United States Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. recently said that there was a need in the Air Force for a low cost, lightweight fighter jet to replace aging F-16 fighter jets (Axe 2021). Astute readers will know that such a jet has already been attempted, the F-35. Since 2001, the US government and Lockheed Martin have worked to create the next generation of fighter jets at a total cost of $400 billion as of 2020 (Grazier 2020). At $21 billion a year, the F-35 project alone is capable of paying almost half of the estimated cost of $48 billion a year for free college education in the United States as proposed by Senator Sanders (Golshan 2019). However, as President, Biden has within the first month in office already approved $200 million in weapons sales through Raytheon to Jordan, Chile, and a NATO agency (Mehta 2021). As such, we can likely expect the Air Force to get their wish as we once more return to Obama-era global interventionism. Whereas in the previous five years we have seen blunter edged, loud, bragging styles of military engagements through Trump, we are now more likely to see a return to what was aspired to by Donald Rumsfeld and perfected by Barack Obama: “A new kind of war,” one with “sustained engagement that carries no deadlines” is the perfect distillation and crystallization of the American Empire’s need for consumption of resources (Rumsfeld 2001). And now with President Biden we might see a proliferation of such acts. 
    
​American culture has long been critiqued for its consumerism. Post-industrial America and much of the West has been absorbed fully in consumer culture. As Americans, the concept of “freedom” can be seen most clearly in what we can purchase and consume. The right to bear arms is not a right to be exercised against tyranny, but rather a marketing tool to sell personal defense handguns. The right to free speech is the right for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones to sell you snake oil. It is also the right for corporations to buy influence. Through Citizens United, money is equivocated by law to freedom. Even as other countries across the world entered mandatory lockdowns to prevent the spread of Covid-19 there was intense backlash in America. This is partly because such a lockdown would deprive us of the one freedom that we exercise most often and care the most about: our freedom to make consumer choices. Due to this, we did not have a lockdown like many other countries did. Nowhere in America were things fully closed to the degree that you saw in nations like Vietnam, China, or Australia. We do not see the health and wealth of us all in common as an expression of freedom, rather we view ourselves in our personal kingdoms. We lack the culture and social structures that would allow us to define freedom or express it in any other way. 
    
So, what happens when this rabid consumer culture is married with imperialism? What is unleashed when a society built on infinite economic growth and consumption must grow more and consume more? A Lovecraftian horror is thrust upon the world, its maw wide open and ready to engulf the planet. While conquest defined empires of the past, consumption is what defines the American empire.
    
President Joe Biden has already authorized bombings in Syria, citing Iranian backed militia groups, that have left 22 people dead (De Luce, Gains, Gubash 2021). This news comes the same day that Democrats capitulate to the Senate parliamentarian on a minimum wage increase (Linton, Segers 2021). Biden and the rest of the Democratic party have thrown their hands in the air in mock shock and disappointment over an issue for which they cared very little. However, the bipartisan support for war can be seen in the 93-2 confirmation for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a man who was previously on the board of Raytheon and will receive close to $1.7 million in payments from Raytheon (Shabad 2021; Capaccio, Allison 2021). Beyond Secretary Austin we can see the White House’s appetite for war only grows with other nominations such as Neera Tanden to head the OMB. Tanden has previously stated that Libya should repay the United States in the form of oil after the removal of Gaddafi (Greenwald 2015). This is the model of empire as consumption. We liberated you, now give us your resources. This harrowing model of global politics is repeated endlessly by administration after administration. 
    
This immediate move into warfare is not novel in any way. Trump’s first military order came in early February of 2017, and Obama’s first military order was a mere three days into his presidency (Merica, Brown, Zeleny 2017; Zenko 2017). Now as we move into the Biden presidency, we see the persistence of American imperialism taking precedence above all other policy matters. While elected officials and talking heads berate the left for wanting minimum wage increases, green energy, an end to foreign wars, or any other policy goal and speak about the difficulties involved they have no issue ordering and defending the death of people across the world. 
    
We have seen once again the broken promises and empty words of the Democratic party. In our discussions with our fellow workers, we must draw attention to this betrayal. We must continue to further class consciousness with those around us. We must continue to develop our own infrastructure and organizations to more effectively combat these warmongers and imperialists. Ultimately it is capitalism that is the driving force for these horrendous acts of war. Through its overthrow we will see the day where all peoples of the world are liberated. Until that day comes, we must continue our work in solidarity and in strength. Day by day, more and more of the working class of this country sees how little the imperialist machine cares for them and how much they might gain from its overthrow.





Citations

Axe, D. (2021, February 25). The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-force-just-admitted-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-has-failed/?sh=13cb405d1b16

Capaccio, A., & Allison, B. (2021, January 10). Biden Defense Pick to Get Up to $1.7 Million From Raytheon role. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-10/biden-defense-pick-to-get-up-to-1-7-million-from-raytheon-role

Golshan, T. (2019, June 24). Bernie Sanders's free college proposal just got a whole lot bigger. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/23/18714615/bernie-sanders-free-college-for-all-2020-student-loan-debt

Grazier, D. (2020, October 21). Selective Arithmetic to Hide F-35's True Costs. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/10/selective-arithmetic-to-hide-the-f-35s-true-costs/#:~:text=The Navy spent a total, or $7.5 billion per ship.

Greenwald, G. (2015, November 05). Leaked Emails from Pro-Clinton Think Tank Reveal Censorship and Pandering to Israel. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://theintercept.com/2015/11/05/leaked-emails-from-pro-clinton-group-reveal-censorship-of-staff-on-israel-aipac-pandering-warped-militarism/

Linton, C., & Segers, G. (2021, February 26). Senate parliamentarian rules Democrats cannot include minimum wage hike in COVID-19 economic relief bill. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-covid-relief-bill-senate-parliamentarian/

Luce, D. D., Gains, M., & Gubash, C. (2021, February 26). Biden orders airstrikes in Syria, retaliating against Iran-backed militias. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/biden-airstrikes-syria-retaliating-against-iran-backed-militias-n1258912

Mehta, A. (2021, February 11). State clears first three foreign military sales of Biden administration. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2021/02/11/state-clears-first-three-foreign-military-sales-of-biden-administration/

Merica, D., Browne, R., & Zeleny, J. (2017, February 03). How Donald Trump's first military action went from the Obama White House to deadly raid - CNN Politics. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-trump-obama/index.html

Rumsfeld, D. (2001, September 27). A New Kind of War. The New York Times, p. 21. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/27/opinion/a-new-kind-of-war.html

Shabad, R. (2021, January 22). Senate confirms Lloyd Austin as first Black defense secretary. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-confirms-austin-first-black-defense-secretary-n1255322

Zenko, M. (2017, January 20). Obama's Final Drone Strike Data. Retrieved February 26, 2021, from https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data​

According to legend, when United States President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he said to her, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Whether, in fact, Lincoln really did say this is immaterial. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a best seller of the 1850s and 60s and it brought realistic depictions of the horrors of slavery into the homes of millions of white Americans who might have otherwise never imagined the atrocities committed on Southern plantations. Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired songs, plays, fashion and even kitchenware. Many, including the Lincoln of legend, saw Stowe’s writing as the catalyst for the American Civil War.
​
Lincoln’s purported comment illustrates the importance of stories. Stories are powerful. They can take the receiver of the story to a different place and time. They can reshape the receiver’s vision of what is moral, just and most importantly what is possible. What happens in reality can be guided by a committed group of individuals’ effective articulation of a good story. Italian critical theorist Antonio Gramsci called an effective story “a special relationship or bond between intellectuals and the people, the nation.”

Fiction had a powerful effect on the politics of post-bellum America. Edward Bellamy’s utopian socialist novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887, published in 1888, was the third best seller of its time after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben Hur. The novel articulated a vision of a future socialist America from the perspective of a Rip Van Winkle character who awoke to a much better world than the one that existed when he fell asleep. The story inspired its readers to take action to build the future Bellamy described. One hundred sixty five Nationalist Clubs, so called because they wanted to nationalize all industries after Bellamy’s description, sprung up throughout the United States by 1891. Others fused Karl Marx’s scientific socialism with Bellamy’s Nationalism and the American utopian movements of the 1830s and 40s to form prefigurative socialist communities such as the Kaweah Colony in California’s Sequoia region. The Bellamy movement led to the formation of the People’s Party, also known as the Populists, in 1892. The Populists became a major electoral force that pushed both the major parties to the left.​

In 1935 Georgi Dimitrov, at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, expressed the importance of creating stories that connect contemporary struggles to the revolutionary history of the past. He was concerned that reactionary historical narratives were dominating the public imagination, remarking:​

Tenth Communist Party USA convention in Chicago. May 1938.​

​Fiction is a tool that has historically been wielded to great effect by both the right and the left. Some have argued more recently that the strength of the pro-Trump QAnon movement, its symbols very visible in the January 6th, 2021 Capitol seige, is that it offers a narrative, albeit delusional, to explain inexplicable hisotrical events. Hitler’s Jewish conspiracy narrative served this same purpose after the failure of the Weimar republic and the Sparticist revolution to uplift the German economy. On the other hand, the popularity of 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was largely due to his compelling narrative that described an ultra-rich 1% of the population that has exploited and oppressed the rest of the 99% of the people. The story remains a compelling and persistent legacy of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Occupy and Sanders’ narratives and the historical narratives of the broad left tend to have the benefit of being based on economic and historical facts. Radically reactionary, fascistic narratives like QAnon and the Jewish conspiracy are based almost entirely on fiction. Unfortunately, they proliferate because they are repeated so often. As Marx pointed out in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, religion also serves this purpose. At times it is the “cry of the oppressed creature,” based on economic and historical realities. At other times it is “the opiate of the masses,” based on fictions repeated across centuries.
​
Much of what Americans know about the Civil War was invented by former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest and his pro-slavery secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, shortly after the end of the Civil War. The “Noble Lost Cause” narrative, portrayed in popular films like Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone With the Wind (1940), has dominated entertainment and sadly even scholarship relating to the American Civil War for over a century. To counter the Klan’s reactionary narrative, it is important for the political left to articulate a narrative about the heroic actions of radicals during this revolutionary historical period. 

Author Timothy Russo has taken on today’s task of creating an explicitly leftist narrative of the American Civil War that is, in part, fiction and, in part, based on actual historical events. In a note left for this reviewer, Russo writes, “I firmly believe the left needs to tell great stories.” Unlike the vast majority of Civil War fiction, Russo’s heroes are radicals: underground abolitionists, adventurist Marxists, Free Soil homesteaders and labor organizers. Russo seeks to uproot the untold story of the revolutionary generals, colonels and underground railroad conductors that has so often been written out of the history of the American Civil War.
    
Russo’s protagonists echo the true stories of antebellum radicals like Marxist refugee of the Revolutions of 1848 Joseph Weydemeyer, abolitionist freethinker Sojourner Truth and spiritualist sisters Kate and Margaretta Fox. Russo’s focus is not on high ranking Republicans like John C. Frémont and Abraham Lincoln, but on common, working class and oppressed people: child laborers, Irish migrant workers, 48ers, strikers, Free Soil homesteaders, Quakers, religious freethinkers, clandestine gay men and temperance feminists. The world of Russo’s book is not the contemporary, atheistic world of today. It is an accurate portrayal of the way people saw the world at that time. Contemporary consumers of historical narratives often assume that the people of bygone eras were just like us, only with less technology. However, the world of 19th century American was a world where God was real, He was above us and the spirits were real and they were among us. Russo uses the idea of ghosts as a metaphor for a certain radical spirit. However, he is historically accurate in his portrayal of these ghosts as reified beings that have very real effects on the world and the people that inhabited it.
    
Russo’s story is a complex, interconnected thriller that eventually leads to the outbreak of what the International Workingmen’s Association, under the leadership of Karl Marx, called “the American Antislavery War.” Ghosts of Plum Run is a compelling story whose protagonists are racially, nationally and age diverse. It takes place on the embattled frontier in what would become Minnesota. The book is full of action that makes the reader yearn to find out what happens next. Despite a few instances of awkward wording, Timothy Russo has succeeded in telling a “great story” from the left. Ghosts of Plum Run is a valuable contribution to the genre of historical fiction. Although Civil War fiction is somewhat of a saturated market, few Civil War novels tell the story of how the various elements of European radicalism, militant abolitionism, organized labor and Free Soil homesteading coalesced around the Republican cause in the lead up to the Civil War. Even fewer in the Civil War novel cannon tell the story from an explicitly socialist point of view. Russo reports that volume two of Ghosts of Plum Run will be coming out this Spring. This writer, for one, is anticipating the next chapter in this saga with baited breath

"Fr​aught with Ought" reviews two new books concerning the American philosopher Wilfred Sellars (1912-1989). These are a collection of papers about Sellars by Jay Rosenberg (Wilfred Sellers: Fusing the Images, Oxford, 2007) and an anthology (In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfred Sellars, Harvard, 2007). Why all this interest in an academic philosopher, unknown to the general public, and dead for almost twenty years? And what has any of this to do with Marxism?
​
Briefly, Sellars was an analytic philosopher, a member of a school stemming back over a hundred years, that grew out of the rejection of the European philosophical tradition growing out of German Idealism, especially Kant and Hegel. Marxism also grew out of this German tradition.

Recently some analytic philosophers have come to believe that the wholesale rejection of Hegel and others in the classical tradition has been a mistake and was based on a faulty understanding of their works by some of the founders of the analytic movement, especially Bertrand Russell.

Sellars' philosophy is being examined in this light and is taken by some to be useful in reclaiming Kant and Hegel, for example, and using them as part of the program of analytic philosophy-- viz., of using the analysis of ordinary language usage and the philosophy of language to find the solution to philosophical problems. Rehabilitating the thinkers from whom Marx and Engels learned so much and whose ideas they grappled with in forming their own is also a way of reminding the contemporary world of the continuing relevance of Marxism.

One of Sellars' most important works was his 1956 paper "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." Although not in this work, Sellars gives an interesting definition of the aim of philosophy:"The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term."

This really is quite general and could be said of the natural and social sciences as well. The aim of Marxism could be said to be to bring about the end of human exploitation in the broadest possible sense by the most effective means, considered in the broadest possible sense, of eliminating capitalism and abolishing classes.

Marxists also share a common aim with Sellars. He wanted, in his own words. "to formulate a scientifically oriented, naturalistic realism which would 'save the appearances.'" The last expression refers to a desire not to stray too far from common sense. His love of science is the same as that of all true Marxists and is very clearly expressed by him when he writes, "in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not."

In other words, he shares with Marxists the idea, as Crane says, that philosophy's "fundamental task" is "to explain how things seem (in the broadest sense of that term) consistent with what science has told us about the world." The term "scientia mensura" is used by Sellarsians (it could be adopted by Marxists as well)to sum up this view. The job of philosophy is to bridge what Sellars called the "manifest image" of the world [i.e., common sense]and the "scientific image" [we are just a bunch of vibrating strings or atoms, etc.] Crane says Sellars developed his own "systematic philosophy" to deal with this problem. Let us see how far it agrees with Marxism.

Many philosophers such as Sellars have been bothered by three things about the manifest image of the world, according to Crane, namely intentionality or meaning, value, and consciousness. All bourgeois realists, just as all Marxist materialists, accept "that there is a world independent of thought." Bourgeois realists are in fact materialists. Sellars, however, has a problem with how we become aware of the world and how we use language to describe it.

Marxist and non-Marxist realists alike tend to see language as somehow reflecting or referring to the objects of the world. We learn what "cat" means by referring to a real cat. "According to this view," Crane says, "things in the world cause our minds to form certain representations, which is why they represent what they do." This is what Lenin thought when he said consciousness or sensation is a picture of reality. Crane says it is the view of the early Wittgenstein (of the "Tractatus"). But Sellars doesn't buy this. He has his own theory by which he replaces "reference" with "inference." As Crane puts it, "To talk about the meaning of a word is not to talk about the relation it bears to the object it stands for. Rather, it is to talk about what inferences-- what legitimate patterns of thought and reasoning-- that word can be used in."

This is a very dicey development. It seems to grow out of the later Wittgenstein (the "Philosophical Investigations") and his notion of a "language game." Whether this view can be reconciled with materialism is still being debated. What is really distinctive in this view is, Crane says, the role that normativity comes to play in the system. Sellars refers to words as "natural-linguistic objects" and we have to learn the rules (norms) for their use: "they tell us," Crane points out, "how words should and should not be used. Signification and meaning are normative matters." This leads us to a very important key concept of his philosophy-- namely, "the myth of the given." I'm not sure this "myth" is really a myth.

Sellars thinks of thought as "inner speech", as Crane says, "as employing the concepts one has learned in the course of acquiring a language to make inferences which result in dispositions to make 'outer' verbal judgments." So thinking, just as speaking, is subject to rules and norms.

Crane uses the example of a fig tree to clarify Sellars' views. An old fashioned materialist ( such as Lenin ) might say that we have the notion of a fig tree as a result of having learned how to use the words "fig tree" as a result of our early education. Our senses were presented with a particular object, our parents say "fig tree" and we learn that this "given" is to be referred to as a "fig tree."

This is an example (but not a good one) of "the myth of the given." Sellars says "all awareness is a linguistic affair." As Crane puts it "the perceptually given" is not "a mental episode which is prior to thought and language." This has the smell of idealism clinging to it.

Let’s try to be clearer. Crane says Sellars holds, "Every episode of taking something in is really a case of conceptualizing it, and conceptualizing requires being subject to the norms which can only come with the acquisition of a language." Sellars is really saying it is wrong to think there was a "concept of x" in the mind of the child just waiting to be given the name "fig tree". It was only by learning a language that a fig tree could present itself to the child as a fig tree and not just some kind of perceptual static.

Sellars' ideas about sense perception are weak, I think, and I agree with Crane when he says he thinks them "unconvincing." I think, for example, that consciousness and consciousness of objects have evolved from organisms that were precursors of H. sapiens. Other animals certainly have awareness and can even think yet are without "language"-- or least without what we humans think of as "language". Sellars appears to believe that only humans have language. If we grant this and restrict ourselves to "human language" then Crane thinks Sellars' ideas are "clearer and more tractable" if we confine the inferentialist theory to thought and language and leave sense perception out of it.

Now thought, language, meaning, and inference are the result of brain processes that can be studied by science. This is the case even if meaning, thought, and knowledge will not themselves be, as Crane says, part of "the scientific image as such." Why is this so? Sellars writes that it is because "in characterizing an episode or a state as that of KNOWING, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says." And Crane reminds us, this also goes for saying and thinking. If I say, think or know that e.g., my redeemer liveth, or that workers by uniting will only lose their chains I must give reasons that logically lead to a justification for these statements. I am not just referring to some chemical or neurological activity in my brain.

