ABSTRACT
Frederic Harrison, was born into a wealthy family in London. He attended Wadham College, Oxford, where he first encountered the work of Auguste Comte, whose “positivist”, pseudo-scientific “Religion of Humanity” shaped profoundly his subsequent thinking on social reform. Unlike socialism, Harrison argues, co-operation is necessarily involved in market relations and this generates contradictions. Subordination of the producer and prioritization of the store leads to a reliance on slave grown cotton, for instance. Most damagingly, Harrison suggests that there is nothing intrinsically different about this form of joint-stock enterprise and capitalist forms; pecuniary gain is frequently the most important motivation for co-operators. Trades’ unions are still the object of so much ignorant hatred and of such cowardly calumny, that a friendly writer is forced into an attitude of controversy and almost of advocacy. With co-operation, it is very desirable that its weak side should be insisted on at least as fully as its strongest.
