Ownership, the State and Society

Ownership, the State and Society

By Rick Smith

1. The Evolution of Democracy
2. The Advent of Private Ownership
3. The Current System
4. The World's Other Crimes
5. As It Could Be



The Evolution of Democracy

The existence of a social institution is justified by the purpose it serves to those in society whom it governs and unquestionably must remain answerable to. In judging the validity of an institution, sufficient attention must be paid to studying its origins. In the case of the institution of democracy, its origins are deep within what is understood about how humans formed society. The dawn of society begins with tribalism and moves through to the concept of a nation-state, with various methods of governing taking over at the many intervals, but culminating in the popular triumph of democracy. Therefore, tracing the evolution of democracy through the stages of society is of paramount importance.
Presumably in the early stages of evolution humans first began to join together for mutual protection from dangerous wildlife and natural elements that otherwise threatened individual survival. This is reflected in today’s wildlife, the more intelligent of whom practice a habit of living in groups of multiple families for mutual defense. Human beings likely utilized each other’s strengths for the protection of the tribe as a whole, as is often found in isolated corners of the globe today. Early man, while capable of survival, did not have the intellectual capacity to form the concept of private property, but likely did conflict with one another when resources were scarce. In times of plentiful resources, with the concept of private property beyond them, early mankind would likely have experienced little conflict over survival. The structure of leadership from tribe to tribe would undoubtedly have varied, and a lack of historical documentation makes this a difficult matter to discern. Using isolated tribes still in existence in Africa, South America and Polynesia as examples, one may assume that chiefs would have ruled. There is naturally the possibility for other structures, whether based on rule by the most spiritual (theocracy), rule by the most intelligent (meritocracy), or rule by the wealthiest (oligarchy/aristocracy). Monarchy was the norm in Europe for centuries in the 2nd Millennium and hence was a dominant force in the world, and so the origins of monarchy must be determined. As a matter of rule by one person who inherited from the family his power– and occasionally though very seldom her power – monarchy’s roots lie in rule by chiefs in human tribes. Tribes would eventually give way to the next stage of social evolution that have led to the current situation, which are towns and villages.
This is intricately linked to the ability of humans to cultivate crops. In the age of tribalism, horticultural societies reigned supreme. Horticultural societies reaped their crops by moving from location to location in pursuit of soil that would sustain their production. Eventually, without knowledge of crop rotation, the nomadic tribes were forced to abandon what had been fertile land. When humans learned how to regenerate the nutrients in the soil, they were able to settle down in one location. Tribes that had previously lived in what today amounts to a shantytown could build permanent settlements, often around a major source of water (the Nile River, the Yangtze River, the Rhein River, the Indus Valley, etc.). Like the wandering tribes that preceded them, villages operated by having all members contribute based on the village’s needs and ultimately receive more than enough to survive. This is because the mutual survival doctrine of the nomadic tribes transferred into the villages, leaving out the pursuit of individual satisfaction. The degree of work performed was susceptible only to what was required to fulfill everyone’s needs. Ultimately, however, the settlement of villages separated agriculture from towns. This meant that there were those living in towns and those living in rural areas, which ultimately gave rise to the concept of private property. This is because farmers had to feed cities, and while there were communal farms at first, it is obvious that at some point or another the individual family farmers reserved plots of land for their own work. From the beginning, farmers have fed villages, and in the villages were a variety of services, but until the Industrial Revolution towns only served as a congregation point.
In these villages, chief-rule became obsolete. The example of Ancient Greece provides a good example of this phenomenon. Chief-rule became obsolete possibly because of the advent of this private property: now that individuals could own land on their own, they could manage it on their own too and were not subject a ruler whose mandate was largely arbitrary. It is only because farming and town life became so separated that the concept of private property arose because it was the first time such a division of lifestyles existed among the same people. Thus, Ancient Greek towns pioneered direct democracy: any person who owned property was entitled to a say in how their town was ruled. This, however, disenfranchised all those without property, effectively making Greek democracy a virtual dictatorship of the wealthy. It serves as an example of two modern concepts in a world thousands of years in the past: rule by the people and the holiness of private property. In varying forms, these two principles have survived the test of time.
The various city-states of Ancient Greece could not withstand the onslaught of the empires of Eurasia. Be they Roman, Byzantine or Ottoman, Greek democracy could not survive. While the idea of democracy would survive in the writings of Plato – and in the example of a handful of early East Indian republics – Europe became dominated by imperialism. This trend lasted for centuries, and in these empires rule was never democratic. Monarchy rose out of the ashes of Greek democracy, but the two held a common trait: they placed a paramount importance on private property. In Greece, only those with private property could have a say in the democratic city-states, and in the Eurasian empires the nobility and royalty were given large plots of land upon which they could rule over their subjects. The monarchies breached the convention of governing locally over a small territory and instead came to encompass thousands upon thousands of square kilometers. They were able to do this by breeding a hierarchy within the ruling system that gave local nobles the ability to govern as a ruler but made them answerable to the emperor or monarch. After all, no Roman Emperor could have conquered the Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans, Gaul, Britain or Turkey if they themselves exercised absolute sovereignty in the regions. This demonstrates how governments, regardless of the size of their territory, came to understand that their survival depends on having some sort of local governance. Otherwise, those living in the subjugated territories would be forced to reject the centralized government, something that was a greater threat than any invading force. Attempts to restore democratic rule across Europe occurred, with none of them extending beyond the scope of a city-state. The Magna Carte in 1215 was the first time that the powers of the king were limited in a constitutional manner, but still the monarch was able to call the parliament at his pleasure and there was no need to be accountable to the common citizen.
The nation-state grew out of the empire, and it was only able to do so because of the precedence set by monarchy’s ability to reign over a large territory. That is to say, they implemented a top-down system where decisions made at the top were binding on people and governments beneath. Nationalism arose out of the subjugation of ethno-linguistic groups in Europe’s empires. Such examples include Serbia, Ireland, a unified Germany and a unified Italy, Poland and Ukraine. All of these countries were either ruled by a foreign empire or were constantly threatened by one or more. These ethnic groups believed that the survival of their people depended on forming an independent state. The negative consequence of this was a rise in nationalism, a hatred for members of all nations other than one’s own. This is because the xenophobic reaction to foreign domination became to intertwined in the pursuit of “national self-determination”. This allowed for two side effects to take hold, the first being a revival of democracy because of the populist nature of nationalist movements. The second was the exceptional vulnerability of public debate to domination by demagogues. This is because the irrationality of nationalism allowed those who spoke best to preach to the xenophobic masses. Of course, the latter has been known to overrule the former, such as the case of Fascist Italy or Imperial Japan. The rise of the nation-state meant that for the first time the support of the common person became an asset to those who sought power and a threat to those who sought to hold onto it. The greatest trouble of the nation-state is demographics: never before has a nation-state existed that is completely ethnically homogenous. Since the nation-state was always meant for one nation, this meant that minorities living in the state’s territory were either silenced or subject to the will of the majority nation, an early example of “tyranny by the majority”. In a nation-state, which all states are in some way, it is impossible to avoid this condition no matter how hard good-intentioned reformists try.
To this day, no truly democratic country exists. In almost every country the state is in the firm control of the majority and leaves out minorities, or is in the control of a tyrannical regime whose status as a minority or majority does not matter: they oppress everybody. There is no country where democracy is accessible to every single citizen and is directly exercised by the people through a series of communes.










