Cooperative

“ In the domain of economic and social welfare the party will foster the spirit of cooperation on as large a scale as possible. Instead of private and unorganised business enterprises, the party prefers cooperative union. ”

“ The cooperative structure also lends itself to a tighter knit organization, with members feeling they are part of the organization, responsible for its affairs, and willing to pitch in and help if there is some work that needs a few extra hands. ”

“ Other and formidable difficulties in the path of cooperative schemes are, the equitable division of the profits, and the fact that, while workmen are always ready to share the profits, they are neither able nor willing to share the losses. ”

“ Young is said to have received the idea of the big Cooperative enterprise from a small trader who asked permission to establish a mercantile system on the Cooperative plan, of moderate dimensions, throughout the territory. ”

“ This then was the American tradition, that private enterprise manages better all that to which it IS equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society. ”

“ But for those who love co-operation for itself, the true co-operators, whom critics ironically call "mystics/* co-operation is an end in itself. Not that they are prepared to rest content with the results already gained, but because they believe that co-operation is a living organism, and that the results achieved already contain the germs of all the possibilities to be wished for in the future, as the seed contains the fruit in a latent state. ”

“ They say that the attempt to realise the ideal of a new state of society which, like the Millennium to the early Christians, exalted the minds of the Pioneers, is now-a-days confined to the search after more comfort or large dividends in a word, they say that co-operation, instead of being a religion, is no more than mere business. ”

“ To drop metaphor, they believe that each co-operative society which obeys the laws that it has made for itself already constitutes a little world organised in conformity with justice and social benefit, and that it is sufficient to let it develop spontaneously, either by growth or imitation, to realise in the more or less distant future the best of all possible worlds. ”

“ One may say that co-operative association confines itself to transforming that co-operation which already exists in a latent state in all human society into conscious, organised co-operation. It is one of the favourite themes of economists to point out how the play of individual efforts produces involuntarily a general harmony ; unfortunately, facts prove that this harmony is often but a frightful discord. The co-operative society's role is to make each man play in tune ”

“ It presents an alternative theoretical program for dealing with the transition from the built-in competitiveness of western civilization to the built-in cooperativeness of a planned, coordinated, federated socialist-communist world order. ”

“ Co-operative association brings with it the hope of moral progress ; but in abolishing the pursuit of profit as the only real motive of economic activity substituting for it the sole aim of satisfying needs whilst abolishing advertisement, lying, cheating, and inducements to extravagance, co-operation will succeed in establishing in business a reign of truth and justice ”

“ One often hears the somewhat academic question discussed : Is co-operation an end, or only a means? For the great majority of those who rally round the co-operative movement " bourgeois M co-operation, as it is often called, is only a means, a means of living better without spending more or, as we shall see later on, of saving without denying oneself. For those collectivists or anarchists who support co-operation it is also only a means, a means of preparing the advent of the collectivist or anarchist regime by training and arming the people for a class war ”

“ THE immediate aim of co-operative societies is to satisfy the needs of their members better and more economically than is done by existing institutions ; for example, if the need be bread, to furnish it of better quality, juster weight, and more cheaply than the bakers can supply it. ”

“ The great burst of co-operative enthusiasm in 1848, although it spent itself almost entirely in efforts to establish productive societies, did, nevertheless, bring some distribu- tive societies into existence ”

“ In fact, it is inevitable that the more a movement spreads the more its original virtues tend to disappear in the mass of the people ; nevertheless, education, for which English co-operators make considerable sacrifices, will help to keep co-operative enthusiasm alive in the coming generations. ”

“ Moreover, beginning with exchanges of goods and services under agreements between individuals, the principle of voluntary coöperation is simply carried out in a larger way by any incorporated body of individuals who contract with one another for jointly pursuing this or that business or function. And yet, again, there is entire congruity between the representative constitutions of such private combinations and that representative constitution of the public combination which we see is proper to the industrial type: the same law of organization pervades the society in general and in detail. ”

“ A glance at the past rôles of dominance, competition, and coöperation in the institutions of government, religion, and commerce and industry, will aid us to consider coöperation in relation to present international problems. ”

“ The purpose of the joint pursuit in organization characterized by dominance may be either the exclusive good of the master or the joint good of the whole organized group, but in any case it is a purpose formed and kept by those few who know. The group may share in its execution and its benefits, but not in its construction or in the estimating and forecasting of its values. The purpose in coöperation is joint. ”

“ They are recognizing the fact that, not competition, but co-operation, reciprocity, is the great, the true power,—to climb, not by attempting to drag, to keep down one's fellows, but by aiding them, and being in turn aided by them, thus combining, and so multiplying the power of all instead of wasting a large part one against the other. ”

“ It can effect great savings for our workingmen, and can secure them food and other necessaries of the best quality. If nothing further arises, the spread of co-operation may simply induce a new form of competition between these big societies; but no one can study the history of the movement without becoming persuaded that there is a moral development carried on which will, in some way as yet not seen to us, lead up the organization of those societies into some higher generalization, securing harmony. ”

“ From the war-correspondent, whose letters give to the very nations that are fighting their only trustworthy accounts of what is being done, down to the newsboy who brings round the third edition with the latest telegrams, the whole organization is a product of spontaneous {432} coöperation among private individuals, aiming to benefit themselves by ministering to the intellectual needs of their fellows—aiming also, not a few of them, to benefit their fellows by giving them clearer ideas and a higher standard of right. ”

