that would work with the facility of a money-currency.
Within any single Association, where there is practical sense
and technical knowledge, a very general harmony of interests can
prevail. The production, circulation and consumption of goods will
not be regulated by laws, but by the persons themselves, from their
own direct insight and interests. People's own active share in the
life of the Associations will enable them to acquire the necessary
insight; and the fact, that the various interests are obliged to
contract a mutual balance, will ensure the goods circulating at their
proper relative values. This sort of agreed combination, determined
by economic considerations, is not the same as the form of combination
that exists in the modern trades-unions. The activities of the modern
trades-unions are expended in the economic field; but the unions are
not framed primarily according to economic considerations. They are
modelled on the principles taken from practical familiarity in modern
times with political considerations, considerations of state. They
are parliamentary bodies, where people debate, not where they come
together to consider economic aspects and agree on the services
to be reciprocally rendered. In these Associations, it will not be
"wage-workers" sitting, using their power to get the highest possible
wages out of the work-employer; it will be hand-workers, co-operating
with the spiritual workers, who direct production, and with those
interested in consuming the product, to effect a balance between one
form of service and another, through an adjustment of prices. This
is not a thing that can be done by general debate in parliamentary
assemblies. One must beware of these. For who would ever be at work,
if an endless number of people had to spend their time negotiating
about the work! Everything will take place by agreement between man
and man, between one Association and another, whilst the work goes
on alongside. For this, all that is necessary is, that the joint
agreement should be in accordance with the inside knowledge of the
workers and with the interests of the consumers.
In saying this, one depicts no Utopia. No particular way is laid down
in which this or that matter must be settled. All that is done, is
to point out how people will settle matters for themselves, when once
they set about working in forms of community which are in accordance
with their special insight and interests.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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