Almeidaism1 is a democratic socialist ideology developed by Jorge Almeida and several other colleagues from the 1960s to 80s as a response to the policy of the Rosen Republic, other leftist movements, and the Second Rosen Civil War’s underlying economic, social, and political causes. Almeidaism emphasizes collective leadership; tolerance, diversity, and community-building; the abolition of currency; and universal housing, healthcare, and sustenance.
Today, Almeidaism, in a somewhat altered form, is employed in the Rosen Commonwealth as a guiding ideology. It is most apparent in the structure of the Commonwealth’s government, which prizes collective leadership, decentralization, and direct democracy.
Influences
Almeidaism was not conceived in a vacuum. Jorge Almeida’s earliest cited influence for his ideology was his mother, Elaine Soares, who was a prominent trade unionist and labor organizer. Later, colleagues at the University of São Lola like Renato Brito, a Rosen philosopher and political theorist; Lorenzo Castilho, a revolutionary communist who would be arrested during Almeida’s study; and Bartłomiej Koppa, a civil rights activist and Almeida’s future stepfather. Brito, Castilho, and Koppa all influenced aspects of Almeidaism that can be seen in the ideology today: Brito’s emphasis on collective leadership and the directory system of the federal executive, Castilho’s work in arguing for a mass movement and national general strikes to accelerate change, and Koppa’s ideals on diversity and community-building.
In a broader, more impersonal sense, Almeidaism was built upon existing conceptions of democratic socialism, which can be seen in Almeidaism’s absence of a vanguard party, emphasis on workplace democracy and the welfare state, and emphasis on democratic participation. Guild Socialism influenced Almeida’s council-assembly structure, creating systems in which industries were self-managed and directed by their constituents. Syndicalism, similarly, posits that unions and councils should be the building blocks of a socialist society, which was also a core component of Almeidaism. Council Communism is sometimes noted as an influence on Almeidaism, although, unlike democratic socialism, guild socialism, and syndicalism, was never directly referenced by Almeida. As an influence on government, council communism is held responsible for the directorial nature of the federal government and its desire for nonpartisanship and a rotating, weak executive.
Almeidaism’s most distinct features, namely its advocacy on the abolition of currency and automation, often draw contrasts to Genesis Socialism (GS), a technocratic and utopian variant of socialism espoused by some Sayan politicians during the expansion of factory automation in the Union. Though GS advocated for the complete abolition of work through automation, Almeidaism, in contrast, advocated for the complete abolition of the wage relationship in work. Almeida believed maintaining work as a social and civic obligation would serve as upkeep for the weight of the social structure of an Almeidaist society.
Contemporary contributors
Contemporary contribution to Almeidaism refers to those who developed it alongside Almeida during the late stage of his career and those who developed the ideology after the Nuclear Crisis.
Hatsue Yuhara
The Five Figures
The term “Five Figures” refers to the five largest contributors to Almeidaism that Almeida personally knew in his later career: Almeida himself, Hatsue Yuhara, Deng Liang, Cora Cavaleri, and Bartosz Rybicki. Each contributor influenced Almeida in a different way and to different extents, with Yuhara influencing the direction of Almeidaism and explicitly working on Nova Sociedade with Almeida. Deng Liang had significant contacts within the democratic socialist movement, and functioned as an organizer within the Almeidaist faction of the WSPRC. Cora Cavaleri was also a democratic socialist, but was considerably more moderate in her views, with her ideology more akin to social democracy. Finally, Bartosz Rybicki was a philosopher and often contributed to Almeidaism’s sociological components.
Theory
Almeidaism was developed through several written and transcribed works by Jorge Almeida.
Works
Throughout his career, Almeida authored and published about a dozen books, gave about a hundred speeches, and wrote hundreds of letters that shape modern conceptions of Almeidaist ideology. Included here are the major works that represented significant shifts or assertions made by Almeida that came to become integral parts of Almeidaism.