“ And when, with diminution of warfare and growth of trade, voluntary co-operation more and more replaces compulsory co-operation, and the carrying on of social life by exchange under agreement, partially suspended for a time, gradually re-establishes itself; its re-establishment brings the possibility of that vast elaborate industrial organization by which a great nation is sustained. ”

“ Most important of all the spirit of co-operation is fostered, co-operation among the workers, co-operation of worker and management, co-operation between all interested in the movement as subscribers, as collectors, as readers, as “passers-on.” As a positive force this spirit of co-operation is more valuable than anything else. ”

“ Thus while voluntary association is sometimes advocated as a step towards, and sometimes on the other hand as a substitute for, and bulwark against, state socialism, we find in practice these two forces working each in its own sphere, and in ways complementary one to the other, while underlying and essential to both is the force of individual action and self-help. ”

“ There results this type characterized throughout by that same individual freedom which every commercial transaction implies. The coöperation by which the multiform activities of the societies are carried on, becomes a voluntary cooperation. ”

“ The co-partnership party answer that labour at least helps to make the profit, and that competition, as yet almost insignificant between their societies, can be avoided by federating them (a process long ago begun) for buying and selling in common, and for other common purposes, while leaving each the control and responsibility of its own internal affairs. They further advocate the eventual federation of the productive wing of co-operation with the distributive, for settling prices and all matters in which their interests might conflict. ”

“ While, as we saw, the compulsory coöperation proper to militancy forbids, or greatly discourages, individual initiative, the voluntary cooperation which distinguishes industrialism gives free scope to individual initiative, and develops it by letting enterprise bring its normal advantages. Those who are successfully original in idea and act, prospering and multiplying in greater degrees than others, produce, in course of time, a general type of nature ready to undertake new things. ”

“ That the coöperation into which men have gradually risen secures to them benefits which could not be secured while, in their primitive state, they acted singly, and that, as an indispensable means to this cooperation, political organization has been, and is, advantageous, we shall see on contrasting the states of men who are not politically organized with the states of men who are politically organized in less or greater degrees. ”

“ This is but one among a thousand noiseless agencies constantly preaching the advantages and economies of Combination, and indicating the certainty that through Coöperation lies the way whereby Labor is to emerge from bondage, anxiety and need into liberty and assured competence. ”

“ It being always understood that it is Co-operation conducted on righteous principles, and for wise and benevolent ends; otherwise Association cannot be expected to bear any more profitable fruit than Individualism. Co-operation is applied association—association for the purpose of production and distribution. Co-operation implies the voluntary combination of individuals to the attaining an object by mutual help, mutual counsel, and mutual effort. There is a great deal of idle talk in the world just now about capital, as if capital were the enemy of labour. ”

“ Finally, and most important of all, by having a number of men working together, each doing his own share toward the common end, we bring about a systematic working together, that is to say, coöperation, which brings into being a new collective force greater than the sum of the individual forces. ”

“ PIET VLAG TO THE CO-OPERATORS
COMRADES AND CO-OPERATORS:
Here is your magazine. It is human. It is attractive. It is inexpensive.
The MASSES PUBLISHING COMPANY was organized at our instigation; it has no capital to speak of; it is dependent upon your support—and that is sufficient.
Co-operation has to be studied. We must have a means of reaching all the people interested in co-operation. Then we will eventually centralize to such an extent that the middleman will be eliminated. ”

“ From the beginning, therefore, this kind of social coöperation is a conscious coöperation, and a coöperation which is not wholly a matter of choice—is often much at variance with private wishes. As the organization initiated by it develops, we see that, in the first place, the fighting division of the society displays in a more marked degree these same traits ”

“ Thus, by formal organization we mean a planned system of co-operation effort in which each participant has a recognized role to play and duties or tasks to perform” (p. 5) . “... the dignity of the individual can be respected only in an administrative situation in which all participants will gain, in one way or another, from the accomplishment of the organization goal. In such a situation, administration can be ‘co-operative’ in the broadest sense” (p. 23) . ”

“ Radically opposed, however, as is compulsory coöperation, the organizing principle of the militant type, to voluntary cooperation, the organizing principle of the industrial type, we may, by observing the decline of institutions exhibiting the one, recognize, by implication, the growth of institutions exhibiting the other. ”

“ Co-operation.—The control of the manufacturing industry on a large scale by corporations makes hearty co-operation between the employing group and the employees difficult, but on the farm the personal relations of the persons engaged made it easy and natural. The art of working together as well as living together was an achievement of the home, at first beginning unconsciously, but later with a definite purpose. The practice of co-operation is a continual object-lesson to the children, as they become conscious of the mutual dependence of each and all. ”

“ It was the spirit of co-operation which in the the Middle Ages raised the working middle class to so high a level of culture and prosperity, of power and consequence. The re-awakening of the spirit of co-operation in our day will bear similar and still more precious fruit, not for one class alone but for the whole human society. ”

“ The art of co-operation, that great engine of achievement, depends on learning through social contact how to think and feel sympathetically. Finally, there is the product of social organization. Chance meetings and temporary assemblies are of small value, though they must be noted as phenomena of association. More important are the fixed institutions that have grown out of relations continually tested by experience until they have become sanctioned by society as indispensable. ”