AZR opens with respect for the two hundred workers who chose to nullify the "private inclination" and to live in brotherhood. But he does not ignore the erosion: the private instinct always whispers in the member's ear, and sows resentment.
"There are two hundred workers who chose to work together in a group. That is to say, to nullify the private inclination that every person has as an inheritance from earlier generations, whereby each cares for himself and his family, and to live together in brotherhood and fellowship." AZR, "On the Hebrew Commune" (from Ketavim Mekubatzim [Collected Writings], 1934/5).
"The private instinct always comes and whispers in the member's ear: you are devoting all your strength while so-and-so, for some reason, is slacking off... and there is room for opposition, for resentment... and then the trial becomes hard, the soul fills with bitterness, and despair and flight set in…" Ibid.
The cure is not organizational but moral: to increase love in deeds, to be strict with oneself and not with one's fellow, and to prove that life improves through brotherhood and not through envy.
"Against this there is but one remedy: to deepen and increase the measure of love, not only in fine words, but chiefly in good deeds, to be more strict with oneself... and to be very patient in what concerns one's fellow, and always to look upon others with a kindly eye." Ibid.
"For it is not through rivalry and envy that life grows and improves, as the seekers of private benefit teach us, but rather precisely through love and brotherhood and mutual aid." Ibid.
He sets "private benefit," whose road is paved and familiar (and leads to wars between man and man and between people and people), against communal life, whose road is new and unpaved. Every member is required to struggle not only against external obstacles but against the instinct that draws him toward "the paved road."
"Communal life needs tending; its road is a new road, not paved, and it must always struggle not only against the external disrupters, but each one against the instinct that draws them toward the 'paved road,' toward private benefit." Ibid.
Here too his stamp is evident: a public stance resting on the reform of the individual and of morality rather than on a mechanism; a belief that "love and brotherhood and mutual aid" are the foundation of the revival (as in "AZR and the Labor Movement" and "We Are All Jews"); and a clear-sighted view that does not conceal the difficulty, yet closes nonetheless in trust: "and whoever has faith in the ideal is confident that in the end it will be realized."