I
According to Plato's famous myth, two gifts of the gods equipped man
for living: the one, arts and inventions to supply him with the means
of livelihood; the other, reverence and justice to be the ordering
principles of societies and the bonds of friendship and conciliation.
Agencies for mastery over nature and agencies for coöperation among men
remain the two great sources of human power. But after two thousand
years, it is possible to note an interesting fact as to their relative
order of development in civilization. Nearly all the great skills and
inventions that had been acquired up to the eighteenth century were
brought into man's service at a very early date. The use of fire, the
arts of weaver, potter, and metal worker, of sailor, hunter, fisher,
and sower, early fed man and clothed him. These were carried to higher
perfection by Egyptian and Greek, by Tyrian and Florentine, but it
would be difficult to point to any great new unlocking of material
resources until the days of the chemist and electrician. Domestic
animals and crude water mills were for centuries in man's service, and
until steam was harnessed, no additions were made of new powers.
During this long period, however, the progress of human association
made great and varied development. The gap between the men of
Santander's caves, or early Egypt, and the civilization of a century
ago is bridged rather by union of human powers, by the needs and
stimulating contacts of society, than by conquest in the field of
nature. It was in military, political, and religious organization that
the power of associated effort was first shown. Army, state, and
hierarchy were its visible representatives. Then, a little over a
century ago, began what we call the industrial revolution, still
incomplete, which combined new natural forces with new forms of human
association. Steam, electricity, machines, the factory system,
railroads: these suggest the natural forces at man's disposal; capital,
credit, corporations, labor unions: these suggest the bringing together
of men and their resources into units for exploiting or controlling the
new natural forces. Sometimes resisting the political, military, or
ecclesiastical forces which were earlier in the lead, sometimes
mastering them, sometimes combining with them, economic organization
has now taken its place in the world as a fourth great structure, or
rather as a fourth great agency through which man achieves his greater
tasks, and in so doing becomes conscious of hitherto unrealized powers.
Early in this great process of social organization three divergent
types emerged, which still contend for supremacy in the worlds of
action and of valuation: dominance, competition, and coöperation. All
mean a meeting of human forces. They rest respectively on power,
rivalry, and sympathetic interchange. Each may contribute to human
welfare. On the other hand, each may be taken so abstractly as to
threaten human values. I hope to point out that the greatest of these
is coöperation, and that it is largely the touchstone for the others.
Coöperation and dominance both mean organization. Dominance implies
inequality, direction and obedience, superior and subordinate.
Coöperation implies some sort of equality, some mutual relation. It
does not exclude difference in ability or in function. It does not
exclude leadership, for leadership is usually necessary to make
coöperation effective. But in dominance the special excellence is kept
isolated; ideas are transmitted from above downward. In coöperation
there is interchange, currents flowing in both directions, contacts of
mutual sympathy, rather than of pride-humility, condescension-servility.
The purpose of the joint pursuit in organization characterized by
dominance may be either the exclusive good of the master or the joint
good of the whole organized group, but in any case it is a purpose
formed and kept by those few who know. The group may share in its
execution and its benefits, but not in its construction or in the
estimating and forecasting of its values. The purpose in coöperation is
joint. Whether originally suggested by some leader of thought or
action, or whether a composite of many suggestions in the give and take
of discussion or in experiences of common need, it is weighed and
adopted as a common end. It is not the work or possession of leaders
alone, but embodies in varying degrees the work and active interest of
all.
Coöperation and competition at first glance may seem more radically
opposed. For while dominance and coöperation both mean union of forces,
competition appears to mean antagonism. _They_ stand for combination;
_it_ for exclusion of one by another. Yet a deeper look shows that this
is not true of competition in what we may call its social, as
contrasted with its unsocial, aspect. The best illustration of what I
venture to call social competition is sport. Here is rivalry, and here
in any given contest one wins, the other loses, or few win and many
lose. But the great thing in sport is not to win; the great thing is
the game, the contest; and the contest is no contest unless the
contestants are so nearly equal as to forbid any certainty in advance
as to which will win. The best sport is found when no one contestant
wins too often. There is in reality a common purpose--the zest of
contest. Players combine and compete to carry out this purpose; and the
rules are designed so to restrict the competition as to rule out
certain kinds of action and preserve friendly relations. The contending
rivals are in reality uniting to stimulate each other. Without the
coöperation there would be no competition, and the competition is so
conducted as to continue the relation. Competition in the world of
thought is similarly social. In efforts to reach a solution of a
scientific problem or to discuss a policy, the spur of rivalry or the
matching of wits aids the common purpose of arriving at the truth.
Similar competition exists in business. Many a firm owes its success to
the competition of its rivals which has forced it to be efficient,
progressive. As a manufacturing friend once remarked to me: "When the
other man sells cheaper, you generally find he has found out something
you don't know."
But we also apply the term "competition" to rivalry in which there is
no common purpose; to contests in which there is no intention to
continue or repeat the match, and in which no rules control. Weeds
compete with flowers and crowd them out. The factory competes with the
hand loom and banishes it. The trust competes with the small firm and
puts it out of business. The result is monopoly. When plants or
inventions are thus said to compete for a place, there is frequently no
room for both competitors, and no social gain by keeping both in the
field. Competition serves here sometimes as a method of selection,
although no one would decide to grow weeds rather than flowers because
weeds are more efficient. In the case of what are called natural
monopolies, there is duplication of effort instead of coöperation.
Competition is here wasteful. But when we have to do, not with a
specific product, or with a fixed field such as that of street railways
or city lighting, but with the open field of invention and service, we
need to provide for continuous coöperation, and competition seems at
least one useful agency. To retain this, we frame rules against "unfair
competition." As the rules of sport are designed to place a premium
upon certain kinds of strength and skill which make a good game, so the
rules of fair competition are designed to secure efficiency for public
service, and to exclude efficiency in choking or fouling. In unfair
competition there is no common purpose of public service or of
advancing skill or invention; hence, no coöperation. The coöperative
purpose or result is thus the test of useful, as contrasted with
wasteful or harmful, competition.
There is also an abstract conception of coöperation, which, in its
one-sided emphasis upon equality, excludes any form of leadership, or
direction, and in fear of inequality allows no place for competition.
Selection of rulers by lot in a large and complex group is one
illustration; jealous suspicion of ability, which becomes a cult of
incompetence, is another. Refusals to accept inventions which require
any modification of industry, or to recognize any inequalities of
service, are others. But these do not affect the value of the principle
as we can now define it in preliminary fashion: union tending to secure
common ends, by a method which promotes equality, and with an outcome
of increased power shared by all.