THE REVOLUTION AGAINST SCARCITY
Lincoln, Murray D.
The Revolution Against Scarcity By MURRAY D. LINCOLN FOR long centuries the masses were kept in ignorance and given access only to ideas and beliefs which encouraged meekness. Today the "reward in...
...They have added moral principle to economics and come out with an annual volume skirting the billion mark...
...A Significant Warning The same determination can be found in the field of services...
...These are clearly public interest areas...
...Warning us further that democracy itself may not survive this struggle between selfish interests, Chase says, "When Big Business . . . Big Unions . . . and Big Farmers moved in upon the government . . . the community had to develop the Big State to cope with them...
...It is not realistic to recommend that the corporate structure of American business become cooperative...
...A private enterprise which cannot, or will not, provide a measure of that abundance to all—is writing its own death warrant...
...We are aware of the tides of revolution sweeping the world today...
...but as the mainspring of the public welfare...
...Its motive force is the idea of plenty...
...We shall all of us—industry, labor, and agriculture— either discipline ourselves in terms of the public interest and welfare or we shall surely be disciplined by people through government action...
...It may also be said that the most dangerous group in America is the group—be it agriculture, labor, or in-dustr(/-^-which plans to continue its traditional selfish and restrictive role in-the postwar period...
...Over 20 of such organizations are turning in million dollar volumes annually...
...And it will be brought by all three groups working at cross purposes—each seeking to gain at the others' expense...
...Farmer confidence in this consumer technique was clearly demonstrated by an organization which recently raised a half a million dollars for expansion in several weeks...
...Today they are recognized as potent and wholesome forces in our business community...
...An enlightened private enterprise will do well to consider the public temper as tentative...
...It was perverted to the forces of tyranny in Germany and Italy...
...The rural electric cooperative has accounted for most of that gain...
...The implications behind a great urban and rural cooperative development in America are tremendous...
...We have the facts...
...Democratically elected representatives control the policies of this organization which serves consumers— urban and rural—in 12 states and the District of Columbia...
...Here again it seems to me is a significant warning to private enterprise...
...to establish, upon the ruins of the scarcity that has hitherto enslaved them, an economy of plenty—-plenty not just for the few but for all...
...But this time they want them to pay off...
...It lost its battle in Russia...
...The American people do not want to move mountains with WPA shovels...
...Not only are the co-ops purchasing, they are manufacturing as well...
...Ten years ago cooperatives in America were considered the Holy Rollers of our economic kingdom...
...Aiidjuniess we do, we are blueprinting1 Ante'ricaf's next great depression and the possible collapse into stateism...
...Not only are they committed to, but they carry out the literal translation of free enterprise...
...It will be brought about by a business system which is afraid to put public interest ahead of the balance sheet...
...Central organizations in the East and Middle West are developing techniques for accelerated organization which should dot the nation with city cooperatives in the next 10 years...
...It is well for all of us to recognize that this man is fighting for this country in the world battlefields today...
...Cooperatives in America are growing and will continue to grow...
...Our failure this time to release the abundance America is capable of producing will be a moral failure...
...If urban consumers have been slow to establish cooperatives, the future promises a much more rapid and widespread development...
...The endorsement of consumer cooperation by major organized labor groups may hold the key to a great consumer movement here in America...
...It would shorten the line of distribution for vital foodstuffs...
...The deep and restless desire of the peoples of the earth is...
...The conspicuous achievements in cooperative sponsorship of insurance, credit, and electricity have importance beyond their member and dollar volume...
...He wants no part of an economy which sets its prices to protect the least efficient producer...
...The farmer is number one American cooperator...
...The efficiency and quality of service which cooperatives are displaying will doubtless stimulate the trend towards greater public control and ownership in these fields...
...It is getting that chance because World War II ha3 pulled its chestnuts out of the fire...
...Only in America does it have another great opportunity to demonstrate its value to mankind...
...We know the relationship between prosperity and high employment and purchasing power...
...With already 100 factories to their credit they are just beginning...
...Where cutting distribution spreads required the ownership of production units, farmers have bought their own factories...
...Over two million farmers are members or patrons of purchasing cooperatives...
...Three thousand cooperative associations put these farmers in business to the annual tune of approximately a billion dollars...
...An organized labor, harnessing its tremendous consumer power through cooperatives, can contribute far more to its own and the nation's welfare than it will ever achieve through political pressure...
...The relationship would be one of service—not conflict...
...They are manufacturing tractors along with other farm machinery needs...
...An American statesman has said: "The chains of the ages have snapped...
...It offers the buyer what a genuinely free enterprise system should—highest quality at the lowest possible price...
...Jtyhat does it take t6 lift our sights ? Not one of these groups has giyeiv any, indication of honestly abandoning itis j)l<l-selfish roles...
...This is but one of many such insurance organizations...
...Farmers are producing and refining oil...
...A business system which has to date made no effort to abandon its restrictive policies, its trade agreements, its price fixing practices, its patent deals, its cartel relationships, and its general psychology of low production and high prices...
...But it is the soberest kind of realism to recommend to a tottering private enterprise system the moral and social purposes which account for the steady growth of cooperatives in this country...
...Showdown For Consumers The consumer is the priceless ingredient of a prosperous economic community.- The cooperative philosophy was conceived out of a determination to serve that consumer...
...They still prefer the bull-dozers of private enterprise...
...They have a formula and it works...
...How much private enterprise they will replace will depend upon the enlightenment and determination of American business to see its role not only as the profitmaker...