The Advent of Private Ownership

The origins of human society in a nomadic tribal format made ownership of land impossible, except by the tribe as a whole or by the chief. Sufficient evidence exists to make the former the more likely, and indeed more feasible, possibility. Personal possession came to include the land that one lives upon when the divide between town and rural came into existence. The result was lack of distinction between property and possession that justifies the type of capitalistic exploitation today.
The pastures are where early human civilization first produced. Since it was a horticultural society, there was no time for individual members of the tribes to claim land for themselves. Instead, these tribes saw the land that gave food to them as being something that no human could own. Thus, early mankind had a view of the land that is more in tune with North American Native culture than North American European culture. The nomadic tribes would farm the land collectively and use the crops to feed all those who worked – which was everyone who in the tribe who could. Even when tribes began to settle in specific locations and give up the nomadic lifestyle, before the division of rural and town there still existed a view of the land as belonging to all for the benefit of all. The only times that a conflict over the land would arise would be when competing tribes would seek the best land. There was no individual competition except perhaps over the best crops that would come from the land. Nevertheless, the sense of co-operation that arose the need to work together for survival made the pastures a place of peace and an early example of the benefits of infusing one’s own needs with the needs of all.
At the time when crop rotation came into existence, towns did not develop immediately that cast farmers into rural regions. This can be witnessed in what is known about Native American culture, wherein the land surrounding a settlement of houses would be used but the concentration of tents into a very small portion of land would mean that there was no need to separate farmer from townsperson: they were one and the same. While Biblical accounts ofl fer a perspective that while on the move the Israelites practiced this type of society, at some point towns began to develop that required farmers to settle on the outskirts for practical purposes. It is at this point in history that the right to use a certain parcel of land would have been developed. Once there became those who did work that was not farming, the farmers would have to have acquired a means to distribute their produce to those who did other work. It is likely that at first the farmers worked together, but as the population grew tribes became less and less distinctive and eventually the “nation” arose. This would have made it impossible for farmers to work as one organ if only because of the impracticality of such massive organization at the time. This problem would have bred the sort of circumstances that necessitated an individualist approach to farming. For this to work out, each farmer would have to claim land for his own personal use and not the use of other farmers if he were to be able to benefit from selling to the townspeople. Since different parts of land are more fertile than others – for example, if they are closer to a water source or in less dry territory they are more fertile – there would have arisen a conflict over which land belonged to whom, and how much one farmer could morally take in such a coveted territory. All of these circumstances (trade with townspeople, conflict over the best land, etc.) created a bartering system, and eventually this would have led to the production of money.
Slavery is an institution that predates written history. Its exact origins are not entirely clear, but one theory is that the first slaves were used as servants for royalty or government. In application to the theoretical development of society, this would mean that at some point the chiefs of tribes would have begun to use slaves for their personal use. However, an aspect of slavery that this point misses is that it is unpaid, which means that slavery in its modern definition likely does not predate money, as a tribe without money would not have paid any who worked. Thus, what would have been called slavery would have arisen once property and money were introduced into society, as they would have been denied the property that those who worked on farms would have accumulated. There is also a direct connotation between xenophobic racism and slavery, as is evidenced by Israeli slavery in Ancient Egypt. Likely, the importation of captured members of other races did not satisfy the demand for free labour by the royalty and ultimately class divisions began to show. Class divisions also arose during the advance of feudalism. At this point, royalty began to become decentralized (recall the rise of empires). It was at this point that serfdom arose, allowing wealthy property-owning nobility to virtually enslave the farming masses and the poor townsfolk. The end of feudalism, and by extension serfdom, came about because of the growing population. No longer could the lords exchange sufficient land for military service of their subjects. Furthermore, the Age of Exploration brought about colonialism which about the empowerment of monarchs to build Empires. Such an example is France prior to the French Revolution, where the Bourbon dynasty’s consolidation of their power away from feudal lords brought about massive upheaval.
The Industrial Revolution can be credited with ending serfdom for three reasons. For one, lords lost their capacity to exploit human labour through land alone, which up to that point was all that they possessed. Next is that the dramatic shift in population from rural to urban left the feudal lords incapable of asserting dominance in their traditional domain of agriculture. Lastly, the fall of the monarchy in France led the other European powers to recognize the grievances of the people and restructure the government. This in particular meant that lords no longer had the ability to control land exclusively, but instead were forced to recognize the property “rights” of the average citizen. By a variety of means, common people had now begun to form a middle class that became lords in every name but title. They became the owners of the means of production across Europe. This ownership translated into virtual mastership, for while the worker sold his or her labour to the owner, the owner maintained an authoritarian relationship throughout the workday. This is because of the prevailing view among the capitalist class that property is rights, meaning that those who possessed property had rights (including exclusively holding the right to vote) whereas those who did not became subordinates for this new generation of lords. All of the factories, mines, ports, railroads and other means of production were in the hands of individual owners and required labour to turn the raw materials into anything valuable. The value made off of this labour was put directly into the hands of the owner who returned a tiny portion that he had guaranteed to his workers but kept a significant amount of the profit as capital – that is, unpaid labour. Certainly there were expenses, but they were and to this day still are vastly outweighed by the amount of profit retained by the capitalist class. This was the beginning of the division of the human race in the developed world into two major socioeconomic classes, the working class and the possessor class. The possessor class is that which has acquired property that is not used for living, such as land on which a home is built, but the kind that results in the exploitation of one human by another because it is valuable. Industrial might is a benefit that humanity has harnessed but is not used for the benefit of humanity. Rather, the possessor class uses industrial power for their own benefit, a condition that is as real today as it was at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
The history of possession begins when humans began to divide into separate classes, and it is for this reason that it remains. Possession in its raw form is nothing to be abhorred, for certainly nobody wishes to share a toothbrush with the world. This kind of possession is harmless. It is the kind of possession in the form of property as distinguished by its ability to result in exploitation of labour that is the source of virtually all strife in society. The possessor class’ ownership of the means of production is inherited from the days of feudalism, with the sole distinction that there is the tiniest chance of the common person rising to become a member of this class. This myth is precisely what allows such a socioeconomic structure to endure that causes the vast majority of people hardships as they struggle through life. These hardships include the familiar feeling of being overworked and underpaid, a lack of health benefits and a rising cost of living, but it also exists on a grander scale. For example, despite industrial power, North American countries often face crumbling infrastructure, inadequate housing, longer wait times at hospitals, and falling standards for education. The root of this problem is a lack of willingness by the possessor class to share even the smallest sliver of the vast wealth that they continue to accumulate on a greater basis every day. Yet a solution to this problem that results in a loss of power for the possessor class is considered unacceptable by the governments of the West because, simply, what’s theirs is theirs. This points to a complete unwillingness of government to alleviate the problems of the common person in the face of aggressive lobbying by the possessor class in a way that sets society back to the days of feudalism, when government and the possessor class were toxically intertwined.
A distinction, based on the history of ownership, must be made between the type of possession that are used for personal benefit without involving others and the type of possession that allows one to accumulate illegitimate wealth at the expense of nine-tenths of society. It is the latter kind of possession that is responsible for depriving society at large from the wealth that its members produce, thereby degrading humanity and damning it to a permanent authoritarian structure in an economic sense.








