1. Co-Creation
2. Biological Priority and Psychological Supremacy
3. Personalization

Twenty theses advanced by Hector Sabelli, M.D., Ph.D.
and co-workers at the Chicago Center for Creative Development

Social and economic processes are not determined, nor are they random or a matter of free choice. They are creative in the same sense that the development of a human person, from a simple cell to a unique individual, is creative. Interactions co-create diversity, novelty, and complexity rather than equilibrium. The scientific basis of co-creation is the new science of creative processes, towards which the authors have contributed the discovery of bios, and its generation by bipolar feedback. These studies are presented in scientific journals and in Bios. A Study of Creation (World Scientific, April 2005). Biotic patterns are found in fundamental physical, biological, and economic processes. Biotic patterns are generated by positive and negative interactions between complementary opposites. Stressing the need for both positive and negative interactions for evolution departs from Darwinian evolutionism, Marxist class struggle, and capitalist economics, and opens new avenues for social action.

Social and economic processes are co-created by physical and biological processes that have priority, and by psychological and cultural processes that have supremacy. Life, not money, represents the real “bottom line”. Health care, peace, and a healthy environment are thus political priorities around which to take the initiative. Yet, to build a popular majority requires attending to collective (and diverse) cultural and emotional processes. While economics has served as the reference science for both capitalism and socialism, healthy social development requires comprehensive scientific grounds from environmental science to human psychology.

Biological Priority and Psychological Supremacy is a new approach to human science and clinical practice developed at Rush University Medical Center, and first published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. This concept also applies to social practice. It provides a new vision for society -personalization.

Nothing less than a new vision will do. Idea-less politics fails to nucleate a majority. Resistance has not contained war, nor the class war of the greedy against the poor. We need to gain the initiative. We need a broad-based vision, grounded on biological, social and psychological science.

These are organized as a set of scientific hypotheses and proposals for creative social development, with various degrees of empirical and/or mathematical evidence. Together they provide a method and a vision for social change.

1 Creative development: Social systems evolve from simple to complex. Social systems are not conserved by homeostatic feedback mechanisms, or by self-reproduction (as described by Marxism and some contemporary systems models). Human history is a creative development that starts with biological givens: age, sex, social cooperation in economic activities (food, shelter), raising the young, and defense of the group and its territory. The interaction of these simple original processes generates diverse, novel and complex patterns, including local, complex, and unique agents and events.[1] The outcomes of this evolutionary process are novel and unpredictable, but not accidental. Nor are they determined once and forever by biological or economic laws. As other evolutionary processes, socioeconomic development is both causal and creative.

2 Creative and destructive development: Social processes, as physical ones, evolve towards greater complexity, but creation is also accompanied by destructive consequences, whether or not predictable and/or intended. Industrial growth often produces ecological destruction. The accumulation of wealth by some persons or nations often impoverishes others. Reverse development generates “underdevelopment” (e.g. the “development” produced by globalization generates deindustrialization and pauperization in many countries). Technological advance accelerates both creative and destructive processes, hence the catastrophes that opened the 21^st century (wars, terrorism, epidemics, economic collapses, financial scandals). Social development is a race between opposing creative and destructive processes (“enantiodromia”). To accelerate creation over destructiveness requires not only changing our current policies now, but also permanent vigilance in the future to attend to unpredictable and unintended consequences of policies that today we regard as healthy.

3 Social Bios: The concept of creative social development is based on mathematical economics. The mathematical analysis of economic data demonstrates that economic processes display life–like patterns (bios). They rarely show stability, periodicity, randomness, or chaos (except in pathological situations). Economic processes do not tend to equilibrium as postulated by standard economics. It is thus proposed that other social processes are also biotic. A biotic process is a far from equilibrium, causal, and creative process, characterized by continuity, diversification, novelty and nonrandom complexity. Social processes are biotic, including multiple bipolar feedbacks (cooperation and conflict), as contrasted to integration into harmonic systems (society as organism as in the Medieval theories resurrected by some modern Catholic thinkers, systems scientists and self-organization models) and conflict theories (Darwinism, Marxism, Capitalism). Biotic processes are extremely sensitive to conditions, so we can modify them with our actions; for the same reason, we can only predict the immediate consequences of these actions. Therefore, we need methods, not plans, and ends never justify means.

