The Three Spheres of Democratic Socialism

The Three Spheres of Democratic Socialism Michael J. Thompson Socialism’s primary goal is the creation of a social world where the self-realization of the individual is of primary importance—the realization of a kind of individual that will enrich and advance the community as well. Socialism therefore has as its primary end the organization of a society that will be able to develop the powers, capacities, and creativity of the individual and society at the same time. Socialism is therefore not a theory of administrative state power, nor is it a theory of a planned, state-run economy, or a form of politics that squashes the individual. It is not a hyper-developed welfare state, nor does it seek to abolish freedom in any concrete sense of the term. Socialism is rooted in a distinctive desire to organize our social world for the common good of its members. According to socialism, the highest good of each member is their own self-realization and their self-realization is, in turn, the basic principle for what determines the common good itself. When we talk about socialism, we are talking about a new set of values and principles—values and principles that give rise to a distinct kind of politics. These values are rooted in the actual nature of our species, as cooperative, associative, creative, and interdependent. It views the individual very differently from ways that liberal societies do: not as separate from others, as an atom seeking its own happiness. Individuals are embedded in a nexus of social relations – social relations that have the power to shape and mold the individual. Socialism and democracy are therefore not simply related to one another, they are in fact mutually constitutive of one another. By this I mean that socialism is a political project the holds all 14 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES forms of power accountable to the common interest of the community as a whole. Its organizing principle is that of shaping our powers toward the ends that most develop and serve our needs and self-development. In order to flesh this idea out and make clear the radical distinctiveness of the kind of values that animate socialism, I want to explore what I see to be the salient facets of socialism’s inherently democratic character. To do this, I will trace what I call the three spheres of democratic socialism—three spheres that, as I see it, constitute the very core of the socialist tradition and the way that socialism concretizes democratic principles into a concrete form of life. The core thesis is that each of these three spheres is interdependent on the other two; each requires the other to give socialism its full and proper expression. Each sphere refers to a distinct dimension of social reality, and each sphere possesses its own relevant principle that organizes it. The politics of democratic socialism is organized around these three spheres and principles, and these principles are not blueprints for some ideal society but, rather, principles that have generative power to articulate new forms of social reality and keep in view what a humane and free community should seek to make real in the world. What this means is that these spheres are only meaningful to the extent that they transform actual forms of life. They are not utopian in the sense that they detach themselves from what is possible, nor are they regulative, in the liberal sense, in that they simply are formal ideas for which we strive but never realize. Rather, they are what we can call generative principles: their efficacy is measured by the extent to which they emerge as real, as concrete, in the world. They insist, therefore, on transformation; they generate a new reality. The key idea here is that all three spheres conjoin and fit with one another, and thus, any emphasis on one sphere at the expense of the others will get us nowhere. The first sphere I want to consider covers the ways that we organize our material and economic relations with one another and the natural world. We can call this first sphere, the material sphere of democratic socialism. THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 15 It concerns the economic institutions and modes of relating to nature and the ways that we manage and direct the creative and laboring practices of human beings. The material sphere can be organized according to the principles of profit and competition, or it can be organized according to the principle of cooperative interdependence. The first is that which debases our individuality; the second the proper context for the fulfillment and enrichment of our common interest. We can first begin with the critique of the economy, of capitalism itself, and the abolition of wage servitude as the first iteration of socialism. This dominates the ideas of many of the radicals of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. It is characterized by the principle of the transformation of economic structure, not as redistribution, but rather as a new form of productive practices and ends of production that would suffice for a vague conception of personal freedom. Worker movements therefore sought for an extension of democracy into the sphere of economic life. They sought not only for a democratization of the workplace, but also for a democratization of capital itself: its use for common social needs rather than exploitation. Exposed to harsh and acute forms of abuse and exploitation, workers movements saw labor as the central axis of conflict in modern society. But what the socialist workers movements also came to see was that the modern forms of industrial working life exposed a crucial and central truth about human life: namely, our cooperative interdependence with one another. The capitalist came to be seen as a controller and exploiter but not essential to modern forms of social production. What capitalism did was make what was actually interdependence between individuals into a hierarchical form of dependence of the many on the few. The problem of capitalist market societies—as opposed to prior forms of societies that had functioning markets for goods—lies in the persistence of forms of domination and exploitation that do more than simply extract surplus from individuals and society. More central is the way that these forms of power are able to shape and distort our interdependent and cooperative forms of activity for common purposes. We therefore can call the principle of the first, material sphere of democratic socialism to be that of the principle of cooperative interdependence. 