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Worker Co-Operatives and the A.L.P

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Worker Co-Operatives and the A.L.P RACE MAIHEVVS RACE MATHEWS is Minister for the Arts and Victorian Fabian Society Minister for Police and Emergency Services in Pamphlet 39 Victoria's Labor Government. He has represented $1.50 Oakleigh in the Victorian Legislative Assembly since 1979, and, is secretary of the Victorian Fabian Society. j He rvas Principal Private Secretary to Gough Whitlam i' :i: ,r I i,, as Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament 1967-72, Member of the House of Representatives for Casey 1972-75, and Principal Worker Co-operatives Secretary to Clyde Holding and Frank Wilkes as Leaders of the Opposition in the Victorian Parliament and the A.L.P. 1976-79. BUILDING THE SOCIETY OF EQUALS Worker Co-opGratives and the A.L.P. by Race tlathews Uictorian Fabian Society Pamphlet llumber 39 BUILDING THE SOCIETY OF EQUALS Worker Go.op€ratives and the A.L.P. For Bob Murray who prodded me into drawing together the proof that worker co- Most of us never control the way our poverty line; where l07o and more of operatives are a practical proposition. daily work is done, or the use to which it is those who want jobs are unable to find put. Nor are the profits or losses our own. them; and every form of job-creating Worker co-operatives are different. activity from building a house to The workers in a worker co-operative are starting a business-can be obstructed or all member-owners, and membership aborted by the high price of money. cannot be held by anybody else. Nor is this atl. As our economic Everybody participates on an equal difficulties have dragged on, with still no footing in making the decisions, benefits end in sight, their social costs have equally when there is a profit, and increased exponentially. This is apparent sacrifices equally when there is a loss. in the grim statistics of homeless young The Mondragon Group of worker co- people, young people who have missed operatives in the Basque region of Spain out on acquiring the habit of work, is owned by 17,000 workers spread over middle-aged people crushed by ninety-six separate enterprises. with an unexpected and irretrievable annual turnover in excess of $400 million, redundancy, unemployment-related The Group's immensely successful bank family breakdown and unemployment- is a worker co-operative. as are its related crime. It cannot be assumed that facilities for research and development, our past good luck in avoiding a Watts or education, housing, health care and a Brixton will continue indefinitely. The social security. France has 900 co- existence of an under-class whose operatives owned largely by the 35,000 members are permanently unemployed people who work in them, and in Italy or otherwise impoverished is rapidly there are 5,000 co-operatives with becoming as real in Australia as in Britain ownership shared by a 350,000 strong and the United States. We are witnessing workforce. Hundreds of thousands of the growth of a similar potential for Danes, Israelis, Poles, Portuguese, violence, in the pent-up rage of people Swedes. Swiss. West Germans and who have been stripped capriciously ofall Published by the Victorian Fabian Sociery, Yugoslavs are worker co-operative self-confidence and hope for the future. G.P.O. Box 2707X, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001, members. The lesson for those who still remain well- Australia. Worker co-operatives are an old idea off may well be that in the long run has personal safety social justice are Copyright Race Mathews, 1983. which taken on new interest for and good reasons. All around the developed indivisible. Cover Design by Vane Lindesay world there is rising anger and frustration Conservative commentators harp Printed by Bel Air Graphics over the apparent inability of capitalism, incessantly on how competing demands communism and the mixed economy to for higher incomes ofall kinds, enhanced National Library of Australia card number cope with such economic problems as social benefits and capital investment and International Standard Book Number inflation, unemployment and excessive have swamped increases in productivity interest rates. We are all acutely aware and economic growth. Their account 0 909953 18 2 that there is something appallingly wrong adds to the picture of our predicament with a situation where a nation as richly without explaining it. The real question is endowed as Australia has up to one in why people behave as they do, and how every seven of its citizens ekeing out a change can be brought about. In fact, the precarious existence below an austere structure of our societv and its a new era, and won an enduring place in was sometlmes a prelude to lailure. The institutions leaves most us with no The ideals of the of worker co-operative history for its twenty-eight founder early prosperity