The Primary Political/Economic Alternatives

In a Progressive Perspective

 

Political theorist A. Allen Butcher has identified nine main types of governance.  These are identified in the table below (slightly modified from Mr. Butcher’s writings).

As a corrective to the drift toward plutocratic capitalism, a drift now sharply accelerating under globalization, we tentatively endorse a gradual integration into the world’s democracies of the features of an Egalitarian Commonwealth, with much of the privately owned wealth managed in the fashion of Egalitarian Collectivist societies.

Ownership of Wealth Dimension

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Control of Wealth Dimension

 

Common Ownership of Wealth

Mixed Ownership of Wealth

Private Ownership of Wealth

Participatory & Decentralized Control of Wealth

 

(Political control exercised by consensus or some similar system of control)

Egalitarian Communalism

 

Common property ownership with egalitarian, participatory or consensus based government through income sharing systems and labor credit systems.  Although, in principle, nearly any form of organization could be controlled as an egalitarian communal society,  few have been.

Egalitarian Commonwealth

 

A mixed economy, including both private and common ownership, with participatory government (e.g., consensus decision-making with site-value taxation; also some tribal cultures such as the Iroquois Confederation.)

Decentralized political units.  Municipalism (community control over a local economy).

Egalitarian Collectivism

 

Individually owned property with egalitarian, participatory, or consensus based government.

Corporations run as consumer, producer, & worker cooperatives, and/or employee owned and controlled businesses, such as the Spanish Mondragon Cooperatives). 

Mixed Control of Wealth

 

(Representative democracy* & related systems of control)

Democratic Communalism

 

Common equity ownership with democratic majority-rule.  Includes some “socialist” countries and societies that have minimal private property, such as the democratic and communal Israeli kibbutzim.

Democratic Commonwealth

 

Economic mixture of common ownership (e.g., governmental & tax-exempt organizations) and private ownership (e.g., for-profit corporations), with a majority-rule political system.  Some “capitalist” and some “socialist” countries.

Economic Democracy

 

Private equity ownership with democratic majority-rule. Corporations run as partnerships, cooperatives, for-profits and non-profits.  No government owned property, no tax-exempt organizations, no public “commons.”

Authoritarian & Centralist Control of Wealth

 

(No democratic features, or purely nominal democratic features.)

 Totalitarianism

 

State or party control of economy and government.  Communism or fascism, one variant of Marxism, Stalinism, & others.  Minimal private property and complete control of society

 Authoritarianism

 

Rule by dictator, with private property owned primarily by cronies or a small upper class.  Includes absolutisms, aristocracies, despotisms, feudalisms, gerontocracies, matriarchies, monarchies, oligarchies, patriarchies, theocracies, “banana republics.”

Plutocratic Capitalism


Government run, perhaps behind the scenes, by an elite of wealthy businessmen.  Corporate decision-making power based upon percent ownership of stock, or vested in a board of directors.  Laissez-faire corporate monopoly, multinational and hierarchical capitalism.

 

* Representative democracy (RD) is very much to be preferred to totalitarian, authoritarian, or plutocratic systems of governance, but in its current forms it is steeply hierarchical in nature, leaving individuals with little real political power, and therefore little real ability to effect political change for the common good.  RD has also shown itself highly susceptible to plutocratic invasion through "campaign financing" (bribery), media control, creation of policy think tanks, business pressure groups such as the Business Roundtable, political “in-groups” such as the Trilateral Commission, and private political clubs for the wealthy such as the Bohemian Grove.  Thus, representative democracies tend to result in big political wins for those with the most influence over elected officials, and big political losses for those without such privileged, wealth-based access.  We therefore commend integration of features of a more consensus-based, decentralized, and truly democratic model.

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