| Towards a humanist economy |
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| Written by Ianko Stoianov |
| Saturday, 27 September 2008 19:41 |
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Towards a humanist economy
Two totally different economic systems can be created by man: a system based on greed, exploitation and dehumanisation or a world founded on mutual respect, co-operation and humanism. As the organising principle of modern states, the principle of greedy capitalist private property distorts everything for it is the principle of egoism, the principle of pitiful individualism; it has nothing in common with the principle of humanist communities – "Love your brother like yourself." It is the principle behind the ideology of each alienated government, the principle of double standards in domestic and foreign political affairs. The domination of the principle of unlimited private property of capitalist type leads to privatisation of political life. Being forced to alienate their own labour activities, the proletarians are also compelled to accept their alienation from the public good. The expropriation of their private property leads to the expropriation of the public property of the whole people. Today the principle of private property of capitalistic type has developed to its totality as a global principle. Its champions have been so successful in strengthening its global power that the principle of global private property has become a justification for the ruthless exploitation of the global working class and the rapacious economic and political actions of the Big Global Bourgeoisie, which aims at the total appropriation of the state, at the expropriation of the citizen and his alienation from public property, at depoliticizing of social life, at deparliamentarization of political life and annihilation of the national state as we know it. Globalisation of a capitalist type is theft of property of a higher order; it is a theft of the wealth of the nations. Since the end of the XV century the masters of the world systematically robbed and exploited their overseas colonies. This violent robbery was a part of the initial accumulation of capitals in the European countries. So tremendous and cruel was the power of the protagonists of the capitalist way of production that since then it has been spreading out all over the world; the fights of the word working classes against the barbarity and brutality of capitalism have invariably been heroic. Capitalist globalisation is a form of neocolonialism and unprecedented legitimized exploitation of the labour of whole nations. Whereas the capitalists of the past used to exploit predominantly the labour of the working class in their own countries, now – through the multinational companies – they have created a global system of exploitation the labour of whole nations unparalleled since time immemorial. Investing all over the world, they pay the incredibly cheap labour there and appropriate the enormous surplus product. It is an easy game for them to play because nowadays the state – res publica, – is still privatised and they are the owners. Modern states are based on the principle of private property in its exploiting capitalistic form and act in its defence. Today's political order is still based on governments appointed by the barons of Big Capital, who still successfully use the media to manipulate, brainwash and control the people. The main goal of the newest capitalist globalisation of the world is to lead up to the liberalisation of all commodities markets, of capital and labour, as well as industries and services. The global oligarchs want to subordinate and successfully subordinate governments and whole nations to the enormous power of their capital – i.e. to the extraordinary power of previously expropriated by them property of other people or nations – with the sole purpose to expropriate and rob more and more property, and lead up to the constitution of stateless global governance. Abolishing all kinds of regulatory functions of the states, the agents of capital – big business and multinational corporations – dominate the world of politics and have more political clout and economic power than the democratically-elected governments; their immense power is unaccountable and based on economic dictatorship. Power has shifted away from governments and now lies in the hands of the huge transnational corporations that rule over the world economy. The process of deparliamentarisation of capitalist democracy is still ongoing. The will of Big Global Bourgeoisie rules the world. Due to the "invisible" hand of the market the big global bourgeoisie has safely installed an invisible global government – the international financial institutions fully committed on behalf of their masters; the imperative demands of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation are free from all kinds of control and restrictions on the part of the electorate in countries all over the world. The market is left largely unfettered. Threatening that otherwise they would take their investment to more accommodating locations, the transnational companies gain the immense power to impose their will on nations all over the planet and force their governments to step aside. Thus, overthrowing exchange controls and protectionism in economies all over the world, capital is free to roam the world, looking for the best investment opportunities and labour exploitation. Such is the unconditional power of neo-liberal capitalism and its huge machine of brainwashing propaganda and manipulation that the truth about the unlimited and tremendously selfish will of the capitalist establishment is hideously hidden. It is high time the modern proletariat achieved a higher state of its intellectual will and had the courage to understand and face the truth: depoliticizing the political life of the nations, the private interests of the Big Global Bourgeoisie thoroughly remove the collective will of the electorates. No matter how much politicians posture and how many times voters go through the democratic motions, the rules are still made by an unaccountable, and virtually infinitely powerful Global Bourgeoisie capable of ignoring governments and dominating over them. Here we will be brief. Suffice it is to say that the ugly aspects of the process of globalisation have been superbly described by many deservedly