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HISTORY OF WORKER COOPERATION IN AMERICA
[Ed. Note: John Curl wrote the History of Worker Cooperatives in America which was published in 1980. His new book is a rewritten, expanded and updated version of the earlier book. His new book, Worker Cooperatives or Wage Slavery, published by PM Press, is available on Amazon.
Here is a clip from the earlier book:
So much of American history still lies buried like treasure deep in our country's marrow. The histories of American cooperatives and unions are inextricably entwined with each other. The cooperative movement has rendered unique service to the union movement at critical moments, as when the Grangers helped the railroad strikers in 1877, the co-ops joined arms with the unions in the Seattle General Strike in 1919, and when the Farmers' Union brought truckloads of food to striking coal miners whose food stamps had been cut off in 1977. The histories of American cooperatives and unions are also inextricably entwined with the larger history of America itself. They can be seen as aspects of the larger movement for democracy, equality, freedom, justice and community.
While there is an official government of the US, there is also a backroom government, consisting of all the biggest financiers and manufacturers; they plan America's economy with the aim of maximizing corporate profits, and they plan industrial worker cooperatives out of it. Under their rule, advanced technology has enriched only those who have controlled it, while impoverishing and virtually enslaving most of those who don't. There are few fields where many independent workers can still survive, and there are still only a comparative handful of collectives and cooperatives, leaving the vast majority of workers with a choice between wage-slavery and unemployment. Meanwhile unionization has shrunk from over one in three in the late '30s, to less than one in five today.
Although on the surface of our country today capitalism, competition, and the wage system seem unchallenged, history may someday show that beneath the surface the working population was quietly gathering strength for its next challenge. Involuntary bondage is supposed to be abolished in America, yet how many would remain wage-slaves if they felt they had any choice? The corporations still fear industrial cooperatives, for the same reasons they have feared them and used their power to put them down throughout American history. The corporations know that they must prevent the average worker from having the right to choose between working as an employee or being one's own boss, becoming a cooperator. They know that few would choose bossism and bondage over freedom, democracy, and equality. Whoever controls the basic means of survival controls society. There is no such thing as democracy or equality without the people having collective control of these means, both on a large scale, nationwide, and on a small scale, in the neighborhood and the workshop. Cooperatives give people control over their lives and democratize the products and the process of work. Cooperatives have proved to be a strong base for movements for progressive social change, since by their very nature they demand changes in the general conditions of society, and empower and embolden their worker-members. But consumer co-ops are not enough. Even though employees and tenants may own part of the distribution system cooperatively, they still remain in bondage. The fortress of capitalist power is in production, not distribution, and even a widespread co-op distribution network is by itself no real threat: as long as capital rules production, all gains can be taken away in a different form. We need banks not only for farmer and consumer cooperatives, but for real industrial cooperatives and collectives: cooperativization on a national scale is a question of the most basic freedom for our whole population. If America is ever to become truly free, the organized power of the people must be used to ensure that everyone has an alternative to being forced into wage slavery. That choice can only be through worker cooperatives. It may be that good old fashioned traditional American worker cooperation may still prove stronger and deeper here than capitalism, and will be the force to ultimately abolish it along with its unique system of work bondage. For without cooperation replacing competition as our most basic force, the USA will not survive, except in a form of our nightmares. The way of competition offers only increasing bondage, while the way of collectivity and cooperation offers real freedom.
