The Green Book , Part II: The Solution of the Economic Problem (Socialism)

Overview
The Green Book, Part II, titled "The Solution of the Economic Problem (Socialism)," presents a program of economic thought that rejects both classical capitalism and Soviet-style state socialism. The argument centers on reshaping ownership, production, and distribution to remove what the author calls exploitation and to return wealth and decision-making to the people. Economic life is framed as an extension of political sovereignty: if the people are to rule themselves politically, they must also control economic resources directly.

Core economic principles
Central claims assert that wage labor is a form of slavery and that profit, interest, and rent are instruments of exploitation. Wealth generated by land, natural resources, and collective labor should be owned collectively rather than by private capitalists or by a distant state bureaucracy. The text advocates for an economic system where the individual worker and the community share in the fruits of production, and where accumulation by a separate owning class is prevented.

Organization and property
Ownership is redefined away from private capital and away from centralized state monopoly toward "social ownership" administered by popular institutions. Large natural monopolies and resources are treated as public property, while productive enterprises are to be organized as cooperative or peoples' units that report to and are accountable to popular congresses and committees. The author stresses that legal title should reflect the direct role of citizens in managing and benefiting from productive assets.

Labor, remuneration and distribution
Remuneration is criticized when it takes the form of wages divorced from the actual value created by labor; such wages are depicted as a vehicle for transferring wealth to owners. The proposal emphasizes linking remuneration to contribution and to social needs, promoting systems intended to eliminate surplus extraction by intermediaries. Redistribution mechanisms are proposed to ensure that basic needs are met and that income disparities based on ownership are minimized, though the text combines moral, political and economic justifications rather than laying out a detailed technical plan.

Mechanisms and institutions
Economic organization is to be implemented through popular congresses, committees, and cooperatives that embody direct participation. These institutions are described as vehicles for both decision-making and accountability, replacing parliamentary and managerial hierarchies with assemblies of producers and consumers. Banking, interest, and speculative finance are denounced, and emphasis is placed on directing resources through institutions controlled by workers and communities rather than markets or centralized party-state organs.

Practical implications and critique
The model is presented as an attempt to fuse individual dignity in labor with collective welfare, but it rests on broad normative claims and institutional prescriptions that critics have called vague or contradictory. Questions about incentives, efficiency, coordination of complex industries, and political centralization under the rubric of "people's authority" are left largely unresolved. Historical attempts to apply these ideas exposed tensions between rhetoric about popular control and realities of concentrated power, and the proposals have been influential mostly as political doctrine rather than as a replicable economic blueprint.