The Current System

North American and Europe share the common affliction of being caught between the warring ideologies of socialism and capitalism. Capitalism is the norm in economics, whereas governments make a half-hearted attempt to be socialist. To successfully examine how governments in the West work it is necessary to understand the method of governing in today’s world – liberal democracy – as well as the capitalist system and how it results in class struggle, and ultimately how in spite of class antagonism this system has endured for over a century.
Most Western governments (those of North America and Europe) are defined as a liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, wherein official are elected to represent the views of their electors. They are restrained in their powers by a constitution that protects the rights of individuals as well as prevents the majority from exercising complete tyranny over minorities. Liberal democracies are not so-named because they adhere to liberalism exclusively, but because they guarantee a multitude of individual freedoms. The rights and freedoms guaranteed in liberal democracy extend to what an individual may do with his or her spare time, but the structure of the system itself leaves the masses and the state terribly separated. This is the core flaw of representative democracy, wherein elected official are given mandates of a specified time to fulfill their promises. The span of time is usually long enough to allow politicians to do either nothing or go back on their promises without any accountability to the people. The expensive public relations campaigns waged in the name of being re-elected are enough to convince an astounding proportion of the population – so distracted with their busy working lives – to vote for the parties of broken promises and possessor class allegiance. The benefits of liberal democracy are the same benefits of democracy as a whole: smooth transition of government, multi-party elections, and some form of accountability to the common person however minimal. An alternative to liberal democracy must be sought if there is to be hope of effective government, because democracy is a hollow word indeed unless the people truly do exercise direct rule.
The partner of liberal democracy is capitalism, a natural relative for various reasons. For one, the unaccountability of liberal democracy exists in the capitalist sphere, albeit to a greater degree. Think for example of the countless times that corporate scandals have been uncovered: the Enron accounting fraud, Exxon over-reporting their oil reserves, Hewlett-Packard spying on their bureaucracy and journalists, Lockheed’s bribery, lead paint in Mattel’s Chinese-made toys, Pacific Gas and Energy poisoning the water supply in Hinkley, California, and the inflation of the price of Guinness stocks. These are just a few off of the very long list of instances where corporations cared more about their own profits than their employees, the general public, and even their own bureaucracy. The capitalist structure exists on two planes, the first being that which affects those working for the possessor class. The other plane is that which affects the general public. Culminated, these planes constitute almost all people except for the possessor class. Then again, this is the nature of the capitalist system because of its enshrinement of the “what’s mine is mine” mentality. Since young children in a capitalist country are raised to ravenously compete not for riches, there is no room to reconsider this destructive system. Some of the most dedicated progressive activists can be reluctant to suggest replacing the capitalist system and instead advocate changing it, and these people can be environmentalists, feminists, youth, and even labour unionists. It testifies to the arrogantly secure position that capitalism holds in society that this is the case. Capitalism and liberal democracy make the best partnership because liberal democracy makes the people feel as if they have a say, thereby staving off fundamental changes that would upset the power structure. Capitalism benefits liberal democracy because liberal democracy relies on heavy funds to keep the bureaucratic parties in power, and there is no better way to do this than by having the big parties align themselves with the possessor class. In Canada it is the Liberal and Conservative parties, and in the United States the Democrats and Republicans. Even in Europe traditionally progressive parties moved to the right in the 1990s, notably the Social Democratic Party in Germany, the Socialist Party in France, and most prominently the Labour Party in the UK. Part of the reason is the rise of popular capitalism following relentless Reaganomics in the 80s, but ultimately the progressive parties got caught up in what keeps liberal democracy ineffective. The parties fear losing power, and because of the clear benefits of allying with the possessor class for funds they become a party of that class themselves.