* * * "The poverty of the country is such that all the power and sway has got into the hands of the rich, who by extortious advantages, having the common people in their debt, have always curbed and oppressed them in all manner of ways." Nathaniel Bacon 1676
"Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it." Thomas Paine
"Where wealth is hereditary, power is hereditary; for wealth is power. Titles are of very little or no consequence. The rich are nobility, and poor plebeians in all countries. And on this distinction alone the true definition of aristocracy depends. An aristocracy is that influence or power which property may have in government; a democracy is the power or influence of the people or members, as contradistinguished from property. Between these two powers -the aristocracy and democracy -that is, the rich and the poor, there is constant warfare." A Farmer in the Maryland Gazette 1783
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations, tongues and kindreds." Abraham Lincoln
"If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard." Eugene Debs
Here is a clip from the earlier book:
LAST WORDS
http://www.red-coral.net/WorkCoops.html
http://www.red-coral.net/WorkCoops.html
So much of American history still lies buried like treasure deep in our country's marrow. The histories of American cooperatives and unions are inextricably entwined with each other. The cooperative movement has rendered unique service to the union movement at critical moments, as when the Grangers helped the railroad strikers in 1877, the co-ops joined arms with the unions in the Seattle General Strike in 1919, and when the Farmers' Union brought truckloads of food to striking coal miners whose food stamps had been cut off in 1977. The histories of American cooperatives and unions are also inextricably entwined with the larger history of America itself. They can be seen as aspects of the larger movement for democracy, equality, freedom, justice and community.
While there is an official government of the US, there is also a backroom government, consisting of all the biggest financiers and manufacturers; they plan America's economy with the aim of maximizing corporate profits, and they plan industrial worker cooperatives out of it. Under their rule, advanced technology has enriched only those who have controlled it, while impoverishing and virtually enslaving most of those who don't. There are few fields where many independent workers can still survive, and there are still only a comparative handful of collectives and cooperatives, leaving the vast majority of workers with a choice between wage-slavery and unemployment. Meanwhile unionization has shrunk from over one in three in the late '30s, to less than one in five today.
Although on the surface of our country today capitalism, competition, and the wage system seem unchallenged, history may someday show that beneath the surface the working population was quietly gathering strength for its next challenge. Involuntary bondage is supposed to be abolished in America, yet how many would remain wage-slaves if they felt they had any choice? The corporations still fear industrial cooperatives, for the same reasons they have feared them and used their power to put them down throughout American history. The corporations know that they must prevent the average worker from having the right to choose between working as an employee or being one's own boss, becoming a cooperator. They know that few would choose bossism and bondage over freedom, democracy, and equality. Whoever controls the basic means of survival controls society. There is no such thing as democracy or equality without the people having collective control of these means, both on a large scale, nationwide, and on a small scale, in the neighborhood and the workshop. Cooperatives give people control over their lives and democratize the products and the process of work. Cooperatives have proved to be a strong base for movements for progressive social change, since by their very nature they demand changes in the general conditions of society, and empower and embolden their worker-members. But consumer co-ops are not enough. Even though employees and tenants may own part of the distribution system cooperatively, they still remain in bondage. The fortress of capitalist power is in production, not distribution, and even a widespread co-op distribution network is by itself no real threat: as long as capital rules production, all gains can be taken away in a different form. We need banks not only for farmer and consumer cooperatives, but for real industrial cooperatives and collectives: cooperativization on a national scale is a question of the most basic freedom for our whole population. If America is ever to become truly free, the organized power of the people must be used to ensure that everyone has an alternative to being forced into wage slavery. That choice can only be through worker cooperatives. It may be that good old fashioned traditional American worker cooperation may still prove stronger and deeper here than capitalism, and will be the force to ultimately abolish it along with its unique system of work bondage. For without cooperation replacing competition as our most basic force, the USA will not survive, except in a form of our nightmares. The way of competition offers only increasing bondage, while the way of collectivity and cooperation offers real freedom.
* * * "The poverty of the country is such that all the power and sway has got into the hands of the rich, who by extortious advantages, having the common people in their debt, have always curbed and oppressed them in all manner of ways." Nathaniel Bacon 1676
"Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it." Thomas Paine
"Where wealth is hereditary, power is hereditary; for wealth is power. Titles are of very little or no consequence. The rich are nobility, and poor plebeians in all countries. And on this distinction alone the true definition of aristocracy depends. An aristocracy is that influence or power which property may have in government; a democracy is the power or influence of the people or members, as contradistinguished from property. Between these two powers -the aristocracy and democracy -that is, the rich and the poor, there is constant warfare." A Farmer in the Maryland Gazette 1783
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations, tongues and kindreds." Abraham Lincoln
"If you and I must fight each other to exist, we will not love each other very hard." Eugene Debs
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