THE NAPUK PARTY -- MANIFESTO
By Ivancho Jotata, known also as Ochnavi Atatoj, Ivan Bugarow, Jotabash Giaurgi, Nostradamus Buladamus, and other cloning names
[ Remark: There are three papers about NAPUK party that go hand in hand, the Manifesto, the Program, and the Codex; they are related, but they are different, stressing on different sides of the activity of this unique party. ]
[ The
idea for illustration is in placing of one picture in a frame under the title and the author, which has to be square and probably 450 x 450 pixels (because I use usually 525 x 725 for the cover and then multiply by 3, when necessary). The picture can be made as ink sketch in different colours, or as colour painting (probably the last is better), and it shows a flag carried horizontally (like on a sporting event), where the flag is green (or its borders, if this is a sketch), and in the middle of it is an orange circle (only its borders), where is shown the well known sign of the ... fig, also in orange (where is good to elongate a bit the thumb in order to be well seen, when squeezed between the second and third fingers, not this to be taken for a fist); plus this the important element is that this flag is carried by 4 different kind of people, where they go from left to right in the front as black, white, and in the back as green, yellow! Excluding the green these people symbolize the 3 races, and the green one is meant as Martian (and can have also some kind of trunk for a nose (as if in spacesuit), what has to say, that this party is good for every country and planet. This is the idea, and the same picture is used for the variants in all languages. ]
Abstract: This is the beginning and most fundamental of the trinity of papers about NAPUK party. Here is explained what this means, why is it so important and unique, which are the basic requirements of its policy, in economic and social aspects, and why it is a must for the contemporary decaying capitalist society. If you like our society in world-wide scale, you can quietly miss these papers, but otherwise you better cast a look at them.
0. Introduction
The idea for this party appeared in my head on the background of our Bulgarian big mess and confusion in economic, and chiefly politic and social (rather
unsocial) aspects, where I said to myself: let me invent one party which is
like no other party, different from all possible (and impossible) parties, so to say, against each and every party, what in Bulgarian is 'napuk', and sounds good in all languages (I suppose in Hindu, Chinese, Hungarian, Eskimo, etc.). And the etymology of the word is funny, because 'na' is prefix meaning usually: above, on, at, but here "in spite of", and the root 'pukam' in Bulgarian is to crack, yet in transferred meaning also to, sorry, fart! Not that this is known in Bulgaria, but I have made my etymological researches and can give you some foreign words, like: Russian 'pukatj' as to fart (and this 'j' I use here and there for softening), Serbian 'putzam' (ah, and single quotes I use for pronunciation in more or less Latin way) as the same, then old Greek
perdeo as the same, and so on -- this word being sound imitation -- to the Sanskrit, where the same activity (because it
is activity, isn't it?) was 'prdj'. Id est, I don't give a damn (in order not to repeat too many times the same word) about all other parties, this my party will be the most unique party of all unique parties, so to say
unucum uniquorum in (
my) Latin.
But I am not such person who invents paradoxical ideas for the fun of it, no, the fun can be present, but the ideas have to be sound and useful. Hence I begin
not with rejecting of the exploitation, but with its accepting, only making it palatable, good for the exploited persons. Then I add some communist ideas, to be sure, but which are such that the very communists (if they are left somewhere, say, in China) would
not accept (because they deny the exploitation, you know). Then I put all this in the environment of up-to-day computers or business machines, with abilities to monitor nearly
everything. Then I come to a new way for pensioning from very
young years, say, up 12! Then I invent special category of
social products, which have to be able to be somehow donated by the state, because only to increase the prize with taxes and excise duties is not good for poor countries. And I make some rough calculations, about these things. And I, no matter that am atheist, call various religions to justify my propositions. And I care equally well for the
wealthy, like for the poor, I don't insist that the poor people have to disappear entirely, but there is a difference between a poor person now and in the times of the Pharaohs; I just care about the exploitation, because not everybody can exploit himself (like me, for example). And so on.
