A RESOLUTION OF THE COMMON MAN

The Counter-Memo

A Global Declaration on the Economic Extraction of Working People

Introduced by the Robert Wayne Human Reclamation Project
March 2026

PREAMBLE

This Resolution belongs to no political party.
It serves no ideology.
It is submitted on behalf of the Common Man — the working people of the United States and nations worldwide who produce the value of civilization and have been systematically separated from it.

Economics is the master of every ideology.
Left and right argue over its distribution.
Neither has stopped its extraction from the Common Man.

This Resolution does not take sides in that argument.
It names the extraction itself.

In 1971, a memo was written that redesigned the relationship between working people and the value they create. It was precise. It was coordinated. It was executed with deliberation over five decades.

What is designed can be redesigned.
What was done can be undone.
But undoing requires the same precision, the same coordination, and the same deliberate intent that did the damage.

A counter-memo was needed.
For 54 years, none was written.
This is that document.

WHEREAS

WHEREAS, from 1948 to 1973, the American economy operated on a foundational principle — that when working people produce more, working people earn more; and during this period productivity increased 97% and wages increased 91%, and the prosperity created by labor was shared with labor; and

WHEREAS, ideology — left, right, and all formations between — has throughout history been employed in service of those who hold power and in disservice to the Common Man who sustains it; and the extraction of working people from the value of their labor preceded any single document or policy, rooted in the systematic subordination of labor to capital across generations; and

WHEREAS, in 1971, Lewis Powell, corporate lawyer and future Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, authored a confidential memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce entitled "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" — not as the origin of that extraction, but as its amplifier; a coordinated strategic blueprint that accelerated, formalized, and institutionalized the separation of working people from the value they create — a document now part of the public record and available for examination by any citizen of any nation; and

WHEREAS, following the execution of that blueprint, the foundational principle connecting productivity to wages was permanently severed; and from 1973 to the present day, productivity increased 150% while wages increased only 12%; representing the largest transfer of wealth from working people to ownership in recorded American economic history; and

WHEREAS, the mechanisms of this extraction were deliberately constructed through coordinated policy — the systematic dismantling of collective bargaining reduced union membership from 35% of the American workforce to under 11% today, eliminating the primary instrument by which working people claimed their share of the value they created; and

WHEREAS, tax structures were redesigned to concentrate wealth upward, defunding the public infrastructure — education, transportation, healthcare, housing — upon which working families depend for economic participation and dignity; and

WHEREAS, trade policies were constructed that prioritized capital mobility over worker stability, resulting in the hollowing out of manufacturing communities whose economic foundation was removed without replacement, whose residents were told to adapt to conditions they did not create and were given no tools to navigate; and

WHEREAS, financial deregulation enabled speculative risk that, upon collapse, was absorbed by working people through economic devastation, job loss, and home foreclosure, while the institutions responsible for that collapse were protected and restored at public expense; and

WHEREAS, new forms of labor organization were deliberately constructed to eliminate worker protections, benefits, and stability — reclassifying employees as independent contractors to avoid minimum wage, overtime, healthcare, and unemployment obligations — making precarity the permanent condition of millions of working people and presenting that precarity as individual freedom; and

WHEREAS, these mechanisms operated across administrations of both major political parties, confirming that the extraction of value from working people is not a partisan phenomenon but an economic one — that economics is the governing force above ideology, and that the Common Man has suffered its extraction regardless of which party held power; and

WHEREAS, this pattern of extraction is not exclusive to the United States — working people in nations worldwide have experienced the separation of their labor from its value through equivalent mechanisms adapted to their local conditions, confirming that the extraction of the Common Man is a global phenomenon requiring a global declaration; and

WHEREAS, for 54 years no counter-document was written, no counter-strategy was coordinated, no counter-institution was built with the same precision and deliberation as the original blueprint — leaving the Common Man to feel the effects of a designed system without a name for its cause, without a map of its mechanisms, and without a blueprint for what to build instead; and

WHEREAS, the Robert Wayne Human Reclamation Project was established to coordinate that response — to name the mechanism, document the extraction, and build the infrastructure of the freed society: worker cooperatives, community land trusts, participatory governance, and technology that serves people instead of extracting from them; and

WHEREAS, The Hidden Forces: Reclaiming Humanity's Power from Systems of Control — 123,000 words documenting every mechanism of extraction and every alternative already operational worldwide — was published March 1, 2026, as the intellectual foundation of that response;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED

That we, the undersigned Common Men and Women of the United States and nations worldwide, do hereby declare:

FIRST, that the separation of working people from the value of their labor was not accidental, not inevitable, and not the result of natural market forces — that while ideology has long served as an instrument of suppression against the Common Man, the architects of coordinated economic policy amplified and accelerated that suppression through deliberate design, sustained strategy, and more than five decades of policy execution in disservice to the citizens they were obligated to serve.

SECOND, that the Common Man — the working people who build, teach, heal, grow, drive, create, and sustain civilization — produced the value of the modern economy and are entitled to receive that value.

THIRD, that no ideology, party, or movement that fails to address the economic extraction of working people serves the Common Man, regardless of its claims.

FOURTH, that systems must serve people — not the other way around — and that this principle is not political, not ideological, and not negotiable.

FIFTH, that the freed society is not theoretical. Worker cooperatives, community land trusts, participatory democracy, and mutual aid networks are operational models already functioning in communities worldwide, demonstrating that the alternative to extraction is not utopia but engineering — systems deliberately designed to serve the people who power them.

SIXTH, that the counter-memo is now written. The counter-strategy is now coordinated. The blueprint now exists. And the movement to build the freed society has begun.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF

We affix our names to this Resolution as Common Men and Women who feel the invisible cage — and who declare, together, that the cage is real, its design is documented, and its dismantling has begun.

The cage is real. But so is the key.

Sign this Resolution 

THE ACTION
Signing this Resolution is the declaration.

Supporting RWHRP is the action.

The Powell Memo was funded. Coordinated. Resourced over decades.

The counter-strategy requires the same.

This is not charity.
This is the infrastructure investment that makes the reversal possible.

Worker cooperatives. Community land trusts. Participatory governance. Technology that serves people.

None of it builds itself.
The Common Man built everything this civilization runs on.

Now we build the alternative.

👉 Fund the reversal 

100% of every dollar goes to RWHRP.  Zero fees. Zero extraction.

Read the complete blueprint

Read the essay for full documented case

Introduced by Robert Wayne
Founder, Robert Wayne Human Reclamation Project
Author, The Hidden Forces
March 2026

"Systems must serve people — not the other way around."