Humanism - Clearly



Throughout history, authorities have been trying hard to keep power in their own hands, just as they are doing today. Even though nowadays a formal democracy exists almost everywhere, the people are still impotent. This is the main reason why the world passes through phases of destruction, instead of through continuous productive development. The impotence of the society is so great, that not even an idea exists of what the good society should look like. Finally, thanks to the development of information technology and to my persistence, I have discovered the path to create a good society, as defined in many utopias. My utopia, described in the book “Humanism”, is no longer wishful thinking, but a pure science that defines an unavoidable and bright future of humankind.

A positive future for humanity ultimately requires power in the hands of the people. Each person should have the power to directly represent and protect his interests wherever he needs to. I am talking about brand new ideas that will give people the power that is, under present circumstances, unthinkable. In first place, I need to stress that new ideas will bring about a complete change of the existing system, since that system has been built under the influence of authorities.

The new political and economic system, that I have proposed, is equally acceptable to all. It will end all kinds of oppression and give a much greater freedom to everyone, but it will also require each individual to be responsible to all other individuals in society. The whole system is based on a highly developed form of democracy. It will also realise a greater economic productivity than capitalism can, and a stability that capitalism cannot provide at all. Ultimately, it will force capitalism to withdraw. This new system prevents crime, wars, and all kinds of destructiveness in society, as well as encouraging the development of human productive powers. It will totally change the world, and give a wonderful life and harmony to humanity.

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In order to create a good society, we should first define and accept all kinds of values that are, or should be, important to society. We then need to find out which of these values each person possesses. The sum of all values that a person creates throughout his life, presented by a numerical value, may be called human productive power. Taking into account that most people would probably not like to have their productive power compared to that of other people, such a value may be kept secret, known only to the owner of the value himself.

The value of human productive power will incorporate, firstly, capitalist values, such as real estate, money, shares, and all assets that capitalism recognizes as valuable. Besides the capital-based value that represents an element of human productive power, we need to recognize and include all other values that society accepts or should accept. Such values are: man himself, his education, work experience, contributions that he has given, and awards that he has received for creating value to society, etc. The pooling of different forms of value will require a comprehensive study and - certainly - difficult negotiations in society. However, after some time, new democratically regulated standards of all values that can be created in society could be established. Such regulation will be automatically applied whenever necessary. I’ll explain it better in the next paragraphs.  

The human productive power will certainly be strongly affected by the existing economic productivity of workers. In publicly owned companies, workers will share profits proportionally to the numerically determined responsibility they themselves propose for their work. Higher responsibility will naturally realize a larger share in profit, in case that the company’s profit increases. Such profit will now be expressed in a value that reflects the workers’ human productive power. And vice versa, in case of production losses, workers who propose higher responsibility for their work will realize larger losses in value representing their productive power.

If the society would like to stimulate education it might raise awards for higher education in the value that represents human productive power. If, for example, a region has too low a birth rate, people may decide to award parents with more children with this kind of value. And vice versa, if a region has too high a birth rate people may decide to punish parents who have more children by a certain value representing human productive power.

The value of personal productive power will be specially affected by disobedience to the law. If a person acts against the law he will lose a legally defined value off his productive power. Each crime may be easily judged by existing laws and recalculated into a value representing human productive power. If a person commits a very serious crime he might lose all the value of his productive power, and even get a negative value. The proposed system can make assignment of such a negative productive value much more painful than a prison can be, so that prisons will not be needed any more. Each person will avoid committing any crime carefully. If it still happens that a person gets such a negative productive power, he will try hard to escape it and that will only be possible by hard productive work and by extremely good behaviour over a long period of time.

Society may regulate whatever it needs through evaluation of human productive power. However, all values cannot be regulated, because people have varying individual needs. Therefore, the value representing personal productive power should also depend on unregulated values, based on people’s opinions about free actions of others. This is a completely new measure and, in my opinion, the most important measure of the future. I call it democratic anarchy.

Democratic anarchy is a new form of social relations, wherein every person exercises equal legislative, judicial and executive power in the society. It is possible to accomplish it in a manner that gives each person the right to evaluate the activity of any other person. Each positive assessment should automatically bring a small increase of the total value of productive power to the assessed person. On the other hand, any negative assessment will result in punishment in the same form. Let us say that awards and penalties of such evaluation would have an equivalent value of one dollar. If the society were afraid of such power of individuals, the power of evaluation could be reduced. Even the evaluation with the power equivalent to just one cent would be enough for the improvement of society.

