Humanism Clearly
Throughout history, authorities have tried hard to keep power in their own hands, just as they do today. Even though formal democracy exists almost everywhere today, people are still powerless. This is why the world cycles through destruction instead of continuous development. Society's impotence is so great that not even an idea exists of what a good society should look like. Finally, thanks to the development of information technology and to my persistence, I have discovered the path to create a good society, as defined in many utopias. My utopia, as described in the book “Humanism,” is no longer wishful thinking but a pure science that determines an inevitable and bright future for humankind.
A positive future for humanity ultimately requires power in the hands of the people. Each person should be able to directly represent and protect their interests wherever needed. I am talking about brand-new ideas that will give people power that, under present circumstances, is unthinkable. First, I need to stress that new ideas will bring about a complete change in existing social systems, since they have been built under the influence of authorities.
The new political and economic system that I have proposed is equally acceptable to all. It will end all kinds of oppression and give everyone much greater freedom, but it will also require each individual to be responsible for others in society. The whole system is based on a highly developed form of democracy. It will even achieve greater economic productivity than capitalism can and provide stability that capitalism cannot. Ultimately, it will force capitalism to withdraw. This new system prevents crime, wars, and all kinds of destructiveness in society, while also encouraging the development of human productive powers. It will completely change the world, providing humanity with a wonderful life and harmony.
To create a good society, we should first define and accept all kinds of values that are or should be important to society. We then need to find out how many of these values each person possesses. The sum of all values a person creates throughout his life, expressed as a numerical value, may be called human productive power. Since most people probably would not like to compare their productive power to others, they may keep this value secret, known only to themselves.
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 addition to the capital-based value that represents an element of human productive power, we need to acknowledge and include all other values that society accepts or should accept. These values include people themselves, their education, work experience, contributions, and awards they have received for creating value for society, etc. Pooling different forms of value will require a comprehensive study and, indeed, difficult negotiations in society. However, over time, society could establish new, democratically regulated standards for all values. Such regulation will apply automatically whenever necessary. I’ll explain it better in the following paragraphs.
Human productivity will undoubtedly be strongly affected by workers' economic productivity. In publicly owned companies, workers will share profits in proportion to the responsibilities assigned to their work. Higher responsibility will naturally result in a larger share of profit if 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 the event of production losses, workers who assume greater responsibility for their work will experience more significant declines in value, reflecting their productive power.
If society would like to stimulate education, it might increase funding for higher education to reflect the value of human productive power. If, for example, a region has a very low birth rate, people may decide to reward parents with more children by assigning 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 specific value representing human productive power.
Disobedience to the law will especially affect the value of personal productive power. If a person acts against the law, they will lose a legally defined value of their productive power. Existing laws can easily recalculate each crime into a value representing human productive power. If a person commits a severe crime, they might lose all the value of their productive power and even get a negative value. The proposed system can make assigning such a negative productive value much more painful than prison, making prisons unnecessary. Each person will carefully avoid committing any crime. If a person still encounters such negative productive power, they will strive to escape it, which is only possible through hard productive work and outstanding behaviour over a long period.
Society may regulate whatever it needs through the evaluation of human productive power. However, society cannot regulate all values, 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 others' free actions. This is an entirely new idea and, in my opinion, the most important invention of the future. I call it democratic anarchy.
Democratic anarchy is a new form of social relations, wherein every person exercises equal legislative, judicial and executive power in the society. This is possible if each person has the right to evaluate any other person's activity. Each positive assessment should automatically increase the assessed person's total productive power by a small amount. On the other hand, any negative evaluation will result in punishment in the same form. Let us say the awards and penalties of such an assessment have an equivalent value of one dollar. If society feared individual power, the evaluation's power could be reduced. Even an assessment with a power equivalent to just one cent would be enough to improve society.
Democratic anarchy will guide each member of society to create the greatest possible advantages for the community and to reduce or eliminate all forms of disadvantage. Such a measure will definitely reduce uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled individual power stemming from privileged social status. I must stress that individuals' privileged status causes the most significant inconveniences and problems for society. If all individuals have an equal right to evaluate and assess independently of any written rules, such democracy will take 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, resulting in highly harmonious and constructive social relations.
It is understandably desirable that the value of human productive power becomes very important to society, and therefore, its acceptance should be additionally stimulated. This will be accomplished, first, 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 the opportunity nor the right to participate in making other decisions that regard their interests in society.
Here, we need a compromise equally acceptable to all. Let each person have the right to participate in making any democratic decision in society, but let him earn this right through his productive contribution to increasing society's value. This system proposes unequal voting power, accepted by a consensus of political parties. In reality, it will contribute to the development of democracy because, for the first time, people will have the opportunity to participate directly in decision-making on all questions regarding their interests.
Secondly, each person should receive an income for working in publicly owned companies, proportional to the total value of their productive power. This measure largely follows the existing state of affairs, but it will also introduce new rules, more justice, and order in the system of income distribution. Thirdly, personal productive power must be inherited through generations to be accepted. By implementing these measures, every member of society will recognize the value of human productive power, which will contribute significantly to society's development.
The new economic system adopts the existing model of the market economy. Private enterprises will continue to function as they do today. The new system will significantly change publicly owned companies. First, the changes will affect the division of labour. No division of labour is fairer or better than open-market competition among workers for every work position. The worker who envisages and offers the highest productivity for any public work post at any time will get the job. This measure is necessary primarily because it will abolish work privileges that underlie inefficient orientation and societal problems. If you think this might lead to a rat race for work positions and you are already worried about your job, you need not be. The new system will create a new regulation of the division of labour that will prevent such undesirable effects.