16 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES According to this principle, we should see in all economic activities a fundamental and essential system of cooperation among equals. The principle of cooperative interdependence is aimed at the realities that persist in the material production and organization of capitalist societies, which are essentially rooted in the twin principles of instrumentality and exploitation. These describe the ways that economic relations direct, or perhaps better mis-direct, the capacities and powers of the members of the community. The principle of cooperative interdependence explodes the instrumental-exploitative logic of modern economic life. Capitalist society is a defective mode of social organization mainly because it creates relations of dependence between people—specifically between different classes and social groups. Through the power of private individuals to decide how to employ and organize our cooperative powers of labor, creativity and so on, it directs these powers toward ends and purposes that merely expand profit and surplus. It does not aim at the social benefit of whole, nor for the development of the individual. Rather, our labor, our creativity (to the extent that it is developed at all), is misdirected toward their projects and their intentions. It creates forms of dependence for the purpose of extracting benefit (in the form of profit or other services) from others, but it also normalizes the instrumentality of human beings—we come to accept our state of being used for the benefit of others. This is little more than the abuse of the social bond; it is the deformation of the cooperative and interdependent activities of our association with others. One should make no mistake: exploitation need not only occur within the “satanic mills” of the industrial age. Exploitation happens any time one is dependent on a wage as opposed to profits; any time one adopts the norms of consumption and waste that is requisite for the expansion of profit; and any time we accept the existence of those with billions, accumulated off of the long chains of production and consumption of the labors of others. Exploitation is a form of extraction: it is a social relation that enables the taking away from one for the greater, surplus benefit of another. Add to this the power of expropriation, of the power to plunder, rob, and siphon the value from another or a group to THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 17 oneself. In either case, such a society constitutes a system of relations marked not by interdependence, but dependence; it allows some to consume, enjoy and to direct the wealth generated by all. Cooperative interdependence is starkly different from extractive dependence in that it eliminates the forms of parasitism and command that characterize capitalist society. Since socialism has in view the essential social-relational substance that is human life—that is, the associative and relational features of human existence—it views capitalist forms of economic and social life as aberrations, as corruptions of our human interdependence. It sees that the private control over the collective powers of social labor and the wealth produced by it not merely as a moral injustice, but more importantly as a debasement of the very purposes for our common lives together. It also highlights a basic feature of what it means to live as a human being with others: regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, we are a cooperative species. To deny this, to live amid separation, hierarchy, and inequality therefore is a central pathology of our society. This is not merely an abstract principle. When all fully cooperate and participate, the common wealth of the community increases. Every denial of this cooperative interdependence is a scar on the possibility of human progress. The dual problems of exploitation and instrumentality have led not only to gross inequalities of wealth and power in modern societies; they have also led to alienation and the degrading of our capacities as individuals. As long as the material sphere of life is dominated by these twin principles, there will be no place for the full emancipation of society and thus of the individual. Socialism insists on the democratization of all forms of life, of all forms of social relations. What socialism aims for is the democratic accountability of our social-productive forces; what it demands is the expansion of democratic social wealth and the erosion and ultimate elimination of oligarchic wealth. It demands these things because without them, the full development of humanity will continue to be directed and utilized by the power of others. It is anathema to any understanding of democracy. 