Democratic anarchy will direct each member of society to create the greatest possible advantages for society, and to diminish or abolish creation of all forms of disadvantages. Such a measure will definitely decrease uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled individual power originating in a privileged social status. I have to stress that the privileged status of individuals causes the greatest inconveniences and problems to a society. Given that all individuals will have the equal right of evaluation, and that they will give their assessments independently of any written rules, such democracy will assume the form of anarchy. In this extremely simple way, the populus will for the first time in the history of humankind realize a great direct power in society, which will result in highly harmonious and constructive social relations.

It is understandably desirable that the value of human productive power becomes very important to society and therefore its acceptance should be additionally stimulated. That will be accomplished, firstly, by giving each person the voting power in society proportionate to the value of his productive power. I am talking about a great change in the democratic system. Today, people have only the right to choose their parliamentary representatives. They have neither opportunity nor right to participate in making other decisions that regard their interests in society. Here we need a compromise equally acceptable to all. Let each person have a right to participate in making any democratic decision in society, but let him earn this right by his productive contribution to the development of value in society. This system proposes unequal voting power, accepted by a consensus of political parties. In reality, it will contribute to the development of democracy because the people will, for the first time, get a chance to directly participate in decision-making about all questions regarding their interests.

Secondly, each person should get an income for work in publicly owned companies, proportionate to the total value of his productive power. This measure follows the existing state of affairs to a large extent, but it will also introduce new rules, more justice and order in the system of income distribution. Thirdly, personal productive power must be inherited through generations in order to be accepted. Through implementation of such measures, every member of society will recognize the value of human productive power as a great value – this will contribute significantly to the development of society.

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The new economic system adopts the existing model of market economy. Private enterprises will continue to function in the same way as they do today. The new system will change publicly owned companies greatly. First, the changes will affect the division of labour. There is no fairer or better distribution of labour than an open market competition of workers for every position. The worker who envisages and offers the highest productivity for any public work post at any time will get the job. This measure is necessary, in the first place, because it will definitely abolish work privileges that are the basis of inconvenient orientation and problems in society. If you think that this might lead to a rat race for work positions and you are already afraid for your job, you need not be. The new system will create a new regulation of the division of labour that will prevent such undesirable effects.

The new system will make full employment a reality. If creation of new work positions is not needed, full employment will be achieved by reducing work hours in public companies proportionately to the unemployment rate. Also, under the new system, each job will be equally desirable. This will be achieved by giving the job with a defined productivity to the worker who demands the lowest price for current labour and, consequently, a lower income. Better jobs will realize lower incomes and worse jobs will be better compensated through higher incomes. This way, the labour market will set an objective measure of direct labour value and will balance the interest in all job posts. Since the workers themselves will be setting the price of their current labour, by the same token they will be the most satisfied with their earnings.

The new economy will necessarily require an efficient system of determining the workers’ responsibility for the realization of productivity that they have offered. The system would establish a new way of bearing the workers' responsibility through the value of their productive power. A failure to realize offered productivity or a fall in productivity would reduce the total value of workers’ productive power proportionately to their responsibility in the productive process. And vice versa, the rise in productivity will increase the total value of workers’ productive power proportionately to their responsibility in the process of production.

No economy can be more productive than the one where the best available worker gets each job. Such economy will easily become significantly more productive than the capitalist one, so that the latter will be forced to recede. Also, the workers will no longer be interested in working for private enterprises, where they do not have enough freedom to choose jobs, to decide on their income, nor do they have an opportunity to share in the profits. Soon after this system is implemented, private enterprises will be forced to withdraw and join the new system.

The owners of means of productions who voluntarily surrender their private property to society will realize an increase in the total value of their productive power proportionate to the value of the surrendered property. The value of personal power will become a humanistic form of shares, because each worker will receive for work in a public company an income proportionate to the value of his productive power. This fact may additionally encourage inhabitants of a region to voluntarily pool their private companies into what I call a “humanistic” corporation.

