Chapter 4.5.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.5. Labor Relations Law

In 4.1. of this chapter, we pointed out that labor laws are included in the communist economic law system. This is because labor and management are combined in a communist business organization. In this respect, capitalist labor laws, which are premised on the separation of labor and management, are often divided into individual labor laws that protect the rights of individual workers and collective labor laws that stipulate the organization and rights of labor unions.

The fact that workers' rights cannot be fully protected unless they form unions and unite outside the company is a result of the capitalist separation of management and labor, but as we explained last time, in communist business organizations, whether they are co-determination type or self-management type, workers' organizations are permanently established within the business organization, so there is basically no need for external organizations such as unions.

As a result, there is no particular concept of what is called the right of workers to organize. However, this does not mean that unity is prohibited. Rather, it can be said that the right to organize is included in the right to co-determination and the right to self-management.

Furthermore, there will be no need for the right to strike, which is the most radical of the three labor rights. As long as co-determination or voluntary determination is functioning, labor-management disputes that develop into industrial action should not occur in the first place. Even if a serious labor dispute does occur, it will be sufficient for a third-party arbitration committee established within the company to make a ruling.

Thus, communist labor relations laws will be dominated by so-called individual labor laws, but at the same time, they will not be limited to the Labor Standards Act in the narrow sense, but will be integrated laws that also include labor environment legislation such as the Industrial Safety and Health Act and the Employment Discrimination Prohibition Act.

In the first place, in a communist society where the monetary economy has been abolished, there is no wage labor, and everything is unpaid labor. Therefore, labor standards are fundamentally different from capitalist labor standards, which are almost entirely about wage issues, and communist labor standards will have working hour regulations at their core, but will also be accompanied by workplace environment regulations such as safety and health and the prevention of harassment.

As a result, the nature of labor standards inspection will change significantly, and the police-style labor standards inspection system with compulsory investigation powers that existed under capitalism will no longer be necessary. Instead, a more judicial labor dispute resolution system with a human rights relief approach, such as the Tribune for Labor, will develop.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

Chapter 4.4.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.4. Corporate Organization Law

The second pillar of communist economic law is the corporate organization law, which defines the nature of communist corporate organizations. Corporate organization law is roughly equivalent to the company law in capitalist legal systems, but in a communist society, there are of course no profit-making companies such as joint-stock companies.

Therefore, the legal nature of a communist corporate organization is an incorporated association, but it is not a profit-making corporation, but a non-profit production corporation. A production corporation is granted legal personality, and certain rights are guaranteed within the scope of the law.

A major feature of the communist corporate organization law is that it includes the labor organization law. In other words, since the basic principle of the operation of a communist corporate organization is worker self-management or labor-management joint decision-making, an internal labor organization corresponding to this is permanently established.

The specific types of communist corporate organizations have already been discussed in my On Communism (see my article), so here I will only summarize them from a legal perspective.

Communist corporate organizations can be roughly divided into socially owned enterprise and self-managed enterprise, the former being production business organization and the latter production cooperative. In terms of operation, large-scale production business organization is equivalent to co-determined enterprise. Planned economy is limited to the former socially owned enterprise-production business organization.

The latter, self-managed enterprise-production cooperative, engages in off-plan free production activities and also engage in barter, so in that sense it is similar to a commercial enterprise, but as mentioned above, it is not profit-making in the legal sense of distributing profits to shareholders as the owners of the company, as is the case with a joint stock company.

An intermediate form between these two is the production business corporation. This is similar to a production cooperative in that it engages in off-plan production, but because its large scale makes self-management technically difficult, it is a large enterprise with a co-determined internal structure similar to a production business organization.

There is also the cooperative labor group, which is a small business organization smaller than a production cooperative, but this is not a corporation but a group of workers. However, as long as it is officially registered, when conducting business, the entity is conveniently given status as a single legal group similar to a corporation.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

Chapter 4.3.

Chapter 4: The System of Economic Law

4.3. Economic Planning Law -part 2-

In the enforcement of economic planning law at the Zonal level, it is important to monitor compliance with economic plans and expose violations, especially the latter. In this regard, if we consider the types of violations of economic planning law, they can be broadly divided into (A) violations of plans and (B) unplanned production.

In the old-style planned economy, the latter, unplanned production, that is, the "black economy," was a major issue. This is because the old-style planned economy aimed to nationalize all economic activity, and private business activities were widely considered criminal acts.

However, in the new environmental planned economy, which aims for environmental sustainability, the planned economy is only applied to environmentally damaging industrial sectors, and other economic activities are left to the free economy. Therefore, the acts that are exposed as unplanned production are also limited.

Violations of plans can be divided into those on the producer's side and those on the consumer's side. Producer violations occur when a business entity subject to a planned economy intentionally overproduces or underproduces in violation of a plan. Therefore, if overproduction or underproduction occurs unintentionally and as a result of negligent management decisions, it does not constitute a violation of the economic planning law, although management may be held responsible under the business organization law.

Consumer violations occur when consumers (including business entities) monopolize products in violation of acquisition quantity limits. In that sense, this can also be called "antimonopoly," but of course this has a completely different meaning from antimonopoly as a market monopoly regulation under capitalism.

Unplanned production, on the other hand, occurs when a free production enterprise secretly carries out production activities in areas subject to a planned economy. This is a type of underground economy and is therefore subject to prohibition, but it is a relatively rare case.

The economic planning law are enforced by the Planning Inspection Department, a law enforcement agency established within the Economic Planning Conference Secretariat. The Planning Inspection Department functions as an economic inspection agency with the authority to conduct on-site inspections and compulsory investigations.

Penalties for violations of the Economic Planning Law are imposed through hearings by the Economic Planning Conference, and primarily consist of suspension of the business qualifications or civil rights of individuals involved in the violation.

Even if there is a systematic violation, because planned enterprises are involved in core production, it is inappropriate to dissolve the business entity itself, but also to impose penalties such as suspending operations. In the case of unplanned free enterprises, penalties such as suspension of operations or forced dissolution may also be imposed.

👉The table of contents so far is here.

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

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.