Introduction

This introduction presents three aspects of this book: its objective, the methodology used, and its form.

Objective

The objective of this book is to propose a model of society compatible with the aspirations of people in the 21st century.

In the 17th century, modern science was born, namely the trio of experimentation, publication of results and conclusions with a precise description of the experimental conditions, and verification and criticism by all. This led, from the 19th century onwards, to an unprecedented technological leap in human history, which revolutionized our relationship with nature: we acquired, through our technical know-how, the ability to protect ourselves from the greatest plague, famine, as well as to dramatically increase the productivity of labor in many activities.
Yet, as early as the 19th century, observers such as Zola and Marx noted that something was wrong. Indeed, progress (1) seemed to benefit some at the expense of others for whom the situation appeared to be getting worse. This is still largely true at the beginning of the 21st century, with the victims of progress tending to be concentrated in certain countries.
What is wrong is that science has not produced an objective and effective method of organizing human societies, and as a result, governance methods have become archaic in light of our new technological power and the aspirations that arise from it.

From a system before the 17th century where power was mainly aristocratic, the scientific and technological revolution everywhere gradually shifted power toward capital. This is what Marx describes, and he predicts that the people must inevitably reclaim power to counter the perverse effects of this shift.
However, on the one hand, the taking of power by the proletariat did not occur everywhere, and on the other hand, when it did occur, it resulted finally in a mere temporary shift of power toward the political realm, which did not solve the original problem of the system's inability to put progress at the service of all.
Finally, in the 20th century, the lack of an alternative led to the emergence of another form of contestation that Marx had not anticipated, one that is more negative as it leads even more inevitably to tyranny, populism.

Let us put it simply: Marx's great strength is having accurately analyzed the nature and mechanics of the perversion of the capitalist system, where Zola and other realist novelists merely described its effects. Marx's great weakness is having led people to believe that it was sufficient to overthrow the system to resolve the problem. Yet history regularly shows us that overthowing without precisely planning what comes after is very unpredictable. We will not go into whether or not Marx was aware of the limits of his work, but the subject of this book is indeed to go as far as proposing a complete and coherent social organization system, adapted to the new capacities provided by the scientific and technological revolution to humans.

Method

To achieve this objective, we have structured this book in three parts:

The first part, composed of chapters 1 to 7, revisits Marx's analysis and updates it in light of the subsequent contributions of history and social sciences.

The second part, composed of chapters 8 to 12, describes the core of the proposed organization system, that is to say, how to organize production, justifying each point by its connection to the elements of the first part.
The originality of this organization is to avoid the two flaws present in almost all previous social organization proposals, namely, either having as the cornerstone of the system individual virtue, that is to say, assuming the miraculous emergence of a new, more upright or altruistic humanity, or finally justifying the oppression of the weak by the strong as natural or positive.

Finally, the third part, composed of chapters 13 to 22, addresses a whole series of transformations needed in related fields to ensure the coherence, and therefore the viability, of the whole.

The second part immediately shows that we have chosen a collective solution, in the tradition of the Enlightenment thinkers, and then of Marx, and in contrast to Krishnamurti, who advocated individual liberation. This in no way means that we consider the individual solution invalid, but we think it only concerns a minority and thus cannot allow us to manage the power resulting from the technological revolutions of recent centuries within a reasonable timeframe to avoid a final ecological or military catastrophe.
Moreover, we address the individual aspect in chapter 22, which can very well be read directly after the first part. This reading shows that the main justification for our individual recommendations is their effect in reducing conflict, that is to say, their collective effect. In other words, the most important constraints lie on the collective level, not on the individual level. It is logical to center the book on the collective aspect, and to treat the individual aspect only at the end.

