Monday, April 08, 2013

Part 3. of 8.: Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY


Dear Reader,


This blog-entry contains the
third part of my serialization, within this blog, of the E.A.g.’s [Equitist Advocacy group's] Way Forward proposal, entitled Alternative to the Totalitarian, Humanocidal Self-Degeneration of Capitalism -- Political-Economic Democracy, with my own edits added to their text, for its improvement [improvement, at least, to my way of thinking!]. 

 

In my opinion, this text is too valuable to be treated as any kind of “sacred text”.





 

It needs to be “improved upon”, and circulated, «samizdat», worldwide, in such “improved” forms -- i.e., in as many versions as are seen as being needed, by every author who thinks that [s]he can “improve” upon it [including this one].

This text is under the Equitist Advocacy group’s omni-copyright umbrella [see item 6, Universal Property”, in text at:   http://www.equitist.org/Equitist/InternalAffairs/InternalAffairs.htm  ], so there are no “copyright violation” issues to hinder such circulation, whether attributed anonymously, or under the name, or under a pseudonym, of the improving author, or under the name of the Equitist Advocacy group itself [although, in that case, the fact of the “improvement” of their original text by (an)other author(s) should be explicitly noted, obviously].


Here are the links to the original version --

http://equitism.org/Equitism/Equitism-entry.htm




Regards,

Miguel











Part 3. of 8. --

Alternative to the Totalitarian, Humanocidal Self-Degeneration of Capitalism -- Political-Economic Democracy.


An Historical Helix of Social Democratization, Spanning and Extending Beyond the Epoch of Capital as Dominant Human-Social Relation of Production.

 

The incipient political democracy and civil liberty that early, competitive, ascendance-phase capitalism asserted, initially against its feudal and Absolute-Monarchical rivals, can only be restored in a higher form, and preserved from otherwise total destruction by the late, decadence-phase form of that same capitalism, by means of advancing that initially merely political democracy to a politically-and-economically democratized, actualized political-economy.

That political-only democracy can now be restored only by advancing it; by the creation of new, economic checks-and-balances, to regenerate, augment, and support the concentrated-wealth-compromised constitutional political-only checks-and-balances, that have not survived the massive and systematic briberies, buy-outs, and "hostile takeovers" of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of political government, carried out via the "Big Money" of "Big Capital" -- by the hyperconcentrated-capital-ownership, plutocratic ruling class of the late, descendance-phase capitals-system.

We hold that the way to achieve this begins with an extension and generalization of "stockholder democracy" into '''stakeholder democracy''', in a "publics" sense; that is, by way of a constitutional institutionalization of Equitarian, 'externality-equities'-based economic democracy; a public and popular economic democracy that was absent as such throughout the capital epoch, seeded only in that democracy among capitalists — among the holders/owners of 'internality-equity' — as immanent in the principles and practices [however often honored in the breach] of joint-stock company "stockholder democracy".


'Re-Constructive' vs. 'Pre-Constructive' [Predictive] Modeling of the Transition Using an 'Intensional-Intuitional', Heuristic Dialectical Algebra.

 

We propose the following 'heuristic derivation' of a relatively detailed, concretized concept of the next '''social relation of [human-society self-re-]production''', successor to the capital social relation of production [herein denoted K for short], as the next subsuming 'socio-negentropic' organizing principle of human society, based upon the work of Karl Seldon, co-founder of Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.].  

We apply an 'heuristic dialectical algebra' intuitively below; there is thus no need to detail here the algorithmic mechanics of the Seldonian 'dialectical arithmetic' that undergirds the operations of that 'dialectical algebra'.

This predicted next '''social relation of [human-society self-re-]production''' is, we hold, 'the social relation of generalized equity' [herein denoted E for short], with 'citizen externality-equity' as «arché» of these new, later «species» of equity, beyond the present-day concept of capital equity, and seeding a succeeding social [re-]formation which we term -- following Seldon -- 'Equitism', or 'Equitarian Society'.

. . .



Expected Emergent «Species» of 'Generalized Equity' in the Epochal Transition from Capitalism to 'Equitism'.

