Welcome! This web site is designed to help people understand why the traditional versions of socialism, communism and anarchism didn't conquer the world of ideas, and to help people find fresh inspiration with:
"John R. Commons, the well known USA labor historian, wrote that "the earliest evidence of [labor] unrest" was a pamphlet circulated by workers that demanded daily working hours be reduced from "12 to 10, to 8, to 6, and so on" until, in the workers' words, "the development and progress of science have reduced human labor to its lowest terms.""
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
"So long as there is one man who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of work are too long." - Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labour President, 1887
Created in September of 2000, this web resource is designed to help progressive activists find a program that makes sense for modern democracies. Expropriatory ideologies have faded, leaving an ideological vacuum. But, hope for fundamental change should not be abandoned: Reducing the length of the work day and week, as necessitated by on-going improvements in technology and productivity, will reduce the income gap between rich and poor, and eventually bring workers up to the level of freedom enjoyed by the idle rich. Reducing labor time is compatible with democracy and private property, and comprises the primary methodology of Liberation Capitalism.
Anarchist ideology is no more useful to workers today than when Marx and Engels wrote a joint 1873 work entitled: "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association". Their article contained an enjoyable critique of Bakuninism: "In Madrid, {the Alliance} founded a newspaper, El Condenado, which adopted as its programme the three cardinal virtues of the Alliance: Atheism, Anarchy, and Collectivism, but which preached to the workers that they should not demand a reduction in working hours." Anarchism has continued to downplay the importance of reducing labor time, instead pushing to the forefront long-term goals that are incapable of being implemented during the present era of labor, economy, and scarcity.
The Introductory Essay Replacing Broken Socialist Dreams reveals many fatal flaws in traditional socialist schemes, and lists feasible methods of redistributing work.
The program and theories of the Socialist Labor Party are analyzed in depth in my Book
Theories of social change are analyzed in depth in Correspondence and Essays
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This web site was last updated on November 23, 2006, with a minor update. Enjoy your visit, and come again.