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 in the history of mankind, establishing the highest growth in living standards. However, the competition of private entrepreneurs has considerable disadvantages. Better producers win and push 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 the struggle for survival on the market. This struggle is objectively irrational because current production can meet people’s needs efficiently.
Economic crises are integral to capitalism. Crises arise from an insufficient balance between supply and demand. Capitalism has no way to prevent crises because its entire production system rests on free competition among manufacturers in an unpredictable market. Also, capitalism cannot survive without continuous economic growth. It is compelled to continually seek new forms of consumption where companies can realize profits as a condition of their survival. As technology develops, cycles of production expansion and recession accelerate, leading to economic instability and more frequent capitalist crises. 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 our planet's natural resources. Limited resources are the ultimate constraint on economic growth and an insurmountable obstacle to capitalism's survival.
Capitalism is very demanding in depriving people of their freedom. In today’s society, virtually only capital is free. People have developed consumer freedom, which capitalism relies on to survive. Therefore, excessive consumption is established in the Western world, primarily for its own sake. People buy useless, cheap goods that quickly become trash, incurring new expenses because they must be transported to waste. Regardless, citizens in the developed world treat consumption as a maximal value. Capitalism has deliberately imposed this alienation on people through extensive propaganda. Today, many companies spend more time finding consumers than producing goods. This irrationality suggests capitalism cannot develop further and therefore prevents civilization from advancing. In the developed world, consumption has reached its limit when it can no longer objectively improve consumers' lives, just as a satiated person 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 exploitation is the difference between the cost of work freely formed in the labour market, where every worker has a job, and the cost when workers must take jobs to earn money to live. Unemployed workers are forced to accept any job to feed their families. That is why capitalism deliberately maintains unemployment at around 5%. There are various ways to regulate such an unemployment rate, from importing workers 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.
State regulation can significantly reduce, or even eliminate, exploitation. If governments set shorter working hours proportional to the unemployment rate, it may make the number of job posts equal to the number of workers. This measure could lead to full employment. The workers could request wages they consider appropriate for their tasks, ensuring they wouldn’t be exploited. This measure would establish fair relations in the production process, provide workers with a more stable income, and, of course, lead to more stable production. Society as a whole would gain a lot from this. So why has nobody ever proposed such a simple measure? Because increasing workers’ incomes reduces capitalist profits, which capitalism opposes.
Another significant improvement for capitalism will come from tax policy. States plan and order their spending. State leaders plan state consumption to ensure the most stable production based on state orders. Governments are supposed to create tax policy and use tax money in the people's interests, but they don’t. Control over tax revenue gives governments significant power, and they tend to spend it as they please. However, even governments do not have the most significant control over this money. The Western world has developed a complex mechanism that gives rich people control over everything, including tax revenue. The mechanism begins with friendly advice and lobbying of governments and parliament representatives, and ends with corruption and blackmail. They are very successful, which means collective spending follows the interests of a few rather than the people. This is not fair. We all pay taxes, but only some have control over them. That must be changed.
The future of democracy will no longer be based on privileged elected representatives in parliaments and leaders. Advances in computer technology allow people to participate directly in making key decisions of common interest. Individuals will directly create society's policies, primarily economic policy. People will be particularly interested in deciding society's macroeconomic policies. People will directly determine how much money they want to allocate for taxation from their gross incomes. The sum of all such decisions will form the total tax in society. Please don't get me wrong. This does not mean that each person will pay as much tax as they wish. It means people will participate in forming the state budget, and then pay taxes according to their income levels.
Furthermore, each person can decide how the tax money is spent. Each person will determine how much of their 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 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. Through lived experience, people will learn how much money to collect in taxes and the best way to spend it. Thus, this spending will follow people's needs in the most efficient way. Collective consumption will no longer be alienated from society. In this way, people will become active members of society and accept their community much more. Once people gain the power to decide directly, they will be so satisfied that they will not allow anyone to take that power from them.
Technically, there is room for democratic improvement within capitalism, which might benefit 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 society has injustice and alienation, 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 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 seeks assistance in wars, where it destroys everything and practically restarts its development from the beginning. Capitalism may always withdraw from crisis; however, one should not focus on helping it survive, but on creating 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 it would make everyone's life far better.
The New Social System: Humanism
All the political and economic measures 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 as they do today. Public companies will undergo significant changes.
