Anti-Egalitarians and Egalitarianism
by John Spritzler
June 30, 2026
[Also see "Who Exactly Are the 'Rich' Who Should Be Removed from Power, and What Happens to Them Then?"]
A common misunderstanding about egalitarianism (described here briefly and here in more detail) is that in order to have an egalitarian society everybody must first be made to be an egalitarian.
Here is an example of how a person (H.S.) expressed this misunderstanding to me recently:
John, I'm not opposed to living in an egalitarian community, I once did before it was crushed by the Feds. You want to build a localist egalitarian utopia, but I have one question you've never answered:
How are you going to make everyone an egalitarian?
Here is how I replied:
You ask me, "How are you going to make everyone an egalitarian?"
Here's my answer. I am NOT going to make everyone an egalitarian. (I never said I would.)
What I do want to do is help the vast majority of people who are already egalitarians (like my neighbors pictured at https://www.flickr.com/photos/182436693@N06/ ) to prevail over the small minority of anti-egalitarians, forcibly when necessary.
Your failure to see the task as the majority of good people prevailing over the minority of bad ones, and thinking the task is the very different one of a few good people converting large numbers of bad people to become good people, is the reason we are speaking past each other.
What are the origins of this misunderstanding?
One origin of this misunderstanding is that people think of egalitarianism as if it were an intentional community, like The Farm in Tennessee, which my friend H.S. alludes to having once been a member of. H.S. seems to have been asking me how I would make everybody be the way they are in The Farm community, on the misunderstanding that an egalitarian society is The Farm extended to all of society.
Here is why that misunderstanding is wrong.
Firstly, The Farm intentional community requires, among other things involving spiritual beliefs, that all of its members be pacifists and that none of its members ever hunt and kill animals for any reason, not even to use as food. But lots of egalitarians are not pacifists, and lots of egalitarians hunt and kill animals for food. The idea that an egalitarian society cannot exist until everybody is like the people in The Farm is false.
Secondly, the Marxist idea for how to create a good society--a classless society it refers to as a communist society--is indeed that people must first be changed from the bad kind of person they are today to the good kind of person that is required to have a good society. The Marxist, Che Guevara, spells out this notion in his
essay, "Socialism and Man in Cuba." In this short essay, Guevara repeats over and over again the theme that ordinary people are defective and must be re-made into a "new man and woman," which is the task of the vanguard Marxist revolutionary party:
"In our society the youth and the party play a big part. The former is especially important because it is the malleable clay from which the new person can be built with none of the old defects."
"To build communism it is necessary, simultaneous with the new material foundations, to build the new man and woman. "
"The resulting theory will, no doubt, put great stress on the two pillars of the construction of socialism: the education of the new man and woman and the development of technology."
"Each and every one of us readily pays his or her quota of sacrifice, conscious of being rewarded with the satisfaction of fulfilling a duty, conscious of advancing with everyone toward the new man and woman glimpsed on the horizon. "
"In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new man and woman being born. The image is not yet completely finished — it never will be, since the process goes forward hand in hand with the development of new economic forms."
Egalitarianism is based on the contrary idea.
It is based on the idea that in order to create an egalitarian society the people who already have egalitarian aims and values (the vast majority in most places) need to PREVAIL OVER (not convert) the anti-egalitarians.
For example, in 1936-9 about one quarter of Spain was essentially an egalitarian society, as I have written about here and in the several articles it links to under its title (including some about why it was defeated after three years by the fascist General Franco). How did this happen? Did some egalitarians (they called themselves anarchists then) convert everybody to agree with them, including people with very anti-egalitarian values and aims? No!
The anarchists formed militias and forcibly drove out the chief anti-egalitarians--the big landlords. And the remaining people then were free for the first time to make their society be egalitarian because the anti-egalitarians were either absent now or too weakened to have any real power.
Read "How We CAN Remove the Rich from Power" about how we, the egalitarians, can indeed remove the rich from power in the United States despite the fact that the rich have a powerful military force.
No. Egalitarianism is NOT Utopia
A closely related misunderstanding about egalitarianism is that it is Utopia, reflected in my friend, H.S.'s, words above: "You want to build a localist egalitarian utopia".
Please read "Egalitarianism Is NOT Utopia!" to see why egalitarianism is not utopia.
