from them. Barack Obama and all other good leaders who try to restrain liberal capitalism by reforms cannot achieve significant success because the rich people stop it. After sound, but unsuccessful leaders, disappointed people, often choose a strong right-wing leader who makes the situation worse. However, the worst in all this is that people have no alternative. People today are powerless and in it lay the foundation of the social evil today.
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Technically, there is room for 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 good. Capitalism is not enough rational system because it requires too much unnecessary work. Capitalism cannot establish a stable production and therefore cannot establish a stable society. That is the reason capitalism cannot prosper.
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 withdraw from a crisis; however, one should not think about how to help capitalism survive, but rather about the creation of a far better system than capitalism for all the people. Such a system must take power from authorities and give it to the people, and this will solve all social problems of capitalism. I have proposed such a system, but it is so different from all existing models that people cannot accept it quickly even though they would all live far better. However, my proposal may open discussion which by the time may bring better future of humankind closer.
The New Social System: Humanism
The new democratic tax policy is a necessity
States plan and order their spending. Countries are the largest consumers, and therefore they can stabilize production to the grand scope. Today it is the job of elected representatives of the people. 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 important decisions of common interest. Individuals will directly form a policy of society, and in the first place, economic policies.
People will be particularly interested in deciding on the macroeconomic policies of the society. The state budget will be created through direct democracy. 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 means 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. They will have a far greater overall impact if they are democratically allocated. In such a way, the people will become active members of society and so; they will accept their community a lot more. Collective consumption will no longer be alienated from society. 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. Once people get the power to decide in society directly, they will be so satisfied with it that they will not allow anyone to take such power from them.
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The 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. They will organize new production, far more productive than the private companies can achieve.
In capitalism, the opinion is built that states are lousy businessmen. So far that is relatively true.
The reason can be found in more privileged working positions of workers in the state sector comparing to the ones in private companies. Following the philosophy that inadequately interprets the working rights of workers, jobs in the state sector are generally protected. The workers can hardly lose their jobs even if their work performance is weak contrary to the workers in privately owned companies. Workers in public or state companies do not have enough developed the income-based stimulation to work more. Good work is often not paid better than a lousy one. Workers in the state sector, especially managers, can often benefit more by corruption at the expense of the company rather than from their work. As a result, state companies lose the productivity battle against private enterprises. Privileged jobs, poor wage policies and corruption create the bad productivity of state companies. 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.
Even though the privileges of workers in private companies are less than the ones in public companies, they still exist. The majority of jobs usually are occupied, and they are not available to other workers even if they might be more productive than existing ones. Also, there are positions in private companies that are more awarded by high income than the workers would demand on the free market. Why is that? Capitalists need buffer zones between themselves and exploiting workers, which are unconditionally obedient. Secondly, it justifies inequality and thus gives the stability of capitalism.
Capitalism still does not have a developed mechanism of rewarding good work and punishing a lousy one. Income awards are punishments, are not fairly distributed. Perhaps it could be presented best by the management of American corporations. They are compensated by severance packages in the millions of dollars even if they have damaged their companies by their incompetence. I see no other reason for that than it is essential for the rich people to preserve the immorality of the system. The money they are sacrificed shows how important it is to them. This is a form of corruption that does not give a good perspective to private companies and the capitalist system.
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. It is necessary to allow an access of every worker to every work post. That would be accomplished by giving every public job position to the best available worker. Also one needs to develop an objective system of remuneration to each employee for good work and a system of punishment for bad work. These measures will build a sound economic future.
The new division of work is a necessity
The state-owned companies will accept an entirely new economic system that will be far more economically productive than private companies. Firstly, the changes will affect the division of labour. There is no fairer or better distribution of labour 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 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 advantages and the least possible disadvantages to society is just a technical question. I have defined a pretty good solution in my book Humanism, but that will probably have to be more developed through 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 proportionately to the unemployment rate. Also, under the new system, each job will be equally desirable. This will be accomplished 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 an objective measure of direct work value 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 wish to achieve greater competitive power, 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.
