Egalitarianism of the Free Society

This is Robert Corfe's introductory volume to his 3-volume work, "Social Capitalism in Theory and Practice". It sets out to examine in detail the sociological aspects of some of the most urgent questions of our time, viz., the problem of maintaining high culture in an egalitarian society; the psychological nature of property as being essential to the freedom of the individual and the community; the misconceptions and difficulties in establishing a truly democratic society; and the epistemological problems in discussing political science and the role for a New Idealism.The book which is written with crystal clarity, in appealing to the general reader as well as the student of politics, presents an exciting and entirely new way of looking at social issues which cuts through all the ideological dross which has dominated thinking for so long a period. The author brings exceptional qualifications to this introductory study of Social Capitalism, for not only has he been a life-long student of the social sciences, but for many years was a senior executive in manufacturing industry, as well as an activist in political life on both the local and national levels.

The transformation of society and the world of work, in the industrialised countries over the past 60 years, have overtaken political systems in the democratic world. The old left/right political divide, which has marked the pattern of socio-economic struggle since 1789, has now ceased to be a useful tool in advancing the progress of humanity.This book presents the new realities in the spheres of social life, as an introduction to the author's forthcoming 3-volume work on Social Capitalism, which concentrates on the shattering economic and political changes in the contemporary world. What is to be the future of society if it is to advance in any meaningful sense? If society is to be egalitarian and at the same time free, it will need to ditch the ideologies of the past which so inspired our forebears.The book opens with 6 chapters discussing the role of high culture in a society where class associations have been minimised and elitism takes on quite a different meaning. In an upwardly aspiring society, and under a changed educational system, the best would be available for all in the practical democracy of the future.There then follow 11 chapters on the nature of property, which is projected as an individual right in fulfilling psychological needs. The political consequences are that property is presented as something contradicting its concept as understood in the traditional thinking of left or right wing politics. The practical implications of property are considered in their different life situations in separate chapters.Democracy, real or illusory, is discussed in 7 chapters, and historical arguments are evoked in exploring the erroneous beliefs and myths on the nature of freedom. The book concludes with 12 important chapters analysing those adverse intellectual influences in the 20th century responsible for undermining constructive thought in enabling a better world.

Changes in society

The transformation of society and the world of work, in the industrialised countries over the past 60 years, have overtaken political systems in the democratic world. The old left/right political divide, which has marked the pattern of socio-economic struggle since 1789, has now ceased to be a useful tool in advancing the progress of humanity.This book presents the new realities in the spheres of social life, as an introduction to the author’s forthcoming 3-volume work on Social Capitalism, which concentrates on the shattering economic and political changes in the contemporary world. What is to be the future of society if it is to advance in any meaningful sense? If society is to be egalitarian and at the same time free, it will need to ditch the ideologies of the past which so inspired our forebears.The book opens with 6 chapters discussing the role of high culture in a society where class associations have been minimised and elitism takes on quite a different meaning. In an upwardly aspiring society, and under a changed educational system, the best would be available for all in the practical democracy of the future.There then follow 11 chapters on the nature of property, which is projected as an individual right in fulfilling psychological needs. The political consequences are that property is presented as something contradicting its concept as understood in the traditional thinking of left or right wing politics. The practical implications of property are considered in their different life situations in separate chapters.Democracy, real or illusory, is discussed in 7 chapters, and historical arguments are evoked in exploring the erroneous beliefs and myths on the nature of freedom. The book concludes with 12 important chapters analysing those adverse intellectual influences in the 20th century responsible for undermining constructive thought in enabling a better world.

Contents; Preface page - iii; PART I; Introduction page - 1; CULTURE AND EGALITARIANISM; CHAPTER 1; Culture Versus Populism; 1 - Fears of socialism undermining cultural standards 2 - The blame of plebeianism 3 - Threats to culture but not from Social Capitalism 4 - The threat to taste from mass production 5 - The threat of proletarian cultural values 6 - The threat of populism 7 - The threat of Americanisation 8 - The higher aspirations of the middle-middle majority 9 - Their betrayal of proletarian values 10 - As human nature aspires towards self-fulfilment each class eventually betrays its origins 11 - Class "treason" and the fear of levelling down 12 - Change in the perception of egalitarianism 13 - Definition of Social Capitalist egalitarianism 14 - The Responsible society; CHAPTER 2; An Egalitarianism of The Best; 1 - Elitism of the majority 2 - Democratisation of leisure pursuits 3 - This has not led to a decline of cultural standards 4 - Why high culture is vital for a Social Capitalist society 5 - Purpose of culture is to increase sensitivity and pleasure 6 - But these things need to be taught, e.g., sexual pleasure 7 - Even the enjoyment of the countryside is not an intrinsic pleasure 8 - Differentiating aesthetics from morality 9 - Cultural implications of this 10 - Why high culture rather than religion will inspire greater spiritual fulfilment in the future; CHAPTER 3; Marketing and The Corruption of Culture; 1 - How culture is poisoned by populism or the principles of marketing 2 - Conditions essential to true art 3 - Corruption of Hollywood by marketing values 4 - Artistic integrity of the film elsewhere 5 - Exposure to Hollywood is demeaning to our better selves 6 - Improvement of British cuisine 7 - How the capitalisation of an economy influences gastronomic standards 8 - These now being undermined by fast food 9 - Marketing and the undermining of publishing standards 10 - Book retailing and the contraction of free choice. CHAPTER 4; Stripping Culture of its Class Associations; 1 - Function of Social Capitalism to raise aesthetic standards for the majority 2 - Culture was used as an instrument for social control 3 - How to strip culture of its class associations 4 - Substantive cultural values are classless and hence egalitarian 5 - Why the middle majority will contemn new attempts at class differentiation 6 - The philistinism of class-based culture 7 - Egalitarianism raises rather than diminishes high culture; CHAPTER 5; The Problem of American Cultural Values; 1 - The deceptive social egalitarianism of America 2 - Why the powerful are invisible 3 - America's anti-elitist values 4 - A cultural egalitarianism of the lowest common denominator 5 - The emergence of pop culture 6 - Pop culture as a foreign import 7 - The consequent debasement of educational standards; CHAPTER 6; The Value of High Culture; 1 - How price became the criterion for American cultural values 2 - The egalitarianism of price as value 3 - Price as value spelt the death of culture 4 - Religion substituted the spiritual role of culture 5 - Why high (or complex) cultural forms are important to peoples in advanced industrial economies 6 - How low culture corrupts advanced societies 7 - The good intentions but bad outcome of American cultural domination 8 - The dangers of American cultural imperialism 9 - The need to resist this 10 - Egalitarianism as the aristocracy of the majority; PART II; Introduction page - 63; THE POLITICS OF PROPERTY; CHAPTER 7; Some Popular Misconceptions; 1 - Demoralisation in the workplace 2 - Not an intrinsic characteristic 3 - Motivation dependent on the work environment 4 - But most of all on a sense of freewill 5 - Obsolescence of Management theory 6 - The psychological value of possession 7 - Abuses have given rise to false notions on property 8 - Religious leaders on property relationships 9 - Dichotomy between religious and secular values 10 - Political misconceptions on property relationships. CHAPTER 8; Political Conflict and Property; 1 - Man's unique acquisitiveness 2 - Utopianism is linked to oppression 3 - Oppression stems from the monopoly of power and possession 4 - The solution is to maximise the number of possessors 5 - This is not achieved through Nationalisation 6 - Nor through the misnomer of "Privatisation" 7 - Extending ownership and control increases productivity 8 - Examples of this in rural areas 9 - And in manufacturing industry; CHAPTER 9; Sociology of Possession; 1 - All relationships of the individual with the external world are concerned with possession 2 - Acquisitiveness is vital to survival 3 - "Opting out" is not a viable solution 4 - Artificial means