1. Abolition of the Private Ownership of Land.

Land, being the prime raw material for all human labor and the basis of human existence, must be made the property of society, together with the means of production and distribution. At an advanced stage of development society will again take possession of what it owned in primeval days. At a certain stage of development all human races had common ownership of land. Common property is the foundation of every primitive social organization; it is essential to its existence. Only by the rise and development of private property and the forms of rulership connected with it, has common property been abolished and usurped as private property, as we have seen, not without severe struggles. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property formed the first cause of oppression. This oppression has passed through all stages, from slavery to “free” Wage-labor of the twentieth century, until, after a development of thousands of years, the oppressed again convert the soil into common property.

The great importance of the soil to human existence was the reason why the ownership of the soil constituted the chief cause of conflict in all social struggles of the world – in India, China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Christian middle ages, the realms of the Aztecs and Incas, and in the social struggles of modern times. Even at the present day men like Adolf Samter, Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, Henry George, and others, who do not believe in other forms of common property, favor the common ownership of land.

The welfare of a population depends primarily upon the cultivation of the soil. To develop this cultivation to the highest degree is eminently to the interest of all. That this highest degree of development cannot be attained tinder the rule of private property, has been shown. To obtain the greatest possible advantage from the soil, not its cultivation alone must be taken into consideration. Other factors must be considered to which neither the largest private owner nor the most powerful association is equal, factors that may exceed even the jurisdiction of the state and require international consideration.