Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/798

 776 ECONOMIC JOURNAL the numerous readers of that veteran author, presents the Individualist's ideal of cooperation. Miss Potter, conducting the case for the other side, is freer from rhetoric and closer in argument. Her well-timecl pleading for an Industrial Concert between Cooperation and Trades Unions will carry away many readers who may be stmnbled by her frank alliance of Cooperation and State Socialism. ' The democratic form of cooperation (she says, p. 190) may either be considered as an alternative to State Socialism, or as a steplinqstone to it,' and she frankly elects for the latter. She tries to show that, as English Socialism and English Cooperation began together in Robert Owen, the union of Cooperation and Socialism is necessary to the realising of l the Cooperative ideal and thorough social reform now. ' The keysto. ne of Robert Owen's Cooperative system of Industry was the elimi.naton of profit and the extinction o/ the profit-maker' (p. 21). Now n the Stores of the Cooperative Union, founded on the Rochdale model, profit was eliminated. ' The surplus over cost price, given by the pur- chaser, was returned to him in the form of bonus' (pp. 66-7); and, as every purchaser is a member, as the number of members may be un- limited, and as the government of the store is in the hands of the whole body of customers, there is thus provide d 'a unique democratic. foundation to an industrial organisation,' (p. 70). When the Wholesale Society came into existence to act as general purveyor to the several stores as they did to their members, the same principle was acted on; so-called profits earned 'ere divided (i.e. returned) to the several stores. The truth is (according to Miss Potter) that an association of consumers can make no profits, any more than an individual who does not buy to sell again, but buys to consume, or hires to enjoy (p. 96)i. And one inference she draws from this is, that ' whatever remuneration I choose or am forced to give, I cannot ask my employes to share in a fund xvhich does not exist- profits' (ibid.). No doubt, ' the fund commonly known as Profit' has points of difference from ordinary Profit on Price (though Miss Potter herself, p. 133, speaks of Joint Stock Companies as extinguishing the profit- maker and retaining the profits). But it is a fund which arises in a ' denocratic Store' exactly as profit on price might arise in a private shop; for example, it may be large cr small according to the ' exploita- tion' of the workers, whether in a store or a shop, or in a municipal undertaking, &c. Glasgow has its own gasworks; and, if it chose to underpay its gasworkers, the resulting cheap gas would be a profit to the Glasgow citizen, in the sense that it would be a gain obtained for him by the very means whereby profit-is largely secured for the private employer. One sign that this is so even in ' democratic' stores is the existence of a Trades Union of Cooperative s. hopmen, to .apply the pressure without which even Cooperative Societies will not gve normal xvages (cf.. p. 98). But, suppose normal wages paid, is the said ' fnnd' to have no further interest for the worker ? Is the relation to be that of ordinary ' wage-slavery "!