Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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