4. Creative factors: Mathematical models indicate the factors that promote creation, thereby suggesting methods to promote social change. Creative outcomes such as bios are generated by action, opposition and conservation. Notably, these factors are embodied in the three universal aspects of all processes, energy, information and matter:

(1) Action, in physics, is the change of energy in time. Mathematical models show that repetitive action is a necessary factor to generate creation. Creativity requires agency and spontaneity. Correspondingly, to promote social progress, one must act rather than react, and seize the initiative.

(2) Opposition: Information is contained in distinction, the difference or opposition between two or more complementary values. Opposites coexist: self and other, harmony and conflict, friend and enemy, simple and complex. Every system includes and generates oppositions. Evolution proceeds by bifurcation, i.e. the partition of a single process into opposites; repeated bifurcations generate diversity, novelty, complexity and multiplicity. In turn, opposites interact and may combine, thereby forming complex systems. Information itself involves its opposite, misinformation, as in error, propaganda, deception, and self-deception; this implies the need for methodological doubt, continual vigilance and public refutation of systematic lies from political, religious and commercial sources.

Opposition is creative, a concept dating from ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy, and later reduced by Darwinism and Marxism to competition and struggle. Creative action requires going both with and against the flow, as in crossing a river diagonally rather than struggling against the current or letting oneself go. Social health, political democracy, and sustainable economic progress require both cooperation and conflict. Ideas flourish through discussion and are equally unmanned by ready acceptance or pure criticism. One-party systems and bipartisan consensus hinder progress.

Opposition is most creative when it is self-opposition or feedback. Feedback is necessary for creative development. The economy deteriorates when determined by plans drafted by financial institutions, governments, or corporations without any feedback.

Feedback is most creative when it is bipolar, i.e. both positive and negative. Bipolar feedback is a cyclic engine for development. Unipolar feedback (either positive or negative) can generate chaos or equilibrium, but not complexity. In social processes, as in natural ones, progress results from the coexistence or alternation of synergy and antagonism, as contrasted to strategies that rely solely on cooperation or competition/struggle. Creative economic development requires bipolar feedback (abundance and scarcity). Economic processes display a biotic pattern, indicating their generation by bipolar feedback processes of consumption and production. In other words, the interaction of demand and supply generates bios, not equilibrium as postulated by standard economics. Classic economics postulates scarcity as the sole economic motivator, and international financiers propose austerity programs for third world countries. Just as mathematical models of scarcity (unipolar feedback) produce chaos (but not bios), social chaos is indeed observed in third world economies that have accepted austerity programs. Development is fostered by the interaction of abundance and scarcity. Natural abundance allowed the emergence of life and human societies, and is still a central issue in the modern economy. Social progress emerges from the ability of farming and industry to generate abundance, and crises often result from overproduction rather than scarcity.

(3) Continuous transformation: Conservation, continuity, and nucleation are required for constructive processes (physical, economic or cultural). Matter is conserved though the ceaseless formation, transformation and destruction of systems. Societies evolve by transforming rather than replacing pre-existing economic and legal systems. The conservation of identity is essential: persons as well as groups normally wish to maintain their belief systems and their loyalty to family, country and church. Creation requires conservation and progress –this implies a political stance drastically different from conservatives who strive to preserve antiquated, dysfunctional and oppressive systems as well as from progressives of either capitalist or socialist ideology.

5 Social roles, classes and systems: Each person plays a set of generic social roles according to age, sex, class, and type (ethnic group, “race”, nationality, religion). Each of these consists of a smaller set of roles, each of which is paired with a complementary opposite counter-role in a relation of mutual bipolar feedback. These relations of mutual bipolar feedback occur in society at large (which has priority) and in the family (which has supremacy), and include (1) the temporal changes of age and consequent relation between generations; (2) the relation between two biologically determined sexes; (3) the interactions among three or more classes defined by power over the use of tools and weapons, and among ethnic groups largely defined by past and/or present membership into a system. Age, sex, class, and type are generators of behavior, not simply categories for classification. Roles do not determine sharply delimited groupings, as a person may play multiple roles (e.g. son and father, employer and employee), and social mobility is real in modern society –it is however, limited, and in any case, it does not diminish the need for social equity.

