Nation states act as a buffer and check on the power of centralized world government institutions. We should acknowledge the quest for imperial world conquest which is as old as ‘civilization’ itself. Today the transnational capitalist class (Sklair) is the world’s ruling class, pushing global-national hyper-market liberalization and privatization of national infrastructure in its neoliberal approach to governance, and has the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as world government institutions to enforce such anti-social and dehumanizing programs and measures.

Nation states also divide political territory into units which promote global cultural diversity. This has an humanizing effect as humans are a territorial political animal at heart and in essence with a need for a sense of belonging, property and to have an agency to exert control over one’s political destiny in micro and macro economics and politics. It is not an inherent trait of human nature to exploit peoples using national spending and resources to do so. We should separate the concept of nation states from nationalistic imperialism. The two need not go hand in hand, even if this is how they were forged.

Currently nation states reflect and embody vast inequalities, particularly between the global north and south, with the north generally exploiting the south with vast inequalities in wealth and military power(s). The socialist revolution must seek to equalize the wealth-gap per capita, across nations – there is the need for internationalist solidarity between peoples, where progressive national political parties and grass-roots movements ally and/or show solidarity between people of all nations.

As it currently stands, under global and national capitalist ascendancy, nation states oppress other nation states through accruing differential advantage and are ‘capital accumulators’. There is also economic oppression and vast inequalities intra or within nation states. Nation states currently serve, not without effective resistance in many cases, the world’s global rulers – the transnational capitalist class. The nation is a contested political space and territory, and a site of ‘class’ resistance. Nationalism tends more to be a disease with corruption, exploitation and a source of jingoism as current prevalent features, than a culturally humanizing project – but this insidious form of nationalism need not continue. National pride in ancestral legacy and cultural mores, are not in of themselves dehumanizing or without merit. Shared custom and belonging help to unite peoples and promote global and national cultural diversity. It is only the capitalist system which uses these national differences to divide people in a cynical and manipulative manner, with the coercive laws of capitalist competition and exploitation as the generative force for anti-social political praxis.

The nation state itself is becoming more pluralistic in terms of ethnicity, race, and culture, which if in conscious and sub-conscious opposition to capitalist commodity homogenization and McDonaldization, has some progressive traits, considering race and ethnicity are cultural constructs albeit important and meaningful ones, without being totalizing. These cultural categorizations will remain to some extent, since breeding occurs in locales more so than across large geographical distance(s). Fluidity and more reflexive creativity in ethnic and racial categorizations and diversifications will be a feature of the 21st century. Tolerance and difference with nation states are progressive manifestations and allow for cultural diversity within nations. However, there is still the need for positive unity around nationalism in terms of shared culture and geography, and ethnic and racial belongings; pride in diversity and difference within nations can and should itself contribute to a sense of national pride. There is a huge exigency to reclaim national space for First Nations People, and inaugurating Indigenous Days into public national celebrations is needed and the case for this could not be overstated.

It is a presumption of socialist ideology in itself that care and solidarity need to be extended to people of all countries, with workers’ organizations and direct democracy the key political organs within nations which must yield political power, reflecting and putting into practice decentralized policy and legislative decision-making processes. Fresco was adamant that the earth’s resources should be declared the common heritage of the world’s peoples, and it is this mandate which should inform socialist countries and their nationalisms. The (nation) state should be controlled by workers, with the distinction between workers and owners under capitalism, made obsolete. Thus, everyone becomes a worker – everyone becomes working class – in democratic workplaces with fair principles of remuneration for the level of individual sacrifice and contribution, and nation states become sites of workers’ and the peoples’ power – sites of political, social, and economic equity.

There will always be a need for international institutions which can assist in the maintenance of substantive equality within and across nation states, with soft law treaties that can be ratified by any nation state, reflecting the interests of nations with regard to more global issues. However, socialist, at its core, need not be preclusive of the ‘resurrection’ of and revolution in inter and intra nation state equity and equality.

Internationalism must subsume ultra-nationalistic sentiment and praxis, and thereby humanizing nation-hood. Capitalist nation-hoods must become outmoded, obsolete, and antiquated by workers’/socialist nation-states.