The united humanistic corporation will develop its production on basis of customers’ orders, and will thus achieve the most stable production. Work competition will ensure the best production performance, and will therefore realise the greatest consumer convenience to society. Last but not least, the system will be based on such a high degree of workers’ and managers’ responsibility that they will have to cooperate at all levels of production processes, and to establish a high level of consensus before making decisions. This kind of market competition will inevitably end up in cooperation at all levels of production processes, and will thus contribute to the productive development of society.

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Democracy will improve dramatically as well. The future of democracy will no longer be based on elected leaders. Development of computer technology allows people to participate directly, through referendum, in making all key decisions of joint interest. In order to prevent overruling of minority in a society, all the referenda questions must be created by the consensus of political parties. Each decision may have a scale of values prepared by the consensus of political parties; each voter may then choose a value that suits him the best. The mean of all the values expressed by members of the population, as a function of their voting power, would point to acceptability of each and every decision in the society.

The people will directly create policies of their society, firstly, the economic policy. In the system of pooled ownership over means of production, money will also be pooled. Joint ownership of money will make the introduction of direct democracy into economy possible. Each voter will directly participate in distribution of the collectively owned money realized through revenue of a collective. The money will be distributed for purposes of development of the economy (the total quantity of money for investments in the economy), for individual consumption (the total quantity of money for workers' earnings), and for collective consumption (the total quantity of money intended for collective consumption of the whole population). Given that the new system proposes unequal voting power, each voter will actually distribute the total value of his productive power among different voting groups. The sum total of all the voters’ statements, given in all voting groups, will form the total amount of money intended for these expenses groups. In such a simple way the people will actually directly create the macroeconomic policy of society. The present-day system of income distribution, establishment of fiscal and developmental policies of a society, will thus be directly upgraded in a democratic manner.

The new system has to ensure economic independence of each individual as a main precondition for establishment of a free society. Besides, the system of work competition requires a higher level of social insurance than the existing one, and for that reason every inhabitant will receive some income. The individual income level will depend primarily on the total value of personal productive power, then on the price of current labour, as well as on the accomplishment of proposed productivity. Within the distribution of money intended for individual consumption, the people will also directly establish the ranges of workers’ earnings, by setting the level of minimal earning directly. If workers’ interest in performing their work is insufficient, the society may directly reduce the minimal income, which would stimulate workers to work more. And vice versa, if productivity is higher than necessary, the society will then increase the minimal income and thus reduce the income-based stimulation for work.

Assets intended for economic development will have to be further allocated to those sectors of a “humanistic” corporation that predicts higher shorter-term profits in the free market. In that way the society, as a whole, achieves the greatest consumer and economic benefits. People may also directly decide on the distribution of money for collective-consumption needs, up to the level of their interest. In the future, instability of the market economy will be replaced by a stably planned production based on customers' orders. Under such circumstances, market policy will be less anarchic and more democratic, which will open up a possibility of development of a democratic planned economy.

The political and economic model described here will improve the efficiency and stability of production, introduce more justice into the process of production and distribution, and provide significantly higher advantages to all members of society. In general, this system will rid the people of authoritative pressure and give them freedom to follow their own interests, while at the same time forcing people to mutual respect. Such experience will demystify the values imposed by authorities, and will teach people to live in accordance with their proper nature, which will in turn free them from all types of alienation characteristics of present-day society. Furthermore, the system will teach people to set their needs in accordance with the possibilities of satisfying them. This is the chief prerequisite for overcoming destructiveness in society, because people who permanently satisfy their needs are not destructive. The proposed system promises a natural, harmonious and highly prosperous development of society.

Finally, I would like to emphasise that the proposed system not only provides the best solution for the future of mankind, but also the only good one. As a crown, the system predicts that the work will become a direct value itself, whereas commodities will lose their alienated value. Therefore, the development of such a system may realize the nowadays-impossible goal: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” In any case, the system will make Paradise on Earth.

My book, “The Humanism” elaborates everything I have said here more precisely, and much more. It is available on line free of charge here. The changes I have described will affect almost every existing science. An individual can make no more significant improvement here. That is a job for teams of scientists. I will appreciate anyone willing to cooperate with me on this project, anyone giving me comments on the book, or even everyone who would just read it.

Thank you very much.

Aleksandar Šarović

 

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