I just wanted to share a link to my manifesto on libertarian social democracy. The manifesto is in the form of a zine or pamphlet and is titled Anarchist Social Democracy: Structure & Theory. The following is a brief synopsis of some of the core ideas that I cover in this work.
" We are all Republicans: we are all Federalists."―Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address)
The idea of libertarian/anarchist social democracy takes the ideas of Fabian socialism and social democracy and incorporates them into the framework of democratic confederalism. Thus, I envision a delegative democratic federal republic, such as the models proposed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and Murray Bookchin. Decisions would be made locally, through assembly democracy, and the local general assemblies would send delegates to communicate their consensus to councils higher up within the confederation. This would resemble the federalist/republican models of Montesquieu, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. However, democracy would be done directly at the local level, where town hall meetings would become general assemblies for participatory democracy and "representatives" would be replaced by recallable and revocable "delegates." These delegates would represent the local general assemblies and would be bound by an imperative mandate, meaning that the delegate would not have the prerogative to act or vote contrary to the consensus of the assembly of his/her constituents.
In addition to the idea of bottom-up delegative democracy and federation, which derive from anarchist theory, I am influenced by the ideas of social democracy. (Cf. Beatrice Webb, Eduard Bernstein) The economic system would be a form of market socialism in which the municipality, governed on principles of direct democracy, would have ultimate control of all industry. There would be two tiers of ownership, akin to the way things currently are. The tier-1 owner of industry would be the municipality, and the people in the local community would reserve the right to regulate, abolish, or tax any enterprise as they see fit. The tier-2 owners of industry would be the workers. The workers would collectively own and manage companies as co-operatives, with payment in terms of shares rather than wages. The tier-2 owners would also, however, share in the tier-1 ownership insofar as they would be part of the democratic assembly that governs the municipality. If the municipality decided to tax a company or fine the company, then the revenue generated therefrom would be due to the community as a collective of individuals, not due to some council of oligarchs. Any revenue generated from corporate taxes would be divided up and given back to the citizens as a dividend or share of municipal wealth.
Libertarian social democracy would also incorporate the ideas of Georgism. (Cf. Henry George, Thomas Paine) The two-tiered property system would apply to land and natural resources too. The tier-1 owner of all land would be the local community. The tier-2 owner would be the person who possesses it. The local community could, therefore, democratically decide how land and resources should properly be used in the best interest of everyone. They could prohibit people from polluting the air and water, because those resources belong to the community. This would allow for sensible urban planning, rational ecological and environmental regulations, etc. The tier-2 owner would have exclusive right to the use of the land, within limits set by the local community, and would have to pay rent (land value tax) for that privilege. Since the municipality would own all land, the municipality would have the right to charge rent for the privilege of exclusive use of land and resources. More valuable land would be taxed (rented out) at a higher rate than less valuable land. This would eliminate the boom-and-bust cycle that is driven by real estate and land speculation. It would also tend to reduce inequality. The tier-2 owner, the local community, would own the land and be due the rent. However, the community is nothing but a collection of individuals. Consequently, the revenue from the rent or land value tax would be divided up in an egalitarian fashion and given back out to the members of the local community as a citizen's dividend.
The municipality could also implement a system of voluntary taxation. (Cf. the voluntaryism of Auberon Herbert) The general assembly could set rates of taxation. The contributions would be voluntary, but payment of those contributions might be a prerequisite to using the community's resources. For instance, renting land from the municipality and receiving the citizen's dividend and such could be contingent on voluntary payment. If you pay your taxes as a voluntary membership due, then you get all the privileges that come with citizenship. If you don't pay your taxes, then you don't get those privileges. The system of taxation should be progressive, so that people who earn more money are taxed at a higher rate. (This follows from Amartya Sen's argument for the justice of progressive tax schemes.) The municipality could then use the revenue generated from voluntary tax contributions for public projects like road maintenance, law-enforcement, etc.
The local municipalities would be federated into a large democratic confederation for purposes of social welfare and national defense. Each municipality would pay a membership due or tax to the federal level government. (There would be no direct taxation at the federal level. All federal taxes would be collected from the municipality.) The tax rate should be progressive, so that municipalities with more resources pay more than poorer ones. The federal level would also maintain a central bank and currency system. Banks would be publicly owned and revenue generated from interest and creation of new money would automatically be routed to the accounts of each citizen within the confederation as a citizens's dividend. There would be confederal councils, consisting of delegates from each municipality, wherein the delegates would discuss tax rates (membership dues) from each member community. There would actually be several levels of confederal councils, ranging from the district level, the city level, the regional level, to the national level and even inter-national. These confederal councils would be where deliberation is done on matters that affect various communities and cannot be decided locally. Excess wealth, above operation costs, held by the confederation would be used to give grants for research and development (R&D) and to fund scientific studies.
