People Don't Get On a Bus If They Don't Know Where It's Going. Ditto re Joining a Social Movement

Knowing what kind of a world we are FOR is as important as knowing what injustices we're against

In order to end the horrible injustices that characterize our present world order it is crucial to build a mass movement that not only knows what it is against but also has an inspiring vision of the world it is for. Why? Because (as one of my sons once told me in this regard) people don’t get on a bus if they don’t know where it’s going, do they?

There are two reasons why we do not have a large mass movement today to remove from power the billionaire plutocracies that rule the world and inflict such horrible suffering on so many people to maintain their unjust wealth and power and privilege.

One reason is that the rich work very hard, and, so far, successfully, to prevent the vast majority of people who would love to remove the rich from power from being confident that they are in fact the vast majority in that aspiration. Lacking this confidence, people feel hopeless about the possibility of removing the rich from power and therefore do not do the serious organizing it takes to make it happen. Lacking this confidence that they are the vast majority, they don’t think about how it is possible (this way!) to remove the rich from power despite the fact that the rich have a powerful military force.

The second reason we don’t have a large mass movement to remove the rich from power is the focus of this article. It’s this. People are not convinced that it is possible for a society to be substantially better than the one that exists now. The only alternative to our current social system—undisguised rule by the very rich—that most people know of is the Marxist alternative exemplified by nations whose rulers have declared them to be Socialist or Communist. But the Marxist alternative, as lots of people know, is not a desirable one. It is ugly in its own way, thoroughly anti-democratic in its own way, and still—in its own ugly way—rule by a privileged (essentially rich) minority that ruthlessly imposes the same old economic inequality. Why, most people ask, fight to change the system if the new system will be one in which “all the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”?

If we want a better world we need to have an inspiring vision of what that world will be. If we want to build a mass movement for a better world, then we damn well need to tell people where that movement is going, or else—like the bus—they won’t “get on it,” right?

This is why I write about and talk about egalitarianism, which is an inspiring vision of a much better social system.

• It is why I wrote a FAQ-type article about the aim of egalitarian revolution.

• It is why I write about how egalitarianism is the opposite of Marxism.

• It is why I write about how egalitarian genuine democracy, based on voluntary federation (read about real-life voluntary federation here) of sovereign LOCAL assemblies (read why local, not national, here) of egalitarians (read why only egalitarians, not everybody, here), is the opposite of the fake democracy that exists in non-egalitarian societies be they capitalist or socialist or Communist.

• It is why I illustrate what a good egalitarian society can be writing about the egalitarian society that existed in a quarter of Spain in 1936-9. For example read this eyewitness account of what actual egalitarian democracy looked like.

• It is why I write about how an egalitarian economy, 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,” is both morally right (and not freeloader-friendly), in contrast to an economy based on buying and selling (as I discuss in “Why Abolish the Use of Money?”), and is also entirely practical and even MORE productive when so-desired, as I discuss here, and is furthermore the DESIRABLE way for people to do useful work together, as I illustrate here.

• It is why I write about how egalitarianism is the way to prevent abuse of power.

• It is why I write about how egalitarianism is the way to eliminate most corruption.

• It is why I write about how egalitarianism, with an egalitarian foreign policy, is the way to prevent thermonuclear war.

• It is why I write about how it is egalitarianism that makes for FAIRNESS and FREEDOM and JUSTICE and the promotion of TRUTH and in general the shaping of society by the GOLDEN RULE.

I am sure that you have noticed how non-egalitarian movements (revolutionary or reformist) do not talk about what they are for this way, or at all in many cases. They focus only on what they are against or what specific reform they want (such as a higher minimum wage or ending a specific war). If they win what they aim for then invariably the rich remain in power, the social and economic system remains the same, and people end up still suffering. Read here and here, for example, what happened in this regard to the people in South Africa when the anti-apartheid movement won, and read here about other struggles that met the same bad fate for lack of an inspiring vision of what kind of world they were for.

In order to present the inspiring vision of an egalitarian society we must stop paying homage to ideas and beliefs that are anti-egalitarian. That should be obvious, right? But for some people it seems not to be obvious.

For example:

• Egalitarianism is about sharing economic wealth on the basis of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.” This is the opposite having some people richer than others and it is the opposite of the current system of buying and selling things with money. Money is about exchanging equal value for equal value; it makes a society be based on the immoral anti-egalitarian principle: “To each according to whether one can pay for it or not.” Yes, money is a superb way (far more convenient than barter) of exchanging equal value for equal value. But money is not how people share economic wealth the moral way, the egalitarian way. What does it mean when people talk about how the money system should be modified (i.e., kept) or about placing a limit on how rich the richest people should be allowed to be, instead of talking about abolishing the use of money and having no rich and no poor? Talking like this amounts to advocating the anti-egalitarian principle of exchanging equal value for equal value and the idea that some people are rightly much richer than others. People who talk like this are thereby opposing egalitarianism even if they don’t intend to do that.

• The United States Constitution is a document that describes a government based on the opposite of the egalitarian genuine democracy of sovereign local assemblies of egalitarians. The Constitution says that the sovereign power should NOT be a local assembly but rather a national government. And the Constitution says that anti-egalitarians can definitely be in the government. The Constitution is thus an anti-egalitarian document at its very core (Here’s why the Founding Fathers made it that way.) If one tries to gain support by praising the U.S. Constitution then one is trying to gain support by opposing egalitarianism. This is not the way to present the egalitarian vision to people and certainly not the way to build a mass movement for egalitarianism.

Let’s talk to people about what we are FOR.

Even with just a very few words we can start to do that. Here’s one way:

People want to know “where our bus is going.” Let’s tell them, so they will want to get on it with us.

You can do this. Here’s how.

Your call.