Most People Are Egalitarians
by John Spritzler
June 30, 2019
The URL of this article for sharing it is https://www.pdrboston.org/most-people-are-egalitarians
[Read this free online book about how the way people live their everyday lives reflects their egalitarian values: We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life by Dave Stratman ]
[Also please read "The Capitalist Big Lie about Human Nature"]
See here how 500 of my neighbors told the local public that they aimed to "Remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor"
Most people are egalitarians. They would, in other words, LOVE to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. The evidence for this is overwhelming, if one cares to look for it, as I have. Here's some of the evidence.
1. I live in zip code 02135, which is called Brighton--a mostly white middle and working class neighborhood of Boston, MA. I asked people--random people--in front of one of the main grocery stores and in front of one of the main drug stores if they agreed with a sign I showed them, and if so, to pose for a photo holding the sign to be seen by the public. The sign includes the words, "We aim to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor."
More than 500 people enthusiastically posed for a photo holding the sign. Here are their photos. And here are those same photos displayed in a video with my narration about how they were taken.
I could not have taken this large number of such photos--all of people just in my own zip code--unless most people there agreed with the sign. For every person who wanted to pose for a photo, about five or six also agreed with the sign but did not want to have their photo holding it made public, for one reason or another; in some cases it was fear (of their employer seeing it, etc.) and in other cases vanity ("Oh, I don't have my make up on now.")
If you did this in your zip code you'd no doubt have the same positive response. Read here suggestions about how and why to do it. We are literally surrounded by egalitarians!
2. I asked random people in five neighborhoods of Boston to say if they agreed with a button (pdf) that had the same words as the sign on it ("Let's remove the rich from power, have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor"). Here's a video of people responding to that question, and there is no cherry picking; it shows all of them. 91% of random people said they thought what the button said was a good (or great!) idea!
3. The neighboring zip code to mine is 02134--Allston. Allston-Brighton is often considered one neighborhood. Read here how I collected 1021 signatures from people in Allston-Brighton saying they agreed with those same egalitarian revolutionary words that are in the sign.
4. I went to a pro-Trump rally in 2016 in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston and asked 50 random people at the rally (all white, most wearing the Trump MAGA hat and lots wearing NRA shirts and waving the American flag) if they thought the message on the button ("Let's remove the rich from power, have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor") was a good idea or a bad idea. Forty-three of the 50 people (86%) said it was a good idea and gladly accepted the button when I offered it to them; many pinned it on themselves right on the spot. A woman at the rally who had bottles of cold water (it was a very hot day), in appreciation for the message I was spreading, insisted I accept a bottle from her! Read about this also here.
What about racism? Are pro-Trumpers all racists? Read why this is not so (and how the liberal media work hard to make it seem to be so) in "Pro-Trumpers and Egalitarianism."
5. More than 80% of people in Unity, N.H. (a small rural town where the people listen to conservative talk radio and not NPR), when asked to read this egalitarian revolutionary declaration of belief, signed it readily.
But There's a Problem!
Egalitarians today are, unfortunately, silent and invisible in regards to any explicit expression of their egalitarian values and aspirations (unless somebody asks them to pose for a photo holding a sign expressing their egalitarian revolutionary aim, or sign a statement or wear a button expressing that view, which seldom happens presently.)
Furthermore, when I advocate egalitarian revolution on the email group for people in my neighborhood of Allston-Brighton, the handful of people who do respond disagree with egalitarianism and give all sorts of excuses for why.
So, what is going on?
There is a big difference between the kind of people who join and then post on my neighborhood email group (a very small minority of the people in my neighborhood), versus the random people (who are representative of the great majority) one meets when standing in public places (such as the entrance to a grocery store or a CVS drug store). Most of the people one meets in public places don't even subscribe to the neighborhood email group, never mind post to it.
The kind of people who do subscribe and post to the neighborhood email group are the kind of people, apparently, who--unlike most people--do not want an egalitarian revolution. They're the kind of people who feel pretty comfortable and want to keep the status quo (or perhaps reform it a bit, but still keep the class inequality, with some rich and some poor, in place) and who fear what might happen if ordinary people (the riff raff), who want real, not fake, democracy and no rich and no poor, took over and removed the rich from power.
The kind of people who subscribe to and post to community email groups are also the kind who create and lead community organizations (like the BACC in my neighborhood that I talk about [1]). They're the kind of people, in other words, whose views are very visible. In contrast, the egalitarian views of the great majority are virtually never expressed explicitly in email groups or as the statements of formal organizations.
The Egalitarian Values of the Vast Majority Are Expressed Implicitly by How They Live Their Lives Everyday
But the egalitarian values of the vast majority ARE expressed *implicitly* by how they live their lives everyday. Most people, in the small corner of the world over which they have any real control (the very personal sphere) express--by their actions that they don't think of as political at all, but just natural--concern for other people and the idea that they should be treated with dignity befitting an equal; they do not try to dominate and exploit other people and treat them like dirt, the way the upper class treats ordinary people. The few assholes amongst us who do try to dominate others and treat them like dirt are always roundly detested by most ordinary people.
