Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account