A feature of universalised socialist nation state would be substantial de-militarisation. Military spending does not meet human needs, and is a prolific waster of resources. De-militarisation would likely have to work in a dialectical synchronistic way where organs of political power become democratised in each nation state.

We live in a post-colonial world, but one with neo-colonialism through international finance and multi-national corporate domination, and lingering imperialism (neo-imperialism) such as the 2003 Iraq war. Nation state powers have been implicated in this regime. So, to redeem nation states’ best features we will need to capture them by social justice forces as well as to achieve a revolution in human consciousness, as it is in the holistic interests of all to achieve a more enlightened sociality.

God provides comfort to many people. I believe in the God we can create ourselves as a function of a community of believers who have solidarity with one another, and a celebration of each other, as Žižek has formulated. And this is a form of socially inspired enchantment.

However, in many cases, for many people, God is actually ‘the Big Other’ (Žižek) that people create for themselves as a way to try to deal with not having perfect knowledge, that compensates for this unknown.

Also, belief in God is often an attempt to cope with suffering. God is often a human creation we create out of frustration in not being able to cope with our insecurities. This is a rather hollow solution as belief therein unfortunately yields little comprehensive long-term material solutions to many systemic and political problems, aside from human-made good religious morality in the written texts and oral traditions in the name of God.

When it comes to the nature of a God, let’s play Devil’s advocate for a minute: currently, ‘God’ is more likely to be an evil deity, as the Gnostics believe, than a benevolent force for good, if one takes into consideration the unnecessary and acute suffering of humans and animals. I personally doubt that even the Gnostics have it right, as there is simply no empirical proof of God’s existence.

Instead, God is a priori apprehension outside of the knowledge that is built on observation and scientific investigation/testing: there is no convincing proof of God: we can just believe it a priori, as we create it.

However, in saying this redemption of God, I identify as an atheist; the less suffering we find in the world, the more likely I would be to indulge in belief in a God. I can have transient belief in God at times when it elicits self-esteem and/or positive feelings. But this is emotional and not a rational belief of mine.

I think it’s about time we craft and formulate more nuanced and intelligent understandings, knowledge and discourse regarding ‘God’, as this will assist in intellectual, personal, social and political praxis. After all, social justice is really just about more refined human performance directed by reconciled knowledge. Here I’m alleging that ‘the humane’ and human progression is indeed rational buttressed by our holistic self-interest. The quality of our morality depends and hinges upon our level of enlightenment!

Over the years, socialist feminisms have made the best impression on me out of all the strains of feminisms. And I feel I owe a debt from what I’ve learnt from their virtues, to be repaid through my own analysis and knowledge (putting it in a shareable format).

However, ‘oppression’ of women is a problematic concept in itself when it implicitly portrays women as the weaker sex vulnerable to male exploitation. It, in some instances, degrades the virtues of women – it overlooks their unique virtues as a ‘sex class’ and certain privileges that come with these virtues. This includes their (generalised) lack of involvement in militarism and imperial violence, even if they did on occasions wed or sleep with male victors. On this, women can proudly assert they have been more peaceable having greater empathic consciousness, and have thus saved themselves the devastation and horrors that men have faced on the battlefields often fighting for ‘their women’, so women didn’t have to fight or be conscripted.

More one-sided objectification, poor sexual etiquette culture on behalf of the male sex class as a generalisation (not ‘rape culture’ – see https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/01/02/on-rape-culture-allegation/), indecent assault, sexual assault, rape, domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual harassment, control over women’s bodies through anti-choice sexism, unpaid labour, and underpaid labour exists. And this is not something to under-acknowledge.

On ‘Rape Culture’ Allegation

But let us state a key point clearly: the essence of patriarchy is self-flagellating for men, as well as being oppressive to women. Being expected to be the breadwinner, and working dehumanising jobs or hours should not be underestimated in its effect on men, the sacrifice on the battlefield, high incarceration rate of males and men, and the ill-health effects of hegemonic masculinity to men in terms of the high morbidity and mortality rates are real issues. Men also have sexual issues being that of sexual cuckolding, and even the threat of reproductive cuckolding.

The point is, is that this masculine ‘hegemony’ for all the damage it does to women, does an equal amount of damage to men and to masculinity itself.