Most people try to shape their little corner of the world with the egalitarian values of mutual aid and equality, and egalitarian revolution is simply shaping ALL of society by these widely shared values.
The task of revolutionaries is to help the vast majority of people who, today, are silent and invisible, to become confident enough--in the superiority of their values and the superiority of their numbers in the population--to shape ALL of society by their values, and to create the organizations it takes to do this.
It's much more daunting to explicitly challenge the rich and powerful and call for removing them from power, than it is to avoid challenging the legitimacy of the rich and powerful. This is a major reason why the people who do not advocate egalitarian revolution are so much more active in expressing themselves on email groups and in organizations than the people who do want an egalitarian revolution.
We must not be fooled by the greater visibility of the anti-egalitarians than the egalitarians into thinking that we--the egalitarians--are the small minority. That's what the ruling class wants us to think, and it uses its mass media to make it seem that way. This is why one absolutely never sees or hears a person saying anything remotely like "Let's remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor" on the radio or TV or large-circulation magazines or newspapers. Read here how the Gallup Poll Co., for example, refused to do a poll to see how much support there was for egalitarian revolution. The upper class fears the public finding out the truth about this!
No! We are the vast majority. Go ask random people in public places what they think about the idea of removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, and you'll find out for yourself that we are the vast majority. You don't have to take my word for it.
The Ruling Class Promotes the Big Lie that People Are Selfish and Anti-Egalitarian
Did you ever read William Golding's famous novel, Lord of the Flies? Lots of people have read it. Golding is greatly admired by our ruling class. How come? Because his novel purports to show that when children are left to themselves they naturally create a horrible oppressive anti-egalitarian society, that this is just 'human nature.' Curiously, there was actually a real-life version of the children-shipwrecked-on-an-island story in Lord of the Flies. The Guardian has an interesting article about what the children actually did, and it is the opposite of what Golding wrote that they would do in his horrible novel. Read about the real life version at
Read about the capitalist Big Lie about human nature here.
What about All Those Racist, Homophobic, Transphobic People?
A small number of people do truly hate those of another race, or hate gays, or hate trans people. But the great majority of people that liberals view as racist or homophobic or transphobic are not hateful; they have reasonable concerns that the liberal wing of the ruling class declares (for the purpose of divide-and-rule!) to be hateful bigotry. Read about this here and here (regarding race), here (regarding homophobia/same-sex marriage) and here (regarding transphobia).
Likewise, the Israeli (billionaire-controlled) government funds and works to keep in power HAMAS in order to ensure that most working class Jewish Israelis will remain fearful of Palestinians and thus be easily controlled and oppressed economically by the Israeli ruling class that pretends to be protecting them from their 'real enemy'; and of course fearing people is essentially the same as hating them. This illustrates that ruling elites can sometimes make lots of ordinary people fear (and thus hate) another category of innocent people, but it requires LOTS of manipulation and lies and violence to accomplish; it does not mean that most ordinary people are just naturally hateful of others.
What Next?
Read here how to turn things around, and help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement, even if you're just one single individual.
No! Divisive 'Social Issues' Are NOT 'Just a Diversion'
The great majority of ordinary people, IF LEFT TO THEMSELVES, would make a much better, more equal and democratic world.
This is why the billionaire upper class dares not leave people to themselves; instead it proactively does all it can to ensure that the have-nots are so divided against each other that they remain unable to seriously challenge the power of the upper class and thereby make a better world, or to think it is realistic even to try such a thing.
The task for those of us who want a better world is MAINLY to identify EXACTLY how the ruling class divides the have-nots, to identify exactly what lies it uses for that purpose and what truths it censors, and then to refute the lies SPECIFICALLY AND PERSUASIVELY and express the censored truths clearly and widely. This task is NOT accomplished by ignoring the actual reasons people are not fighting for a better world and simply telling people that they ought to it.
Why are so few good people doing this task?
I think it is because they perceive the problem wrongly; they wrongly perceive the obstacle to a better world as being a lack of desire for such a world on the part of the have-nots. As a result, they dismiss as mere "diversions" the specific divisive frameworks on issues, such as illegal immigration, abortion, race, Israel, same-sex marriage, etc., that the ruling class uses to divide the have-nots, and they therefore don't engage in the task of PERSUASIVELY refuting these divisive frameworks.
This is why I am virtually the only one who writes persuasive refutations of the divisive frameworks, such as these three articles:
1. "What CRT Censors"
and
2. "Israel's Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians"
3. "INTRODUCING 21st CENTURY DIVIDE AND RULE AND HOW IT RELIES ON THE LEFT TO WORK"
Other good people don't do this because they don't understand that these divisive frameworks, not ordinary people's supposed lack of desire for a more equal and democratic world, are the main obstacles to the better world we all want.
------------------
1. https://www.pdrboston.org/dear-bacc-founders-steering-c-membe