ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters I have been dealing only with Co-operation as an industrial system ; and I have tried to show how the movement industrially contains within it two seeds or germs of immense significance and value. In the first place, it is the only industrial system, actually working successfully on a large scale, which is capable of applying democratic control to industry. In the second place, it is the only system which can found the industrial actions of a community upon right and reasonable beliefs and motives. If men and women were really civilized, they could not possibly fail to see that the only object of producing and distributing material commodities is consumption. The actual work of the human agents under modern conditions of industrial production and distribution cannot be either ennobling or pleasant in itself. We cannot now revert to those days before the machine and the factory came, when every leisurely producer might, if he wished, be an artist and find the artist’s joy in his work. Industrial production to-day is an unpleasant necessity, and the world should recognize it as such. No industrial production should be tolerated in a community which has any belief in the dignity or hope of the future of man, except such as supplies the wants of the community. But that means that industry should be so organized that the motive which sets in motion industrial operations is always only the demand of the community for commodities.
