COMMUNITY IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

COMMUNITY IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

1. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS ARE KEY TO FREEDOM

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 96.

For the accomplishment of all these ends we must organize. Organization among us has already gone far but it must go much further and much higher. Organization is sacrifice. It is the sacrifice of opinions, of time, of work and of money, but it is, after all, the cheapest way of buying the most priceless of gifts--freedom and efficiency.
2. PRIVATE CONCERNS ARE A MYTH--EVERYTHING IS PUBLIC

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p.6.

I do not believe that government can carry on private business as well as private concerns, but I do believe that most of the human business called private is no more private than God’s blue sky, and that we are approaching a time when railroads, coal mines and many factories can and ought to be run by the public for the public. This is the way, as I see it, that the path leads and I follow it gladly and hopefully.
3. INDIVIDUAUSTIC SEPARATION LEADS TO SLAVERY

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p. 97. You cannot physically “separate” people today without turning back civilization one thousand years. Even at that time separation had to be absolute and complete or it meant conquest, slavery and caste. It means the same today and only fools are unaware of the fact.

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 261. Organization is sacrifice. You cannot have absolutely your own way--you cannot be a free lance; you cannot be strongly and fiercely individual if you belong to an organization. for this reason some folk bunt and work alone. It is their nature. But the world’s greatest work must be done by team work. This demands organization, and that is the sacrifice of some individual will and wish to the good of all.

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 602.

There still persists, the conviction that unemployment primarily and at bottom is the fault of the man who is without work. It may not be his fault under present circumstances but he surely must have been idle and careless in his youth, wasteful and thoughtless as a young man, to be found in his full manhood or in middle age without work. This is cruelly untrue and leads to injustice and social disaster.

SOCIALISM IS NECESSARY FOR LIBERATION

1. SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY WAY TO LIBERATE BLACKS

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p.⁶.

In the socialist trend thus indicated lies the one great hope of the Negro American. We have been thrown by strange historic reasons into the hands of the capitalists hitherto. We have been objects of dole and charity, and despised accordingly. We have been made tools of oppression against the workingman’s cause--the puppets and playthings of the idle rich. Fools! We must awake! Not in a renaissance among ourselves of the evils of Get and Grab--not in private hoarding squeezing and cheating, lies our salvation, but rather in that larger ideal of human brotherhood, equality of opportunity and work not for wealth but for Weal--here lies our shining goal.

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p. 124. Wealth is a social product, and not an individual acquisition. At present we allow certain men to be custodians of this social wealth, partly because of the worth of their services in helping the community to accumulate it and partly because of their wise use of their trust. But we never forget where wealth in the last analysis belongs--i.e., to the community. we take it for taxes, we seize it when grossly misused, we limit the amount and method of its disposal. Why? Because WE own it. We, i.e., organized society created the wealth in unison and it was not created by any one man or corporation. If this is true, then every worker in the community has some claim on this common wealth.

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 318.

It is the shame of the world that today the relation between the main groups of mankind and their mutual estimate and respect is determined chiefly by the degree in which one can subject the other to its service, enslaving labor, making ignorance compulsory, uprooting ruthlessly religion and customs, and destroying government, so that the favored Few may luxuriate in the toil of the torture Many.
4. SOLVING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY SHOULD BE OUR FIRST PRIORITY

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 319.

If we are coming to recognize that the greatest modern problem is to correct maladjustment in the distribution of wealth, it must be remembered that the basic maladjustment is the outrageously unjust distribution of world income between the dominant and suppressed peoples; the rape of the land and raw material, and monopoly of technique and culture.
5. CAPITALISM DESTROYS DEMOCRACY

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 633. It has always been felt that the United States was an example of the extraordinary success of capitalists

industry, and that this was proven by the high wage paid labor and the high standard of intelligence and comfort prevalent in this country. Moreover, for many years, democratic political control of our government by the masses of the people made it possible to envisage without violence any kind of reform in government or industry which appeared to the people. Recently, however, the people of the United States have begun to recognize that their political power is curtailed by organized capital in industry and that in this industry, democracy does not prevail; and that until wider democracy does prevail in industry, democracy in government is seriously curtailed and often quite ineffective.