Among the greatest barriers to revolution is the failure to imagine how life improves after the revolution.
Picture it with me... As the smoke clears the morning after the revolution... and the American people have finally reclaimed power from the oligarchs... what is the first thing you would change?
The first thing I would change is I would hand ownership and decision-making power over to the workers.
What would happen is all corporate ownership shares would be invalidated. All boards of directors would be dismissed. The ownership of every American corporation would be placed 100 percent in the hands of its workers.
That would mean that if you work somewhere, you are now an equal owner with every other employee of the company. As a part-owner you have equal say in business decisions with every other worker at that company. You now get a meaningful vote in every important matter facing the business, including what to do with the profits.
You also get a vote in everyone else's salary. Including the CEO. Probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense to keep paying the top execs millions to watch out for shareholders anymore. But the CEO's vote now matters as much as yours, or everyone working in the shipping deparment, or the cafeteria workers or any other employee in the building. Also, every new employee would become an equal shareholder with equal voting rights.
I hear some of you saying, "Oh great, more work." As part-owner of the company you would have a say in staffing up or reducing work hours. Formulating the process for making decisions is also up to you. Some worker-owned companies set aside one day a week to vote on matters of importance. Imagine a modified 4-day workweek, with 4-hour workdays. Who knows what might be possible when workers finally get a say in what their work-life balance looks like?
There would also be a debt jubilee... forgiveness of all loans, all debts.
As the private for-profit banking system melted down, assets would be nationalized and used to establish public state and city banks owned by state and city residents in the style of the Bank of North Dakota. Please see my previous post. Same deal as the workers get. All residents would be equal share owners with equal voting rights.
The healthcare system would be nationalized, the petroleum and defense industry, all monopolies too. Large corporations would be dismantled into smaller, self-sustaining companies. Owned by their workers, naturally.
Citizenship would echo the pattern established with workers. All US citizens would be considered equal share owners with equal voting rights in our government. In an upcoming post I will describe my vision for a new governance system that prioritizes the needs of the public.
This totally imaginary plan has the advantage of dispossessing the rich of the source of their power, not with a guillotine but the stroke of a pen. The powers of government would be used to prevent capital flight.
These kind of radical (meaning root) changes would drastically alter the power arrangement in this country overnight. Obviously definitions like "worker," "resident," and "citizen" deserve a lively debate, but the general trend should be aimed at broader, more inclusive definitions, not restrictive. The goal is broad, dispersed power... to the people. And in this way we might finally achieve the society described by Abraham Lincoln as "of THE PEOPLE, by THE PEOPLE, and for THE PEOPLE."
I want to hear your ideas. What comes next? What positive changes would you suggest? Would you like to build or expand on my idea? Please!
Please also give a like, comment, and restack so that other people can find me here on Substack.
Let’s make them pay.
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