Chapter 4.2.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.2. Economic Planning Law -part 1-

The first division of the economic law system is economic planning law, and in response to the two-stage structure of a planned economy in which economic plans for each Zone are formulated based on a global framework economic plan in the World Commonwealth, the economic planning law that serves as the basis for this also has a two-stage structure of world law (treaty) and Zonal law. This structure is similar to environmental law.

World Economic Planning Law as a world law is a treaty that defines the content and formulation process of the framework economic plan formulated by the World Planned Economy Organization, a World Commonwealth organ, and it is legally binding on all Zones that make up the World Commonwealth.

In contrast, the Economic Planning Act as a Zonal law is a law that defines the content and formulation process of economic plans at the zonal level that are formulated by the Economic Planning Conference of each Zone within the framework of the overall economic plan based on the World Economic Planning Act, and can be said to be a specific branch of the World Economic Planning Act.

I plan to discuss the outline of these two-stage law-based economic planning in detail in my related series, Sustainable Planned Economy, so here I would like to focus in particular on issues related to enforcement, which is what makes the Economic Planning Act a "law."　　

The Economic Planning Act is indeed a legal norm, but the economic plan formulated based on this law is not itself a legal norm. However, because it binds economic planning entities as binding rules, the Economic Planning Act has an enforcement process for implementing the economic plans.

Corresponding to the two-stage structure described above, the enforcement of economic planning law is also divided into two stages: the world law level and the Zonal law level. At the world law level, the aforementioned World Economic Planning Organization itself can audit whether each Zone is complying with the overall framework established by the World Commonwealth.

On the other hand, enforcement at the Zonal law level is centered on auditing compliance with the economic plan established by the Economic Planning Conference and uncovering violations, and is carried out using more coercive measures; however, this poses some unique problems, so I will leave it for another article. 

👉The table of contents so far is here.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 4.1.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.1. The Significance of Communist Economic Law

Generally, economic law is a legal system that regulates economic activity, regardless of the economic system. Under a capitalist system, it often includes a wide range of laws related to the regulation of economic activity, with the antimonopoly law, which is the basis of a free economy, at its core.

However, since capitalism bases economic activity on ownership and sales contracts (so-called private autonomy), the starting point of the legal system is civil law that regulates these, and economic law remains a secondary legal system. Since areas where private autonomy is applicable remain in communism, civic law equivalent to civil law is enacted separately, but its position is subordinate to economic law.

Economic law in a communist society is second only to environmental code in importance. As we saw in the previous chapter, in the communist legal system, environmental code has priority second only to the Charter, which is the highest law, and thus economic law is also placed under the discipline of environmental law.

These can be broadly divided into three areas: economic planning law, business organization law, and labor relations law. The first, economic planning law, regulates the system of planned economy that is the basis of a communist economy, and forms the core of the communist economic legal system.

Next, business organization law regulates the nature of various business organizations under a planned economy, and is the equivalent of company laws in capitalism, but since there are no profit-making companies in a communist society, business organizations of all types are non-profit organizations.

The third, labor relations law, is a law that guarantees the rights of workers, centered on the Labor Standards Act, but unlike capitalist labor law, which is premised on the separation of labor and management, in a communist economy where the principle is that labor and management should coincide (my article), labor relations law is also positioned as a field of economic law.

In actual legislation, these three areas are not enacted as separate laws, but are all combined into a single code, the Economic Code. This is also very different from most capitalist economic laws, which are merely the aggregation or generic name of a number of codes.

Note that the Land Administration Law, which stipulates the management of land, which in a communist society becomes an unowned property, also regulates the right to use land and is a law that lies somewhere between civil law and economic law, but as it is broadly included in economic law, it will be dealt with in this chapter.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 3.5.

Chapter 3: System of Environmental Law

3.5. Enforcement of Environmental Laws

When it comes to the enforcement of environmental laws, a distinction is first made between those at the World Commonwealth level and those at the World Commonwealth constituent Zonal level.

The law enforcement system at the World Commonwealth level refers to the supervision of environmental law enforcement at the Zonal level by the World Environment Program, a World Commonwealth agency.

The World Environment Programme is a subordinate organ of the Sustainability Council, one of the main organs of the World Commonwealth, and is the organ that plans and implements environmental policies at the global level. It periodically reviews the enforcement of environmental laws in each Zone and has the authority to issue recommendations or stronger warnings as necessary.