History is created by cooperation and conflict within and among generations, sexes, classes, and systems, not solely by their struggle or their integration into harmonic systems. This role theory is at variance with individualistic accounts that focus on conflict within classes and with socialist theories of progress through class struggle. It is more insightful to see the continuity of families and of age roles than to focus on the conflict of generations. It is insightful to see that sexes epitomize the co-creation of opposites rather than to focus on patriarchy or feminism. It diminishes history to regard it as struggle between rich and poor. Class struggle is no more noble than racial struggle. It is not a desirable path to social liberation. Yet, social movements cannot ignore class issues, particularly not in the mist of an offensive against workers’ rights. Class struggle is currently waged by greedy governing classes to further enhance their privileges, thereby generating destabilizing polarization. Likewise, the exploitation of poor nations requires wars of conquest, and generates terrorism and revolution. The 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe and South Africa demonstrate the possibility of profound change without violence. Social progress is best served by class peace and legality, resisting the offensive of the greedy in a nonviolent manner, and taking the initiative with new proposals for social development that generate effective majorities.

6. Social opposites co-determine each other. Spouses make themselves happy only by making their spouses happy. Each Self creates an Other in its own image. Czarism created communism, and communism created anticommunism. Imperialism created Islamic terrorism, and Islamic terrorism generated American military interventions. Black-or-white thinking is inherently destructive. Conflict generates paranoia, rage, fear and submission to authoritarian leaders. We co-create not only with our allies but also with our enemies. It is thus desirable to promote cooperation and non-violent opposition rather than class or national struggle. At the very least, make peace. Armed conflicts devastate both antagonists –even the most powerful nation cannot prevent destruction by terrorists. It is meaningless to be peaceful only with our allies. One can make peace only with our enemies. One cannot ignore when the other is an enemy: one must defend oneself and protect others. But “preventive” war does not make peace. One can never kill every enemy: attempting to do so only creates new ones. Terrorism flourishes when political opposition is suppressed. One cannot wait until the enemy changes leader or tactics. One makes peace by opposing the war parties on both sides of a conflict. One makes peace by respecting the other, and abstaining from exploitation and aggression.

7. Action, opposition and structure, the factors required for creative processing, are embodied in all processes. Energy, information and matter are inseparable aspects of processes at all levels of organization, not three separate components[2] of processes. Social movements must attend equally to all three. This requires consideration of processes of interaction that cannot be conceptualized as bounded systems. Even from the purely material viewpoint, families are processes extending in space and time, and have no boundaries. A person forms a system centered on the body, including an energetic field of affective and economic interactions with relatives, co-workers and friends, and a larger informational field of social communication. Social systems also involve external processes; they are not defined by their apparent boundaries. Personal systems, as well as different types of collective systems (family, community, nation, corporation, party), by necessity overlap with each other and involve multiple mutual and bipolar feedbacks.

“Material” processes are simple, i.e. they have lower density of information relative to their energetic and material content. “Ideal” (mental, cultural, spiritual) processes are complex, i.e. they have greater information density. Neither material processes nor ideas have absolute primacy in human life. Instead, the concept of primacy must be divided into the complementary categories of priority and supremacy. This notion diverges sharply from biological, economic and historic materialism, as well as from philosophical, cultural and religious idealism.

8. Physical priority and mental supremacy in human processes: Human processes are hierarchically organized in levels according to both evolution and complexity: physical < biological < economic < social < personal (psychological). Social processes are co-created by the priority of physical and biological needs and the supremacy of psychological and cultural factors. Social processes are simpler and older than individual psychological development. Humans are first social and familiar animals; psychological individuality is acquired: we develop within the family and the community. Solidarity and affection are fundamental biological instincts; they have priority over self-interest. Selfishness is not a psychological fact; it is ideology or sociopathy. (In contrast, fashionable economic and sociobiological theories regard selfishness as normal and normative.) Sociobiological roles of age and sex have priority; economic and cultural roles have supremacy.