famous contemporary dissidents such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, etc. The problem dissidents invariably have is that while they are amazingly good at criticising, they fail to provide the cure, the treatment. After the collapse of pseudo-communism in the Soviet Union, the European Social-democratic parties lost their historical mission and their historical vision, their left roots and identity and energetically began to acquire the dogmas of neo-liberalism. A different world is possible. New humanism aims at liberating humanity of the oppression of the principle of private property of exploiting capitalist type, which leads to total privatization of public property and political power. It aims at getting rid of the dictatorship of the Big Bourgeoisie and its political class; a dictatorship, which imposes and preserves the principle of private property of capitalist type. The humanists are in favour of a world based on mutual respect, co-operation and humanism. They want to breathe new life into the humanist will for just power expressed in Plato and Marx's teaching and time and time again to make it a victorious force in the history of mankind capable of winning and overcoming the forces of evil. Being men and women of destiny, they are ready to devote their lives and their energy to this new social order; they will build it for they are always predestined to be great leaders and change the course of World History. Marx's project, which aimed at overthrowing capitalism's social separation of the producers from the productive forces and a complete decommodification of labour power, is still actual. Marx suggested that whereas the means of production are chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labour in capitalism, communism will transform them into mere instruments of free and associated labour. Unfortunately, never did Marx elaborate upon the technicalities and the concrete way of implementing his ideas. Unlike Stalin's pseudo-communism, which failed to understand and acknowledge the justice of free market economies, common possession of the means of production in a neo-humanist society does not mean that they have to be a state property. It means that they must belong to free associations of labourers who do not only transform capitalist companies and corporations into democratic associations in which each worker has a voice and an interest but also freely compete in the conditions of collective market economy. Thus, Engels and Marx's dream will come true: human labour power will be emancipated from its position as a commodity. Democracy begins at work, at the workplace, at the corporation. The political sovereignty of the people is impossible to exist in actuality without their economic sovereignty, without sovereignty of labour. The humanists want to – and are determined to – carry out into practice what Rousseau knew in his day: "The social compact sets up among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights."1 This manifesto aims at continuing the deed of all great humanists passionately willing to develop and practically apply the theory of humanist political economy on the base of a just ethical social contract for joint common activities of the producers as well as modernising the project for overthrowing the inhumane form of the principle of private property of capitalist type and the capitalist hired society. The will of modern humanity for just political economy will abolish the system of hired labour and will create economic enterprises of a new type functioning as free unions of people in the Rousseau's meaning of the word. . A truly humane politico-economic order can definitely come into being only through the overthrow of the capitalist order. The right of both individual and collective labour of just payment, the right of sovereign labour to have the fruits of their hands and intellect and, therefore, the fruits of their labour is sacred and inviolable. A society based on the principle of exploiting private property of capitalist type is organised in such a way that the lion's share of the products of the sovereign labour, the private good, as well as the sovereign public good is robbed conveniently by the Big Bourgeoisie. The modern capitalist economic system has not change its nature: The wolf may lose his teeth but never his nature. Big Capital takes it all. The proletariat obtains only the leavings of its labour. This injustice, which works so advantageously for the Big Bourgeoisie, is the source of the deepest irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism and the bourgeois class society; it is the reason that capitalism is antagonist of humanity and humanistic societies. This system must be abolished and will be abolished. What always happens will happen again: when people begin to understand a political system in its true contradictoriness, they find a new humanist solution of the contradictions and revolutionise the world; this is the task of every enlightened era. True, contradictions are an immanent moment of the absolute; however, the point is to refute the profoundly unjust contradictions of the bourgeois class state, to create a higher social order and humanise the inevitable contradictions of economic and political life, to elevate them to their humanistic dimension according to which "Not money is the measure of Man" but "Man is a measure of all things in the world." Therefore, humanism and nothing else but humanism imposes a deep obligation upon us to prepare the people to enter in possession of the revolutionising power to change the world. This is the task of our time. Unlike our predecessors – the Marxists, – the humanists vigorously and decisively support the principle of private property in its humanistic forms in order to express and develop the longings, desires and aspirations of humanist will. Understood in its truth, the opposite of the private property of capitalist predatory-rapacious type is not the total negation and abolition of private property through the abstract common property, as Plato and Marx wanted, but private property of a humanist type in its universal form. This universal private property of humanist type is the truly universal and free; it is the riddle of history solved for it achieves the unity of opposite volitions for property. Now this new type of private property must be presented. It is unusually