The “Gestalt (Figure) of the Arbeiter,” the entity well-attuned to the Work-Standard, naturally arises from the introduction of the Sociable Currency. The Market/Mixed Economy and Fractional-Reserve Banking System are replaced by the VCS Planned/Command Economy and Reciprocal-Reserve Banking System. The Parliamentary Democracy is supplanted by the Council Democracy and the OECD-Type Student Economy by the Socialist Student Economy (SSE). Instead of Private/Common Property-as-Wealth, there is Productive/Personal Property-as-Power. These transitions can occur in a Western developed country as well as in a non-Western developing country insofar as all of these changes are registered by movements away from Production for Profit and Production for Utility to Production for Dasein. Through mastery of the Work-Standard from inside the central government, the Arbeiter revolutionizes the everyday life of a whole nation.
Everything related to the Work-Standard is conveyed in terms applicable only to Production for Dasein. The changes are most profound upon studying the prevailing legal and constitutional theories surrounding the Legal Code and the Constitution. Instead of a Freedom-Security Dialectic, ours will be one defined by the interplay between Legal Duties and Legal Rights and how they relate to corresponding Constitutional Obligations and Constitutional Intents. The legal jurisprudence is then organized under the “Central Plan.” In MTEP (Mission-Type Economic Planning), the Central Plan does not last four or five years like a conventional Work-Plan (as an NSFI) insofar as the Central Plan exists as our equivalent to Neoliberalism’s “Social Contract.”
What deters Neoliberalism from always descending into literal Tyranny lies in the ability to maintain the Freedom-Security Dialectic as part of the Social Contract. In a Social Contract with the “Parliament” and the “Civil Society,” the “Private Citizen” voluntarily surrenders certain Liberties in exchange for Securities protecting their remaining Liberties. These Securities are designed to ensure that the Private Citizen and Civil Society do not infringe on each other’s Liberties and the same is to be expected of the Civil Government as well.
By contrast, the Self forms their Central Plan with the State and the Totality. The Self voluntarily observes their Constitutional Intents and Legal Duties in return for Constitutional Obligations and Legal Rights. The Legal Rights gives the Self the power to do what is required, while the Constitutional Obligations ensure that the Self is rewarded in kind by the Totality and State.
In Part of II of this Entry, I will be presenting some relevant case studies from the Counterculture that are of interest to a legal and constitutional discussion. Three sets of cases stand out from the period. The first set is a cross-examination of the “Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)” and the “Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)” in regards to the Sharon Statement and Port Huron Statement respectively. The second set deals with the “Free Speech Movement (FSM)” at UC Berkley. And the third is a discussion of the 1968 Protests in preparation for Part III.
The Intent of discussing about these related events from the Counterculture is to lay the theoretical groundwork for the “Liberalization of Young Minds” and the “Socialization of Young Minds.” All of these historical events from the 1960s saw the mass mobilization of young people in the tertiary educational level and attempts to promote political-economic change. The Gestalt of the Arbeiter can successfully emerge from within an OECD-Type Student Economy, provided that it is able to fully distance itself from Neoliberalism and promote its own parallel Deep State. That Deep State will in turn sow the seeds of future political-economic change through the subsequent formation of organizations and parties vying for political power. If the Gestalt of the Arbeiter succeeds in doing so, it can implement a Socialization of Young Minds and defend itself against the Liberalization of Young Minds (which leads to cooption by the Establishment) and introduce limited applications of the Work-Standard before advancing toward full-scale implementation.
Social Contracts of the YAF and SDS
The Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) are youth movements associated with the rise of the New Right and the New Left during the 1960s. The two movements reflected the sentiments of the New Right and the New Left through the political-economic stances toward the Federal-State System of American Federalism and the role of the Federal government. Even though the members differ on the fundamental aspects, the two movements also contained factions which were not always in mutual agreement with Jeffersonianism. Our Gestalt of the Arbeiter can arise from within the YAF or SDS and, if successful, may end up coopting both the YAF and SDS for its own purposes. On the Freedom-Security Dialectic, if the Arbeiter emphasized Security, they will start in the SDS and proceed to the YAF; if the Arbeiter promoted Freedom, they will begin in the YAF and advance to the SDS.
The Arbeiter will discover that the YAF is a loose organization of Classical Liberals (Read: Libertarians), Social Conservatives, and “Economic Nationalists.” Conversely, the Arbeiter learns that the SDS is a loose organization of Social Liberals (Read: Progressives), Social-Democrats, and “Democratic Socialists.” What happens if one combines the ideas of the YAF and the SDS?