My exchange with H.S. about the egalitarian principle that the only sovereign authority is the Local Assembly of Egalitarians (by whatever name it is called and whatever manner it is constituted.)
H.S. wrote a Substack article here where we exchanged ideas about sovereignty in the comments section. It was at the end of this exchange where H.S. asked me, "How are you going to make everyone an egalitarian?" and I where I replied as indicated above.
I am including the entire exchange below because I think it is interesting on two counts. First, it's interesting because it illustrates the importance of understanding why only local assemblies of egalitarians should be the sovereign authority (discussed also here.) Second, this exchange illustrates that disagreements with egalitarianism usually stem from a disagreement with the egalitarian view of ordinary people as being ALREADY egalitarian and not in need of being converted to egalitarianism.
J.S. Howard, you make a lot of excellent points about how good organizations end up being controlled by big $.
You might be interested in what I call a good idea, but not a great idea that I had in 2007, which I put on the ballot in Massachusetts in 2008. It was a ballot question that proposed replacing the state legislature with 100 randomly selected residents. Go to https://www.pdrboston.org/commonwealth-jury-2006 to read more about if you wish.
H.S. A good idea and we don't have to wait on a party if can organize enough citizen assemblies to elect a Congress that would listen to them.
J.S. Howard,
Regarding your "enough citizen assemblies to elect a Congress that would listen to them," here's a question regarding what you think should be the case in a good society.
If the good people in a local community do not wish to obey a law passed by the national Congress, should those good people be forced to obey that law, or not?
In other words, which should be the sovereign authority in a local community: the local assembly or the national congress in which the local assembly has a representative?
I say the local assembly should be sovereign authority. I explain why at https://www.pdrboston.org/why-laws-only-made-by-local-assemblies .
I advocate voluntary federation, which is used today as I discuss at https://www.pdrboston.org/real-live-voluntary-federation .
What do you think?
H.S. I agree that the citizen assemblies get to decide and their representative carries that to Congress and is replaced if they don't. To do that we first have to take the bankers veto away from them or anything we try to do will be crushed becasue they control the state. So a citizen's movement to create the assemblies that restore Congress to what we all thought it was intended to be, public control of the state.
J.S. Regarding your "I agree that the citizen assemblies get to decide and their representative carries that to Congress and is replaced if they don't," I am confused. If the local assembly's representative (who votes as the local assembly wishes him/her to vote) in the Congress is outvoted by the other Congressional members, and the Congress passes a law that people in the local community disagree with and don't want to obey, then in this (typical!) case, which is the rightful sovereign authority: the local assembly or the Congress. This is a fundamental question of principle.
H.S.
John, that is a good question. It forces us to define sovereignty clearly.
In my view, sovereignty is divided by jurisdiction, not monopolized by either one.
For local issues (zoning, local infrastructure, community police), the local assembly is the rightful sovereign. Congress has no say.
For national issues (defense, interstate commerce, civil rights, environmental standards), the Congress is the rightful sovereign.
If a local community loses a vote in Congress on a national issue, they are bound by that law, not because Congress is 'superior' in all things, but because individual egalitarianism requires it. Every citizen across every community gets an equal vote on national matters; if one community could simply veto a national law it dislikes, then citizens in that community would have more power over national policy than citizens elsewhere. That would be deeply unequal.
The local assembly's recourse in that case is not defiance, but political organization to change the national majority, or constitutional amendment. You are right that this means local communities don't get the final say on everything, but that is the necessary trade-off for ensuring that no local majority can override the collective will of the national majority on shared, national problems.
J.S.
Howard, here's why I disagree with your defense of Congressional (National) sovereignty on so-called "national issues."
The key fact is this. If 350 million people are required to obey a law written by a few hundred people (Congress) in a nation's capital city very distant from most of those 350 million people, then this makes it easy for an oppressive class (with lots of money, like today, or with other kinds of power possibly) to gain power over all 350 million people merely by using its wealth (or other kind of power) to control the few hundred people who constitute the national government (Congress.) This is exactly what is going on today in the United States, quite obviously.
You rationalization for Congress to have sovereignty in so-called 'national issues' is exactly what an oppressive class wants (today) or would want in the future to prevail, to make 350 million people wrongly believe that they are morally obliged to obey a national Congress no matter what.
There are in fact no such 'national issues.' Consider foreign policy, even war-making. I discuss this in my earlier Substack at https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/who-makes-foreign-policy-in-an-egalitarian?r=1iggn .
Local communities via their Local Assembly of Egalitarians decide whether or not their local community will support the waging of a war. The Local Assembly will decide if people in the local community may join the larger military force that wages the war; it will decide if the local community will provide economic products or services to that larger military force. The larger military force will only be able to operate and wage war if a sufficient number of local communities agree--using voluntary federation as discussed at https://www.pdrboston.org/real-live-voluntary-federation ) to support the war this way.
This illustrates that local sovereignty of local assemblies of egalitarians is the ONLY sovereignty that is proper, and that people have a moral obligation to obey. This is the principle that makes it exceedingly difficult for an oppressive class to gain power over many millions of people, as it has so obviously done today because people mistakenly think they must obey the national government on so-called 'national issues.'
H.S.
John, yes, we agree that the national government is captured by an oppressive class, and that local sovereignty is essential to preventing tyranny. I agree with you that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible.
I think you go too far when you say local assemblies are the ONLY rightful sovereigns. What happens when a local assembly oppresses its own minority? What happens when a foreign power invades, and some communities refuse to defend others?
The principle of subsidiarity, decisions at the lowest level, but with appeal and coordination at higher levels. This preserves local autonomy while providing a safety net against local tyranny and collective action failure.
I also think your model seems to assume that local communities are homogeneous and virtuous. But history shows that local majorities can be just as oppressive as national ones. The solution is not to abolish higher levels of governance, but to design them so they are accountable, transparent, and subject to constant recall.
You say the people have a moral obligation to obey only the local assembly. I say the people have a moral obligation to obey any institution that respects their rights and serves their interests, and to disobey any institution that does not. That includes local assemblies.
You are making a majoritarian argument, the local majority decides, and everyone must obey. But what if the local majority is wrong? What if they decide to persecute a minority, or to secede and join an enemy power, or to hoard water from a neighboring community?
Under your system, there is no appeal. The local assembly is the final authority. That is not egalitarianism; that is local absolutism. It is exactly the same problem as national absolutism, just at a smaller scale.
J.S.
The moral principle I advocate regarding legitimate government, and that most people agree with when they consider it, is this:
Egalitarians should only have to obey laws that they are able to make in person and as equals with the other egalitarians who will have to obey those laws. This means the law-making body can only make laws for a LOCAL COMMUNITY that is small enough to permit all the egalitarians in it who want to participate in making the laws to meet together face-to-face to do so.
There is no valid reason why egalitarians are obliged to obey laws written by a set of people from which they are excluded (such as a Congress of so-called "representatives" meeting in a distant capital city).
You write, "I say the people have a moral obligation to obey any institution that respects their rights and serves their interests, and to disobey any institution that does not." Obviously this begs the question, "Who decides if an institution respects their rights and serves their interests?"
I say that the egalitarians in a local community, meeting in their Local Assembly, are the ones who decide if a national Congress respects their rights and serves their interests. If these egalitarians decide in the affirmative, then they go along with the Congress, and if they decide in the negative then they do not go along with the Congress. This is the very definition of the voluntary federation that I advocate. The Congress is tasked with making proposals, not laws, for the Local Assemblies of Egalitarians to implement or not as they wish. As I write about at https://www.pdrboston.org/real-live-voluntary-federation this is how the Universal Postal Union representing about 193 countries operates, and people seem satisfied with how mail and packages are sent and received across the globe.
Your objections to sovereign Local Assemblies of Egalitarians are not persuasive.
You say that local assemblies of egalitarians may not be homogeneous and virtuous and that local majorities may be oppressive. If the majority of a local assembly enacts oppression, then they are not truly egalitarians. In this case the egalitarians elsewhere have every right to prevent the people claiming to be egalitarians from doing their oppression, and may even form a militia to forcibly prevent them. This is what making an egalitarian revolution is all about: forcibly preventing anybody from oppressing others. We need to do this whenever there is oppression. This fact does not, however, take away from the fact that egalitarians are only obliged to obey laws made by a set of people from which they are NOT excluded.
You say that under my system there is no appeal. Well, there is always the appeal to the egalitarians elsewhere, in other local communities, who may as I discussed above, intervene forcibly to prevent a given local assembly from oppressing somebody. THAT is the appeal. In practice it is the ONLY appeal. I could just as well say that under your system there is no appeal, since who can a person appeal to if the Congress oppresses them? They can--in practice--only appeal to the egalitarians elsewhere to forcibly prevent their oppression by the Congress. This is real life.
You say sovereignty of the Local Assembly of Egalitarians is absolutism. Well, from the point of view of somebody who is an anti-egalitarian who wishes to oppress, then YES, the Local Assembly of Egalitarians is a form of absolutism. It is the absolutism that is GOOD. Why are you opposed to it?
H.S.
John, I'm not opposed to living in an egalitarian community, I once did before it was crushed by the Feds. You want to build a localist egalitarian utopia, but I have one question you've never answered:
How are you going to make everyone an egalitarian?
Our community was a bunch of hippies who came together in agreement, bought land and began buidling a community.
Your entire system depends on local assemblies composed of people who spontaneously choose not to oppress. But when I point out that local majorities can be oppressive, you reply: "If they oppress, they aren't truly egalitarians." That's not a safeguard, it's a tautology. You've defined the problem out of existence.
Where do these virtuous, non-oppressive people come from? How do you produce them? How do you eliminate those who aren’t? You seem to believe that simply arranging face-to-face meetings will automatically create egalitarian behavior. History says otherwise. Villages have oppressed outsiders, persecuted minorities, and exploited their own members for millennia. Proximity doesn't guarantee virtue; sometimes it intensifies tribalism.
Here is where monetary reform enters and why you're wrong to dismiss it.
I believe egalitarianism can be achieved, but only by changing the money system first, This is because the current system is not neutral. It not only actively manufactures anti-egalitarian psychology, it will crush those that emerge. I know this from experience when the FBI got involved with our bank and the banker’s veto ended our 12-year-old collective egalitarian community. There is a much smaller community still occupying the land, but it is not the radical egalitarian community it once was. Think about it:
A debt-based, interest-bearing money supply creates artificial scarcity. There is never enough currency to repay principal plus interest, so someone must always lose. This breeds fear, hoarding, and zero-sum competition.
It rewards psychopathic behavior. The banking system extracts value from productive labor without producing anything itself. To succeed within it, you must either become a rent-seeker or serve one.
It fractures social trust. When survival depends on outcompeting your neighbor for scarce credit, cooperation becomes a liability.
You want local assemblies of equals? You will never get them under the current monetary regime, because the current regime produces inequality, domination, and fear. It shapes human character in its own image.
Change the money system, and you change the psychology. That is because money is more than an economic tool, it is a vital cultural artifact.
Reclaim sovereign, debt-free, interest-free issuance. Remove the structural compulsion for endless growth and usury. When the state can fund public goods without borrowing from private creditors, the fiscal squeeze lifts. When communities have access to non-usurious credit, they cooperate rather than compete. Artificial scarcity recedes; abundance and reciprocity become viable. People become more egalitarian because the material conditions that reward domination are removed.
You say you want to abolish money but the community ledger is a very old form of money. You want to eliminate currency, fine, but that's a distraction. The real lever is the credit creation mechanism. If you don't reform it at the sovereign level, your local assemblies will still be using privately created credit, just with a different ledger. The psychology of scarcity follows the ledger, not the token.
So, again: How do you make everyone an egalitarian? If your answer is "they just are," or "other egalitarians will stop the bad ones," you're relying on magic. My answer is: reform the enabling condition which is the money system. Change the structure that shapes human behavior, and the behavior follows. That's not magic. That's materialist psychology.
Stop avoiding the structural lever. Join the coalition to reclaim sovereign issuance. Without it, your utopia is just a campfire story. With it, we might actually build something real.
We don't need to agree on everything, but I think we need to build a mass movement to acomplish any significant change. I disagree that a small group of people can do it.
J.S.
Howard,
You ask me, "How are you going to make everyone an egalitarian?"
Here's my answer. I am NOT going to make everyone an egalitarian. (I never said I would.)
What I do want to do is help the vast majority of people who are already egalitarians (like my neighbors pictured at https://www.flickr.com/photos/182436693@N06/ ) to prevail over the small minority of anti-egalitarians, forcibly when necessary.
Your failure to see the task as the majority of good people prevailing over the minority of bad ones, and thinking the task is the very different one of a few good people converting large numbers of bad people to become good people, is the reason we are speaking past each other.