Additionally, it would be in the best interest of all citizens of the confederation if there were a scheme for mutual insurance at the federal level, similar to the schemes for social security and universal healthcare in Nordic countries.
The system of taxation, being both Georgist and progressive, along with the various citizen's dividends would bring about a distributist economy with an egalitarian distribution of wealth, but it would also provide each citizen within the democratic confederation with a universal basic income. The system of progressive taxation would meet the communist criteria of "from each according to ability," and the universal basic income would give to each an equal share of the wealth of the community. However, markets as a distribution mechanism and money as a medium of exchange would be preserved, but the market would be regulated by the democratic government insofar as banks and enterprises would be regarded as somewhat public property and would, therefore, be subject to communal control.
The above points are aspects of my thought that are more unique, which most other anarchists won't advocate. In this manifesto, I also talk about economics, labor and unions, national defense, and policing. These are aspects of my thought that are more in line with other schools of anarchist thought, so I won't elaborate on them here, but I do address them in the zine.
Man, you lost me there, ekk, I never figured you'd come down on the side of rule by force after having read those most opposed to it.
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In what way is it rule by force? If decisions are made locally, at the level of the neighborhood, on a consensus basis....then there is no rule by force, only free association. And each neighborhood sends a delegate to the municipal council, but the delegate is bound by an imperative mandate, meaning that the decision is made by his constituents via consensus, and not by the delegate’s arbitrary choice. The delegate would attend the council, hear and participate in the deliberation, and then report back to the general assembly in his neighborhood, but the decisions would ultimately be made through consensus processes at the local level.
I see democratic confederalism working as a system of various overlapping networks of free association through confederation. So, imagine an entire region is united into a confederation for national defense. Suppose there are many poleis (autonomous democratic municipalities) and they are all united into a confederation for national defense. There may be other separate and independent federations in addition to this defense confederation, so each polis (municipality) may belong to various different confederations. Just as Denmark and the Netherlands are members of the EU, UN, and NATO, but Sweden joined the EU and UN while opting out of NATO, so too could these autonomous municipalities be members of separate and independent confederations and associations.
Imagine that there are various autonomous municipalities; let’s call them a, b, c, d, and e. Let’s suppose that all 5 municipalities confederate and form a free association for national defense. They have a confederation of national guards into a unified confederal military to protect them from invasion. Municipalities a and b might form a separate and independent free association (confederation) for social welfare, choosing to both collaborate in a mutual health insurance scheme for their citizens. Then, municipalities c, d, and e might opt out of the mutual insurance scheme and instead form a separate free association for a communistic confederation, in which they have a syndicalist approach to share resources according to need. Then, suppose that a neighboring nation has a confederation of municipalities for national defense; these are the municipalities of f, g, h, i, and j. Municipalities g, h, and j may make a voluntary contract with a, c, and e, forming a free association for the first three to provide agricultural products to the latter three in exchange for firearms and ammunition. Furthermore, the two national confederations could form a confederation together in order to guarantee mutual assistance in case of invasion of either nation. So there would be a complex network of various interlocking and overlapping federations and free associations. Furthermore, each community could choose which federations to join and which to leave or decline to join, all on the principle of free association.
So, the anarchist social democracy might actually be formed by a multiplicity of free associations. So, the libertarian social democratic confederation might actually be the area were several separate confederations overlap (a defense confederation, health insurance confederation, universal basic income confederation, etc.). The anarchist social democratic confederation, then, is more of an emergent phenomenon that arises out of the way that various networks of confederation interact and overlap.
It would be in the best interest of all communities involved if each municipality adopted a geoist land value tax, universal basic income, mutualist market system, and all the other “anarchist social democratic” proposal that I proposed. However, you have to keep in mind that libertarian municipal democratic confederalism is the ultimate basis of the social order that I propose, which means that decisions are made in general assemblies on a consensus basis at the local level, which means that each autonomous community could potentially opt out. This also means that you might end up with something like “gerrymandered”-looking municipalities, where various neighborhoods within a single “city” might choose to confederate into separate municipalities. Same way nationally, there might be wonky looking maps if you try to draw the territory of a confederation, because each municipality could choose to opt out of one confederation and into another one. Each municipality could choose to embrace geoism and UBI, but they also have the ability to opt out, but that doesn’t mean that the fully anarcho-social-democratic municipalities won’t be in a federation with non-anarcho-social-democratic municipalities. Also, trying to map out territories would probably be impossible, since each community might belong to hundreds of different confederations. The confederations are free associations, not States, so there is no territorial monopoly on force, which means that borders and territorial boundaries would be flexible or non-existent, or differ depending on what association you are talking about, or really only meaningful at the level of the local community and the lines drawn between various yards within a particular neighborhood. The system I envision is anarchist. There is no State, no territorial monopoly, no clearly defined borders, and no rule by force.