Processes at each level of organization are in part endogenous and in part co-determined by processes at simpler or more complex levels. The interactions may be expected to be largely synergistic; for instance, biological and social factors work largely together in determining the relation between sexes, but there are also divergences between the biological and the social that generate change. (In contrast, religionists and sociobiologists see the relation between sexes as natural and unchangeable, while feminists regard them as purely socially determined and artificial.) Processes at different levels of organization interact in a bi-directional and hierarchical manner. Simple processes are extensive in space, time, energy and mass, and have temporal priority. Higher levels have greater flow of energy and information density (complexity), and are more creative.

9. Priority of the simple: Physical priorities of social significance include temperature (e.g. global warming), clean air and fresh water. The priority of life includes peace, human health, and the health of the planet. [In contrast, both capitalist and socialist ideologies regard economics as the basis for social politics.] Medical care appeals most directly to all persons, poor or rich; increasing awareness of the dishonest behavior of multinational pharmaceutical corporations provides insight into the pitfalls of profit as the sole organizer of social life. Peace will progressively become a major goal for the majority, given the unavoidable consequences of foreign military interventions including their eventual defeat by the invaded nations –wars for independence eventually succeed.

Physical resources and the health of the population are the bases of sound economic development. Time after time, entire civilizations have perished as result of depletion of resources, and we are now threatened by worldwide pollution of air and water. Increasingly, health issues weigh heavily on economic welfare. At the individual level, almost half of bankruptcies in the USA in 2004 resulted from medical expenses. At the collective level, the USA has the world’s greatest expenditure in health care and an increasingly declining level of health, including the worst infant mortality among the 34 most advanced / wealthy countries.

Survival has priority. Self-defense is necessary at every level of organization, not only national, but also generational, sexual, economical and racial. Bipolar feedback does not imply unconditional peacefulness; it also includes struggle. Being co-creative leads us to abhor violence but it requires responding to aggression, albeit without escalating it.

Physical dominance has been instrumental in the generation of age and sex inequities. Physical domination of one human group by another through war has been a basic process in the generation of class and race hierarchies. [In contrast, many theoreticians attribute sex and class hierarchies to psychological, intellectual and cultural advantages, or to economic reasons.]

10. Supremacy of the complex: Although survival has priority, people risk their lives to save others, and also in wars fueled by ambition, conformity, patriotism, or religion. For most people, relationships are more important than money. Money is not only wealth and power, but also a status symbol. Narcissism often drives economic competition. The physical and biological environment has priority in economic processes, but the social, economic and legal systems have supremacy in determining the environment. In turn, economic motivations largely predetermine our ideas and moral values, but knowledge and moral values are extremely important regarding what we consider economically or legally sound. Depletion and pollution are the direct result of an outmoded legal system designed to foster profits at a time in which the scale of economy was much smaller. Ideas have supremacy.

The supremacy of the complex has practical implications regarding social action. While radical ideologies focus on the material roots (priority), social movements must also attend to mental processes: knowledge, feelings, and beliefs. Social movements require both social insight (i.e. science) and motivation (i.e. the spirit). Social theory is needed; practice alone will not do. The popular successes of Darwinism, Marxism and religious fundamentalism stem from their clear formulation of ideas. We must now formulate equally comprehensive and clear principles.

Culture is an economic asset. Technical know-how and professional education have immediate economic values. American social movements must assert the right to free education that already exists in many others countries.

Language must be defended against its systematic distortion and euphemisms (“collateral damage” for civilian casualties); social movements must speak the language of class, undeterred by taboos created by those who also exile “liberalism” from political language.

Psychological issues are of foremost importance. Hope and trust move persons to create. Sexual repression and aggressiveness amalgamate in religion, affecting personal relations and promoting torture. Fear drives people to war. Emotional depression (as during economic depressions), rage (e.g. German response to Versailles “peace”) and fear (e.g. American after the 9-11 attack) are major historical factors, indicating the potential usefulness of psychotherapeutic techniques in social action.

Given the importance of psychological, ideological and moral issues, it is important to contest the false, immoral norms and beliefs propagated in the name of religion, morality and patriotism. The prestige of science and medicine can assists us to this end. Scientific concepts of mental health provide genuine and credible moral criteria from which to foster creative social development. Mental health is a sine qua non for spirituality.

Social creative development requires incorporating religious movements. Religions have served as pillars for despotic systems but they have also been vehicles for liberation. Religious fundamentalisms, while extremely dangerous as they promote ignorance, war and terrorism, must fail, as modern society cannot do without science and technology. This opens an avenue for scientifically grounded, psychologically healthy, and socially responsible religious movements. They may play a key role in promoting peace and justice.