The result of the toxic twins of capitalism and liberal democracy and their alienating techniques is class antagonism. The division of society by who owns and who works is the natural consequence of private dominion over property that is used to exploit the labour of the toiling masses. This ties into the noticeable difference between what human society originated with – mass work for mass benefit with no ownership – and what emerged from the development of the monarchy and ultimately the nation-state. One may wonder how such a system survives: the key to this is the division of the working class. Since the possessor class views labour as a commodity, unionization becomes a monopolization of labour and prevents them from attaining the best price possible – the cheapest one – for someone’s labour. This division of the working class runs on an individualist plane, which works well for the possessor class because they themselves never had to band together to improve their lifestyles and thus see mankind marked only by absolute individual sovereignty. It naturally follows that in individualizing society the possessor class would have to convince the masses that they have a shot of joining them at the top. Yet this means asking someone to turn on his or her fellow worker by becoming an exploiter, something that if they are not willing to do condemns them to a lifetime under the ruling class. Even so, it is the fondest dream of many to become rich, but often it may be for financial freedom more than a thirst for all things luxurious. The working class has the power to emancipate themselves from this cycle by embracing a policy of unity and rejecting the illusion of ascension to the possessor class ranks. If they do this, casting off that which binds them to servitude, they can share in the wealth that the ruling class has withheld since the Industrial Revolution by placing the means of production in the hands of the common person.
The question of just how grandly the illusion of ascension has permeated society is vital to understanding class struggle. Primarily, it is based on the perception of the chances of making the transition to high society compared to exactly what the chances are. In terms of the perception, recent studies suggest that four in five Americans believe in the maxim that “if you are poor and work hard, you have a chance of becoming rich”. A further three in ten believed that putting in longer hours at work would make a difference in one’s chances of rising in the ranks. This compares to one-third of Brits, and less than one-quarter of French people. Yet in the United States, the reality does not reflect the perception. One report concludes that American children from low-income families have only a one per cent chance of making it to the to five per cent of income earners. Even children of middle-income American families had a one point eight per cent chance of making it to the same level, which is hardly better than the poor ones. Although the United States represents the most capitalist of any country in the world, only in the United Kingdom does one have a lesser chance of making it to the top five per cent of income earners – attributable only to the survival of the monarchy and nobility. In fact, as the rich-poor gap widens across the developed world, the chances of moving up the income ladder decrease drastically, and this gap’s widening shows no signs of slowing down. This is especially evident in statistics available from Canada, where real wages for workers, once inflation is taken into account, of all incomes have remained virtually frozen and has even decreased for those earning minimum wage since the 1970s. Meanwhile, Canada’s economy has grown by seventy-two per cent and Canadian workers have raised productivity by fifty-one percent over the same time period. It begs one to wonder why Canadian workers are half way to doubling their productivity yet earning no more. Especially since anybody can see that it is no beneficial to society either, with infrastructure crumbling in and between all major cities, poverty on the rise, an increasing burden on the health care system and ever more expensive education. Simply put, capitalism hoards the wealth produced by the masses for those who own what they use to produce that wealth. It is the source of all class antagonism and cannot be alleviated through capitalist reform.
An example of the crime of capitalism is the death of infrastructure across the developed world. Cracks run through urban, rural and small-town streets like a spider-web of disrepair. Many bridges are in desperate need of attention, as is exemplified by the bridge collapse in Minneapolis or the closing of the Montreal downtown due to a subway system glitch. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given grades for infrastructure across the country, with bridges receiving a C, dams a D, aviation a D+, rail a C- and roads a D. The world’s richest country should not have such damning reports on their infrastructure, not only the backbone of any economy but a matter of the safety of all citizens. Although this indicates that wealth produced by the public is not being used for the public good, more fundamental questions about what this means for the individual person must be considered. Although capitalism claims to reward the hard working, it has already been demonstrated that Canadian workers have been increasing productivity since the 1970s while receiving no portion of that. Capitalism is far too structured to give instant rewards for hard work because of the wage system – agreed upon transfers of money to the individual worker that are well below what the minimum production would allow so as to always ensure profit for the possessor class – and instead relies on the promise of promotion for hard work. Basically, crumbs are given with the promise of a meal later, and yet if every worker were to labour to their full extent there could be no promotion for all of them. Capitalism does not allow one to eat if they work hard, but if they are the hardest working.
The life force of the way that Western society is structured is the marriage of liberal democracy, so detached from the average citizen, to capitalism, so alienating to anybody relying on a salary or wage. Foundational changes need to be made not only to one Western country, but to all lands across the world to bring about the downfall of the global system that is capitalism.