18 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES The realization that any democratic account of the economy is a necessary and central principle characterizes the first sphere of democratic socialism. Material power is, after all, the primary resource for social and political power. At essence, this principle is in fact nested within a broader political tradition in Western politics, that of republicanism, a specific form of political institutions designed to maximize the freedom of citizens construed as their self-rule for the common interest of the community as a whole. It is the common good that is therefore the core concept of the socialist tradition that seeks the reorganization of society along the lines of self-government and the absence of any form of subordination, control, or domination. The second sphere of democratic socialism therefore can be defined as the political sphere: that is, the sphere of relations of social power that extend beyond class and economic life. Modern liberalism is keen on separating equalities based on opportunity and respect from any kind of substantive equality in material or economic terms. But this only ends up granting a feeble and insufficient kind of freedom. In this sense, the political problem is one that is rooted not only in our economic life, but also in any sphere of activity where some have unchecked powers over any other individual or group. The capacity for subordination, exclusion, and domination therefore is what democratic political life is meant to combat and eliminate; it has in its sights the power of any other person or group to have the capacity to direct your activities, your choices or your values and norms for their benefit and gain. Democratic socialism is therefore just as committed to the principles of non-subordination and inclusion that were at the heart of modern civil rights struggles and human rights struggles. But it seeks more: it seeks inclusion into a society that is oriented toward the good of each its members and to hold all forms of social power accountable to common interest. It is an essential adjunct to the material sphere described above that emerged during nineteenth-century industrial society. The principle that emerges from this sphere is that of non-domination defined primarily as the incapacity of others to control, subordinate, or direct your activities, labor, and social choices, as well as the norms THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 19 and values that govern the community. The principle of non-subordination or non-domination is one that is itself rooted in the insight developed by the material sphere: that human sociality should be patterned according to the principle of cooperative interdependence, that there should be no kind of power, nor enough wealth held by any one or any corporate agent, to allow them to control, shape, orient, or direct the behavior or life course of any other according to their interests or their benefit. However, although wealth is indeed the primary and most robust resource for social power and dominance, it is not the only means by which social dominance can be exercised. A democratic society, in a complete, that is, socialist, sense of the term, would have to maximize the extent to which relations of subordination and dominance are themselves attenuated and extinguished. Just as in the material sphere the controllers of capital themselves must be controlled, in the non-material sphere those who have the power to use others for their own ends and as their means, those who degrade others, and those who exclude others, must themselves be accountable to public power. A society that is truly interdependent must also become one that is solidaristic as well. The capacity of any group to subordinate, control or exclude others—along the lines of race, gender, or whatever—must be the focus of the principle of non-subordination and non-domination. Its aim is not, however, an abstract liberal principle of negative liberty or an “equality of opportunity.” The socialist articulation of this kind of non-dominance is one that has in view the cultivation and maintenance of a social world that is cosmopolitan in its solidarity—in other words, one where the diversity of others is reconciled into a richer, more satisfying social whole. Only when all can participate, and all can contribute, will the common good reach its apex and each one of us receive the fullest benefit in turn. When we subordinate, control and exclude, we do damage not only to others, but to ourselves as well. The opposite of this is not difficult to see. Exclusion and subordination by race and gender and other forms of difference pervade our world. Socialism takes into account these power relations; but to remain democratic, it also insists on the establishment of a constitutional form 20 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES of republic rather than an anarchic vision of communitarian self-rule. This was the lesson learned by democratic socialists in the early twentieth century such as Karl Kautsky, Jean Jaures, Leon Blum. These socialists were not tempted by the Jacobin tactics of Leninism. They saw that democracy had to be maintained by constitutional and republican forms: that democracy meant civic participation even as it meant the socialization of capital. They insisted on the extension of rights to all, even as they sought to democratize the wealth of society. Democratic socialism’s radicalism lies not in its romanticism, but in its political maturity. Republican institutions preserve the ability of the demos to, in Henry Pachter’s words, “control the controllers.” Neither populism nor anarchism nor Leninism provide the framework for a genuine form of democratic life—a socialist, democratic republicanism does. The politics animated by this kind of principle would push the evolution of the institutions of government, constitutionalism and law to a new phase of development, not seek to eradicate them in some kind of anarchic-utopian scheme. Political power will always be needed to protect the common goods and public interest. Cooperative interdependence goes hand in glove with the principle of non-subordination and non-domination. They are twin principles of a kind of community that would provide the rich context for the emergence of a new kind of