It is idiotic and self-flagellating to oppress women.

So women’s oppression should not be conflated with women being the weaker sex.

Quite the contrary, the key reasons why women are not the weaker sex, and this – the shallow-minded weaker sex argument – is in need of specific refutation, are that women seem to have a biological proclivity to empathy which may be accounted for by the larger and more active anterior cingulate gyrus in the female brain, and they carry and give birth to their own offspring annulling ‘maternal angst’. They, as a sex class, generally have more emotional intelligence, whereas men find it difficult to express and regulate their emotions, in part leading to a higher suicide rate of men.

So when we talk about oppression of women, we should add or acknowledge that men suffer just as much as women, and that just because we live in a patriarchal culture it does not mean women are the weaker sex! They’ve had their unique virtues and strengths all along!

Where I think some socialist feminisms go too far, is the attack on the family as inherently patriarchal, as opposed to attacking the patriarchal form it takes at present in many instances. We should attack female domesticity within families, acknowledging it is patriarchal. However, the family itself is not inherently patriarchal, lest we all end up as Bonobos where the males don’t know who their offspring are, leading to a cataclysmic paternal angst, where children are reared collectively robbing them of having a humanising and caring emotional and material support connection and relationship with their parents. Schools do the good job of helping to raise children communally. But to decimate the family unit is dehumanising, as Huxley warned us of in his Brave New World. It is the reactionary impetus to tear down all established institutions even when they have merit, which is the tendency here that need be critiqued.

Trotsky theorised the need for a national workers’ struggle to be supported by the working classes of other nation states. I say, the more support from abroad, the merrier. However, one should not wait for internationalist working class synchronicity before making a peaceable revolution on the back of working class organisation into workers’ councils and workplace and industry committees, and strengthening unions.

The other way forward for socialism is for a transition to market socialism through instigating profit-sharing for employees, en route to the abolition of the employee-employer distinction in the workplace or employee-employer economic productive relations with respect to the ownership or lack thereof of the means of production (the exchange of performing labour for wages paid by an owner of economic productive means).

Both methods, the building of working class workplace democracy, strengthening of unions, the building of decentralised workers’ councils and committees on the one hand, and progressive political party organising to institute profit-sharing on the other, can happen simultaneously.

The difference between the two methods is that profit sharing and market socialism can be skipped in favour of full workers’ control over production if the right principles and incentives for work are put into place in democratic workplaces.

These principles are largely provided for by the works of Albert and Hahnel in their approach to (economic) social justice called ‘participatory economics’ – wherein this special kind of workplace is called a ‘balanced job complex’. One principle is the right to vote on matters in proportion to the degree a worker is affected by a workplace decision, and a conscious effort to split the onerous and comparatively empowering labour more equitably. I think job rotationals is a good way to mitigate elitism, but still perhaps keeping a level of specialisation of job roles, especially in the transitionary stages between capitalism, social democratic capitalism (which can be skipped), market socialism (which can be skipped), socialism with strict and tight controls on income inequality – still allowing for job role specialisation, and libertarian communism and the ongoing revolution in the economy, continually selecting for more substantive equality between social agents.

I do not mean to conflate libertarian communism with the abolition of all forms of property – just the abolition of bourgeois forms of private property. I think that we should still retain a more personal type of property if fairly acquired, reflecting more a use-value than symbolic forms of hierarchical status we see in the exclusionary capitalist and bourgeois conceptions of private property. The right to indefeasibly own their own land freehold for all members of society, and to purchase goods and services in the economy is a progressive one. This – individual freehold ownership of a parcel of land – should be an economic right, and one that should be universalised, as it is from this foundation that people can better self-actualise with economic and social security. This means people will be able to contribute more fully to the culture, locally, nationally and globally.

National governments could purchase land from people and companies who own multiple properties at market value, and then award landed property to those without land ownership through submitting their preferences to a lottery based system of allocation.

This will facilitate a smooth transition to a more equitable land based allocation, without undercutting or misappropriating the landed assets of extant middle-class landlords or real estate companies/businesses, many of whom / which, currently provide affordable housing.

