Reply To: Status of World Socialist Party (US)
Neil, what our role is explaining why after two hundred years of experience we have not learned the lesson of a Chartist.
Ernest Jones, wrote:
“I contend that co-operation as now developed, must result in failure to the majority of those concerned, and that it is merely perpetuating the evils which it professes to remove… That the co-operative-system, as at present practised, carries within it the germs of dissolution, would inflict a renewed evil on the masses of the people, and is essentially destructive of the real principles of co-operation. Instead of abrogating profitmongering, it re-creates it. Instead of counteracting competition, it re-establishes it. Instead of preventing centralisation, it renews it—merely transferring the role from one set of actors to another… your co-operative ranks are thinned, your firms find, one by one, they can no longer in make the returns equal the expenses, they cannot sell as cheap as the capitalist, they can therefore no more command the market, their co-operative fires die out in quick succession, stores and mills close over their deluded votaries—and the great ruin will stand bald, naked, and despairing in the streets.”
We should not repeat mistakes merely because they sound popular. We are not basing an analysis on theory or any abstract hypothesis but empirical evidence, Neil. We will not receive thanks when people are disillusioned and disappointed but instead socialists will be accused again of not fulfilling the promises they make.