The tradition of isocracy is history, the practise is contemporary. Isocracy is born from the desire of people to have control over themselves - and an equal right to contribute to their community.

As with so many other terms to represent a form of government, isocracy derives from the ancient Greek, meaning "equal rule" (isos, equal - kracy, rule). It is during this time we encounter the first use of the word in the name of one of the ten famous Attic orators, Isokrates, the most influential rhetorician in his time. Like many people of that period we have an incomplete collection of his works, but we do know that he argued against the sophists in favour of teachings that provided practical application in context, or "kairos" ('the supreme moment'). His school was the first liberal arts institution, teaching oratory, composition, history, citizenship, culture, and moral reasoning. Most remarkably for the time, he expressed a desire for an educated multicultural polis, "Athens ... has caused the name of Hellene to be regarded as no longer a mark of racial origin but of intelligence, so that men are called Hellenes because they have shared our common education rather than that they share in our common ethnic origin."

Following Isokrates there are but a few references to the word in the subsequent two thousand years. In 1796 Robert Southey's Life and Correspondence speaks of "a seditious Spaniard .. preaching Atheism and Isocracy". In 1844 the Anglican Reverand Sydney Smith questioned democrats and asked whether they were really isocrats, who would be prepared to argue that women too would be accorded the right to vote. The next major appearance of the word is by the popular and sometime scandalous author Grant Allen in the founding documents of the Independent Labor Party in 1893, a radical and co-operative socialist British political party which was represented in the Commons until 1947 and still exists today within the British Labour Party as Independent Labour Publications. Allen wanted the ILP to be called the "the Isocratic Party". From there there is but a handful of academic references, most importantly by the reputable Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori in 1957 in his "Democrazia e Definizioni".

An isocracy avoids the common criticisms of democracy (e.g., tyranny of the majority) and demagogy by limiting public governance to the public sphere and private governance to the private sphere. An isocracy is a secular system of governance; there is no endorsement or interference in religious matters. An isocracy is republican; there is no hereditary provision of power. By extension, an isocracy does not engage in moral distinctions in law on the grounds of race, sex etc. All these principles are seen as universal rights, beyond temporal and spatial contexts, and to be established in as a constitutio libertatis.

An isocracy tends towards a federal network with a high degree of regional autonomy and in productive activity towards mutualism. From the free association of individuals and communities, common and particular interests can be distinguished.

The political and economic theories of an isocracy are fundamentally distinct from property and power relations enforced by the State as in institution of class rule, an isocracy advocates the general abolition of such armed forces (army, police) in favour of an inclusive civilian militia for public peace, defense and emergency services.

Three modern traditions that contribute; liberalism, socialism, and anarchism

"The Isocracy Network" is a group of like-minded individuals who support the core principles. It is not a political party and does not seek political office under its name. It does not have a centralised method of organisation, nor does it determine what particular policies are best suited for specific circumstances. Individuals themselves participate in the network to design practical public policy. Rather than an organisation, it is perhaps best considered a movement.

People, even to the extent that personhood is a process which includes high levels of socialisation through language, culture, and norms of behaviour, still exist as independent bodies. This is an ontological fact. Individual consciousness expresses its will throughout active control of this body, as much as the will can do so (the body's limitations represent the limit of the will).

Recognising this independence is a foundation of isocracy. The existence of the self, the combination of the mind and body as an individual whole, also means recognition that other people are in the same situation. The recognition of individual liberty in the self also must mean the recognition of the same liberties in others. Through this reciprocity, personal liberty extends into a social right which is applied equally to all.

Moral and social philosophy is very much in agreement to with this principle. It is certainly something that had been embodied, albeit with difficulty at times, in liberal theory. Rather famouly, John Locke remarked:

"Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his." (John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise, Section 27, 1689).

We can return to the issues of what is called "inferior Creatures", the common ownership of the Earth, and right of full return from labour throughout this book.

Martha Nussbaum expresses this as a form of social justice, deriving from the capability approach of welfare economics of Amartya Sen, with a particular emphasis on justice for women: "Being able to move freely from place to place; being able to be secure against violent assault; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction" (Martha C. Nussbaum, "Sex and Social Justice", Oxford University Press, 1999. 41-42.)

As a whole, this comes down to a matter of body politics, the issue of who controls whose body and what are the justifications for doing so. The principle of Isocracy means self-ownership, full and exclusive right and responsibility over oneself for adults of adult-reasoning, and by extension, consensus in participation.