Let’s talk about middle class privilege. I don’t think that we should dismantle middle class privilege as many middle class people don’t individually own their own land or houses. Instead we should be for basic economic rights: individual land rights and rights to housing as inalienable human rights. We should think about having a strong middle class lifestyle – complex living, as the baseline level of wealth for a strong and prosperous society.

Also, as a transitionary method we should protect and nurture small business (with humble profit-sharing for workers/employees) as business owners wear the risk and asset burden in the market, and often pay themselves a wage. I think socialist revolutions and revolutionaries oft make the mistake of seeing the proletariat as the sole or only revolutionary force available and/or that we should be quick to dismantle middle class and small business people’s privilege. Generally, I think that middle class level of wealth and education is rightful even if it is ‘achieved’ through exploiting others; people in the first world buy goods made overseas that are made by/through underpaid labour and sweatshop labour at times or as the norm, so most of us in First World countries are caught up in exploitation and benefit from it materially in some way. This is no good or ethical justification for dismantling First World working class level of privilege. Rather, we should seek to emancipate overseas workers caught in chronically underpaid jobs, often for multi-nationals, and bring people up to a First World middle class level of privilege and complex living.

We need to protect the middle class as they oft have genuine virtue and instead bring up the working class to the wealth privilege of the middle class and abolish more passive forms of wealth leverage and income which the rich classes benefit from through excessive amounts of surplus value extraction from workers and through investment without labouring menial or rote, cognitively ‘disempowering’ tasks and job-roles.

In summary, an inclusive baseline level of legitimate social privilege would be the right to individual freehold ownership of land and housing, UBI (in the face of capacity to automate much of production), a reduction in the working week towards ancestral loads of 20 hours (paid) labour a week, and free access to tertiary education.

Let me state at the outset: being sceptical of the behaviour and motives of elites is a part of legitimate class consciousness. Conspiracy theories thrive because people are disturbed at the level of psyche by the exorbitant wealth-gap between ordinary people and multi-billionaires. It is this social environment and milieu which perhaps allows an over-abundance of conspiracy theories to flourish. Perhaps many are reactionary to the social exclusion and acute level of inequality under the now late capitalist mode of production. However, acute inequalities have been normalised in societies ever since the birth of empire. Ever since then people may have over-inflated the influence and power of secret societies and occultist symbolism of some elite clubs and organisations.

It is precisely the inability of human beings to agree on mandates and courses of action which may work against grand conspiracy theories involving large networks of elites, making this a difficult feat, perhaps at times improbable and even somewhat absurd. Transnational capitalist elites and native politicians do not have homogenous views on the full array of policy and ideological persuasions to cooperate in a seamless way and be effective of dehumanisation of the rest of the populace. We know that the world’s ‘1%’ attend Bilderberg group meetings attempting to consolidate power and set the agenda for geopolitical control in their own interests.

What is indisputable knowledge is a geopolitical trajectory approaching a conspiracy: in the late capitalist era there is a consensus among many elites for hyper-market liberalisation and the spread of the neoliberal approach to governance. across the globe. This suits the agenda(s) of multi-national corporations, where ineffectual and rather thin attempts at national anti-monopoly and competition regulation means that duopolies and cartels foster global market dominance, overpowering global, national and local worker, consumer and community organisations. They also desperately want, as their prime agenda, to construct a one world government based on this neoliberal form governance, with very low social mobility for the lower classes. They have already succeeded in establishing global government bodies and architecture which promote their narrow geopolitical and economic interests in terms of The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund. Their self-termed ‘New World Order’ is designed to usurp the sovereignty of nations to a centralized world government bureaucracy to uphold neoliberal policy.

There is the belief that ‘money talks’, and that a person with large and copious amounts of money can simply bribe others to commit crimes and corrupt acts on their behalf with total immunity and impunity. However, even elites may not be above the law, and criminal investigations may be adept at following the money trail. Also, elites do not need to bribe lackeys to carry out acts of crime and terrorism to leverage their wealth and gain great returns in their investment portfolios. There is a lack of a direct monetary incentive to do so. In canvasing the opposing view, mega-elites may be able to solicit services in secret, such as paying a neuro-scientist exorbitant amounts of money to live in a basement to augment elite’s brain; perhaps we are not at that technological level, but there is a real risk, as nano-tech and bio-tech become more sophisticated, of a bio-morphological fracturing within the species along class lines, as elites will be able to afford the very expensive transhumanist brain augmentation, and cognitively outcompete non ‘cyborg’ humans.