And after turning of this idea for several nights in my head I came to the conclusion that it is, really, very interesting, even urgent in these days of unending economic crisis in world-wide scale. This can be able to
enliven the economy, can give purpose in life for many people, at least for a pair of generations. And because of the not exactly small volume of the paper I decided to divide it in three parts, Manifesto, Program, and Codex of this unique party, invoked to become ... gravedigger of all parties, in the name of better live and happy exploitation of the people, defending the
right of everybody to be
exploited! So that, let me begin.
1. Exploitation
The history of all societies, from the primitive ones, and to the contemporary (and decaying) capitalism,
is a history of fights for
finding of better way for exploitation of the masses! This has to be obvious, because the society has arisen with emerging of the first professions, those of the soldiers and of the prostitutes, and these are activities which everyone can perform yet it is preferable if there are persons specialized for doing this, professionals. Specially trained persons means able to do more in quantitative sense, yet also in qualitative, because they are forced to do this and they compete, hence they are exploited, mark this. Let not be squeamish to call the things with their names because the word exploitation comes from French and has Latin roots meaning something in abundance, multiple things, raining, etc. (Latin plural, your plenty, French
pluie-to-rain; there are also Slavonic and even Sanskrit similar words), hence it can be translated as taking out of everything, of the
soul of the person. Yeah, but this is not against the wishes of the very exploited human (or animal) being!
To convince ourselves in this let us cast a look at the Ancient Egypt, during the slavery of the pharaohs. This is a good example because this is not the capitalistic exploitation, where nobody forces you with a whip, but a real and brutal exploitation, yet what do you think: wanted the masses in their hearts to be exploited or not? Now, people always wanted something more, and are especially
in love with the word freedom (I mean French
liberte-freedom and German
Liebe-love, because here the root is the same), but frankly speaking, where to would have gone the freed slaves in the Ancient Egypt, ah? There are lions and poisonous snakes around, there is the desert, and the Pharaoh
feeds them, really, allows them to have sex as much as they can (because this is reproduction of slaves, of course), so that this, what one clever slave would have wished in those times, was only a good headman or ruler or Pharaoh (and not to finish your years under some of those big stones for the pyramides). So that everybody, deep (or maybe not really deep) in his (and surely also her, I will not repeat this each time) heart, wants to be exploited, but in such way that this to be in his advantage, i.e. receives more money, in praised higher, such things.
And, come to think of this, the life is generally one massive multilateral
mutual exploitation! Because the man exploits the wife and v.v., and wants, really, to be better exploited in the sex, the parents exploit their children and v.v., the people exploit their home animals and also v.v. (the animals are glad to serve the people, don't doubt in this, they don't really want to be eaten by us, but to be exploited -- why not, when we feed them?). Sometimes such mutual exploitation is called symbiosis, and in this sense the capitalism is contemporary symbiosis of capitalists and hired workers. The only other way is the ...
self-exploitation, because without exploitation a society is unthinkable, but far away from all people are of the category of so called workaholics, the usual, let's say, 90 % of the people, need somebody else to force them to give their utmost! So it is, so is easier for us, this is unavoidable. So that, again, the point is in finding of the
desired form of exploitation.
But the times change, the productive means develop (how the communists have said, but you can put this in other words if you like), and then it comes time when the productive means, the speed with which everything is produced, the conditions of work, et cetera, begin not to correspond good with the kind of exploitation and people begin to complain, and the form of exploitation has to be changed and then comes some new social order, that's it. To this
transitional moment has to be paid big attention, because not only the very transition is worse than each of the states or steps, but it has to be well synchronized in the time, it has not to happen neither earlier, nor later! That it has not to happen later is clear, there arise revolutionary situations, but the transition should not happen earlier, because if something has existed for a long time then its necessity is obvious, without it may arise situation of lack of force or compulsion, and in my old years I have come to the conclusion that to leave a big group of humans (or animals) without compulsion, without strong necessity to
fight for something important, is perilous with bad consequences. How the exploitation is necessary and has even
healthy effect over the exploited persons, so the compulsion to act in some desired direction, to mobilize us for some common activity, is basic requirement. You can take for example the period of abolishing of serfdom, and we are more or less in similar situation nowadays in the end of the dying capitalism, on what I will dwell a bit in the next point.