difficult for the contemporary man to perceive the tremendous power of the fundamental principle of humanist private property; the close relationship between this new type of property and freedom must be shown to him. For even to this day the capitalist society as such has not yet attained and due to its intrinsic immorality cannot attain the highest determinations and actuality of freedom. The capitalist notion of freedom is still largely indeterminate and undeveloped; it is still not rational enough. The newest development of freedom and the idea of property aims at the introduction of a new scientific, legal and ethical actuality, the result being that every humanistic Will becomes a truly free Will. Hegel, the greatest philosopher of all times, never related freedom to the question of ownership. That is the reason why in his works freedom is still unconditionally indeterminate and abstract. He claims that "the Eastern nations knew only that one is free" and that one is therefore only a despot, not a free man; "the Greek and Roman world knew only that some are free," and therefore the Greeks and the Romans had slaves; while he and his contemporaries "know that all men absolutely (man as man) are free."2 It was not true; Hegel was utterly unable to notice that in his lifetime mankind's Will for humanism was still enslaved, and consequently, the freedom of Will was still incomplete. He did not know and could not have known yet that only when economic freedom is really universal and every individual possesses property in the world of production of material goods, i.e. possesses means of production, can true political freedom – the highest form of freedom – exist. It was for that reason that never did the question of humanist ownership attract Hegel's attention. As a matter of fact, only some had then and only some still have private property over the means of production today. Only some still have the "freedom" to exploit other people, to expropriate the private property of all other classes from them, to brainwash and manipulate them and enjoy total political freedom and public happiness because the paradise of the bourgeois states and the "rule of law" they have created for themselves make it possible for them to dominate with impunity. The rights of the universal, of the community of people, have always been sacrificed on the altar of private property of exploiting type, the altar of the one or of the few. However, the times of rational freedom are now to come. The fundamental principle of a truly humanistic society is: Everyone has property. Only when everybody has productive capital, all are free. A truly just and free society can only be based on the fact that all people have productive capital. The task of World history is to continue to develop the desires and volitions of Will for its highest good – freedom of the economic and political subject. Thus, modern humanism reconciles the opposites and rightly so. The universal right to property of humanist type can only be implemented through sublation – i.e. through total abolition and rejection – of private property in its capitalist form and overthrowing the political system based on the total private property of the public good and the reckless greed of the few, which harms the future of the many. Modern humanism wills to take the best of both worlds and reconcile the opposites. The task of the humanist society is to create an economy in which enterprises are as successful and factories are as productive as the ones based on the principle of private property in its capitalist form and as humanist as the ones, which Marx's communism dreamt about. Private property in its humane form is the newest and definitely the best solution of the riddle of history. It is the reconciliation of the opposites because only in its humane form – as it has been described above – the principle of private property is universal. God wills everybody to have private property; everybody's industrial capital must be acknowledged. The creation of a humanist political economy is absolutely necessary. The principle of humanist private property is the solution of the task of finding the supreme principle of the will for a truly just state order. The fact remains that Locke's thesis - "the work of our body and the deeds of our hands" – is just a moment of the complete reality of human existence, a moment of the Universal Will. The latter also consists of the preservation of the human race, of mankind, as well as the implementation of the principle of universal justice. We are definitely going to create a new civilisation based on the principle of public property, which has the principle of humanist private property as one of its moments. Locke might have been aware of the fact that his consistently expressed ethical support and humanistic apology of private property is at the same time consistently expressed humanism. Today the humanists certainly know that for sure. They have every right to claim that labour – both intellectual and manual – is the most essential factor of creating capital and, therefore, the capital which every worker creates belongs to him in accordance with Locke's teaching that "the labour of his body and the product of his hands" as well as the labour of his intellect "rightly and deservedly belong to him." It is absolutely true that the human being himself is the main force of production. The neo-humanists are determined to respect private property but only in its universal and, therefore, humanistic form. Capitalism is certainly a pre-humanistic society. The worker, the teacher, the engineer – whatever man's profession is – are in full possession of their bodies, intellectual Will, qualifications, lives, professional experience, skills and knowledge as well as freedom. They are masters of themselves; they are the only legitimate owners of their corporeal, intellectual, volitional and professional capital; capital, which gives each and everyone the right of 100% participation in division of the surplus value of the product in accordance with his capital. This capital is as indivisible and inalienable from the personality of the white-collar or blue-collar worker as the participation of his physical body and his intellectual Will in the economic life of the enterprise he works for is. It cannot become somebody else's property. In no way are capitalists entitled to steal other