If a Zone does not comply with the warnings, it will dispatch an environmental inspection team and conduct a compulsory investigation. If the inspection reveals any problems, the World Environment Programme will issue a new, binding corrective order, and if a Zone is not followed, it can recommend to the World Commonwealth  General Assembly that the Zone be suspended from membership in the World Commonwealth. 

On the other hand, enforcement at the Zonal level is directly handled by the the Commons' Convention, which is the representative body of the people in a communist society without the governmental structures that exist today, as is the case with other laws in environmental laws.

Here, the core of the environmental law enforcement body is the Sustainability Committee, which is also one of the standing committees of the Commons' Convention. This committee is the center of environmental policy making and legislation, and at the same time, it is the presiding body of environmental laws, which is established in each of the Zonal and its local Commons' Conventions and is responsible for everything from environmental impact assessment to the enforcement of environmental laws.

In particular, under the Sustainability Committee of the Zonal Commons' Conventions, the Environmental Inspection Offices are established in each region as the agencies responsible for on-site law enforcement. These offices are the practical agencies for the environmental impact assessments carried out by the Sustainability Committee, and at the same time, they are also environmental law enforcement agencies that uncover violations of environmental laws.

Similarly, local authorities within a unitary Zone or Zonelets constituting a federal Zone may also set up their own environmental enforcement agency under their Sustainability Committees.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 3.4.

Chapter 3: System of Environmental Law

3.4. Unified Environmental Code

The World Global Environmental Law (Treaty), which is the global common source of communist environmental law, requires each of the Zones that make up the World Commonwealth to enact its own environmental code. This Zonal environmental code functions as the basis for specific environmental conservation measures that are adapted to the environmental conditions of each Zone.

A Zonal environmental code is not simply a collection of individual laws, but a unified code that is enacted as a single law from the beginning. Since such a unified environmental code is a statute common to the entire Zone, it will be enacted as a federal statute that applies to in a federal Zone.

The content of the code reflects the three basic principles of the Global Environmental Law, namely, 1) conservation of biodiversity, 2) conservation of natural resources, and 3) prevention of climate change, and specifies a specific system of environmental conservation that takes into account the environmental conditions of each Zone.

This Zonal unified environmental code is not merely a conceptual law, but is the law that has the highest priority after the Charter in the Zonal legal system. It therefore provides guiding principles for economic code, civic code, counter-offenses code  (criminal code), and so on, which will be discussed in the following chapters.

Within the framework of this Zonal environmental code as a statute common to the entire Zone, local areas and the Zonelets that make up the federal Zone can not only enact their own environmental laws, but can also pioneer the enactment of their own environmental regulations that have not yet been stipulated in the Zonal code (preceding regulatory laws).

If the contents of pioneering regulatory laws in the localities where environmental conservation is taking place become widely recognized, they have the potential to be incorporated into the Zonal environmental code and become a entire Zonal legal matter, and therefore the enactment of such pioneering regulatory laws is explicitly encouraged in the Zonal environmental code as well.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 3.3.

Chapter 3: System of Environmental Law

3.3. Basic principles of the World Global Environmental Law

As we saw in the previous section, the fundamental principle of the World Global Environmental Law (Treaty) is "sustainable coexistence." Based on this fundamental principle, the primary objective of the World Global Environmental Law is the conservation (including restoration) of biodiversity. At the same time, this also constitutes the first basic principle of the Law.

In this case, " variety of life" in biodiversity includes human beings. Therefore, the conservation of biodiversity is not limited to the protection of non-human plants and animals, but aims to protect all species, including humans.

The second basic principle is the conservation of natural resources, especially water. Needless to say, water is an indispensable resource for all living things, and the abundance of water resources is the main reason why the earth has enabled the coexistence of diverse living things.

Sustainability-oriented communism allows for the communal and transnational management of natural resources, including water, but its legal basis is placed in environmental law before economic law. This is precisely why it is called a "sustainable planned economy.

The third basic principle is the prevention of anthropogenic climate change. This is currently being addressed as an international priority under the name of "global warming countermeasures," but since the capitalist system cannot legally constrain the activities of capital, the source of global warming, there is no prospect of reaching a definitive agreement internationally or domestically, and it will always remain a microcosm of lukewarm consensus. Anthropogenic climate action will be effective only in a communist system with a sustainable planned economy.

