Our farmers are already free. The problem with them is not now concerned
with freedom, but how they may be brought into a solidarity with each
other and the nation. To make our proletarians free and masters of their
own energies, in unison with each other and the national being, is the
most pressing labor of the many before us. Unless there be economic
freedom there can be no other freedom. The right of no individual to
subsistence should be at the good will of any other individual. More
than mere comfort depends on it. There are eternal and august rights of
the soul to be safeguarded, and the economic position of men should be
protected by organization and democratic law. I have already discussed
some of the avenues through which workers in our time have looked with
hope. I have little belief that these roads lead anywhere but back to
the old City of Slavery, however they may seem to curve away at the
outset. The strike, on whatever scale, is no way to freedom, though
the strike--or the threat of it--may bring wages nearer to subsistence
level. The art of warfare is too much in the hands of specialists for
trust to be placed in revolution. A machine-gun with a few experts
behind it is worth a thousand revolutionary workers, however maddened
they may be. Does political action, on which so many rely, promise more?
I do not believe it does. I believe that to appeal to legislatures is
to appeal to bodies dominated by those interested in maintaining the
present social order, although they may act so as to redress the worst
evils created by it. In Ireland, for this generation at least, it
would be impossible to secure in a legislative assembly majorities
representative of the class we wish to see emancipated. It may seem as
if I had closed all the paths out of the social labyrinth; but the
way to emancipation has, I think, already been surveyed by pioneers.
A policy of social reconstruction is practical, and needs but steady
persistence for its realization. That policy--I refer to co-operative
action--has been adopted in various forms by workers in many countries;
and what is needed here is to study and coordinate these applications of
co-working, and to form a general staff of labor who will, on behalf of
the workers, examine the weapons fashioned by their class elsewhere, and
who will draw up a plan of campaign as the staff of an army do previous
to military operations. It will be found that economic action along
co-operative lines has, in one country, barriers placed before its
expansion which could be set aside by supplementing this action by
methods elaborated by the genius of workers elsewhere.
It is not my purpose here to repeat in detail methods of organization,
partly technical, which can be found fully described in many admirable
books, but rather to indicate the order of advance, the methods of
coordination of these, and their final absorption and transformation
in the national being. There is a great deal of ignorance about things
essential to safe action. When men are filled with enthusiasm they are
apt to apply their new principles rashly in schemes which are bound to
fall, just as over-confident soldiers will in battle sometimes rush a
position prematurely which they cannot hold, because the general line of
their army has not advanced sufficiently to support them. Sacrifices are
made with no permanent result, and the morale of the army is injured.
In the rural districts the advance must, in the nature of things, be
from production to consumption, and with urban workers inversely from
a control over distribution to a mastery over production. I have often
wondered over the blindness of workers in towns in Ireland, who have
made so little use in the economic struggle of the freedom they have to
spend their wage where they choose. They speak of this struggle as the
class war; but they carry on the conflict most energetically where it is
most difficult for them to succeed, and hardly at all where it would
be comparatively easy for them to weaken the resources of their
antagonists. In warfare much use is made of flanking movements, which
aim at cutting the enemy's communication with his base of supply.
Frontal attacks are dangerous. It is equally true in economic warfare.
The strike is a frontal attack, and those they fight are entrenched
deeply with all the artillery of the State, the press, science, and
wealth on their side. What would we think of an army which, at the
close of each week's fighting, voluntarily surrendered to the enemy the
ground, guns, ammunition, and prisoners captured through the previous
six days? Yet this is what our workers do. The power opposed to them is
mainly economic, though there is an intellectual basis for it also. But
the wages of the workers, little for the individual, yet a large part of
the national income if taken for the mass, goes back to strengthen the
system they protest against through purchases of domestic requirements.
The creation of co-operative stores ought to be the first constructive
policy adopted by Irish labor. It ought to be as much a matter of class
honor with them to be members of stores as to be in the trade union of
their craft. The store may be regarded as the commissariat department
of the army of labor. Many a strike has failed of its object, and
the workers have gone back defeated, because their neglect of the
commissariat made them unable to hold out for that last week when both
sides are desperate and at the end of their resources. But it is
not mainly as an aid to the strike that I advocate democratizing the
distributive trade, but because control over distribution gives a
large measure of control over production. The history of co-operative
workshops indicates that these have rarely been successful unless
worked in conjunction with distributive stores. The retail trader is
not sympathetic with co-operative production. As the cat is akin to the
tiger, so is the individual trader--no matter on how small a scale he
operates--a kinsman of the great autocrats of industry, and he will
sympathize with his economic kinsmen and will retail their goods in
preference to those produced in co-operative workshops.
The control of agencies of distribution by the workers at a certain
stage in their development enables them to start productive enterprises
with more safety and less expense in regard to advertisement than the
capitalist can. In fact the co-operative store, properly organized,
creates a tied trade for the output of co-operative workshops. It is
a source of financial aid to these, and will invest funds in them and
assist trades unions gradually to transform themselves into co-operative
guilds of producers which should be their ultimate ideal. As I shall
show later on, the store will enable the urban worker to enter into
intimate alliance with the rural producer. Their interests are
really identical. In every town in Ireland efforts should be made to
democratize the distributive agencies, and the workers will have many
allies in this, driven by the increased cost of living to search out the
most economical agencies of purchase. If the proletarians are not in a
majority in Ireland--a nation where the farmers are the most numerous
single class--they certainly form the majority in the cities; and the
co-operative store, while admitting to membership all who will apply,
ought to be and would be sympathetic with the efforts of labor to
emancipate itself, and would be a powerful lever in its hands. As the
stores increase in number, an analysis of their trade will reveal
year by year in what directions co-operative production of particular
articles may safely be attempted. More and more by this means the
producing power and the capital at the disposal of the worker will
be placed at the service of democracy. The first steps are the most
difficult. In due time the workers will have educated a number of their
members, and will have attached to themselves men of proved capacity
to be the leaders in fresh enterprises, manufactures of one kind or
another, democratic banking institutions, all supporting each other and
leaning on each other and playing into each other's hands.
The extent to which this may be carried, and the opportunities for
making Ireland a co-operative democracy, I shall presently explain. I do
not regard any of these forms of co-operative organization as ideal or
permanent. The co-operative movement must be regarded rather as a
great turning movement on the part of humanity towards the ideal. The
co-operative organizations now being formed in Ireland and over the
world will, I am certain, persist and outlast this generation and the
next, and will grow into vaster things than we dream of; but the really
important change they will bring about in the minds of men will be
psychological. Men will become habituated to the thought of common
action for the common good. To get so far in civil life is a great
step. Today our civil life is a tangle of petty personal interests
and competitions. The co-operative movement is, as I have said, a vast
turning movement of humanity heavenwards, or, at least, to bring them
face round to the Delectable City. When this psychological change takes
place the democratic associations--which have grown up haphazard as the
workers found it easiest to create them--will be changed and remodeled
by men who will have the mass of people behind them in their efforts
to make a more majestic structure of society for the enlargement of the
lives and spirits of men.