people's capital. The worker is always in possession of his capital and his work force. Being the only owner of his work force, he has an absolute right to want joint ownership of the produced product, common real participation in the collective property and management of the company or the firm he works for as well as in its reinvestments and distribution of wealth. A radical just change is passionately willed by humanity so as to constitute the sovereignty of labour, to restore the original unity of the labourer with the means of production and his unconditional right to property over an appropriate part of the productive forces. That will create a work environment that is truly worker centred. Only when the exploiting capitalist system is entirely overthrown, can a truly humanistic society be created; a society, which will aim at defending the sovereignty of individual labour as well the sovereignty of collective labour. It will lead to the creation of a new humanistic political economy radically opposed to the unethical and predatory political economy of the exploiting class. Only when people are in total possession of their private and public property, can they be in possession of themselves and, therefore, free. To want to be free – this is the highest determination of political Will. The solution of the contradictions of a society based on the principle of private property of exploiting type is and can be only one – social co-operation. In other words, the task which the humanists face is to create such a social union whose economy is based on the principle of humane private property and, therefore, on humanistic social co-operation and at the same time is as highly productive as a greedy and predatory capitalist economy based on the exploitation of man by man. This is not an easy task. Absolutely sure! But it is feasible. It was Marx, who used to say: „Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!"”3 "To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system,"4 namely because the capitalist system of hired labour can exist only through the expropriation of hired labour from its product. Capitalism is based on the illegitimate theft of property. True, defence of private property is a fundamental function of the law; however, its consistent application means defence of every man's right to humanistic private property, i.e. defence of the private property and the capital of all members of the robbed classes, of all members of the working class as well as all individuals belonging to the middle class. Without question, these are the classes that will fight for the deed of humanism and create a new social order in the nearest future as a first step of the newest development of humanism. The humanists stand for market economy as the absolutely necessary principle of justice of economic life. They stand for implementing genuine economic and political democracy based on the indivisible, inalienable, sacred and sovereign right of each individual to private property of humanistic type as well as public property. They declare: Free market – yes! Capitalism – no! Free market – yes because it establishes the foundation of all kinds of personal freedom and happiness as well as public justice. Capitalism – no because it is based on exploitation of man by man. Freedom of trade, freedom of all economic activities have to remain within the frames of humanistic industrial production. For centuries humanists have been claiming that labouring men can and must become their own employers through cooperative associations in which the whole capital is the property of associated producers. Without question, in the times of the economics of knowledge, in which knowledge is money, they possess sufficient intelligence to be in possession and enjoy the entire benefits of their own labour. In accordance with the principle of humanist private property, private property of capitalist type comes to an end with the total expropriation of the expropriators, i.e. with the appropriation of the productive forces by associated labour, emancipation of the modern proletariat and establishing universal collective co-ownership of the means of production and all kinds of enterprises. The principle of private property of humanist type constitutes a concrete form of property so that capital is not converted into an abstract common property, and thus into nobody's property of all members of society. However, its social power is not exploitative any more for it is based on real socialization of production; this kind of social property ensures the sovereignty of labour. We want to create a society in which no-one has the power to subjugate the labour of others through possession of the means of such appropriation, a community of free individuals, a society in which the universal character of the means of production, their social role is the dominating factor, a society whose moral and ethics are based on social unity and solidarity, on integration of persons and classes into a social entity. The common good, the good of every political community and the good of humanity as such are above the private good of each particular individual. Every representative of associated labour must consider himself a state activist, attain the level of statesmanship, of enlightened political Will and work for the welfare of the human species. The humanists want to change the traditional capitalistic way of thinking about wealth and virtue and to give humanity a new goal: building a social order of a new type which will implement humanistic ideas of virtue and lead to the ethical perfection of the human species. Today Man uses not only the fruits of Earth, which God bestowed upon him but he is also the creator of his own material welfare. Fortunately, Man is a creator who has realised that his hopes for power over the Nature due to his economic and technological success are delusive. Now the most important thing this creator has to become aware of as soon as possible is that his material wealth must first and foremost be humane, that we need new ethical principles and institutions based on humanistic communism, that we are burdened with a responsibility for what we do. New forms of property are bound to be examined and implemented in the course of development of the World History towards humanism and humanist economy.
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