11. Priority of systemic causes and supremacy of personal action: As fundamental social processes are generic and systemic (e.g. age, sex, class), creative social action needs a global focus that addresses systemic causes. To sustain a livable planet, focus on climate change and its economic roots, not on garbage recycling.

The natural environment, the relative status of sexes, and salary levels are largely determined at national and even international levels, and cannot be drastically modified by local action. Land, water and air, are collective issues. We cannot do much to improve the quality of air in our individual home, we can do a little more collectively to decrease pollution in our city. Planetary action is required to maintain the Amazon forest alive and prevent its destruction by the timber industry. We can filter the water at home, but we cannot prevent the contamination of fish by mercury. At this time, the ocean is being privatized, just as the land was before, and the air will be in the future, if markets continue to dominate persons. The privatization of land converted the British peasants into urban proletarians in the eighteenth century; in the next century, it converted the African farmers into disposed farmhands –just prior to their transformation into savages by Hollywood movies. Fundamental social processes such as class relation between executives and employees are global (at least national, but increasingly international) and cannot be adequately addressed locally, one corporation at the time. Social collective interests must be satisfied to some degree for individual interests to be satisfied. There is no way in which individuals can control the quality of air and water, the incidence of crime, or global warming.

The good will of particular individuals or corporations will fail for the most part to successfully change current conditions –although some creative executives have managed to do it. Consider, for instance, a company that increases its workers’ salaries and / or modifies production procedures to protect the environment while its competitors do not, will increase the cost of its products, decrease its profits, and fail in the market. Only a collective change in all companies that compete with each other allows each of them to improve the situation of its employees and to protect the natural environment. Thus, when governments refuse to enact laws and instead rely on voluntary changes, they are in practice insuring that workers will be exploited and the environment will be damaged.

Rene Dubos’ notion “Think globally, act locally” has many positive implications, but its opposite “Think locally, act globally” is equally valid. Thinking locally, i.e. about what we actually know, helps us to understand more concretely general issues. Acting globally is absolutely necessary to deal with problems generated by large, macroscopic, systemic, causes. This fact is obvious but not trivial, because many persons, with the best intentions, from religious pastors to psychologists and environmentalists, regard individual, local actions as the way to produce social change. This “atomistic” way of thinking misrepresents reality, and misdirects action. It drives efforts from efficacious ways to change things for the better. Global change seldom results from the sum of local actions. The addition of individual actions can be effective only when it becomes collective, e.g. when we disseminate what we judge to be the right behavior. An enormously important case has been the anti-smoking campaigns in the USA.

Acting globally is also useful as self-defense, because locally a person is more vulnerable. Stressing the need to act globally does not diminish the importance of personal and local actions. They are just not to be confused with global interventions. It is often in the performance of our work that we can make our most important contribution to society –think of teachers, doctors, and mothers. Capitalists and executives can do much to change the lives of their employees and to protect the natural and social environment.

Thinking locally is important because we treat better those who we know personally, hence the commandment to treat all others like we treat our neighbors. Thinking locally implies treating others like persons. Thinking locally implies being a person. There is a very different reason why personal actions are important. Only our own personal behavior is truly relevant to ourselves. Whether you believe that you may be rewarded or punished in an afterworld, or you behave morally out of respect and love for yourself or others, your life is no worse or better than what you do. Every soldier is personally responsible for every bullet he fires (Sartre). Should the bullet finds its target, our personal behavior is truly relevant to others.