individuality and new kind of culture, which would itself spring from “a new legal and social order, no longer based on private interest, but on an interest grounded in social solidarity.”2 This leads me now to the sphere of culture and the self, to the domain of the individual. The economic organization of society and the political architecture of power as well set the context for the development of the individual, and the kind of self and personality that it exhibits. The two nested principles of cooperation and non-domination I have explored 2 Max Adler, Neue Menschen: Gedanken über sozialistische Erziehung (Berlin: E. Laub’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1926), 51–52. THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 21 above are therefore linked with a third and crucial idea, that of the principle of self-realization. This third sphere of democratic socialism therefore refers to that of culture, the sphere of the potentialities and capacities that either enhance or stifle the development of the individual. In this sphere, the importance of the individual and the needs of creative self-expression become paramount. This emerges in different periods in the tradition— from Marx’s ideas about unalienated labor to the aesthetic experimentalism of early twentieth-century art, to the cultural experimentation of the 1960s. It places emphasis on the liberation of subjectivity and a new form of individuality. Reaction not only to the affluent society’s emptiness as well as the normative conformism of administrative capitalism led inevitably to excesses of this movement at the expense of the first two spheres during the 1960s counterculture. But the urge for a new individuality that would transcend and explode the categories of liberal culture and its imposed forms of identity and meaning is a crucial aspect of the democratic socialist project. Indeed, it is not hard to see that the principle of self-expression and individuality is one that is itself nested in the two other principles of cooperation and non-domination. The purpose of a socialist society is not to expand the welfare state, to redistribute wealth, and so on. It is to reform the social world to be able to expand the horizon of the individual. As Oscar Wilde once put the matter: “What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not wounded, or worried, or maimed, or in danger.”3 If our social relations remain marked by exploitation, instrumentality, subordination, and exclusion, our individuality will too remain shallow, empty, and vapid. Detached narcissism, alienation, ethical nihilism and automaton conformity will remain the lot of the self—individuality will continue its regression to a sterile, inert atomism. But from a historical point of view, it is also clear that emphasis on the self developed more robustly over time. From the nineteenth century 3 Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” in Selected Critical Prose (London: Penguin, 2001), 134. 22 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES into the twentieth, painters such as Cezanne and Kandinsky, poets such as Whitman and Mallarme and others sought an expansion of our subjective powers of experience. The emphasis on a creative, spontaneous form of subjectivity was registering the shock of the technical world—a world where humanity was degenerating into mere instruments of others. The drive for self-expression reemerged after the twin crises of the global capitalist depression and Second World War in the counterculture movements of the 1960s. Here revulsion at the conformity of everyday life and the vacuous emptiness of the “affluent society” took the form of a heightened awareness of the expansion of aesthetic experience, an exploration of sexuality and different forms of culture. With social affluence at its peak, something was nevertheless lacking. Documents such as the Port Huron Statement were expressions of a vision of society that exploded the narrowness of the cultural and economic goals of personal acquisition and material consumption. It was only with the neoliberal counterrevolution beginning in the 1980s that this social wealth was redistributed upward and a more restricted culture of conformity would set back in. We have been under its dominion ever since. In contrast to all of this, a socialist concept of individuality is one where each sees oneself as interlaced with others; that the good of the individual is a function of the good of the community as a whole; that the freedom of the self is coordinate with the freedom of others. It also means that the individual sees relations to this kind of society in different terms as well. Far from being burdened by social obligations, fleeing into the small world of one’s privacy, the expanded individuality will see new obligations and interests in contributing to the common wealth of the community. This new consciousness will be the result of a kind of society that organizes itself for human needs and human development. Individuality will be expanded, cooperative, and socialized. Privacy should not disappear, but it will no longer be an escape from corrosive forms of work and competition. Privacy will be a sphere for self-enrichment, which, in turn and in time, will be employed for the enrichment, and not at the expense or in spite, of others. THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 23 Today we can see that capitalist culture has eroded these powers of the self. Experiment, inquiry, curiosity—all seem to be receding into a miasma of overconsumption and hyper-stimulation. The ennui that does persist and deepen can be held at bay through various means: commodified culture offers diversion, drugs, the narcissistic exploration of one’s “identity,” which are only several of the ways that a more authentic form of individuality is thwarted, displaced by an abstract search for meaning and