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The Eight Principles
of the Democratic Front and the Revolution

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"At least we found eight things we can agree on."

The diamond of eight stars on the national flag signify the Eight Principles of the Bergonian Revolution.   In the 1920's the various parties and groups comprising the Democratic Front raised a banner of eight stars to signify their agreement on eight fundamental programmatic principles-- more platform for electioneering than theory.  The eight-point platform was a broad outline of those principles the various revolutionary parties could all agree on.  

These radicals employed their nation's traditional four-pointed star, eschewing the five-pointed star as a symbol of everything Western, which to an extent was hypocritical, since so much of their theory and vocabulary had been imported from Europe.  Indeed European socialism and anarchism had a more attentive audience in Bergonia than they did in the United States, with culture and politics totally derived from Europe.  The radicals' use of the four-pointed star was not too much a pretense, indeed as much a simple, direct expression of national identity, since the national flag already displayed a single four-pointed star.

These principles are (as set out in standard from on leaflets & posters all throughout the Revolution during the 1920s): 

  1. Liberty:  "Personal liberty belongs to every man and woman  to speak and to write, to organize and petition authority, to choose work, life and travel according to individual conscience and taste, with no state or workplace censorship."

  2. Equality:  "There shall be no ruling class.  All men and women shall have equal claim to the the good life, and equal access to power.  All races, creeds, communities and religions deserve both equality and autonomy, and no language or religion shall be suppressed."

  3. Democracy:  "All authority in every part of society shall be subordinate to democratic selection and control.  The people and workers shall either govern directly or choose their governors."

  4. Socialism/Syndicalism:  "The common good shall direct all policy, and the means of production will pass out of private hands, and into the cooperative hands of the workers and farmers, who shall enjoy the full fruits of their labor."

  5. Decentralization/Federalism:  "Local power is better than national power.  Plural power is better than a single party.  Divided power is better than consolidated power."

  6. Education and Science:  "All the people shall obtain education in the arts and sciences at free schools and universities, and science shall guide policy."

  7. Religion  "In a free society all religions shall have equal freedom to preach and practice."

  8. Public Ownership of Land:  "The land and natural resources of the country shall be allocated, protected and used to the benefit of all the people."

The Bergonian revolutionaries of the DF tended to be short on theory (very short, compared to Marxists), but thick on practicality.  The eight principles were all the official doctrine that the DF parties had collectively, other than the "principles of strategy," approved unanimously by the DF annual convention in 1924 in a manifesto, summarized as "revolutionary goals, leftist pluralism, multiple fronts, coordinated action, open-mindedness, force if necessary," by Dherein.

"The eight principles do not summarize a delicately balanced, comprehensive social theory, but only a rough recipe for socialist society.  We will use them as eight yardsticks and eight anchor points as we build our socialist house."  -- said Catlere Amar, the first DF Speaker of Congress, a brave woman who during fighting in her hometown of Leakin, Letlari, took up a rifle position on the second floor of headquarters and answered gun fire from hostile Army troops.

"It is not enough to get the capitalist hand out of our wallets and the jackboots of the conservative state off our necks.  We have to keep the thieving hands and bruising feet from returning to curse us in the future.  Following the eight principles will give our revolutionary society purposeful form, and give the people some assurance against backsliding."   -- said Tranton Asceleri, first chairman of the DF, DF's presidential candidate in 1930, and first Minister of Economics under the revolutionary government.

The anarchists with reservations agreed to the Eight Principles at the time of their coalition with the DF in 1928, but the Communists refused to do so-- they could not stomach the language in Number #7 that accepted Religion.  They were blind to how their atheism created for the workers' movement an unnecessary enemy.

 

 

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