Again and again enterprises have been begun on co-operative principles which bid fair,in the opinion of the promoters,to succeed;but after one,two,three,or ten years,the enterprise which was started with such high hopes has dwindled away into either total or partial failure.
At present,many co-operative undertakings are nothing more or less than huge Joint Stock Limited Liability concerns,shares of which are held largely by working people,but not necessarily,and sometimes not at all by those who are actually employed in the so-called co-operative business.Now,why is this?Why do co-operative firms,co-operative factories,and co-operative Utopias so very often come to grief?
I believe the cause is an open secret,and can be discerned by anyone who will look at the subject with an open eye.
The success of industrial concerns is largely a question of management.
Management signifies government,and government implies authority,and authority is the last thing which co-operators of the Utopian order are willing to recognise as an element essential to the success of their Schemes.The co-operative institution which is governed on Parliamentary principles,with unlimited right of debate and right of obstruction,will never be able to compete successfully with institutions which are directed by a single brain wielding the united resources of a disciplined and obedient army of workers.Hence,to make co-operation a success you must superadd to the principle of consent the principle of authority;you must invest in those to whom you entrust the management of your co-operative establishment the same liberty of action that is possessed by the owner of works on the other side of the repudiation of the rotten and effete regime of the Bourbons,the French peasants and workmen imagined that they were inaugurating the millennium when they scrawled Liberty,Equality,and Fraternity across all the churches in every city of France.
They carried their principles of freedom and license to the logical ultimate,and attempted to manage their army on Parliamentary principles.It did not work;their undisciplined levies were driven back;disorder reigned in the Republican camp;and the French Revolution would have been stifled in its cradle had not the instinct of the nation discerned in time the weak point in its armour.
Menaced by foreign wars and intestine revolt,the Republic established an iron discipline in its army,and enforced obedience by the summary process of military execution.The liberty and the enthusiasm developed by the outburst of the long pent-up revolutionary forces supplied the motive power,but it was the discipline of the revolutionary armies,the stern,unbending obedience which was enforced in all ranks from the highest to the lowest,which created for Napoleon the admirable military instrument by which he shattered every throne in Europe and swept in triumph from Paris to Moscow.
In industrial affairs we are very much like the French Republic before it tempered its doctrine of the rights of man by the duty of obedience on the part of the soldier.We have got to introduce discipline into the industrial army,we have to superadd the principle of authority to the principle of co-operation,and so to enable the worker to profit to the full by the increased productiveness of the willing labour of men who are employed in their own workshops and on their own property.
There is no need to clamour for great schemes of State Socialism.
The whole thing can be done simply,economically,and speedily if only the workers will practice as much self-denial for the sake of establishing themselves as capitalists,as the Soldiers of the Salvation Army practice every year in Self Denial Week.What is the sense of never making a levy except during a strike?Instead of calling for a shilling,or two shillings,a week in order to maintain men who are starving in idleness because of a dispute with their masters,why should there not be a levy kept up for weeks or months,by the workers,for the purpose of setting themselves up in business as masters?There would then be no longer a capitalist owner face to face with the masses of the proletariat,but all the means of production,the plant,and all the accumulated resources of capital would really be at the disposal of labour.This will never be done,however,as long as co-operative experiments are carried on in the present archaic fashion.
Believing in co-operation as the ultimate solution,if to co-operation you can add subordination,I am disposed to attempt something in this direction in my new Social Scheme.I shall endeavour to start a Co-operative Farm on the principles of Ralahine,and base the whole of my Farm Colony on a Co-operative foundation.
In starting this little Co-operative Commonwealth,I am reminded by those who are always at a man's elbow to fill him with forebodings of ill,to look at the failures,which I have just referred to,which make up the history of the attempt to realise ideal commonwealths in this practical workaday world.Now,I have read the history of the many attempts at co-operation that have been made to form communistic settlements in the United States,and am perfectly familiar with the sorrowful fate with which nearly all have been overtaken;but the story of their failures does not deter me in the least,for I regard them as nothing more than warnings to avoid certain mistakes,beacons to illustrate the need of proceeding on a different tack.