2. Money
The existence of money is necessary at least because this gives us some common equivalent for measuring of everything (even when "everything" is too obliging word). I can find also here some linguistic proof, and this is the parallel of French
parite-parity with the Turkish
para-money, which word is known also in Bulgarian. So that, OK, let us preserve the money, but ... . But, ha, ha, from dialectical point of view the only evolution that can appear here is to come to rejecting of the money, when the very money will reject themselves! Because this is how it often happens -- to remind you here the ... Christian phrase that Christ defeated the death by the very death -- and nowadays more and more people, at least in the well developed countries, begin to contempt the money (I have heard at least in some films the phrase, that this is only money). And, really, we, the majority of people on the world, work in order to think later how to spend the money, to get rid of it; and this at the same time when many people have not enough money for basic everyday needs (like myself, who, as said, have deserved a pension of 3 ... bus tickets daily for
all expenses). What leads us to the obvious conclusion that in pretty short time, this century or at most in the next, we will remain without stimulus in our lives, and either the society will dissolve itself (what is the worse variant, I don't believe in it) or we have to find some better way for ensuring of the exploitation, which is necessary to maintain the society glued together.
So what is necessary to be done here is in two different directions, for one thing the minimal income has to be raised (because it is laughable to cite this my Bulgarian pension, and to remind you that there are people who live much worse, I myself have lived worse for about
10 years), and the another direction is to invent some more social, more directed to the group and not to the single person, form of ownership (where I have expressed some thoughts in my recent
Communionismo). So that I will discuss here chiefly the proposition for one standard raising of minimal income in the most obvious way -- via some kind of
pension or allowance, paid to everybody each month, and then
subtracted from the income, if there is an income! The idea is surely brilliant (like everything that I propose, right?) and I will explain it in more details in the next point, but here I want to stress only on that moment, that we have to begin, in whatever possible way, to proclaim that to work only for money is ...
debasing, surely, this is against what each religion -- you pick the desired by you -- declares, that everything is vanity, that one has to satisfy his necessities, yet not to live in (filthy) abundance. More or less similar view was and is applied with the payments to the scientists (what I know, having lived for some time as research assistant), so that this, what I propose, is not utopia, no, I simply try to raise the other common people to the stage of aristocracy (with or without quotes).
3. Allowances For Everybody
As I said, the idea is simple: there has to be some banking institution, let's name it Allowance Bank (AB), where everybody, young or old, yet for the beginning let us say that only for persons above passport age, must have an account under his (or her) Unique Citizenship Number (UCN), or also called personal security number, or PIN code, or the like, via which account all money which he receives is directed. Then in the beginning of each month he receives, as if in advance, the established for the moment Minimal Allowance (MA), and what he receives later in the month is added, but by each of the receipts is made a try to subtract the already received allowance, if this can be done, so that in the end of the month will be seen whether he takes from the state or not. Naturally there have to be accounted for older periods, at least for the current year, and averaged (because there may be seasonal workers, or illness, or something of the kind), and all other social payments will be caught by this bank and restituted to the state, and even sometimes, when this proves necessary for some person, the allowance can be paid on weekly basis, something like this. And surely that all employers will be obliged to perform all payments via these bank accounts.