Socialism in Saya
Mundo
Mundo was the first of Almeida’s works to gain traction in the Rosen socialist sphere. It was critically acclaimed by many; critics of the Rosen far-left often believed Mundo was both pragmatic and utopian in its vision for a path from capitalism to communism.
Despite this acclaim, Mundo is perhaps the “furthest-left” work Almeida wrote. It was Almeida’s first iteration of applying democratic socialist ideology to Almeidaism: it appears unfamiliar to modern Almeidaism in its comprehensive critique of the bourgeois and industrial capitalism; modern Almeidaism typically avoids criticizing current ideologies and instead poses Almeidaism on its own.
Our
Our saw Almeida begin to develop his political ideology further, this being made apparent by Renato Brito’s involvement in the work. It was the only major work Almeida explicitly co-authored.
Our saw Almeida develop a long, primarily historical critique of Rosen democracy. Almeida essentially poses that Rosen society has never been democratic, exemplified by political repression under the Rosen Federal Union and economic repression seen through corruption in the Republic. Our
Battle of Brenito Manuscripts
Nova Sociedade
April 1985 Letters
Philosophy
Almeidaism prizes relation—the connections between humans that shape interactions. It believes labor, with the wage relation removed, develops humans and forms connections that cannot be replaced by leisure. A degree of healthy inconvenience is necessary to building empathy, avoiding boredom, and stimulating the brain.
Humans have basic needs that must be met by a successful, developed society. These are outlined in the principles of Almeidaism.
Principles
In Our, Almeida extrapolates five needs that all humans require.
- Humans need conditions that create and protect dignity,
- humans need to work meaningfully,
- humans need to belong to, and have roots in, a community,
- humans need relationships to one another,
- and humans need to participate in decisions that affect their lives.
These are broken down as follows:
Dignity
This principle was developed beyond its infantile state in Our by Hatsue Yuhara, and in the context of Almeidaism is described as the dignity principle. The dignity principle posits that the highest virtue any organization, whether that be economic, political, or social, is the protection of human dignity. All aspects of society, directly or tangentially, should thus create grounds for universal dignity, and protect by any means necessary. One can note that the other four needs Almeida describes all serve the dignity principle: dignity is meaningful work, community, relationships, and democracy.
Meaningful Work
Meaningful work, sometimes shortened to the work principle, is reasonably unique, and was thus developed in response to unique (at the time) sequence of events: factory automation. In Almeida’s view, industrial capitalism in the 1800s initially alienated workers from their work. Factory automation was both relief and dangerous with regards to alienation; automation removed menial, dangerous jobs but alienated workers from their production further.
Almeidaism attempts to synthesize the best of both worlds by eliminating the wage relationship and embracing automation of menial labor, coupled with a worker-council system that ensures workers have both power and responsibility in their work. The work principle is critical to the economics of Almeidaism at the most basic level, ensuring work has meaning and is non-transactional.
Roots
The Commonwealth’s diversity in ethnicity and unique ethnic republic devolution necessitated emphasis on diversity and community. Almeidaism posits that humans require a community. However, this community cannot be manufactured like the commune system seen in some third-world socialist states.
This need for roots, specifically, is protected by the preconditions ensured in the dignity principle. Universal housing and sustenance allow community to develop through a stable, physical, and shared region. At the higher level, the republic system allows rootedness at its core.
Relationships
Humans need each other, and the other principles allow the relationships principle to flourish. Almeidaism emphasizes community, and through this it emphasizes genuine connections to one another. The work principle, for instance, allows relationships to one another by creating shared notions of meaningful work. The roots principle insures communities, meaning relationships with those around you are more or less inescapable.
Elements of capitalism hinder relationships at the level and scale Almeidaism desires: consumerism, for instances, commodifies objects and individuals to the point that their social value is twisted or diminished. Consumerism builds groups of people with common preferences but no actual relationships to one another. Again, the worker-council system permits greater community because people have vested interests in such communities.