The new system will make full employment a reality. If creating new work positions is not needed, full employment will be achieved by reducing work hours in public companies in proportion to the unemployment rate. Under the new system, each job will also be equally desirable. This will be achieved by assigning the job with defined productivity to the worker who offers the lowest price for current labour, resulting in a lower income for the worker. Better jobs will have lower salaries, while worse jobs will be better compensated with higher incomes. This way, the labour market will set an objective measure of direct work value and will balance the interests of all job posts. Since workers themselves will set the price of their labour, they will, by the same token, be most satisfied with their earnings.
The new economy will necessarily require an efficient system to determine workers’ responsibility for realizing the productivity they have offered. The system would establish a new way of bearing the workers’ responsibility by valuing their productive power. Failure to achieve the offered productivity, or a decline in productivity, would reduce the total value of workers’ productive power in proportion to their responsibility in the productive process. And vice versa, the rise in productivity will increase the total value of workers’ productive power in proportion to their responsibility in the production process.
No economy can be more productive than one where the best available worker gets each job. Such an economy will easily become significantly more productive than the capitalist one, forcing the latter to recede. Also, the workers will no longer be interested in working for private enterprises, where they lack the freedom to choose jobs, decide on their income, or share in the profits. Soon after this system is implemented, private enterprises will be forced to withdraw and join the new system.
The owners of the means of production who voluntarily surrender their private property to society will realize an increase in the total value of their productive power proportionate to the value of the relinquished property. The value of personal power will become a humanistic form of shares, as each worker in a public company will receive an income proportionate to the value of their productive power. This fact may additionally encourage inhabitants of a region to voluntarily pool their private companies into what I call a “humanistic” corporation.
The humanistic corporation will develop production based on customers’ orders, achieving the most stable output. Work competition will ensure the best production performance and, therefore, realize the greatest consumer convenience for society. Last but not least, the system will be based on a high degree of responsibility among workers and managers, requiring cooperation at all levels of the production process and a high level of consensus before decisions are made. This kind of market competition will inevitably lead to cooperation at all levels of the production process, contributing to society's productive development.
Democracy will improve dramatically as well. The future of democracy will no longer be based on elected leaders. Advances in computer technology allow people to participate directly in making key decisions of joint interest through a referendum. To prevent the majority from overruling the minority in a society, political parties must create all referendum questions by consensus. Each decision may have a scale of values prepared by agreement among political parties; each voter may then choose the value that suits them best. The mean of all the values expressed by members of the population, as a function of their voting power, would point to the acceptability of each and every decision in the society.
People will directly create policies for their society, starting with economic policy. In the system of pooled ownership over the means of production, money will also be pooled. Joint ownership of money will make direct democracy in the economy possible. Each voter will directly participate in distributing the collectively owned wealth generated by the collective's revenue. The money will be distributed for economic development (the total amount for investments in the economy), individual consumption (the total for workers’ earnings), and collective consumption (the total funds intended for the collective consumption of the whole population).
Given that the new system proposes unequal voting power, each voter will actually distribute the total value of their productive power among different voting groups. The sum of all voters’ statements across all voting groups will determine the total amount of money allocated to these expense groups. In this way, people will directly create society's macroeconomic policy. Thus, the present-day system of income distribution and the establishment of society’s fiscal and developmental policies will be democratically upgraded.
The new system must ensure each individual's economic independence as the main precondition for establishing a free society. Besides, the system of work competition requires a higher level of social insurance than we have today, and for that reason, every inhabitant will receive some income. Individual income will depend primarily on the total value of personal productive power, the price of current labour, and the achievement of the proposed productivity. In distributing money for individual consumption, people will also set the range of workers’ earnings by directly setting the minimum earnings level. If workers’ incentive to work is insufficient, society may directly reduce the minimum income, which would stimulate workers to work more. And vice versa, if productivity is higher than necessary, society will then increase the minimum salary and thus reduce the income-based stimulation for work.
Assets intended for economic development will have to be further allocated to those sectors of a “humanistic” corporation that predict higher, shorter-term profits in the free market. In that way, society as a whole will achieve the greatest consumer and economic benefits. People may also directly decide how to distribute money for collective consumption needs, up to the level of their interest. In the future, the instability of the market economy will be replaced by a stable, planned production based on customers’ orders. Under such circumstances, the market policy will be less anarchic and more democratic, opening up the possibility of developing a democratically planned economy.
The political and economic model described here will improve production efficiency and stability, bring more justice to production and distribution, and provide far greater benefits to all members of society. In general, this system will free people from authoritative pressure and let them pursue their own interests while encouraging mutual respect. Such experience will demystify the values imposed by authorities and teach people to live according to their true nature, which will, in turn, free them from all types of alienation characteristic of present-day society. Furthermore, the system will teach people to set their needs according to what they can satisfy. This is the chief prerequisite for overcoming destructiveness in society because people who permanently satisfy their demands are not destructive. The proposed system promises a natural, harmonious and highly prosperous development of society.
Finally, I would like to emphasize that the proposed system not only provides the best solution for the future of mankind but also the only good one. Like a crown, the system predicts that work will become a direct value in itself, while commodities will lose their alienated value. Therefore, developing such a system may realize the goal that is currently impossible: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” In any case, the system will make Paradise on Earth.
My book, “Humanism,” elaborates everything I have said here more precisely, and much more. It is available online free of charge here. The changes I have described will affect almost every science. An individual can make no more significant improvement here. That is a job for teams of scientists. I would appreciate anyone willing to cooperate with me on this project, comment on the book, or even read it.
Thank you very much.