 

We can presently discern the following 'socio-ontological' «species» of social relations [of production] as inhering within the «genos» of 'generalized equity', and as expected to be manifested by, and ingredient in, the emergence of E from K
  1. Capital-Owners Internality Equity of private stock-owners, which, of course, continues to emerge, and to develop further, under the general rule of the "capital-relation" today [«arché» 'onto' of equity, seeded in K, partially «aufheben»-conserved but also elevated and constrained / negated — i.e., via Externality-Equity-holding Publics' Boards' constraints,  and other new constraints — within E].  A progressive "withering away" of 'internality equity', via its progressive net conversion into 'stewardship equity', i.e., into democratically-managed '''social property''', is both intended and expected as part of the transition from the '''formal subsumption''' to the '''real subsumption''' of the "capital-relation", K, by the [rest of the] "generalized-equity-relation", E;  
  2. Citizen Externality Equity of public stakeholders [the intra-dual 'contra-thesis' to 'Internality-Equity'; the «arché» social-relations-of-production 'socio-ontological category' of 'Meta-Capitalist Society', or 'Equitarian Society'];
  3. Citizen Birthright Equity of every child born; equal social resource grants to each new citizen, at birth; egalitarian social self-investment / social self-endowment trust-funds, with "moral hazard" mitigators;
  4. Citizen Stewardship Equity, superseding the "wage-labor", '''sold labor-power''', or '''alienated labor''' relation of capital.  Encompasses the constitutional rights of each working adult, to membership in, and 1-person/1-vote 'economic suffrage' within, the 'producers' councils' or 'stewards' councils' democratically managing the socially-/legally-/constitutionally-favored, mutually-competing producer's cooperative enterprises.  This includes the right to share in the profits-of-enterprise of any such socialized producers' cooperative in which that citizen works, with partial rights of use/disposition over the socially-owned means of social reproduction ceded, in stewardship, but not in local ownership, to these producers' cooperatives/local producers' associations, under the collective/democratic control of their base-elected 'stewards' councils', in continuous negotiation with these enterprises' own 'externality-equity'-holding 'publics' boards', as part of Equitarian Society's «aufheben»-negation /- conservation / elevation of economic-competition-enforced, market-based checks-and-balances regarding the pricing and quality of the goods/services supplied to the citizen-consumers by these enterprises, using equitably-allocated, socially-owned means of social reproduction.

    This newly-emergent 'Stewardship-Equity-relation' is expected and intended to increasingly supplant the likewise «aufheben»-conserved/constrained '''wage-labor'''/private-capital social-relationship-of-production [cf. the model of "Economic Democracy" comprehensively constructed and defended by David Schweickart in his book Against Capitalism (Cambridge University Press; NY; 1993), as well as in his book After Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.; NY; 2002), to which we are indebted, in part, for key aspects of the conceptual derivation of this crucial sub-principle, and 'socio-ontological «species»', or 'social relations of production «species»', of 'generalized equity'];
  5. Citizen Allocational Equity as the social principle, and the social policy, of equitable regional-geographical allocation of social property — of socially/publicly-owned means of social reproduction resources/funding — on a «per capita», or per human person, basis.















Elaborations Regarding the Determinations of Some of the New «Species» of 'Generalized Equity' Expected to Emerge in the Epochal Transition from Capitalism to 'Equitism'.

 

We will address herein, at greater length, some of what we have been able to derive regarding the determinations of two of the new «species» of 'generalized equity', namely, the 'Citizen Externality Equity' «species», the 'Citizen Birthright Equity' «species», the Citizen Stewardship Equity', and the 'Citizen Allocational Equity' «species», immediately below.





Citizen Externality Equity.

 

The social principle, and social policy, of 'Citizen Externality-Equity' is both a collective-property, public-property, social-property instantiation of the so-called "Coase Theorem", and an ultimate fruition of the '''equity''' or '''equitable jurisprudence''' tradition of Anglo-American law, in contradistinction to the common law and statutory law traditions. 

"Externalities" are “market failures” of the markets of Capitalism, as recognized, and as named as such, by capitalist economists, constituting a major aspect of the immanent critique of capitalism officially admitted — however much these immanent failures of 'capital-ism' may be officially downplayed — by capitalist economics. 