It is obvious that there will be no problems for contemporary computer systems to perform all necessary operations, and in this way the income of everybody will be easier accessible by the state for the purpose of taxing, what will be useful for the state. But this will be useful also for the people, because when the state pays something to everybody then it will seek its ways for reimbursing of the given money, which otherwise may be delayed (for various reasons), hence this will be a secure "cap" over all payments to the people, like pensions, sick-leaves, stipends, et cetera. So that this will be a panacea for everybody, providing all these money can be found, right? But why not to find them, if this is necessary? For one thing because the mayor part of the payments is already paid by some institution (say, the pensions). For another thing because it will be
known in advance how much money is needed, and everything will be planned, the ways must have been found before this. For one more thing because to exist people who must receive such payments
without other reasons (i.e. they are simply without income, not ill, or studying, or the like) has to be considered as
exceptional, and in a well organized country (excluding such barbarian ones like Bulgaria, to be sure) such people
must not exist, somebody has to care about such people simply because they are living persons, no matter lazy or drug-addicted or imbeciles, or whatever. And for one more reason, because these are
not really big money, I will show this now: the payment of salaries in an average company (it surely depend on the company but there have to be some average value) is usually about 10 % of all expenses of the company (the major part being amortizations for buildings and equipment, raw materials, transport means, and the like), and if the persons in such need are about another 10 % (and they should
not be more than this, even in Bulgaria I don't suppose that they will be more than 20 %), so this means (if you express the percents as fractions) just 1 (
one) percent of the expenses of the state for the given period!
OK, then remains only to say how big must be this MA, and I propose also something close to the reason, namely
1/3 of the Minimal Monthly Salary (MMS) in the general case; for very poor countries (like Bulgaria or Bangladesh), this can be made to 1/4 of MMS but never less than this, and the tendency has to be to come up to 1/2 of MMS! Obviously such countries and cases and people who live on pensions equal to about 3 bus tickets (like myself) daily (or have even smaller income, zero income) have to disappear, they have to receive something, this is moral duty for each country and Government, now and ever after, as is said. The idea is, naturally, that these measures will include everybody even from the nursery (includeing) and to the grave (excluding), what can be put in other words as: to live
like in the paradise, to have what everybody needs, something what the communists stated, and have more or less succeeded to build. And mark that everything expressed in MMS, not in actual money, makes the measures established for all countries and for all times, this is really universal approach.
Ah, and why I have chosen this 1/3 MMS? From personal experience, but also out of some universal quotas, this is 3 times less than the minimum and such big jumps must not exist, it is usually (according to me, and I suppose to every thinking person) allowed to decrease or increase something --
whatever -- till 2 times, 2 and a bit, but not more! There is also the argument that the average salary is (was by us, and has to be, and is so on the West, too) about 2.5 (rather between 2 and 2.5) times the MMS, but if it reaches the number 3 (how it was in Bulgaria somewhere in the very end of the last century) then something is wrong; hence it is taken as normal for the minimum to be about 2.5 times less than the average, and I extend (in fact, extrapolate) this rule for the minimal allowance being 3 times less than the MMS.
The last moment here is to rebut some of the readers who will want to say that this will make the nation consist chiefly of idlers who will be carried on the shoulders of conscious workers. This will never happen for the simple reason that 1/3 is exactly 7 times less than 2.33 = 7/3, i.e. such income will be 7 times less than the average, and as far as everybody strives to have something more than the average (surely), then this will mean 10 (
ten) times less than the expected by him! So do you think that the people will begin to
want en masse to receive 10 times less than the expected, ah? And if you think so then you have to be simply cuckoo, I will not orient myself on such persons.
4. Social Prices
This is also important and natural point, the prices have to be in some
correspondence with the means of the people, because if they are not, then revolutionary situations arise, and nobody wants nowadays (or whenever) to have revolutions. Surely this can be made easier under totalitarian order, as it was made, but something can be done also in conditions of market economy, and is done in countries that can allow themselves to take some measures. I mean that always can be performed some reimbursement, or some products can be offered on reduced prices to some people, such things. Yet this is adhocracy, this is not the right way to do the things, and I have come to the right way before several years under my usual pseudonym, which I will express roughly here (and more detailed in the Program of the party). The idea is that it is easy to take something from the people adding taxes but it is more difficult to reduce the prices and in such cases have to exist some banking institution, say Social Bank (SB), then some classification of the goods that have to be monitored and reduced, say Social Products (SP), then have to be used some bank cards where (i.e. in the accounts) are entered the expenses for these SP, it is made comparison with the personal income measured in MMS, and on the basis of this is calculated what part of the products have to be reimbursed to the person. Let us first leave aside the question from where the money for this reimbursement will come, because it has to come from some taxation of the population (and I don't intend to do the work of the Ministry of Finances), and clear the other notions.
