We Need to Build Neutopia NOW
Doctress Neutopia
In response to your series, “Reimagining Socialism”
What we need more than anything else right now is a civic space,
virtual and real that allows for the new socialist global community to
get know, respect, and love each other. We need to find the space in
which we can find ways to think and work together in order to build
solidarity needed to envision a pattern of civilization that isn’t
based on exploitation of human labor and nature, and that gives people
the freedom to pursue their creative dreams in service to humanity. We
need space to air out all the ideas and possibilities that have been
suppressed under oppressive regimes so that we can select the best
ideas in which to build a new planetary civilization.
One such idea is the idea of creating socialistic ecocities, or
arcologies. Arcology, an architectural theory fusing ecology with
architecture proposed by architect Paolo Soleri, could be a container
for a new model of ecological socialism. Soviet style socialism
failed, in part, because it wasted its resources on competing with the
West in a nuclear arms race rather than giving incentives to its
revolutionary artists and architects who wanted to build “socialist
palaces” for the people.
It’s time to use arcology blueprints and promote other collectivists
architects who are working on designing the ecological city so that we
have a structure in which to re-imagine socialism. It is our task as
global citizens to devise a fair and liberating social architecture
needed to manifest the new world of equality, excellence, and human
rights for all. If the Nation’s forum on Reimagining Socialism can be
open and expand the discussion by creating blogs that allow the public
to participate, perhaps we can construct our “collective salvation”
and advance humanity to the next phase of existence.
Morpheal
> Letter to the Editor of The Nation magazine
> In response to your series, “Reimagining Socialism”
Doctress,
Soviet communism proved itself to be a religion, based on irrational,
unscientific, beliefs.
Capitalism has proved itself, in the twenty years since the end of the
Cold War and thus the
end of its excuses blaming communism for all its troubles, another
system of irrational beliefs.
In effect neither communism nor its biggest rival capitalism were a
true science of economics.
The distortions of socialism, as it has manifest itself in some places
in the world, besieged by
its rivals: fascism, communism, and capitalism, place socialism itself
largely into question.
Remember that fascists were socialists, and believed that fascism is
necessary for socialism
to exist. They were national socialists. Similar tactics of
dictatorial oppression have surfaced
in nearly every instance of socialism since.
Anarchism is not an option because true anarchism demands a high level
of intelligence and
education, that enlightens rather than the inadequate pedagogy of most
of our schools at any
level in the education game. It assumes that of people and in fact we
live among savages.
Anarchism only works in an ideal society. When you look at the
behavior of MBAs and CAs,
as well as many corporate lawyers, in the recent economic scandals
that have rocked
America and the planet, the lack of "whistle blowers" and the lack of
responsibility and ethics
in government and the private sector you realize that savages have
assumed control over
the economy and have steered it onto the rocks, without the slightest
beacon of wise and
true guidance. In other words savages at the helm is not an
environment for laissez faire
belief in the goodness of society and its members. Certainly not a
society where anarchism
has any chance.
I think that rather than an "ism" such as socialism, capitalism,
fascism, communism or
anarchism, the world has to step back and reassert a true science of
economics. That means
that the system has to be much more rule governed, planned, regulated,
governed, than it
has been. It also means that with the failures of capitalist free
enterprise to do what needs
to be done in the world, governments will need to step in and plan,
manage and direct the
money they create for the purpose of economic activity meant for the
betterment of the
human condition.
I have also suggested a form of corporate socialism to reduce the
extremely destructive effects
on corporations and therefore their workers, of trying to compete in
free enterprise, very brutal competition,
in a time when modernization and improvements are necessary, not
optional, in regard to the environment,
and the human condition. We have to reduce the impact of necessary
change, by subsidizing change,
from the most able to pay for the less able to pay, to help everyone
survive. This is even more applicable
to corporate entities, as a special class of entity, because
individual survival is dependent. So in America
the constitutional grounds can be found for that type of program being
necessary, not optional. Even though
the individual citizen is precedent as a class of entity under
constitutional law. Since it would benefit the
individual it becomes a valid legislative task to support the survival
of corporations outside the brutally
Darwinian model of "survival of the fittest" (really survival of the
financially fattest).
Leaving the "what to do" totally to free enterprise capitalism has
failed largely to do what is right for
society, for humanity, in the long term, so the savagery is there
among the captains of business as it
is among the general population. Thus wise and true governance is
necessary to guide those captains
of industry, as well as the general population to chart a new course
to a "new deal" for humanity, and
to get the economic engines going, headed in a new direction, full
speed ahead.
Robert Morpheal