The World’s Other Crimes

For all the discussion of capitalism so far, it is indeed not the only evil to rear its head in the world. From the same source that capitalism comes from – organization the human race hierarchically – comes racism, sexism, heterosexism, ethnolinguism, ageism and ableism. These evils exist in society whether anybody likes to believe them or not, and the pedagogies of denial that seek to sweep them under the rug will not make them go away.
No issue plagues European and North American history in the same way that racism does. To begin, race has largely been discredited as a real factor in genetics, accounting for as little as five per cent of one’s genetic make-up, whereas ethnicity can compose up to eight-five per cent. Anthropologically, race was created to distinguish physical features of one human from another, and likely has its roots in the conflicts between white Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. European imperialist expansion into sub-Saharan Africa would have made this an even more acute line of division. In particular, one theory states that the Europeans viewed the size of the African man’s penis as something more akin to animals than humans, an early example of racism. Furthermore, the arrogant European saw the tribal structure of African society as being inferior to their Christian, civilized order. This explains the drives to bring civilization and Christianity, together or separately, to “the savage” or “the heathen”. This would come into play again with the colonization of the Americas, every aspect of which is drenched in the blood of millions of Native people and built on the slave labour of millions of Africans. Like the Africans, Native Americans were seen to possess physical features and a primal society that the Europeans saw as inferior to their own. The same condition existed in Australia and New Zealand, whose Native people have their own history of cultural assault that exists to this day, and in Asia where European powers asserted their control over India, China, Indochina, Indonesia and the Philippines. In everything, the empires of Europe made the excuse of seeking to spread civilization around the world when in reality their colonies acted as resource feeders to their mother countries. Raw materials were shamelessly extracted from the land and were almost always done by enslaving those that were willing to subordinate themselves and killing those that weren’t. Even to this day racism exists: “guest worker” programs import cheap labour from poor countries and deny these people any right of residency; race-motivated murder makes headlines more often than rarely; Native land claims in the courts in Canada number over eight hundred with only ten or so settled every year; Black Americans have a far shorter life expectancy even when considering only natural causes; the list is endless.
If there is one oppressive ideology that can challenge racism for the title of most widespread, it is sexism. Almost always this involves the notion that men are superior to women physically and/or mentally. However, it extends beyond this and includes such things as the perception of “male entitlement”. This explains why men raped one hundred per cent of female rape victims and seventy per cent of male rape victims. Sexism is not always about women being inferior to men, but men being superior. It is a common trend that has existed all throughout written history. Sexism’s roots are far more difficult to trace than racism’s because every society has males and females, whereas many societies have been racially homogenous in history. Many societies in history have elevated women to positions equal to or above that of men. However, the vast majority of historical societies have actively mistreated women. The latter came to exclusivity in the modern world though the rise of Judeo-Christian traditions in the European empires in the first few centuries AD that later expanded across the globe. Sexism exists today in many forms, including but not limited to the aforementioned victimization of women overwhelmingly by sexual violence. Other examples are the far greater likelihood of a woman of any age living in poverty than their male counterparts, the average wage of females being significantly lower than that of men, and the media’s assault on the self-esteem of females of all ages. As with racism, the pervasiveness of sexism in Western society is ridiculous and cannot be tolerated.