of the Pioneers'venture alternative pursue courses of movement are precisely from which but to those members. The Society's tiny generalstore into the worker co-operative field action which are economically self- the Labor Movement the arose. In in Toad Lane, Rochdale, opened at first through the Rochdale Co-operative defeating. There is no incentive for us to lamous words of Victor Hugo, "Nothing on two evenings a week I'or the sale of Manufacturing Society was brought to put extra effort into our work because in this world is so powerful as an idea small quantities of butter, sugar, t'lour, nothing when greedy shareholders began overwhelmingly the benefit will be whose time has come". oatmeal and cakes. A year later splitting up the earnings among creamed off by others already l-ar better membership had risen from 28 to 74 and themselves, along lines which made the off than ourselves. Any economic capital from f28 to f l7l, while the stock undertaking indistinguishable from its consequences of our attitudes and actions oRtctils had been expanded to include tea and capitalist competitors. Co-operatives can be left to the boss, or the government, tobacco, and the shop itsell'was opening also continued to go under in the l'ace of along with all the other economic issues Worker co-operatives have not every night in the working week. the familiar dilTiculties of obtaining we are never allowed to handle for reached this point of promise easily. An example had been set which other adequate management and capital. ourselves. Advertising goads Lrs Co-operation had been foreshadowed communities were quick to follow. Experiences of both sorts had an unrelentingly to the pursuit ofpurchasing in Cromwell's time, when the Levellers Consumer co-operation was on its way to immense influence on the thinking of power and consumption at levels which applied co-operative principles to becoming the major force in retail trade Sydney and Beatrice Webb. who. in tlrcir can be achieved only at the expense of the farming, and Peter Cornelius Plockhoy now familiar in Britain and elsewhere. turn, shaped the attitudes of the Labour jobs of our workmates or the re- set out in detail "a way to make the poor At the same time, principles were party, the trade unions, and the co- investment of capital on which society's in these and other nations happy by identified which currently provide the operative movement itself. The Webbs future well-being depends. bringing together a fit, suitable and well International Co-operative Alliance with concluded that any association of At the same time, state capitalism as it qualified people unto one Household- its basic operational philosophy. producers which set out to compete with is practised in most of the communist government or little Commonwealth". Membership of a co-operative is capitalism on its own ground would countries has been no more successful. The roots of the broad co-operation voluntary, and open to any person who is either fail financially or adopt the capital- There, too, the link between the economic movement lie deep in the hunger, sweat willing to accept its responsibilities. ist values it was supposed to supplant. interests of the individual and those of and exploitation of Industrial Revolution Managers of co-operatives are elected or Largely as a result of these views, interest society has not been forged. For most in France and Britain, where decent men' appointed by the members, and in workers co-operatives remained people, work and drudgery are still the and women recoiled from the misery accountable to them. Return on shares is minimal among the groups who same thing. Their capacity remains which was inflicted in the name of limited to a fixed interest rate, and any otherwise might have been theirstrongest underdeveloped and their commitment progress, and looked for ways in which surplus is distributed among members in advocates and supporters, long al'ter the unengaged. It is bitterly ironic that, in the human dignity and decent living proportion to their participation in the Webbs were dead. very places where exploitation and standards could be secured. Saint-Simon. form of work or purchases. A co- For all practical purposes, while alienation were to have been eliminated, Fourier and Bouchez in France, Owen in operative educates its members in the consumer co-operatives flourished in we see instead apathy and cynicism Britain and a host of other largely- philosophy and practice of co-operation, Britain, no new worker co-operatives expressed in the worst alcoholism in the forgotten figures thought through the and works together with other co- were started there between l9l4 and world. concept with such effectthat, by 1830, the operatives at the local, national and 1960. A handful of survivors I'rom the Worker co-operatives are way of a editor of "The Co-operator", William international levels.
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