I understand that you are committed to Marxism. I seriously considered but eventually rejected it, though I accept Marx’s description of capitalism as a system of exploitation in the form of wage slavery — being used as a machine (or a draft animal) and compensated monetarily (ideally, for capitalism’s optimal performance according to capitalist theory, at the absolute minimum compensation necessary for subsistence and procreation).

One question that arises is how it can be possible to get from a scientific description of the process of social development to advocating for a particular form of social organization without becoming prescriptive. As a scientific endeavor Marxism can only be a descriptive theory with a prediction that can be tested empirically, but the only way to test the prediction is to watch the process unfold and see if the predicted social organization comes into being.

I have, on the other hand, developed an ethic that follows immediately from observation within material existence. It is a materialist ethic. I therefore call it the ethic of ‘real justice’. It involves mutual respect.

This ethic exists at the level of the individual, but since a society is a collection of individuals it has implications for the political process and the economy. It would directly govern the structure and functioning of those social processes.

This ethic would not prohibit private property, but if it were fully realized that institution might in time ‘wither away’. It would provide the means to eliminate wage slavery — in the U.S., with a single Act of Congress (instituting a full-fledged “democratically distributed income”). Doing that would also of itself all but assure sustainability.

I wish you would consider considering this idea. It needs advocates. A brief (“5 min read”) summary of the ethic is here in Medium, as a place to start.