5.4.2 The American Coöperative Movement

In a similar vein, it is important to distinguish reimagined coöperation from the trajectory of the coöperatives movement in the United States, which gradually became reformist—especially during the Cold War, when it veered conservative.

The movement has a long and august history that traces to the early twentieth century. The Cooperative League of the United States of America was founded in 1916 with the righteous ambition of creating a “Cooperative Commonwealth.”³²⁰ The league was principally about consumer coöperatives. It quickly won the support of the likes of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann.³²¹

The Cooperative League was inspired at first, at least in part, by the writings of Kropotkin. Its founder, James Peter Warbasse, was a doctor who argued, in his own words, that “The forces which promote co-operation are the natural human instincts, the inherent animal tendency toward mutual aid, which has existed as a biological necessity since animals began, and without which the race would perish.”³²² One can hear Kropotkin in these words, and in fact Warbasse cited to Kropotkin’s work in his manifesto, Co-operative Democracy (New York: MacMillan Co., 1923).³²³ There were, of course, other influences—and his writings reflect an eclectic theoretical mix:

His theory of consumers cooperation … was drawn primarily from two French theorists, Charles Gide and Ernest Poisson. He borrowed both from Marxian socialism and Kropotkin’s mutual associationalism. Good nineteenth century secular and religious humanitarianism obviously infused his whole approach to life. He may not have been a careful student of either William James or John Dewey, but pragmatism came naturally to influence his beliefs. For all this eclecticism his system was surprisingly logical, coherent, and persuasive.³²⁴

There are many strengths to build on here. For instance, there were times when the Cooperative League presciently prefigured the ideals of a reimagined coöperationism. At an early stage, Warbasse imagined “co-operative democracy” as a third way, an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. Warbasse positioned himself politically as opposed both to capitalism and socialism:

Capitalism was doomed; but its declared alternative, the socialist state, was equally to be feared. Co-operation offered the only valid way to win a new world. The need was for the application of “constructive social engineering” to usher in, by evolutionary steps, a cooperative society. Both capitalism and socialism tended toward statism. […] The paternal state, welfare capitalist or socialist, corroded the self-reliance of the people, destroyed their initiative, usurped their liberties. The paternal state led to insolence and arrogance on the one hand, and indifference and submission on the other.³²⁵

Notice how coöperation is here situated against both capitalism and socialism as too statist, too dirigiste. I share in that assessment.

But here too, there were warning signs and prejudices to avoid. According to an early commentator by the name of Clarke Chambers, “Warbasse’s view of the human animal, like that of most of his associates, preferred Kropotkin’s Darwinism to Sumner’s. The instinct for mutual aid was fortified by other inherent tendencies or ingrained racial habits—‘natural good-heartedness, the inherent sense of justice, the fairness, and the good-will of human beings.’”³²⁶ The deeply troubling reference to “racial habits” reflects the fact that much of the coöperatives movement in the United States formed in homogenous ethnic areas, Finns and Swedes in the Mid-West for instance; and so here too we need to distance ourselves from these writings and their biases. The references to social evolution and racial habits are simply unacceptable.³²⁷

Moreover, in the post-war period, the Cooperative League became more conservative, especially as the Cold War began. In 1946, a designated language committee “recommended that there be no more ‘indiscriminate’ criticism of capitalism, for that merely aroused hostility and misunderstanding. ‘Indiscriminate attacks on 'capitalism' may cause the speaker to be classified as a communist or fascist.’ A better tactic was to demonstrate that an unregulated profit drive led to monopoly. ‘Many who are alienated by an attack on 'capitalism' will heartily support opposition to monopoly.’ Avoid use of the old term ‘Cooperative Commonwealth,’ the committee urged, for it suggests that all enterprise should be taken over by cooperatives ‘which is neither true nor possible.’”³²⁸

The Cooperative League also played into an imaginary of ownership. During and after the Great Depression, leaders of the Cooperative League argued that capitalism had failed and presented coöperatives as the best alternative to capitalism and communism. “America was at a cross-roads: it could swing down the right hand path to dictatorial fascism, down the left hand road to totalitarian socialism, or toil down the straight and narrow path toward a consumers cooperative society,” Chambers writes, describing the arguments of the leader, Eugene R. Bowen. “Cooperation was the peaceful way out, depending on neither ‘bullets nor ballots,’ and was the means by which Americans would come to own America.”³²⁹

Today, the Cooperative League is part of the National Cooperative Business Association.³³⁰ It is part of a more mainstream business environment. Chambers retraces the variegated ideological history of the Cooperative League in the following terms:

The Cooperative League grew out of Jewish democratic socialism and fraternalism and out of Finnish radicalism. Under Warbasse’s leadership the League’s official theory was close to a benevolent form of anarchism that predicted the withering away of the state as the cooperative commonwealth was gradually established. With Bowen the great agricultural purchasing associations were brought into the League, which they soon dominated. With this development, during the terrible crisis of the depression decade, the League moved gently away from rigid neutralism toward social reform through political action, and tempered its earlier utopianism by more practical programs. With Lincoln and Voorhis, the League fully accepted the sector ideal of the Swedish cooperative movement without for a moment surrendering its reform urge. The League can be found today campaigning for every good cause of political and social liberalism.³³¹

These pendulum swings reflect the geopolitical shifts of the twentieth century.

We need not subject ourselves today, however, to the aftershocks of those histories. The Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the Cold War, McCarthyism—those pushed and pulled the Cooperative League in different directions. We need not follow those vicissitudes today.

We can reimagine coöperation for our times.