Page:Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868 - International Working Men's Association.djvu/12

 training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes. It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.

It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The congress shall, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.

(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.

(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalistic society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz.: the State power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.

(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its ground work.

(d.) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment of new co-operative fabrics as well as by teaching and preaching.

(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary-middle class joint-stock companies (sociétés par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought