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October 20, 2025
Hi my 59 Brighton CVS-ville neighbors*,
I decided to write a relatively short summary of egalitarian values and principles, shown below. This is what I believe the vast majority of people want our society to be based on when they hear these ideas stated clearly, which the ruling class works hard to prevent. These are the ideas that I believe are required to both unite the vast majority of people and be the basis for doing what the sticker calls for: "Let's remove the rich from power; have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor."
Note: I made little edits to the following article after I emailed this copy of it, and I have included those edits in what is below.
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Egalitarian Values & Principles Summarized
This is a summary of the more detailed "What Is Egalitarianism?"
by John Spritzler
October 19, 2025
Egalitarianism is the idea that society should be based on the Golden Rule and hence shaped by egalitarian values, which are:
1) Equality in the sense of "no rich and no poor," not the "equal opportunity" sense that means an equal opportunity to get richer than others; democracy is equality in the political realm; this economic and political equality means abolition of class inequality;
2) Mutual Aid, also known as solidarity, meaning helping each other and not taking advantage of others' weakness or difficulty for selfish gain;
3) Fairness as discussed here;
4) Justice as discussed here;
5) Freedom as discussed here;
6) Truth as discussed here.
Egalitarians are people who, whether they've ever heard the word "egalitarian" or not, share these values implicitly if not explicitly, in other words egalitarians are the vast majority of people.
Egalitarian principles of government, the economy and defense are ways of implementing these values. These principles are:
Government of, by and for people with egalitarian values in SOVEREIGN LOCAL ASSEMBLIES:
Social order--including, in particular, democratic government--is based on mutual agreements only among egalitarians (excluding anti-egalitarians), not on the anti-democratic principle that egalitarians must obey laws that they have no equal say in writing and that are written by other people (such as so-called "representatives").
One way of implementing this principle is by having sovereign (no higher governmental authority) local assemblies of only egalitarians at which all adult egalitarians who live or work in the local community have a right to participate as equals in democratically a) making the laws that everybody in the local community must obey and b) delegating various authorities to individuals or committees. Voluntary federation of such assemblies is used to reach mutual agreements for order on a larger than local scale.
Economy, based on "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need":
People who work reasonably according to ability either a) voluntarily share (not buy and sell) freely the fruits of the economy among themselves according to need and reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need, where what is reasonable is determined by democratic government and where the details of this are reached by mutual agreements, as discussed here; or b) they (along with anybody else) may use barter to exchange goods and services. Since there is no buying and selling, money is not necessary and ideally is not used at all because it potentially enables some to gain unjust power over others, as discussed here.
At all places of work the workers all have equal status economically and with respect to having a say in democratically making the decisions affecting both the manner and the purpose of their work. Nobody is allowed to hire wage workers or use slave labor or possess more wealth or property than the local assembly of egalitarians (or its equivalent) deems reasonable and fair, as discussed here.
Defense of egalitarian values:
Egalitarians have the right to form voluntary militias to defend egalitarian values when necessary, as discussed here.
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What do you think?
All the best,
--John
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* Read my email sent September 8 here about what I call "Brighton CVS-ville" and what I hope you will help make happen in it.
October 23, 2025
Hi my 60 Brighton CVS-ville neighbors,*
Now that five of us have formed an organization (four who met last Friday plus a friend of mine who wants to join us at our Nov. 9 meeting) to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, the question arises: What should we do?
Here's what I propose our strategy should be (the tactics for implementing it are whatever we decide makes sense given our current circumstances.)
Our strategy should be to persuade most of the people in what I have called “Brighton CVS-ville” (people who shop or work at, or pass by, the Brighton CVS, and their friends and relatives and neighbors and co-workers) of the following:
#1. that they are the great majority in thinking it would be wonderful if the rich were removed from power and we had real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, even if most people also currently think that this goal--the egalitarian revolutionary goal--is impossible; and
#2. that the achievement of this egalitarian revolutionary goal means, and requires, shaping all of society by the egalitarian values and principles that are spelled out in "Egalitarian Values & Principles Summarized"; and
#3. that this goal is in fact possible (as discussed here) and practical (as indicated for example by how it worked in Spain as discussed here) and very desirable for many reasons, just of few of which are indicated here and here.
When we succeed in this strategic aim, then for sure people in other communities will be inspired by our accomplishment to do the same thing in their own community.
When this has happened in many communities then people will gain confidence to do things to build and organize a massive and determined egalitarian revolutionary movement, things that they would previously have never considered doing (as I discovered in 1969 and wrote about here.) This confidence is what changes the current crippling hopelessness and despair to hopefulness, which is what makes revolutionary change happen, as I discuss here. This is how we can "get the ball rolling" that will one day be able to truly remove the rich from power as my above-linked article here discusses.
The current members of our (not yet named) organization can figure out ways to implement this strategy as both individuals AND in an organized way together. We also, of course, need to persuade more people in Brighton CVS-ville to join our organization, which I think will become easier and easier as we go about implementing this strategy.