needed to adjust property relationships 5 - Anthropology demonstrates that there is no natural form of human society 6 - The instinct for possession and power is one and the same 7 - Property relationships in the primitive society 8 - Complexity of property relationships in modern society 9 - Private property emerged with the differentiation of social classes 10 - But these are not grounds for reverting to an ideal of "Common ownership" 11 - Meaninglessness of the political term "Private property" as now used 12 - Little to distinguish private from public monopoly; CHAPTER 10; Property: Its Psychological Function; 1 - Decentralised state franchises a realistic alternative to the solutions of left and right 2 - Hiving off the DHSS 3 - The NHS not a sacred cow 4 - True possession entails not merely legal ownership but control, but not necessarily absolute rights 5 - Why property rights should be circumscribed 6 - The first function of property is to give emotional fulfilment 7 - And to extend the personality and human potential 8 - How to achieve this politically.; CHAPTER 11; Home-Ownership: Real and Illusory; 1 - Social advantages of full possession 2 - Need for intervention in maintaining home-ownership 3 - Dispossession through usury 4 - The inflation-makers hurt both the economy and home-owners 5 - Property restrictions should be placed on aliens in accordance with international practice. CHAPTER 12; Wider Ownership In The Business Sector; 1 - Freedom of sole proprietorships and partnerships 2 - Limited liability and the separation of ownership from control 3 - The company is a legal entity responsible only to itself 4 - Unanswered questions of limited liability status 5 - Employees' grounds for claiming a partnership 6 - Indebtedness of the company to the state are grounds for intervention on behalf of employees; CHAPTER 13; The Problems of Rural Land Ownership; 1 - The need for efficiency and Britain's success 2 - Why land ownership is more equally distributed in Continental Europe 3 - British land ownership patterns no need for complacency amongst arch-conservatives 4 - Agriculture dependent on intervention for market stability 5 - The plateau for efficiency in farm sizes 6 - Scandal of land monopoly 7 - Ecological threat of large-scale farming 8 - Organic farming needs smaller more labour intensive acreages 9 - Need to conserve balanced rural communities 10 - All land should be put to a good economic use 11 - Benefit of afforestation policies; CHAPTER 14; Public Servants As The Non-Possessing Class; 1 - Defining the pure public service sector 2 - Abuses arising from the privatisation of tax collection or the armed services, etc. 3 - Power acquisitiveness of public servants 4 - Business sector acquisitiveness more laudable as it contributes towards national wealth creation; CHAPTER 15; Communal, Collective and Rentier Property; 1 - Nature of communal property 2 - It must be justified by what is both democratic and ideal 3 - Collective property 4 - The need to monitor the wealth of independent associations 5 - Rentier property; CHAPTER 16; Inherited Property and Taxation; 1 - Perceived as illicit property 2 - A poor measure for achieving egalitarianism 3 - Comparisons of personal wealth 4 - Need for safeguarding inheritance 5 - Assists long-term productivity 6 - Alternative means of taxation should be used for achieving a more egalitarian society 7 - Examples of this 8 - Taxation as the destroyer of initiative 9 - How we unfavourably compare with Europe 10 - Inheritance of titles cannot be justified 11 - Special place of the monarchy 12 - Steps for preventing the inheritance of political privilege. CHAPTER 17; Domination as Possession; 1 - Striving for possession motivated by pleasure 2 - Love, platonic and sexual, masks a lust for possession 3 - Even compassion conceals the enjoyment of power 4 - Perceived love and "mutual possession" is an illusion 5 - Identity of thinking is also an illusion 6 - Love is only realised through perceiving the good or the ideal 7 - When lovers fall out then reality shows through 8 - Function of humour, and the realism of the Old Testament prophets 9 - But illusion is after all necessary for a tolerable existence 10 - Authority in society is dependent on projecting the ideal 11 - Direct personal power less dangerous than the abstract power of religious or political authority 12 How the political problems of domination as possession can be resolved in society 13 - Conclusions; PART III; Introduction page - 153; DEMOCRACY: REAL AND ILLUSORY; CHAPTER 18; The Erosion of Freedom; 1 - Trade gives rise to freedom 2 - Freedom is not an immutable national characteristic 