Egalitarian Revolutionary Transitional Demands
We need to think outside the capitalist class inequality box, or else we'll remain in that terrible box forever!
Here are 21 suggested transitional demands by an egalitarian revolutionary movement—a partial list and a work in progress. (The *, ** and *** footnotes are important and are right after the list of 21 demands.)
Make squatting legal for those who contribute reasonably according to ability (and who thus pay for their housing by working reasonably according to ability*).
(The *, ** and *** footnotes inside the graphic below titled “Local Assembly of Somewhereville Egalitarians” refer to the notes at the bottom of that graphic.)
Make it illegal to construct any new housing that a janitor cannot afford, or have the right freely, to live in.
Make health care that is the same quality as what the richest Americans receive available for free to all who work reasonably according to ability* (and who thus pay for it by working reasonably according to ability.)
Make food in grocery stores free for all those who work reasonably according to ability* (and who thus pay for it by working reasonably according to ability.)
Make transportation free for all those who work reasonably according to ability* (and who thus pay for it by working reasonably according to ability.)
Make entertainment (films, concerts, etc., etc.) and nice vacations free for all those who work reasonably according to ability* (and who thus pay for it by working reasonably according to ability.)
Ditto everything else people need or reasonably desire: these things should all be free for those who contribute reasonably according to ability* !!!!!
Abolish all foreign U.S. military bases, end all supply of weapons to foreign anti-egalitarian governments, and abolish all military projects that are not 100% for self-defense.
Abolish our nuclear weapons**.
Make it so that the highest authority regarding what people in a given local community are required to do or are prohibited from doing, including what they are required to do to implement any foreign policy decision such as going to war against anybody, is the Local Assembly of Egalitarians*** in that local community, as discussed here and here.
Make it so that the Local Assembly of Egalitarians*** (as described here) has the final authority to fire anybody, such as a police officer or prison guard, who is authorized to use violence against people.
Abolish involuntary solitary confinement.
Make "sex change" and “puberty blocker” medical/surgical procedures for minors illegal when the only purpose is treatment for gender dysphoria. (This is discussed here.) Also protect the right of girls and women to have females-only spaces in which people who are visibly male are not allowed, and to have female-only sports teams and competitions in which people who went through male puberty are not allowed. (This is discussed here.)
Require the truth (as discussed here) about racial discrimination—that discrimination against non-whites harms, not benefits, ordinary white people—to be taught in public schools.
Investigate and prosecute racial discrimination in employment, housing, education, and access to public venues, services and events. (This is the opposite of what DEI and Affirmative Action do, as discussed here and here and here.)
Provide lots of free mass media coverage for REAL debates (with the real opposing sides represented) about all controversial subjects such as catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, the Russia/Ukraine war, the supposed need to go to war against China, reparations to the descendants of slaves and to American Indians, and the benefit or harm from Covid-19 vaccinations.
Guarantee the right all of the workers in every economic enterprise (including institutions such as schools and hospitals, etc.) to democratically, as equals, make all of the decisions about how the enterprise operates, what it does with the products it produces, and to whom it provides the services it performs, consistent with the above demands. Guarantee the right of the workers to make mutual agreements with other workers as described here. (Rich people will say this is not allowed because they own pretty much everything and therefore have the right to control how it is used. Egalitarians reply, “No you don’t!”)
Inform jurors in criminal trials that they have the right of jury nullification, i.e., the right, based on their own sense of justice, to refuse to follow the law and acquit a defendant even when the evidence presented seems to point to an incontrovertible verdict of guilty.
Abolish all coercion to make people submit to a medical treatment (such as a vaccination) when that treatment has not been scientifically shown to protect other people from serious harm and to be very safe for the individual receiving it.
Declare that there is no right to speech that helps oppressors oppress people, not even if such speech does not cause likely imminent harm to innocent people and not even if such speech is humorous. (This is discussed here and here.) We saw what happened when the Nazis got away with this, right?
And we saw what happened when the slave-owners got away with it, right?
Declare that the concept, “national interest,” is a bogus concept because it is used as a euphemism for the interest of the ruling class of a nation, which interest may be contrary to that of the have-nots of the nation. Declare that our society stands on the side of the have-nots of the world, not on the side of any anti-egalitarians no matter what their nationality, religion, ethnicity, etc. (This is discussed here.)
