AZR locates the evil in an unexpected place: not in economic injustice alone, but in the fact that acquisitiveness isolates a person and fills him with perpetual suspicion. "The pure soul" exists, but acquisitiveness strangles it.
"Acquisitiveness is evil not only because it exploits and enslaves, but above all because it causes each and every person to set himself apart, to distance himself even from his brother who is as acquisitive as he is." AZR, "Acquisitiveness" ("HaRekhushanut"), "Kuntres," Adar II 5685 (1925).
"'Man is by nature a political being' — and acquisitiveness forces man into solitude, into fear of the evil eye… How can there be any lasting bond under the rule of acquisitiveness? It would be easier for the Irish to unite with the English than for acquisitive men of one and the same people to unite." Ibid.
The psychological point: acquisitiveness is not the province of the rich alone. The beggar too has a "sack" over which he is jealous, and the same psychology operates even among the God-fearing and the learned. Thus AZR explains why fraternal hatred has never ceased despite the morality of the Prophets.
"The trait of acquisitiveness dwells not only in those who own great houses... but also in those who own nothing at all... 'The beggar hates his fellow beggar.' He too, the beggar, is to a certain degree acquisitive: he has a sack, and he worries that his sack be full, and he sees in the other beggar a dangerous competitor." Ibid.
"Even the sages of Israel, the God-fearing and the whole-hearted, are forever at war with one another. The morality of the Prophets and the sages is one thing, and the acquisitive psychology within them is another." Ibid.
And here comes the bold step, a self-criticism aimed at his own camp: even the kibbutz, if it is closed in on itself, is in AZR's eyes an "acquisitive commune." This is a direct dialogue with his remarks in "On the Hebrew Commune."
"Even in our communes the ideal of prophecy is not yet complete. So long as the commune is closed, it is an acquisitive commune, caring for its own collective, but there is not yet in it any national unification, let alone human unification…" Ibid.
As is his way, the remedy is not an economic mechanism but an inner transformation: "uprooting acquisitiveness from the heart, like crabgrass, with all its roots" is in his view the first task of the pioneers of the Land of Israel, "and then there will be room for the human-Jewish feeling within them to grow and flower." The essay complements "On the Hebrew Commune" and "We Are All Jews": acquisitiveness is the dark side of that same division AZR fought all his life, and the morality of the Prophets is the cure.