In capitalism, the prevailing view is that states are lousy businessmen. In fact, that has been relatively true so far. The reason lies in the more privileged positions of state-sector workers compared to those in private companies. Following a philosophy that inadequately interprets workers’ rights, jobs in the state sector are generally more protected than in private companies. Workers can hardly lose their jobs even if their performance is weak, unlike in privately owned companies. Privileged positions lead to lower efficiency in state companies, resulting in a productivity loss in the 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 that in privately owned companies. However, it may be much better. The state-owned companies will organize new production based on a broader market than capitalism can support. First, a permanently open labour market will be established, making the economy more productive than private companies can achieve.
The new division of work is a necessity
All privileges must end. A good economy requires the complete abolition of privileged work positions. One should protect workers' economic existence rather than jobs. The reform of the new economy will firstly affect the division of labour. No distribution of employment is fairer or better than open-market competition among 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, the quality and quantity of goods produced, or evaluations from other workers or clients. A worker who offers more profit, better manufactured goods, or 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 outlined a solid solution in my book Humanism, but it will need further development before implementation.
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 creating new work positions is not needed, full employment will be achieved by reducing work hours in all companies in proportion 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 factor determining salary levels. 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 salary levels and balance interest across all job posts. Since workers themselves will set the price of their labour, they will be most satisfied with their earnings.
The system would have no meaning if workers, on their way to greater competitive power, offered productivities they could not realize. Today’s politicians do precisely that, for example. The new economy will create an effective system of accountability for the productivity workers offer, so they will not dare offer productivity they cannot achieve. I will discuss this further 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, forcing capitalism to recede. Also, workers will no longer be interested in working for private enterprises where they lack the freedom to choose jobs or decide their incomes, nor the opportunity to share in the profits. In the new system, workers will participate in the distribution of profits, which is not the case in private companies. Soon after this system is implemented, private enterprises will be forced to withdraw and join it.
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 must determine which of these values each person possesses. The sum of all values that a person creates throughout his life, presented as 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 shares in the integrated company in exchange for their ownership. They will not be forced to merge their companies, but they will do it under heavy pressure from the higher productivity of public companies. Besides, they will learn that a larger merged company is more stable amid change. The joint owners would realize smaller profits in good businesses and smaller losses in bad ones, as large companies would absorb fluctuations in market earnings. The production of such companies would be more stable because it would depend more on customer orders. If owners of private companies today could choose to join such a company, they most likely would, because it would save more of their capital value during the frequent crises of capitalism.
With human productive power, we can establish an effective system of worker responsibilities. In publicly owned companies, workers will share profits in proportion to the responsibilities assigned to their work. This is an idea I hint at here. You cannot fully understand it 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 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 substantial losses in the value representing their productive power.
A promising future of humankind cannot be based on the value of capital only. Person needs to become the most significant value, and this orientation can be stimulated by the value that represents human productive power. In addition to capital-based value as an element of human productive power, we need to recognize 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, complex negotiations in society. However, over time, the community could establish new, democratically regulated standards for all values that can be created. Such regulations would apply automatically when necessary. This will be explained in more detail in the following paragraphs.
If society would like to stimulate education, it might increase funding for higher education to reflect the value of human productive power. For example, if a region has a very low birth rate, people may 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 particular 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 from their productive power. Existing laws can judge each crime and recalculate it into a value representing human productive power. If a person commits a severe crime, they might lose all the value from their productive power and even get a negative value. The proposed system can make assigning such a negative productive value far more painful than prison, so prisons will no longer be needed. Each person will carefully avoid committing any crime. If a person still experiences such negative productive power, he will strive to fix it, which will only be possible through diligent productive work and outstanding behaviour over a long period.
Since most people would probably not like to have their productive power compared to others, they may keep this value secret, known only to themselves. But those who enter into negative productive power will have to wear recognizable clothes, and this will force them to improve their behaviour.
Society may regulate whatever it needs by evaluating 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 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 increase the assessed person's total productive power by a small amount. 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 society feared individual power, the power of evaluation 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 a 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.
People will judge other people freely. This means an immoral person may evaluate others dishonestly, but it will not matter much because an individual’s power of one dollar cannot harm anyone. Individuals will not have much influence in society, but their collective evaluations will be very powerful. A person who receives many negative assessments would try hard to avoid doing anything inconvenient to other people.
Besides, a person who receives inadequate evaluations would never know who has evaluated them negatively, so they would try to improve their behaviour towards everyone. As a result, bullies will not harass children at school, bosses will not abuse their employees at work, neighbours will not make noise at night, salespeople will not cheat their customers, and politicians will not lie to people. They will all try to please other people in the best possible way. This will take privileged powers from all people; it will eliminate social evil and form a good society.
