A week ago, I wrote an outline of the necessary changes — the minimum changes — to allow for a profound reorientation of human life. You can read this outline here. Immediately, and rightly, friends asked me: But how? I want to outline how.
GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
1. First, it is necessary to declare the sovereignty of the people globally. This means a number of things in practice. Allegiance will no longer be given to any state or even any nation. We must understand ourselves as part of the global population of human animals, and more widely the totality of the world’s existence. Specifically, boundaries will no longer be recognised. Struggles for liberation in one locale are global struggles for liberation of all. As soon as the sovereignty of the people is established globally, all would understand him or herself as a member of the global population with local and global interests.
REDISTRIBUTION
2. It is a fact that in terms of wealth accumulation, the top 1,000 individuals in a world of 7+ billion people own more wealth than the rest of the human population combined. So in terms of income redistribution, the global problem is largely condensed into the wealth of a tiny number. The declaration of the sovereignty of the people globally would go hand-in-hand with notification that this global inequality of wealth (the 1% and the 99%, in popular understanding) has come to an end, and will be peacefully ended. It is then a matter of identifying these individuals and commencing immediate and targeted campaigns to put overwhelming global moral pressure on these individuals to give up this wealth and participate in a phased process of global transformation and redistribution until money itself is phased out, as outlined in the original vision, readable here.
THE POLICE
3. An accurate analysis needs to be made of the possible short-term changes in everyone’s lives — whether for those living in advanced societies, or those living in more overtly exploited societies — of the redistribution of resources in the medium term until money is phased out. The strategic goal is to reach the consciousness of the primary organ that maintains by force the global inequality of distribution of resources: the police in every society. The fight against the police has to be transcended. But equally, the police have to stop fighting society. The place of the analysis is to establish a credible vision of how equitable redistribution of massively unequal accumulated wealth can resolve near every global and local problem and conflict, including but not limited to endemic starvation, impoverishment, most forms of crime and most forms of marginalisation.
THE STATE
4. Behind the police lies the State. The global declaration of the sovereignty of the people is a frontal attack on the State and its panoply of control mechanisms. Again, the key is showing how the simple redistribution of the accumulated wealth of a minuscule minority set against global population numbers would in a phased process of redistribution elevate all beyond the immediate strictures of life that the State imposes and establishes as the core of its ordering function. No longer would the world be conceived of as a global factory for the benefit of a few, but rather a world of common resources for the use, based on need, itself based on aspirations in tune with the transformation needed, of the majority. The hierarchy system of capitalism would collapse, and with it would be rejected the entire consumer life model, to be replaced by a different conception of the purposes of existence, as outlined previously.
GEOPOLITICS
5. War having been made illegal, and global resources now conceived of as the common patrimony of all, without exception, the geopolitical structures that have locked nations and peoples into conflict will simply vanish. The massive global redistribution of resources — in the period of the controlled transition away from money — will manyfold realise the essential needs of every single person living on the planet, whether for education, health, leisure, a home, food and a network of support institutions to serve global citizens as equals. This redistribution would be so vast, and the understanding of the transformation that the people of the world would be undertaking so profound, that all violence would find no place, because, in essence, there would nothing one would need to gain. Global hunger cured within five years. Education for life guaranteed to everyone within a generation. The resources of the world pooled to invest in clean, solar energy that could serve the world’s needs within a decade, we would stop raping the planet and brutalising each other.
FLAT GOVERNANCE
6. Hierarchical institutions would be phased out. All equals, we would use our technological achievements to establish direct local and global democracy, unfolding within a conscious drive to reassess the state we had arrived to, the unnecessary suffering we had subjected ourselves and others to, and with a view to collectively lifting our eyes from the ground and seeing the universe around us and discussing all together, without pressure of the struggle for survival or profit, what we are, where we are, and where we would like to head — what paradise should look like, and how we could get there. Grounded in non-coercion, none could be forced to think alike, but still none would be without the resources to make whatever they wish from their lives. The condition would be solidarity and friendship, because none could coerce another, while none could deny (or would have reason to deny) the requests of another, if the request could be met without doing harm. The phase of redistribution would go a long way to purging the consciousness of people everywhere to own. The world is abundant. In the controlled transition, we could build the resources of societies equitably, and in the end money would become irrelevant, in part because access would not be conditioned upon it, and in part because during the controlled phase of transition, redistribution would allow people to fulfil their desires and needs, while at the broader scale humanity as a whole would lay plans for global development along a new model: common destiny, common equality, and the absence of the consciousness of ownership.
CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT
7. Education will be key to the whole process. Leadership in a transitional phase would necessarily fall upon those with strong ethical visions. In the history of human civilisations, this dialogue has been tried many times. But it always unfolded in the context of two things that are toxic to it, and distort and ultimately corrupt individuals, groups and societies: capitalism and the State. The controlled transition would set the world inexorably onto the path of ending money, while the principle of non-coercion would simply remove the State entirely. Institutions — the products of the long and difficult struggle for human betterment in the context of deep strictures borne of private property and State appropriation of life for its own national and geopolitical purposes — would remain but be steadily reformed. Anarchism, properly understood, is not chaos and destruction. It is building together as equals.
FRIENDSHIP
8. Can 1,000 individuals continue to block the life possibilities of billions, and the very horizon of our species, and the rights of living a full life in the world? By what right would they do so? Humanity needs to profoundly embrace the principle of non-coercion, to which ownership — whether of things or people — is anathema. At the very heart of capitalism and the State is the principle of self. What this transformation would add, without coercion, is the principle of all. Focus on the self to the detriment of others would be understood for what it is: coercion of others. Destiny is not fulfilled alone. We fulfil our destinies among others, and in parallel with others. The move beyond money would put people in constant contact with others. While redistribution would take care of the basics, allowing people to focus on what they want from their lives, living that life would almost always put the one in contact with others. Fulfilling one’s destiny would almost necessarily become a global dialogue entailing thousands of new connections, with nothing denied if it is justified as an aspiration and doesn’t impinge on the honest aspirations of others. But here the key is honesty. The model as a whole would not work based on lies or deceit. But then why would people need to lie when all was open to them, just as it would be for the people with whom they come into contact? We would make our destinies together, in profound and honest friendships. Friendship is inherent among equals.
WHERE DO WE START?
9. What is the primary condition for setting the ball rolling? Two things: a) The promise of a better world is real, certainly for the billions that constitute the 99% of the current global wealth and class system; b) Individually and collectively we must understand that our aspirations should be fulfilled. Destiny is not simply a matter of ideals. It is also a physical path that we should — and have a right to — pursue. It may take longer for some than for others, but nearly everyone at one point or other in their lives recognises that there is _something_ that they want to do. So long as this something does not entail coercion of others, there is nothing can intellectually or ethically justify this path being blocked. Healthy societies are not ordered societies. They are societies — or would be, for none exist — where individuals and groups can share and realise whatever they wish. In a situation of global citizenship (a literal global equality), people would be fundamentally free, while the end of money and the State would take away what presently blocks people from being free and realising their dreams.
SAYING NO TO SAY YES
10. Would it happen easily? Doubtless there would be initial resistance from two directions: from the money economy and all its lynchpins, given that privilege at the expense of others would be phased out; and from the State, its police force and ultimately military force, because the State has an existence of its own — principally a negative view of human beings, and their regimentation into ordered (and sometimes disordered) groups, for the sake of political profit, which is the control of large groups of human animals by smaller groups, serving, sometimes conceived, the “humanitarian” purpose of running the lives of populations. It is more than time that we all stopped supporting this, walk out of the impossible prison, and breath air as free and equal global citizens. The mentality inherent in the money economy and capitalism is virulent anti-social, and indeed anti-progress, in dissolving the grandeur of presence into work and growth. The State, however, is the primary organ of mass control, below which exists the mechanism of the capitalist economy. As such, its mentality is the key one to deconstruct. It can be summed up, when all is said and done, quite simply: power over others. But on what basis would other live animals, born contemporaneous to you, assert a right of coercion over you? There is no basis. And get rid of money, with effective equal redistribution, there is not even a shred of justification. The key to all of this — both the vision and the practical steps — is our refusal to be coerced. Simply put, no one has the right to assert authority over you. Especially when you refuse. That refusal is the gateway not only to a better life for all the people on planet Earth, but is also the gateway to our species — human civilisation — raising its eyes from the ground and engaging in our true home: the universe as a whole.
We can make this paradise.
11 June 2013