Collectivity

“ Large, settled populations, adequately supplied with the essentials of life, enabled human beings to organize social centers in which a comparatively few people, tending their animals and working the land, could release a comparatively large part of the population to devote its time and energy to trade and commerce, to industry and transport, to the arts and sciences and to the organization, direction and administration of large scale enterprises such as government, the military, construction and the mobilization of sufficient labor power to carry on and enlarge their enterprises. ”

“ The principle now in practice is to induce a large portion of society to devote their lives to distribute wealth upon a large, a medium, and a small scale, and to have it conveyed from place to place in larger or smaller quantities, to meet the means and wants of various divisions of society and individuals, as they are now situated in cities, towns, villages, and country places. This principle of distribution makes a class in society whose business is to buy from some parties and to sell to others. ”

“ If individual property, on the contrary, were excluded, the plan which must be adopted would be to hold the land and all instruments of production as the joint property of the community, and to carry on the operations of industry on the common account. The direction of the labour of the community would devolve upon a magistrate or magistrates, whom we may suppose elected by the suffrages of the community, and whom we must assume to be voluntarily obeyed by them. The division of the produce would in like manner be a public act. ”

“ COLLECTIVISM, a term used to denote the economic principle of the ownership by a community of all the means of production in order to secure to the people collectively an equitable distribution of the produce of their associated labour. ”

“ With the gradual change of conditions, growth of population, increase of wealth, and greater intercourse between communities there grew up on one end of the social scale groups of laborers who were not members of any guild and on the other end accumulations of capital which were either in the hands of men who were neither craftsmen nor guild members or of those who had larger accumulations than they could use in their own business. ”

“ No reasonable person can doubt that a village community, composed of a few thousand inhabitants cultivating in joint ownership the same extent of land which at present feeds that number of people, and producing by combined labour and the most improved processes the manufactured articles which they required, could raise an amount of productions sufficient to maintain them in comfort; and would find the means of obtaining, and if need be, exacting, the quantity of labour necessary for this purpose, from every member of the association who was capable of work. ”

“ During that time the laborers will take possession of all lands, buildings, instruments of production and distribution. With these in their possession, and without the interposition of government, they will organize into associations or groups for the purpose of carrying on the work of society. ”

“ If will mean society organized upon a co-operative basis, collectively owning the sources of wealth and the means of production, and producing wealth to satisfy human wants and not to gorge a privileged few. ”

“ The plan of the Community, as an economy, is, in brief, this: for all who have property to take stock, and receive a fixed interest thereon; then to keep house or board in common, as they shall severally desire, at the cost of provisions purchased at wholesale, or raised on the farm; and for all to labor in community and be paid at a certain rate an hour, choosing their own number of hours and their own kind of work. ”

“ To what extent do individuals move from one class to another, and how does this fact modify the character of class relationships?
News and the mobility of the social group.—The division of labor, in making individual success dependent upon concentration upon a special task, has had the effect of increasing the interdependence of the different vocations. A social organization is thus created in which the individual becomes increasingly dependent upon the community of which he is an integral part. ”

“ A number of groups adopted the new system, breaking off from the old groups of builders, dealers in clothing, metal-workers, artisans, and farm laborers, each group increasing in number, each different, each making itself essential to [872] the rest, and satisfying individual wants as well as the needs of a community. Nothing impeded any man’s expansion; a citizen working as a laborer might unite himself with as many groups as he thought proper.... ”

“ It is the Community, organized in various ways, which maintains government and foreign relations, secures law and order, fosters the arts and inventions, aids education, breeds opinion, and promotes, through concession or otherwise, the agencies of transportation, communication, credit, banking, and the like, without which any production, save the most primitive, would be impossible. It is the Community which creates the demand for commodities and services, through which Labor is provided with remunerative employment, and Capital with a return upon its investment. ”

“ In advanced and complex societies, however, each individual belongs to a number of groups—to a town, a factory, a school, a home, a political party, a fraternal order, a church. In complex societies these groups are united to form the whole social structure. The individual belongs to society, therefore, because he belongs to one or more of the groups composing society, and his membership in society is dependent upon his membership in a social group. ”

“ The purpose and plans of the society were to be fully set forth in a little pamphlet, and placed in the hands of every citizen. The people were to be urged to co-operate with the institution by refusing absolutely to give any man, able to work, either food, clothing or lodging, on the ground that he could obtain the needed help by paying for it in labor at the institution; and that they further assist the work by contributing clothing, by employing laborers, and using the products of the institution as far as possible. ”

“ Individuals have, therefore, gradually banded themselves together into partnerships, corporations, banks, trusts, insurance companies, labor unions, and other forms of collectivism, because only through coöperation could they do the big work of this country. ”

“ The objection ordinarily made to a system of community of property and equal distribution of the produce, that each person would be incessantly occupied in evading his fair share of the work, points, undoubtedly, to a real difficulty. ”

“ After the initial stage, when the institution becomes firmly established, it attracts local deposits, and thus the savings of the community, which are too often hoarded, are set free to fructify in the community. ”