Extremists do not need the financial backing by capitalist elites, as they often procure weapons and explosives themselves and are ideologically driven, usually as a result of a lack of education or psycho-pathologies. In contrast elites are more interested in maximising profits from their corporate governance and investments.

What we should acknowledge, however, is that what elites want the most is power, not money. Money is merely a means to that end. This kind of power which elites covert we may term – ‘geopolitical power’. Non-elites have a different kind of power, which we may term – ‘compassionate power‘. Sklair’s term and formulation of the Transnational Capitalist Class (‘TCC‘) as the current ruling class of the globe – is a technical term for what many class conscious people have dubbed and understand as ‘the 1%’. It is the most robust and successful form of global empire the world has ever seen. With concentration of wealth in the 1% TCC – the most unequal it has ever been in history, is it any wonder that we have perhaps an over-abundance of conspiracy theories?

For those interested in social justice, in theorising conspiracies we should not be wholly diverted from challenging social structures and thus achieving structural change at the level of economic and social systems and institutions. Too much emphasis on conspiracy theories without a reconciled ideology and praxis (on class, race and gender for instance) to guide our grass roots movements and social justice scholarship, will not be effective and not yield the changes we need for a truly humanist project on earth. Expending precious time and resources on what might be, at times, tenuous links between criminal activity, draconian laws and elite clandestine activity. We must organise effectively for structural change at the level of economic and social systems and institutions.

Yes, elites meet in private, such as at The Bilderberg Group, but they may not be in agreement of a dehumanisation programme for the rest of us. I am sure they would like for people to accept a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) implants to both centralize and collect data (financial, biomedical, and social credit ratings) as a part of a high-tech surveillance state. Their aspirations may be somewhat disparate and themselves ‘all too human’, which may work in the majority’s favour. They are also interested in a level of global security, since they too are threatened by international violence, war and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

We should re-evaluate simplistic fear-based thinking. We should replace it with complex understandings and focus on tangible struggles in our locales, nations and the globe to fight the root cause of social corruption – and that is extreme economic inequalities.

What would women say if someone proposed to them that they all could be master of their own households?

Is this audacious?

Politically it is very radical. But that’s the point.

True economic and social independence for women, from men, involves indefeasible individual land rights. Is this not the proper basis upon which the most successful, in all life’s facets, relations between women and men should proceed?

Men would do their own housework. Women would do their own housework.

Women would have true economic and social refuge.

I think it would whole-heartedly improve relations between women and men, and of all people, trans inclusive.

Indefeasible individual land and housing rights for all!

After all, women and men could still spend time co-habiting households, but they would have their own space from each other when wanted.

Unite around this political right and mandate!

Let’s talk about the importance of the family unit. From a familial unit perspective, liberal capitalism ultimately erodes family values and liberalism seems to often erode the family unit itself through consumerism (and over-work), as Žižek has alluded. This is what Aldous Huxley warns us of in his Brave New World. Classism becomes genetically ingrained in this dystopia with no social mobility available, something which is a very real threat as we are on the precipice of a bio-fracturing of the human race based on class positions with the advent of biotech and nanotech human (or ‘posthuman’) advancement and enhancement. In this Brave New World the family unit becomes utterly usurped by ‘hatching’ humans and then subjecting them to psychological (classical) conditioning and manipulation methods for rearing new members of its five-tiered caste system for its (dystopian) society and culture.

Consumerism, as a form of market-based conditioning through ubiquitous advertising saturating social space, is the prioritizing of material possessions and worship thereof, and tends to supplant people nurturing friendships based on mutual intellectual and emotional growth whether they be familial, platonic or in intimate relations. It is also sociologically closely tied to over-work, since people work more to consume more, at the expense of personal and social development (which – individual and collective personal and social development – has positive externalities in society).

There seems an incongruency particularly in U.S. Republican ideology, where commendably they are for protecting and nurturing the family unit, with strong Christian values, but with the promotion of liberal and conservative capitalism, which often leads to a disintegration of the family unit through consumerism and socio-economic stressors.