"Externalities" comprise the external costs, and, sometimes, also in the external benefits, that are imposed, by the operations of capitalist enterprises, upon those ‘‘‘publics’’’ which are neither the owners, nor the employees, nor the customers, nor the suppliers of those enterprises, and which are imposed upon those ‘‘‘publics’’’, without any intrinsic provision for consent by, or compensation to, said ‘‘‘publics’’’.

The life-threatening toxic pollution of the air, water, and soil of residential communities by proximate industrial plants forms a classic spectrum of examples of such “external cost” imposition. 

The Coase Theorem is the name given to the proposition, asserted by Nobel-laureate capitalist economist Ronald Coase, to the effect that externalities do not give rise to ‘‘‘diseconomies’’’, ‘‘‘distribution sub-optima’’’, or ‘‘‘resource mis-allocations’’’, provided that well-defined and enforceable property rights exist, such as to create a market incentive for the externality-producer to ‘‘internalize’’’ the cost(s) of the externalit(y)(ies) being produced. 

The equity, or equitable jurisprudence, tradition of Anglo-American law originally emerged as a system of law, parallel and dual to the common law/statutory system of law, in the English chancery, and which came to comprise a settled and formal body of substantive and procedural rules and doctrines that supplement, aid, or override common and statutory law.

"Equity" in this context connotes justice according to fairness, esp. as distinguished from mechanical application of rules”.

The equity principle at work in the 'Citizen Externality-Equities' ‘‘‘second «species»’’’ of 'generalized equity', is the principle that publics, by suffering the ‘‘external costs’’’ imposed upon them, without their consent, and without any compensation to them by the externalities perpetrators, the private-capital enterprises, thereby, in effect, ‘‘‘purchase’’’, in kind, a kind of ‘‘‘shares’’’ of a new, to-be constitutionally established and mandated class of equities – a public, collective form of equity-property – whose disposition must therefore be accomplished by means of collective, democratic decision, arrived at by vote of the publics, i.e., by vote of the 'externality-equity' owners, the citizen 'externality-equity' ‘‘‘shareholders’’’, or 'externality-equity' ‘‘‘stakeholders’’’in each locality, for 'public directors' for their.  

These publics-elected 'public directors' will sit in "local, second, PUBLIC-INTEREST boards of directors", or "local, second, PUBLIC-INTEREST management committees", one assigned to each local operating unit of each locally-operating enterprise, so as to be in continual negotiation with the traditional, private-interest board-of-directors, or private-interest "management committee", of each operating unit of such locally-operating enterprises, located in that locality, whose externalities-production / external costs production exceeds legislated thresholds, continually negotiating with regard to the statutorially-required 'externalities-budgets' of the annual operating plans of each such enterprise local operating unit, and with regard to, and monitoring, the day-to-day implementation of those 'externalities-budgets', and subject to losing-party-pays adjudications, in the new, constitutionally-mandated Tribunals for Externality Equity, should these negotiations deadlock.

'Citizen Externality-Equities' implies an immanent-/self-expansion of joint-stock-company stockholder democracy principles, inherent in the capital-relation, to encompass the constitutional, legislative, and regulatory 'institution-ization' of a generalized, comprehensive ‘‘stakeholder democracy’’’.

'Equitism' begins with constitutional recognition of a new 'socio-ontological category' of equities:  'Citizen Externality-Equities', as demanded by the mass movement of a majority of the people.

'Citizen Externality-Equities' generalizes core, capital-equity logic to encompass economic democracy, starting with public, democratic ‘econo-political’ governance of the core of capitalism’s ‘‘market failures’’’ – its production and accelerating accumulation of an ever-mounting burden of the ‘‘externalities’’’, that it foists upon its publics, publics who may be “third parties” – neither customers of, nor employees of, nor owners of, nor suppliers of the capital-entity producing the “externalities” in question.





The following image provides a summary visualization of the expected, multi-scale 'Associations of Publicly-Elected Public Directors' administrative infrastructure for the society-wide popular-democratic governance of economic externalities, local to global -- 










Citizen Birthright Equity.

 

The principle of the social generalization, or universalization, of equity-holding, to all social citizens, and of an 'socio-onto-dynamasis' beyond the kinds of such equity presently in existence, to birth new kinds, e.g., 'Citizen Externality-Equities' — the heart and «arché» of the E 'socio-onto' — does not end with the public-democratic 'property-ization' of 'externality-equities'.