“ It tends to the highest well-being of the community, that is, to its possession of a maximum of vital attraction for individuals, that this industry should supply a variety of sources of income; that is, wages, profits and interest. If the community can retain in its own bounds the owners of its industries, at least in some numbers, and the capitalists whose wealth is invested in these industries, it is [Pg 96] of great service. ”

“ They have awakened from their dreams; and now is the time for practical attempts, to start with, first, the joint-stock property, the large farm or township, the common home [433] and joint property of all the members; second, coöperative labor and the equitable distribution of products, the large fields, large pastures, large gardens, large dairies, large fruit orchards, etc., with their mills, mechanic shops, stores, common wash-houses, bake-houses, baths, libraries, lectures, cabinets, etc. ”

“ They have overlooked the equally vital questions concerning the distribution of these possessions, and of the various employments of mankind. Full of their leading idea, and accustomed to abstractions and generalities, they forget the individual, and appear to treat their subject as if the aggregate wealth of a community were to be enjoyed in some aggregate manner, and a sum-total of possessions would represent the comforts and enjoyments of its several members. ”

“ Industry had produced municipal prosperity; prosperity stimulated municipal industry. A new class of society had been called into existence by mercantile occupations, and, in proportion as it throve, the whole social order was improved. ”

“ The labourer could only obtain the full produce of his labour in communities in which co-operative production, voluntary exchange, and co-operative distribution were the basis of industrial organisation. ”

“ These farmers are organized in the interest of agriculture. The resultant social life constitutes a most intense organization in which voluntary and conscious combination matures in instinctive union embodied in blood relationship, neighborliness and economic union. These populations show the correspondence between economic and religious austerity. Thrift takes the form of dogmatic repression and finally their organization and their relationship express themselves in organized efforts for the well-being of the community. They deliberately as well as instinctively co-operate. ”

“ Community—That unit of territory and of population characterized by common social and economic interests and experiences; an “aggregation of people the majority of whose interests have a common center.” Usually ascertained by determining the normal trade area of each given center. The primary social grouping of sufficient size and diversity of interests to be practically self-sufficing in ordinary affairs of business, civil and social life. ”

“ Whether we compare different communities with each other, or examine the same community at different times, it is obvious that the progressive society, which is marked by increase of population, is also marked by an increased consumption and an increased accumulation of wealth, not merely in the aggregate, but per capita. ”

“ In uniting the population into such co-operative communes the already existing co-operative societies will be of great importance. The wider the sphere of work of the co-operatives, the wider the circle of the population included, the more organised will the distribution of products become, and the more frequently will these co-operatives be changed into organs of supply for the whole population. ”

“ The structure of human society consists of specialized economic, political, administrative and cultural groupings assembled and maintained in relationships that supply necessities, conveniences, comforts, luxuries for the individuals, together with capital goods and services for the social groups composing the civilization. ”

“ The arrangement of industry was planned in detail, a co-operative system was organized that would keep every man busy at useful labor without working him too hard, would take away the profits of the middleman by a well-planned system of distribution, and would allow liberty in social relations as far as consistent with the general good, but would subordinate the individual to the community. ”

“ The world has made great progress in this direction during the last fifty years, through voluntary organizations for prudent expenditure. The only limit to such community of organization for special purposes is in the nature of the work and the relation of the workers. ”

“ The furtherance of industrial development by aggregation is no less manifest. If we compare a small society with a large one, we get clear proof that those processes of coöperation by which social life is made possible assume high forms only when the numbers of the cooperating citizens are great. ”

“ It is precisely, indeed, in the degree to which that obligation is interpreted as attaching to all workers, and not merely to a select class, that the difference between the existing industrial order, collectivism and the organization of industry as a profession resides. The first involves the utilization of human beings for the purpose of private gain ”

“ Every one of the communities just described turns the power of its common organization upon the problem of maintaining the lower margin of the community. They who are in danger of falling behind are sustained and carried on. None in these communities is permitted to fall into pauperism. The workingman without capital, whether he be in their meetings or only employed on their farms, is kept from want. ”

“ Since each of these elements of production may be separately appropriated, the industrial community may be considered as divided into landowners, capitalists, and productive labourers. Each of these classes, as such, obtains a share of the produce: no other person or class obtains anything, except by concession from them. The remainder of the community is, in fact, supported at their expense, giving, if any equivalent, one consisting of unproductive services. These three classes, therefore, are considered in political economy as making up the whole community. ”

“ The cultivation of speculative knowledge, though one of the most useful of all employments, is a service rendered to a community collectively, not individually, and one consequently for which it is, primâ facie, reasonable that the community collectively should pay ”

“ Certain officers of the state constitute, as we saw in an early chapter, one generic class of laborers, one of whose functions it is to retain in a state of appropriation things on which [Pg 376] other men have conferred utility—that is, to protect property, and so to coöperate in the creation of wealth. In a few directions they render services which private employers might render in a less effective way. ”