Meaningful coincidences do happen. One happened to me yesterday. On the very day that my search for what's going wrong in the world had led me to think that a fundamental problem is that the system we live under taps into the 'dark' side of our psyche, our competitiveness and our belief that it's 'every man for himself', I went to a meeting of our local Co-op Society and heard a talk by POLYP (do look him up on www.polyp.org.uk).
POLYP writes graphic books with a political message. Yesterday's political message was that co-operation is found in every cell of life on Earth. His latest book 'The Co-operative Movement', as well as giving the historical background to Co-ops, focuses on (the science of) co-operation in nature and portrays an optimistic, sustainable and co-operative vision of the world in 2044.
How beautifully that fits into my latest finding that capitalism's need for us all to look after No.1. conflicts with the human, instinctive, archaic, need to live co-operatively and look after the welfare of the group. Ancient Man knew that his survival depended on a strong group, we just seem to have lost out along the way ...
(Thanks, POLYP, for coming last night).
The co-operative commonwealth is the end, co-operatives, however, are not the means to the end. Any survey of their history will show that there can be "no islands of socialism" in the ocean of capitalism. Every co-operative scheme has either adopted capitalist practices and operated little different from a conventional capitalist enterprise and been subsumed or they have gone to the wall. Surely the Co-op Bank just to name the most recent example demonstrates this.
ReplyDeleteMust think about that ...
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