cooperators were not deterred. While the store grew slowly during the first few years, it experienced rapid expansion after 1849. Aptly named "equitable", the Society sought to rectify the injustices of a profit-oriented market economy, and to bridge the gap between consumer and producer in a culture not yet geared to mass production. Instead of competition, the Pioneers wanted cooperation, instead of private profit, social wealth. They wished to replace individual powerlessness with democratic participation, dependency with self~help, and isolation with mutuality. The Rochdale Pioneers put their fingers on a central problem of industrial society, namely the connection between economic dependence, alienation, indifference and spiritual impoverishment. They knew that local control, democratic participation, and face-to~face contact were necessary prerequisites for successful cooperation. Their vision extended beyond the monetary benefit for the individual member to a concept of social interconnectedness that rejected the definition of the individual as solely a self-interested, autonomous being. Their goal was not simply to become ·gentler capitalists, and their success was not solely due to their businesslike approach and level-headed calculations. A good deal of enthusiasm and idealistic fervor sustained them. Their principles projected the expansion from consumer cooperation to cooperative manufacturing, "for the employment of such members as may be without employment." They also planned to set up cooperative farms and communal housing "to establish a self-supporting home col~ny of united interest." The cooperators of Rochdale did not.Jose sight of their larg~r goal of extending the cooperative principle, since "human society is a body consisting of many members, the Page 34 RAIN Summer 1996 Volume XV, Number 1 real interests of which are identical." Their rules reflected the traditional notion of a moral economy which values people over the abstract laws of the market. This was in clear opposition to the fashionable theories of economic thinkers such as Adam Smith, who saw individual selfinterest and the division of labor as the means to progress, and David Ricardo, who emphasized the rule of iron laws in the economy that justified low wages and miserable working conditions. When the economy is defined as being ruled by "laws" of supply and demand and a "free" market is declared most beneficial, forgotton are ethical issues about how to live, what to produce, and how to work. For the cooperators industrial poverty, alienation, and the transformation of people's labor into commoditi~s had a real and specific meaning. "As Cooperators," Abraham Greenwood, a Rochdale Pioneer, declared, "we have to teach mankind, that as humanity is one body, all we, being members of that body, are bound to labor for its development." The artisans of Rochdale rejected classical liberalism's belief in the beneficial results of a free market driven by the relentless pursuit of self-interest. They also expressed disdain towards medieval corporatism, which idealized the bonds of protection and service between nobles and serfs. Instead, they saw in democratic participation and socio-economic interconnectedness the basis of a new order. Setting up villages of cooperation remained a central part of this goal. The Pioneers started cooperative housing projects. Although the idea of communal living was abandoned, homes were built to provide decent dwellings at reasonable rents. In keeping with the principle of bridging the gap of consumer and producer, they also wanted to eradicate the distinction between employer and employee. Their cooperative manufacturing enterprises relied on a partnership with the workers, who would receive benefits out of the profits. Some of their co-ops, such as card making and tobacco processing, were short-lived enterprises. The idea of cooperative farming faded before the Pioneers even v~ntured into this area. Store policy did not let the husband withdraw the money of his wife, a rarity in patriarchal England of the time. In 1854 the cooperators founded a new industrial venture: the Cooperative Manufacturing Society, operating power looms for weaving and, later, for spinning. The Pioneers decided that the manufacturing venture should be an independent enterprise, with the Society of Equitable Pioneers as a shareholder. The remaining capital was to be provided by individual members and the workers themselves, who would own capital invested in the mills and receive both dividends and bonuses.
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