Finally, co-operation is a golden mean between individualism and Socialism. It includes all the good features and excludes all the evil features of both. On the one hand, it demands and develops individual initiative and self reliance, makes the rewards of the individual depend upon his own efforts and efficiency, and gives him full ownership of specific pieces of property. On the other hand, it compels him to submerge much of the selfishness and indifference to the welfare of his fellows which characterise our individual economy. It embraces all the good that is claimed for Socialism because it induces men to consider and to work earnestly for the common good, eliminates much of the waste of competitive industry, reduces and redistributes the burdens of profits and interest, and puts the workers in control of capital and industry. At the same time, it avoids the evils of an industrial despotism, of bureaucratic inefficiency, of individual indifference, and of an all pervading collective ownership. The resemblances that Socialists sometimes profess to see between their system and co-operation are superficial and far less important than the differences. Under both arrangements the workers would, we are told, own and control the means of production; but the members of a co-operative society directly own and immediately control a definite amount of specific capital, which is essentially private property. In a Socialist régime the workers' ownership of capital would be collective not private, general not specific, while their control of the productive instruments with which they worked would be shared with other citizens. The latter would vastly outnumber the workers in any particular industry, and would be interested therein not as producers but as consumers. No less obvious and fundamental are the differences in favour of co-operation as regards the vital matters of freedom, opportunity, and efficiency.
In so far as the future of co-operation can be predicted from its past, the outlook is distinctly encouraging. The success attained in credit, agriculture, and distribution, is a sufficient guarantee for these departments. While productive co-operation has experienced more failures than successes, it has finally shown itself to be sound in principle, and feasible in practice. Its extension will necessarily be slow, but this is exactly what should be expected by any one who is acquainted with the limitations of human nature, and the history of human progress. If a movement that is capable of modifying so profoundly the condition of the workers as is co-operative production, gave indications of increasing rapidly, we should be inclined to question its soundness and permanence. Experience has given us abundant proof that no mere system or machinery can effect a revolutionary improvement in economic conditions. No social system can do more than provide a favourable environment for the development of those individual capacities and energies which are the true and the only causal forces of betterment.
Nor is it to be expected that any of the other three forms of co-operation will ever cover the entire field to which it might, absolutely speaking, be extended; or that co-operation as a whole will become the one industrial system of the future. Even if the latter contingency were possible it would not be desirable. The elements of our economic life, and the capacities of human nature, are too varied and too complex to be forced with advantage into any one system, whether capitalism, Socialism, or co-operation. Any single system or form of socio-economic organisation would prove an intolerable obstacle to individual opportunity and social progress. Multiplicity and variety in social and industrial orders are required for an effective range of choices, and an adequate scope for human effort. In a general way the limits of co-operation in relation to the other forms of economic organisation have been satisfactorily stated by Mr. Aneurin Williams: "I suggest, therefore, that where there are great monopolies, either natural or created by the combination of businesses, there you have a presumption in favour of State and municipal ownership. In those forms of industry where individuality is everything; where there are new inventions to make, or to develop or put on the market, or merely to adopt in some rapidly transformed industry; where the eye of the master is everything; where reference to a committee, or appeals from one official to another, would cause fatal delay: there is the natural sphere of individual enterprise pure and simple. Between these two extremes there is surely a great sphere for voluntary association to carry on commerce, manufacture, and retail trade, in circumstances where there is no natural monopoly, and where the routine of work is not rapidly changing, but on the whole fairly well established and constant."[159]
The province open to co-operation is, indeed, very large. If it were fully occupied the danger of a social revolution would be non-existent, and what remained of the socio-industrial problem would be relatively undisturbing and unimportant. The "specialisation of function" in industrial organisation, as outlined by Mr. Williams, would give a balanced economy in which the three great socio-economic systems and principles would have full play, and each would be required to do its best in fair competition with the other two. Economic life would exhibit a diversity making strongly for social satisfaction and stability, inasmuch as no very large section of the industrial population would desire to overthrow the existing order. Finally, the choice of three great systems of industry would offer the utmost opportunity and scope for the energies and the development of the individual. And this, when all is said, remains the supreme end of a just and efficient socio-industrial organisation.
REFERENCES ON SECTION II
Fisher: The Rate of Interest. New York; 1907.
Cassel: Nature and Necessity of Interest. London; 1903.
Gonner: Interest and Saving. London; 1906.
Landry: L'Intérêt du Capital. Paris; 1904.
Menger: The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour. London; 1899.
Cathrein-Gettelman: Socialism. St. Louis; 1904.
Skelton: Socialism: A Critical Analysis. New York; 1911.
Spargo: Socialism. Macmillan; 1906.
Walling: Socialism As It Is. New York; 1912.
Hillquit-Ryan: Socialism: Promise or Menace? Macmillan; 1914.
Savatier: La Théorie Moderne du Capital et la Justice. Paris; 1898.
Garriguet: Régime du Travail. Paris; 1908.
Funk: Zins und Wucher. Tübingen; 1868.
Holyoake: The History of Co-operation. London; 1906.
Fay: Co-operation at Home and Abroad. London; 1908.
Williams: Copartnership and Profit-Sharing. Henry Holt & Co.; 1913.
Mann, Sievers, Cox: The Real Democracy. London; 1913.
Also the works of Taussig, Devas, Antoine, Hobson, Nearing, Willoughby, and Hitze, which were given at the end of the introductory chapter.