We are advocates of free speech, within the limits of defamation etc, following Rosa Luxemburg's "Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden", ("Freedom is always the freedom for dissenters"), and even includes "destructive" rights (e.g., voluntary euthanasia), as long as third party expert assessment declares the individual as being compos mentis.

We support reproductive rights.
We are opposed to the death penalty, under all circumstances. We support voluntary euthanasia.

Critique: some also argue that the right to life and/or the right not to be killed overrules the right to absolute bodily autonomy

Liberty in the private sphere of life is matched by equality in the public sphere; political emancipation means that all are treated equally. Individual liberties, when applied with reciprocity, become public rights. When these are not applied equally to all people, then there is a population that requires emancipation. From this promise of modernity, moral impetus was given to the great acts of emancipation; freedom of religious belief, disbelief, and practise, women's suffrage and rights, and the abolition of slavery, and apartheid - that is the practise of discrimination on the basis of race and sex. Increasingly, an equality of rights is being introduced on the consensual sexual orientations and their practises.

The concept includes the notion of isonomia (ἰσονομία "equality of rights"), as used by Herodotus (3.80) and Thucydides, who used it interchangeably with democracy in contrast with monarchy. e.g., Herodutus quoting Otanes c492BCE: "I vote, therefore, that we do away with monarchy, and raise the people to power. For the people are all in all."

Aristotle argued democracy and isonomia need to be combined: "Democracy arose from the idea that those who are equal in any respect are equal absolutely. All are alike free, therefore they claim that all are free absolutely... The next is when the democrats, on the grounds that they are all equal, claim equal participation in everything." (Politics, Book V)

Further, the highest possible levels of education is requisite for members of a society to make rational choices. This is recognised by Robert Charles Winthrop when he wrote; "Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education."

The public is the rightful owners of natural resources, and that value of which should be used as the sole source for public income. It is also the means to ensure that a parasitic class of rent-seekers is abolished with their expropriations redirected to productive investment. As Rousseau warned: "You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to no one."

Confucius: "When the Great Way prevailed, natural resources were fully used for the benefit of all and not appropriated for selfish ends... This was the Age of the Great Commonwealth of peace and prosperity."

Goethe and Kant, said "The great ones of the world have taken this earth of ours to themselves; they live in the midst of splender and superfluity" and "All men are originally in a common collective possession of the soil of the whole earth and they have naturally each a will to use it". In the New World, Thomas Jefferson argued "The earth is given as a common stock for men to labor and to live on. ... Wherever in any country there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right", whilst Thomas Paine - echoing earlier words from the Dutch philosopher Spinoza - said: "[I]t is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds"

Harriet Martineau, compared land rents to slavery, "The old practice of man holding man as property is nearly exploded among civilized nations; and the analogous barbarism of man holding the surface of the globe as property cannot long survive." The freethinker Robert Ingersoll, said "I am satisfied that all human beings are entitled to the essentials of life, that is to say, to water, to air, and to land",

Adam Smith correctly argued that the owner of natural resources extracts their rent from the worker and was the first to realise that a tax on economic rent would not effect productivity: "It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of the ground", he said. Following this David Ricardo bluntly pointed out that the interest of such monopolistists "is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community...". John Stuart Mill "No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title."

Modern economists agree. In a standard university textbook on economics, Paul Samuelson, a Nobel Prize winner in the field, along with William Nordhaus explain the issue: "The striking result is that a tax on rent will lead to no distortions or economic inefficiencies. Why not? Because a tax on pure economic rent does not change anyone's economic behavior. Demanders are unaffected because their price is unchanged. The behavior of suppliers is unaffected because the supply of land is fixed and cannot react. Hence, the economy operates after the tax exactly as it did before the tax--with no distortions or inefficiencies". Samuelson and Nordhaus are far from alone; another Nobel prize winner, William Vickey accurately states that "Economists are almost unanimous" on that issue, across the political spectrum with figures as diverse as Milton Friedman, Herber Simon, James Tobin, Franco Modigliani and James Buchanan being among other Nobel Prize winning economists who also concur.

All taxes come with an administrative cost (someone has to do that paperwork) and a deadweight loss through a reduction in trades - except economic rents.

