Competition and Co-operation in Politics and Economics [1951]

This article was written for the quarterly publication of Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever: Progress 42, no. 232 (autumn 1951): 13–16 (B&R C51.34). This hugely successful company was formed in 1930 from a merger of British soapmaker Lever Brothers with Dutch margarine producer Unie. Progress had been started in 1899 by William Hesketh Lever (1851–1925, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, 1917) as a medium of communication from the Lever Brothers management to its workers in the main production facility located in the company’s model village of Port Sunlight on the Mersey estuary, and in branch plants and offices in Britain and overseas. Two opposite relations are normal in the contacts of human beings. They may co-operate or they may compete. Both kinds have existed ever since there were human beings, but the relative importance of the two has been undergoing continuous change as techniques became more complicated and more productive.