3 - Our failing representative system 4 - Monopoly of the media 5 - Contrasted with Continental Europe 6 - A fringe press is not evidence of a free press 7 - The secrecy of the state 8 - How it undermines democracy 9 - Elsewhere freedom of information is guaranteed 10 - Economic factors entail the greatest diminution of freedom 11 - Our erosion of freedom runs parallel with our industrial decline 12 - Dangers of institutionalised opinion forming and the Computercrat; CHAPTER 19; When Old Prejudices Seem Vindicated; 1 - Britain viewed from the Continent 2 - Corrupt origins of the representative system 3 - Causes of our intellectual complacency 4 - Sound reasons for "disdaining" the foreigner 5 - But what lay under the democratic veneer 6 - Why political reform failed to dissolve the class divide 7 - Our prejudices seemingly justified by 20th century events 8 - Contradictions of our divided society 9 - Social progress is not the outcome of political stability. CHAPTER 20; Democracy: Reality and Myth; 1 - Constitutional democracy defined 2 - Criteria as to the failure of our representative system 3 - Effective democracy dependent on majority participation 4 - Constitutional democracy is value-free 5 - Democratic and autocratic oppression compared 6 - Democratic values defined 7 - Limitations of Utilitarianism 8 - Why material values are a higher priority than democratic values 9 - Place of ethical values in society 10 - Nature of political parties; CHAPTER 21; Unique Origins of The Social Divide; 1 - Our toughest industrial competitors do not owe their democratic societies to Britain 2 - Our failure as a democracy is due to class entrenchment 3 - Class resentment traceable to psychological rather than material factors 4 - Unique origins of our class-based society 5 - How these cleavages were deepened at a later era 6 - Elsewhere the social organism was maintained through the old system 7 - Social effect of Britain's industrial revolution different from elsewhere; CHAPTER 22; Revolutionary and Evolutionary Progress Compared; 1 - Revolutionary change has a different effect on society compared with evolutionary change 2 - How a dual party representative system exacerbates the class divide 3 - Its contempt for minority opinion and anti-intellectualism 4 - Its eventual breakdown in the perception of reality 5 - Subjective vested interests give rise to many ills 6 - Different character of representative institutions abroad 7 - English revolutions have been failed revolutions 8 - Vested interest nature of British administration contrasted with more objectively oriented European bureaucracies 9 - Confrontational and Participatory representative democracy compared. CHAPTER 23; Democratic Society As a Realisation; 1 - Economic egalitarianism cannot be equated with social egalitarianism 2 - The class divide is widening 3 - As representative democracy has failed as an agency for social reform other roads to social freedom must be sought 4 - The value of objectivity in unifying society 5 - When representative government is used as an instrument for social oppression 6 - Continental thought giving rise to the idea of the classless society; CHAPTER 24; Democracy For Tomorrow; 1 - Britain cannot survive in a vacuum 2 - The challenge must be met 3 - The democratisation of society is the road to its modernisation 4 - Bankruptcy of the confrontational party system 5 - Imperative need for Socialist radical centrism 6 - Problems of centre parties 7 - Failure of the SDP Liberal Alliance 8 - The vice of political "professionalism" 9 - How it became a vested interest party 10 - Actions not words must be the criterion of a party 11 - Hope for a merging or withering away of parties 12 - Representation through pure political power 13 - As a step towards the achievement of direct democracy; PART IV; Introduction page - 239; THE ROAD TO CONSTRUCTIVE POLITICS; CHAPTER 25; The Unseen Real Issues of Politics; 1 - Failure of modern politics to solve substantive issues 2 - Government policies fail to reflect underlying causes of ills 3 - Examples of superficial problems perceived as underlying ills 4 - Demonstration of the false perception of these issues 5 - Deceit behind such false perceptions 6 - Public acceptance and hardening of these false views 7 - This compounded by anxiety of self-justifying to others 8 - Consequently, the truth in political discussion and thought is poisoned 9 - Hence the intellectual paralysis of political life; CHAPTER 26; The Causes For Our Intellectual Disability; 1 - Our problems may be blamed on an intellectual disability 2 - The poverty of new ideas 3 - Comparison with the political creativity of