A history comparison can be made with the "People's Budget" of the UK in 1909, which included a proposal for a national land tax. The Conservative-Unionists, who included a lot of large landowners, opposed this, arguing that welfare expenditures should be raised through tariffs on imports. Notably tariffs are very beneficial to large landowners, especially in agricultural produce. The lords of the UK profited very well indeed whilst the poor starved during the Great Potato Famine of Ireland and Scotland.

We support the promotion of a true, good, and pleasant life for all life and the removal of all which causes suffering to the same. In particular this extends to animal welfare; as Jeremy Bentham wrote: "The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny... What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? ... The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?"

Roger Scruton, who writes that only humans have duties, and therefore only humans have rights. This assumes that rights come from duties; as we have illustrated rights come from a an equality of consideration of interests. Where this consideration does not occur, speciesism - this does not argue that all species are equal in ability, reasoning, etc, and nor does it suggest that an equality of rights must be universally applied. It is not in an animal's interest to vote, etc., but it certainly is in their interest not to suffer. (c.f., Peter Singer, Practical Ethics)

Nonsense oppositional argument from Objectivists (Leonard Peikoff . Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 1991), p. 358) "By its nature and throughout the animal kingdom, life survives by feeding on life. To demand that man defer to the "rights" of other species is to deprive man himself of the right to life. This is "other-ism," i.e., altruism, gone mad." Because apparently being a vegetarian will kill you!

We support levies and charges on activities that generate negative externalities, where the producer's costs are borne by society in general. Likewise those activities which generates benefits carried by society in general they can be susidised to that level. The combination encourages socially beneficial activity and reduces socially negative activity. Al Gore, correctly said: "Global warming pollution, indeed all pollution, is now described by economists as an 'externality.' This absurd label means, in essence: we don't need to keep track of this stuff so let's pretend it doesn't exist... But what we're pretending doesn't exist is the stuff that is destroying the habitability of the planet."

Open government and a free exchange of information. Knowledge goods have an increasingly high initial cost and an increasingly low marginal cost of reproduction. This requires public funding for social knowledge generation, and open source public information when produced. Apart from the political benefits of transparency, it will also provide significant positive externalities and reduce the enormous waste of replicated research. As Linus Torvalds, the initial and chief developer of the Linux kernel puts it, "the future is open source everything" [citation needed].

We support a "free economy", following the ideas of Silvio Gessell. This includes Freigeld (free money), which removes the economic death spiral arising from treating the means of exchange as a commodity, Freiland (free land), which removes land and resource speculation in favour of productive investment, and Freihandel (Free Trade), which allows all world citizens to engage in the work they have comparative advantage. John Maynard Keynes, who was influenced by Gessell wrote, "I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx."

We strongly support the establishment of worker's cooperatives with industrial democracy as a standard business form, as an alternative to imposed, top-down state socialism or the plutocratic rule of a capitalist elite. We support the primary aspects of mutualism; free association, mutual credit, and contractual agreements, and gradualism. As Peter Kropotkin said, harmony in society is obtained: "... not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being."

The existence of full-time professional soldiers and police employed by the state is a fairly new phenomenon. Their role as a distorting influence on the economy ("the military-industrial complex") has been well-researched. Their ineffectiveness as an defensive force compared to democratic, voluntary and well-regulated militia is also noted. Ultimately armies are only effective at invading other countries, and police as a tool for tyrants to "invade" the unarmed local civilians. As James Madison accurately wrote: "War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few." We support contributions to international security and universal rights, whilst opposing all nationalist wars.

Supporters of the state monopoly on violence suggest individuals and groups will inevitably use violence. The appropriate organisational model for a classless, stateless, but organised society is the militia, the armed citizenry, a trained, voluntary and well-regulated democratic and federal force that carries out emergency services and protection. Such organisations have shown on successive times in history that their capacity, local knowledge and morale in resistance and defense is exceptional; but their ability to wage an aggressive war is hopeless - this is a virtue.

Examples:
José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica who, as the head of military junta after a dispute election, gave blacks citizenship, women the vote, re-established a democratic constitution, abolished military rule and abolished the military. Not surprisingly, Costa Rica has been one Latin American country that has not suffered any other military coups.

Switzerland, through a civilian militia system, avoided invasion when standing armies failed (See: Stephen Halbook, "Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich", 2006).

The essay by Robert Higgs, "The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism" (http://mises.org/story/2450), published on the von Mises Institute website last year which explores how "military interests" distort democratic processes through contracts and donations.

