(c) Productive Co-operation

Apart from the experiments of small self-sufficing socialist communities or colonies, we find that the first form of socialization that is proposed is productive cooperation. A business is to be taken over by the workers it employs, who will organize it in their own way, draw up their own rules, and select their management. Here we find the most complete democracy of Labour. Here the workers control their own means of production and the whole product of their labour.

At one time, productive co-operation was regarded. as the means to the emancipation of Labour. The Liberal friends of Labour were distinguished from the Socialists only by their method of establishing productive co-operation. The Liberals believed that the workers would be able to emancipate themselves if they were careful to save enough money to establish such co-operative associations. The Socialists recognized the absurdity of this expectation. They asserted that productive co-operation would only be effectual for the abolition of wage slavery provided it were established on a large scale with the aid of State resources, the means of production remaining State property, and the co-operative societies organizing production by means of extensive associations.

Upon this point all Socialists were united. They differed with regard to the methods of securing State assistance. Louis Blanc, who was an enthusiastic champion of the idea of productive co-operation; believed that the inauguration of the democratic Republic would alone suffice to secure the necessary State assistance to the workers. Lassalle, who adopted the idea from Louis Blanc, thought that universal suffrage, even under the Prussian military monarchy, would induce the State power to assist the workers to achieve emancipation from the domination of capital.

Marx, on the other hand, regarded universal suffrage and the democratic Republic as necessary conditions for the emancipation of the workers. But it seemed to him that this emancipation could only come from a State power which had been captured by the workers, which presupposed not only universal suffrage and a Republic, but also a high degree of capitalist development, as well as a numerous, well organized, and adequately trained working class. Even he laid great stress upon productive cooperation, although the trade unions seemed to him to have more immediate importance.

To-day, the importance of trade unions is greater than ever, since they are no longer wholly concerned about wages and hours of labour, but are also actively engaged in home and foreign policy. On the other hand, productive co-operation has fallen into the background. Practical experience of these associations has given rise to many objections against them. To be sure, not a few of them are in a thriving state, and they demonstrate by their example that the industrial self-government is not a Utopia. But they are exposed to the hazards that affect all undertakings in the capitalist world. They do not all prosper; many fail or become bankrupt, because their managers lack the necessary commercial experience, and in the bourgeois world they encounter the strongest enmity among those they have to deal with as suppliers of materials, grantors of credit, or customers for products.

Ought the State to meet the loss of every co-operative association, no matter how incompetent the management, or how inadequate the personnel? If this were done on a large scale, it would undermine the State’s stability. A higher mode of production is not to be achieved by such methods.

Should the thriving co-operative associations assist the decaying societies? Should their members accept those of the bankrupt societies with equal rights in their midst? This prospect would not please them at all. In most cases they have only been able to overcome their initial difficulties by means of great privations and tireless industry. Should they now, when they have reached the point of reaping the harvest, share it with those who were perhaps less ready for sacrifice or less enthusiastic, and have therefore fallen into a parlous condition? Whether these suppositions be right or wrong, the evolution of co-operative societies is always as follows. Some of them fail, but those that survive continue growing, and engage new workers, not as partners, but as wage-earners. Thus the co-operative associations are in practice only a means of transforming a number of specially capable or lucky workers into capitalists not of abolishing the rule of capital itself.

Nevertheless, the co-operative idea need not be wholly abandoned. Hitherto it has always been pursued under circumstances which put great difficulties in its way. In a community dominated by the workers, it could develop more easily, and the objection that in its present form it only rears new capitalists could perhaps be overcome by special provisions.

However this may be, it now appears unlikely that cooperative production will ever become a general form of socialist production.

In his History of the 1848 Revolution, Louis Blanc gives a detailed account of the socialistic experiments which were undertaken in that year of revolution, under the pressure of the working class of Paris, and in face of the greatest opposition from the Provisional Government.

It is noteworthy that it was almost exclusively handicrafts for which productive associations were formed at that time with State assistance. This corresponded to the condition of Paris industry, in which the machine played no part at all, even at the time of the Commune of 1871.

The most important of the productive associations founded at that time was that of the tailors, which comprised 2,000 members, to whom was assigned as workrooms the former debtors’ prison of Clichy, as the Revolution had abolished imprisonment for debt.

The second productive association which arose under Louis Blanc’s influence was that of the saddlers. Both associations received the patronage of the State. The tailors received an order to make 100,000 uniforms for the National Guards, and the saddlers were given an order to manufacture the saddles that had previously been made by the military workshops.

By the side of the tailors of Clichy worked a third association, that of lacemakers, who were entrusted to make the epaulettes for the uniforms manufactured by the tailors.

In all the industries affected by the National Workshops experiment handicraft had not yet been supplanted by the machine. And each of these industries only employed workers belonging to the same vocation. The organization of the process of production was very simple, requiring no other knowledge than that derived from personal experience, which every worker could acquire after some time in his trade, and which would enable any intelligent and skilful workman to organize and manage the business himself.

Where productive co-operation is concerned with conditions of simple handicraft and does not have to produce for particular individuals, but for solid organizations with well-defined needs, wholesale buying societies, municipalities, and the State, it will acquire a certain importance for the socialization of production.

Yet as regards most of the branches of industry which it was thought would come within the scope of productive co-operation, the organization and management of the undertaking by the trade unions concerned, or what is called Guild Socialism, may prove more advantageous.