Welcome to the world of Cooperative Socio Capitalism or CSC, a new conception of Socio-Capitalistic-Democracy. To understand what is CSC and how it can empower democracy to build shared wealth in our society, we encourage you to peruse all articles at our website home page viz., coop-sc.com. To begin, you must first read, What is CSC?, followed by, Transformation to CSC. However, even before we embark on this journey, it is important to understand how we humans got to the current state of society in our historical journey.
Human civilizations started with the human species emulating the animal world at first i.e., a dominant male or female in a pack. This led to someone in the human herd to be picked as a leader. Being a leader had its share of responsibilities, such as, protecting the herd from extinction, and perks like, easy availability of food or mates. There would sometimes be bloody fights to be recognized a leader with the loser always eyeing a chance of becoming the leader. Those who did not want to get into the fight would become happy subordinates giving the leader the power to rule the territory. When the leader exceeded the socially agreeable limits and boundaries of their power, some who resented the transgression would join forces with the loser and weaken the power of the leader leading to their downfall. Even as evolution progressed and humans became more sophisticated (civilized) little has changed in the basic instincts of human beings. As populations grew, the losers would take their supporters and set off to find separate abodes, far away from the parent herd giving birth to tribes.
Tribes evolved and thrived as long as their population was small requiring little resources and was self-sufficient. Unique tribal practices and beliefs gave birth to distinct tribal cultures. All seemed to be fine until, diseases and natural disasters threatened their very existence. In the desperate need for self-preservation, travel, information exchange and collaboration between the tribes started. This led to dilution of the culture distinctions and amalgamation of diverse tribal practices into commonly acceptable norms and beliefs paving the way for modern civilizations. The basic concept of having a leader continued with the primary responsibility to govern and manage resources to protect the people from both natural disasters, and man-made calamities (due to population growth) eventually leading to establishment of kings and monarchies.
The progress of art, philosophy and religion enriched the kingdoms and monarchies and several successful civilizations emerged and collapsed over thousands of years. Humans became aware of their self-worth and wanted to participate in their own governance. While there is some evidence to believe that some form of societal governance was practiced in ancient civilizations much before the Christian era, documented history shows that Athens in Italy was the first to experiment with self-governance as the basic tenet of democracy. This developed around the fifth century B.C.E. wherein all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government. This original idea of participative democracy was different from modern representative democracies in which people elect representatives to run the day-to-day affairs of the government. The assumption was that all citizens were incapable of directly making decisions or judgements on issues affecting the population and that there was a need to elect candidates to make those decisions for them. The power of the state/candidates was curtailed through a social contract (the constitution) by giving citizens the right to vote in or vote out their representatives and therefore provide checks and balances against authoritarianism.
The framers of the Constitution of the United States (COTUS) had all the right reasons to make USA a representative democracy with reasonable checks and balances at a time when the need of the hour was to unite the unwieldy colonies under one centralized authority. There was a need to curtail individual freedoms and in return offer a bill-of-rights and other concessions to satisfy the vagaries of powerful men who were required to unite under one tent to fight the Brits. When Thomas Jefferson drafted the declaration of independence that quotes “…all men are created equal…”, he did not mean individual equality (https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2020/07/01/meaning-declaration-independence-changed-time/). Slave ownership and monopolies by powerful men continued with total disregard to individual freedoms. An attempt to make amends led to the Civil War of 1860s. After the war ended, there was a need for a second reconstruction of the constitution with a new set of amendments (1865-70). Although slavery was abolished by the 13th amendment in 1865, other amendments never happened due to their dependency on other conditions. The abolition of slavery was sort of a trigger for revenge in enacting segregation laws spearheaded by Jim Crow. It took almost another 100 years from the Civil War to fully recognize the equality of all people, only in the 1960s.
America’s “democratic experiment” stood the test of time mainly due to “a few good men in power” who continued to believe in the equality of all people. If these checks and balances had not endured, America today would have been an oligarchy or a dictatorship and, currently, there is great danger of that happening. A significant minority in the country feels that the country is going backwards due to excessive liberties and freedoms taking away their perceptions of “Americanness” and is spearheading a social revenge akin to that in the Jim Crow era, questioning the very foundation of the United States as a land of immigrants with no preference to race or religion under the constitution. This section of the population has been cleverly manipulated by oligarchs (who also control the media) spreading falsehoods that are constantly repeated as truth to a point that the affected individual is brazenly in denial that, immigrants, through their hard work and perseverance, have brought immense wealth and exponential prosperity to our nation in recent times. Also, they attach no significance or relevance to the fact that their own existence in many ways was due to the good work done by a previous generation of immigrants. The identity of who is truly “American” is truly in question.
Unfortunately, even in a representative democracy such as ours, the freedom of all the citizens is mortgaged to their representatives who are elected for a term. Ordinary citizens have almost no direct say in day-to-day decision making on critical issues. It is assumed that the representative will be making the right decisions and representing the will of their constituency from the time of their election to office. In today’s reality, the representative is already sold to the highest bidding lobbyist or influential billionaire even before they start their first day in office and throughout the term is focused on advancing their agenda like a puppet. Instead of focusing and passing bills that benefit all people, they pick and choose bills to support, or kill, if that would make them look good politically and advance their longevity in office. They would also spend their tax payer paid time in fund raising for their next election campaign. There is no penalty for not passing a bill or killing a bill, if it suits their political ambitions. Oligarchy, as mentioned above, where a small group of powerful people have control, has already set in several institutions of the government including SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of The United States) and personal egos are driving and affecting life and society, unleashed.
Who is to blame for all this? It is “we the people” who continue to blindly practice a representative capitalistic democracy handed over to us by our founders and that has very limited possibility of direct decision making by its people (except in some small town governments). Now, we should ask ourselves – Could we really change our state of affairs of governance at the state level and federal level? You bet! If we all unite in understanding that a reset in governance is required, and that, a move to a Socio-Capitalistic-Democracy is good for our country, and, we are all willing to work together in making the change to MARGA (Make America Really Great Again).
Welcome to the conception of Socio-Capitalistic-Democracy and the world of Democratic Socio Capitalism!
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