Note that everything proposed above can (and should) be done by perfectly legal means. Furthermore doing this will increase public support for us and make it extremely difficult for the ruling class, if it accuses us of a crime, to persuade all members of a jury to vote that we are guilty of a crime (which is necessary to convict.) I stress this so that we are not unduly paralyzed by the fear that Trump is clearly trying to escalate with his declaration that anti-capitalists are terrorists.
My two cents.
What do you think?
All the best,
--John
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* Read my email sent September 8 here about what I call "Brighton CVS-ville" and what I hope you will help make happen in it.
October 24, 2025
Hi my 60 Brighton CVS-ville neighbors*,
On Wednesday as I was stickering at the CVS I ran into our city councilor, Liz Breadon. We talked briefly because we've had encounters before. I reminded her that she had refused, when I personally requested it of her, to tell her constituents how the City of Boston was using a deliberately deceitful definition of "affordable" to make it seem that there was far more affordable housing in Boston than there really was. Liz Breadon just mumbled to change the subject.
I wrote in 2021 two articles about how Liz Breadon refuses to tell her constituents the truth about this. The article online are:
and
"HOW PROGRESSIVE IS OUR ALLSTON-BRIGHTON CITY COUNCILOR, LIZ BREADON?"
I wrote about the lack of affordable housing in Boston here, with a link to a 2017 independent source that explains the City's deceitful definition of "affordable" here.
Since then we have a new mayor but nothing substantive has changed, which is just one more reason why we need to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
I just received an email from Liz Breadon announcing that she is asking people to join her this Sunday, October 26th, at Oak Square, 430 Faneuil St., 2:00 - 4:00 pm EDT, to help her canvass homes for her re-election. You may want to go and speak to her about what I wrote about.
What do you think?
Reminder: the next meeting of our Brighton CVS-ville organization for removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor is Sunday November 9, 1:30 PM at the Mirror Cafe (corner of Washington St. and Market St.) If you plan on attending please let me know. 😀
All the best,
--John
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* Read my email sent September 8 here about what I call "Brighton CVS-ville" and what I hope you will help make happen in it.
October 27, 2025
Hi my 60 Brighton CVS-ville neighbors*,
The cruel canceling of SNAP food assistance payments next month calls for an egalitarian kind of economy. Please read my free Substack post today titled, "'Shopping' in an Egalitarian Society versus In the U.S. Today that Is About to Cut Food Assistance to Poor People Who Need it to EAT: Egalitarian 'shopping' is FAR more just and even a lot simpler than our unjust money-based capitalist system; but hey, the rich prefer it the way it is."
It is important that we are confident that there is a much better alternative to the kind of economic system we have today, an alternative that is not the ugly Communist one with its authoritarian centrally planned economy, an alternative that is truly democratic and based on the egalitarian principle of "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need."
How could such a system work? Probably in many ways, but we need to be confident that there is at least one way; my Substack post describes one way.
What do you think?
Reminder: Our new organization (as yet un-named) for removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor is meeting Sunday, November 9 at 1:30 PM at the Mirror Cafe (corner of Washington St. and Market St. at the Reservoir-bound 86 bus stop.) Since you support its goal, please join us and join the organization.
All the best,
--John
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* Read my email sent September 8 here about what I call "Brighton CVS-ville" and what I hope you will help make happen in it.
October 28, 2025
Hi my 60 Brighton CVS-ville neighbors*,
You may wonder how did I ever get persuaded to stand in front of the CVS with a sign, and handing out stickers, saying "Let's remove the rich from power; have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor"? The long answer is the subject of my Substack post today online free to all here.
The short answer is that I was persuaded by my late friend, Dave Stratman, to find out for myself what would happen if I asked random strangers on the street if they thought the words of the sticker were a good idea or a bad idea (not whether it was possible or not, which is an entirely different question.) When I did this for the first time I was, frankly, surprised--very surprised!--that about 90% of the random strangers I asked said it was a good idea.
Only by actually asking random people what they thought, did I come to know with real confidence--with certainty!--that what I initially hoped would be true, and thought might be true, was indeed true: that most people would love to remove the rich from power this way.
Only when I had this confidence--confirmed in subsequent ways such as discovering how easy it was to get people to pose for these photos--did I come to think that it made sense for me to start sticker-ing at the CVS. Only when I had this confidence did I understand that practically all of the people who did NOT take a sticker from me nonetheless also would love to remove the rich from power.
They didn't take a sticker either because they were focused on their personal life and not interested in reading some sign held by some stranger at the entrance to the store they were entering (this describes me, myself, on many occasions).
Or it was because they read the sign and thought to themselves "That guy is crazy; doesn't he know that it is impossible to remove the rich from power?"
Or (in a small number of cases) because they (wrongly) thought I must be a Communist who wanted a dictatorship like in the Soviet Union.
Even the very VERY rare cases when somebody said they wanted to keep the rich in power it was mostly because they (wrongly) thought that this was necessary in order for people to do useful work, i.e., to 'have a job.'
Yes, out of engaging with thousands of people (I've passed out about 3,400 stickers now) since April when I began sticker-ing at the CVS, about two or three told me they wanted the rich to stay in power because the rich were smarter and better than most people. These kind of people are a tiny minority. They (especially the ones who have lots of money) are the people we need to remove from power.
I hope that some of you will do (or already have done?) what I did--show people a sticker and ask them: "Good idea or bad idea?"--to find out for yourself--with certainty!--that you are surrounded by people most of whom would love to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
When there are a lot of us with this new-found confidence in the egalitarian revolutionary aspiration of our friends and relatives and neighbors and co-workers, then I believe we will have the confidence to begin to organize the egalitarian revolutionary movement in Brighton CVS-ville.
Reminder: our new organization, aimed at doing what the sticker calls for, meets Sunday, Nov. 9, at 1:30 PM at the Mirror Cafe (corner of Washington St. and Market St, at the Reservoir-bound 86 bus stop.)
By the way, as we all are no doubt aware, there are very bad things happening now or imminently: the cruel deportations, the halting of SNAP benefits, the cuts to Medicaid, the continuing (or temporarily barely halted) genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza, and the apparently impending U.S. war on the have-nots of Venezuela on the pretext of stopping illegal drugs entering the United States. While demonstrations and other various protests against these things are perfectly justified and understandable, I believe that the most appropriate thing to do in response to these attacks on the have-nots is to build the movement that explicitly aims to remove the perpetrators of these attacks--the ruling billionaire class--from power. Until we remove this class from power--which can only happen when people explicitly aim to do exactly that--it will continue such attacks forever.
All the best,
--John
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* Read my email sent September 8 here about what I call "Brighton CVS-ville" and what I hope you will help make happen in it.
November 1, 2025
Hi my 60 Brighton CVS-ville neighbors*,
Now that some of us have formed a new organization to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor (what I call egalitarian revolution), to shape society by egalitarian values and principles as I have summarized here, I would like to mention briefly some things that we might want to do to implement the strategy I proposed in my earlier email sent to you on October 23 and online here.
#1. One way to give people greater confidence that our egalitarian revolutionary goal is POSSIBLE is to show that the great majority of people want the same thing we want, despite the fact that controversial social issues such as deportations and Israel/Palestine and race make it seem that we the have-nots are hopelessly divided against each other. The way to do this is to identify and publicize the key truths about these social issues that the ruling class censors but that, if widely known, would cause the vast majority of people to be on the same side and against the ruling billionaire class. My recent Substack post here identifies eleven such key truths, any of which we could publicize to people in Brighton CVS-ville.
#2. By advocating what I call egalitarian revolution, our organization can prevent the ruling class from getting away with its standard method of making us, the have-nots, accept things that we don't want to accept.
For example, consider what happens when residents of a neighborhood oppose a zoning variance that would allow a big real estate developer to build something with far too many expensive luxury condominiums or rentals and far too few that are affordable. The residents know that when their neighborhood is filled with new mainly luxury housing then the rents and property tax will rise and many people who’ve lived in the neighborhood for generations will be forced to leave because they’re unable to afford the higher rent or property tax; this is gentrification. To counter the residents’ opposition to this gentrification, the Big Money developer may argue something like this:
“It’s not possible to make a reasonable profit unless I have lots of luxury units in the new building. No other developer would be able to make a reasonable profit with fewer luxury units than what I intend. If you want more housing you’ve got to accept that it will be mainly luxury housing.”
This Big Money argument is a pretty strong argument IF one accepts its unstated premise, which is that our society not only is, but ought to be, based on the profit principle of capitalism. Any effort to increase the proportion of affordable units in new developments will come up against this Big Money argument. And unless its premise is explicitly and aggressively and persuasively refuted, this argument will very likely persuade many good people (people who would indeed like lots more affordable housing) to grudgingly accept the truth of the argument, and grudgingly accept that the new development will have far fewer affordable units than otherwise.
This is why it is so important for we the people to reject the premise that society ought to be based on the profit principle of capitalism.
But in order to reject the profit principle of capitalism, at least to do it confidently, it is necessary to be confident that there is a better principle on which our society can and ought to be based.
There is such a better principle. It is NOT Communism or Socialism, as I explain here but something very different described here. It is the egalitarian principle on which the economy of an egalitarian society is based. It is the principle: “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire, with scarce things equitably rationed according to need” (this is the “no-rich-and-no-poor” principle.) Click here to read an introduction to how a society’s economy can work based on this principle, indeed work much better than when based on the profit principle.
When we the people are confident that we want society to be based not on the profit principle but on the egalitarian no-rich-and-no-poor principle, then consider what will happen when Big Money throws its argument at us. Instead of being put on the defensive, and seeing many good people decide to grudgingly accept the Big Money plan, we will be able to go on the offense. We’ll be able to refute the Big Money argument by clearly rejecting the premise it rests on. This is what becomes possible when we the people have decided to explicitly aim for removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
All the best,
--John
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* Read my email sent September 8 here about what I call "Brighton CVS-ville" and what I hope you will help make happen in it.