mooring in a world shredded by the logic of exchange, hierarchy and meaningless labor and consumption. The socialist conception of the self and the individual differs, however, from the ways that it has developed into a more narrow form under this consumptive capitalism. The principle of self-realization is now to be understood not as the culmination of the previous two spheres, but rather as the sphere that gives them dimension and depth. By now we can see that once we have fully grasped the principle of self-realization, we are at once in touch with the principles of cooperative interdependence and non-domination. The common good of any community is enhanced once each if its members contribute their fully developed capacities to that community; but this is only possible once that community has been organized for that purpose in the first place. True individuality is therefore the animating principle for the others. Without it, the other spheres descend into mere shadow institutions—creaky administered frameworks of rules that lack genuinely human content. True individuality is also one that has absorbed these other, prior principles as well. The genuine individual—as opposed to the merely particular person—is cognizant that the material and political spheres are essential substrates for his or her own self-development and freedom. A new kind of civic consciousness and citizenship therefore takes root as each sees the structure of their own freedom as dependent on the moral intelligence and civic mindedness of others. Solidarity becomes not a mere moralism, but a concretely rooted form of how we reflect on our common ends, needs, and relations with others. The way our individuality is not limited but expanded as a result of the kind of solidarism that emerges when the frayed social relations of capitalist society are resolved 24 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES into the cooperative, non-subordinating relations of interdependence worthy of an association of equals. Solidarism of this kind is both the producer and the product of robust individuals; it is the keystone to the vault of human emancipation. This lies in stark contrast the defective forms of “individuality” articulated by liberal capitalism. Radical individuality is not a kind of extreme form of self-reliance or independence. The right to do whatever can be done is not part of the imagination of this kind of individuality. At the core of capitalism are the centrifugal forces of social disintegration as social bonds are frayed and torn by inequality, atomized individualism, and hierarchical control. The alienation resulting from these petrified social relations presses the self into aggressive, anxious, depressive, and meaningless forms of life. “Small wonder then,” Adam Schaff once wrote, “that the individual feels threatened, insecure, frightened, that he does not feel organizationally united with society and consequently feels lonely and isolated.”4 Rather, an individual formed by the principles of interdependent cooperation and non-subordinating social relationships will be one that seeks out contributing to the common interest. As Herbert Spencer once remarked: “The ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man, who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of the social unit; and yet is only enabled so to fulfill his own nature, by all others doing the like.”5 The unfolding of the individual’s powers, of creativity and experiment, will only serve to mutually enhance others as well as the individual. With the absence of private power to control and mis-direct the development and capacities of others, a new social ethos will emerge where the individual sees an obligation to enhance and expand the resource of common goods that produced his own self-realization. At the same time, this will be a kind of individuality that focuses on treating others as ends, not as means. Contemporary movements for legalizing 4 Adam Schaff, Marxism and the Human Individual (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), 12. 5 Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (London: Williams and Norgate, 1868), 483. THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 25 prostitution or narcotics are only perverse expressions of the defective kind of selfhood that brings the libertarian model of the entrepreneur and private property into a more exaggerated register. This is not the kind of individuality that socialism will have in view. Rather, it sees human purposes and ends as having a wider and more expansive horizon. Now that I have explored the three spheres of democratic socialism and the three principles that are produced by them, we can articulate a more coherent understanding of the principles and politics of democratic socialism. Any emphasis on a part of this interlocking set of spheres and principles will result only in the deformation of the socialist project and not its fruition. We should not see race, gender or class struggles as somehow existing outside of the net of these three spheres. Equality of respect is of course a worthy goal; but it is essentially meaningless when the material power relations of the community remain hierarchical and captured by the logic of exploitation and accumulation. The redistribution of wealth may also seem a laudable end to pursue, but social transformation will also require that the social-relational context of the community replace production for profit with production for social need. And of course, the achievements of racial or gender struggles cannot be dismissed; but they will do little to prevent the culture of capital from exploiting new communities and merely expanding the structure of the status quo. The three principles outlined above must therefore be coordinated with one another. Any attempt to emphasize one of these spheres at the relative expense of the other will