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Land is no one's property. But everyone has the right to use it, to benefit from it by working, farming or pasturing. This would take place throughout a man's life and the lives of his heirs, and would be through his own effort without using others with or without wages, and only to the extent of satisfying his own needs.
If possession of land is allowed, only those who are living there have a share in it. The land is permanently there, while, in the course of time, users change in profession, in capacity and in their presence.
The purpose of the new socialist society is to create a society which is happy because it is free. This can be achieved through satisfying the material and spiritual needs of man, and that, in turn, comes about through the liberation of these needs from outside domination and control.
Satisfaction of these needs must be attained without exploiting or enslaving others, or else, it will contradict the purpose of the new socialist society.
Man in the new society works for himself to guarantee his material needs, or works for a socialist corporation in whose production he is a partner, or performs a public service to the society which provides his material needs.
Economic activity in the new socialist society is productive activity for the satisfaction of material needs. It is not unproductive activity or an activity which seeks profit in order, after satisfying material needs, to save the surplus. That is impossible under the rules of the new socialism.
The legitimate purpose of the individual's economic activity is solely to satisfy his needs. For the wealth of the world has limits at each stage as does the wealth of each individual society. Therefore no individual has the right to carry out economic activity in order to acquire more of that wealth than is necessary to satisfy his needs, because the excess amount belongs to other individuals. He has the right to save from his needs and from his own production but not from the efforts of others nor at the expense of their needs. For if we allow economic activity to extend beyond the satisfaction of needs, one person will only have more than his needs by preventing another from obtaining his. The savings which are in excess of one's needs are another person's share of the wealth of society.
To allow private production for the purpose of acquiring savings that exceed the satisfaction of needs is exploitation itself, as in permitting the use of others to satisfy your own needs or to get more than your own needs. This can be done by exploiting a person to satisfy the needs of others and making savings for others at the expense of his needs.
Work for a wage is, in addition to being an enslavement of man as mentioned before, work without incentives because the producer is a wage-worker rather than a partner.
Whoever works for himself is certainly devoted to his productive work because his incentive to production lies in his dependence on his private work to satisfy his material needs. Also whoever works in a socialist corporation is a partner in its production. He is, undoubtedly, devoted to his productive work because the impetus for devotion to production is that he gets a satisfaction of his needs through production. But whoever works for a wage has no incentive to work.
Work for wages failed to solve the problem of increasing and developing production. Work, either in the form of services or production, is continually deteriorating because it rests on the shoulders of wage-workers.
First Example:
Second Example:
A worker who produces ten apples for another person and gets a wage of less than the price of one apple. Third Example:
A worker who produces ten apples for himself.
The first (a) will not increase his production for whatever the increase might be, he will only get an apple for himself. It is what satisfies his needs. Thus all those working for such a society are always psychologically apathetic.
The first (b) has no incentive to production itself, for he produces for the society without obtaining satisfaction of his needs. However he has to continue to work without incentive because he is forced to submit to the general conditions of work throughout the society. That is the case with members of that society.
The second does not initially work to produce. He works to get wages. Since his wages are not enough to satisfy his needs, he will either search for another master and sell him his work at a better price or he will be obliged to continue the same work just to survive.
The third is the only one who produces without apathy and without coercion. In the socialist society, there is no possibility for private production exceeding the satisfaction of individual needs, because satisfaction of needs at the expense of others is not allowed. As the socialist establishments work for the satisfaction of the needs of society, the third example explains the sound basis of economic production. However, in all conditions, even in bad ones, production continues for survival. The best proof is that in capitalist societies production accumulates and expands in the hands of a few owners who do not work but exploit the efforts of toilers who are obliged to produce in order to survive. However, The Green Book not only solves the problem of material production but also prescribes the comprehensive solution of the problems of human society so that the individual may be materially and spiritually liberated ... a final liberation to attain his happiness.
Other Examples:If we assume that the wealth of society is ten units and its population is ten persons, the share of each in the wealth of society is 10/10 ~ only one of the units per person. But if some members of society possess more than one unit, then other members of the same society possess nothing. The reason is that their share of the units of wealth has been taken by others. Thus, there are poor and rich in the society where exploitation prevails.
Suppose that five members of that society possess two units each. In this case the other five possess nothing, i.e., 50 per cent are deprived of their right to their own wealth because the additional unit possessed by each of the first five is the share of each of the second five.
If an individual in that society needs only one of the units of the wealth of society to satisfy his needs then the individual possessing more than one unit is, in fact, expropriating the right of other members of the society. Since this share exceeds what is required to satisfy his needs, estimated at one of the units of wealth then he has seized it to hoard it. Such hoarding is only achieved at the expense of others' needs, i.e., through taking others' share in this wealth. That is why there are those who hoard and do not spend ~ that is, they save what exceeds the satisfaction of their needs ~ and there are those who beg and are deprived ~ that is those who ask for their rights in the wealth of their society and do not find anything to consume. It is an act of plunder and theft, but open and legitimate under the unjust and exploitative rules which govern that society.
