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Page:David Joseph Saposs - Trade Union Policies and Tactics (1928).djvu/13

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couragement and many Socialists organized colonies in the West and South, some of which are still in existence.

f. While these colonies have enabled a select number of persons to forsake city and industrial life and live in the country on agricultural pursuits, they have not made any headway in supplanting the capitalist system.

IV.

a. When industry was still primitive and the capitalist system in its infancy, groups in the labor movement thought they could control capitalism through the cooperative marketing of their products.

b. This was the period of handicraft production, when each worker still owned his tools and worked in his home or little shop.

c. His problem was to dispose of his product to the consumer. Between him and the consumer stood the middleman or merchant who forced the worker to divide the profits with him, for the privilege of selling his wares.

d. This is still the predicament of the farmer, who is therefore still interested in cooperative marketing, government ownership of warehouses and railroads, which will enable him to market his own products without the intervention of the middleman.

V.

a. When the factory system superseded the handicraft mode of production, the worker no longer had sufficient capital to individually own the means of production and the necessary raw materials.

b. Hence, when workers became determined to replace capitalism, they turned to cooperative production or collective ownerership of the means of production by the workers of the shop.

c. This was the ideal of the self-governing shop, in which every worker was an equal owner with his fellow workers of the shop in which they worked.

VI.

a. Another group felt that this form of producers' cooperation merely made small capitalists out of individual workers.

b. They advocated that cooperative shops should be founded and governed by all the workers of the industry through their unions. That is, the union, on behalf of the workers, should own cooperative shops and thus abolish capitalism.

c. The Knights of Labor actually bought a mine on this basis, but because of disagreement among the leaders and members, were forced to give it up.

VII.

a. Another group of workers argued that he who controls markets, controls production and dominates the capitalist sys-

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