Presenting: Progressive Republican Socialism
In a previous post, I explained the difference between Socialism and Communism. The former was defined by the French after the French Revolution, and valued the freedom of the Third Estate (commoners and plebians). The latter was defined by Marx, a German, and was the opposite of Socialism because, operationally, it valued the organization (councils or soviets) that controlled the distribution of wealth among different classes of people.
The appropriation of herds and flocks introduced an inequality of fortune. It first gave rise to regular government. Until there is property, there can be no government. The very end of government is to secure wealth, and defend the rich from the poor. (Lectures on Jurisprudence, Adam Smith)
I also mentioned that the best social systems were the ones that were in the middle of selfishness and non-selfishness, and objectiveness (realistic) and non-objectiveness (abstract). Too much democracy leads to mob rule, while too little democracy leads to tyranny and corruption. This is why Socrates let himself get killed, as a stand against unchecked democracy. Plato’s solution was the Republic wherein everyone can choose from a list of qualified candidates, filtered by ability and morals. We call a republic that is mandated to rule for the common good as a social republic or Republican Socialism.
There are three forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, democracy. Aristocracies and democracies may be called republican.These may be blended in many ways. (Lectures on Jurisprudence, Smith)
Rome was already a Republic when it entered an Oligarchy phase that the Gracchi tried to fight, which transitioned into a Democracy phase under the reforms of Marius, ending up dying under the Tyranny of Caesar to be replaced by a new society-organism called the Roman Empire.
From this, we learn that a republic must be able to adapt to the internal changes while it cycles from democracy to tyranny to aristocracy, and to oligarchy without going into any extremes. The hard work achieved in one cycle must not be thrown away in favor of the next cycle. Rather, gradual tweaks and adjustments in policy must be done regularly in a progressive manner. We can attribute the Fall of the Republic to the failure of the Gracchi to check the power of the oligarchs. In Plato-speak, we can say that the Gracchi were weak guardians that failed in their duty.
A social republic that does this is then called a Progressive Social Republic and can be added on to country names to create the Progressive Social Republic of Wakanda, for example.
In a nutshell, a Progressive Republican Socialism is composed of three concepts blended together:
- Republican: the type of government. Opposing types are monarchies, empires and dictatorships. This should not be confused with the cycle types which are democracy, tyranny, aristocracy, and oligarchy (when combined, it creates a democratic republic, communist-socialist republic, technocracy, and neo-liberal oligarchy, respectively). As a general rule, we stick to the original Socrates + Plato definitions, since they named these concepts.
- Social: the goal of government. Opposing goals are profit (as in Capitalism) or religion (as in Theocracy). Note that this is not traditional socialism from the French Revolution, but social networkism, derived from networked user accounts as done by Facebook and Google.
- Progressive: how the goals are achieved. Opposing methods are planned economies (as in Communism) or laissez faire (or arbitrary, as in neo-liberalism).
This is based on the advocacies of Adam Smith as written in Lectures in Jurisprudence and Plato as written in The Republic
