SOCIALISTS AND CO-OPERATORS.
(To THE Entroa or Tas " SPEETAZOIL"i
Sia,—The Socialists are most anxious to obtain control of the co-operative movement, and the order has gone forth to all sections of the Socialist and Bolshevik movement to make an effort to capture the official position in the co-operative societies. The Socialist success in exploiting the trade unions has led them to believe that a similar success awaits them in the co- operative movement. The millions of capital in this movement Is a great temptation to the Socialist, and he will not be happy until he can lay his hands upon it, as- he has done with the funds of the trade unions. Socialists do not necessarily believe in the principles of the co-operative movement. The Socialist Press often refers with contempt to the capitalistic methods of the co-operators. One Socialist paper says that " the oo-opera- eve movement is a creation of petty-bourgeois idealogy," and that its trading, " like all capitalist trading, has a corrupting tendency, and creates in the workers engaged in it a bourgeois psychology and the employers' spirit." The same paper boasts that in Russia the co-operatives have been stripped "of their power for evil," and have been made subject to the Soviet Government. It is further stated that when the new social order of the Socialists is established in this country the co- operatives wilt only have a temporary place. " All their share- holding dividends and private trading apparatus must he swept away." These Socialistic opinions concerning the co-operative movement indicate that the Socialists' desire to form an alliance with the co-operators is not due to the love of the Socialists for the es-operative movement. It is not the oce operator but his money that the Socialist wants.—I em, Sir, &c.,
17 Heather Gardens, London, N.W. 4. W. FAULKNER.
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