Palmer ...laska
Editor.Dorothy M. Bell
advertising....Harriet Z. Boll _•
Published once a week at Palmer, ^.laska, for the Mat anus ka Valley
Farmers’ C;operating association for the purpose of giving news of the
..ss-ociations work*problems and accomplishments.
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' COOPERATIVES ano COMMUNISM , :
More than ten million members; more than 500 million of retail trade.
Those are the record figures of consumer’s cooperation in Great Britain
for 1948. The membership, spread over more then 1,000 retail cooperative
societies of greatly varying size, links together in some degree, between
one quarter and one half of the households in the country. The retail
trade represents one-third of the national trade in milk, one quarter'of
the national trade in such staple commodities as sugar, butter, bacon,
cheese, bread and tea; and in the complete sphere of consumer goods, in
cluding food and non-food merchandise, represents at least one-seventh
of the national trade.
All this has been achieved in a period of little more than one hundred
years, for it was in 1844 that the cooperative movement commenced, based
on the Rochdale Principles.
The basis of the cooperative movement is absolutely free and democratic.
The shareholder, as such, is placed in a secondary category. It is the
member who is the foundation of a cooperative society. And the member,
as a consumer, has always the right to choose. Some cooperative members
are very loyal and make most of their purchase-with their societies.
Other members may make purchases, if they wish, of only one commodity,
e.g. milk or may make only intermittent purchases. Nobody has the right
to question this freedom of choice in the shopping of cooperative members
There is no dictatorship in the cooperative movement. It represents in
actual fact, "The people in business1.1 For the Most part these people are
ordinary working class men and women. It is their collective savings
as capital which finance all their undertakings. It is they who control
and administer their vast organizations.
In spito of their distinct'separation from the orthodox of economics,
based on capitalism and competition—or indeed perhaps because of this
separation—cooperative societies have developed in all countries under
a free and democratic form of government. As one writer on the cooper
ative idea has stated, "By the financial tenets of the times the Ruch
dale system of trading has remained in all its original integrity after
a century of experience and i’s still fructifying in fresh vital enter
prises." Tho simple principles enumerated as a basis for domestic thrift
and rudimentary social Service are being used to raise the standard of
living of millions of working people; to market the agricultural products
of the New world; to run factories or to provide houses in various parts
of the world.
The cooperative method of trading .is now accepted and its benefits ac
knowledged. It has nothing to fear from other economic types of trading
under a free system of government. There is, however, one great danger
to the cooperative type of organization. That danger is found in the
sinister challenge of communism to all free and voluntary and democratic
systems. Cooperation and communism are,incompatible.
Ill is danger is very reel because of the bubtlo nature of the argument
which which alleges that cooperation and communism have the same aims.
As a natter of fact, in principle, the tv;o systems are diametrically op
posed to each other. The communist idea is based on the importance of
the state, and party state at that. In the consumer's cooperative move
ment the sovereignty of the consumer is all important. In the Communist
system, the state as such, is supreme, for the system is totalitarian
and permits of no Other policy or creed. If it is claimed that commun
ism is a form of compulsory cooperation then it should be stated that
there is no such thing as compulsory cooperation; that is a contradiction
of t^rms. Cooperation must be voluntary and free because of its very
nature.
Communism destqp-ys the essential basis of cooperation. In communist
countries Cont. on page 3