The Maccabaean

(Concluded from last month.)

4. ELEMENTS IN THE EXERCISE OF STATE FUNCTIONS

A 1. Public Ownership of Natural Resources, Means of Transportation and Communication.

It follows, hence, that the first business of the state is to keep the original sources of the common wealth in possession of the Commonwealth.

(a) The primary and ultimate source is land. The first exploitation of man by man in agricultural communities came through the development of private property in land. The first passionate protest against exploitation uttered by the first of the great prophets, by Amos, is a protest against the evil of this private ownership and of the terrible social consequences following from it. The basic principle of the fundamental law of the ancient Jewish state is the principle of the inalienability of the land. The principle upon which the fiscal agency of the Zionist movement, the National Fund, is founded and the principle upon which it operates is the principle that land is common wealth and is inalienable from the Commonwealth. By tradition, by practice and by what is soundest in contemporary political and economic theory the first rule of the fundamental law of the New Zion must be that the whole Jewish land shall be the inalienable possession of the whole Jewish people.

(b) So also with the mineral resources existing under the soil, with the power in rivers and streams, and so on. All natural resources of the Jewish people in the Jewish land are to be the inalienable possession of the whole Jewish people.

(c) So also with the means of transportation and communication—roads, highways, railroads, waterways, canals, post, telephones and telegraphs without which national resources cannot be made available—they are to be the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.

A2. Individual Rights in the Commonwealth.

I. The Use and Rental of Public Resources...

Where land and all other natural resources, together with all means of transportation and communication are under state control, the relation of the individual to the state, so far as the elementary conditions of living are concerned, defines itself automatically. The development of the land, the productive use of natural resources are not primarily state affairs, they are private matters. Individuals or associations undertaking any operation or industrial enterprise become tenants or leaseholders of the state. On the basis of the Jewish tradition the lease terminates in the fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee. There is no reason for deviating from this tradition. Leases of whatever public property terminate automatically every fiftieth year. The lessees should have an equity in renewal and renewal should not be refusable except for cause. Leases would, of course, be heritable and possessed of the other characteristics necessary to the continuity of enterprises based on them. Their rental value would be reassessed every five or seven years and the increase drawn off, by a proportional raising of the rent, into the public treasury. No tax system would be necessary.

The monies so obtained would naturally be expended on the other institutions of the state by which the state performs its function of keeping the ways of life open. These are fundamentally just two: Public Defense and Education.

III. The Organization of Industrial or Agrarian Enterprise.

Leaseholders of public resources would all be on the same level. Where private ownership of natural resources exists this is impossible. Capitalist and wage-earner, employer and employee are involved in the "class war," with all the evil consequences that follow. Where, however, a group of persons have each shares, diverse as these may be, in the production of a commodity, each is also an owner of the finished work. Each is an owner in the process of production. Each should have a word in determining the fate of both process and product. Each should share justly in the benefits from the common result. The formula for these prescriptions is "Industrial Democracy." Industrial democracy rests upon the principle that labor is not a commodity. Labor is not a thing that can be detached from a man and sent out into the market to be bought and sold like coal or iron or flour or books or guns. Men sell themselves in selling their labor. And hence it is that the rights of labor can never be separated from the rights of man, while the rights of property not only can but must. In a free commonwealth, therefore, there is no room either for employer or employee. Every industrial or agrarian organization will have to be an autonomous, free, co-operative company, in which the less-skilled have a voice with the more skilled in the determination of policy, the division of profits and so on. The activities of the National Fund, its experiments in the establishment of farm and other enterprises, have made a beginning. This beginning will have to be carried out to the end. In the New Zion no economic endeavor, involving more than one person, shall be organized otherwise than as a democratic self-governing co-operative company, in the profits of which all its members share alike up to a certain minimum, and according to their powers and capacities beyond this minimum. The minimum will be determined by the effective needs of a human being for health, efficiency, and assurance concerning the future. Each co-operative unit would join with others of its kind, to form a national association of that industry or profession, charged with care for its welfare and progress.

B1. Public Defense against Disease.

The first and most fundamental line of public defense is that against disease. Such a defense, like all institutions of the Jewish state, must be both democratic and effective. To make it so it is necessary only to socialize the private medical associations to be found in every land. All physicians licensed to practice in Judaea should become thereby members of the one national association, and subject to its rules. All teachers of the science and art of medicine should be members of this association. All hospitals and schools of medicine should be under its care. It should be organized federally, with branches in every locality. It should be absolutely autonomous with respect to all matters relating to the teaching and practice of medicine. Its president should be the Minister of Public Health, and