What is important about this part of Sellars' theory is, according to Crane, that questions dealing with "meaning and significance" are not about facts-- "questions about what is the case" -- they are questions concerning "what ought to be." They are not questions for science. Sellars thinks they are normative because we have to follow rules for justification which are located in "the logical space of reasons." Sellars says. "If they are thinking THIS, then they OUGHT to think THAT too."

What is going on here? It seems natural to distinguish between factual (scientific) statements and value (moral, un- or non- scientific) statements. But, says Crane, Sellars has gone beyond this dichotomy: "not only moral value, but also thought and consciousness, are (in his words) 'fraught with ought.'" There are problems with this I think. If I give justifications for my belief that united workers have only their chains to lose those justifications are intended by me to be true factual statements about the world and thus subject to scientific scrutiny. It is scientific socialism to which I appeal. It is another question, indeed fraught with ought, whether that commitment logically forces me to embrace the dictatorship of the proletariat as well.

Some have come to think that Sellars' views would cause a "sea change" in philosophy. Crain disagrees and thinks Sellars' "inferentialism" with respect to "meaning and thought" can be weaned away from other elements in his system and adopted by those with "more traditional" attitudes towards "the self and the mind." I think that there is no need for Sellarsian extremism on the question of the "scientia mensura." To save the appearances, the "manifest world", we don't have to divorce it so completely from the "scientific world" as Sellars maintains. We only need show there is no manifest contradiction between the two worlds. There is no contradiction between our being human beings running about with "minds" on the one hand, and being ultimately vibrating strings or atoms on the other.

Marxists view the human world of consciousness as a higher level organization of matter (that stuff existing independently of the human mind from which the universe and everything in it derives) and what science ultimately discovers this stuff to be will not be in contradiction to the view that the manifest world is part of the continuum logically derived from the knowledge of the scientific world. Thus, Marxists can adopt some portions of Sellars' inferentialism, especially with regard to the consistency of their thoughts with respect to what they ought to believe and do given what they say they believe and do.

One simply cannot deny the revolutionary legacy of Malcolm X, the man held a charisma and intelligence that transformed him into one of the biggest, most influential leaders of the American civil rights era. There have been several pieces written about the life and actions of Malcolm X throughout the years, with the most iconic being his 1964 autobiography.

    
​The book being examined however is not the famous autobiography. Published by Scholastic in 1994; Walter Dean Myers’ biography titled Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary is a highly informative and simplistically written glimpse into the life and evolution of the revolutionary civil rights leader and anti-colonial activist.

    
As one would expect, the early years of the man formerly known as Malcolm Little are visited in this book. Myers relives the history of Malcolm’s revolutionary spirit, citing that one of his biggest inspirations was his own father, Earl Little. Earl Little, unfortunately, was murdered by white supremacists for his work in the furthering of black liberation as a part of the Marcus Garvey movement. The look into the history of Malcolm X, along with his own family’s revolutionary activity displays that a revolutionary spirit was embedded into his DNA, with his father’s righteous death serving as one his greatest inspirations for his work later in life.

    
Myers details the development of the ideals of Malcolm X as his life went in Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary. Beginning with his time spent as a member of the Nation of Islam, as a disciple of spiritual leader and N.I.S figurehead Elijah Muhammad, Myers presents the beginning of Malcolm X’s path towards revolutionary ideals and action in the black nationalist group. Malcolm’s rise within the organization as one of the most well respected and influential members is a testament to his charisma and revolutionary grace. With Muhammad as his mentor, Malcolm X was able to further the Nation of Islam and greatly increase their membership during his time in the organization.

    
While Malcolm X never explicitly referred to himself as a socialist, his later life saw a transition from black nationalism to a more anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist perspective, and Myers details that it was through his departure from the separatist Nation of Islam that Malcolm X began his flirtation with decolonization and in some aspects, socialism. It was in 1960 during the March on Washington that the former Little met with revolutionary communist leader Fidel Castro, then President of Cuba. 

    
When referencing Castro, Myers includes a quote from a Cuban citizen that fled from the Fulgenico Batista regime that speaks highly of the Cuban revolutionary.

    
“He is a wonderful man. When he speaks his strength is in his words, his mouth. He speaks for the little people of Cuba.”

    
A man as controversial and influential as Malcolm X would never be able to avoid creating a few enemies in his pursuit for political, social, and economic justice. His time with the Nation of Islam garnered the attention of the FBI, who began seeing him as a threat and a potential catalyst for violent uprising against the United States government. The meetings held with Fidel Castro in Washington only furthered their suspicion, with the FBI calling him a Communist on his official file. Malcolm X was a force to be reckoned with, and the American government knew this all too well. 

    
    
Malcolm X was and always will be one of the most important revolutionary figures in American history, the history of the pursuit of civil liberties, and the expansion of the African diaspora. There was none other like him, and there may never be again.

    
It is important to note that the ideals of socialism and iconic revolutionaries are treated with respect within this biography. There’s no peddling of tired reactionary propaganda or condescending annotations that attempt to discredit the theories of socialism and communism. There are no attacks on someone’s character or use of slanderous tactics. The effects of the poison that is McCarthyist, Red Scare propaganda were never to be found between the pages of this book. 

    
A quote straight from the mouth of Malcolm X is included in this piece, touching upon the practices and influence of capitalism on both a global scale and how these practices ultimately pose a threat to not only the plight Afro-descendent people but the entirety of the oppressed masses, rather than a solution to the contradictions that afflicted their daily lives.

    
“The newly awakened people all over the world pose a problem for what is known as Western interests, which are imperialism, colonialism, racism, and all the other negative isms, or vulturistic isms. Just as the external forces pose a grave threat, they can see that the internal forces pose an even greater threat.” - Malcolm X
    
    
The Civil Rights Era of the United States was rampant with socialist ideals and other sections of radical ideology, with a vast number of figures within the fight against institutionalized racism and segregation subscribing to the tenants of revolutionary socialism at least at some point in their fight. Names such as Angela Davis, Martin Luther King, Assata Shakur, and Huey P. Newton just to name a few considered revolutionary socialism to be an integral part of their fight against white supremacist capitalism. Malcolm X was perhaps the most powerful, influential, and at least for the institution of capitalism, the most dangerous of the Civil Rights fighters until his untimely death. 

    
This is a piece well worth the read. A factual and accessible account of the development of one of the most significant civil rights leaders in both American and global history. Walter Dean Myers displays a great respect throughout this biography, for both the legacy of Malcolm X, and the radical presence in the fight for Civil Rights..

    
The digestible, simplistic writing style of this biography makes ideal reading for those totally unfamiliar with Malcolm X and the history that surrounds him. Whether you be an anarchist, a Marxist, or some other tendency of radicalism, we should be educating ourselves on the history of decolonization and similar revolutionary movements, from Marx to Malcolm, from Sankara to Newton, we must continue to study. A relatively quick read abundant with information, Walter Dean Myers’s work is second only to the official autobiography. Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary is an immensely informative and engaging book, for the new and the familiar.

​

*Midwestern Marx youth writer Sahil Siddiqi has compiled a list of links leading to mutual aid organizations in Texas. They can be found at the bottom of the article.*
 
An unprecedented winter storm has thrown the state of Texas into chaos. Texans have experienced freezing cold temperatures and multiple inches of snow. At face value, this may not seem like a big deal to a Midwesterner. To those of us accustomed to these conditions, winter weather simply means it’s time to break out the winter coat and boots. For most Texans however, grabbing the Winter apparel to protect from these conditions is not an option, as the storm they are currently experiencing is unlike anything Texas has seen in recent memory. 21 people have now died, and much of the homeless population is desperately looking for warmth.

​Not only are people freezing, but the state’s infrastructure is completely unprepared to withstand a blizzard of this magnitude. Videos have spread around the internet of Texans filming their roofs caving in from buildup of snow. Reports from the Texas Tribune detail millions being left without power, and many now being forced to ration food.[1] The storm, which scientists are telling us is climate change induced, is a warning of what’s to come if the US does not change course when it comes to production. Texas’ privately owned energy grid has failed millions, while continuing to rake in profits for their services. The crumbling homes are an example of how ill prepared US infrastructure is for the storms which will only increase as the climate worsens. The clear solution is to move to a system of planned production, and worker ownership of all major industries. Continuing to allow private companies to command production is suicidal for the working masses. Socialism and planned production must be implemented, or private interests will continue to destroy the planet, while apathetically watching us die in the climate storms of their own creation.
 
 
Local Texas news station KHOU 11 reports that the private utility company ERCOT met to discuss what should be done during this disaster. The conclusion was that electricity prices should be raised, due to an increase in the demand for power.[2] There may have never been a clearer example of how little profit driven private entities care for anything besides profit itself. The very fact that companies are allowed to make a surplus profit off of something as essential as electricity, highlights the irrationality of a capitalist economy. However, in the face of an unprecedented storm, it becomes more clear than ever how the system incentivizes profit, and profit alone. Private companies like ERCOT look at a situation in which people are dying and being left without power, and see only an increase in consumer demand, which will allow for a hike in their prices. They care nothing for the human costs of their actions.
 
Privately owned utilities must be seized and made public. This is quite literally our only option. So long as private interests are in control of the major sectors of the US economy, they will continue to be apathetic towards the effect their production has on the climate, and they will continue to turn the climate change storms they create into profitable business opportunities. The solution is for the working masses to seize the major sectors of economic power, because workers are those who feel the negative effects of climate change. The capitalists are not struggling in Texas. On the contrary, they are thriving. Capitalists sit and watch the chaos of the storm on television from the comfort of million dollar electrified homes, plotting new avenues of exploitation, which can bring an increase in shareholder profits. Capitalism is, at its core, a system which incentivizes a group of greedy vultures to extract all they can from the masses of society. A fact which this storm in Texas has made apparent. It is as Rosa Luxemburg said many years ago, we must choose between socialism, or barbarism.
 
*Links to Help Texas Compiled by Sahil Siddiqi*
 
- North Texas Mutual Aid
- Austin Mutual Aid
- Ending community homelessness coalition (ECHO)
- get free lunches to homeless people
- Texas health and human services
- Texas COVID-19 Mutual relief
 


[1] Aguilar, Julián. “Texans Running out of Food as Weather Crisis Disrupts Supply Chain.” The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune, February 18, 2021. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-food-supply-power-outage/.

[2] Staff, Author: KHOU 11. “ERCOT to Raise Texas Energy Prices, Blaming High Demand from Winter Storm.” khou.com, February 16, 2021. https://www.khou.com/article/weather/ercot-to-raise-texas-energy-prices-blaming-high-demand-from-winter-storm/285-76ea495b-b67b-4cb7-8f1a-47f0fb4b4234. 

​This is a reply to Slavoj Zizek's article "Mandela's Socialist Failure" published online in The Stone (a New York Times maintained philosophy blog) on December 6, 2013. In eight pithy paragraphs Zizek endeavors to expose the real legacy of Mandela as opposed to his current "beatification." The Catholic Church used to have someone play the role of Devil's Advocate to denigrate the reputation of a person nominated to become a saint. Zizek has taken it upon himself to see to it that Mandela's "beatification" does not progress to full fledged "sainthood."

Zizek's mantra is that "Mandela was not Mugabe"-- the "good" as opposed to the "bad" Black African leader. Mandela is seen as "a saintly wise man" and Hollywood even makes movies about him. He was "impersonated" by Morgan Freeman who, Zizek points out also impersonated God! Oh my!-- what are they trying to tell us? Zizek should perhaps be reminded that Morgan Freeman is an outstanding actor (or impersonator if you prefer) and has played many roles-- including a chauffeur. And, Zizek notes, "rock stars and religious leaders, sportsmen and politicians from Bill Clinton to Fidel Castro are all united in his beatification." Somehow I don't see Fidel Castro as a "politician" in quite the same way as the unprincipled pragmatist Bill Clinton. Nor do I think Fidel and Clinton are "united" in their evaluations of Nelson Mandela-- far from it. According to Zizek, Mandela is hailed for leaving behind "a muti-party democracy with free press and a vibrant [!] economy well-integrated into the global market and immune [!] to hasty Socialist experiments."

But what is the truth about this man's legacy? The Devil's Advocate will reveal "two key facts" that are "obliterated" by all the pro-Mandela beatification activities. Fact One: There is still wide spread poverty and social misery in South Africa and an increase in "insecurity, violence, and crime." The majority of Black South Africans are living "broadly," Zizek says, "the same as under apartheid." This fact "counterbalances" any "rise of political and civil rights." What is the "main change" in South Africa since the time of Mandela according to Zizek? It is a "new black elite" has joined the "old white ruling class"-- not a new constitution giving equal rights to all citizens and allowing all South Africans to live and work together.

Zizek's statements are completely ridiculous. There are deepening economic problems in South Africa today as well as class divisions but Black people and all South Africans no longer have to carry passes, all can vote, people can go to the same beaches and hotels, etc. The millions who mourned the death of Mandela are acutely aware of the problems facing their country and also aware that the repressive, dehumanizing regime of official racism and apartheid is dead. To think that reality has been "obliterated" in the consciousness of South African people by a Mandela sainthood cult is an insulting affront to the citizens of the new South Africa and reeks of a colonial European outlook towards African peoples. So much for "Fact One."

Fact Two: Black South Africans are becoming angry because the memory of the aims of the "old" African National Congress (social justice and a "kind of" socialism are being "obliterated from our memory." Far from being "obliterated" the program of the ANC and its allies in the labor unions and the South African Communist Party are constantly debated and discussed by the people of South Africa and the demands for more radical reforms and more progressive policies can be democratically advanced. Zizek overlooks the fact that there is a real living democracy at the root of the New South Africa and that Nelson Mandela played a major role in its creation. The millions mourning his passing are not mindless masses with "obliterated" memories.

According to Zizek South Africa is just another example of the current left paradigm: the left comes to power promising a "new world" but then confronts the reality of the international neoliberal capitalist consensus . Imperialism can speedily punish countries trying to embark on the socialist road. In South Africa's case political power was ceded to the ANC on condition that the existing economic system was preserved . It was thought that this prevented a civil war of massive proportions.

This Historic Compromise (called by some a Faustian pack with the old regime) is at the root of the current problems of poverty and mass discontent in the country.

Zizek is sympathetic to Mandela's dilemma -- create a "new world"-- risk a civil war-- or "play the game" and abandon the "socialist perspective." [There is too much focus on Mandela here-- these decisions were made collectively by the leaders of all the major forces in the liberation movement.] Zizek asks a question that is still hotly debated today. Given the constellation of forces facing the ANC et al on the assumption of power "was the move towards socialism a real option?" [Compromise was indeed necessary, but did the ANC concede too much?]
Seemingly inspired by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (a coming of age novel for adolescent libertarians), Zizek looks for "the grain of truth" in the "hymn to money" found in the novel: "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns or dollars. Take your choice-- there is no other."

Not only is there no "grain of truth" in this "hymn" but when human beings only deal with each other on the basis of money we get all the horrors of blood, whips and guns that humans employ against each other in order to obtain and control more and more money (slavery, colonialism, imperialism, fraud-- you name it). It is not humans per se, of course, who engage in these horrors, but a special class of humans (capitalists) created by the dominant economic system of monopoly capitalism.

Not content with uncovering a grain of truth in Randism, Zizek imputes the same idea to Karl Marx-- a most un-Randian leap of fallaciousness. He asks if Marx's ideas about "the universe of commodities" were not similar to what Rand said in her hymn about money. After all Marx said under capitalism "relations between people assume the guise of relations among things." This is a perfect example of a non sequitur and I defy anyone to find the similarity between Marx's statements about the fetishism of commodities and Rand's view "that money is the root of all good."

Zizek's confusions continue. He thinks that the relations between people in the "market economy" can appear "as relations of mutually recognized freedom and equality." Maybe in the days of Adam Smith but I doubt even then. Donald Trump and his chauffeur hardly are equals or exercise the same amount of freedom. Mitt Romney thought 47 per cent of the American people were social parasites and he is an outstanding representative of the freedom and equally offered by the "market economy." Most working people know exactly their relations to their bosses and it not only appears to be unequal and unfree (who gets the pink slip and loses unemployment insurance) it is unequal and unfree-- and all of Ayn Rand's baloney will never make it otherwise.

It is obvious to any aware working person, that the blatant inequality and restrictions on human freedom under the "market economy" lived and felt by millions of Greek workers, Spanish working people, and others in the EU and throughout the world, that Zizek's view -- under capitalism "domination is no longer directly enacted and visible as such" -- is just nonsense. Such ruminations by a famous philosopher can only give philosophy a bad name.

While Zizek says that Ayn Rand's ideological claim (only the love of money can free people) is ridiculous, he persists in reminding us of the "moment of truth" it contains. The problem, he thinks, is Rand's "underlying premise" which is "that the only choice is between direct and indirect relations of domination and exploitation" and any alternative is "utopian." Ayn Rand has no such premise. She thinks in simple dichotomies. Unfettered dynamic capitalism and the love of money is GOOD and it is in no way, direct or indirect, involved in any relations of domination and exploitation-- it is the root of GOODNESS. On the other hand any efforts by liberals , socialists, misguided Catholic popes, or anybody else that impinges on this system of goodness is EVIL and a direct source domination and exploitation.

Zizek, however, thinks the "moment of truth" in Ayn Rand's theory of money is that it teaches us "the great lesson of state socialism." Despite Zizek's discovery of the Randian "moment of truth," I don't recommend using Atlas Shrugged as a prolegomena to any future socialism. This is the "truth" that Zizek has discovered.

If you abolish private property (God forbid!) and the market without concretely regulating production then you resuscitate "direct relations of servitude and domination." What does this mean? What "state socialist" country or countries can he be referring to that did not or do not have plans that regulate production? So called "state socialism" was famous for having "central planning" and tried to concretely regulate both production and distribution. As it stands Zizek's lesson is pointless.

He expands on his lesson. If we just abolish the market "without replacing it with a proper form of Communist organization of production and exchange, domination returns with a vengeance, and with it direct exploitation." This isn't very helpful. Communism doesn't spring full blown from the brow of Lenin the day after the revolution. What does Zizek think is the "proper form" of Communism. He gives us no clue in this article. I fear there is no lesson at all to be learned from Ayn Rand's "moment of truth." Certainly not Zizek's tautology that socialism fails to create communism if it doesn't create the proper form of communism.

Zizek now propounds a "general rule"-- it is really just his way of saying the more things change the more they stay the same. It goes like this: when the people rise up against "an oppressive half-democratic regime" [what is a "half-democracy"-- people either have democratic rights or they don't] it's "easy" to get large demonstrations underway [I think that's what rising up means] and crowd pleasing slogans are devised (pro democracy, anti-corruption, etc) but after the "revolt succeeds" the people find themselves still oppressed as they were before except in a "new guise."

