Billionaires Tremble In Fear of the Have-Nots Hearing and Organizing Around This Idea
The mass media deluge us with competing ideas to obscure this one
The idea that the billionaires tremble in fear of the have-nots hearing and organizing around is this simple idea:
The economy should be based on the principle of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.”1
The billionaires fear the have-nots hearing this idea because, unlike the competing ideas about the economy that the billionaires deluge us with (discussed below), this idea unifies the have-nots. It unifies the have-nots because the vast majority of have-nots ALREADY respond positively to this idea (which is a form of the Golden Rule) when they hear it expressed; the problem is that they seldom hear it expressed.
This “From each according…” idea is what most people think is morally right.
To prevent the have-nots from organizing around this unifying idea, the billionaires not only censor it in their mass (and so-called “alternative”) media—when have you ever heard it expressed there?—but also deluge us with competing ideas that do not challenge class inequality but seem, at least on first glance, to be good.
The ideas that the billionaires ask us to embrace INSTEAD of “From each according…” are morally wrong.
For example, the idea that we should make the economy be based on the principle that some things (such as health care or housing or food, etc.) are the RIGHT OF ALL is a rejection of the “From each according…” principle because it says that even those who refuse to contribute reasonably according to ability have a RIGHT to take the fruits of the labor of those who do contribute reasonably according to ability. Many have-nots, quite understandably, say this is morally wrong, that it is pro-freeloader, that it makes a kind of slave of those who do contribute reasonably according to ability and makes those who refuse to contribute reasonably like a slave-owner. If you have trouble understanding why many people feel this way, then I hope you will read “Is Anything the Right of ALL?” and “A Parable: The Right to Health Care” and “Is Health Care the Right of Freeloaders?”
Note that it is one thing to provide, say, health care to a person who refuses to contribute reasonably according to ability (as discussed in footnote #1) because you WANT to provide them health care for some reason. But it is a very different thing to say that a freeloader has a RIGHT to DEMAND that you provide them health care, to demand that you labor as an orderly or nurse or physician or X-ray technician to take care of them, or labor to produce whatever is used to compensate such health care providers for their labor.
For example, a national health care system might offer health care free to everybody no matter what, instead of only to people who are not free loaders, simply because it would cost more to check if a person is a freeloader every time somebody requests health care. Fine. Or it may be desirable for the sake of overall public health to offer health care that is needed to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. Fine. Or the health care workers may not want to live where sick people are dying on the street; or they may just feel sorry for the freeloader, or hope to improve their chances of going to heaven if they give the freeloader care. Fine. But note that these reasons have nothing to do with the notion that free loaders have a right to have health care provided to them by those who do contribute reasonably according to ability.
The Universal Basic Income idea is getting a lot of promotion in the mass media lately. That’s because it is a divisive trap, designed to pit the liberal NPR-listening have-nots against the more blue-collar non-NPR-listening have-nots who don’t like it because it is overtly freeloader-friendly, as I discuss here.
Then there’s Robert Reich’s idea that he preaches we should all embrace: “Equal Opportunity.” As I discuss here, this idea means DO NOT base the economy on the “From each according…” principle but instead base it on the idea that there should be some rich (a few) and some poor (the many) but, “Hey! That’s perfectly fine as long as everybody has an equal opportunity on a ‘level playing field’ to win in a competition of all against all and get to be one of the few rich people.” According to this “Equal Opportunity” nonsense, the only thing wrong with chattel slavery in the American ante bellum South was that blacks didn’t have an equal opportunity with whites to be a slave owner.
Of course there’s the standard capitalist idea: “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” (a.k.a. wage slavery.) This idea says that the economy should be based on having a few employers and lots of employees, with the employers being dictators over the employees during working hours, with the employers owning everything that the employees create with their labor, and with the employees having to be satisfied with whatever wage the employer pays them. This is the way for a billionaire class to be a ruling billionaire plutocracy that treats the have-nots like dirt. It is the opposite of an economy (described here and here and here) based on “From each according…”
Lastly, let’s not forget the idea embraced by both the liberal and conservative wings of the ruling class, an idea first given its famous pithy expression by John F. Kennedy: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” In other words (at least according to some interpreters of JFK’s phrase), whatever makes things better for the wealthiest people—the big capitalist employers—will also make things better for the poorest people—the have-not employees. Thus when the workers work harder and smarter to increase production and profits for their employers, the workers will also make out better:
Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement to make our economy be based on the “From each according…” principle.
This is an egalitarian principle, and egalitarians, being reasonable people, will no doubt count children and retired elderly and people physically or mentally or for any other reason unable to work as "working reasonably" even though they do no work, and likewise deem it "reasonable work" when people care for their own or other children or for other sick adults or attend school or apprentice programs to learn skills so as to be able to work in the future. Also, being reasonable people, egalitarians will no doubt take into account, when deciding how much work is reasonable, how onerous or unpleasant or dangerous some kinds of work are compared to other kinds.
Note that Karl Marx did NOT call for shaping the economy according to the “From each according….” principle until FAR FAR in the future, definitely not now nor in the lifetime of those living now.
Marx did not invent this idea, he merely popularized it in his Critique of the Gotha Program, in which he emphasized that society could NOT be based on this principle until far FAR in the future. Here are his exact words:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
Marx thought that, since people were just motivated by self-interest, they would never share things according to "From each according to his ability, to each according his needs," as long as there was still economic scarcity. But in about half of Spain during the Spanish Revolution 1936-9 led by people (who called themselves anarchists) who rejected this Marxist view of people, the "From each according to need, to each according to ability" principle was implemented with great success despite great economic scarcity; economic productivity increased even though many people had to be in the militias fighting the fascist General Franco. Read about this here.
As early as 1775 in his Code de la Nature ou le Veritable esprit de Ses Lois a Frenchman named Morelly wrote, long before Karl Marx was even born, that his aim was "To distribute work according to capacity; products according to needs." The same idea appears even earlier, in the Bible (Acts, 4:34-35): "Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostle's feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need." According to the authors of this Monthly Review article, "Back in 1987, a poll of the U.S. population indicated that 45 percent of the population believed that Marx’s famous words from the Critique of the Gotha Programme delimiting communism—'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'—were enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. This, of course, said more about the absolute ideals of most Americans, and what they thought they should expect, than about the U.S. Constitution itself.19"