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.
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