12. Priority and supremacy in generational, sexual and class hierarchies: Adults dominate over their children, who will grow up to dominate over their elder parents. Male supremacy is complemented by the priority of the mother as first love, authority, and identification figure. The governing classes derive their power from the acquiescence of the governed. Revolutions change the order of dominance but do not abolish hierarchy. As power generates perceptions and interests, the new dominant classes become similar to those they replaced. Abolishing private property does not eliminate power hierarchy, which depends on the control of property, not its “ownership”. Social justice does not advance by the replacement of one dominant group by another but by the wider distribution of power across all groups. -not equality but symmetry of power among complementary opposites. This increases feedback and thereby creativeness. A greater distribution of power is also necessary because sociopaths, being charming and yet antisocial, often achieve positions of commercial, religious or political power; criminals often govern (e.g. Caligula, Torquemada, Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Hussein). Thus, the governed must actively scrutinize and control the governors. In our times, a nonproductive class of financiers has gained control of industry, professions, science, politics and media; this system has created hunger in many countries, and economic hardships even in the USA. The destruction of the Argentine economy in 2001, gangster capitalism in Russia after 1991, the theft of Jewish property by Swiss bankers during the Holocaust, and the contemporary economic frauds perpetrated on the American people by giant corporations all illustrate the consequences of unregulated capitalism. We cannot abolish hierarchies, but we can eradicate abuse, misery, and oppression.

13. Priority of objective facts; supremacy of subjective interpretations: There are objective facts: global warming and evolution are not matters of opinion; presenting “the two sides of each question” often serves only to obscure reality. Complementarily, facts are interpreted, including psychological and cultural biases and distortions by ideological, political and commercial interests. Even scientific theories are human actions, not neutral and objective descriptions. Most economic theories prescribe rather than describe. By focusing on the present, ignoring centuries of predominance by other nations, and presenting current trends as universal biological, economic or psychological “law”, ideologically driven academics and the media connive to idealize current American capitalism as the summit of historical progress. What defines capitalism is not simply the control of the means of production; it is the control of feelings and ideas. Capital is an economic factor, but capitalism is an ideology. Capitalism is the idealization of capital as the notion that profit and property have supremacy in human nature. Most persons and most societies hold a very different set of values, placing God, family, or nation well above economic profit.

Interpretations are vital to understand social reality and to create social movements. One must identify the crucial issues and choose appropriate bifurcations that provide effective and forward looking majorities (for instance, focus on equal rights for homosexuals rather than same sex marriage). Activist majorities may be built by setting up objectives such as health care, the rights of elders, peace, the increase of social security, and containment of global warming that constitute thorough change and thorough opposition to the governing group, yet they can be expressed in terms of respect for life and the need for survival. Shifting objectives to attract the “center” weakens one’s position and strengthens the power of the rulers.

14. Social systems attract and expand: Wealth and population flow from periphery to center. International loans accelerate this transfer of wealth. Frontiers do not stop massive immigration. AIDS, pollution, and wars also reach the center. The migration of enterprises to the periphery de-industrializes the center, generating unemployment. Social systems enlarge from groups, to tribes, nations, empires, and globalization. Economic systems expand towards monopoly and stateless multinational corporations. Nationalism cannot succeed against the spontaneous flow towards unification. We cannot stop the development of empires, but we can civilize them by establishing international law, promoting social and political responsibility among their citizens, asserting political, economic and social rights for peripheral countries, and regulating and democratizing multinational corporations. At this time, we live during the expansion of the American empire. As a consolidating power, the USA is not the worst choice –consider the behavior of former empires. The problem resides in its military power, so even a small error in judgment can be more devastating than all despots throughout human history. Also, the current vision of empire is not desirable: it is dominated by impersonal corporations often controlled by dishonest executives, it has often supported gory military dictatorships in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and it is now bent on a program of continual war and world-wide domination that employs radioactive weapons and systematic torture. This imperial program has been accompanied by a decrease in internal democracy in the USA, comparable to the transition from republic to empire in Rome. Militarism replaces capitalism.

15. War is a crime: Self-defense is natural. Conflict is unavoidable and necessary. War is systematic and massive murder. War is systematic and massive robbery. The appropriation of the property of the defeated “natives” has been the main source of wealth since antiquity to our times. War, not the division of labor, is the main cause of class domination –warriors enslave the conquered and become lords to their compatriots. “Race” originates as class. Throughout history, military classes have become dominant as the consequence of war. Militarism, not capitalism, communism, or Islam, is the main enemy of freedom and justice. The defining feature of fascism in Germany, Japan and Latin America has been the overt and crude domination of society by military classes. The Red Army, and other armies of national liberation, dominated Communist and post-colonial African and Asian countries. Terrorism is a warrior ideology, and the mirror image of state-sponsored military terror. A major cause of war in our times is the development of war economies and war cultures, and the consequent domination of the nation by a complex of financial, industrial and military classes. Since the beginning of the Second World War, USA foreign policy, as well as internal economic priorities and political discourse, have been dominated by military objectives. The current expansion of the USA military, and their role as agents of multinational corporations, together with the power of modern weapons, generate new dangers. Yet America has a strong tradition of civilian control over its military. Also, the celebration of heroism, patriotism, holy wars and crusades by schools, churches, and the media may cease as those who up to now monopolized military power realize that chemical and biological warfare have created “poor man’s atomic bombs”, nuclear proliferation is already a reality, military force cannot preserve life even in the wealthiest nations, and when used to destroy enemies they only multiply their number. Self-defense is crucial, but peace-making is its most important tool.

