The Maccabaean

THE modern competitive system of industry gives us a heartless struggle for existence that entails enormous waste both of profits and human life; while Socialism, as an alternative, offers us a system of co-operation in production that may exclude individual initiative. The latter can give us no assurance, above all, that it would produce an economic surplus, which is essential to enlightened society. Our problem is to so organize the industrial system in Palestine that we may avoid the gross waste of present day competition, and, at the same time, secure a more equitable distribution of wealth, which is the promise of Socialism, without destroying the incentive for individual initiative and the accumulaton of a large economic surplus, which is essential for advancing civilization. Can we retain the benefits of competition, while substituting, for the disadvantages of unemployment and poverty, the invaluable gifts of contentment and security?

Various attempts have been made to solve this problem by systems of profit sharing. Omitting the local and incidental causes for the failure of most of the profit-sharing schemes, there is still this deeper economic and logical reason: the remedy is not co-exiensive with the evil it is calculated to eliminate. For example, let us assume the existence of many successful profit-sharing corporations— huge capital-labor trusts, each safeguarding the welfare of its own employees, by liberal allowances for profits and high wages. There would then be a consumers’ problem, due to the high cost of living necessary to support such combinations of capital and labor. Instead of a labor problem arising out of the condition of the wage-earners, we would have a consumers’ problem because of the prohibitive prices imposed by the bakers’ trust, the meat trust and the clothing trust.

If we are to be at all successful we must secure some basis for the participation of the consumers—the all-embracing class—in the profits of our industrial system. In theory, this is altogether just and proper, since, by creating the demand, the consumers constitute the greatest factor in economic value. In practice, the only large co-operative schemes that have proven successful are those in which the benefits are distributed in proportion to the purchases made by the consumers. The well known co-operative stores in Great Britain, France and Belgium, sharing their profits in the shape of rebates, or dividends, on the amount and value of the purchases, have been far more successful than all the schemes for co-operative manufacture. In the latter case co-operation is always a difficult matter because of the manifold problems of efficiency, trade regulations and the struggle for world markets.

In fact, we may draw the general conclusion that co-operation is successful when it is all-inclusive in its membership, and generally fails when it attempts restriction and monopolization. As a further illustration of the truth of

this conclusion, we have the successful efforts of co-operation among farmers in the distribution of their products—particularly worthy of notice is the co-operation in the sale of dairy products of the farmers of Denmark. The farmers share in proportion to the value of the products that each brings to the co-operative sales-agency, while they retain the rewards due to personal skill, labor and industry in raising the products. We have here a successful co-operative business in the distribution of products, which, in its nature is all-inclusive.

Profit-sharing schemes, therefore, to be permanently successful, must be all-inclusive and not confined to the laborers of a particular industry. It is only just and proper that the profits should bring appropriate benefits to the laborers in all industries, since otherwise the profits for the laborers in any particular industry would depend on the success or failure of that special industry. Many laborers would suffer for the mistakes of their overseers, and others would profit inequitably because of the ability of their leaders, or the demands of the public. Indeed, they may often profit unjustly through the power of their monopoly— by compelling consumers to pay high and unfair prices.

"Industrial organization from the point of view of consumers should, therefore, be the basis of the activities of the Palestinean economic system.

In the upbuilding of such an economic system we might follow, to a large extent, the plan of organization for the co-operative stores of Great Britain. Every Jewish resident of Palestine would be eligible for membership and be urged to join an incorporated association, to be known as the “Kehillah of Erez Israel.” Each member would be required to pay a small sum as an entrance fee, let us say, the equivalent of five dollars, and the Kehillah might also issue bonds, bearing interest, to enable it to undertake and conduct various economic activities.

Such an organization of the Kehillah (the Jewish Community) of Palestine would give us an economic basis which would go a long way to insure that it will become a really effective force in the development of a Jewish Palestine. Most of the present day Kehillahs, in this country as well as abroad, suffer from the fact that they touch the life of the individual only on rare occasions—in times of great stress and strain—in days of pogroms and outrages, and, to a limited extent, in education. If the Kehillah, of New York, for example, were to own and operate a whole chain of Kosher butcher shops, of Kosher restaurants, of “extra” places of worship on the high holidays, etc., it would become a force in Jewish life, which few Jews could, or would desire, to escape. And so, in like manner, the Kehillah, representing the whole Jewish community of Palestine, must have the broadest economic basis, since its work will be more important than the work of any other Kehillah. It should own and operate stores throughout Palestine which would