There is the threat to state-consecrated sexual and emotional monogamous marriage (not downgrading legitimate polyamory here). Some left-wing politics assuages fantasies of polyamory in child-rearing as the only option available and the destruction of the family unit (as some strains of Marxist thought has indulged). We should strengthen the family unit, and seek to protect it. This can co-exist peaceably with LGBT rights and emancipation, where the site of reproduction is the nuclear family between two consenting adults as parents (couples). Most couples would be heterosexual (as they are the majority), and non-heterosexual couples would be a liberated minority.

The family unit should be reconceived in that each individual adult should be granted freehold ownership of a parcel of land with housing on that land. Couples could still live together, but individuals could retreat to their own abode at their will. That is a lot of houses, but population should be managed (not by the state, but by the citizenry’s consciousness) around this political and ethical dictate. This will select for greater individual autonomy and independence, whilst simultaneously strengthening the hetero and non-normative nuclear family.

Compassion means to grow being-for-others as a function of a holistic self-interest. We’re currently a narcissistic species (especially ‘civilization’) which is what happens when primates get advanced technology and surplus generation. Everything has a cost, and ‘evolutionarily’ (in terms of dominant globalizing cultures) the human brain has an operating cost at the expense of the planet’s health and we’re racing towards ecocide evidenced by this latest virus: we’re our own biggest threat and we should bare-facedly acknowledge this. We lack social and ecological intelligence as a species and those of us with social, class, first world, racial and ethnic privilege should invest in multi-disciplinary tertiary education with a philosophical, humanitarian and political interest. There are no shortcuts. The only solution is to see quality life-long education and social justice as counteractive technology to cure our immensely faulty and flawed brains.

There is an ancient archetype of reproductive sex in the human species. This is vaginal penetration by a penis. In mutually negative dialectics, each cisgender sex (masculine and feminine) is defined by what the other is not: i.e. the penetrator has its opposite in the penetratee (neologism for person penetrated). The penetrator is the masculine and the penetratee is the feminine. Each play their dialectical sex role in genetic-biological reproduction, and is a part of the performative ‘becoming a man’ through penetrating and ‘becoming a woman’ through being penetrated: a man is not penetrated, and a woman does not penetrate, as this would run counter to their archetypical sex role needed for (bio-genetic) reproduction of self.

I argue there is also an ancient archetype of sex which is psycho-evolutionarily linked to and informs recreational sex at the level of the socio-symbolic unconscious: sex as, at least, symbolic reproduction of self. This can be queered, but I argue that it can have sexual and emotional consequences for heterosexual men.

As consequence of this, regarding heterosexual men, it may assume and adopt the archetypical role of the feminine to be sexually penetrated. Thus, I argue that heterosexual men should consider this before agreeing to be sexually penetrated. Whilst we have the capacity to subvert archetypes and consent (liberal consent to penetration: see my blog post on liberal consent versus structural consent https://henrywilloughbyssocialjusticeblog.com/2021/05/11/liberal-consent-versus-structural-consent/) to being penetrated, preserving the reproductive role of the masculine may be the most healthy expression in sexual exchange for heterosexual men, at the level of sexual-symbolic reproduction of the self, at the level of the unconscious.

Liberal Consent Versus Structural Consent

For homosexual men, the archetype becomes queered and subverted – even totally queered. This is an individual’s choice. However, I argue that heterosexual men may relinquish sexual-symbolic power when agreeing to be penetrated, since hetero sex may maintain a close affinity for and with the archetype. Heterosexual sex has an archetype attached to it, whereas homosexual or transsexual sex has departed from the archetype, manifesting new meanings, however, it may still be close to reproduction of self as enjoyed in sex when parties are equal (not sexually subordinated). This – sex as close to reproduction of self, can itself be queered (and even totally queered) and enjoyed in this way.

For those not wishing to depart from, queer (in part or totally), or subvert the archetype, I suggest considering the residual power of the archetype, which may be sexually-symbolically invoked given the context at hand, when contemplating consenting to being sexually penetrated if you are a cisgender heterosexual man!