у вает тлет оссиратоп 1 s of workers control, - Robert Owen factory. in Liverpool, NVT-Meriden, the East Moors Cardiff. You will say to those now in possession of riches, honours, powers and privileges: "Retain these in perfect security....Our whole conduct and proceedings shall be a pledge to you that Most people now see the Co-op' as the 'divi-shop' round the corner. and a grouping in the Labour PartyBut now, as workers are resisting the bosses'attempts to close factory after factory.one popular way of fighting closures is to suggest the formation of a workers' co-operative to run the Robert Owen's model factory at New Lanark, with which he attempted to show other bosses that they could give good conditions to the workers and still make a handsome profit 1 This has been seen at UP'D Kirkby Scottish Daily News, Propytex-HartJapool, BSC-Shelton Heath, and BSC The ideas behind the new schemes backed hy Tony Benn and the Institute of Worker Control - may be just as dangerous in the long run as those of the 19th century advocale of co-operatives, Robert Owen, who thought that the working class should try to persuade the capitalists to change society by force of argumOwen argued that workers shpuld form cooperative communities producing all kinds of goods - a utopian collective economy inside the wider capitalist economy. But all attempts to do this failed (indeed most didn't even get off the ground) for the same reasons that today's factory-baaed co-ops face problems -the hostility Owen's crusade to build islands of socialism' found little serious backing beyond various groups of intellectuals and skilled workers. In 1819, a Commission was set up to Triumph workers refused to allow these motorbikes-worth over E1 million- out of the factory until their jobs wore guaranteed launch an Owenite community, De spite its prestigious sponsors - its chairman was the Duke of Kent, and its other memhers included the Duke of Sussex, Sir Robert Peel (later founder of the English police and Tory Prime Minister), and the famous cconomist David Ricardo - it raised only 18,00U and the scheme had to be shelved.
Efforts to raise cash through co-op savings schemes for workers also failed. Then the idea of co-op shops was hit on. The original idea was that into difficulties. In the present ecthe profits would be saved to found communities and co-op factories -unlike the Cirs today, where a portion of the profits are distributed in dividends and the rest ploughed back. tax and capital needed for ploughing The Owenite co-op shops at first did quite well: by 1830, there were 500 societies with 20,000 members.
Owen then insisted the co-ops join together with various early trade unions whose unemployed members would produce goods to be sold in "bazaars' where the working class could exchange and barter on the cheap.(He called this the "Grand National Moral Union of the Useful and Productive Classes"). This scheme houses under workers' control. collapsed through lack of finance and most of the co-op shops then simply went out of business.
In all Owen managed to found only eight co-op communities, and eventually all his schemes foundered under pressure from the realities of the capitalist market cither in rais- italists. ing funds, or because of the difficult of maintaining a co-op without res orting to the very methods the co-op tries to escape! increasing work-speed and productivity, the pressure to ec onomise and threaten jots, and the problems of linding reliable markets FAILURE After the collapse of 'Owenism' most of the co-op societies moved. in the direction of the co-op (CWS) as we know it. The idea that workers should save to found co-op factories was abandoned and replaced by the idea of paying out the "divi" to the individual worker.
The CWS of today, with its notorious attacks on working conditions in its refrigcrator tactories in New Zealand and its tea plantations in Indis and Sri Lanka, has no idealist pretensions, whatever its supporters might say.
The nearest thing to Owen's ideas today can be found in the Scott Bader chemicals firm, and the Industrial Common Ownership Movement set up under the leadership of Ernest Bader, Hader formed his co-op firm in 1951 and the group now includes 10 member firms - including the Fakenham leather goods factory which was occupied by women work ers two years ago in their fight spainst closures. Bader's ideas are similar to Owen's: *..the division between cup ital and labour encourages selfishness and groed and until the two are united in a common purpose there will be no peace." The co-ops in his group are meant to develop as a rodel of a new social order demonstrating a new industrial way of life All the workers have shares in the concerns and they are run with worker-participation in management. But there is no reul independent org anisation of workers in the concern. No wonder that Scott Bader tops the chemical industry for return on capital and sales per employee. DIFFICULTIES The Bader group is also running onomic crisis, cuts in salary are being discussed. Their 'ideal" of self-finan cing is breaking down. About 78 per cent of the surplus is taken up with back. The concern is now running a huge overdraft.
If ever the proof of the imposs ibility of applying the co-op idea were needed, the Bader group is it. To meet the economic crisis of capitalism head-on, the workers movement must launch an offensive against oll the aspects of the capitalist "conomy for nationalisation of key industries, the banks and finance Isolated schemes of workers' management and "participation' cannot stop the attacks on workers living standards that the crisis forces on erery conomic concern operating on a capilalist basis whether run by the workers or by the cap-
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we will never attempt to dispossess you from any part of them ....The cause of contest between us will henceforth cease...*