Capitalist Strategy

I was talking about this with a comrade a few weeks ago, and its something that has only really occured to me over the last few months that I've been researching the material on Co-ops.

"Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (and then repeatedly every 20 years or so) there has been a surge in the number of cooperative organisations, both in commercial practice and civil society, operating to advance democracy and universal suffrage as a political principle[7]. Friendly Societies and consumer cooperatives became the dominant form of organization amongst working people in industrial societies prior the rise of trade unions and industrial factories. Weinbren reports that by the end of the 19th century, over 80% of British working age men and 90% of Australian working age men were members of one or more Friendly Society[8]."

Co-ops

Partly, the rise of Friendly Societies had been in response to the introduction of the new Poor Laws. But, it occurred to me, particulalry after reading Hobsbawm's "Industry and Empire", that at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the twentieth century - that is at the end of the period of the 25 year long Long Wave Boom - when workers living standards, for the first time, in industrialised economies like Britain, had risen to a level where they could save significant amounts in these Societies, is precisely the time when the Capitalist Governments introduce a National Insurance Scheme, and limited Pensions and other welfarist policies, which undermine the workers own systems, and drain those savings from them!

Its unlikely that was a coincidence!