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FOOTNOTES
* Three points are important in this regard:
#1. Children work reasonably according to ability just by being children. People who worked reasonably according to ability before retirement age are working reasonably according to ability after retirement age just by living. Students doing well in school and apprentices doing well in learning are thus working reasonably according to ability. People taking good care of children or elderly or others are working reasonably according to ability. People sincerely looking for employment but who are unable to find a reasonable job are working reasonably according to ability. People who can work reasonably according to ability but who refuse to do so are NOT working reasonably according to ability and do NOT get anything for free. The local assembly of egalitarians or its transitional version*** decides what is reasonable or not.
#2. Here’s the answer to those who scoff at these demands to make things free for those who work reasonably according to ability. The scoffers say, for example, “If food is free then how will the grocery store pay the farmer for the food?” The answer is in what demand #7 implies. The farmer does not need any money because everything he or she needs or reasonably desires is free because they “pay for it” by working reasonably according to ability as a farmer and providing the grocery store with food. Ditto the doctors and other health providers, and the people who manufacture subway cars and who drive them, etc. etc. etc.: they are “paid” by having the right to take for free what they reasonably need or desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need. By the way, virtually every nuclear family in the United States operates on exactly this principle; they don’t buy and sell services or commodities to each other; they share them according to the principle of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire.”
#3. Scarce things are rationed equitably according to need, to those who work reasonably according to ability, by the Local Assembly of Egalitarians (or by the transitional Local Community Jury described in footnote *** below.)
** By very publicly destroying our nuclear bombs and never using violence against non-combatants and by supporting egalitarians everywhere in the world against oppressors we make it crystal clear to the egalitarian people in any nation whose government might consider attacking us with nuclear bombs that such an attack has no moral justification and is an act of pure evil. That government would know that it would sharply increase the risk of being overthrown by its own people if it attacked us with nuclear weapons. The likelihood it would use nuclear weapons against us in this case is very small, much smaller than the likelihood--if we were armed with nuclear weapons and it feared (regardless, of course, how much we promised never to do so!) our launching a first nuclear strike--that it would retaliate against us with nuclear weapons if it thought (perhaps mistakenly, even, but such a mistake is quite possible) we had launched a nuclear first strike against it. Read about this further in my article saying why I condemn Russia’s and the U.S.’s threat to use nuclear weapons, no matter what the circumstances.
*** As a transitional step to having a Local Assembly of Egalitarians (as described here), extend the existing jury system to create a randomly selected Local Community Jury that would have the power stated here.
Thank you very for this. Really well explained. There is A LOT here to take in and evaluate/examine/contemplate, but i'd just like to make a very quick and superficial comment for now and that is that I was struck by the sentence - "By the way, virtually every nuclear family in the United States operates on exactly this principle; they don’t buy and sell services or commodities to each other; they share them according to the principle of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire" - and a thought came to me that this might indeed be the crux of the matter (or one of the cruxes). The fact that most of us have been conditioned in an atomised dog-eat-dog capitalist society to reserve our care and love and goodwill ONLY towards immediate family, and view everyone else (outside family) as someone who at best we're indifferent towards (perhaps slightly generous and charitable if the mood strikes us) and at worse see them as an enemy/competitor/threat to the narrow atomised "interests" of me or my family..
When i read that sentence it just came to me that this atomised frgamented capitalist perspective on life (and society) is a very big deal and is perhaps one of the root causes for why (and how) the ruling class are able to keep us stuck in this hierarahical anti-egalitarian social order (and to even view it as beneficial and protective of one's family).
But this is just a quick initial and superfici thought that came to me. Still requires further inquiry and examining and elucidation, of course
PS. One ither small thing - this atomised me-against-you capitalist perspective seems to me to be inherently anti-religious God-ignorant and Christ-rejecting, and yet ironically this is the perspective that i see most often entertained by many of those who like to view themselves as religious (especially conservative religious). That's another very major factor that hinders (or can hinder) the transformation of our hierarchical anti-egalitarian social order, it seems to me..