These are the three basic principles of World Global Environmental Law. While these three principles are objective principles, the principle of prudence is stated as an instrumental principle to achieve these three principles. The principle of prudence is the principle that environmentally hazardous actions must be avoided even if their environmental hazards are not scientifically proven, unless they are clearly based on unscientific grounds. 

A similar principle is the precautionary principle, which requires actions to prevent the occurrence of environmentally harmful events that are scientifically predicted to a certain extent, although not 100%, whereas the principle of prudence goes further than this, requiring the selection of precautions to avoid even theoretically possible harmful environmental events.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 3.2.

Chapter 3: System of Environmental Law

3.2. Fundamental Philosophy of the World Global Environmental Law 

The unifying source of law for communist environmental law is the World Global Environmental Law. This is one of the world laws enacted by the World Commonwealth, which is a law comparable to the current United Nations Convention.

The World Global Environmental Law sets forth the key environmental principles that form the basis of the environmental codes enacted by each of the Zones. The foundation of this law is the idea of the right to coexistence. The right to coexistence means the right to the coexistence of diverse living organisms, including human beings.

In this sense, it can be paraphrased as the right to coexist with life. It is not an ethic from a religious perspective, such as the precept of killing in Buddhism, but a rationale guiding the preservation of the global environment as a place for the survival of diverse organisms, including humankind.

In other words, it is the preservation of the global environment for the coexistence of all living things. From this point of view, the term "sustainable development," which has become a key word in environmental preservation, is replaced by "sustainable coexistence."

"Sustainable development" is a slogan that implies the idea of balancing environmental sustainability and capitalist economic development. It is an eclectic philosophy that seeks to preserve the environment within the framework of a capitalist economy, and while it may have historical significance as a principle that corrects the development-oriented capitalism that leads to environmental destruction, it is clear from the composition of the term that its main focus is on "development."

herefore, environmental conservation measures that essentially hinder development, especially fundamental policies that shake the foundations of the capitalist economy, are avoided or denied, and environmental conservation measures must always remain half-baked and only haphazard measures. At the same time, there is no hiding the attempt to lure environmental conservation into a for-profit business.

The World Global Environmental Law will make a radical break with this "green capitalist" philosophy and revolutionize the fundamental principle of environmental law to guarantee the sustainability of the survival of a wide variety of living organisms.

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.

Chapter 3.1.

Chapter 3: System of Environmental Law

3.1. Positioning of Environmental Law

In the system of communist law, environmental law is second in importance only to the Charter of the Commons' Convention. Environmental law is the basis for laws and regulations aimed at maintaining an ecologically sustainable global environment.

The reason why environmental law is so important in communist law is that the ultimate significance of modern communism precisely lies in the preservation of the global environment. In other words, planned production activities and a democratic political system that truly takes into consideration the preservation of the global environment is the ideal form of communism for the modern age, and environmental law is the legal system that lies at the heart of communism.

The legal category of environmental law itself has already appeared in capitalist societies. However, environmental law there is usually treated as the law on which the government implements its environmental policies, and is classified as administrative law in the broad sense of the term. Therefore, its content is unstable and subject to change according to the administrative policies of the government from time to time.

Moreover, except in some environmentally advanced countries, environmental laws are not compiled into a unified code, but are merely a patchwork of multiple laws. This is because environmental laws in capitalism are merely supplemental laws enacted on a case-by-case policy basis to the extent that they do not unduly restrict the activities of capital.

In contrast, environmental law in communist law is a unified legal code that is formulated in each Zone in accordance with the global environmental law (treaty) at the World Commonwealth level as a unified source of law. Its position is not just a part of administrative law, but also constitutes a unique legal system in its own right: environmental law.

Communist environmental law is not a supplementary law, but a basic law that underlies and constrains all other general legal systems, and in that respect it is a part of the basic law, second only to the Charter. This is supported by the fact that maintaining a sustainable global environment is not just a policy, but also a pillar of universal human rights in the Charter of the World Commonwealth.

The fundamental legal source of these environmental laws is the Global Environmental Law mentioned earlier, but but the principle content included therein will be submitted to the next article. 

👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.