Page 22 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Story of the C.W.S.
another venture of the time, it may be written down as foundered at
sea. Launched amidst enthusiasm, it sank in darlaiess, unregarded
and alone. Owenism, meanwhile, was attempting fantastic things.
The glittering idea of abstract labour-value was producing the Labour
Exchanges, where knowing people, while they had the opportunity,
deposited articles of no commercial worth, and took away all they
could obtain of a contrary kind, leaving the Exchange counting
" profits " in surplus thousands of " hours." A currency of labour
notes was being created, which (said the Crisis, in its report of the
opening of the London Labour Exchange of 1832) " are already and
will become increasingly more valuable than gold and silver coin."
Owen passed on to his " Grand National Consolidated Trade Union
of Great Britain and teland," to the " Association of All Classes of
All Nations," and the " commencement of the millennium " at the
Queenwood community. Finally, with the rise of chartism,
co-operation as a national movement was submerged until it began
again at Rochdale.
Without doubt the special difficulties of those days largely
accounted for the practically universal breakdown. The fact that no
legal existence was possible, together with the absence of railways
and the crude organisation of co-operation generally, left no
hope for a wholesale society in particular. But even if these cases
had been removed there still would have remained a more potent root
of failure. This was the old idea of the superiority of production,
which led these co-operators to organise labour first and search for
consumers afterwards. The newer co-operation succeeds by organising
and rewarding the consumer, and afterwards employing labour.
Nevertheless, from parks and art galleries to school cUnics and day
niurseries, and from co-operative wholesale societies to municipal
trams, there are few combined efforts to-day which do not represent
under new forms some old ideas of Owen and his earnest followers.