Why an Egalitarian Revolution is Possible and How we Can Work for it

The aim of this piece is to offer a succinct introduction to my (John Spritzler’s) perspectives and work on egalitarian revolution. The issue of democractic, or egalitarian, revolution has never been more pressing than today, with the advent of the 4th Industrial revolution and technological advances which threaten greater automation and consolidation of ruling class power (i.e. A.I. run technocracy) over the 'have-nots'. A more detailed exploration of the subject of this article can be found in the pamplet I co-authored: 'Thinking about Revolution'. For the curious, you can also read about my background and political journey here.

I edit the website PDRBoston.org, which is all about promoting egalitarian revolution, not only the need for it but--more controversially, actually!--the possibility of it. I live in a part of Boston, Massachusetts called Brighton (zip code 02135). Please go here to view 500 of my Brighton neighbors proudly displaying a sign I produced that says: "We the People want affordable housing for ALL. To get it we aim to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor." I did not have to persuade a single one of these people to agree with the sign; they read it and agreed with it from the get go. This fact is why I believe the egalitarian revolution I write about is very possible.

The short description of what egalitarian revolution means is contained on the stickers and buttons I produced, which say, "Let's remove the rich from power, have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor." A more detailed description is here and here, as well as in the pamphlet mentioned in the introduction.

Removing the rich from power means creating a society in which economic wealth is shared according to the egalitarian principle of: "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need." Sharing economic wealth this way is not about buying and selling things; it is totally different. Money is for exchanging equal value for equal value, i.e., buying and selling things. But since an egalitarian economy is not about buying and selling things, it is not based on money. Read how it works here. In fact, I argue here that the use of money is a bad thing and have written here about how the egalitarians who called themselves anarchists and who made an egalitarian revolution in about half of Spain in 1936-9 virtually abolished the use of money.

In an egalitarian society the workers in an economic enterprise are equals with respect to democratically making all the decisions that we think of today as being what management decides; this means that there is no wage labor, as I discuss here.

Real, not fake, democracy means that the sovereign (no higher authority over it) governmental body in an egalitarian society is what I call the Local Assembly of Egalitarians. So who are egalitarians?

Egalitarians are those people who have the egalitarian values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality, mutual aid, fairness and truth, regardless of whether they call themselves an egalitarian or have even heard of that word; in most communities the vast majority of people are egalitarians.

The Local Assembly of Egalitarians consists of all the adult egalitarians in the given local community, and ONLY they, who wish to – democratically, as equals - write the laws that everybody in the local community must obey. By "local community" I mean a community the size of which makes it practical for all egalitarians in it who want to participate in the local assembly to do so, hence not a "national assembly" for a region of millions of people, but more like what in the United States is a postal zip code.

In an egalitarian society, order on a large scale, even on a global scale, is achieved by voluntary federation. This means that delegates sent my many local assemblies meet to craft proposals--not laws!--that their respective local assemblies enact only if they wish to; in practice this means negotiations back and forth to arrive at mutual agreements for large scale cooperation and order. Voluntary federation thus means that egalitarians in a local community are only obliged to obey laws and follow policies--even ones that are about very large scale order--that their own Local Assembly of Egalitarians--in which they may participate as an equal--write. Large scale order achieved by such voluntary federation is how the global postal system works today, as I discuss here along with other examples of real-life voluntary federation.

Note that egalitarians are perfectly justified in using voluntary federation to form a militia, as discussed here, when necessary to defend against anti-egalitarians, and this includes using force or its credible threat to prevent anti-egalitarians from oppressing people, even if the anti-egalitarians in question falsely claim to be egalitarians and somehow have managed to become the majority in a nominal Local Assembly of Egalitarians.

One of the main reasons why local, not national, governmental bodies should be sovereign is this: a national (or large regional) sovereign governmental body makes people a sitting duck to be dominated by an oppressor class, as I discuss here.

The reason only egalitarians should be allowed in the sovereign governmental body is discussed here; in short, allowing anti-egalitarians to be part of the egalitarian government is like allowing arsonists to be part of the fire department.

How we CAN remove the rich from power despite the enormous military violence the ruling class has at its disposal

As I mentioned above, the most controversial part of what I say is not that it would be good to have an egalitarian revolution. Most people (as I prove here) would love it! You wouldn't know that, however, because the mass media work very hard to make sure you don't know it, in order to make you feel so hopeless about the possibility of egalitarian revolution (because supposedly hardly anybody else wants it) that you won't do anything to organize explicitly for that goal. And, if there is not a movement that is explicitly for egalitarian revolution, then there will never be such a revolution, as I discuss here.

But because most people do in fact want an egalitarian revolution, it is possible to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, even in spite of the proverbial 82nd Airborne Division (or readiness of military might to be deployed against the people), as I discuss in detail here. The key obstacle today for building the egalitarian revolutionary movement is hopelessness due to people not knowing that they are the vast majority in having the egalitarian revolutionary aspiration. The strategy I propose for overcoming this hopelessness, a strategy that even a single individual can implement today, is spelled out here.

The strategy entails first doing things to discover for oneself that one is literally surrounded by neighbors who would love an egalitarian revolution, and then doing things that enable people to see and know with confidence that they are in the vast majority in wanting such a revolution. When we implement this strategy on a large scale, then we will see the growth of a huge egalitarian revolutionary movement that can win. Let's do it!