So SPs can be, firstly and predominantly, all kinds of communal expenses like: central heating, electricity, transport (the notorious bus tickets), but maybe also some kind (the cheapest) of bread or sugar or oil (it depends), then all payments for education, healthcare, such things. As numbers they must not be too many, maybe about dozen things, and initially only 4-5 things, but the cards and this bank, and some Social Ministry have to exist, and it has to be begun with mere monitoring of social status of
every citizen, and this has to be done
all the time (not by one party, and then rejected by the next), this means new social policy, people! Yet when once the way is paved it will be easier later. And with this my proposition of restoring of expenses, although it is more difficult to be done than in totalitarian times, it is in a way
better planed (how can I plan something badly, ah?), because is given
exactly to the persons in need, not like with equally reduced prices for everybody (say, of milk).
Anyway, there have to be social prices for the social products, they should
not be offered on market mechanism, this means, quite often, discrimination, maybe even apartheid of some category of people, this is more than obvious. When one has to pay for education this is discrimination, the same for healthcare, this is returning to the capitalism of a century back, and exactly this is what happened in Bulgaria with our
never ending transition to democracy. And, mark, that in well organized countries, where such measures
are taken (say, there are programs for healing of drug addicted, or for integration of some category of citizens, or for providing of scholarships, etc.) then they meet with the same problems, I don't propose something new, I just want these measures to be
integrated in the governing of the state.
But there can be thought some other approach, there can be collected some
communal taxes from all working people and they to be used later for reducing of the prices of some communal expenses of first necessity (like central heating). Here we have to come to some melting of communism with capitalism, this is unavoidable, there are things that have to be done, otherwise they reflect over the society. And one more moment, the taxes have to be taken just according with the income
in the families or together living people, not from every working person counted as single, and this is done
nowhere, as far as I know, and there is no excuse for not doing this, because here we have not big number of companies and market mechanism and returning of money, no, this is clear taking! What I mean is that there is a difference, and a
big one, whether one lives alone or has dependent persons (chiefly children), so that if some single mother with one child receives 2 MMS, and there is not a known father, then her income has to be first divided by 2 and taken ... in fact, nothing! Each child has to be either added to
one of the parents (what is the better approach, but as if morally hardly acceptable), or then to be divided by 2 halves and the dependent persons to be counted with each of the parents. Only this is the correct way for socializing of the society. And it is not so difficult this to be done, because there are kept data about every possible heirs, as well also about the income of each person; they can be in different institutions, but they can be somehow united, and only then to be spoken about really social prices for social products.
5. The Future
The future is interesting in order to predict it, what is natural. I will not dwell on the scientific aspects of the future because here the new discoveries have begun to appear too fast to be predicted, but the disturbing for me moment is the
high speed with which our knowledge grows and the things change, because this speed can't continue to grow with such steps, something has to lessen it, we can't orient ourselves so fast. There are reasons to believe me here, because about this, that the science does not make people happy,
all religions are unanimous, this is a bad symptom, and I may be an atheist but am bound to listen to what the
intersection of all religions (how the mathematicians say) proclaims, yet I have also other, dialectical considerations in my mind. What I mean is simple, yet I have not met it in the literature (maybe because it is too elementary), and it is that there are only two ways to continue to move in the
same direction -- what here means to increase the scientific progress and to better our live with it -- namely: by sinusoid, or by exponent, or, of course, by a mixture of these processes (like in oscillation of the pendulum). What means, with simple words, that we will return back to some state (of primordial or whatever) chaos -- this is the sinusoid or the cycle --, or will begin to slow our movement -- what the exponent does, it is infinitely
smooth curve. I can't say why we will lessen the speed of development (if at all), but if we do not do this, then the cataclysms are waiting for us, like the First and Second World wars.