It extends as well to the social generalization of the proprietorship of, initially, 'internality equities', by all citizens, by means of a policy of 'Citizen Birthright Equity Endowment', in an amended, constitutionalized Bill of Social Rights & Responsibilities.

This new «species» of equity also flows from principles of 'social risk management', of 'economic-system-risk' management and of 'societal self-investment'.

It means that every child born into 'Equitarian Society', is granted, «ipso jure», at birth, by virtue of fundamental constitutional right, a tax-funded equal sum of capital equity stock, comprised of small portions of all publicly-issued stocks, bonds, and other capital assets meeting legislated standards, and of extant social property "rent" income streams as well, designed as an integrated social/individual risk management trust-fund, and a unified, 'omni-portable', globally-portable "social safety net", for every new-born citizen. 

This new constitutional right, in this sense, makes every baby born into human society a '''trust-fund baby'''.

It means per capita citizen net assets in place of today's plutocracy-mandated, malignantly growing per capita citizen liabilities; the share of each citizen in plutocracy-incurred public debt [a way by which the plutocratic minority finances its destructive imperial enterprises, and their required '''permanent war economy''', via taxes primarily on wages-income, as legislated forced collective consumptions, foisted upon the non-super-rich majority]. 

  • Moral Hazard Mitigations.  The mitigation of the massive "moral hazard" potential of this social policy will require that there be many "strings attached", restricting the uses of this public investment in each citizen-person by that person, and by various parents or guardians and heirs of that person at various stages of that person's expected life-history, and beyond.  Each social equity-endowment must therefore remain a partially-social property; an only-partially-individual/-personal/-private property. 

  • Principles of Universalized Inheritance and of Universalized Birth-Advantage.  This policy of 'universal advantage' / 'universal inheritance' / 'social inheritance' — of the universalization of capital/equity ownership / social property ownership / inheritance as a partial remedy for the viciously self-amplifying hyper-inequalities of plutocratic-minority capital-advantage and capital-privilege; a '''social risk management''' policy designed to achieve an «aufheben»-negation of some of the socially-recognized systemic risks of the predecessor, «Kapitals»-system — envisions a unification of the fragmented and otherwise inadequate «Kapitals»-system epoch legacy of "social safety net" provisions. 



If not, in the beginning, birthing every baby with a golden or even a silver spoon in her or his mouth, every baby would be born with at least a stainless steel "spoon in its mouth".

These unified provisions would address the management of the risk of the "contained" but also "retained" elements of capital-profit-based economics, plus of the new, Equitarian system, as well as of the universal risks to which human social life is heir. 

Society's collective portion of equal initial social investment in each individual citizen, by social right of birth [as distinct from the presently persisting unequal family investment in / inheritance of each child, resulting from, e.g., the unequal fruits of achievements and/or thefts by that child's ancestors], and the partially age-based and tests-of-knowledge-based, constitutionally- and legislatively-restricted allocation of each child's birth-right equity trust-fund, would be legislatively designed to meet the expected, standard costs of foreseeable life-history events, including — 

  • Education — primary school, trade-school, college, professional, '''life-long learning''', etc.;
  • Medical Care — for "normal", plus at least some classes of "catastrophic", illness;
  • Home Purchase — down-payment for young adult first home acquisition;
  • Entrepreneurshippublic "venture capital" funding for first [below legal-threshold employee-count for stewardship-equity requirements] small business, or for producers’-cooperative launch[es];
  • Unemployment Insurance — for cases of economic downturns, producers’-cooperative bankruptcies, etc.;
  • Re-Training — redressing 'technodepreciation', or technological 'obsolescence-depreciation', of '''human capital''', or of the required 'human skill-negentropy', for stewardship-equity-holding producers;
  • Retirement — partially replacing plutocracy-gutted pension, employer 401(k), IRA, & Social Security programs. 


Costs of social failures by the individual — e.g., of welfare livelihood-support in the cases of extended, perhaps non-economic-downturn-induced unemployment, or of incarceration costs in cases of criminal conviction — would be borne out of this birthright equity fund, up to its near-exhaustion, thus also forming a further dis-incentive to such failures. 


