The Co-operative Character: Alienation and the Search for Meaning in Early British Socialism

Golan, Yaron (2025) The Co-operative Character: Alienation and the Search for Meaning in Early British Socialism. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the significance of the emphasis on ‘Character’ in early British Co-operative thought. The Movement set itself the ambitious objective of ushering in a New Moral World by transforming the character of every individual in society. Over time, however, the emphasis on ‘character’ has waned and the Movement largely abandoned its utopian designs while changing into a consumer movement. This loss of idealism has preoccupied many histories of the movement, most of whom conclude that the shift is a result of the Movement’s “appropriation” by a capitalist logic. In contrast with previous histories, this thesis argues that analysing the ontological and epistemic assumptions underlying the language of ‘character’ in the 19th century might yield more productive answers. I do this by adopting an archaeological approach, analysing the Movement’s theoretical writings on pedagogy, psychology and political economy, as well as their pedagogical, medical and communitarian practices in order to ascertain the ontological and epistemological commitments that undergirded the Movement’s grand project. To this end, I use a plethora of published materials, as well as making extensive use of original materials held in the National Co-operative Archive in Manchester. I begin by framing the emergence of the Movement as a response to a perceived crisis of truth. I examine the different analyses of the crisis across the different strands of the Movement, comparing their ontological and epistemological commitments. This approach reveals that Co-operators developed innovative early conceptions of alienation and flourishing, as well as a radical critical capacity that enabled them to question many of the day’s received institutions. However, I eventually conclude that the loss of the Movement’s potency stems not from “appropriation”, but rather from its reduction of human agency to mechanistic rationality and to epistemological problems, and from its fixation on regulating the conduct of individuals in a top-down, rationalist fashion. In doing so, the Movement failed to understand the significance of ‘meaning’ to human agency and to acknowledge meaning-formation as an essential human activity. I then propose that in order to regain its transformative potency, the Movement ought to develop new practices of collective meaning-formation “from below”.