do things for themselves. They begin with the distribution of the necessities of life, such as food, clothing and shelter, and thus gain better access to the things they need. But what is more important, they learn by experience the technique of carrying on distributive business in the interest of the consumers. Next comes federation of distributive societies, and then wholesaling. This gives experience in the management of big business. Then follows production for use-production in their own factories and workshops for their own non-speculative use. When the consumers have reached back to the ownership of the productive plants, the land and the raw material, the demonstration is complete that the people can conduct their own business from start to finish for service and not for private profit. When this end is reached, the victory is won; a revolution has slowly but definitely taken place. There is another question: How can the people obtain control of industry and administer it effectively in their own interest? Voting does not provide the training. There is a prevalent fiction that all that is needed is for the majority of people to vote at an election to instruct the government to take over profit-making industries and use them for the service of the people. But these industries have never been used for that purpose, nor have the people who are administering them and working in them had experience in service for social purposes. The industries and the people have been adjusted to the profit motive. The change is too difficult to be accomplished by an edict. discovered this. Russia has There is a serious obstacle to the success of the sudden industrial revolutionary method in a certain fact that has received little attention from leaders of labour and less from economists. It is the fact that the organization of society solely upon a producers' basis cannot solve the economic problem. The theory that the workers should capture the industries by a revolution and that around the industrial function should revolve all of the reforms of the social life, has been responsible for many of the vagaries that have led the people astray. The "Christian socialist" movement, "syndicalism" and "guild socialism" have all been based upon the hypothesis that labour is the great function and that it is at the point of production that mankind needs to begin organization and control. For this reason we find these organizations striving to get for the workers the best rewards possible. This is good as far as it goes, but it never has and it never can solve the workers' problem. It has not the power to change the motive of industry. This method has striven to give the worker "the full value of the wealth he produced." "Full reward for labour" has been the aim. That motive has meant working for wages-producing for wages—and producing with that motive has meant not production for use but production for profit. Labour, like the capitalist, has sought to get as much for itself as possible, and that means as much from the consumers-from all the people as possible. This psychology is not compatible with production for use. In the trade union, as well as in the merchants' and manufacturers' association, the chief problem is how to get more from the consumer. And no group will solve the economic problem with this motive. Other exclusively producing enterprises such as the "selfgoverning workshop," "producers' co-operative," and "cooperative communistic colonies," working for wages, producing for profit, laying emphasis on labour as the exalted function, all suffer one and the same fate: they either fail or they become capitalistic-sooner or later. Let workers, in any form of organization, centralized at the point of production, succeed from the financial standpoint, and their organization becomes capitalistic and profit-making. Idealism in that field is compatible with poverty; but not with business success. Success means failure. The industrial coun tries are written over with a hundred years of historic corroboration of this fact. The few successful producers' cooperative enterprises in Great Britain, the larger numbers in Germany, and the still more in Italy and France do not contradict the general truth of this statement. Only this modification need be made: those that are not on the way to fail or to become capitalistic are on the way to be taken over by the consumers' co-operative societies. It is not for the win That work is the great function is an idea that has been promoted by slave owners, manufacturers, capitalists, schoolmasters, and parents who had no alternative. It is not natural to work. Society has been confused by artificial standards. People work only as a secondary reason. They work in order that they may consume. ning of wages; it is for the things that wages will buy that men work. But so much emphasis has been laid upon labour and wages that money has come to be the object both of worker and capitalist. The fact is, that, not in work but in consuming things is to be found the great joys. Food, clothing, housing, music, art, literature, entertainment, love, the pleasure of companionship-these are the things that come into the body through its senses and give it joy. It is not standing at a whirling machine that gives the satisfactions in life; but in consuming the things that can be gotten with the wages obtained, perhaps, in work at the machine. The one person who merits supreme consideration is the consumer; he is everybody. The alternative to political revolution and to profit-making industrial control is production controlled by the organized consumers and conducted in their interest. This means production for use; and it is the only form of production that has that motive. If the world is to be saved by substituting for the profit system the system of doing things for purposes of service then it must be saved through the organized Consumers' Movement. The consumers are no class. They are all. They are the people standing together, not in drudgery, not by the whirring wheel, but in the enjoyment of things-uniting to help one another secure better access to the things that make life-helping one another to life in greater abundance. When the Co-operative method becomes prevalent, then should the worker get the value of what he produces; then should the access to the good things of life be secured by the performance of useful service. Through the Co-operative Movement the prevalent economic competitive system may be supplanted not by chaos, suffering and revolution, but by an ordered, evolutionary method which employs the humane qualities of friendship and mutual aid, instead of rivalry and antagonism. My friend, Professor Charles Gide, is the foremost spokesman of this Movement in France. His teaching has clarified its philosophy and illumined its social significance. It is an augury of moment that an economist of his profound scholarship should be drawn to Co-operation as the agency above all others which he believes has the power to reorganize society. This book represents a study in the field of fundamental social reorganization, which should prove of great help in promoting an enlightened interest and understanding. It is, indeed, a pleasure to contribute the preface and a privilege to pay homage to its distinguished author. J. P. W. |