In line with sexism exists heterosexism, the notion that those of a heterosexual orientation are superior to those of homosexual, bisexual or transsexual orientation. It is not at all a new phenomenon but shares all the woes of sexism: that is to say, non-heterosexuality existed and was tolerated in societies the world over until the rise of Christianity in Europe whose Old Testament values spoke out strongly enough against homosexuality as to condone the death penalty for those of such a lifestyle. Historically, Japan, Greece, Africa, the pre-conquest Americas, Rome, China and the Middle East all had widespread homosexual and transgender behaviour that were in some cases revered as opposed to simply accepted. All of these societies had been untouched by overzealous Judeo-Christian religion – and Islam in the case of the Middle East – and only began to see it as a deviance of nature. “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” became a common mantra of the homophobes. However, there is evidence that homosexuals are partially created and partially influenced by environmental and hormonal factors. If homosexuality is indeed something incorporated into one’s biology, there is no excuse for not treating them as equals, and even if it is not, fundamental issues of freedom arise. Namely, homosexuality is an act that causes no harm to anybody whether in a homosexual relationship or not and there therefore exists no reasonability behind homophobia. Furthermore, the fundamentalist approach to homosexuality that states that it is unnatural fails to take into account how nature itself handles homosexuality. Were it unnatural, it would not occur in the natural world, yet there are documented instances of dolphins, elephants, penguins, flies, monkeys and great apes engaging in homosexual behaviour and even raising surrogate children as a couple. Basically, homosexuality is an inescapable aspect of sexuality and is nothing to be oppressed or repressed. Some Western societies even today are slow to embrace homosexual rights and to stop homophobic attacks. This must change and homosexuals must be recognized for the human beings they are and appreciated for the value of what they contribute to society just as everybody else does.
Certainly a prevalent issue in Canada, ethnolinguism is the alleged superiority of one ethnolingiustic group over another. Such an example is the ongoing conflict between English and French Canada, embodied in the Quebec debate. Ethnolinguism’s roots lie in xenophobia and are amplified by what is generally accepted to be the fatal flaw in humanity: namely, its fear for what it does not understand. What else embodies a lack of understanding better than a language barrier? Thus, not only do English and French Canada have conflicts, but the same condition exists in Belgium, Sri Lanka, Sudan, India, and the former Yugoslavia. Ethnolinguism as it applies to Canada in particular often ignores racial or ethnic barriers and instead is a construct based on language. For example, Quebec separatists in Canada’s legislatures include Alexis Wawanoloath (a Native), Vivian Barbot and Maka Kotto (Blacks) and Maria Mourani (an Italian). This indicates that in some places language is such a dividing line that it transcends all other barriers. In reality, the history of Quebec is one where the dominant class was largely English and the working or subordinate classes largely French. This oppression has led to a sense of Quebecois unity against English Canada, whom they see as the manifestation of their oppressors. It explains why French Canadians outside of Quebec by and large reject Quebec separatism – they were oppressed by the Anglophone ruling class as much as their fellow Anglophone workers. As with other ideologies, social structures begin and amplify ethnolinguistic tensions.
The last of the West’s major discriminating ideologies – although there are less common types – are the twins of ableism and ageism. The two are related because they draw from the same maxim, which is that those who cannot produce for the economy are useless human beings. The ableists may question why money made by working people is used to keep those who produce nothing alive, and may go as far as to advocate a mass slaughter of disabled people so as to reduce the “burden” on the rest of us. Ageists, like the ableists, discriminate against those who do not produce which in this case are senior citizens and youth. Ageists are condescending to both extremes on the age line, often presuming them to be of inferior intelligence. For youth, stereotypes abound that “kids today” are out of control and are destined for a life of hedonism and non-productivity, which may have to do with a fear that middle-aged people have that they will not be taken care of in their old age. This would make sense if it weren’t the same people who condescended towards senior citizens. This mostly involves opposition to taxpayer-funded pensions and other services for the elderly (probably out of jealousy), but includes prejudice about the ability of a senior to drive a car or think rationally. The sad irony of this type of discrimination – against non-producers – is that if the same attitude were taken towards all non-producers, one has to wonder what would happen to the possessor class who epitomize labourless income. The difference between youth, seniors and the disabled of course is that nobody asks to be a member of those demographics.
Discrimination does not result from capitalism necessarily, nor vice versa. Rather, a more logical approach is to see them all as components of the same ideology of dividing society among any lines necessary to advance the cause of individual pursuit of greatness. The only solution is to purge our minds of ideologies that divide the human race into anything, be it classes, races, ethnolinguistic groups, by age, by ability or by nationality.







