Need, Housing, Income, Transportation, Land

The freedom of a human being is lacking if his or her needs are controlled by others, for need may lead to the enslavement of one person by another. Furthermore, exploitation is caused by need. Need is an intrinsic problem and conflict is initiated by the control of one’s needs by another.

Chapter 13: Housing

Housing is an essential need for both the individual and the family and should not be owned by others. Living in another’s house, whether paying rent or not, compromises freedom. Attempts made by various countries to solve the housing problem did not provide a definite solution because such attempts did not target the ultimate solution – the necessity that people own their dwellings – but rather offered the reduction, increase, or standardization of rent, whether it went to privately or publiclyowned enterprise. In a socialist society, no one, including society itself, has the right to control people’s needs. No one has the right to acquire a house additional to his or her own dwelling and that of his or her heirs for the purpose of renting it because this additional house is, in fact, a need of someone else.

Acquiring it for such a purpose is the beginning of controlling the needs of others, and “in need freedom is latent”.

Chapter 14: Income

Income is an imperative need for man. In a socialist society, it should not be in the form of wages from any source or charity from any one.

In this society, there are no wage-earners, but only partners.

One’s income is a private matter and should either be managed privately to meet one’s needs or be a share from a production process of which one is an essential component.

It should not be a wage in return for production.

Chapter 15: Means Of Transportation

Transportation is also a necessity both to the individual and to the family. It should not be owned by others. In a socialist society, no person or authority has the right to own a means of transportation for the purpose of renting it, for this also means controlling the needs of others.

Chapter 16: Land

Land is the private property of none. Rather, everyone has the right to beneficially utilize it by working, farming or pasturing as long as he and his heirs live on it – to satisfy their needs, but without employing others with or without a wage.

If lands were privately owned, only the living would have a share in it.

Land is permanent, while those who benefit from the land undergo, in the course of time, changes in profession, capabilities and existence.

The aspiration of the new socialist society is to create a society which is happy because it is free.

This can only be achieved by satisfying, man’s material and spiritual needs, and that, in turn, comes about through the liberation of these needs from the control of others.

Satisfaction of these needs must be attained without exploiting or enslaving others; otherwise, the aspirations of the new socialist society are contradicted.

Thus, the citizen in this new society secures his material needs either through self-employment, or by being a partner in a collectively-owned establishment, or by rendering public service to society which, in return, provides for his material needs.

Economic activity in the new socialist society is a productive one aimed at the satisfaction of material needs.

It is not an unproductive activity, nor one which seeks profit for surplus savings beyond the satisfaction of such needs.

This, according to the new socialist basis, is unacceptable.

The legitimate purpose for private economic activities is only to satisfy one’s needs because the wealth of the world, as well as that of each individual society, is finite at each stage.

No one has the right to undertake an economic activity whereby wealth exceeding the satisfaction of one’s needs can be amassed. Such accumulations are, in fact, the deprived right of others.

One only has the right to save from his own production and not by employing others, or to save at the expense of his or her own needs and not of others.

If economic activity is allowed to extend beyond the satisfaction of needs, some will acquire more than required for their needs while others will be deprived. The savings which are in excess of one’s needs are another person’s share of the wealth of society. Allowing private economic activity to amass wealth beyond the satisfaction of one’s needs and employing others to satisfy one’s needs or beyond, or to secure savings, is the very essence of exploitation.