Methodologically, this work rests on two pillars. The first is to start by thoroughly understanding what human nature is, as opposed to what we would like it to be. The second is the cross-referencing of themes to accurately assess the robustness of the proposed system under all angles.
Starting with 'What is man?', that is, specifying what we have inherited from evolution in terms of capacities, limitations and behavioral predispositions, seemed common sense for a book dealing with social organization issues, and yet... it seems it has never been done, as if the deep nature of man were an obvious fact just because we encounter human beings every day! Defining human nature more precisely will therefore be the object of our first part. The aim is, in a second step, to build the social system as a good complement to fill the gaps caused by the imperfection of our genetic evolution. By contrast, previous proposed social models are based on an implicit and largely arbitrary view of man, as has been the case since Antiquity, and as such, the reasoning that follows, even if brilliant, is based on nothing solid. We will, on the contrary, take great care to ground our vision of human nature on the solid foundations that can be established according to modern scientific methodology, and for that, we will mainly turn to sociology rather than philosophy, which constitutes the first particularity of this book.
If the drastic choice we have made among the available theories, as opposed to an encyclopedic approach that would have presented them all on equal footing, can be justified by the scientific and relevant nature of the few that we have retained, on the other hand, we draw conclusions that go beyond what the authors of these researches themselves have formulated. For example, from the documentary Caribbean Primates, we will deduce in chapter 2 the notion of generalized nepotism. Moreover, we make new connections between observations from different fields, for example by relating this documentary to the works of C. Northcote Parkinson. At this point, there is a danger because we risk falling back into disguised arbitrariness, which is very fashionable these days in the field of management methods, where fundamental sciences such as, for example, neuroscience, are made to say things they do not say, by adding arbitrary extrapolations or simplistic and questionable analogies.

This is where our second methodological pillar comes in, that is to say, the third part, which aims to secure the proposal through the importance of cross-referencing. This is the second particularity of this book, that is to say, not treating in depth, as is usually done, only one aspect of social life, for example justice. Thus, we will propose a general organization covering all the main lines, whose justification is linked not only to the scientific origin of the foundations we used to establish our vision of human nature in the first part, but also to the coherence of the whole. To explain this cross-referencing approach, we will quote Jean-Marie Guyau in Sketch of a Morality Without Obligation or Sanction: 'Truth is not only what one feels or sees, it is what one explains, what one links. Truth is a synthesis: it is what distinguishes it from sensation, from brute fact; it is a bundle of facts. It does not derive its evidence and proof from a mere state of consciousness, but from the whole set of phenomena that hold together and support each other. A single stone does not make an arch, nor two, nor three; you need them all; they need to support each other; even the arch built, remove a few stones, and everything collapses: truth is thus, it consists in the solidarity of all things.' We will complete this methodological explanation at the beginning of the third part.
In summary, the originality and scope of this book lie in three points: first, the original selection of theories based on experiments conforming to modern scientific methodology to shed light on what human nature is; second, the equally unique linkage of theories from different fields; and finally, cross-referencing to ensure the overall validity of the whole.

Finally, the choice of starting with Marx is the result of two observations: first, Marx does not simply denounce social misery, but he performs an in-depth analysis of the causes, which remains largely relevant for understanding the current situation; second, the remedies he suggests are those that have led to the current Western system, namely social democracy. However, to understand this, one must first shed the collective imagination, stemming from the ideological confrontation of the Cold War, which reduces Marx to Marxism, that is to say, the seizure of power by the proletariat and the collectivization of the means of production according to the Communist Party Manifesto which he co-authored with Engels. However, Marx's work is not limited to this pamphlet. His major work, which we refer to here, is Capital, which not only provides a much deeper analysis of the causes, but also outlines the general lines of the more moderate regulation solutions that will be implemented in the West in the 20th century, namely compulsory education and the labor code.

Form

As for the form, following Jean-Marie Guyau's architectural metaphor, we would like this book to be read like a cathedral. Indeed, a visitor to a cathedral who focuses only on the aesthetics of each individual stone, one after the other, instead of concentrating on the overall structure, risks leaving very disappointed. The same applies to this book: a reader who focuses only on the style of each sentence, rather than seeking to see the overall structure, is just as likely to be disappointed.
Our objective is to allow a new vision to spread in society, and for this, we also address young adults and people whose profession is to do, not just intellectuals. To facilitate understanding, we have therefore adopted a school-like style, perhaps at the expense of the pleasure of reading.

Just one last warning before we begin. The other stylistic specificity of this book is its density. Some concepts, which could justify an entire book on their own, are treated here in less than a page. Therefore, to get the most out of it, it is appropriate to considerably reduce the reading speed.

(1)
We define progress here as the increase in technological capabilities.