Democracy
Humans need to engage in their communities both formally—through democratic elections and referendums—and informally, administratively—through council meetings and broader ongoing engagement in their communities. This creates more effective administration because those who carry out a job are responsible for governing it; no one is more informed than them on that job. Moreover, people administrating themselves through collective leadership creates greater freedom. Their community is maintained and administered by all constituents of said community.
Feminism
The feminist aspects of Almeidaist philosophy were mostly devised by Hatsue Yuhara,
Ecology
Political architecture
Economic architecture
Almeidaist economics envisions an anarchistic, locally-maintained market relying on contributory labor and civic obligation, creating a society where “consumers do not interact with prices and workers do not interact with wages.”
Almeidaism strongly encourages a bottom-up economy and is vehemently opposed to top-down economic planning. Citing the failure of “five-year plans” in the Sayan Union, Almeida believed bottom-up economic planning combined the value of the “invisible hand” and supply and demand influences with community and human-centered priorities.
Bottom-up economic planning is fostered by workplace democracy. Almeidaism envisions tiered labor unions, comprising worker councils and worker assemblies. Worker councils are small groups of workers that determine their immediate priorities and collectively advocate for their interests by electing a representative to their constituent worker assembly. Worker assemblies, in turn, determine company-scale directives like benefits and wider priorities. Almeida proposed that worker assemblies elect an executive or council of executives to represent the company and ensure it followed the directives of the worker assembly.
Almeidaism is most known for its advocacy for the elimination of currency. This practice is often removed from context; Almeida did not advocate for a barter system or a new kind of currency, rather the total elimination of an exchange in the context of labor. Elimination of currency came to rely on an idea of post-scarcity, which Almeida believed could be achieved to a certain extent through a large-scale labor automation program.
Automation was another core component of Almeidaism. Interestingly, it wasn’t part of Almeidaism to begin with; however, after Nova Sociedade, it became a key tenet of an Almeidaist future. Almeidaism didn’t advocate for the abolition of labor, either. Almeida saw labor as a core part of human interaction and social ability; as such, he believed labor could serve a social or civic function to prevent, in his words, “fatness and satisfaction.” In other words, labor in interesting, stimulating jobs, with menial aspects reduced or done away with via automation, creates a valuable sense of intrinsic value that would allow the Rosen economy to function without wages.
Practice
Application in the Rosen Commonwealth
Application abroad
Criticism
”Reformed Almeidaism”
Poverty is not socialism. To uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty. True, we are building socialism, but that doesn’t mean that what we have achieved so far is up to the socialist standard.
Deng Xiaoping, To Uphold Socialism We Must Eliminate Poverty, 1987
Reformed Almeidaism is a term, often used in an official capacity, to describe the state of Almeidaist ideology in the contemporary Rosen Commonwealth. It functions as both a euphemism and a genuine descriptor of Almeidaist practice.
Reformed Almeidaism is used as a criticism of Almeidaism because its existence, according to critics, proves that Almeidaism is infeasible and requires capitalistic reform to function properly. Proponents argue that Almeidaism was never meant to be implemented in a post-Crisis world, and so the circumstances of the Commonwealth are fundamentally different than what Almeida intended for his ideology to be built upon.
In 2053, there are supporters in the Commonwealth and abroad that continually advocate for further reform. This argument points to the Rosen economic boom, which was enabled by moderately capitalistic policies at home in addition to engagement with a globalizing, extremely capitalistic foreign market. Rosen political theorist Fabiano Ferraz-Gomes argues: “Reformed Almeidaism works. Full stop. There is no need to endanger the Commonwealth’s outstanding standard of living, welfare state, or political stability for the sake of ideological purity.”
Footnotes
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Jorge Almeida didn’t actually call his development Almeidaism, and in fact never really referred to it as a truly independent, novel school of socialist thought. He was cited as calling his ideology the Nova Sociedade after the titular work was published, but that only really happened for a couple years. ↩