We can find an obvious area of interest in the economic positions shared by the Sharon Statement and the Port Huron Statement. On the one hand, there is the belief that the “Self” (Read: Private Citizen) should strive toward greater participation in the affairs of the “Totality” (Read: Civil Society). And on the other, there is the belief that the “State” (Read: Parliament) should not have to coerce the “Self” (Read: Private Citizen) into serving the “Totality” (Read: Civil Society). The SDS believed that the Self is capable of creating Actual Arbeit, to which the YAF later argued that the Self should be able to do so without too much interference from the State.
“[…] The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles: that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; self-directed, not manipulated, encouraging independence, a respect for others, a sense of dignity, and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics; that the economic experience is so personally decisive that the individual must share in its full determination; that the economy itself is of such social importance that its major resources and means of production should be open to democratic participation and subject to democratic social regulation.”
“[…] That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom; […] That the purposes of government are to protect these freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice; […] That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs; That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;”
In both statements, we see a discussion about, among other things, Private/Common Property-as-Wealth and who ultimately benefits from its Quantity of Kapital and Quantity of Schuld. We might recognize this best as the “means of production.” Going by the logic of both Statements, I can imagine the SDS and YAF debating over who has access to the production of an automobile for example. The SDS would have us believe that everyone should earn Kapital from the subsequent transactional sale, even if they were not involved in the production process whatsoever. Conversely, the YAF is inclined to argue that because a privatized commercial firm created the automobile, it should be the one earning the Kapital from the transactional sale of that automobile.
If this description does not sound familiar already, then let it be known that what I had just described is the precursor to an industrial action that a labor union (the employees) wishes to engage against an automotive manufacturer (the employer). The labor union wants a bigger share of the Kapital in the transactional sale, while the automotive manufacturer wants its own share as well. SDS sides with the labor union, YAF sides with the automotive manufacturer, and both are still operating within the paradigm shared by Production for Profit and Production for Utility.
Where does the Arbeiter stand on this matter? The Arbeiter is more concerned about the Actual Arbeit and Actual Geld emanating from this Productive Property, namely who built the automobile and who sold the automobile. In LER Process, the employees built the automobile and the employer sold the automobile: both economic activities contributed Actual Arbeit to the Life-Energy Reserve. Both the employer and the employees are entitled to Actual Geld from the State and Totality. The Totality buys the automobile from the employer in Actual Geld, while the State issues Paygrades to the employees for building the automobile in Actual Geld.
Of course, neither the YAF nor the SDS would agree with the arrangement outlined above. Gradually changing their perspective and introducing limited applications of the Work-Standard might. Think back to the Third Wave Experiment discussed in Part I and how I argued that it can be repurposed to serve as an instructive lesson in the conduct of Council Democracy for the SSE. Another simulated live-training exercise related to this scenario can be conducted by the Gestalt of the Arbeiter as part of the Socialization of Young Minds.
Social Contract of the FSM
SDS was not the only youth movement from the fledgling New Left. Another youth movement, the “Free Speech Movement (FSM),” was taking form in the campus of the University of California, Berkley (known best as UC Berkley). The FSM was organized as a student protest against the limitations to the exercise of the Freedom of Expression in the tertiary educational level of the OECD-Type Student Economy. Its members sought to challenge the old ideas about the political engagement of the Student Body being left under the supervision of the professors and faculties of the universities. In UC Berkley, prior to the FSM, political activities were prohibited on the campus grounds, and students were expected to conduct such activities elsewhere.
The bulk of the FSM’s activities in UC Berkley occurred during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the months leading up to the Vietnam War. Those trends led to UC Berkley students ignoring the prohibitions and attempting to conduct political activities on campus. As more students followed suit, the faculty of UC Berkley imposed a ban on all political activities in and around the vicinity of the campus grounds. The Commercial Media in the US framed the student protests at UC Berkley as actions perpetuated by Social Liberals (Read: Progressives). They even portrayed UC Berkley itself as a hotbed of Social Liberalism. There is no doubt that the FSM did include Social Liberals among its ranks. The FSM, similar to the SDS, was influenced by the political and social trends of the times.
The precursor to the FSM was an attempt at establishing a Student Government under the leadership of “SLATE” in 1958. SLATE was a student organization that bore the characteristics of a Deep State with its own political party, “Towards an Active Student Community (TASC),” which appeared a year earlier. Its goal was to have candidates for office in the actual Student Government of the Californian educational system, the Associated Students of University of California (ASUC), who would then be in the position to end the ASUC’s policies of McCarthyism and racial discrimination among university fraternities and sororities.