the 19th century 4 - The eight causes for our intellectual paralysis 5 - I: The polarisation of political life 6 - Group conflict buries truth 7 - Multi-party systems tend to alleviate conflict intensity 8 - SDP Liberal Alliance was unable to break the mould 9 - Britain's system different from other dual party systems. CHAPTER 27; The Institutionalism of Power; 1 - Politicians divide into the self-deceived and those with vested interests 2 - British democracy upheld by a negative will 3 - Parties not experiencing any meaningful evolution 4 - II: The institutionalism of power bases 5 - This has diminished the power of elected representatives 6 - And their energy and good intentions 7 - The voter made cynical by institutionalism 8 - Feels there can be no new alternatives; CHAPTER 28; The Sterility of Pragmatism; 1 - III: Philosophical pragmatism 2 - Definition of this 3 - Its promotion of expediency and trial and error methods 4 - Over-emphasis on money values 5 - Clashes with the demands of education and modern business 6 - Sets a low value on creative theory 7 - Consequences of the anti-intellectualism of pragmatism 8 - Contra theory equals intellectual paralysis 9 - Practical problems are compounded and divisions maintained; CHAPTER 29; The End of Constructive Thought; 1 - IV: General belief in historical materialism 2 - Used as a basis for arrogance 3 - Or to justify determinism 4 - Points to the futility of intellectualising 5 - V: Negative approach of British modern philosophy to constructive thought 6 - But this is not a criticism of the integrity of British philosophers 7 - Their revolt against Idealism 8 - Irony of Russell's failure to formulate a political philosophy 9 - The "impossibility" of constructive thought 10 - The tragic trivialities of philosophy. CHAPTER 30; The End of Freewill; 1 - VI: Psychology's undermining of the belief in reason 2 - Gives a scientific basis to determinism 3 - Perceived invalidity of speculative thought 4 - Man's alleged incapacity for objectivity 5 - This has devastated our intellectual life; CHAPTER 31; The Failure of The Academics; 1 - VII: Exclusive specialisation of knowledge 2 - The fear of esoteric knowledge 3 - Jealously guarded knowledge has led to academic myopia 4 - Specialists becoming guardians of "priestly" knowledge 5 - They are called upon to resolve untenable issues 6 - But their practical knowledge fails them in this 7 - They are often not qualified to pontificate on socio-economic issues 8 - Interconnecting knowledge creates new knowledge 9 - Examples of this 10 - Above conclusions drawn from personal experience 11 - Sense of status overrides sense of curiosity; CHAPTER 32; The Revolt Against Reason; 1 - Current problems can only be solved by creating new knowledge 2 - Academics seek safety in their ivory towers 3 - The fear of constructive theorising 4 - VIII: The revolt against reason 5 - Has penetrated all political parties 6 - Unreason and the revolt against culture; CHAPTER 33; The Nature of Reason; 1 - Faith in reason: a first step towards safeguarding civilisation 2 - Reason is not sophistry but disinterested necessity 3 - And this must stem from sociological demands 4 - Constructive reasoning must be the method; CHAPTER 34; The Reality of Ideas; 1 - Recognition of the ultimate reality of ideas is necessary for this 2 - Deterministic attitudes both immoral and impractical 3 - Freewill properly understood necessitates objectivity 4 - Need for speculation transcending personal experience 5 - And the individual achieves this through maturity 6 - Denying the reality of ideas has led to our intellectual paralysis 7 - Promoting the reality of ideas for political problem solving is a revolutionary approach. CHAPTER 35; The New Idealism; 1 - This entails the call for a new idealistic philosophy 2 Justified as a methodology for constructive thought 3 - Failure of mathematics as a basis for constructive philosophy 4 - Materialism versus Anti-materialism debate invalidated by 20th century physics 5 - The greater realism of such a philosophy 6 - Benefits of the constructive or idealistic method 7 - Characteristics of the New Idealism; CHAPTER 36; A Warning For The Future; 1 - Need to appreciate the reality of the "As is" situation 2 - Irrationality of beliefs held by the majority 3 - How the young mind is prepared for this 4 - Empty symbols have a stronger appeal than concrete truths 5 - The future: True democracy or an elective dictatorship? 6 - Vacuum in the sphere of reforming politics 7 - This portends great dangers ahead 8 - How an ideological vacuum may compound political ills; SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX.