Co-Operation & Industrialism.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 20, 21 July 1911, Page 4

Co-Operation & Industrialism.

A Sequel to •• Co-Operation : Is it Worth While?'*

By DOGMATIST, Author of "The Ma.teria.list Conception of History."

Reverting again to this world of things in which the working-class "goes into movements in which it gives up the task of revolutionising the old world with its own large collective •weapons, and on tho contrary seeks to bring about its emancipation behind the back of society in private ways, within the narrow bounds of its own class conditions, and consequently inevitably fails. '* The position being : There are the capitalists with everything that is essential to industry and life, within their fences and their walls—behind their gates and doors, with their locks and keys to let you in and lock you out as they decide, to this extent have you fallen under their dominion, you their nominal fellow freeman and women of the wage working class, who can only ltvo by enrolling under their banner, the banner of capital, by taking your places in their battalions and gangs, obeying their behests and the commands of those they set over you and performing the work of production in the way they decide upon. You must sell your own and your children's life energy at so much an hour. The amount of payment you get is so definite, the amount of things to meet your needs that this will purchase is so definite, you. are so mastered, ordered, governed, and graded that we know—know what ? That if through the Customs duties being raised, or through the discovery of a new chemical process, or new sources of raw material, if for any reason the capitalists decided to start a new factory in which employment would be given to 20,000 people ; as we saw tho buildings going up we would know beforehand that as surely as the smoke came out of its chimney stacks so surely would it float out over a definite crop of misery that would spring up in the environs. No occasion to wait for a crop of misery to start a large capitalist concern; start that concern and you will get the crop which N.B. is an indictment. Yet if the workingclass in their ignorance are by a band of capitalists called upon to clamour for a rise in Customs duties to get this new factory, they will clamour and help to get this factory going, not in the expectation of getting that crop of misery, but in the hope of reducing the existing great crop by extending the cause of it. Workers, what of your ignorance? An enlightened industrial unionist would not be so misled. Definite Poverty and How? We know there would soon be found living in sight of those chimney stacks, perhaps within their shadow, a definite number of thousands of poor people, wo know they would be poor because they wouid .be wage-workers, and tho ordinary rates of wages would command-their presence and their service in that locality, and there they would live in the thousands of little cottages packed round about, and perhaps the pall of smoke that floated out over them might have in it the ixn\sonous fumes that would determine even whether thoy should have little flower gardens or not. There would be | the busy and slack times in the indusry, whether from the ups and downs of trade or other reasons, therefore times of enforced idleness and no wages, in short, we know that there would be .this icircumtecribcd district ,a delinitc quantity of unsatisfied wants be- ' cause current wages and short wages can only be made to go so far. While working they would produce merchandise worth millions of pounds in value, but tho books of the concern would show these wage workers who did all the work only got a portion of the value of their services in turning raw materials into merchandise; they would bo found to be poor because their labor product was divided into two parts— wages and surplus value. The capitalists- allowing the workers tho wages part and appropriating tho other part themselves, it would be for this they started the industry and because of this thoso working in it wero poor, and so we know that around this concern would be a definite quantity of pover-l-y ; a definite amount of stress and strain in the factory, injuring body and nerve, that would bring sickness, death :iid sorrow into those little homes, and bring, too, tho parson or priest, who would keep silent as to tho cause of the sickness and death, and even turn the forlorn one's minds off it with a "Let us pray." He will not arouse the workers to a sense of the injury and oppression they suffer from under I the sun—he never does; it is his mission to call up in their minds the

thought—only a thought—"there's better on before." Behind the cloth a man who would have himself a pillar of capitalism and his piety its defence. Thus following the Marxian guiding thread, which is the materialist conception, which is, following on from this to the next in the process and seeing how one thing leads to another, we come to see the wage working class in the midst of society, a definite and distinct part of it living 'within the narrow bounds of its own class conditions," living on the wages share drawn from production, and poor because it only gets that share and not the whole of what it produces. Conditioned by Conditions. Within view of thcso unlovely chimney stacks tho 20,000 and those dependent upon them, and growing up there, too, the young generation receiving tho impress of their environment, all conditioned by conditions. Away in another suburb or far aw r ay city those wno own the factory,; knowing no lack, living in a part perhaps made more inviting by nature, yet further beautihed by the expenditure of some of the many hundreds of thousands of pounds that come to them as surplus value from that factory with the regularity of the toil of those who work tnerem for them to get it, and there too growing up in these homes ol the class above their young generation receiving tho impress of their environment—all conditioned by conditions. When we look at tho magnitude of society, its total of affairs, interests, and possessions, and then turn to that part of them which are the little tilings the wage workers can do in cheir own little ways, with their own little pos-seisvsions, within their own class conditions, how small, paltry, utterly insignificant these latter appear. Those 20,000 "hands" around those chimney stacks., wnat could they do remaining "hands?" Yet if the surplus value of the concern were theirs they could build themselves a gardencity to dwell in and provide themselves with the means of coming and going to their work irom it, and in it Know no lack, and they would not know this because they would know no exploitation by the class above. To realise tins abolition of exploitation is what Marx meant .by revolutionising the Old World. And he named as tne means your "own large collective weapons," large working class organisations on the industrial field and on the political field. On the industrial held of daily struggle build up and prepare your organisations lor the taKing over of industry and carrying on production on your own beiiail, and build up your Socialist political organisations to legalise the act of doing so. " Something Now.' An industrial organisation having for its object the abolition of the wages system, and the establishment of Socialism will not need to be told to get all it can from the capitalists along tne way to emancipation, but the getting of something now will not be its end and chief aim. If it decides to supply its own wants a-s far as possible, if it can gain any advantage or strengthen its position t>y having a store or two or a -bakery or anything else, or if by getting such a thing it satisiies a whim that cannot be put to rest in any other way then by all means it must have what it must have. By the members of a really enlightened revolutionary organisation sucii things as these will be seen ill their right proportions, and thoir proper perspective, and not counted among the major enthusiasms of men and women who have the ending of the | class war in view by entering in and I taking possession of the means of production, which are the work of their hands, and the wiseacres who think tho possession of a few or many co-op. stores on tho approach of trouble will materially add to the resources of the industrialists must think that those standing for the old order will bo pretty far gone in their respect for the rights of property. Surely enough said. (To be Continued.)