This seems to me to be a strange concept of what a "successful" revolt is. Zizek seems to think it is some sort of spontaneous generation of all things good and great for the people and if doesn't happen overnight, then the revolt has failed. His case studies are of the revolts "in the Middle East in 2011." He doesn't seem to understand that these are ongoing processes. The French Revolution didn't end with chopping off the King's head. The revolts may have been begun in the Middle East in 2011 but they are ongoing processes with ups and downs, advances and set backs and it much to early to decide which have failed and which have succeeded or even what "failure" or "success" will mean in the longue duree.

Zizek plogs along. The people do not succeed because they are prevented from seeing that their exploitation continues in the new guise after the revolution by the "ruling ideology" which blames them for their failure because they don't understand that they are not yet mature enough for full democracy [ and anyway, as Lady Thatcher put it, 'there is no alternative" to capitalism (TINA)]. Zizek doesn't make sense here because he maintains both that the people don't realize the same old exploitation is going on and that they do realize it but are themselves blamed for it by the "ruling ideology." I think Zizek will find "the people" a bit more sophisticated and not as simple minded as he portrays them.

Zizek now explains how US foreign policy has developed a strategy that redirects the revolutionary energy of a popular revolt into political forms desired by US imperialism (not a word used by Zizek in this article). The US did this in South Africa after the end of apartheid. If this is the case then the ANC, Mandela, the SACP, and entire liberation movement were puppets of US imperialist foreign policy. While he is at it, Zizek also says the same was done in the Philippines, post Marcos, in Indonesia, post Suharto, "and elsewhere."

Now US foreign policy is indeed a formidable enemy of the people's of the world but the explanation for the problems of liberation movements in attaining their stated goals after the assumption of power can't simply be explained by saying they are victims of US foreign policy's elaborate "detailed strategy of how to exert damage control." In fact, as Wikileaks has shown, the people in charge of US foreign policy often don't know what they are doing, set in motion ridiculous plans, and often end making a mess out of whatever they had in mind to accomplish.

US foreign policy is by and large incompetent and its agents, diplomats, Congressmen and women, generals, cabinet members, and intelligence professionals can only foam at the mouth and yell "treason" when a young soldier, performing his duty to the Constitution of the United States, Chelsea Manning, reveals some "secret" wires showing up the blunders and failures of the "professionals" in the state department and others and how they try to mislead the American people. In any event, Zizek says the big problem of the liberation movements is in finding a way to counteract US policies. As he puts it-- "how to move further from Mandela without becoming Mugabe." Perhaps a dialectical synthesis. Is Zizek is waiting for Mangabe?

Finally, Zizek tells us what to do "to remain faithful to Mandela's legacy"-- a legacy he just told us was a failure and capitulation to imperialism. Zizek is just the philosopher of that kind of legacy. One he himself calls of "unfulfilled promises" and one that didn't "really disturb the global order of power." We must forget the "celebratory crocodile tears" shed for Mandela and his leadership. I think that the people of South Africa and many of the dignitaries (but not all) at his memorial and funeral would, and should be, outraged to be accused of faking their feelings for Mandela. We must instead concentrate on his failures. He ended his life as a "bitter old man" realizing his hero status "was the mask of a bitter defeat." How does Zizek know this? He thinks, this is the type of philosopher he is, that "we can safely surmise" this to be the case because "of his doubtless moral and political greatness." What sense is there in saying there is political greatness in being a bitter old defeated man. Is the true founder of democratic South Africa then president F. W. de Klerk who is neither bitter nor considered a failure? Where is the moral greatness in bitterness?

The truth is that Mandela was a realist who made unavoidable compromises to free his people from apartheid, that he and his comrades in the ANC and SACP and the trade union movements forged a revolutionary struggle that toppled one of the most repressive political regimes in the world-- one backed by the post powerful imperialism in the world and its allies. This was not a failure to attain "socialism." Socialism cannot be imposed from above, it must be struggled for by working and oppressed people themselves and Mandela helped found the preconditions for that struggle.

The fact that the mighty of the world came to his memorial is testimony not that he failed "to disturb the global order of power" but that he profoundly shook it and they are eager to co-op his message and be identified with him because they know that all over the world at this very moment millions of oppressed people in both the centers of capitalist power and in the neocolonial fringes are beginning to rise up and demand their rights and that they have much to learn from the tactics of the South African liberation movement. Slavol Zizek's libels notwithstanding, Nelson Mandela was a great revolutionary leader who freed his people from oppression and inspires masses around the world to fight for a better world-- he was the farthest it was possible to be from a "bitter old man."

​​​​​​​About the Author:
Thomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association.

Egypt is one among the five countries in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) most affected by hunger during the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread hunger in Egypt follows an international pattern. The World Food Program (WFP), the branch of the United Nations (UN) responsible for delivering food assistance, expects to need to serve 138 million people in 2021 - more than ever in its 60-year history.
​
The inability of the majority of countries of the world to effectively counter-act hunger is a result of decades-long neoliberal policies. These policies have either instituted import dependency or unleashed a process of export-oriented agro-industrialization, thus creating a highly unstable and deficient food regime. Egypt is not immune to these economic factors. Present-day hunger in the country is structurally situated in a pro-bourgeoisie paradigm intended to enrich the few at the expense of others.​

The historical context for food insecurity in Egypt is provided by former President Anwar Sadat’s policy of economic liberalization, faithfully continued by Hosni Mubarak till 2011 and by Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi until today. In 1960, Egypt had a self-sufficiency ratio (domestic production in relation to consumption) for wheat of around 70%. By 1980, the self-sufficiency ratio had fallen to 23% as imports rose to massive levels. Food aid and grain imports performed two important functions for imperialist powers. First, they tightly integrated Egypt with the world market and hence exposed it to fluctuating global prices. Secondly, they paved the way for growing levels of indebtedness as access to foreign currency became a key determinant of whether a country could meet its food needs. 

In Egypt, these developments were an important part of Sadat’s decisive turn toward the U.S. through the 1970s. The 1973 war was estimated to have cost around $40 billion, and the general fiscal squeeze caused by rising food and energy imports led Sadat to seek loans from U.S. and European lenders as well as regional zones of surplus capital such as the Gulf Arab states. The latter played a decisive role in bringing Egypt into the orbit of the American empire, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar forming the Gulf Organization for the Development of Egypt (GODE) in 1976 to provide aid to Egypt. 

The condition for Gulf financial aid was the elimination of Soviet influence in Egypt (the Soviet-Egyptian Friendship Treaty was canceled in March 1976) and the implementation of a series of economic reforms prescribed by the US Treasury, IMF, and World Bank, which included an end to subsidies and a deregulation of the Egyptian pound (which would raise the cost of imports). As the Egyptian government moved to amend laws to allow repatriation of profits, free flows of capital, and attempted to lift subsidies, funds arrived from GODE.​

With the arrival of neoliberalism in Cairo, the masses became increasingly poor. When they became poor, they were unable to buy food in adequate quantities. This was the natural outcome of an unending spate of privatization. In the 2000s, Egypt gained the dubious distinction of being the leader of privatization in the Arab world.  The country’s privatization program was launched as part of a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) agreed between the Egyptian government and the World Bank and IMF in 1991. The major focus of this SAP was Law 203 of 1991, which designated 314 public sector enterprises for sale. 

By 2008, Egypt had recorded the largest number of firms privatized out of any country in the region and the highest total value of privatization ($15.7 billion since 1988). Unlike other states, in which just one or two deals made up the majority of privatization receipts, Egypt’s sell-off was wide-ranging - covering flour mills, steel factories, real estate firms, banks, hotels, and telecommunications companies.

To prepare state-owned companies for privatization, the Egyptian government terminated subsidies and ended their direct control by government ministries. In many cases, loans from international institutions were used to assist in the restructuring and upgrading of facilities prior to sale - burdening the state with debt while investors received newly retooled and modernized factories. The end result of privatization was a severe deterioration in labor rights and wages, facilitated by the growth in informal work conditions and the increasing exploitation of women in “micro” or small enterprises where minimum wage, social security, and other legal rights were not in effect. 

Informal workers make up over 63% of Egypt’s estimated 30 million employed population, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). Egyptian officials say the sector generates nearly 40-50% of the country’s economic output. Informalization of the labor market has systematically immiserated the workers. The poverty rate rose from 25.2% in 2010/2011 to 26.3% in 2012/2013 and 27.8% in 2015, then jumped to 32.5% in 2017/2018, which means that 32.5 million Egyptians are poor according to the “national poverty line” (EGP736 per month and person, about $45). 

The World Bank pegs the poverty rate even higher, at 60% of the entire population. Inequality across regions is sharp; poverty levels in Egypt’s poorest villages are as high as 81.7%. The Severe Poverty Line also rose to 5.3% in 2015 and reached 6.2% in 2017/2018, which means that 6.2 million Egyptians - according to the national severe poverty line of 491 EGP (about US$25) per month and person - are extremely poor. ​

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Egypt’s agricultural exports increased significantly. The country became the largest exporters of oranges in the world, as well as strawberries and among the largest in onions. Most of the Gulf countries lifted trade restrictions related to their import of Egyptian products. Egypt’s exports increased not due to a boom in production but because these countries were preparing for an impending crisis. This has greatly affected Egyptians’ access to goods since productivity did not increase but exports did.

The heavy focus on export crops rather than local staples is not new. Since the 2000s, rice, maize and wheat production has been pretty much stagnant. As a result, Egyptians are dependent on expensive food imports. In 2016/17, Egypt imported 12 million tons of wheat, over a million tons more than the average for the preceding 5 years. This coincided with 42% annual food price inflation, the highest for 30 years. The Egyptian Food bank, a large charity that feeds the poor, increased its “handouts” by 20%, extending their reach to “middleclass” families - an extent of the pervasiveness of food insecurity. 

In the current conjuncture, Egypt needs to move beyond the neoliberal model of agriculture which only succeeds in increasing hunger.  Liberalization, immiseration and agro-export industrialization - all of them serve to buttress the power of imperialism and facilitate the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. While there was hope after the 2011 uprising that farmers would enjoy new freedoms and opportunities, it was not forthcoming. On the contrary, farmers have been harassed, they have seen their crops being damaged and there has been considerable police intimidation if farmers have had the courage to challenge aggression from agri-business firms. Small farmers have been bogged down in costly legal proceedings where big landowners have reclaimed land that they had lost during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s agrarian reforms in the 1950s. In addition, small farmers have had to bear the burden of increased rents and expensive farming inputs. An alternative model needs to be urgently established to replace Egypt’s current agricultural architecture which will end up in a seemingly endless “hunger pandemic”. ​

​About the Author:
​Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. His articles have been published in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and several countries of Latin America.

As we engage in the struggle to create a cohesive and revolutionary leftist movement in the United States, it is crucial to use all rhetorical tools at our disposal to aid our fellow workers in radicalization. The Biden Administration represents another tool in the toolbox to highlight the crises of capital and liberal democracy as well as the ineffectual nature of electoralism. 

If the Trump Administration was the first inoculation for many Americans to the need for structural change, the Biden Administration can be seen as a vital second dose. Already, we have witnessed the term “kids in cages” which weaponized the horrors on our southern border to get people on the left to vote for Biden transformed by the Biden Administration to “overflow facility for migrant children” (Alvarez 2021). What was once a rallying cry against the cruel policy of a cruel administration has now been rebranded by the same administration that was meant to end it. As such, we can expect more of this rebranding from Biden and his imperialist administration: a continuation of the evils of previous administrations under softer language. 
​
A second example of Biden’s failures to uphold promises of change is with his proposed pandemic relief bill. When the fate of the Senate was to be determined by two races in Georgia the Democratic Party hammered home the message of $2,000 in a single stimulus check (Kapur 2021). Once the races had been decided, however, and Democrats gained control of the Senate the message shifted. As they are wont to do, Democrat elites elongated and obfuscated the original simple message to something with more wiggle room. “We will finish the job of getting a total of $2,000 in cash relief to the people who need it most,” said Kamala Harris, the incoming Vice President on January 14, 2021 (Harris 2021). A mere nine days after the race in Georgia ended, the Democratic Party began to walk back its promise to Americans. The pandemic relief has been walked back even further still, with the ineffectual and spineless Party now negotiating itself down to providing fewer checks to a smaller group of people to appease a second party who neither holds majority power nor views the Democratic Administration as legitimate (Konish 2021). 

We as Marxists can use these failures as tools for discussion with our fellow workers. Many of my coworkers and friends have realized through the Trump Administration that politics can indeed have a material effect on our lives, particularly through the catastrophic inability in our country to combat the deadly virus that has seeped into every facet of our lives. Now, we must strike while the iron is hot. We must impress upon our fellow workers that they cannot rely on the Democratic Party for salvation. It is vital that we do not allow the conversation to fall into the all too common “both parties are bad, therefore engaging in politics is pointless” cliché. While there is truth in that statement, it is only true insofar as engaging in liberal democratic electoralism cannot yield true change. 

We as leftists can provide answers to the failures of both parties from an outside perspective. Much of the working class considers themselves outside politics, and we can stand outside with them and offer a new perspective. When we are met with exasperation by the working class as stimulus checks are delayed, vaccine rollouts are fumbled, and the change that was promised is not delivered, that is the moment to respond with our message of liberation. That yes, both parties are ineffectual at providing real positive change, but positive change is not impossible. There exists ways in which to create that positive change outside of what we have been taught to believe is the avenue for systemic change. We can engage in positive discussion with our fellow workers about progressive change. We can highlight how socialist countries such as Cuba, China, and Vietnam have been more successful in containing Covid-19 than imperialist Western nations. Against the harsh background of the Trump Administration, we can draw parallels to the Biden Administration, rather than softening the blows that the new regime will bring. 

During the November elections, many Democrat voters were urging leftists to join them to elect Biden with the promise that he could be pushed to the left. This is of course an empty promise, and a man who has sat in power for decades and supported some of the most atrocious acts of imperialism in the world will not be pushed left by Twitter posters. Biden holds all the institutional power he needs and as such does not need to make concessions to any left movement in the United States. However, we can use his presidency to guide others towards the left. Rather than push or pull, we can guide a quickly awakening working class towards solidarity and empowerment through the inevitable failures and shortcomings of the Biden Administration. Biden’s previous eight years as an executive were brought on by a wave of populism and grassroots organizing that was pushed back out to sea as soon as he and President Obama were sworn in. The Obama Administration was a response by the people to eight years of war and austerity under Bush, but the people were not granted the policies they had elected. The Biden Administration finds itself in a similar, yet stronger position. The only mandate required of them is not to be the previous administration. Where President Obama stands alone in American history as the first black president, and when first elected was seen as bringing about a new coalition to power, Biden is much the mirror of Trump. He is an old, white, conservative egoist with an ever diminishing grasp on reality. 

Within this weak mandate, there is room for the left to be critical and provide alternatives in the form of direct action and community organizing. We can take heart in the growing membership of the DSA, SRA, and other local organizations. In fact, the very existence of this blog should help strengthen our resolve and add to the growing proof that a worker’s movement is possible and rapidly approaching in our country. As the left movement in this country grows, we can grow out of the current paradigm of the two major parties engaged in distinctions without difference. We can grow our own institutions and infrastructures and point to them as serious and viable alternatives to our fellow workers. We can use the Biden Administration as a pivot point to guide our fellow workers towards our cause. There is much to hope for in the coming four years. Not because of any liberation from the Democratic Party, but by seizing the opportunity in front of us to create a better tomorrow. 

​

Citations

Alvarez, Priscilla. (2021, February 3). “Biden Administration Prepares to Open Overflow Facility for Migrant Children.” CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/migrant-children-facility-immigration/index.html (February 12, 2021). 

KamalaHarris. (2021, January 14).  “’We will finish the job of getting a total of $2,000 in cash relief to people who need it the most. The $600 already appropriated is simply not enough.’ –Your next president, @JoeBiden” [Twitter Post]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1349900088299188225 (February 12, 2021).

Kapur, Sahil. (2021, January 5). “In Georgia, Democrats Close with Populist Pitch Vowing $2,000 Stimulus Checks.” NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/georgia-democrats-close-populist-pitch-vowing-2-000-stimulus-checks-n1252805 (February 12, 2021). 

Lorie, Konish. (2021, February 8) . “How Soon New $1,400 Stimulus Checks and Other Coronavirus Relief Could Arrive.” CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/how-soon-new-1400-stimulus-checks-and-other-covid-aid-could-arrive.html (February 12, 2021). ​

About the Author:
​David Flora is a bartender living in the South with a bachelors in political science and is currently seeking a masters in public policy. Much of his organizational work and praxis involves fellow restaurant industry workers. He believes the restaurant industry in particular is an important part of a revolutionary workers movement.

Arauz faced two politicians - Guillermo Lasso and Yaku Pérez Guartambel. According to a quick count by the National Electoral Council (CNE), Pérez and Lasso took 20.04% and 19.97% of the votes, respectively. 

Lasso is the candidate for the conservative alliance “Creating Opportunities” (CREO). He is also a member of Opus Dei, banker and businessman. A true representative of the Ecuadorian oligarchy, he served as a minister of economy in the Jamil Mahuad government in 1999, which fell in the winter of 2000 at the hands of 2 million peasants and poor workers who took over the streets in protest against dollarization. 
​
Pérez is the candidate of the indigenous Pachakutik Party. While he portrays himself as an “eco-socialist”, many from the Correa camp have questioned his commitment to defend indigenous communities and remember that some factions of the Pachakutik Party have, in the past, opportunistically aligned with the right against Correa’s government. Moreover, he is also known for supporting US-backed right-wing coups in Latin America and wholeheartedly backing imperialism. ​

The construction of the Ecuadorian State was based on “good living” (El Buen Vivir) - a conception which places life at the center of all social practices and includes the strengthening of the welfare state in order to guarantee it. Correa acolyte René Ramírez argues that buen vivir means: “free time for contemplation and emancipation, and the broadening or flourishing of real liberties, opportunities, capacities, and potentialities of individuals/collectives to bring that which society, territories, diverse collective identities, and everyone - as a human being or collective, universal or individual - values as key to a desirable life.”

An essential part of buen vivir is communal action. While there were many gaps in the achievement of this aim, the Corriesta administration did try to start the “citizenization of political control” - the election of institutional and control authorities not by the legislature, but by an ad hoc organizational structure called the “Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control”. These measures were intended to establish a framework for participatory governance. ​

Lenin Moreno assumed presidency in 2017, riding on the back of Correa’s support. Having served as vice president (2007-13) in Correa’s government, he was expected to continue the progressive agenda of a strong welfare state. Instead, Moreno chose to comprehensively break away from the previous paradigm of anti-neoliberalism, persecuting Correa and his supporters.
​
Moreno used a February 2018 referendum to destroy the CNE, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Judiciary Council, the attorney general, the comptroller general, and others. With the assistance of the CNE, Moreno divided and took control of Correa’s party.  When the Correistas tried to re-organize themselves in a new party, the state blocked them. They said that the proposed names were misleading or that the signatures collected were invalid. By 2019, the Correistas used the “Social Commitment Strength” platform to run for local elections in 2019. This platform was then banned in 2020.

