Page 113 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

A Superfluous Copartnership,
who supposed themselves to be acting in the interests of labour.
They believed sincerely that in denying "participation" and
" copartnership " the Wholesale was relapsing into joint-stock
capitahsm. In reahty the case was precisely opposite.
Tlu'oughout
society, under capitalism, there is a division between a numerical
minority of owners, with their friends and dependents, and a
numerical majority of workers; and there is also another division
co-existing between the antagonistic interests of capital and labour
and the interest of the public as the universal consumer. To accept
these divisions by proposing merely a formal partnership of the
three interests is in effect to perpetuate capitalism. What we need,
in the interests alike of labour and society, is an end to this absolute
division. When capital becomes the servant of the public, and
labour becomes a public service, undertaken by citizens to satisfy
common needs, then the present economic civil wars will cease, for
the capitaUst and the worker will be merged in the citizen, and the
economic interests of society will be united. From such a complete
state the voluntary and limited community of the co-operative
stores and the Wholesale Society, no doubt, is distant; nevertheless,
it is on the same broad principle that the store movement rests.
Co-operators come together to supply their common needs; their
collective capital becomes collectively their servant, work on their
behalf a civil service, and profit a just return for loyalty, going back
through dividend on purchases to those who need it most. All is
imified in the co-operator. Thus, if he is a member of the ever-open
co-operative community, the worker in a co-operative factory
already is in full partnership ; and if he is not a member, then of his
own choice he is outside the co-operative body and has no special
claim upon it. Wages for labour of which none are ashamed, a
strictly limited interest on shares that cannot appreciate, and
everything else to the co-operator who himseU is consumer and
capitalist, and, as far as possible, worker also—these are the principles
of the store movement. When the justice of them is understood the
claims of copartnership and profit-sharing become irrelevant, just as
it would be absurd if members of the House of Commons proposed
copartnership with the nation, and a sharing between members,
fimdholders, and taxpayers of any surplus national revenue.
During recent years all this has been perceived clearly enough,
but in the heyday of the bonus agitation the opponents had no
theoretical objections to offer. The eloquent champions of
" had it all their own way; and co-operators were
"participation
o 81