[Economic downturns may continue to occur, irregularly, during the period of the '''formal domination''', or '''formal subsumption''', of the capital social-relation-of-production by the rest of the emergent social-relation-of-production of 'generalized equity', although any immanent social processes described in terms of a '''socio-economic law-of-motion''' of such downturns is expected to be increasingly 'socio-ontologically' distinct from the immanent social process which drives the iterated irruption of escalating periods of contracted social reproduction within the [sub-]epoch of the '''real domination''' of, and of the more or less exclusive social rule of, the "capital-relation"]. 

This unification, with each citizen as cost-concerned customer, given the voucher-like personal stake of each citizen in the conservation, and expansion, of the principal of each's birthright-equity social trust-fund, would 're-marketize' social welfare provision, and 're-competitivize' the pricing of medical and other social welfare services, and, thus, the exercise of cost-efficiency and cost-discipline in their production, de-incenting the "take it for granted" moral hazard of "free-of-charge", state-bureaucracy-produced, or state-bureaucracy-subsidized, '''social welfare''' provisions. 

The policy of 'Citizen Birthright Equity Endowment' raises questions of the disposition of such endowments in the event of termination of pregnancy, averting the birth of a new citizen, by right of the mother. 

Parents must not be allowed to '''profit''' monetarily from their children's social trust-funds, though, even so, the financial worries and burdens of parenthood would be significantly mitigated by this policy, even countervailing against the extreme amplification of the "demographic transition" presently evident, in part, in advanced capitalist nations' growing tendency toward negative rates of human population growth

The 'Citizen Birthright Equity' policy would not constitute a direct financial incentive to never abort a fetus.

However, the high social valuation of each and every life implicit in this policy suggests a certain resolution of the prevailing "right-of-choice" versus "right-of-life" social conundrum, a conundrum which is allowing the ruling plutocracy to further distract -- and to divide and conquer -- the majority of the population against itself, distracting it away from the realization that the real mortal enemy of all of these citizens is the ruling plutocracy itself. 

This conundrum presently forms an apparently unsolvable antinomy, but one which we see, rather, as yet another dialectical self-antithesis or 'self-duality' within the prevailing social concept of right.

This 'intra-duality' has been opportunistically exploited, manipulated, and amplified — quite predictably, in anti-dialectical, rigid, frozen, "either-vs.-or" fashion — by the 'Meta-Nazi' plutocracy's 'ideological engineering' operations, so as to foster and reinforce the protracted social strife of both sides of a diametrically opposed, antagonistic, "irreconcilable" social antithesis, as yet one further tool for the 'Meta-Nazis' ideology-based divide-and-conquer subjugation of the majority public — of the 'producers-class'.



Aside:  The "Abortion Rights" Conundrum, An Instance of the 'Intra-Dualities' of Human Rights Generally.

 

The apparent antinomy between the community's right and duty to safeguard the lives of all of its members, and thus to enforce severe sanctions against homicidal behavior, on the one hand, and of citizens' rights to the free disposition of their individual bodies with minimal governmental or communitarian encroachment, on the other hand, can be resolved in a higher, socially-mediated, complex unity which preserves both dimensions of right, including some aspects of their sometimes conflictual mutual relationship.

Humane society can never permit the decision to end a human life, even an embryonic life, to be a casual decision.
 
If a healthy prospective mother, with science-based expectancy of a birth-outcome unthreatening to her health, chose to terminate her pregnancy, she would, per this expectation of the '''values''' of a 'democratic communist' society, be incentivized, by democratically-legislated rewards and/or penalties, to register her intention to do so in the appropriate portal, set aside for this purpose, of what we call the global 'Omni-Com' — of the social Omnibus Communications social-property utility; of the globally-socialized heir to today's "internet". 

Other legally-qualified prospective parents, perhaps biologically unable to birth children of their own, would have the constitutional right, by assuming all of the medical and other cost-burdens of the pregnancy and of the delivery, to adopt the child[ren] resulting from the registered pregnancy, as long as the medical court — a jury of publicly-elected physician-justices — certified the mother as physiologically and psychologically safe to go to term within the 'legislatedly acceptable' outcome probabilities, hopefully quite stringent with regard to the safety of the mother.

If the medical court found otherwise, the planned abortion would be free to proceed. 