So that these problems exist, but I am interesting here only what will happen in the social sphere. This will be, for one thing, reducing or ignoring of the power of money, finding of other stimuli for working and living, maybe something like communist moral values, together with the money, and for another thing the increasing of self-exploitation as the highest possible form of exploitation; we have to be ready for both of these directions and to take corresponding measures. I am inventing here nothing, because it is a
shame in a society of universal abundance, to continue to work for money, which, in the end, is
not necessary for us, we just wonder for what to throw it fast away. And you see that when we do not lead world wars, only some local ones, there appeared negative bank interests, what, to be brief, means that people
have, as a rule, money, but they are neither feeling secure enough in order to throw it away, nor know for what exactly to use it, for they need nothing really! This is a kind of devilish circle (
circulo vicioso in Italian), and we have not a ready solution, no, we are even worsening the situation, because we try to invent new desires which to be satisfied, and, respectively, new
work for the people, not like it was in all historical times,
people for some work needed to be done. Here is necessary some new idea to enliven the economy, and the only way out of the difficulties is to increase somehow the
human (not of various automata and robots) work, but we don't want to do this because this is economically ineffective. While the people
want to work, to do something, to see the results of their activity, this can't be avoided.
So that you see that I am right to be bothered by these problems and to invent some unheard of parties, because we are as if dumbfounded and know not what to do, we are, for one thing, happy to have a heap of things, but for another thing are not really happy. This is why I propose measures for lifting of the lower boundary of some minority of people -- what, in fact, leads to higher equalizing of the citizens, more or less like by the communism, but also what the capitalists want, because this means also enlarging of the middle class --, but on the other hand I propose (not only here, in my recent
Communionismo, too) some ways for increasing of the grouping of people, what has to lead to more secure life -- what has in turn to lead to using of the available money, to exiting of the crisis, even to preventing of the crises. Because the crises arise while is produced more than necessary, but what is necessary is not the production, important is the happiness. So that we have to try to increase the ways for personal development and improvement, for the reason that this is what gives pleasure to the people.
However we twist it, the production directed by money, is bad and immoral, it has to be directed by some reasonable estimates about the needs; also to ask people directly what they want -- and the market does exactly this, it offers this and that to see what is more attractive, like also the democracy -- is in many cases at least non-pedagogical, but quite often simply cheating maneuver, people are like little children (when in big groups), this distorts the real needs of the masses. Also the market is a kind of chaos, this
may serve as regulator, but not for a long time and there have to be searched better ways for regulation. And so on, yet I will dig here further in the Program of the party.
6. Conclusion
Who has come till here has seen that this is, really, some new, and fresh in its spirit, party, which has to be equally good for everybody, for the rich and the poor, for all countries, and for all times. Why? Because I simply speak about the eternal dream of mankind, about building of paradise on Earth, just for the reason that now we
can do this, we have all means and are bound to do it, because ..., well, because otherwise we will
again do this, but on the price of bigger social disturbances and victims, that's how it is! We just can't break our bad or outmoded ideas or habits, and continue to do things that are not necessary. While if there will be not really poor citizens, if there could be helped exactly to the persons in need, if we will find better ways to use money chiefly for
measuring of the goods but not as means for directing of the production and relations between people, we will give the latter more freedom to do what they want to do (in order to stick out with something, to do some good deed to the others). As I mentioned, the ultimate goal of the money is to
negate itself, to make people scorn at it, because it, really, does not exist in the world (between the animals), it is our human invention, and we should not live in an entirely unreal world, we have to try, at least, to seek for real values, for feelings, for satisfaction, not, so to say, to smell a pictured rose. The world of money is a kind of
virtual reality, we have to take this as granted, and not to overdo some ideas.
In a way, I propose a new social order, a kind of communal capitalism, or capitalistic communism, but the point is that this is not utopia, it is quite easily realizable thing, or at least my ideas must be tried, this has infinitely lower social price than the social disturbances, and unsolved problems return to us again and again.
So this was more or less 1/3 of the material, there remain also the Program, where will be discussed chiefly economic and managerial questions, and the Codex, where will be focused on the bettering of the rulers. Because my NAPUK-in-spite-of party is against all bad habits in the post-industrial society. If you have come to here, read the other parts, too.
June, 2018, Sofia, Bulgaria