I don’t think my model is actually “rule by force.” I think it is just a free association model, like all forms of anarchism. The only difference is my preference of economic system. If you have a model where governance is done through consensus and free association, there are any number of possibilities (mutualism, georgism, communism, individualism, etc.). Each community has to decide its own economic model and its own rules and arbitration procedure for itself. So, you have to keep in mind that the proposals I put forth are really statements of my own preference or suggestions. Each community has to make the determination for itself, but “anarchist social democracy” is the model of utopia that I would prefer for myself. If a municipality is going to have land value tax and progressive taxes, that has to be determined through deliberation and the democratic process. I would prefer that model, and I think a lot of other people in my own generation would prefer that model too, but I am not proposing the imposition of anything by force.
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But what if I am born and grow up in a community I abhor, do I have to leave to get left alone?
Can I get work in an environment that actively uses me as an example of wrong doing for the kids?
I think you fail to fully explore your model, is there room for dissent, and if I dissent, does the majority over rule me?
Perhaps I put the wrong meanings to the words that you used, but it sure looked authoritarian to me,...if I am not in the majority.
Tax, and money, are both perpetuations of wage slavery, and that certainly is not voluntary.
The choice of starve or submit is not a freely voluntary choice.
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There's two points that you miss. First, that governance is on a consensus basis, which means that rules and norms and membership of communities within free associations/confederations would be malleable and ever-changing. As new generation with different ideas start participating in the decision-making process, things will change. Anarchy is malleable and fluid. It's not a system of majority rule. Within a vast confederation, the confederal council might have to make decision on a majority rules basis, if consensus can't be reached, but the ruling would not be binding on the non-consenting members...each community has the ability to secede or opt out. Locally, I have said that decision should be made on a consensus basis, not by majority rule, which means that there is always room for dissent and a majority can't just choose to ignore the thoughts and opinions of a minority (consensus doesn't allow for the overruling of minorities by majority rule). Even at the level of the municipality, individuals can "stand aside" and opt out. You don't have to pay membership dues (income taxes) to the local community, but you have to keep in mind that the community is also not bound to provide you with food, shelter, and basic income if you do so opt out. Now, the community may choose to provide non-taxpayers within the community with the services and basic income anyway, especially if most people do contribute, but the community could choose to exclude non-contributing individuals within the community from the benefits of the free association.
As for taxes, money, and wage slavery and the "starve or submit" ultimatum, I don't think that applies to my model. Firstly, if you have municipal socialism and "universal basic income," then there can be no wage slavery. Money loses its exploitative and alienating and despotic characteristics when you create a system such as the one that I propose. If you pay your membership dues, you get a free basic income, which would actually cover the cost of the membership dues, so it would be really stupid not to pay them. The UBI would come from the rental of communally-owned land and from the "corporate tax," which is really not a tax per se but a share of profits owed to the community since the community is actually a partial owner of all enterprises in the area since the labor of the community (in maintaining roads, infrastructure, etc.) actually contributes to the profits of the enterprises. Since labor is what makes ownership legitimate, which is why the workers should own industry, it follows that the community should have some share of ownership too, at least insofar as the functioning of the enterprise would be impossible apart from the community and its labor.
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Hmmm, ok, you got me back a little, but I don't like the idea of taxation or starvation.
Contingent on getting a job not being about shaving, ties, and short hair, the cultural shift would mitigate against the conformist nature of humans.
As the shift took hold the viewpoints that scream slavery should diminish simply by the term losing it's common use, I would think.
Thanks for being here, @ekklesiagora, you are a rarity where I come from, and a breath of fresh air here.
Do you meme?
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I don't think that it has to be "taxation or starvation." I don't think the community should be obligated to provide you with food if you aren't going to contribute. If you can work but don't (and other people still have to work), then the community doesn't owe you anything. At the same time, they could feed him, but also deprive him of the right to privately possess land within the community. They could give him basic necessities, but deprive him of universal basic income, use of the communities currency, etc. This would give people an incentive to participate and play fair (thereby avoiding the free rider problem) without being coercive.
I don't really mess with memes.
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I can agree with that.
Work would need to be something different than a job.
No boss to brown nose, no politicking in the work place.
Access to knowledge, and materials to set up a home factory, and I am in.
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