If, globally, no qualified prospective adopters were willing to "speak up for" the life of the child in this substantive way, this silence would constitute consent to the abortion — a relinquishment, by the human community extant, of its right to preserve the potential extrauterine life of the fetus in question. 

The mother would, in such cases — hopefully rare — be free to proceed with the abortion. 

In such cases, no 'Citizen Birthright Equity Endowment' would accrue to support the thus-prevented extrauterine life of the embryonic child.






Citizen Stewardship Equity.

 

The 'Citizen Stewardship Equity' 'justicial principle' is designed to redress and to repair the fundamental, tragic psychohistorical, social wrong that resides at the root of the "modern proletariat" [Marx and Engels] -- that constitutes the origin of the social victimization and denigration of the working class:  the separation of the producers from direct access to [from at least "usufruct" ownership of] the "land", i.e., their exclusion from access to agricultural livelihood/sustenance, and from direct access to all other means of production/livelihood, at the hands of modern capital, allied with modern landed property, so that "universal prostitution" [Marx] -- "self-alienation", i.e., "self-selling", to capital and/or landed property -- became their only recourse for survival.  

The positive aim of the 'Citizen Stewardship Equity' principle of equity is therefore to facilitate a new historic political-economic regime of 'collective entrepreneurship', or of 'entrepreneurial collectivism', among the associated producers [Marx], by making the usufruct of social-property means of production available to qualified collectives, or associations, of producers.

Such collectives of producers, associations of producers, or socialized producers' cooperatives, must first produce a business plan, and a system of by-laws for their own, internal, democratic self-governance, that qualifies for such access by the criteria set forth is statutes promulgated by the democratically-elected, democratically recallable producers' legislature, and in the eyes of a likewise qualifying, citizen-stewards' social bank producers' cooperative, willing to risk their solvency by committing a part of their means of production procurement fund to this citizens' collective, and to its business and self-governance plans.

Thereafter, to continue in existence, this thus-qualified citizens stewardship cooperative must pass the test of competition, for the consumer-credits spending of other producer-citizens, against other qualifying citizen stewardship cooperatives that offer competing goods/services to the public, remaining solvent in the face of that competition for such de facto consumer-credit "consumer votes".






Citizen Allocational Equity.

 

Truly equitable distribution of, e.g., the public assets ceded, from the stock of global social property, in stewardship [not in local ownership], to local and regional producers' associations, may involve, especially initially, from the point of view of the internationally base-elected A.I.D.P.Association Internationale des Directeurs Publiques»], if it so decides through its democratic process, compensatory and reparative elements, until the injustices of past capitalist-imperialist social auto-cannibalization of the capital-hinterland and former "Second World" and "Third World" regions of the globe has been adequately redressed. 

Such allocative equity, in any case, involves the solution of presently unsolved — and hardly even posed — problems of 'social-negentropy accounting' in the context of a 'meta-market' social system, in which mere monetary-valuations provide an even more inadequate metric of 'social-reproductive use-value' than they do now, still within the integument of “the capital-relation”. 

The nature of 'Citizen Allocational Equity' is thus that of an historical equity-principle, which targets an “ideal” of equal «per capita» regional allocation of socially-owned social negentropy, but which recognizes that such an ideal standard becomes relevant only once an “equipotential” among all regions of the globe has been achieved with regard to life-opportunities. 

There will be a role for the constitutionally and juridically regulated and monitored 'Declarations of Peace and Prosperity' — replacing, and hopefully preempting and obviating the whole history of '''Declarations of War''', up to today — adopted by one global region, with respect to another, as part of the process of achieving the necessary compensatory and reparative allocations that constitute '''the correction of the past''' in terms of human-labor-created-wealth-sharing and natural-resources-sharing. 

Such 'Declarations', and, even more so, their implementation, would have to involve subtle applications of a mastery of human-social science — of the science of the catalysis of accelerated human-social self-development — that are all but beyond the ken of our current, capital-compromised and capital-corrupted civilization.
  

These declarations might involve something of what Marx envisioned, with respect to Russia, and with respect to the Russian Mir, '''given a successful proletarian revolution in the West''', in his Preface to the Russian edition of Capital (volume I), and in his draft letters to Vera Zasulich.



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