To make disappear, peacefully, all the social misery and proscription because of money: that is the challenge.
1. Dialectics between common good and private good.
The disappearance of social classes for money reasons can only be attained, in our opinion, through a continuous dialogue and dialectics between the wealth of private persons (individuals and collectivities) and the wealth of collective persons (which is fairly shared out among all its members). More specifically, through a permanent money osmosis among all the social bodies and among all the members of the geopolitical society.
We do not believe in the false solution of the state control of all the wealth or of all the means of wealth production. In the first place the State, as a manager of the empire, is only a particular collective person and, therefore, putting it under the State control is not an act of communalization, but of privatisation. But, moreover, we all know which is the end of the state-controlled production systems: paralysed by the bureaucratic planning and the longing for power, and completely unable to face with dignity the communal needs.
Now, we do not think either that we should trust the persons' good-will, nor force altruistic generosities.
The problem is then, how to create a sufficient monetary mass to face all the actual community needs, without having to disturb in excess (in the best of cases, nothing at all) private persons and their private wealth. The problem is, how to take advantage of the natural utilitarian egotism of man, to build on its basis practical and effective mechanisms of full social solidarity.
While it becomes possible to bring into practice much more satisfactory system at all levels19, we suggest the constitution of a communal monetary mass based on one single tax of social omni-solidarity. In chapter 7 of Part Two we have given all the technical specifications concerning the features of this single tax; we shall now take for granted all that has been said there.
The whole State action will be founded basically on this single tax as far as the sharing out of the communal wealth is concerned: to this end, the percentage on every cheque-invoice will have to be fixed in terms of the needs which will have to be met.
Now, at the same time as the centralized all-accountancy of all the cheque-invoices supplies a deeper and deeper knowledge of the total market and its possibilities, the politician will be able to use, cautiously, complementary measures to increase the amount of the communal monetary mass. These measures could be the following:
But we have spoken about a dialectics between the common good and the private good, between communal wealth and private wealth. What will this dialectics be made of? We are simply referring to the following set of facts:
Since the utilitarian, productive and consumer sector of society has been held under the free private initiative, the communal monetary mass obtained can be said to be in terms of the utilitarian selfishness of population, since the more is produced and consumed, and the more this mass grows, mainly if we consider that the single tax will not be heavy and, therefore, will not slow down with its burden the utilitarian processes.
After being constituted, the communal monetary mass must serve the aims of the full social solidarity. That is, it must be shared out, re-privatized, among all the members of the imperial community, in terms of the specific needs of each of them, and in terms of the global interests of the community.
We foresee two very well differentiated systems of sharing out:
Communal investment credits will be granted:
The conditions of the communal investment credit, which will differentiate it very clearly from an ordinary bank loan, will be the following:
Now, through the communal credits can be fostered one or another sort of company formation, which be found to be suitable and interesting. So, after the basic effectiveness principle, preferential credit lines can be established for the companies showing given features: starting a self-management process (or full self-management); optimization of the company size...
Communal consumption finances are sunk money investments (that is: free) to be spent solely and exclusively for consumption.
The principle to be followed in the sharing out of finances is not that of productive effectiveness, but that of the actual consumnption needs of the population, which must be met according to the principle of a total communal solidarity.
The objective pursued by means of these finances is to have all the misery and the social proscription for reasons of money to radically disappear, granting everybody a vital minimum. Moreover, finances must allow to make the utilitarian market society independent, and to insure the members of the utilitarian society under some situations, very well defined, which may appear in their lives. All these differential needs of each group of population are shown in the four Financial Statutes foreseen:
Constitutionally, every person will enjoy the General Statute for the sole reason of having been born and/or of living in the imperial community: it is then cumulative to each one of the other three statutes.
The General Statute assures to every individual and family citizen a minimum living standard, with which to meet his most urgent material and cultural needs. With this goal in mind, it entitles to the following attributions:
This statute can be accumulated only to the General Statute. The utilitarian professionals have already ensured their sustenance by the remuneration of their utilitarian activity. But unfavourable conditions may appear for which they must be prepared. So the Utilitarian Statute will give a right to:
This Statute can be accumulated only to the General Statute. The aim of this Statute is to supply a dignified sustenance to the liberal professionals and collectivities, which, since they do not belong to the utilitarian or market society, cannot be maintained by it.
Again this Statute can be accumulated only to the General Statute; but it is called «Mixed» because it can be combined at the same time with private incomes. In fact, it has been studied thinking of artisans, collaborators of mixed companies (private-communal ones) of public building works and services, and also will be able to resort to it the unemployed if they accept a professional-craft training of at least 3 years, and then settle down as artisans in places with a very small population.
So, according to cases, this Statute will entitle to:
The land has been, from the beginning of mankind, a communal wealth, that only with the development of a fully monetary market little by little became private. In spite of the fact that we support free property and private initiative inside the market, in the case of land we think that it would be right to give back to this asset its ancestral communal feature, through a progressive socialization on a town level (that is: municipalization).
Only an effective municipalization of the land can ensure the preservation of environment and of the natural wealth, avoid the unsocial speculation on the land, and set the basis for an effective town planning action. It is the town which can closely control the social or unsocial use of this communal asset: then, constitutionally and in the long run, it is the town which must be the only owner of it.
To carry out, progressively and without damaging anybody, this municipalization of the land, we suggest a system based on:
6. Disappearance of classes for money reasons.
We put no obstacle in the way of the generation of private wealth. This will be able to develop as up to now, and even better, as we shall free the market from many of its present day limitations, as we shall see in the following chapter. As a consequence, there will still be some people richer than others.
But our goal is not that everybody be the same, even in money. On the contrary, we believe that everybody is different, peculiar, unique, unrepeatable, outstanding... and only before law must individuals be considered as equals in rights.
Our goal then is not the artificial equalization of live peculiarities, but the solidary coexistence in the difference and vital peculiarity of every individual. And this solidary coexistence can only be considerd on a communal level. Our proposal is that of the financial Statutes, social solidarity in direct ratio to the private wealth of the empire taken as a whole.
Through the General Statute, with its minimum individual and family vital salaries; through the Utilitarian Statute, with its salaries of compulsory unemployment, strike and lock-out for indefinite time; through the Liberal Statute, and the subsequent gratuitousness of the liberal services for all the population, it is possible to attain for every member of the community, a minimum vital level, a minimum sustenance level, which must be as high as possible.
This minimum level, depending on the communal solidarity, prevents individuals from depending on the private generosity or selfishness of any other individual. On the basis of this self-sufficiency on the highest possible level, may be based the suppression of all material misery and of all the subsequent social proscription.
This is in our opinion a valid change for a progressive disappearance of classes for reasons of money, based on the vital subordination and dependence of some groups of population on others. Another more difficult thing, slower to be attained, but also possible, is the disappearance of the social classes because of culture, classism, and a whole number of actitudes and superiority feelings, contempt, envy... among classes. But this second goal will start beeing possible after the first one has been established.
7. Summary of the last chapters.
In the last four chapters we have mentioned the basic structures of the new society we are proposing:
In all the cases then it will be necessary to legislate only the minimum necessary laws, very few but very exact, even if generalizing and without useless casuistries. These minimum laws will have the mission of ensuring and granting the development in full freedom and personal responsibility of all the legitimate town activities. This will be so in every social area, whether state-unifederative in the whole imperial territory, or local-confederative in each autonomous territory (district, town, county, ethnic group,interethnic group, ex-empire).
In the following chapters we shall draw some of the minimum laws which it will be necessary to legislate in:
19In
this respect, see the Fourth Part and, especially, chapter
23, which ends this work.