...In the '30s less than 15 per cent of America's farmers had electric power...
...I cannot accept Mr...
...Farmers were unable to pay the exorbitant installation rates which short-sighted utility companies were charging...
...If American business, flanked by a selfish and restrictive agriculture and labor, moves in to squeeze-play the consumer with the same old formulas of scarcity and self-interest, then we shall have economic collapse and government regulations which will make the New Deal look like a pigmy...
...American business is enjoying its highest public esteem in the past 15 years...
...Idleness, be it of men, or money, or machines, will be the one unforgiveable sin of the postwar world...
...The one thing people won't do is take 'No' for a final answer to their cry for full employment...
...The growth "of consumer cooperation in America— and a worldwide movement embracing 44 nations and a hundred million world citizens—give certain testimony that consumers want a show-down...
...Carr's verdict as final and conclusive...
...I want to review briefly here for readers of The Progressive the philosophy and program of the consumer cooperative movement in this country...
...This generation in America—weary of booms, busts, and wars—is ready for whatever will provide security...
...The world about us has already dipped its knee to the multiple forms of totalitarianism and state control...
...You build...
...The physical and technological resources of abundance are here for all to see...
...Its origins are want and the fear of want...
...The collapse of private enterprise in this country, and the consequent limitations of the freedoms we have enjoyed will be brought about by the major economic groups I have mentioned...
...Today the "reward in Heaven" concept has lost its flavor...
...We know the appalling wastes of depression...
...They produce paints, fertilizers, feeds, hatch chicks, and mine their own coal...
...Forward looking leaders of labor have recognized that endless pressure for higher wages and shorter hours is not the fundamental solution...
...Such local associations are flanked by strong regional wholesales reaching from coast to coast...
...And the next time they are abandoned on the doorstep of depression by private enterprise will be the last time...
...The consumer wants no part of a system which has lost courage for genuinely free competition...
...Philosophy Of Cooperation We face then the responsibility of building and redefining democracy here in America...
...If people must choose between the regimentation of a morally bankrupt private enterprise system and security through government action—then they will certainly choose the latter...
...He is opposed to the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few when it becomes apparent that such power exploits him in the name of profit and American tradition...
...In the past 2 years over 20 million dollars have been invested in such enterprises...
...Today over one-third of our farmers have electric power...
...Over 100 new food stores have opened since our entry in the war...
...It will be brought about by an organized labor which seeks only to push its wages higher and higher while its real income falls lower and lower...
...The formula for our next depression is a simple one requiring little imagination and none of the unselfish courage and spirit needed to build a strong and great America...
...If industry, labor, and agriculture return in the postwar period to the jungle warfare of group conflict—then we shall surely reap the whirlwind of our own selfishness...
...An organized labor which permits restrictive practices within its ranks and refuses to recognize that it, too, is charged with responsibility to the total welfare...
...People—the world over—are awake and on the march...
...The American consumer in good faith offers private enterprise another chance...
...These farmers are making private enterprise pay off...
...Midwest farmers with $10,000 built an insurance business with current assets of $40,000,000...
...And the young American flyer who lost his life in the battle over Europe placed the responsibilities squarely upon our shoulders with these words: "If there is any message which the coming generation should have from mine, let it be a message from those of us who have fought and died to make future generations of human beings possible—let the message be this: We have cleared the site—and laid the foundation...
...Let us examine the record of this consumer revolt against scarcity...
...Challenging Americans to understand the forces of revolution about them, Russell Davenport sounds the warning: "It is a revolution against scarcity...
...Farmers and city workers united by their basic interests as consumers could make abundance a reality...
...It is enjoying such popularity because (1) it has done a magnificent job of producing war materials, (2) it has been able to offer full employment at good wages, and (3) it has spent and is spending millions of dollars "selling" the American people on its own particular virtues...
...These peoples' business institutions are providing members with a wide range of high quality needs at prices bearing close proximity to cost...
...Not when they see themselves surrounded by too much of what they need most and yet might not be able to get...
...It is to such ends and purposes that consumer cooperatives in America are committed...
...It is a record of revolt against the mal-practices of a system of enterprise which is no longer free...
...It will be brought about by an agriculture which sees its future in restrictive production, artificially maintained prices, and a system of permanent subsidization and regimentation at the expense of the public purse...
...The record of consumer cooperatives in America is a record of what enlightened consumers can and will do in a scarcity economy...
...He reacts against patent practices which spawn monopolies in the name of free enterprise...
...It constitutes in no sense of the word a full pardon...
...The farmer would enjoy streamlined outlets for his products...
...The development of consumer cooperatives in America is an effort by people to remedy the very selfish and restrictive scarcity approaches which today threaten to write the final chapter of private enterprise...
...The worker would increase his real income...
...IT has been said that the most dangerous fifth columnist in America is the man who fears the future...
...Stuart Chase, who has written much for The Progressive, in a Twentieth Century Fund study of pressure groups, Democracy Under Pressure, warns us that "if the pressure group free-for-all holds the stage in postwar America—economic breakdown is not far away...
...Democracy In Danger Our system of private enterprise capitalism built Western Civilization and fashioned a great America of tremendous power and resources...
...Like the trend towards greater state controls, the cooperative is a people's answer to the limitations and inadequacies of our social and economic system...
...E. H. Carr, in his book Conditions of Peace, has warned us that private enterprise is dead and that representative government is on the way out...
...It will walk with the yoke of state control in England after this war...
Vol. 9 • March 1945 • No. 13
