EGALITARIAN "BILL OF RIGHTS"

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by John Spritzler

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In an egalitarian society the sovereign governmental power in a local community (typically a region with, very loosely, about 40,000 residents) is what I call the Local Assembly of Egalitarians. All adults who live or work in the local community and who support the values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality and mutual aid and fairness, whether they have ever heard the word ‘egalitarian’ or not, are what I call “egalitarians.” Adult egalitarians who believe that egalitarians should democratically make the laws that everybody in their local community must obey, and only they, have the right to participate as equals in the Local Assembly of Egalitarians to democratically write the laws that everybody in the local community must obey. No other governmental body, no central or national or higher level body, can write laws that people in the local community are obliged to obey. The Local Assembly of Egalitarians is sovereign. Any Bill of Rights is about limiting the power of the Local Assembly.

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Egalitarians want society to be based on equality (no rich and no poor) and mutual aid (people help each other) and fairness. Such people usually want society to be arranged so that people are happy too. To accomplish all of these goals, egalitarians may very well create a document they intend to obey, a document that identifies the rights of individuals relative to the sovereign Local Assembly of egalitarians. These documents may vary from one local community to another. 

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There is no single "correct" egalitarian document to replace the Bill of Rights or the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The principles and rights stated in these documents are certainly very important for egalitarians to study and evaluate with respect to their value and appropriateness in a society ruled by egalitarians aiming to abolish class inequality. But it is important also to recognize that the rulers who wrote these documents, unlike egalitarians, accepted the rightness of class inequality (some rich and some poor).

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Here is a possibly incomplete list of principles that I (John Spritzler, the editor of this website), personally, think should be honored in an egalitarian society.

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FAIRNESS: All human beings have the same rights.

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1. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary--i.e., in a manner that is not in compliance with formal explicit policies determined by and made public by the Local Assembly--arrest or detention or denial of membership in the sharing economy or the Local Assembly or denial of any other enjoyment or freedom or equal status with all others.

2. People have the right, when accused of a crime or of any misbehavior, to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a formal public court of law using fair rules of evidence in which a randomly selected jury of egalitarians decides (however they wish) if the defendant is guilty or not guilty, and the defendant may not be compelled to be a witness against himself or herself. Defendants found guilty may appeal this decision to a jury composed of randomly selected egalitarians from other local communities; if this jury finds the defendant not guilty then these other local communities may take whatever action they think appropriate to remedy the injustice.

3. People have the right to contest a decision by the Local Assembly that they are not contributing according to reasonable ability to, or that they are taking more than according to need or reasonable desire from, the sharing economy (i.e., a decision that results in exclusion from the sharing economy), by presenting their case to the full Local Assembly (or relevant subcommittee if they prefer) and having it vote on the matter or, if they wish, to have the decision made by a formal public court of law as described in #2 above.

4. People have the right to join their Local Assembly and be an equal with all other members of it, but only for the purpose of shaping society by the egalitarian values of equality (no rich and no poor, and fairness) and mutual aid (people helping each other, and fairness); any person clearly motivated by a contrary aim may be excluded from membership in the Local Assembly.

5. Nobody in a local community is obliged to obey any authority other than that community's Local Assembly or authorities derived from delegation by that Local Assembly.

6. People have the right to leave (if not lawfully incarcerated) any local community and the right to return to their local community of birth.

7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

8. People have the right of freedom (e.g., to speak and publish by any technical mode, associate with others [or not, as they wish], choose and practice a religion [or not, as they wish], own personal property and use it as they wish, have personal privacy, marry and found a family [or not, as they wish], etc.) so long as the exercise of that freedom does not unjustly harm another person or promote the emergence, or strengthen the reality, of class inequality relations contrary to equality and mutual aid.

9. People have the right to contribute to the sharing economy according to reasonable ability and in return to take--for free--products and services from the sharing economy according to reasonable need or desire or, in the case of scarce things, to have equal status when such things are equitably rationed according to need. People also have the right not to contribute to the sharing economy and thus forfeit permission to take from it for free. Everybody has the right to barter. Nobody has the right to use another person in a relationship of status inequality such as employer-employee or master-slave.

10. People have the right to refuse to be in a militia or military organization in which they are required to obey militarily justified orders of elected superior officers.

11. People have the right to bear arms for personal and collective self-defense.

12. People have the right to personal privacy insofar as it does not violate the right(s) or deserved safety of others.

13. People have the right to know the truth about what the government does insofar as it does not violate the right(s) or deserved safety of others.

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