Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/800

 778 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL failed. If the experience of the Continent and United Stts haA been taken into account, the case might have hal a different complexion. The Familistre at Guise may have much to teach us, if we are not too insular to learn it. Miss Potter, however, though rejecting Individualism and its innovations, is by no means content with things as they are. Not even a rapFrockement between Trades Unions and Cooperation will bring in the M:illennium. Stores and Unions together embrace only a fifth of the working classes (p. 226). The Stores have only 12 millions out of the 10,000 millions of cpital in the country (p. 225). To sy nothing of the lukewarmness of the converts there are broad limits to propaganda. The very rich and the very poor will not be coopemtors (226-7, 232). She might have added that of cooperators themselves only a very small proportion are shod and clothed by Cooperation, even if they are for the most part fed by it (cf. 233). She goes on to say that, even if propaganda could overtake all classes, there are certain kinds of work that could not be managed cooperatively (228-9). There ere results that cannot be achieved without legislation. ' The British Cooperative M:ovement has left the ownership of land and the iaeans of subsistence in the hands of individuals .... If the English democracy therefore wish to complete the social changes prophetically described in Robert Owen's New Sstem of _ociety, if they are determined to add to the social producio(qealth (brought about by the new industry), to the communal administration and control (introduced by the coopera- tive and trade union movelnents), the communal ownership of land and the means of production, they must use deliberately the instruments forged by political democracy, taxation in all its forins on unearned wealth and surplus incomes, and compulsory acquisition, not necessarily without p.rsonal compensation, of those portions of the national wealth ripe for democratic administration' (p. 238). A compulsory association must supplenent the voluntary. ' But before we can have a fully developed democracy, the nation at large must possess those moral characteristics which have enabled Cooperstots to introduce democratic self-government into a certain portion of the industry commerce and finance of the nation' (239-40). It may occur to some of us that, if these qualities were universally developed, we might be able to dispense with the benevolent despotism of a State Socialism. Till they are developed, there is no doubt that the alliance of State Socialists and Cooperative Federalists will be of great moral benefit to the former and great material benefit to the latter. It remains to be said that the most inlportant discussions in the book on matters of theory are perhaps those relating to Robert Owen's Labour Exchange (pp. 47-50, cf. 27). Miss Potter rejects the theory of value identified with Thompson and Marx, and bases vlue somewhat vaguely on 'utility' (p. 49). She does not make it quite clear on what grounds 'profit on price' is a deadly sin. If cost is rejected in favour of 'wants' as a criterion of value, it might be argued that profit even