The system of democratic anarchy will especially affect authorities. The higher an authority's position in society, the greater the responsibility it bears. For example, the President of the US might receive 100,000,000 negative evaluations from the American people because of bad policies, lies, and criminal aggression against other countries. That would cost them $ 100,000,000 in just one month. On the other hand, I doubt their supporters would evaluate the president positively because they might prioritize other positive evaluations and allocate them elsewhere. Non-privileged presidents would not dare implement bad policies anymore. And if it happens somehow, they would quickly run away from their positions. Only the most skilful and brave individuals would dare lead countries. They will no longer be authorities, but our sincere 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 lasting power of evaluation, even with a small force like one dollar, will make people respect each other deeply. Human beings will become valuable. Everyone will try hard to please society in the best possible way. That will create a miracle no other tool of justice has ever made. That will create a sound and sane society. In the future, the system of evaluation will probably abolish state laws, police, military force, and even states. Nobody will need them anymore. A perfect society will form, and everyone will recognize it. Human society will become more prosperous than anyone can imagine 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 the opportunity nor the 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, for the first time, people will have the opportunity to directly participate in decision-making on all questions regarding their interests.
Secondly, each person should receive an income from work in publicly owned companies that is proportionate to the total value of their 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 a single large “humanistic” company.
Thirdly, the value of personal productive power must be inherited through generations to be accepted. Through such measures, every member of society will recognize the value of human productive power, significantly contributing to society's development.
The economic security of people is a necessity
Capitalists are not at all interested in how consumers will make money to purchase the goods they produce, even though capitalist enterprises cannot survive 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 each individual's economic independence, a precondition for achieving freedom and the survival of society as a whole. Even one individual who is not economically secure enough may endanger the whole community. Also, the system of work competition requires a higher degree of economic security and stability than we have today, ensuring that each resident receives some form of income. The level of individual income will depend primarily on the value of the productive power of man, the price of current work, the fact that every activity is a form of work, and the achievement of the proposed productivity.
People will also directly set the minimum earnings level. If workers’ interest in performing their work is insufficient, 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 reduce income-based incentives to work.
Society as a whole will guarantee each individual's economic security and stability. This will remove the fear that rules throughout the world today. Capitalism finds its primary motivation for work in concern for workers' economic survival, which is why it cannot guarantee financial security. The new system will build motivation for work from the free choice of tasks and the satisfaction that comes from them.
To each according to their needs is the future of humankind
By that time, people will learn that collective consumption is far more rational and stable than individual consumption, so they will decide to allocate more of their gross income to taxes. The more people allocate for taxes, the more goods and services will be available for society's collective consumption needs. This is the planned consumption that most developed democracies in today’s world primarily allocate to national defence. 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 allocate funds to meet the requirements of the common social standard. I mean vast amounts of money that can significantly improve society's standard of living. The new system will enable free individual consumption. Some states today offer free education and health insurance, while others freely distribute goods and services. Why would a new system not provide more?
People will change very much in the new system. I think that one faraway day, 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 goods and services will become freely available to everyone. The products will lose their alienated market value, but the value of the goods in use will 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 even one person wanted to keep his own income, theoretically, the completely free goods and services would not apply.
The conclusion
The new economy will naturally emerge, removing capitalism's shortcomings and ensuring further development of civilization. It will base production mainly on customer orders to ensure stability. It will reduce market competition from the level of companies to the level of work posts. No economy is more productive than one in which each position gets the best possible worker, and that is why capitalism will go down in history. The new economy will eliminate capitalism's disadvantages and bring far greater advantages to society. After capitalism, humanism will arrive, a system that will better meet the needs of people.
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. The open market of work posts will eliminate workers’ privileges. This will further eliminate corruption, which is the primary source of immorality in today’s society. The labour market will give people the freedom to choose jobs they prefer. Work will become an immediate value in itself, and people will enjoy working. People will be free. Freedom is a state in which people do not have to ask anyone for permission except their own conscience. Of course, freedom depends on having a conscience. Conscience will be built mainly through people's defined responsibilities. Accountability will be so high that people will base their mutual relations on cooperation at all levels of human relationships, thereby fostering society's productive development.
In general, this system will free people from authoritative pressure and let them follow their own interests, while also encouraging mutual respect. Such experience will demystify alienated values imposed by authorities throughout history 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. People will then realize where real values are. Furthermore, the system will teach people to set their needs based on the possibilities of satisfying them. 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.
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 have no choice but to follow suit. The new system will establish a good and sane society worldwide. It will build a bright future for humanity. In conclusion, I would like to point out that the system I have proposed not only represents the best solution for the future of humankind but also the only good solution. It will bring prosperity to society regardless of the level of economic development. The biggest problem is the time it will take for people to understand, accept, and implement the system.
I present the new system in my book Humanism.
November 1, 2009