meet with failure—politically as well as culturally. What needs to be seen is the way these three spheres together constitute a politics that transcends any one of them taken independently. We cannot rest with the goal of redistribution, with the expansion of social welfare benefits such as universal health care or free university education. These leave capital in place; they do nothing to extend the 26 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES values of socialist democracy and they do nothing to transform our social relations and our own agency. The mistake too often made by left movements is to privilege one or perhaps two of these three spheres at the expense of the others. To emphasize the material sphere misses crucial aspects of other forms of social domination and subordination and says nothing about the development of self and culture. But similarly to emphasize racial and gender subordination without the material sphere leaves us with a formal liberalism that itself leaves the powers of capital and exploitation intact. And any time we leave out the expansion of the self and individuality, we do nothing to protect ourselves from being crushed and dehumanized by the utility of the whole, and we end up robbing the animating spirit from these struggles. But real democracy, a democracy that thoroughly penetrates all aspects of society, has a different effect on the individual and the society at large. A cooperative society of equals encourages creativity and ingenuity, and both the individual and the association are better for it. As Matthew Arnold once insightfully observed: “Can it be denied, that to live in a society of equals tends in general to make a man’s spirit expand, and his faculties work easily and actively; while, to live in a society of superiors . . . tends to tame the spirits and to make the play of the faculties less secure and active? Can it be denied, that to be heavily overshadowed, to be profoundly insignificant, has, on the whole, a depressing and benumbing effect on the character?”6 All this is meant to highlight what I think is a central and indeed crucial thesis: the democratic essence of socialism must be constructed through the interdependence of the three spheres and principles that I have explored above: taken together, the principles of cooperative interdependence, of non-subordination, and that of self-realization are the diamond net through which our political and moral ideas must pass. A socialist ethos is one that seeks to maximize the cooperative interdependence of our relations with others; it seeks this not as an end in itself, 6 Matthew Arnold, “Democracy,” in Lionel Trilling, ed., The Portable Matthew Arnold (New York: Viking, 1949), 443. THE THREE SPHERES OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM 27 but because it is the fertile context within which the individual can be realized and fully humanized. It seeks to put human need at the core of all institutions and activities. Socialism sees that the essential purpose of our living together is the expansion of our common freedom by the intensification of our cooperative powers; that the purpose of these powers is to enrich the common wealth of the community; that the common wealth of the community is to nourish the self-development of each of its members. Under socialism, genuine progress can exist, although not in the sense that it does under capitalism. Progress will be measured not in terms of technical mastery or the accumulation of wealth or property. Rather, it will be measured in terms of the expansion of human dignity, creativity, and the flourishing of the capacities of the individual. This new framework of values helps keep in focus the ends and purposes for our labors and associations with others. Science and technology will not be curtailed by such a society, but emancipated for a higher purpose: the magnification of human potentiality. Wedded to the interests of capital, technology has largely destructive effects: on nature, on our social relations and on our physical health. Only when science and technology are embedded in social need rather than profit and control will it be humanized. The technical manipulation of modern society and the natural world maps the exploitive and extractive logic of capital itself. It is regressive and dehumanizing. It must be radically altered. Those who vociferously oppose and critique these kinds of values, who warn of social destruction if they are put into place, and seek instead to defend the prevailing reality at all costs actually express a fear of their own freedom. This pettiness of mind reflects conformity to the legitimating logics of the hierarchies that dominate our world. It must be rejected. Indeed, if Mihailo Marković was right that “a developed consciousness about the future directs man in his critique of the present,” 7 then we must also see that the principles of democratic socialism are not merely abstract ideas, but rather prescriptive of the kinds of politics and forms of 7 Mihailo Marković, From Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), 5. 28 AN INHERITANCE FOR OUR TIMES life that we want to make real in the world. Social movements that take up the banner of socialism will find in these three spheres and principles a rich framework to build a new society. Social struggle continues because the world has not yet been made rational, not yet been made humane. Perhaps for this reason, we are all still heirs to the words of Gracchus Babeuf: “May it finally come to an end, this great scandal, in which our descendants will refuse to believe! Let the appalling distinctions between rich and poor, great and small, masters and servants, rulers and ruled, finally disappear.”8 8 Gracchus Babeuf, “Manifeste des Égaux,” in Maxime Leroy, ed., Les Précurseurs Français du Socialisme de Condorcet à Proudhon (Paris: Éditions du Temps Présent, 1948), 65.