Ultimately, all that is beyond the satisfaction of needs should remain the property of all the members of society. But individuals only have the right to save as much as they want from their own needs, because the hoarding of what exceeds their needs involves an encroachment on public wealth.
The skilful and industrious have no right to take hold of the share of others as a result of their skill and industry. But they can benefit from these advantages. Also if a person is disabled or lunatic, it does not mean that he does not have the same share as the healthy in the wealth of the society.
The wealth of the society is like a corporation or a store of supply which daily provides a number of people with a quantity of supply of a definite amount which is enough to satisfy the needs of those people during that day. Each person has the right to save out of that quantity what he wants, i.e., he can consume or save what he likes from his share. In this he can use his own skill and talents. But he who uses his talents to take an additional amount for himself from the store of the public supply is undoubtedly a thief. Therefore, he who uses his skill to gain wealth that exceeds the satisfaction of his needs is, in fact, encroaching on a public right, namely, the wealth of the society which is like the store mentioned in this example.
In the new socialist society differences in individual wealth are only permissible for those who render a public service. The society allocates for them a certain share of the wealth equivalent to that service.
The share of individuals only differs according to the public service each of them renders, and as much as he produces. Thus, the experiments of history have produced a new experiment, a final culmination of man's struggle to attain his freedom and to achieve happiness by satisfying his need, warding off the exploitation of others, putting an ultimate end to tyranny and finding a means for the just distribution of society's wealth. Under the new experiment you work for yourself to satisfy your needs rather than exploiting others to work for you, in order to satisfy yours at their expense; or working to plunder the needs of others. It is the theory of the liberation of needs in order to emancipate man.
Thus the new socialist society is no more than a dialectical consequence of the unjust relations prevailing in this world. It has produced the natural solution, namely private ownership to satisfy the needs without using others, and socialist ownership, in which the producers are partners in production. The socialist ownership replaced a private ownership based on the production of wage-workers who had no right in what they produced.
Whoever possesses the house you dwell in, the vehicle you ride or the income you live on, takes hold of your freedom, or part of your freedom, and freedom is indivisible. For man to be happy, he must be free, and to be free, man must possess his own needs.
Whoever possesses your needs controls or exploits you. He may enslave you despite any legislation outlawing that.
The material needs of man that are basic, necessary and personal, start with food, housing, clothing and transport . . . These must be within his private and sacred ownership. They are not to be hired from any quarter. To obtain them through rent or hire allows the real owners, even society in general, to interfere in his private life, to have control over his basic needs, and then to dominate his freedom and to deprive him of his happiness. The owner of the costumes one has hired could interfere to remove them even in the street and leave one naked. The owner of the vehicle could interfere, leaving one in the middle of the road. Likewise, the owner of the house could interfere, leaving one without shelter.
It is ironic that man's basic needs are treated by legal administrative or other measures. Fundamentally, society must be founded on the application of the natural law to these needs.
The purpose of the socialist society is the happiness of man which can only be realized through material and spiritual freedom. Attainment of such freedom depends on the extent of man's ownership of his needs; ownership that is personal and sacredly guaranteed, i.e., your need must neither be owned by somebody else, nor subject to plunder by any part of society. Otherwise, you will live in a state of anxiety which will take away your happiness and render you unfree, because you live under the apprehension of outside interference in your basic needs.
The overturning of contemporary societies, to change them from being societies of wage-workers to societies of partners is inevitable as a dialectical result of the contradictory economic theses prevailing in the world today. and is the inevitable dialectical result of the injustice to relations based on the wage system, which have not been solved.
The threatening power of the Trade Unions in the capitalist world is capable of overturning capitalist societies of wage-workers into societies of partners.
It is probable that the outbreak of the revolution to achieve socialism will start with the appropriation by the producers of their share in what they produce. The objective of the workers' strikes will shift from a demand for the increase of wages to a demand for sharing in the production. All that will, sooner or later, take place under the guidance of The Green Book.
But the final step is when the new socialist society reaches the stage where profit and money disappear. It is through transforming society into a fully productive society and through reaching, in production, the level where the material needs of the members of society are satisfied. In that final stage profit will automatically disappear and there will be no need for money.
The recognition of profit is an acknowledgement of exploitation. The mere recognition of profit removes the possibility of limiting it. Measures taken to put a limit to it through various means are mere attempts at reform, which are not radical, in order to stop man's exploitation by man.
The final solution is the abolition of profit. But as profit is the driving force of economic activity, its abolition is not a decision that can be taken lightly. It must result from the development of socialist production which will be achieved if the satisfaction of the material needs of society is realised. The endeavour to increase profit will ultimately lead to its disappearance.
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