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 the latter 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 their income, 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. They will be adequately compensated for their companies.
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, essential 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 the human productive power. The human productive power will be one of the most critical factors which will determine the amount of worker’s income. This value will be significant.
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. This measure will look like a free association of private enterprises although the merge will be achieved under heavy pressure from higher productivity of public companies. Owners of private companies will receive stocks for their ownership of the integrated company. They will also find an interest in the fact that a merged company would be more stable to conjuncture changes.
This would in principle mean that the former owners of companies would realize smaller profits in good businesses of the merged corporation, but also smaller losses in bad businesses because the large corporation will cover the disturbances of earnings on the market. Also, the production of such corporation will be more stable because it will be increasingly based on customer orders. If owners of private companies could have an option to join such a company today, they would most likely do it because that would save more of their capital value in a frequent crisis of capitalism.
The value of human productive power may establish an effective system of responsibilities of workers for realizing the offered productivity in the production process. Workers will increase their competitiveness at the desired workplace by offering greater responsibility for the job. The responsibility will be expressed in numerical value. The higher the number, the greater the responsibility it will mean and the greater right to work. This is an idea for which I hint 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 significant declines in value representing their productive power.
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The good future of humankind cannot be based on the value of capital only. Man needs to become the most significant 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 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 society could be established. Such regulation will automatically be applied whenever necessary.
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 decide 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, he will lose a legally defined value from his productive power. Each crime may be 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 to a negative value. The proposed system can make an 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 by 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. However, that will not work for people who fall into the negative value of productive power. They will be very visible to everyone.
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. 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 assessment would have an equivalent value of one dollar. If the society were afraid of such power of individuals, the power of the 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 society and to diminish or abolish the creation of all forms of disadvantages. Given that all individuals will have the equal right of evaluation, and that they will give their assessments independent of any written rules, such a democracy will assume the form of anarchy. In this straightforward way, the populus 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.
Individuals will not have much power 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. 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 criminal aggression on countries. That would cost him 100,000,000 dollars in only one month. Non-privileged presidents would not dare perform bad policies anymore. However, 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 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 power 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. I wrote more about democratic anarchy in the article The Future of Democracy.
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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 society, 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 participate in decision-making about all questions regarding their interests directly.
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 high importance – this will contribute significantly to the development of society.
The economic security of people is a necessity
Capitalists are not interested at all 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 individuals 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 today, so that each resident will receive some 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, 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, the community will then increase the minimum salary and thus reduce the income-based stimulation for work.
Society as a whole will guarantee the economic security and stability of individuals. This will remove the fear that rules throughout the world today. If people were not afraid for their financial future, they would be spending money, and that would quickly pull out today’s economy from the crisis. However, capitalism finds the primary motivation for work from fear 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.
Besides that, the restoration of demand would help the economic crisis of capitalism, but this is not sufficient enough. Consumption already exceeds the real people’s needs in the developed world. A long term exit from the crisis of humankind should be sought in changing the system of values that rule today.
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 individual consumption, so that they will directly decide to allocate more money for taxes from their gross incomes. The more people allocate money for taxes, the more free goods and services will be allocated for the needs of the collective consumption of society. This is the 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 needs of the collective 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 treatments; 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 goods will lose their alienated market value, but the value of the use of goods will remain. It will be worth the same as air is worth today. I am not talking about utopia or oppression of people, but about the advanced technology system that will follow the needs of the people. If only one man, however, would like to keep his 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 conscience. Of course, freedom is dependent on the possession of a conscience. Conscience will be built on a large degree of 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 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 sound 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, represents not only 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.
Aleksandar Šarović
January 6, 2009
References:
Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis Director Martin Borgs made a fresh insight into the greatest economic crisis of our age: the one still awaiting us.
Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis – video speech of the former U.S. government official Richard C. Cook, who sharply criticized the American Federal Reserve Bank.
Zeitgeist: Addendum . Video made by Peter Joseph that digs deep into the core of the problems of capitalism. However, the movie fails to provide enough efficient solution to the problems.