People who are not involved in politics, will suffer governance from those worse than themselves. Our approach to existing political systems is carried out on a pragmatic basis, that distinguishes between a free democracy and State oppression - a continuum which exists often exists the same institution, and has "tipping points" where practical involvement and revolutionary opposition become points of rational choice. Further, as Hannah Arendt understood "... it was the polis, the space of men's free deeds and living words, which could endow life with splendour - ton bion lampron poleisthai" (the enlightened free life).

The approach of "revolutionary reformism" combines the perspectives of involvement in practical politics but for the purpose of fundamental social change. Success requires both the introduction of political reforms as well as a clearly articulated and principled vision.

Mario Ferrero's recent essay Revolution or Reform? Socialism's Dilemma as Rational Choice Problem (in the journal Homo Oeconomicus, 2004) is worthy of reference. It argues that the revolutionary party is a producer cooperative that requiress a parallel commercial reform sector to provide worker incentives and consumer trust. Success in the reform sector, along with a sorely lacking proper use of public democratic institutions (Georg Lukács's The Question of Parliamentarianism, 1919 is critical reasoning in this regard) creates loyalty and attachment to those more radical proposals not yet implemented.

Success in the reform sector, along with a sorely lacking proper use of public democratic institutions (Georg Lukács's The Question of Parliamentarianism, 1919 is critical reasoning in this regard) creates loyalty and attachment to those more radical proposals not yet implemented. In a liberal-democratic state (and not dictatorships which do require revolutions), with their supposed organising principle based on personal freedom and social democracy, there is far greater opportunity for extending these principles to their logical conclusion.

The strength of liberty depends on the involvement of the public. 'Vanguardism' by a cadre elite, is insufficient to guarantee that a revolutionary spirit is not hijacked by authoritarian opportunists, regardless of perceived advantages in a division of labour. It is not therefore "the Party" that should seek to achieve power on behalf of the masses, but rather such political parties should be engaging in a constant campaign that they masses become their own vanguard, led by their own "organic intellectuals", to use Gramsci's phrase. Ideally, the Party should cease to exist after a revolution; if it has fulfilled its revolutionary potential, the people will know how to manage their own affairs.

....

The causes of social change is still subject to significant debate. Broadly speaking, there is a school of thought that argues for a high level of technological determinism, often encapsulated in Marx's remark: "The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord: the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist" (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847). This argument essentially claims that technology pushes society in a particular direction, rather than the demand of actors pulling technology in a particular direction. In addition Marx argues just as the economic base of society determines the possible range of social relations, he also argues that these social relations with this economic base when the latter provides greater potential than the former can provide. This is is illustrated by the famous paragraph from Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859):

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution."

These attitudes are also prevalent among phenomenological social theorists, including Lynn White (Medieval Technology and Social Change, 1962), Martin Heidegger (The Question Concerning Technology, 1954), and, in a phenomenology of communications technology Harold Innis (Empire and Communications, 1950), and Marshal McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage, 1967). In each of these examples it is assumed that the objective reality of technology acts as, at the very least, a deeply influencing orientation on the mind of the subjects who encounter it.

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The Pursuit of Happiness

The seventeenth-century cleric and philosopher Richard Cumberland wrote in 1672 that promoting the well-being of our fellow humans is essential to the "pursuit of our own happiness." (Cumberland, Richard (2005). A Treatise of the Laws of Nature. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. pp. 523–24.), The 1763 English translation of Jean Jacques Burlamaqui's Principles of Natural and Politic Law extolled the "noble pursuit" of "true and solid happiness" in the opening chapter discussing natural rights (Burlamaqui, Jean Jacques (2006). The Principles of Natural and Politic Law. Indianapolis. p. 31.)

Arendt argues that "happiness" is to be interpreted as public freedom and the ability to engage in public participation and well as private welfare.

However that may be, of one thing at least we may be sure: the Declaration of Independence, though it blurs the distinction between private and public happiness, at least still intends us to hear the term 'pursuit of happiness' in its twofold meaning: private welfare as well as the right to public happiness, the pursuit of well-being as well as being a 'participator in public affairs'.

This point is also emphasised by Garry Wills in his book, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.[9] Wills argues that the "pursuit of happiness" does not refer to property or to private happiness, but instead to public happiness.
Wills, Gerry (2002) [Copyright 1978]. Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Mariner Books.