The political organization of TASC borrowed inspiration from the British Labour Party. Attempts were made at trying to introduce the Californian educational system to British-style Social-Democracy. Of course, this never sat well with the faculties of the Californian universities and the American people as a Totality, who found the methodology of the Labour Party to be too foreign and rightfully so. In spite of its setbacks, TASC succeeded in attaining power by 1959 through the election of a Student President and four Representatives in the ASUC. As a result, SLATE found itself in the position to challenge racial discrimination in the Student Housing of fraternities and sororities. They raised important concerns about student rights and academic freedom, Military Conscription, diplomatic opposition toward Apartheid South Africa, and the further testing of nuclear weapons. The Civil Rights Movement, educational reform and the ability of students to engage in political activities on campuses were also on the agenda.
The fact that TASC tried to model itself after the Labour Party is indicative of the fact that it sought to introduce a Social-Democratic Student Government with its own Social-Democratic Student Economy. Even though Social-Democracy pales in comparison to Pure Socialism, the achievement alone cannot be ignored. TASC raised important policy questions about the issuance of a “minimum wage” and “affordable housing” as issues relevant to both the universities and the broader State of California outside the universities. Through TASC, SLATE became a sort of model for student unions to organize and address the concerns of the Student Body. In the Federal-State System of these United States, the national educational system is split among the States of the Union, which limited any and all possibilities of establishing a national student union. The fact that SLATE was template for student unions in the 1960s is something that also cannot be ignored.
A lot of the members of SLATE went on to form the cadres of the Free Speech Movement (FSM). When the student protests at UC Berkley were occurring in 1964-1965, there was already an organizational infrastructure for activists to engage in those student protests. What caused the student protests at UC Berkley?
In October 1, 1964, a student named Jack Weinberg [incorrectly referred to at the time as “Jack Weinberger” (sic.)] was sitting at a table in front of UC Berkley’s Sprout Hall to raise awareness about the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization related to the broader Civil Rights Movement. When he refused to leave, the faculty called local police to escort him away from the premises, a decision which was staunchly opposed by the students who were on campus to witness the altercation. Before the police left, the students swarmed the vehicle and prevented them from taking Weinberg into custody. That marked the beginnings of the FSM.
In response, Mario Savio and thousands of students engaged in civil disobedience at UC Berkley in December 1964. They protested against the restrictions on the Freedom of Expression, demanding the faculty to rescind those restrictions so that the students may be allowed to engage in political activities. Their demands would not just apply to UC Berkley; it would also apply to the rest of the tertiary educational level in the State of California. The faculty of UC Berkley, as part of its initial refusals, responded with arrests by law enforcement. As the student protest escalated, SDS and other movements from the New Left joined the ranks, adding further political pressure.
The faculty of UC Berkley were forced to react and appease the demands of the protestors. A vote was held by faculty by December 8 of that year. The faculty voted heavily in favor of the protestors. The turnout was so high among the Student Body that the FSM was essentially voted into the Student Government, allowing its members to properly address the concerns of student rights and academic freedom. Even today, Sprout Hall and its surrounding Plaza remains a staging area for student activism on the campus of UC Berkley.
There is an instructive lesson to be learned from this in relation to the next case study, which will form the overall theme of Part III. If a Student Economy is able to take form inside an educational system, the appearance of a Student Government becomes inevitable. The purpose of a Student Government to act as the political power, just as the Student Economy serves as the economic power of the Student Body. The establishment of Student Government is preceded by student organizations, unions and activists coalescing around a shared set of mutual interests and the determination to realize common aims along a United Front. While it is true that SLATE and FSM both disbanded alongside SDS (a fate which the YAF managed to avoid after the Counterculture), their achievement deserve recognition as a source of inspiration for the Total Educational Effort.
In Part III, we will be looking more broadly at the student protests of 1968 that occurred around the world. All the ideas of Parts I and II are discernible among the Student Bodies who participated in the demonstrations. Although the aims of the student protests of 1968 varied across different countries, there is still a recurring pattern of behavior. In many cases, there were student activists, unions, and organizations vying for political power by establishing Student Governments as part of taking over the OECD-Type Student Economies. These groups had the potential to coalesce into political parties and seize power through general elections, thereby changing the course of the Cold War and the fate of the late 20th century. However, as history has shown, this was not to be the end of Neoliberalism, and the failures of those protests ultimately led to the Custodial-Care Function cracking down on this dissent.
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