The suppression of Correistas has occurred against a backdrop of a neoliberal onslaught. Moreno has followed laissez-faire economic policies, privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade and state reduction promoted by the Washington Consensus. His initial actions aimed to incentivize private economic activity, including the elimination of advances on income taxes for firms and a move toward labor market flexibility. Further, Moreno introduced tax exonerations for firms that repatriated funds within the next twelve months. 

In August of 2018, the National Assembly approved the “Organic Law for Productive Development, Attraction of Investment, Employment Generation, and Fiscal Stability and Equilibrium”. This law included amnesty for any outstanding interest, fines, or surcharges owed to a number of government agencies. 

A 10-year income tax exemption was introduced for new investments in the industrial sector. Along the same lines, a 15-year exemption for investment in basic industries, and a 20-year exemption for investments located near the country’s border, were also specified in the bill. Exemptions were introduced to the tax on capital outflows for productive investments. These measures reduced the high-tax burden that private companies earlier faced.

Moreno has announced many austerity adjustments: reduction in the salaries of many government functionaries, elimination of bonus payments for state employees, overall reduction in the number of public sector workers, and the sale of state-owned companies. All this resulted in the “October 2019 uprising”. ​

It is likely that Arauz’s socialist leanings will help him succeed in re-gaining presidential power. He is committed to rolling back Moreno’s neoliberal measures, standing firm against the ruthless demands of international capital, increasing public spending on education and healthcare, and imposing restrictions on capital flight. Arauz has conceived of a state model oriented towards selective economic interventionism for the benefit of the poor. 
​
This model argues that the people-centric acceleration of economies is not a spontaneous phenomenon that results exclusively from market forces, but is the result of vigorous state involvement in strategic sectors through planning and structural reforms in the context of a mixed economic system. Considering the fact that absolute poverty has tripled during Moreno’s 4-year presidency, Ecuadorians will elect a leader who promises to provide them with dignified lives. ​

About the Author:
​Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. His articles have been published in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and several countries of Latin America.

​​​​​​About the Author:
Thomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association.

Although one would be correct in naming the Greek lawmaker Cleisthenes, “the father of democracy,” modern democracy was truly revolutionized and defined by John Locke in his 1690 work, ‘Two Treatises on Civil Government.’ 

In this work, Locke writes, “The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.”1

We find this ideal, which states that it is man’s right to live under society as administered by consent of the governed, at the core of nearly every argument for and principle of democracy. Consent of the governed, popular sovereignty, self-ownership, and so forth, are all evidence of this foundational ideal. So, we can consider the general, ‘Principles of Democracy,’ to be any concept which relates to and upholds the center-most ideals of democracy; namely, consent of the governed or popular sovereignty.
              
​And in protection of such principles, the definition of democracy was born. So as not to waste time squabbling over the semantics of what democracy is, I will provide the most simple and inoffensive definition of democracy for our uses. It could be, “a form or method of governing in which the people of a society at large hold control over that society, usually through some form of either direct or indirect voting.” I find this description to fall well within the bounds of any given definition of democracy.

The following is a product primarily, if not entirely, of my own creation. In my studies and research of our world, both as it currently exists and as it did in the past, I have found the Dialectical Materialist outlook to produce far and away the most accurate historical and socio-political (as well as economic) picture. The internal contradictions of every system and society, every manifestation of material interaction, undoubtedly have direct effects on the various other contradictions and interactions they’re associated with. This seemingly endless series of interacting contradictions shapes the world and society around us in its entirety. And so, in hoping to resolve one particular contradiction (and thereby progress society in some way), I have attempted to deeply analyze democracy and its components. Active Voting, as a system of my creation, is the product of these attempts.
              
​Casting ballots, votes, and decisions as a citizen of a democratic society is, at first glance, a manifestation of the previously discussed principles of democracy; those being consent of the governed and popular sovereignty. The former because submitting a vote for representation or legislation is the affirmation of one’s consent to the conditions of said democracy and the latter because said vote (especially when casted for legislation directly) is a display of the people’s sovereignty as they supposedly directly impact the result of said vote, which will end by affecting those same people. However, it is my view that, upon deep analysis of the currently existing systems of democracy, there arises a blatant contradiction. Casting your vote as a citizen of a democracy in the way that things currently stand doubles-back on its own logic and ends in a place quite antithetical to the very principles democracy bases itself within. The contradiction, which has negated the supposed freedom of democracy since its inception, relates to the binary and absolute nature of current voting systems. This characteristic, ever-present in all currently existing democracies, grounds itself in representatives and the way they obtain/keep power. Voting exists as a single decision, a point in time where one decides, independently from all prior or future votes, to cast their opinion one way or another on a particular issue (or candidate, in most cases). This single-point, binary decision-making leads not only to issues within the system itself, but also prevents said system from being truly democratic (that is, to uphold the known principles of democracy through consent of the governed, popular sovereignty, and more). 
              
Now that I have explained this contradiction in the briefest possible manner and given adequate logical and historical basis for my work, allow me to analyze the issues in greater detail and present a direct solution to said issues.

It should be duly noted that, prior to any of the following analysis, there is a much deeper and much more prevalent contradiction between the status quo and democracy. Namely, class society is undemocratic and immoral from the outset. Capitalism cannot be reformed to solve its contradictions; class struggle and profit-based planning will always supersede and destroy any supposedly democratic measures implemented under it. ‘Liberal Democracy,’ and, indeed, any form of democracy existing within the pretext of class society, is democracy for the few, for the oppressive class. Lenin perfectly explains this very truth in Chapter V of, “The State and Revolution.”
              
​Quoting directly, “Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the… details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly…, in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., --we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.”2
              
Societies built within the pretext of class are subject to the rule of one class and subservience of all others. Each individual class, bodies of individuals with similar and connected material interests, are bound to do whatever possible to gain power and promote the development of society in a way that is favorable to themselves. Thus, under the capitalist system, where, for the better part of 500 years, the namesake ruling class has steadily and exponentially increased its own power and directed all innovation towards the advancement of their goals, it is impossible for real democracy to exist. For the solutions described later in this piece to apply practically, it is imperative and ultimately necessary that you first resolve the deeper contradictions of capitalist society by overthrowing the ruling class and abolishing the status quo in its entirety.
              
Take mental note then, that the following two sections of analysis exist in the abstract. Henceforth throughout this piece, the framework justification of Liberal Democracy will be presupposed, and all further critiques will be given from within the logic of this presupposition. My aim with this piece is not to deliver an exhaustive and lengthy critique of the capitalist system or it is, ‘democracy,’ but instead to prove that, even within the context of the liberal logic, there still arises deep contradictions between the status quo and the democratic principles previously outlined.

To fully grasp the deep contradiction that arises between voting and democracy when said voting is made binary, we must first understand the mechanisms and manifestations that uphold consent of the governed as a principle of democracy. And to do this, we must ask ourselves a further question; what, exactly, does consent of the governed mean when applied to the world itself? As is true with all socio-political and economic theory, consent of the governed is an idea (albeit a general one) which would be rendered entirely pointless without application to reality. Theory for theory’s sake is not theory at all, not substantially. Instead, such abstractions serve as little more than, ‘food for thought,’ or preoccupation for a bored mind. And so, again, we must ask ourselves, “How can consent of the governed be applied to the real world through praxis and legislation?”
              
​We can answer such a question by reviewing an attempt at real world application of the principle and comparing it back to its own base. For the sake of relevance, I will use the United States and its documents for the purpose of this analysis, beginning with the United States Declaration of Independence. 

Quoting directly, it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”3

As is clearly stated in this foremost founding document, the principle of consent of the governed is used to uphold certain rights seen to the Founding Fathers of the US as, “unalienable.” These rights, which are present at any mention of the foundations of US democracy, are written as, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Therefore, at least when it comes to US democracy, the practical application of this principle is used as a method to uphold even broader principles. However, this application doesn’t end at the borders of the United States. Rather, this application is found across the planet.

It is well known that the United States and its governmental system stands as a sort-of role model for most of the planet’s nations. Whether aligned with them through geo-politics (as is the case with the infamous Five Eyes Nations and their associates) or through use of force (as is the case with nations such as Libya, who were invaded and had their leaders ousted), most modern democracies stand in the shadow and under the influence of the United States and its principles. One perfect example lies in Japan and their post-war restructure. The Allies (headed in Japan by the United States) occupied Japan after their surrender and re-wrote much (if not all) of their governing texts. This restructure left Japan aligned with the Allies and representative of the same values present in the United States’ governing documents and ethical guide works.

To prove this, quoting from the Council on Foreign Relations, “The 1947 [Japanese] constitution altered the relationship between state and society by introducing popular sovereignty… The Allied powers shared responsibility for post-surrender Japan, but it was [US] General Douglas MacArthur who shaped the rewriting of Japan's constitution.”4 
 
And, if we look to MacArthur’s notes on the revision of Japan’s constitution, we find further proof of this.
Quoting directly, “Japan renounces [war] as an instrumentality for settling its disputes and even for preserving its own security. It relies upon the higher ideals which are now stirring the world for its defense and its protection.”5
              
It becomes quite apparent, especially with the use of key terms such as, “popular sovereignty,” and, “relies upon,” that the restructuring of Japan’s entire governmental system, while definitively for the better, was focused on bringing the Japanese government and its ideals much closer to the principles of the United States. This same story is true not only for Japan, but for most of the planet’s currently existing democracies.
              
That being said, a point has been made; what is true for the application of US principles is also true for most (if not all) of the world’s democracies. This point is extremely important in understanding the practical application of consent of the governed as a principle. The scope has been broadened. We aren’t simply reviewing the application as it relates to the United States but quite the contrary; this method of application, through geo-political leverage as well as occupation, applies to all modern democracies and thus, I will no longer refer to these terms distinctly. The application of democratic principles in the US is synonymous with the application of these principles around the world. Henceforth, I will refer to both of these with the interchangeable term, “application.” 

Know, however, that this isn’t necessarily always the case. In certain, rare examples, there are likely other applications of democratic principles, ones that aren’t directly influenced by US ideals. The existence of said alternative applications does little, however, to disprove or discredit the unanimity of US-style application. In fact, the existence of such outliers is only further affirmation of the widespread influence of democratic principles as applied by the United States. The fact that one could find and present a clearly distinct application of democratic principles is itself an affirmation of the observation that most democracies are modeled in a similar way to the US because having noticed the difference proves the US application to be the normative application.

To summarize in the briefest possible way what we’ve analyzed and proven thus far; the modern conception of democratic principles, as modeled after the United States’ application of them, are used as a tool to uphold certain rights seen to us as, “unalienable,” or universal. By extension of this idea, we find that, if one were to prove the contradiction of any given system with these democratic principles, it could not only be deemed undemocratic but devoid of these basic, “unalienable,” rights. The following exists for the express intent of doing such a thing when it comes to specifically consent of the governed.
              
The modern democratic proceeding, while oftentimes varying in exact method (first-past-the-post being most common), remains extremely consistent in its direct violation of the core democratic principles. Whether there are twenty names on the ballot or two, it matters little. What matters is the nature of our current conception of voting itself. When one goes to the voting booth and submits a ballot for a candidate (or candidates), the contradiction does not wait for some later time. The contradiction of our voting systems occurs instantaneously upon the submission of one’s ballot and remains strong through the entire arbitrary term of whatever office one voted for. There is, again as a consequence of our current electoral conception, a single, brief moment between the end of a candidate's term and the submission of a new ballot for a given office where our democratic principles are briefly respected. Leaving this aside for a moment, however, let’s explore the contradiction of our voting system. 
              
To explore the contradiction of our electoral system and the democratic principle known as consent of the governed, I will provide three separate definitions for the term, ‘consent,’ which can be easily compared and synthesized into a usable definition for our purposes. Our first definition comes from the, ‘Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network,’ who can be considered an authority on the subject of consent as any and all sexual activities involve consent in one way or another.
              
Quoting directly, “While the legal definitions of consent may vary by location and circumstance, the general concept is always the same: Consent is an ongoing process of discussing boundaries and what you’re comfortable with… Consent should be clearly and freely communicated… If someone agrees to an activity under pressure of intimidation or threat, that isn’t considered consent because it was not given freely. Unequal power dynamics... also mean that consent cannot be freely given… You can withdraw consent at any point if you feel uncomfortable. One way to do this is to clearly communicate... that you are no longer comfortable with this activity and wish to stop.”6
              
The next definition comes from Sarah O. Parker, writing for the Brooklyn Law Review on a concept known as, “post-penetration rape,”
              
To quote, “Whether a woman never consents to penetration, or initially consents but later revokes, should be irrelevant. To deny that continued sex after consent is withdrawn is rape affirms the definition of women as property, denies autonomy and bodily integrity to women, and deprives victims of legal recourse in the criminal justice system. First, the refusal to recognize postpenetration rape as ‘real rape’ stems from adherence to the understanding of women as property that underlies rape law generally. In both “ancient societies—and in the more recent American common law tradition— women were considered the legal property of their husbands and fathers”; thus, the rape of a woman was a crime against a man’s property… Second, recognizing postpenetration rape as ‘real rape’ acknowledges women’s freedom to choose and their right to be free from unwanted invasion of their bodies. Rape’s chief harm lies ‘in forcibly depriving a person of her right of bodily integrity,’ and that deprivation exists whether initial penetration is accomplished with or without consent.”7
              
Our final definition will allow for the seamless fusion of our past ones through a philosophical lens.
              
Quoting from Encyclopedia Britannica, “Consent, in ethics and political philosophy, [is] an act of permitting something to be done or of recognizing some authority. Granting consent implies relinquishing some authority in a sphere of concern in which one’s sovereignty ought otherwise to be respected… Consent is fundamental to social contract accounts of political legitimacy, arising as early as Plato’s Crito but most prominently in the 17th-century writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke… In modern moral and legal thought, actual consent… is of great importance in determining the force of moral obligations and the validity of contracts.”8
              
Now, having read and understood these distinct definitions of consent, a synthesis of them can be accurately depicted. Such a synthesis will be used as an encompassing definition moving forward whenever referring to the modern conception of consent, especially as it relates to democracy.
              
This synthesis will be stated as, “Consent is the ongoing, retractable process, whether in relation to matters of physical, political, or philosophical significance, whereby one party or group permits another party or group to act in some particular way or engage in a particular action, especially when the action will personally affect oneself.”
              
Now, after having synthesized an appropriate definition of consent, the contradiction between single-point electoral systems (which includes all currently existing voting systems) and consent of the governed becomes highlighted. Consent, by it’s very nature, is an ongoing and retractable process. Much in the same way a person engaging in sexual intercourse can retract consent during the act of penetration, so too should anyone be able to retract their consent to a particular action or event at any time, even if they previously had agreed. Apply this, now, to consent of the governed, and our contradiction is finally outed.

If a citizen, whilst living under a modern democracy, submits a vote for official representation (an example being the president or governor) and later changes their mind as to the choice they made, there is no recourse through which their consent can be withdrawn. By all intents and purposes, the individual no longer consents to having voted the way they did, and their democratic principles are being infringed upon. Adding onto this, as we covered earlier, not only does this imply that binary, single-point voting is undemocratic, but also that modern democracies are devoid of the supposedly, “unalienable rights,” which we are so often guaranteed. 

Simultaneously, if a citizen, whilst living under a modern democracy, submits a vote for a particular piece of legislation (an example being a law to legalize the use of a substance) and later changes their mind as to the choice they made, there is no recourse through which their consent can be withdrawn. By all intents and purposes, the individual no longer consents to having voted the way they did, and their democratic principles are being infringed upon. In the same way as before, this would also imply the violation of our supposedly, “unalienable,” rights.

Since it is not only possible but likely commonplace for individuals to change their opinions on candidates or legislation based on new information, it’s fair to assume that is common for citizens of modern democracies to have their, “unalienable,” rights infringed upon. Whether or not any given individual has changed their mind since they last voted doesn’t matter, the issue is that it’s possible for someone to change their mind despite there being zero method for revoking one’s consent under our electoral system.

And so after careful analysis of modern democracy in its attempts to uphold consent of the governed, and proper definition of the term consent, the obvious contradiction has shown itself. Binary, single-point voting in which any given vote cannot be later revoked is a direct corruption and violation of the core tenets we know as democracy. Connected through legislation to our conception of, “unalienable,” human rights, the violation of said core tenets is not some minor contradiction. It is a gaping hole in the logical platform upholding modern democracy and the modern democratic government.

This contradiction cannot be solved by simply changing our method of voting. The difference between first-past-the-post voting and instant-runoff voting becomes negligible when one realizes there are greater elements at play, particularly how both of these systems (and, in fact, any currently existing electoral system) will fall prey to the very same contradiction. Sure, instant-runoff voting has more democratic elements than first-past-the-post does, but when both are still binary, single-point electoral systems with no system in place to retract one’s consent, the difference is marginal. There is no reason instant-runoff voting (or any other alternative voting system) couldn’t be implemented alongside changes to the binary nature of modern democracy, however, exchanging one such system for another without addressing the fundamental contradiction they all share would do little at all.

Solving the issues of our current electoral system would involve the deconstruction of our entire democratic system, the analysis of each of its elements, and the restructuring of each of these elements in a way that entirely eliminates their binary, single-point voting nature.

Such is the contradiction of modern democracy and consent of the governed.

To fully grasp the deep contradiction that arises between voting and democracy when said voting is made binary, we must first understand the mechanisms and manifestations that uphold popular sovereignty as a principle of democracy. And to do this, we must ask ourselves a further question; what, exactly, does popular sovereignty mean when applied to the world itself? Much like the previously discussed democratic principle of consent of the governed, popular sovereignty is an idea which would be rendered entirely pointless without application to reality. To repeat myself, theory for theory’s sake is not theory at all. And so, we must ask ourselves, “How can consent of the governed be applied to the real world through praxis and legislation?”
              
​We can answer such a question by properly defining popular sovereignty as a term distinct from consent of the governed and comparing the real-world application of democracy (that we previously discussed so extensively) to it. Despite the colloquial use of popular sovereignty and consent of the governed as synonymous, they can be, in fact, distinctly characterized. To do so, having already defined consent of the governed adequately in the last section, I will analyze and define the term popular sovereignty so that they may be compared. This task can be accomplished by breaking down the definition of each word that composes it and combining them into a coherent synthesis.
              
The word, ‘popular,’ finds its root with the Latin term, ‘pop-ularis,’ meaning, ‘people.’9 The addition of the Latin suffix, ‘-aris,’ indicates relationship or pertinence to a particular subject (in this case, relationship, or pertinence to the people, in general). Any dictionary worthy of merit would know the word’s Latin origins and, thus, reflect it in their definition. The choice of exactly which dictionary to use is one of little importance. So, for sake of name recognition, I’ll use Merriam-Webster’s dictionary entry, as it is seemingly of equal or greater popularity to any other major dictionary.
               
Quoting directly, “of or relating to the general public, [or,] suited to the means of the majority.”10
              
Doing the same for the phrase’s latter half, the word, ‘sovereignty,’ derived from the Old French term, ‘souverain,’ and ultimately rooted in the Latin term, ‘super-anus,’ which means, ‘chief,’ or, ‘principle.’ The term is further derived from the Latin term, ‘super,’ meaning, ‘over.11’ Using Merriam-Webster’s dictionary for the sake of simplicity, we find a related definition.
              
Quoting, once again, “supreme power especially over a body politic, [or,] controlling influence.”12
              
Finally, after having defined the terms and their respective roots, a synthesis of the words into a single phrase for our uses will follow. This synthesis (with the additional political context of a principle) could be stated as, “a system or concept for a system through which the general public maintains supreme power over the society.” Henceforth, throughout this document, anytime reference is made to popular sovereignty, this definition will be the intended thought.
              
As blatantly obvious it may seem, I will put significant emphasis on the characteristic differences between this term and the previously analyzed consent of the governed. The purpose of doing so is simple; as mentioned prior to the definition of popular sovereignty, these terms are often used interchangeably in the common vernacular. For our purposes, however, the two shall be characteristically distinct and independently pertinent to the perceived level of democracy that exists within a system. Such distinction serves the purpose of allowing us to more deeply understand the contradiction of our current democratic system and the principles of democracy itself. The newly discovered nuance of separately analyzing these terms should be apparent in the fact that we are now analyzing two elements of democracy rather than one.
              
This, of course, is not to say that those who continue using the phrases interchangeably are wrong. It is perfectly acceptable to utilize the most common definition of these terms, especially when referring to democracy or governments in a broader sense, rather than through our strictly analytical lens. To stop random individuals on the street and correct them on their use of the colloquially synonymous terms would be to forget the purpose of our analysis here. This paper does not exist to argue over the definition of democratic principles, it exists to prove that said principles are violated. The exact wording of a given definition matters little as long as all can agree the definitions resemble the principles of democracy as outlined either by Locke or by the modern application. As long as one agrees with this resemblance, then this analysis can be recognized as valid. Only those who wish to argue in bad-faith, who wish to, ‘win,’ some arbitrary, ‘debate,’ would dismiss this analysis on the basis of the exact wording of given definitions. 
              
As we deeply analyzed in the last section, the binary, single-point nature of our modern voting system leads directly to contradiction. The idea that, after having voted for a representative (or, in more rare cases, legislation directly), one may not retroactively revoke their consent, is the root of that particular contradiction. However, as you’ve probably assumed given the title of this section, this contradiction is not the only one arising out of this binary nature. Apply additional nuance, and a distinct contradiction reveals itself. Before this contradiction is analyzed, however, another more obvious one must be addressed. This more obvious contradiction rests in the representative nature of modern democratic application.
              
In the United States and abroad, the normative application of democracy is known as, ‘representative democracy,’ and this alone stands as a contradiction. In fact, the name itself is proof of such contradiction. How could a system claim to be truly democratic (that is a method of governing in which the people of a society at large hold control over that society) while simultaneously forcing individuals to submit their control over society to certain representatives who are the true legislative and executive powers? This contradiction, however, is a commonly accepted one. Often, in political discourse, this contradiction is seen as a, ‘necessary evil,’ which is to say that many believe this contradiction to be minor enough to warrant completely ignoring it, given the perceived benefits of the representative system. So as not to waste time weighing the benefits and harms of this minor contradiction (which is an entirely separate and equally long-winded issue of discourse), I, too, will allow this contradiction as a sort of, ‘necessary evil,’ (whether or not it truly is). Now that this contradiction has been set aside, what follows will be the main subject of this entire section; the more primary contradiction between our voting system and the democratic principle of popular sovereignty.
              
When an individual casts a ballot or vote in favor of a candidate or piece of legislation under a modern democratic system, they immediately yield their popular sovereignty on that specific subject, as a result of our binary view. Having given your current (but not necessarily static) input on the matter, you now relinquish your control over the issue you voted for; your input is noted for a single moment, a fleeting action that represents an artificially abstracted moment. When that vote is cast, by the time the individual leaves the voting station, even the booth in which they cast it, the fundamentals of democracy have already been violated. Even if this individual immediately changed their mind, if the slip has escaped their grasp, their prior opinion (that is, the one they held when initially filling out the ballot) is immortalized as an artificial abstraction, a derived snapshot, and an unchangeable representation of an opinion that may or may not still currently exist. 

Whether or not one actually does change their mind matters little. Just the existence of the possibility for one to change their mind and for their previously submitted ballot to no longer reflect their opinion on a given matter is enough to prove the violation of the principles of popular sovereignty (and, as mentioned repeatedly in the previous section, by extension of the modern application of democracy, their own personal liberties). The contradiction is that, for the people to truly hold supreme power over society, they would need some system through which to retroactively change the ballot they cast. And this is utterly impossible under the current conception of voting as a binary, single-point submission.

Such is the contradiction of modern democracy and popular sovereignty.

Prior to the delivery of any information, a good author will provide the context needed for a full understanding of said information. Nothing exists in a vacuum and every concept is related to others. As a result, every idea will necessarily have context behind it and other ideas at its base. In the interest of being a good author, I will now share one needed piece of context for the following section of my piece.
              
​As previously discussed, none of the solutions I will share in this piece can stand alone. They are but aids to a larger body of solutions that can only be understood through reading on a wider subject. The solutions that follow this note can and will only be implemented in the context of socialist republic, a proletarian state with the aim of developing and establishing global communism. The problems and contradictions of capitalism are deep-running and unavoidable, meaning that no level of active voting reform in the context of capitalism will bring about true democracy. Implementing such reforms would be akin to pulling the knife out of a wounded organ and patching the gash while leaving the organ to bleed internally. You cannot solve intricate contradictions without first solving the primary contradictions.
              
Thus, given this context, the following section should be read not with intent to build such systems in the status quo but rather with the intent to build such systems only after the status quo has been altered. Not only must active voting take hold exclusively under socialism, but such a voting system will certainly not be the first priority of a developing socialist nation. Beginning with the earliest attempts as socialism and prevailing to this day, the preeminent nations of the world have been openly and violently opposed to the progress of humanity and have brought immense suffering to the peoples of developing socialist nations. These nations, which will continue to face challenges as they grow, should not be judged as undemocratic simply by their lack of the implementation of active voting, much in the same way they should not be judged as ‘police states’ for their rapid militarization and security advances. When faced with immense challenge, it is imperative that these nations prioritize the safety and security of the people and their nation above all else; that includes the implementation of active electoralism.
              
Keep this context in mind when you read the following section.

Far too often in political discourse, a problem is pointed out and analyzed, but the solution to said problem is left either non-existent or vague to the point of inaction. A system cannot be deconstructed and society cannot move forward without both the analysis of a problem and the proposition of a solution to said problem. And so, in an effort to avoid falling into this trap of political discourse, where ideas are whined about rather than solved, the following will stand as a solution to the previously discussed contradictions between our modern democratic system and the principles of democracy. The following is, then, the entire purpose of this piece, and by far its most crucial aspect.
              
As previously mentioned repeatedly (likely to the point of redundancy), the source of these democratic contradictions is the binary, single-point nature of our electoral system. The idea of having voted or having not voted, of submitting a single ballot as an independent abstraction of one’s opinion, is the cause of our systems undemocratic nature. And thus, among many other changes which should be done on the front of democracy, government, and economy, one substantial change must be made; our electoral system must be entirely restructured. Before we discuss the specifics of this restructure, one matter must be settled. This matter is of utmost importance when considering the aims of this piece.
              
Our electoral system is not and will never be the only structural fault of our system. So many other issues, often of even greater importance, are present in our modern society. Solving these issues, which are more fundamental to the socio-political struggle of our time, is no doubt a greater and more pertinent task for our generation. However, I will not mention these issues by name or implication; doing so would spoil the straight-forward and topical nature of this piece so far. This paper exists not to solve every problem in society, it exists to solve but a single problem in society. To divulge all the issues and problems of our society would not only take an immense amount of time but would come at the cost of the watering-down of this piece’s subject. 
              
What then, is the solution to our electoral struggle? The contradictions inherent to our method of voting are now apparent, but how can they be alleviated or resolved? The answer is a system of my own creation; the active voting system (or, alternatively, the active electoral system, or active democracy). 
              
The concept itself is simple, one you’ve probably pondered through the length of this piece, but one that has never yet been realized as a concept (let alone an application). I have yet to hear of any concept matching that of the active voting system and such a concept has never before existed on our planet. To summarize the concept in a way that allows immediate general understanding, it could be stated that active voting is, “a form or method of electoral process in which one’s votes or ballots are not binary or singular but considered as a constant action, as a condition.” To expand, an active voting system can be broadly defined as the redefinition of voting as a constant variable rather than as a single point in time. One would never vote for a candidate or bill one day and see the results the next. Instead, one would constantly be either voting or not voting for a particular candidate or bill, and seeing the results of said constant voting in much the same way; constantly.

Rather than a candidate needing to achieve a single number of votes once and then riding this accomplishment for some arbitrary term, candidate’s under active voting would be required to not only achieve enough initial votes to enter office but also maintain a certain majority of those votes constantly, for falling below the designated, ‘minimum,’ of a given position would deem a candidate ineligible to remain in said position. In much the same way as with candidates, a new bill or law wouldn’t simply achieve the designated number of votes a single time and then be passed as law indefinitely. Instead, any given law would not only need to achieve the initially designated majority but also retain a certain number of active votes to remain law, as falling below a designated minimum would mean the bill or law no longer has the support of the very people who voted it to pass. This is the concept of active voting, voting as a constantly conducted, passive action rather than a single, active action conducted once and remaining indefinitely. An active vote would be subject to reversal and change at any given time, entirely at the discretion of the voter in question.
              
Of course, under such a system, you threaten to introduce a small level of instability to the electoral system; it is (theoretically) possible for a candidate to achieve the required votes to take office and then immediately have the office revoked or for a law to pass and immediately be abolished. Such an event could occur repeatedly and would gum up the otherwise smoothly operating electoral system. This, however, has an obvious solution which removes this possibility entirely. Simply introducing two distinct minimum voting levels could avoid this possibility by staggering the number of votes required to be elected and the number to remain in office. By reducing the number required to maintain office, a sort of buffer is introduced to the electoral process, the size of which could be adjusted at any moment to the specifics of a given office or law. No longer is it possible for a candidate or law to immediately lose its status as elected or passed, as it would require a significant portion of the voter base to immediately and simultaneously change their mind in the same fashion.
              
An additional benefit of this staggered minimum concept is the chance for candidates and laws to actually affect change before removal for inadequacy. Oftentimes, in defense of the modern democratic system, it is said that terms exist to allow an elected official time to pass laws and work with others to affect change before re-election rolls around and the merit of their prior promises are judged. However, such a term is always arbitrarily determined and directly violates core democratic principles (as discussed previously). This staggered buffer in an active voting system would eliminate both of these issues; the buffer would not need to be arbitrary, it could be studied and specified for each given position to find a mathematically perfect difference between the minimum to be elected and minimum to maintain, and it avoids infringing on democratic principles (and, thereby, individual liberties) by still allowing each voter the ability to, at any moment, revoke their vote (and consent).
              
Another developmental, ‘speed-bump,’ in the synthesis of active voting is the issue of practical application. One may be inclined to ask, “how could this system, which requires the ability for any individual to immediately revoke their active voting status for any number of given representatives or laws, be applied to the real world feasibly?” The answer to which is dependent on the technological capabilities and specifics of the society the system is implemented in. Both will be covered, beginning with the application under worse technological capabilities and conditions.
              
In a society that has poor technological and virtual capabilities but wishes to adopt an electoral system structured in the image of active voting, repurposing old polling/voting stations as active voting stations is one fairly inexpensive method. These structures would act in a similar way to their old function aside from the fact that they would be open every day of every year, preferably twenty-four hours a day as well. Upon entering such a repurposed voting station, one would continue in much the same way they would under our current electoral system. Citizens would check in and verify their identity, proceed to a discreet and private booth, and consider their options for voting. However, the largest difference comes in the number of possible selections and the ability to, of course, change one’s decisions at any time. Ballots in such active booths would likely need to be noticeably lengthier than they are under the modern electoral system due to the much wider array of options available to voters under active electoralism.

​One method of presenting the available options that prioritizes time and is highly feasible for such poor technological conditions would be to designate the first page of a polling sheet or packet as an active voting list. Said list would neatly organize the names of all candidates one is currently voting for, as well as basic voting information on each of these candidates (including the current approval rating as recorded at the end of the prior day). Printing such a list (which could include both candidates and legislation or bills, depending on the space requirements and formatting) every time an individual came in to vote would allow for reduction of time needed for most decisions. If one entered a voting facility for the express purpose of retracting their active voting status for a particular candidate, the inclusion of an active voting list would make this a swift and effective process, even something one could stop for just a number of minutes to do. An optional addition that could further increase the speed at which certain tasks can be conducted would be to, in addition to all the candidates one is actively voting for, the list could include, for each of these candidates, an option to immediately switch their vote to the second (or even third) candidate for the office. This would save further time as one wouldn’t be forced to search the entire ballot or ballot packet for the opposition candidate of a particular office, they could make a single mark and submit the ballot, spending virtually zero time in-booth.

Additionally, this method does not necessarily require the use of repurposed voting stations rather than newly-built ones; the utilization of repurposed buildings serves only the function of reducing cost and saving resources in a nation where this would likely be key. The exact implementation of such methods would obviously vary based on the unique specifications and requirements of a given nation's material conditions, and thus, this implementation method is very much so a malleable selection. In this particular regard, the fact that I haven’t mentioned a given system or specific implementation should not immediately dismiss the concept. The people of a nation should decide for themselves how exactly to implement active voting, as nobody could ever be expected to see the future and present all possible implementations. This stipulation also applies to the following implementation, which regards a society with higher technological capabilities.
              
In such a society, where technological integration with regards to voting is feasible (meaning it is both secure and efficient), the active voting system can be developed in a certainly superior format. Of course, many would argue that the internet and technology in general have not advanced to this point, even in the most developed nations on earth, so such technological integration would likely require a certain level of innovation beforehand. After much thought, there seems to be two distinct possibilities for implementation in a technologically advanced society; one for conditions more similar to today and one for conditions that are, likely, still long in the future.

The prior would be the semi-technological approach, where polling stations (either repurposed or newly built) are constructed with hyper-secure computers within each private booth. One would enter the facility, verify their identity (either with an individual working the station or through an automated process) and proceed to a designated booth where they could edit and modify their active voting list as much as they desire. The main characteristic distinction between this method and the method that could be used in nations with poor technological capabilities lies in the lack of need for costly printing and work-arounds to certain problems. No ballot packets would need to exist as all representative and legislative options can be quickly and easily sorted (through various methods) virtually. Approval percentages and other key voter information could not only be accessed more quickly, but also with far higher accuracy and in real-time. The lack of a physical ballot will also provide the added benefit of destroying the possibility of ballot tampering. Voting computers under this method of application would need to be held to the utmost standard of security and privacy, which would allow immediate and safe transfer of encrypted voting data. 
              
The latter of the technologically advanced applications would require even further security and privacy by nature of it’s core distinction; it requires no physical voting facilities. In the stead of such voting or polling stations, individuals could log into an online voting application which would allow for the most convenient and effective system. Options for representation and legislation as well as key voting information could be sorted in much the same way as they would in the prior application, but rather than existing on dedicated machines on dedicated property, the page could be accessed by any number of authorized devices from any location and at any time. The convenience and effectiveness of such an implementation would be immense; one could just as easily vote from on their lunch break as they could in the bathroom between classes at an educational institution. Voting would, then, become an integral pillar of society. The use of such an implementation would no doubt fundamentally alter the culture and tasks of a given nation or community, introducing the concept of voting at any time and often. One may just as easily excuse their inattention to a particular conversation by replying, ‘I’m voting,’ as they now say, ‘I’m texting.’ This additional factor not only designates this system as the prime and ultimate implementation of active voting systems, but also as a transcendent element of the democratic culture. Democracy would cease to be an abstraction and would solidify itself as an innate cultural factor.

Of course, this ultimate implementation entirely relies upon the ability for a regulatory body to prevent tampering and ensure complete security. Accessing from anywhere introduces a host of possible issues with relevance to not only the individual but the system as a whole, as well. For example, one individual connecting to the voting system from an insecure or compromised network may allow them to tamper with or monitor that individual's active votes as well as giving them a chance at some higher access which may lead to further complications. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that such an implementation takes caution and security extremely seriously. Multi-factor authentication, especially to the third or fourth degree, could be used as a method of increasing security greatly. In addition, a nationalized and universal system of secure internet across a nation (or the planet) would immensely reduce the likelihood that an individual would connect through an unstable or compromised internet connection. The full implementation of this method of active voting, while assuredly the most superior method, would likely take further years of innovation and planning to effectively execute. 
              
Such are the distinctly possible implementations of active voting as a solution to democratic contradictions in the modern world.

The global proletariat is a massive and struggling class. Enforced by its immense size but restrained by the oppression of a higher class, the proletariat struggles every day to maintain its principles as a class. Eighty percent of the world’s population lives on less than ten US dollars every day13 and only a tiny portion of the global population, far less than one percent no doubt, holds any meaningful power in regards to the world around them. Workers are constrained to laboring, eating, sleeping, and repeating without affecting change or making any real impact on the society around them. The proletariat upholds the entirety of our global society but maintains close to zero actual control over it. Even in nations where modern democracy is practiced, it is illusory and contradictory. The guiding principles of a truly democratic society are neglected and infracted through a largely abstract and arbitrary system of governance. Our flawed electoral systems struggle to accomplish anything for the laborer and accomplish much for the tiny class who find it in themselves to sit upon the backs of our working masses.
              
​Active voting, in association with the truly sweeping reform needed to genuinely restructure our society, will help abolish this oppressive power so effectively wielded against our class. Beyond the will of a microscopic minority of capitalists being forced upon the global proletariat - rather than sham and contradictory democratic proceedings upholding the status quo of oppression - there stands a set of principles and systems which can (given immense dedication and effort) destroy the bonds that restrict the people and bring about a truly democratic society. 
              
As I stated with regards to the principles of democracy, theory for theories sake is not theory at all; the application of democratic ideals through active electoralism is a much more pertinent and difficult task than simply laying the groundworks. This piece of theory is no different than any other, it’s theoretical foundation should be used as a general guide (and not a specific list of actions) in applying truly democratic principles in a nation or society. The intent of writing is quite simple when taken in it’s entirety; for me, the highest priority is upholding the working class.

Any action that further enforces the dictatorship of capital and its iron grip on the world is an action against my interests’ wishes. Conversely, any action that degenerates and disrupts capitalist oppression is one I fully endorse, bar none. If steps are being taken to restructure our flawed society, and these steps reflect the interests and needs of the global proletariat, I support them. And when considering electoralism, I observed a void. In almost every aspect of society, there has been analysis of the conditions and contradictions. On all levels, in most every possible way, there has been a great deal of thought put into the material and social interactions of our society. But in just one place, on a single level, I observed a deep cavity of analysis and associated solution. Capitalism and bourgeois democracy have many contradictions, however, never before now have I discovered the analysis of the topic of this piece (namely, the contradictions of binary, single-point electoralism).
              
It is my view that the laborers as a whole, the class of the proletariat, must uphold themselves. In spite of our massive size, the control we exercise on society currently is infinitesimally small. We cannot rely on the morsels of sustenance so grudgingly tossed at us by the oppressing class. Lest we should fall farther into the oppressive bonds of our class relations, the proletariat must (at all costs) build class consciousness and uphold itself. The capitalists certainly have little to zero interest in doing it for us. They aim to continue and retain their dominion, not to give it up to the masses they’ve held down. Capitalism (and the electoral system that has sprung out of it in many nations) exist to enforce a set of principles which will only continue to destroy and degrade the planet and the people who inhabit it.
              
Such are the contradictions and my analysis of the modern democratic proceedings in relation to the principles of democracy.

About the Author:
​​My name is Simon and I am a Marxist-Leninist born on the front range of Colorado. I focus primarily on contemporary international issues with a particular focus on socialist states and their interactions. 

​Karl and Fred were talking in Karl's study about the fact that they had been friends for over 50 years--since first grade in fact.  Karl was saying “Why don’t we engage in an extended study of Chinese philosophy to see if any of it is useful in comprehending the new century”  Fred was not at all adverse to this suggestion so Karl pulled down his copy of a Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy edited by the Chinese scholar Wing-Tsit Chan.
    
“I remember that very well,” Fred said. “When we were in Hawaii in the summer of 1968 you lugged it around with you everywhere you went. Do you still remember what you read?"
     
“I most certainly do,” replied Karl, handing the volume to Fred. “Here! Why don’t you look at it and ask some questions--between the two of us we can try to find out if this stuff has any meaning today.”
    
Fred opened the book and said, “We might as well begin with Confucius--he is the first philosopher I see listed in the Table of Contents.”  
 
“So be it’” Karl replied. 
     
“Ok,” Fred said, “I have the Analects here...” 
 
Karl interrupted, “The  Lun-yu in Chinese. That's a collection of Confucius’ sayings collected by his students after his death. You know Confucius was a great teacher like Jesus, Buddha and Socrates and like them he didn’t write anything himself--his wisdom was saved for us by his followers putting it down for future generations.”
     
“Oh, so we are getting ‘virtual’ Confucius.”  
 
“Well," responded Karl, “there is probably some tampering with the text, some student misinterpretations, but also a lot of the real ideas and opinions of Confucius as well. After all, he was born in 551 BC, lived 73 years, and died in 479 BC.”
 
“That's 72 years,” Fred corrected.
 
“Ah,” Karl replied, “unlike us, in China when you are born you are considered to be one year old so when we are one a Chinese is already two!.”
     
“Anyway,” Karl continued, “He was from a small state called Lu and lived in a time of political turmoil and war because the central authority had broken down and all the little petty states were competing for power. Confucius was self educated, there were no professional teachers--he was the first--and he thought his ideas if practiced would restore the Empire to its former glory and create a just state for the people as well. Failing to do much in Lu he left it and wandered around to other states spreading his doctrines and collecting a large group of disciples who followed him. After many years he returned to Lu and died a few years later, leaving his ‘school’ behind.
    
“I see a bunch of Chinese technical terms here in Chan before we even get to Chapter One of the Lun-yu,” Fred remarked, “Have a look see!” 
 
Karl took the book. “Yes, I see. I’ll tell you which ones are the most important and we will have to memorize them as they will keep cropping up. But for the time being we can ignore them. I’ll talk about them when they actually pop up. Why don’t you begin looking at the text of the Lun-yu.” Karl handed the book back to Fred.
     
“ What’s this 1:1 ?” 
 
“It means ‘Section 1, Chapter 1’-a conventional ordering.” 
 
“OK,” and Fred began to read: “1:1 Is it not a pleasure to learn and to repeat or practice from time to time what has been learned?”
    
“Very famous,” Karl interrupted. “The very first sentence. It indicates that Confucius enjoined the unity of theory and practice!”
    
Fred continued. ”What does he mean here in 1:8? ‘Have no friends who are not as good as yourself.’ If the Chinese thought Confucius was the greatest teacher and the best then he couldn’t have any friends!”
 
“He means “morally good’,” said Karl, “not the best teacher. Confucius was morally good and so were many of his disciples, so he had plenty of friends.”
     
“Well, what about this: 1:11-’When a man’s father is alive, look at the bent of his will. When his father is dead, look at his conduct. If for three years he does not change from the way of his father, he may be called filial.’?”
    
“You know the ancient Chinese were very family oriented and patriarchal with large extended families and sons were filial--meaning obedient, respectful and loyal. Very unlike today with us!”
     
“You mean they were big on the Fifth Commandment!” 
 
“They certainly would have agreed with it. Anyway, this quote just means that a son should be loyal to his father’s ideas while he is alive, and stay loyal to them thru the three years of official mourning after his death, then he can go his own way with his own ideas--he has done his duty.”
     
“What about 2:1? He says ‘A ruler who governs his state by virtue is like the north polar star, which remains in its place while all the other stars revolve around it.”
     
“Chan points out two things are going on here. One is the idea that the Ruler rules by virtue and second, as Thomas Jefferson would say, ‘that government governs best which governs least.’ Everything should fall into place naturally by the laws of virtue.”
     
“Wow! sounds like a Republican--no big government!” 
 
“Or a Marxist--’virtue’ leads to the withering away of the state!” 
 
“Hmmm. The Right and the Left can claim the old boy!” 
 
“Well, let’s wait and see on that one Fred.”
     
“O.K. Karl. 2:4 is very interesting. He says, ‘At fifteen my mind was set on learning [not Intendo]. At thirty my character had been formed. At forty I had no more perplexities [Gad Zooks!]. At fifty I knew the Mandate of Heaven (T’ien-ming). At sixty I was at ease with whatever I heard. At seventy I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing moral principles.”
 
“T’ien-ming--’Heaven-Fate’ or ‘Nature-Fate’ the famous ‘Mandate of Heaven’,” Karl mused.  “You know Chan says the prevailing meaning of this term is what we would simply call the ‘laws of nature.’ Different Chinese thinkers in the long history of China of course meant many different things by this term--from God’s Providence to the philosopher’s ideas of moral law or fate (destiny) to natural endowment [genetic constitution].”
    
“Here is 2:11 ‘A man who reviews the old so as to find out the new is qualified to teach others’. I like that--it means a teacher has to keep reading and studying or he or she becomes stale and unfit. But what does 2:12 mean? ‘The superior man is not an implement.’ “
     
“This is the type of person who follows Confucian philosophy--the sage, the philosopher, etc. I don’t like the term ‘superior man’ and all its patriarchal suggestions, ‘exemplary person’ would be better. The Chinese term is “junzi” and you can just substitute it every time you see “superior man.” You know Fred, despite the prevailing sexism of Chinese culture in Confucius’ day, we have to see this philosophy as compatible with the equality of the sexes if it’s going to mean anything in this new century of ours. Not being an ‘implement’ only means the sage is not just a tool to be used by those in power, a sort of technical expert used to carry out plans devised by others. A true wise person would be well rounded and part of the evaluative process. The scientists, for example, that made the Atomic Bomb, for all their smarts, were just implements. How many scientists today have any real input in the decision making process regarding the use of their work? Many are hired hands. I think this is what Confucius meant.”
     
“What does he mean here in 2:18--’When one’s words give few occasions for blame and his acts give few occasions for repentance--there lies his emolument’?
    
“It’s as Chan points out--Confucianism stresses equally the importance of both words and actions.”
    
“3:17 won’t go over well today!”
     
“Read it!”
     
“Ok, Confucius is replying to one of his followers who was against killing a lamb as a sacrifice at the start of the month. ‘Zigong! You love the lamb but I love the ceremony.’ What do you think of that one?”
 
“Times change. I think by now we all agree that animal sacrifices are a pretty primitive or barbaric behavioral pattern that nowadays would be considered a pretty ignorant sort of practice--but Confucius was living twenty-five centuries ago...”
    
Fred interrupted, “But weren’t there people, teachers in India at this time, that thought that killing animals was verboten?"
     
“I think the point is, this was acceptable in Chinese culture. Confucius is trying to point out the importance of tradition and ritual, but on this point I think Zigong had a more advanced outlook--it’s too bad that Confucius didn’t rise to the occasion.”
    
“Here is another confusing saying, 4:10-’A junzi in dealing with the world is not for anything or against anything. He follows righteousness as the standard.”
     
“Hmmmm. Looks like you could not say ‘I’m for peace or I’m for social reform.’ But of course it’s confusing because it seems as if you could say ‘I’m for righteousness!’  Does Chan say anything in his comment Fred?”
    
Fred read out, “Here lies the basic idea of the Confucian doctrine of ching-ch’uan, or the standard and the exceptional, the absolute and the relative, or the permanent and the temporary.”
     
“This we should remember: ‘The Doctrine of Ching-Ch’uan’. It means don’t be dogmatic, don’t commit the fallacy of accident, maybe even be pragmatic--no, that's the wrong word. Keep an open mind and judge every situation you are confronted with in terms of its own unique problematic, but don’t break the rules of ‘righteousness.’ The big problem is of course how to determine what ‘righteousness’ is. For Confucius it seems to have been the rules of his own society seen from the vantage point of a man who looked to the past practices of an idealized former age.  Confucius would balk at being involved in a current situation that deviated too much from the past--not always, but mostly. His view or doctrine would go along with what today we call ‘situational ethics’ but with a ‘conservative’ twist.”
     
“Maybe this will help,” Fred said. “In 4:15 he tells his follower Zeng ‘there is one thread that runs through my doctrines’ which Zeng explained as ‘The Way of our Master is none other than conscientiousness (chung) and altruism (shu).’  So I say ‘righteousness’ equals chung + shu.”
     
“Not bad,” Karl remarked. “I like the idea of ‘one thread (i-kuan)’.  What does Chan say about these terms?”
     
“Chung is the full development of a person’s mind--the good aspects, and Shu is extending these good aspects to other people. Develop your own abilities and help others develop theirs--what could be more righteous than that?”
    
“Read on!”
    
“Here is 4:16--’The junzi understands righteousness(i); the inferior man understands profit’. Yikes! Our whole Global Capitalist system is based on profit!"
 
"Maybe to be a Confucian today puts you in the opposition.”
    
“ Do you really think so Karl? Confucius lived under something like feudalism. What was his attitude?”
     
“This is getting heavy. I think we will have to keep these questions in mind and read along some more in the Source Book before we try to answer them.”
 
“OK by me. Here is just some information from 6:5. We find the name of Confucius’ favorite student was Yan Hui.”
    
“I know, he died very young, in his thirties.”  
     
“What do you think of this? 6:17--’Man is born with uprightness. If one loses it he will be lucky if he escapes with his life’.”   
    
“I don’t know what this means. ‘Uprightness’ is a culturally relative term and a person learns it from his or her society, so I don’t know what it can mean to say you are ‘born’ with it. But think of ‘with’ in the sense that a person is born into a society with [i.e., which has] such a sense, then if one loses the sense of uprightness inculcated into one by the society one gets into a pickle indeed. I can make sense of 6:17 along these lines.”
     
“Well Karl, I think you must be correct. Looking back to 5:12 I found this: Zigong is speaking, ‘We can hear our Master’s [views] on culture and its manifestation, but we cannot hear his views on human nature and the Way of Heaven [because these subjects are beyond the comprehension of most people].’ So I don’t think that Confucius was talking about anything innate in humans.”
     
“I agree. What’s next?”
    
“6:19--’To those who are above average, one may talk of the higher things, but may not do so to those who are below average.’”
     
“This is sort of a philosophical rule. The Prime Directive of philosophy is to ‘Always seek the truth by means of logic and reason without appeals to faith and emotion.’ And here we have what I call the ‘Second Directive’--’don’t bother talking philosophy with people who don’t understand the importance of the Prime Directive.’” 
    
“That’s how you interpret 6:19? Where does the Prime Directive come from? I haven’t seen it in the Analects?”
     
“It’s from Socrates via Plato. But there are hints of it in the Analects.  I’ll point them out when we come to them.”
     
“Maybe there is a hint of it right here in 6:20--”Devote yourself earnestly to the duties due to men, and respect spiritual beings but keep them at a distance. This may be called wisdom.’ I think I see a hint there.”
     
“Good observation Fred. Read on!”
     
“OK, 6:21--’The man of wisdom delights in water; the man of humanity delights in mountains. The man of wisdom is active; the man of humanity is tranquil. The man of wisdom enjoys happiness; the man of humanity enjoys long life.’ “
    
“These are two of Confucius big values--activity and tranquility. They are found in the same person depending on the circumstances. By the way, Yan Hui had a short life but I doubt that Confucius did not consider him a man of humanity.”
    
“And Chan remarks that ‘courage’ was later added to the list and that Mencius grouped these first two values with his concepts of righteousness and propriety to get ‘The Four Beginnings.’”
    
“Yes, but we will get to Mencius in due time [i.e., in another discussion]. Let’s not jump the gun.”
    
“6:23--’When a cornered vessel no longer has any corner, should it be called a cornered vessel? Should it?’”
   
“We are approaching here a central and important doctrine of Confucius--the rectification of names--but we will have to wait a while for its proper development. It’s just hinted at here.”
     
“I see Chan’s brief comment:’ Name must correspond to actuality.’ The Correspondence Theory of Truth!”
     
“What’s next?”
    
“6:28--’A man of humanity, wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself, also helps others to be prominent. To be able to judge others by what is near to ourselves may be called the method of realizing humanity.’ Chan calls this ‘The Confucian golden rule in a nutshell.’ “
     
“Yes, and this passage is connected with 4:15 and the ‘one thread’ passage.”
     
“7:1--’I transmit but do not create. I believe in and love the ancients.’ Chan suggests we compare this with 2:11 and points out that he did do things that were new--’he offered education to all’--and his ideas on the junzi and ‘heaven’ were somewhat original.”
    
“That comment on education needs to be looked at, especially the ‘all’ part. I want to give Confucius his due credit. He was not a stuck-up aristocrat and if so-called common people showed an aptitude for learning or people from impoverished economic and/or social backgrounds showed talent, Confucius welcomed them as students. This was really a big step forward for the China of his day and in his own social context Confucius was an enlightened person in this respect. But he did NOT offer education to ‘all’. He had nothing to do with women and did not rise above his social conditioning with respect to their rights as human beings with the same value as males. In this respect Plato was much more enlightened than he. One wonders if women had been seen as equals by Confucius if they would have had to wait until the victory of the Marxists in 1949 for the preconditions of their emancipation.”
    
“Excellent observation Karl. I wonder why Chan missed it. Anyway, here is 7:8--’I do not enlighten those who are not eager to learn, nor arouse those who are not anxious to give an explanation themselves. If I have presented one corner of the square and they cannot come back to me with the other three, I should not go over the points again.’”
    
“A very revealing quote on his teaching methods. Compare it to 6:19.”
 
“In 7:16 he says, ‘Give me a few more years so that I can devote fifty years to study, then I may be free from great mistakes.”        
     
“This reminds me of Hume’s satire on his own death--asking Charon to grant him a leave of a few years so he might see the overthrow of religious superstition. Of course Confucius is not trying to be funny, this simply shows his modesty--yet fifty years is hardly a few!”
     
“7:20-’Confucius never discussed strange phenomena, physical exploits, disorder, or spiritual beings’”
     
“Here is one of those Prime Directive hints we were speaking about earlier.”
     
“7:22--’Heaven produced the virtue that is in me; what can Huan Tui do to me?’”
    
“This seems deterministic. Huan Tui tried to assassinate Confucius. It seems as if Confucius was a Presbyterian here. If Heaven has determined what shall be then Huan Tui really can’t do much to Confucius. There are many problems with this type of determinism which are not discussed in the Analects.” [Huan Tui was a jealous official afraid he would lose his Job if Confucius met his Lord]
     
“7:24-’Confucius taught four things: culture (wen), conduct, loyalty, and faithfulness.’”
      
“Very succinct statement showing that Confucius’ concern was with social philosophy--politics and ethics--and not religion or metaphysics.”
    
“Here is 7:29--’Is humanity far away? As soon as I want it, there it is right by me.’”
     
“It’s as Chan remarks. We are always able to act properly. Our humanity is always on call and we have no one to blame but ourselves if we fail to act upon it--unless there is a gun to your head or something similar.”
     
“Now Karl, here is a good one--more than a hint of the Prime Directive if you ask me. 7:34--’Confucius was very ill. Zilu asked that prayer be offered. Confucius said “is there such a thing?” Zilu replied, “There is. A Eulogy says, ‘Pray to the spiritual beings above and below.’” Confucius said, “My prayer has been for a long time [that is, what counts is the life that one leads].”’”
     
“I agree with you Fred, this is really a great quote. Confucius has no interest in religious mumbo jumbo. This would be especially true if he thinks Heaven is a deterministic system.  It looks like Zilu missed one corner of the square!”
     
“7:37--’Confucius is affable but dignified, austere but not harsh, polite but completely at ease.’ And Chan remarks that this is ‘The Confucian Mean in practice.’ But we haven’t talked about the ‘Mean’ have we?”
    
“Not yet, but it’s coming up. It’s more or less like the Greek notion of nothing in excess.”
    