16. Societies diversify roles, classes, and power: Social processes generate both polarization and diversification. Classes are spontaneously created in primitive societies, and are spontaneously recreated in socialist countries. Animal societies already include sociobiological classes determined by age and sex; the division of labor further diversifies society, creating a wider range of classes. Further progress may be expected to result in a greater diversification of classes, instead of their abolition. In the last century, three major classes have grown powerful: administrators, salaried professionals, and the military. The administrative class acquired and loss its power in communist countries but executives (as differentiated from capitalists) are becoming dominant in capitalist economies. With an increasing role for science in production, the professional class (physicians, scientists, engineers, etc.) has diversified, expanded in number, and increased in economic power, factors that propel it to a leading role.

Social development also differentiates institutions. Most countries have obtained the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers. The USA has achieved the separation of church and state. A separation of political and economic power is conceivable. Capitalist enterprises have evolved into stateless multinational corporations that increasingly control life and government in both central and peripheral countries. Just as monarchies evolved into republics, top down corporations may evolve into autonomous, internally democratic organizations. Workers, but not yet consumers, already sit in the governing bodies of some corporations; further democratization has been triggered in the USA by the massive financial scandals that followed capitalist deregulation. Also, the stateless character of multinationals opens the possibility of separating them from national political organization. Most countries have obtained the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers. The USA has achieved the separation of church and state. A separation of political and economic power is conceivable. National states and international institutions can protect consumers and workers from economic abuse and environmental poisoning only if neither the state is the employer (as in communism), nor the employers control the state (as in capitalism). The separation of political and corporative power would free corporations from the state, and free governmental and electoral processes from multinational, stateless corporations. This is against the current trend, but there is also a powerful sentiment among the people. Who could have ever predicted the separation of church and state?

17. Developing a winning vision for creative social development: To promote healthy social development, it is indispensable but not sufficient to be right; it is necessary to win. Positive plans and promises attract; criticism and opposition repel. The choice between an idea or person and its opposition is always the positive pole. Choosing to win requires to be co-creative. Each audience requires an appropriate language –in Poland, it is not sufficient to speak Polish; one must also “speak Catholic”. As the conservation of identity is essential, social movements require ideologies that emerge from the social culture. Importing ideologies rarely succeeds. Democratic movements in multicultural countries need to develop their ideas along several lines, and to convey them through multiple vehicles (major and minor parties, environmentalism, feminism, socially conscious religious groups). In America as in Islam, to have God in our side is not only convenient: it is necessary. In America, social movements require a scientific, American and Christian ideology. This is not to exclude non-Christians, but to regain a heritage. At this time, the name of Christianity is being used to support racist and sexist politics, corporate property, and an imperial enterprise. This is contrary to real Christianity. The Cross denounces torture and empire.

18. Personalization as a historical process: Central to historical development is personalization –the diversification of persons as individuals. Traditional societies foster family and community but not individuation. Modern societies often provide a cradle for empathic, differentiated and creative individuals. However, persons often remain tied to social identities; e.g. most Americans still say ”we” to refer to governmental actions they themselves regard as despicable. Also, personalization coexists with depersonalization in modern society. Democracy fosters personalization, but urbanization and markets depersonalize neighborhoods, services, medicine, education, and work. Privacy is reduced by the commercialization of personal information and by the increasing powers of policing agencies. Personal property is dispossessed in favor of corporate property.