As It Could Be

Four chapters about how we have come to be where we are as a society and what’s wrong with the status quo. This could not be concluded without a legitimate and viable program to make steps forward for humanity away from individualism, hate and exploitation and towards a common brotherhood where our industrial and technological might is expanded and used for the good of all people and not the possessing few. This involves direct democracy, uniting the nations of the world, removing the means of production from private hands and placing them in the hands of their communities, replacing owner-sanctioned management in the workplace with management selected by the workers, and ultimately breaking down every single barrier facing mankind’s peaceful progression into the future together.
The very first step and the only means by which community socialism can take hold is the introduction of community-based, bottom-up democracy: call it community-democracy. The essence of community-democracy is keeping a big and bureaucratic government from calling the shots. Power must be restored to the communities of the world. Imagine a democracy where local community councils are formed in which every member living in the community participates and has a voice as well as a vote of their own. One vote for one person with a plurality being the only thing needed to pass approval. If the issue goes beyond the confines of a community, which could be as little as twelve people or as many as one hundred, the communities will form a partnership and have their combined membership vote on the issue. No expensive elections to pick representatives who, as most people living in a liberal democracy can relate to, simply do not listen. Only free votes by free people. This system can come about without a violent uprising against the current government – assuming that one’s country allows free association. All that is required is that members of a community learn see this as common ground and set up their council. From there, a domino effect can take hold, allowing surrounding communities to join in the wave for community-democracy, and once a riding or electoral district is dominated by community councils, they must elect a member who will fight for devolution of power to these community councils. It must be the first step, for once in it is easy for an elected official to be corrupted by the capitalist-state complex.
One of the primary issues that must be resolves it the existence of nationalism. Nationalism must be eradicated, a task that is not as lofty as it sounds. Although this has sometimes in history been accomplished through struggles like the Second World War or the end of apartheid in South Africa, the damage has never been truly recognized as being from one community onto another. This is why problems persist in the United States, former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Israel. And as long as there is no real meeting of the minds from nation to nation, in the form of community to community, there can be no healing. Without healing, there is only more conflict, and ultimately only more poverty and violence. To accomplish this, the idea of the nation-state must be cast into history as something that only divides and does not settle conflicts. As an example, the concept of Quebec vs. English Canada must be abolished. In its place must be a united Canada that is not divided along provincial lines, for provinces were drawn up at the pleasure of the monarchy and in and of themselves divide people of similar ethnicity, custom, ancestry, nationality and even language. With community autonomy, the various French Canadian communities in Quebec and elsewhere can maintain their culture and preserve their heritage without confronting over seventeen million English Canadians through Quebec. Minority language communities across the world, from the Frisians in Germany to the Aymarans in Bolivia can enjoy the autonomy and protection from an overbearing majority through their own strength. Since power will not rest in federal or provincial/state governments there will be no need for antagonism between the communities at these levels. The new order will be the world’s nations living in common with one another through their local communities, eliminating the divide between nations that is bred by the nation-state.
These communities a need and an obligation to immediately make a move for repossession. Centuries ago the means of production fell in the hands of a ruling elite in the government that within the last two centuries fell into private hands, but that transition meant nothing to the privileged few who were able to take over the means of production. Never since the nation-state arose have the people owned the means of production – not even in the state capitalist governments of the USSR, the People’s Republic of China and their satellites. Yet it is time to take back what rightfully belongs to the people: mines, bridges, roads, ports, railroads, factories, oil patches and all that sustains an economy. The right of a community to own these is called, by community socialists, Mamlaka after the Swahili word for “right of ownership”. The optimal time to do this is when the company in possession of the particular means is facing hard times, making it more likely that they will give up their ill-conceived property. Whether a community council, province or federal government compensates the possessor class depends on the region and culture, so there exists no absolute program for this nationalization. Nevertheless, for a community to be able to use the means of production to better the lives of all people they themselves must possess the ability to do so, and this can only be achieved through Mamlaka. Otherwise, a damning cycle of taxing the citizens to pay the possessor class for what is produced on their property will leave the working class penniless and the possessors even wealthier than before.
The workplace need not change drastically, especially as not all businesses will be placed in public hands – retail, for example, may still be owned and operated by an individual, although ideally it would be small enough to necessitate the owner to work at the store. However, for the working class to emancipate itself from wage servitude it must take a greater role in the day-to-day running of their operations. This is the value of trade unions and workers’ councils. As it currently is, management of the workplace is selected by a bureaucracy in control of and working for ownership. In a community socialist system, management would be selected by the workers’ council at the workplace, and much like a representative in community-democracy they would be subject to the confidence of those beneath them at all times. Just as the trade unions are necessary today, even though the possessor class claims arrogantly that the woes of the working class have been alleviated, they will be necessary in community socialism. Their function will be to serve as a rallying point for working class unity, and in the case of large companies like a nationalized railroad network they would be needed for bargaining with such a large and centralized employer. It is important to maintain rank-and-file power within the trade unions themselves, for bureaucracy in the unions would be undesirable for the same reasons that it is undesirable in other aspects of life: it leads to decision making based more on manipulating superiors than what is good for the common person, and in this case the common worker. Thus, the call of community socialists is for an economy based on worker-backed management, community ownership and councils in the workplace that include every worker to the same degree that community-democracy includes every citizen.
The last aspect of the community socialist program is about the principle of people’s unity: achieving a world where nobody prejudges another based on anything on the exterior. Despite right-wing denial, discrimination based on any factor imaginable still rears its ugly head constantly. Seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil will not eradicate the devil’s ideologies of hate. Even though eliminating the nation-state may dispose of nationalism, a new form of provincialism may arise between the communities. For this to be avoided, an effort must be made on the part of every community to be part of a federation of communities and to use this federation as a foundation for festivals to celebrate the unity of the world’s communities free from the bonds of misunderstanding. It is a concept as simple as any but is ultimately the hardest one to achieve, for prejudices are infused in our minds from the cradle to the grave and require a very conscious effort to cast them aside. One particularly good way to ensure that everybody experiences other cultures enough to not be affected by prejudice is to promote traveling. After all, the world belongs to every human being and is ours to experience.