“Now here is a very interesting description of Yan Hui the favorite disciple. Chan says it is very Taoist. It is given by Zengzi. 8:5--’Gifted with ability, yet asking those without; possessing much, yet asking those who possess little; having, yet seeming to have none; full, yet seeming vacuous; offended, yet not contesting--long ago I had a friend who devoted himself to these ways.’ And now to continue. Here is an example of elitist thinking! 8:9--’The common people may be made to follow it (the Way) but may not be made to understand it.’”
     
“This goes along with the sentiments in 6:19. Undemocratic from our point of view but quite in keeping with the feudal mentality of the times. This distrust of ordinary people seems endemic. Not only is our U.S. government designed to minimize participation by the common people but we have seen the collapse of the European socialist countries was facilitated by a similar, and in their case paternalistic, contempt of the ordinary person. The current Chinese government seems no different in this regard no matter how much better off materially the majority of the people may be.”
     
“Here comes a passage that Chan says has caused a lot of problems in the Confucian tradition. 9:1--’Confucius seldom talked about profit, destiny (ming or the Mandate of Heaven), and humanity.’  Chan points out that while ‘profit’ is discussed only six times and ‘destiny’ ten times ‘humanity’ is mentioned one hundred five times! So how can it be maintained that Confucius seldom talked about it. Chan says it is an intractable problem. Confucius had positions on all these subjects.”
     
“Well, I understand not talking a lot about ‘profit’--’chung + shu’ seem incompatible, at least if profit is elevated to the primary aim of life. ‘Ming’ [fate] is a metaphysical concept and we have already noted that metaphysics was not one of Confucius’ major concerns.”
     
“9:16--’Confucius, standing by a stream, said, “it passes on like this, never ceasing day or night!”
     
“Obviously a metaphor for time and life. This saying is very much in the spirit of Heraclitus and even the Hegelian dialectic. I hope the Chinese Marxists appreciate it!”
     
“Now we have what Chan says is ’a most celebrated saying on humanism’. Another one of those hints we were speaking of previously--a lot more than a hint actually. 11:11 Zilu ‘asked about serving the spiritual beings. Confucius said,”If we are not yet able to serve man, how can we serve spiritual beings?” “I venture to ask about death.” Confucius said, “If we do not yet know about life, how can we know about death?”’
     
“A really great quote Fred. Would that all the squabbling religious fanatics we are reading about in the papers every day might heed these words!”
   
“We have come to 11:25 A, I am going to summarize it. It is rather long but has generated a great deal of speculation as to its meaning because of what many consider to be the unusual responses in it by Confucius.  In this passage Confucius asks several of his companions what they would most like to do in the world assuming they had attained office and recognition. One replied that he would like to govern a state that was in dire straits so that in three years the people could see how he could solve all the problems. Another gave a similar answer while admitting that he was not himself a junzi. Another wanted to be a junior assistant as he was still learning. Finally, Zengxi said ‘In the late Spring, when the spring dress is ready, I would like to go with five or six grownups and six or seven young boys to bathe in the Yi River, enjoy the breeze on the Rain Dance Alter, and then return home singing.’ Now Confucius replied ‘agree with Zengxi.’ The Chinese have expended a lot of ink trying to find out why Confucius agreed with Zengxi.
     
“Well, Fred,” Karl began, “it seems pretty clear that what Confucius is saying is that it’s best to have power in a well ordered state that doesn’t require any heroics to administer. His other students didn’t get the point, obviously, of Confucius’ ideas about government. He seems to have had a lot of students he should have gone over that first corner with again.”
     
“That’s right Karl. Now here is a version of the ‘Golden Rule’ from the Analects--its in 12:2 ‘Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.’”
   
“The negative version. I used to think that the ‘Golden Rule’ was unique to our culture till I read about it long ago in the works of Confucius.”
     
“A point for anti-ethnocentrism.”
     
“Indeed!”
     
“12:22--’Fan Chi asked about humanity. Confucius said, “It is to love men.” He asked about knowledge. Confucius said “It is to know man.”’”
    
“Again the stress on moral and social subjects. Of course today knowing ‘man’ would include psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, etc., etc.  And ‘love’.... here we need a real definition of what constitutes ‘love’ of humanity. What is the real substance of Confucian Humanism.?”
    
“Is it just practicing the ‘Golden Rule’ in whatever situation you find yourself?”
     
“Maybe. But maybe it’s more action oriented than that. Maybe ‘love’ means we have to strive to change the social situations in which we find people. Maybe nowadays Confucianism can only be practiced within the Marxist framework. Sort of ‘Marxism-Confucianism.’”
    
“That sounds a little like the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. He said he had come to realize that his philosophy, ‘existentialism,’ could only be developed within a form of Marxism because the social conditions that brought forth Marxism have not been transcended. In fact, according to him, no philosophy made any sense that ignored or rejected Marxism because only Marxism addressed itself to the problems of humanity as a whole, to abolishing race and class exploitation and treating, eventually, all people as ends.”
     
“We are getting far afield. Better get back to the Analects!”
    
“13:3--here Confucius brings up the topic of ‘The Rectification of Names’. ‘If names are not rectified, then language will not be in accord with truth. If language is not in accord with truth, then things cannot be accomplished.’”
     
“You know Fred this is extremely important. This is reminiscent of Bertrand Russell and of the Analytic Philosophers and the Oxford ordinary language philosophers. The words we use to describe reality have to correspond to that reality. People are misled and misgoverned all the time by being duped by the misuse of names. Remember the Vietnam War--American troops would retreat and the military brass would call it an ‘advance to the rear’! They were just trying to mislead and confuse the American people.
    
“Like renaming the War Department the ‘Department of Defense' or calling the invasion of Iraq 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' instead of 'Operation Iraqi Oil'”
    
“I think we have another directive under our Prime Directive, or rather another rule.”
     
“That’s one directive and two rules we have then.”
     
“Yes. Rule One--don’t discuss philosophy with those who reject the Prime Directive. Rule Two--’The Rectification of Names.’  That is ‘language must be in accord with truth.’ This may be difficult to attain but we must constantly strive for it. You see, we are learning lots of stuff we can apply to our own age and culture!”
    
“Hmmmm. Here is a difficult passage I think. 13:18--’The Duke of She told Confucius, “In my country there is an upright man called Kung. When his father stole a sheep, he bore witness against him.” Confucius said, “The upright men in my country are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this.” ‘What do you make of that Karl?”
     
“I think it’s the ‘Euthyphro Problem.’”
     
“What’s that?”
     
“Plato wrote a dialog called the Euthyphro. Socrates meets Euthyphro who is on his way to report a murder his father has committed. He thinks piety requires this. This is like Kung being a witness against his father because he, and the Duke of She, think that uprightness requires this. Confucius holds the contrary view.”
     
At this point Karl walked over to his bookcase and pulled out the Oxford Companion to Philosophy. “There is an article here on this problem Fred, by Gareth Matthews. I think it will throw some light on Comrade Kung’s behavior.”
     
By all means, Karl, carry on.” 
     
“To put the problem in Chinese terms we have to figure out what does ‘uprightness’ consist of-- that is, where does the notion come from. Is it one thing in Lu, Confucius' native state, and another in She or is it constant so Confucius is really indicating that the Duke of She is wrong? I must say, I don’t have an answer to this and neither did Socrates. Here let me read this passage or paraphrase it to the Chinese context. The point seems to be that ‘uprightness’ can’t be defined as something we should do because some authority demands it of us, say God or Heaven, because then we would only be doing it because of authority and authorities differ. Nor can it be the case that God or Heaven orders it because it is right to do so because then it is an independent thing to which God or Heaven is subject. So we really can’t figure out from whence the standard of ‘uprightness’ is derived. It’s the old ‘Is it good because God wills it or does God will it because it is good’ problem. I think the Prime Directive rules out ‘God” as an explanation, so we have to say on one level ‘uprightness’ is relative to cultures, the level of cultural development and on another level we have to contextualize the circumstances of each situational act.  The Duke of She hasn’t given us enough information on this case and I think Confucius jumped the gun with his reply. Is your primary duty to your family or to the state--i.e., to a legal system which should protect all? It’s Kung’s father that is the problem but between the Duke of She and Confucius it’s not possible to definitely say one or the other is right. It seems the duty to ‘truth’ however would tip the scales against Confucius unless Kung volunteered this information in a noncompulsory environment.”
    
“14:36--’Someone said,”What do you think of repaying hatred with virtue?” Confucius said,”In that case what are you going to repay virtue with? Rather, repay hatred with uprightness and repay virtue with virtue”’
     
“Confucius means you repay hatred with proper behavior according to the circumstances.”
     
“This means, according to Chan, absolute impartiality. Confucianists mean that by ‘uprightness’.
     
“If so then Kung was being impartial in saying his father stole the sheep. Confucius should have agreed with the Duke of She!”
     
“In 15:8 he reaffirms his humanism: ’A resolute scholar and a man of humanity will never seek to live at the expense of injuring humanity. He would rather sacrifice his life in order to realize humanity.’” 
     
“Go on Fred.”
     
“OK, 15:23, a follower asks if there is one word that sums up Confucius’ philosophy. You guess Karl!”

"Well, I think it must be 'humanity' (jen/ren)."
    
“No, it’s shu or altruism, from 4:15. He then repeats the negative ‘Golden Rule’ which must be the real meaning of altruism and hence is the one-word summation of Confucius philosophy!”
    
​“So, we can boil down the whole of the Analects to this one comment. But let’s proceed anyway.”
     
“OK, 15:28 ‘It is man that can make the Way great, and not the Way that can make man great.”
    
“This is heavy Fred. The Way or Tao is the master controlling force, as it were, of the universe--”God” to Westerners! So, we make ‘God’ he doesn’t make us ‘great.’ I think this boils down to our actions in life reflect on the Way, we in a sense create it in our own image-- we can follow it positively or negatively. For example, if we ourselves are, say, homophobic or think males are higher than females, or want to control the actions and thoughts of others, lo and behold, our ‘God’ wants that too, and vice versa.”
     
“So, our religion is just the reflection of the kind of human beings we are.”
    
“Yes, and that is based on our education, our openness, and the culture we are brought up in--wide or narrow.”
     
“15:38--’In education there should be no class distinction.’”
    
“To bad he didn’t, as Plato did, add ‘no sex distinction’ as well. He would have to be against our system of public schools for the masses and elite private schools for the rich. American or European followers of Confucius have a big educational reform to fight for. Even private universities would have to go public....”
    
“Or let anyone attend. I’m not sure everything has to be public. You could have both--just that admission standards and costs have to be equalized so the rich don’t end up in one type of system and the poor in another.”
      
“I see we can have a big debate about this!”
      
“Here in 16:9 is something we can’t agree with, at least as he puts it. ‘Those who are born with knowledge are the highest type of people. Those who learn through study are the next. Those who learn through hard work are still the next. Those who work hard and still do not learn are really the lowest type.’”
     
“This is no good. People are not ‘born’ with knowledge. Also, different people learn different things. You might work hard at chemistry and not learn it but work at history or literature or physics and learn that, or music. Confucius should have recognized ‘different strokes for different folks’--this idea is an elitist throwback--a little too judgmental I think.” 
       
“OK Karl, I won’t argue with you because I think you might be right. Nevertheless, there may be something to what he says if you substitute ‘capacity’ for ‘knowledge. What do you think about this in 17:2-’By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart’?”
    
“Well, we can universalize this and see how contemporary Confucius' thought is. He is indicating what we now commonly think to be true, that is, that human beings are pretty much equal all over the world and it is only cultural differences which separate us. Jarrod Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs and Steel, demonstrates this thesis. It is a little inconsistent with what we have just been discussing since the differences between humans should be due to ‘practice’ so some people should not be ‘born’ with knowledge.”
 
“And we should note that what Chan says in 17:2 is ‘the classical Confucian dictum on human nature.’”
    
“All the better. This dictum is absolutely superior, from a modern perspective, to Aristotle’s views, in the Politics, about the superiority of Greeks and his notion about ‘natural slaves.’ Not even Plato, it would seem, had advanced to this Confucian idea.”
     
“You are thinking about his discussion in the Republic about the different ways Greeks should treat Greeks as opposed to barbarians in warfare?”
     
“Yes.”
    
“Now, right after this, in 17:3 he says, ‘Only the most intelligent and the most stupid do not change.’”
    
“Looks like another deviation from 17:2 but I think not. I think, as in Aristotle, we should be putting a little mental note to ourselves when we read these passages, such as ‘always OR for the most part’. This allows us to recognize that we are dealing with general principles not absolute ‘laws’. While there may be individual variation in intellectual capacity this should be a cross cultural thing. By and large within, as between, cultures ‘intelligence’ is also a social construction, therefore I don’t think there is any ultimate contradiction between 17:2 and 17:3.”
     
“Karl, do you think we have another Rule, Rule Three, with 17:2?”
     
“I don’t see why not. Rule Three: ‘All human beings are basically alike, i.e.., equal.’ Just remember the proviso that since we are dealing with a multi-cultural world this needs some interpretation.”
     
“Such as?”
     
“Such as they are ‘equal’ before the law, or subject to the same ‘rights’ as each other. Basically, we all evolved from the same blob so it has to be ‘practice’ that separates the Queen of England from Apple Annie! “
    
“Here is an excellent quote to underscore Confucian Humanism--17:19: ‘Does Heaven say anything? The four seasons run their course and all things are produced. Does Heaven say anything?’”
     
“Even after all these centuries how can we improve on this observation.”
     
“It’s not an observation, it’s a question. I think Confucius meant it to be left open.”
    
“Maybe. We don’t have to answer this now then.”
    
“We may have to retract Rule Three--look at 17:25-’Women and servants are most difficult to deal with. If you are familiar with them, they cease to be humble. If you keep a distance from them, they resent it.’ And Chan says Confucius and the whole tradition thought women to be inferior (servants may differ due to ‘practice’).”
    
I see, we put ‘human beings’ in Rule Three and Confucius had said ‘men’ so we were giving him credit for what is actually a modern idea. This universal sexism, except perhaps for Socrates, is a problem. We now know there is no scientific evidence to justify it and so women would have to be included under Rule Three whatever Confucius may have thought.  We are holding to the view that Confucius and other past philosophers would change and adapt their views to accord with what we could demonstrate to them by our modern methods to be true of the natural world. So, I think they, as philosophers, would give up an outmoded sexism just as they would the centrality of the earth in the solar system. After these considerations I think we can keep Rule Three.”
    
“This last is a quote from a pupil, Zixia, ‘So long as a man does not transgress the boundary line in the great virtues, he may pass and repass it in the small virtues.’  19:11.”
     
“That’s it?”
    
“There is a little more, but I think I hit all the major issues or points.”
    
“So, we have Confucius in a ‘nutshell’ as it were. I think we have made some progress in understanding Chinese philosophy in its infancy. We have a Prime Directive, actually derived from the Greeks, and three rules to go by. I think we can justify the view that the Confucius word view is not inherently opposed to Marxism and does not constitute an antagonistic contradiction (矛盾).

​​​​​About the Author:
Thomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests and calls for change that followed, an interesting solution was brought up and encouraged, the call to buy from black businesses. While black businesses are indeed a way to grow wealth for the black community, they are in no way a solution to the broader source of oppression. In order to truly liberate the black community from the chains of racism, generational poverty, state oppression, and exploitation, it’s not enough to encourage the entrepreneurship of only a few people, one must address it from a collective and anti-capitalist approach. Only with socialism will the black community truly be eliminated from the systemic racism capitalism has weighed over them.

When speaking about black entrepreneurship one is often met with rosy words of praise, all across the political spectrum, even so called “progressives” and “intersectional feminists” gush at the idea of buying from black owned businesses (BOBs). But let us not be fooled, small businesses are not inherently better than corporate behemoths. In fact, small businesses can and usually are worse for workers than larger businesses, including conditions such as offering worse benefits, lower wages, and being exempt from worker protections. This isn’t a defense of big business but a criticism of businesses overall. Small businesses and mega-corporations both exploit their workers. However, small businesses, unlike mega-corps, have a quaint rosy glow which excuses them from the harsh scrutiny received from larger companies. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge of the business or if the company is large or small. Businesses functioning in the traditional structure are still exploitative; the worker continues to not receive the full value of their labor and are forced to rely on the will and the mercy of the boss to not starve.

Moving on, the origins of black capitalism and the related “opportunity zones” have been a meager scrap thrown to the black community in a lame effort to eliminate the effects of systemic racism and generational poverty. The origins of modern Black capitalism lay in Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”. Instead of actual racial and economic justice such as desegregation, more public sector jobs, anti-discrimination measures, etc., mild tax incentives and breaks was the solution to racial ghettos and oppression. These meager crumbs tossed to the black community allowed Nixon to oppose vital economic reforms championed by Civil Rights activists and to crack down on the black community in other ways (most notably the War on Drugs and the War on Crime). In an effort to undermine important economic and racial reforms Nixon started spouting free-market and libertarian talking points, arguing that capitalism was the natural cure of racial ghettos and that black people should “help themselves.” Such rhetoric appears in his Acceptance of the Republican Nomination for President Speech “Instead of Government jobs and Government housing and Government welfare, let Government use its tax and credit policies to enlist in this battle the greatest engine of progress ever developed in the history of man-American private enterprise.”

Black-Americans were thus wished good-luck before being shoved down the meat grinder that is capitalism, often put in a position where they are the ones worse off after every financial crisis and capable of gleaning only the tiniest bits during the good times (especially in comparison to their white counterparts). Decades have passed since the Nixon administration and both parties have continued to champion black capitalism while either cutting social programs or giving very meager assistance. Black capitalism, while it may have started with Nixon, eventually morphed to “enterprise zones” under Reagan, “new market tax policies” with Clinton, and “promise zones” by Obama. All of whom have continued and put into place brutal neoliberal policies where BIPOC typically bear the heaviest burden and draconian treatment of felons, especially those on drug charges (which are disproportionately black), creating a cycle of poverty for generations to come.

The problems that plague the black community are not a lack of entrepreneurship or an insufficiency of capitalism, rather, it is capitalism itself that continues to dig the black community into an even deeper hole. It was “entrepreneurs” and banks run by capitalists who were responsible for shoving subprime mortgages down the throats of black borrowers, resulting in 53% of all wealth in the black community being wiped out, and by 2009 35% of black communities having zero or negative wealth. It is years of mass incarceration, housing discrimination, and red-lining which pushed and continue to keep the black community in poverty. None of the problems listed above can be attributed to the problem of a lack of “black entrepreneurship” or lack of capitalism. Rather, it is capitalism that is at the root of many of these problems. It was land developers and planners who decided to red-line neighborhoods in fear that having integrated neighborhoods would decrease the value of the neighborhoods, and thereby lower their profits. It was the private prison companies who lobbied the government for harsher and more draconian laws and sentencing to funnel more BIPOC into the prison system, which further ruined their chances of building any wealth, and thus made it more likely that they would return to prison – not to forget of course the many companies that rely on and use prisoners as free labor. Minority capitalism isn’t the solution to wider systemic problems caused by the capitalist system itself.

The assumption of black capitalism is that it is possible for society – and especially Black Americans – to buy their way out of racism and oppression. This is an assumption that is verifiably false. It is a bandage upon an internal wound. It is neoliberalism’s way of co-opting an important movement and, like a leech, sucking out all the meaning of the movement. Additionally, “buying black” and supporting black capitalism is an incredibly individualistic approach to uplifting the black community. Black capitalism, as well intentioned as it seems, only uplifts a few members of the black community. True liberation is not adding a few members of the marginalized group to the oppressing group, rather, it is dismantling the system that creates thus conditions. Black capitalism lifts a few members of the community to the position of the bourgeoisie. Having a more diverse bourgeoisie, a more diverse group of people responsible for the suppression of the proletariat does nothing for the vast majority of people who face hunger, starvation, homelessness, poverty, and various other issues that intersect with their identity. The only solution is the dismantle of capitalism.

What are examples then of anti-capitalist societies that have managed to drastically eliminate the legacy of systemic racism? The answer to that is Cuba. Cuba prior to the revolution used to be no different than the US when it came to race relations. Afro-Cubans faced widespread discrimination and segregation. They were given the worst jobs, housing, and education (if any at all). However, immediately after the revolution the newly established government set to work immediately to combat all traces of systemic racism. Anti-racist measures were enforced both legally and socially. In Cuba’s Constitution Chapter 1 Article 42 all people regardless of their identity(ies) are guaranteed equality before the law, in comparison to the US Constitution where such an explicit promotion of equality doesn’t exist. Furthermore, anti-discrimination doesn’t only exist as an empty statute but is constantly and vigorously enforced with militias in any location where black and mestizos could be denied equal treatment. A harsh contrast in comparison to the US where BIPOC are constantly being denied mortgage loans and/or given worse rates, poorer medical care, and denied jobs because of their race. While there’s no doubt that fully eradicating the legacy of systemic racism won’t be solved overnight and people will still hold onto many of their discriminatory beliefs even under a different economic system, in the transcendence of capitalism, the economic and material conditions that produce racial inequality and oppression will be abolished, a vital and necessary step to doing away with racism. 

Citations

Baradaran, Mehrsa. Opinion | The Real Roots of ‘Black Capitalism’ (Published 2019). 1 Apr. 2019, nytimes.com/2019/03/31/opinion/nixon-capitalism-blacks.html.
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Barnes, Jack. “The Militant - April 19, 2010 -- Affirmative Action Needed to Unite Toilers.” The Militant, 19 Apr. 2010, themilitant.com/2010/7415/741560.html.

Coleman, Aaron Ross. “Black Capitalism Won’t Save Us.” The Nation, 24 May 2019, thenation.com/article/archive/nipsey-killer-mike-race-economics/.

“Cuba’s Constitution of 2019.” Constitute Project, 4 Feb. 2020, constituteproject.org/constitution/Cuba_2019.pdf?lang=en.

Mallett, Kandist. “The Black Elite Are an Obstacle Toward Black Liberation.” Teen Vogue, 30 Oct. 2020, teenvogue.com/story/black-elite-racial-justice.

Martinez, Carlos. “20 Reasons to Support Cuba - Invent the Future.” Invent the Future, 13 Jan. 2014, invent-the-future.org/2013/07/20-reasons-to-support-cuba/.

Prescod, Paul. “‘Black Capitalism’ From Richard Nixon to Joe Biden.” Jacobin, 18 May 2020, jacobinmag.com/2020/05/black-capitalism-joe-biden-unions-class.

“Speeches by Richard M. Nixon: Acceptance of the Republican Nomination for President.” US Embassy, 8 Aug. 1968, usa.usembassy.de/etexts/speeches/rhetoric/rmnaccep.htm.

About the Author:

N.C. Cai is a Chinese American Marxist Feminist. She is interested in socialist feminism, Western imperialism, history, and domestic policy, specifically in regards to drug laws, reproductive justice, and healthcare. ​

​In any attempt to understand contemporary culture and its artistic manifestations in a materialist manner it is absolutely essential that we attempt to do so in the light of a Marxist critique. There is not, however, only one "official" Marxist approach to the understanding of art. Past attempts to force creative thought into a narrow official mould by means of state sponsored interpretations of Marxism resulted in a separation between genuine materialist theory and the social reality that was being presented. My purpose is not to present the "correct" theory of a materialist philosophy of art but to attempt to lay down what I think to be the four basic features that anyone trying to work out a Marxist aesthetic must keep in mind. These four features will also be useful to those who propose to write materialist criticism of both contemporary "pop culture" as well as so called "high culture."


First, it is well known that neither Marx nor Engels consciously worked out a philosophy of art as part of their general worldview. Nevertheless, they made particular judgments on art and their overall positions on historical materialism (in conjunction with these judgments) have been appealed to by their followers in order to support aesthetic theories that were developed later within the context of the Marxist movement.


Second, based on the general notions of historical materialism, the social context of art takes on the most important aspect in any Marxist aesthetics. That is to say, approaching art in a materialist spirit, a Marxist philosophy of art bases itself on the social, cultural, and biological factors of human life as the foundation upon which art arises. This, of course, does not distinguish a Marxist approach from a materialist approach in general. This further determination can be made when we consider the following.


Third, the notion of contradiction in the dialectical logic inspired by Hegel, as developed by Marx and Engels, and its relation to struggle and the overcoming of such at higher developmental levels are necessarily linked to the basic materialist approach fundamental to a Marxist aesthetic. In this we find the main difference between traditional philosophical materialism and Marxist historical materialism. Traditional materialism, while recognizing the primacy of matter, tended to interpret the world in unchanging mechanical categories. The materialist philosophers of the French Enlightenment, while disposing of religious, spiritual and mystical explanations for the events of the natural world, had no real theory of historical or natural change and development.


The materialist philosophy developed by Marx and Engels, on the other hand, by adapting the Hegelian concept of contradiction to materialistically inspired categories of explanation, was able to provide a non-mechanistic explanation of natural and historical change, development and progress. In this combination of materialist philosophy and dialectical method, of which the notion of contradiction is central, can be found the difference between "materialism" and "historical materialism."


The correct application, as well as understanding, of contradiction is one of the most vexing problems in the history of Marxist thought. Its abuse led to Marx’s famous comment about his not being a Marxist. I do not intend to go into all of the different interpretations which have been given to Hegel’s views on this subject. I will, rather, briefly outline what I consider a useful way of looking at contradiction as used by Hegel and Marx and Engels and relate this to my claim that it is the basis of any Marxist philosophy of art by showing how one of the most original Marxist thinkers, Christopher Caudwell, employed contradiction in his great work on the origin of poetry: Illusion and Reality.


Let’s begin by asking the following question: What happens when one makes a mistake in philosophical reasoning? One of the most common occurrences is that we have been guilty of over-generalization or have dealt with our subject without sufficient knowledge that might have affected the outcome of our reasoning. It is the presence of a contradiction in our reasoning which signals that this faulty way of reasoning has occurred. The function of philosophy is to deepen the analysis, make it less general, and overcome the contradiction while at the same time preserving what is true and valuable in the previous view. This method is then repeated on the new views, and on the views that replace them and is continued as long as we can. Hegel uses the German verb aufheben which means "to lift up," "to cancel," and "to preserve" to describe this process. No one English verb quite catches all these meanings. Contradictions are not therefore mutually exclusive after all. In The Science of Logic Hegel maintained it was very important to keep in mind that such seemingly contradictory opposites as positive and negative, virtue and vice, truth and error, and one could add, illusion and reality, only had their truth "in their relation to one another; without this knowledge not a single step can really be taken in philosophy." Ivan Soll puts it this way in his An Introduction to Hegel’s Metaphysics: "The dialectic preserves parts of putatively opposed categories as the necessary elements (Momente) of more concrete categories. But as necessary elements of a more concrete category their mutually exclusive character is removed or negated. These categories are both preserved and negated - they are aufgehoben."


This method was taken over by Marx and Engels and applied to the analysis of history as well as to natural phenomena. The difference in their materialist, as opposed to Hegelian application, is that, as Engels points out (The Dialectics of Nature), in the former the contradictions are derived from the actual study of history and nature while in the latter they "are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought."


When it comes to Caudwell, we see his use of contradiction throughout all the major discussions of Illusion and Reality. According to David N. Margolies (The Function of Literature), "Caudwell had to take a fully dialectical view of literature, seeing literature not as static works but as a process. Literature and society exist in a dialectical unity and thus not only does social existence determine literature, but literature also influences society."


But Caudwell uses contradiction in other realms besides literature. For example, he takes Freud’s category of "the instincts" (the source of humankind’s free natural existence) and contrasts it with the category of "the environment" (the source of the repression and crippling of the instincts) and derives the higher category of "civilization" which, Caudwell says, was evolved "precisely to moderate and lessen" the conflict between the other two antagonistic conceptions.


We should further note that illusion and reality, which we create and study by means of art and science are not for Caudwell absolutely contradictory conceptions. It is true, he notes, that in many theories these concepts "play contradictory" even if intermingled roles but they are really unified and reflect different (but equally important) aspects of our common world. Our human biological make up and "external reality exist separately in theory, but it is an abstract separation." Caudwell continues, "The greater the separation, the greater the unconsciousness of each." By which he means the more distance we put between "art" and "science" the less we really understand either of them.


Contradiction, as used by Caudwell, consists in the refusal to isolate the world into a system of mutually exclusive categories. What appears on one level of analysis as contradictory or exclusive is seen, on a higher level of analysis, to be complementary. He uses this method or argumentation and discussion when he deals with poetry, psychology, epistemology, language, communism, and in virtually every aspect of his philosophy. For this reason he can be located in the tradition of classical and contemporary Marxism.


Fourth, one last feature seems to me to be necessary for a Marxist philosophy of art. The fundamental purpose, the raison d'être of Marxism is to be the leading philosophy of the worker’s movement in the class struggle to overthrow the economic system of capitalism. Therefore, a Marxist philosophy of art must, as I define it, link up with the class struggle, directly or indirectly, and, whatever else it may seek to do or explain, provide insights and guidance in that struggle.

​​​​About the Author:
Thomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association.

In Equality as a Moral Ideal, Harry Frankfurt argues that the value of equality is not valued for itself. Rather than viewing equality as an intrinsic good, Frankfurt suspects that the  actual intuitive appeal of equality derives from our moral intuition that everyone should have enough. We will first investigate the concept of “enough” on Frankfurt’s account. Then, we will analyze the moral import of making sure everyone has enough under the framework of the “strong sufficiency view.” While we will see that sufficiency for others is indeed a vital moral  value, there is still reason to regard equality as good in itself as well. The latter view we will  refer to as the “weak sufficiency view,” which I seek to sketch out and defend. 

The view of Frankfurt’s we wish to analyze is concisely put forward by Frankfurt when he writes, “[W]hat is important from the point of view of morality is not that everyone should  have the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others” (Frankfurt 21). We will refer to this view as the “strong sufficiency view.” On this view, equality is regarded as entirely lacking  intrinsic moral import. For Frankfurt it simply does not matter how the distribution of resources  turns out to be in terms of some or other measure of equality—at least as long as everyone has enough. But what is enough? 

We must be clear that for Frankfurt the extension of the word “enough” is broadly  encompassing. We do not mean here enough to barely survive, or enough to hardly live comfortably. Rather, with “enough” we mean enough to flourish. Not only does sufficiency include the basic necessities of life such as food, water, and housing, but also what people need in order to live a meaningful life as they see it. For example, in order for the musically talented to flourish he needs instruments and leisure time to develop his skills. Alternatively, the nuclear physicist needs lab equipment, textbooks, and raw materials to do the work that makes her life feel meaningful to her. The conception of sufficiency on this view is wide-ranging, but the main point is that it is the amount of resources (social, material, and beyond) that someone needs in order to fulfill their potential as they see it. In this way, we see a strong parallel with John Rawls’s ideal of society promoting the ability of each individual to have genuine self-respect (Rawls, A Theory of Justice 386). While they strongly differ in their views on egalitarianism as a  whole, both of their views are at least partly motivated by an impulse to preserve the cherished values of autonomy and self-determination that underpin modern liberal democracies. 


To anyone on the political left, the idea that everyone should have enough to flourish is unlikely to garner much criticism. What about a libertarian? Someone like Robert Nozick would disagree strongly with the idea that morality demands that we be concerned with everyone having sufficient resources. Rather, from the strict libertarian perspective, what is morally  relevant is consent. For the libertarian, it doesn’t really matter if almost an entire society lived in poverty while some live in lavish conditions with more resources than they could use in a  thousand lifetimes. As long as those conditions arose out of voluntary transactions between individuals, there is no moral claim to be made against such a distribution. 


What the libertarian fails to understand is that without enough to live well people are not in a position to genuinely consent in a free-market system. Given the inevitable concentration of resources into the hands of a few in modern global society (see Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, etc.) a large portion of a free-market society must engage in menial labor in order to survive. In a free market system, there is no real choice. Is it genuine consent if failing to engage in menial labor will result in your children starving to death? Is it genuine consent if failing to  engage in menial labor will result in your mother dying from diabetes because she can’t afford her insulin? There is no consent where one does not have a legitimate chance of survival if she  says “no.”  


What if we provide everyone with enough? It seems then that no one would be forced into menial labor—one could say “no” to those jobs and still be perfectly able to survive and live  a meaningful life. While one may say that’s far-fetched—we will always need menial laborers—I  would urge him to look at the rapid development of technology. Far from far-fetched, it seems inevitable that large portions of the simple, menial jobs of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first centuries will vanish within the next ten years. The dreaded decline of the trucking industry,  one of the largest employers in the United States as of this writing in 2020, is a particularly  poignant example. What are they to do when all the trucks drive themselves? What will their  “consent” in the “free” market look like then? 
We can see now that providing people with sufficient resources to live their best life (as they see it) actually enables consent!

​By securing sufficient economic resources for everyone, people’s freedom will grow exponentially. Let us picture our level of freedom as some rough estimate of our available choices. It is simply undeniable that a society in which everyone unconditionally had enough to live well would result in those people have more choices available  to them to design their conception of the good life. How many poor kids in the United States long to become doctors, lawyers, professors, or nurses, who will never be able to do so because their family has never had enough to invest in their education? It is an insidious falsehood that the only motivator for human behavior is profit. While this is an empirical claim we cannot verify here, I truly believe that there are millions who would pursue these things for their own sakes. The free market profit motive is not necessary for the perpetuation of our society.  Everyone should have enough. 

​
Let us now introduce an amendment to Frankfurt’s strong sufficiency view. We have  established that everyone having enough is vitally important for the legitimacy of a liberal democracy and market system. But that does not mean sufficiency is all that matters. 


Imagine a society in which everyone had sufficient resources. Every single person has enough to fulfill their conception of the good life, whatever it may be. To be clear, there has not  been a single society in the history of the world that has achieved this. But as philosophers we  get to imagine. 


In this society, we will say that a unit of $1/day covers the vast majority of people’s  needs. However, there is still a market in society, and some people amass much more wealth than others. We will structure it like this: 90% of the people have a net worth of $36,500 (which  would cover $1/day for 100 years); 5% of the people have a net worth of $1,000,000 ($1/day for  2,740 years); and the top 5% have a net worth of $10,000,000,000 ($1/day for 27,397,260 years).  


Is it really of no moral consequence that these vast inequalities exist? Keep in mind everyone has enough to thrive. There is not a single person in deprivation in this society. For the sake of further clarity, we can imagine this as a worldwide government. Every single human being has enough. However, even in those conditions, there is still a massive power inequality  between the three groups. The psychological effects of wealth have been discussed by  intellectual revolutionaries from the ancient prophets Buddha and Jesus Christ, to the economists of the nineteenth century and the psychologists of today. It seems extremely unlikely that in any society in which money still exists there would not be people motivated by greed. While, as  stated above, the profit motive is not the only motive human beings have for behavior, we know from time immemorial that there are people in every generation who are primarily motivated by this. In short, in a society in which money exists money is a primary vehicle of power. 


The moral consequence of our inequality here has nothing to do with sufficiency.  Sufficiency has been met in this society, and that is certainly a necessary condition for a just society. Ironically, sufficiency is not a sufficient condition for a just society. Any society in which  there are massive imbalances of power cannot be considered properly just. To appeal again to our liberal ideals of autonomy and self-determination, a relatively equal distribution of social power is necessary for the genuine expression of these values. Money is the ultimate social influencer in societies in which it exists. If one group of people enjoy far more access to social power than  another, those people are much more likely and able to exert their control over the society as a  whole to a much greater degree than those without that social power. To have one’s interests, desires, and beliefs manufactured intentionally is a barrier to true autonomy—but even in this  society of sufficiency such exertion of control through money would likely be inevitable. 
​

We will then call our adapted view the “weak sufficiency view.” On this view, sufficiency is vitally important. No society can be just even if a single person under its sovereignty does not  have enough in Frankfurt’s fullest sense. However, we have seen that the distribution of power is also vitally important, and the guarantee of such a just distribution of power cannot be achieved  by application of the principle of sufficiency alone. 

​
One might wish to object at this point that this defense of egalitarianism is simply a defense of equality as an instrumental good for the sake of maintaining just power structures.  However, the value of equality simply is the value of a just power structure between persons.  Frankfurt has shown us that it is not the equal distribution of material resources themselves that  is important with respect to equality. What is left for us then is the most basic sense of equality  between persons, and that is equality between the power of persons. As Rawls says, the value of  autonomy is sustained by our regard for all individuals as free and equal persons. The value of  equality of power between people underpins even the social value of personal autonomy for all  persons.  
​

On our weak sufficiency view, we assert that sufficiency is necessary. However, this sufficiency must be accompanied by a reasonably equal distribution of overall resources in order to retain the value of equality of power between persons. We have seen that maintaining a reasonably equal distribution is itself necessary to retain the very principles that constitute the  backbone of modern liberal democracies. The long and bitter struggle between the priority of liberty and the priority of equality may never see a practical end in human society, but I believe  that a proper analysis of the concept shows that they are mutually intertwined. Liberty without  equality of resources cannot be liberty because there is not genuine consent and autonomy  between citizens where there are great imbalances of material power. Equality of resources  without liberty cannot be equality because there would be great imbalances of power between  citizen and state. While liberty and equality are not reducible to each other fully, they are mutually affirming, and one cannot be properly understood without some reference to the other.

​About the Author:
Jared Yackley is an undergraduate student of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary focuses are in epistemology, history, and political philosophy. Yackley hopes to apply the principles of dialectical materialism to contemporary issues, both philosophical and political.