Corporative property is not private property. Corporations are not persons; as sociopaths, they lack moral conscience –in fact, by law, they attend only to maximizing profits. Corporations make no decisions; decisions are made by real persons. Legal responsibilities should accrue to them. Regarding corporations as “legal persons” introduces conscienceless agents into society, and render those responsible immune to necessary legal controls. Corporations are not persons, and should loose their legal status as “legal persons”.

19. Developing a concept of personal property: Biological territory is shared by many species; all members of the community share the homeland. Personal property is an unalienable right that involves biological, social, familial, and individual aspects. All of them have been recognized throughout history in various ways (e.g. zoning and other limitations to property owned privately in our times). However, expropriation has also been fundamental in social history. Modern capitalism started with the expropriation of the land and the enslavement of native populations in America, Africa and Asia. This process continues today. This expropriation process is often labeled “privatization”. Contrary to the ideological notion of a “tragedy of the commons”, privatization destroyed the environment to a much larger extent than communal use. In our times, globalization has led to the closing of many enterprises as no longer profitable, particularly in the USA and other high wage countries. The economy of many countries has been devastated by globalization. Paradoxically, as result of the destruction of national economies by capitalist globalization, cooperative ownership is emerging as the embryonic origin of a new economy in culturally developed countries. Workers reopen the closed factories, manage them as cooperatives, and able to produce at a profit.[3] We can adopt this concept as a way to provide job security in countries with high wages and educated workers such as the USA: whenever a (large) company large closes a factory, the property of the physical facilities becomes collectively owned by the workers if they want to make it function as a cooperative. Workers’ recovery of failed business saves their communities, yet also allows personal freedom including private enterprise. This is not a utopia emerging from the head of an intellectual but a collective co-creation in a country transformed from rich to hungry by globalization and austerity economic programs. Workers’ recovery of failed business is a strategy that continues, supports and expands capitalism (albeit without a separate class of capitalists who appear to be as unnecessary as aristocrats were earlier on found to be). New economic systems must be developed within the context of the old, as capitalism emerged within the context of feudalism. Worker’s cooperatives are not communism, where the state owned the property and bureaucrats managed it, but a spontaneous emergence of cooperative property in an industrial society. The recovery of filing business by workers does not challenge property; it conserves it. In our times, cooperative property provides an alternative to both capitalism and socialism.

20. Personalization as a vision: As the personal is the highest level of organization, social progress requires the personalization of social and economic processes, not only the socialization of individuals. Personalization is not individualism: as a person is a member of society before being an individual, social issues have priority in personalization. Social justice is necessary (albeit not sufficient) for personal liberation. A personalized social policy places medicine, education, industry and commerce at the service of persons, their health and liberty, rather than at the service of state, church or corporation. Society is made of persons, not governments or corporations. We need a new accounting system in which salaries are profit, not cost, and environmental damage is cost, not gratis. This requires a new taxation system in which the use of natural resources is paid to their owners –the people, and salaries are counted as tax credits. A personalized society recognizes the personal dimension of government. The global is personal. Global warming, mercury pollution, and radioactive weapons are personal issues. Persons make decisions, and persons suffer the consequences. Health, age and sex issues have priority over class issues. Striving for the rights of elders must be made into a priority political issue; the growth of the elder generation and the debate on social security provides an opportunity to take the initiative and reverse the current political trend. Because economics has priority over political life, personal freedom requires employment and private property, which, I repeat, is often embodied by cooperative property better than by corporate property. Personalization offers a new vision for society beyond both individualism and socialism.

Hector Sabelli, M.D., Ph.D. 2400 N. Lakeview, Chicago Illinois, USA 60614. Hector_Sabelli@rush.edu

[1] This conception of system as the giving rise to its parts through differentiation / bifurcation contrasts with the atomic / individualistic concept of systems as formed by the union of pre-existing part
[2] Energy, information and matter are regarded as separate components by most theories, and either matter or ideas are given primacy.
[3] For instance, when the 2001 collapse of the Argentine economy was accomplished in a few days by the collective action of USA banks that simultaneously exported all their assets, many factories closed because they could not make profits, creating massive unemployment. Argentine workers occupied these closed factories, obtained popular support, and thereby government authorization for their expropriation, created a cooperative system without bureaucrats, and managed to produce at a profit, and cheaper. This fact also refutes the notion that the poverty of Latin American nations is "underdevelopment" due to “lack of work culture”.