Last Words

A sense of resignation to the current system has permeated the realms of contemporary activism. For example, while there are ongoing wars between the environmentalist camp and the capitalist powers, rarely is any fundamental change to the system proposed – instead, reforms or restrictions to capitalism are suggested. The same exists on the affirmative action front, where the solution to social inequalities is to elevate women or minorities to the possessor class instead of challenging the possessor class’ right to their ill-conceived power. Although three in five Canadians have responded to a poll saying that socialism is a viable political alternative to capitalism, a real challenge to capitalism only amounts once in a while, such as at Seattle or Quebec City.
Even so, opposition to globalization may not always imply opposition to capitalism itself. Calls for restricting capitalism are, to be blunt, foolhardy, for the capitalist system relies on being able to run amok so that it may exploit every worker, resource and portion of wealth that it can place its hands on. If any given capitalist system were restricted, its very lifeblood is placed in danger thereby risking the growth that is necessary to sustain it. Thus, the capitalist system is weak without rampant exploitation, and it must be replaced. This means that all activists must embrace a policy of fundamental economic change that does not restrict capitalism but abandons it altogether. Other economic systems have come and gone, and capitalism can be as such: the poverty and starvation proclaimed to be the result of abolishing capitalism are not a consequence, but something that the capitalist system has cursed humanity with and is only to be left behind.
There are over six billion human beings living on this planet, with the resources that our soil has given us being possessed by a remarkable few. Capitalism has expanded its reach across the planet in its insatiable need to consume what the world has to offer. Instead, this should be used to eliminate poverty, defeat world hunger, liberate the toiling masses and ultimately make the world fit for everybody to live on.
Humans are one people, weighed down only by what the possessor class wishes for them to be weighed down by so that they may be distracted focus from the possessor class’ rampant and wanton destruction of their livelihood.
Community socialism is an assertion of power for the common people, a rallying call to confront and overthrow. It is about returning sovereignty to the people. An era of unity from North to South and East to West is calling us all.
Do not hesitate: free this planet and ourselves through direct action against the current world order of the twins of capitalism and hate. Reorganize, repossess, and rise up!