Vilarism

Vilarism, also known as Vilarist Theory, is a social, economic and political ideology created by philosopher and journalist Nicolau Vilar throughout the 1870s whose goal is to establish a socialist society with a socioeconomic system structured on communal ownership and workers rights and the absence of an upper class, in the hope to create "[...] a more humane and equal industrial society which has cut the sin of greed out of society." as Vilar put it himself. Vilarist ideology saw real world success, having previously been only a theory, during the Age of Revolutions in the early 20th century, most notably during the Adonian Revolution, which saw a Vilarist government come into power. It is at this point the ideology would split into different variants such as Nys-Vilarism and Democratic Vilarism.

History
Nicolau Vilar, born in Koliya in 1835, first published his political ideas in the newspaper The Enlightened Worker, a popular far-left leaning newspaper at the time. For the first few years he covered various strikes in the Adonia region and as such he travelled through the region and spoke to many workers, as well as employers. In 1874 he published a pamphlet titled The Common Man and Workers Struggles in this Industrial Society as well as various other writings in the years 1874-1876, which he published as a collection called How to Achieve an Equal Society - a Collection of Socialist Theories by Nicolau Vilar in 1876, which included his most well-known work; A Theory on How an Industrial Society Affects the Common Man, the collection became known as simply Vilarist Theory. Vilarist Theory quickly caught on in various socialist circles but never reached the status of being the mainstream socialist ideology in his lifetime. Nicolau Vilar passed away from Tuberculosis in 1898. He continued to write for The Enlightened Worker until his death.

First United Front
Established in 1898, only a couple of months after Nicolau Vilar's death, the United Front of the Collective Workers of the World or, more commonly, the First United Front. It was founded as an organisation of made up of various labour unions and socialist parties throughout Atnarsia, the goal was to unite and lead the socialist movements of the world to achieve common goals, within the first few years of its existence it had an internal ideological struggle but eventually, in 1903, settled on furthering the ideas of Vilarist Theory, now widely known as Vilarism. Vilarism, in part thanks to the First United Front, became the main ideology of socialist movements in Atnarsia.

Theory
Vilarist Theory is in its original form, known as Classic Vilarism due to the variations in both implementation and theory that would develop from the original theory. The ideology of Classic Vilarism contains 6 main tenets:, , , , and a.

Direct Influence
Vilar laid out a theory, or model, of how the common man could get influence over the upper classes, known as the "Vilarist Model of Direct Influence" or just the "Direct Influence Model". It lays out that the workers and the common man have very little "direct influence" over the upper class and factory owners, while the opposite is not true. Only through joining together in unions, direct influence over factory workers, which gives leverage for such things as workers' rights, minimum wages and working hours. This has become common knowledge today, but at the time of its publication, unions were mainly a tool of solidarity. If one worker was fired, everyone else would quit, as well as being an insurance for when members got into accidents. It was Vilar who first, or at least most prominently, put forward the idea of using the worker unions to push for political reforms and other changes directly. He expanded this idea later in his life into the idea of a united front.

Nys-Vilarism
The largest variant of Vilarism, Nys-Vilarism, is heavily based on the concept of a, which guides a "revolution of the common man to achieve the Vilarist ideal of an industrial world" as written by Anton Nys, later Chairman of the Adonian People's Republic. The main deviations from Classic Vilarism are the lack of Workplace Democracy and the introduction of a vanguard party to lead the workers to the Vilarist ideal society through reforms and governance. It gained huge traction following the Adonian Revolutions where Nys-Vilarist groups increasingly gained influence in socialist governments and organisations.

Democratic Vilarism
First developed in the 1960s, Democratic Vilarism seeks to implement Vilarist policies and ideas within the framework of liberal democracies by discarding the concept of a vanguard party and expand the original idea of workplace democracy to be a form of. The politician Paulo Ferreiro started advocating for this new democratic angle to Vilarism in places where vanguard parties ruled in order to "[...] really implement what Vilar originally envisioned, a society for workers and ruled, collectively, by the workers." . Democratic Vilarism has seen wide support around the world, seen as working inside the framework of but with Vilarist policies.

Seppism
Founded and implemented by Supreme Leader of Vedria Hubert Sepp in the early 1990s, Seppism seeks to implement a pragmatic economic approach while keeping many internal Vilarist policies. Originally an advocate of Nys-Vilarism, Sepp responded to an economic crisis with many reforms which resulted in this new variant of Vilarism, Sepp had been exploring and theorising about how to use the global economy to enrich the citizens of Vilarist nations, without fully committing to a capitalist system or abandoning Vilarism in some way. In 1996, Sepp published Vilarism in a Modern World, which fully established Seppism as a variation of Vilarism.

Criticism
Vilarism has been criticised by many other political ideologies as well as academics globally. The criticism includes such things as the practicality of Vilarism in a modern globalized world, the societal effects of the proposed revolutions, as well as many others. There have also been many internal debates and conflicts within Vilarist circles, resulting is new forms of Vilarism, which come with their own criticisms, most notably the authoritarians of Nys-Vilarism and ideological inconsistencies of Seppism.

Common Man Debate
Nicolau Vilar writes many times "common man" in addition to "workers" in his works, while these would simply be combined to be "workers" or "proletariat" during the period of the First United Front, it has still caused a debate on why this distinction was made in the first place. In her 1995 book The Great Socialist: A Biography of Nicolau Vilar Atse Ferreyra ends the book with a speculative piece on the "Common Man Debate " that has been present more or less since Vilars death in 1898. Ferreyra argues that "the common man" is meant to represent the growing middle class of the time, with workers being the working class that had existed for decades. The Common Man is, as such, simply meant to represent "[...] more wealthy workers, not rich enough to have contradictory goals and mindsets to the workers but with enough currency in their lives that they could support the socialist movement that Vilar envisioned, instead of class struggle with the workers against everyone, it is a common class struggle against the upper class. A United Front of Middle Class and Workers, if you will." This theory became extremely controversial at the time of its publication in 1995, with many socialists claiming it was "disrespectful to the movement Vilar founded". Non-socialist scholars look at this theory, meanwhile, as likely being the truth, due to the extensive examples and work Ferreyra put into the theory. The piece was republished in 2001 as its own book called Vilars Common Man.