INTRODUCTION Two antagonistic economic forces today are striving for supremacy. The conflict between them causes the general social disorganization now obvious. A stabilized society will come to pass only when one or the other of these becomes dominant. The great war was but a minor and subsidiary flare-up in one of the contending camps. Shall the life and industries of the world be conducted for purposes of profit or for purposes of service?-this is the Great Conflict. The war was a melange of hidden motives, uncertainties, hypocrisies and subterfuges; the Great Conflict is clear-cut and definite. On the one side are the most powerful forces in society from the material standpoint. They get their strength from the belief, of the many, in the competitive profit-system. They are supported by the vast interests which subsist upon income from property. They are maintained by the human hunger for privilege and power and the natural desire to have the good things of life without performing service. They are associated with the ownership of the major part of the property of the world. They control the great governments, with their coercive might of arms, police, and jurisdiction over the lives of the people. On the other side are forces which are as yet weak and but meagrely organized but which are steadily growing. They are impelled by the determined conviction in the minds of people that it is possible to organize the economic affairs of the world upon the basis of production and distribution for service. A hunger is growing among the toiling masses for the control of the affairs of their lives to this end. Substantiating these tendencies are the facts that the workers are organizing more and more effectively as producers in the field of production and as consumers in the field of consumption. The demonstrations of these possibilities are capturing the imagination of the people and creating the vision of larger things. On the first side, and contributing to the strength of the second side, is the present breaking down of the profit-system. There are some who look forward with fear to a collapse of the economic structure of modern society and to a coming revolution. Fears of such a future event are groundless-such a catastrophe need not be anticipated as a possibility of the future-it is already coming to pass. Whether we realize it or not, we are living in the midst of a cataclysm. The old order is breaking to pieces. The life of an individual is a momentary flash in the history of society; the events through which we are living are burning and quick. As the profit-motive in industry fails to serve the people as a social instrument, two organizations of society stand ready to assume its functions. One is the political State; the other is the voluntary, non-political organization of the people in the Co-operative Movement. When the present disorder has subsided, the future conflict will be between these two principles. One is the compulsory political idea; the other is the idea of free and voluntary association. Each is making progress. Each moves in the direction of production and distribution for service. Harmonization of these two elements is possible and to be hoped for as an event of the future. In the reorganization of society now imminent there is a question of paramount importance to be answered: Can the people conduct their own business effectively or must they eternally look to private profit-making interests or to the impersonal State to do it for them? This question is answered by the co-operative societies in which the people are giving the world a demonstration of their capacity to |