A National Ideology of Cooperativism1

chapter 10 A National Ideology of Cooperativism1

Stanisław Wojciechowski

The main purpose of man on earth is to do good to other people, to spend one’s whole life trying to better the lot of one’s neighbors, and even to attempt to en- sure that the charitable acts of one’s life bring happiness to future generations. On the occasion of a nationwide school questionnaire thirty years ago, Stanisław Szczepanowski2 wrote in Słowo Polske [Polish Words]: “A person is only a person if he lives in service of an idea. Without it, he is at most a human ox, regardless of how blue his blood and how refined.” “Even in the economic movement, what we most lack is not money or edu- cation but character.” Complaints about a lack of idealism and lack of character are being made now no less than in the times of degrading bondage. They are not an expression solely of the shortcomings of our national life alone; we hear them in countries that are happier than ours, even in American, which is saturated with gold and a flourishing industry. Extravagant greed and the desire for consumption risk producing man’s complete materialization, the predominance of personal and class aims over national ones, the neglect of ideas about the future for temporary benefit today. An increasing number of people regard public affairs as a sort of stock com- pany whose purpose is to pay dividends to each of its stockholders; they take that much interest in it and are ready to abandon it when there is no profit. Warning voices say: what is the nation becoming, when rationalism and materialism cool the heart, stifle the conscience, loosen the ties of obligation, and a crisis or war constrains the satisfaction of expanding personal needs?

1 Stanisław Wojciechowski, “Narodowa ideologja spółdzielczości” [“A National Ideology of Co- operativism”], Lwów 1928, Nakładem Związku Stowarzyszeń Zarobkowych i Gospodarczych [Published by the Union of Occupational and Farming Associations]. 2 Polish economist, engineer, petroleum entrepreneur, deputy of the Austrian parliament and the diet of Galicia, proponent of the industrialization of Galicia, founder of the Folk School Society, called “a romantic among positivists.” Most important works: Idea polska wobec prądow kosmopolitycznych [The Polish Idea and Cosmopolitan Currents] (1901), Nędza Galicji w cyfrach i program energicznego rozwoju gospodarstwa krajowego [Galicia’s Poverty in Num- bers and a Programme for the Vigorous Development of the National Economy] (1888), Nafta i praca—złoto i błoto [Petroleum and Work—Gold and Mud] (1886).

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Will it be possible then to regulate economic life, to stop unruly egoisms, if previously higher motives of action, such restraints as religion and patriotism, have been degraded? A person is a person if he lives in the service of an idea. And a group of people is a nation only if the citizens are bound by mental ties and not merely by money interest. On the basis of the Polish ideological ques- tion, higher motives of acting in public life have particular significance. We can not complain of a lack of ideas. Whenever some doctrine is hatched abroad, it at once finds a group of enthusiasts to import it to Poland, almost like patent medicines, which are equally praised. We also have no lack of indifferent materialists who cultivate egoism of the worst sort. This kind of person appeared among us even earlier than abroad, contaminated our public life, and led the Republic to its downfall. Piotr Skarga 3 once pointed to them, saying

You love your individual benefit while the common one you wreck and imagine you have done yourself well…Greed and a narrow heart attached to its own benefit dissipate all good advice. Do not restrict or confine love to your homes and individual benefits; do not confine it in your chambers and moneyboxes!

Poland has suffered, and still suffers, not from a lack of hot heads and cool hearts, but above all from a lack of moderation, from the rift of reason and heart in the life of its citizens. At times in Poland wild enterprises have been undertaken which had no chance of being maintained, were ill prepared, and unsupported by the orga- nization of national forces. At other times, cold prudence came to the fore, repelling the young gen- eration with its chill, ordering the renunciation of dearest hopes and passive submission to the waves of fate. Our heroism at times aimed very high, but the thin flame was quickly extin- guished, or we floundered again in heavy materialism; we gave predominance to personal goals over general goals, without concern for the future of the nation. This division of mind and heart, the lack of continuity in the life of the nation is a most dangerous of diseases, ruining the health of families and of the Republic. Our entire past and future demands a continual tie between national

3 Piotr Skarga (1536–1612), a Polish Jesuit, theologian, preacher and polemicist. He was a lead- ing figure of the Polish Counter-Reformation, the author of Kazania sejmowe (Sejm sermons). He was an advocate of reforms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he wanted to strengthen the king’s power against the parliament (Sejm) and the nobility (szlachta).