Henrik F. Infield - Co-Operative Communities at Work

by
HENRIK F. INFIELD

First published in 1947 by
Routledge, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd

Reprinted in 1998 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1947 Henrik F. Infield

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Co-operative Communities at Work
ISBN 0-415-17619-0
Class, Race and Social Structure: 21 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17826-6
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

CHAP.

From time immemorial men have dreamed of establishing a society in which every warm human heart could take joya community of peace, brotherhood, and new liberty of expression. Great intellectual leaders and social reformers foresaw the hope of a co-operative rather than a competitive society. They were not idle dreamers but set forth realistic plans and programmes for the realization of their ideals.

Nor have such programmes remained in the realm of theory. Every now and then the dream has been taken literally and has led groups of people into working co-operative units. The leaders, among them Owen, Fourier, Cabet, have been practical-minded theorists who held that a people without vision must perish and that only a new way of life can save men from their own madness. In recent times we have seen established the modern co-operative community, wherein the dream has hardened into sober reality.

In Soviet Russia, in Mexico, in Palestine, the co-operative has been effective in introducing the most advanced farming methods into formerly backward rural areas. By pooling of resources peasants have availed themselves of the advantages of large-scale farming, and have thereby increased production and raised their standards of living. The co-operative has brought medical care, improvement in diet, and more decent and sanitary housing, to people who formerly lived in dirt and squalor, suffering from malnutrition or other diseases of poverty. Destitute farm folk, as full-fledged members of a co-operating group, have acquired, often for the first time in their lives, a sense of economic and social security. In fostering participation in the arts, literature, and scientific progress, this system has, finally, helped to redress the most distressing evil of rural existence, the idiocy of village life.

Although the co-operative community is the accepted form of rural organization in one big country, Soviet Russia, and its number is steadily increasing in several other countries, relatively little is known about it in the United States. The attempt of the Farm Security Administration, in 1937, to establish this type of settlement for the rehabilitation of low-income farmers has aroused slight interest in outside circles. To-day the necessity approaches of rehabilitating whole masses of people, so dislocated by war that the Government will have to co-operate with them in their plans, and in many cases make plans for them. According to various estimates, some fifteen to twenty million people of Europe will find themselves in need of resettlement. No country, not even the United States, can handle so gigantic a task alone. Some inter-governmental authority will undoubtedly have to be established for the purpose. To scrutinize closely the merits of group settlement should be part of the preparatory work of post-war resettlement planning.

It is in the light of such considerations that the present study is undertaken, in an attempt to sum up the lessons offered by co-operative communities of the past and present. The work deals with two principal tasks: (1) a description of the most significant instances of co-operative living in relation to post-war planning; (2) their application to resettlement to-day. The historical survey will be brief. Those who wish to review the story of these communities in detail will find available extensive works of research and a number of special monographs.1 We shall place the greater emphasis on groups still in existence or only recently disbanded, as most relevant to our problem.

We shall consider (1) the motives behind each community, with a short history of its origin; (2) the human element, membership requirements, duties and rights of members, their racial, social, and political backgrounds; (3) administration and management; (4) the degree of co-operation practised; (5) finances, credits, expenses, and profits; (6) the approximate turnover in each community; and, finally, (7) an evaluation of advantages and drawbacks in relation to post-war resettlement.

Particular attention will be paid to the degree of co-operation practised. It will be easily noticed that there are two kinds of co-operation: one limited to economic goals, and one that embraces most, if not all, social values. We have called the first kind segmental, and the other comprehensive, co-operation. The two terms are by no means mutually exclusive; both designate, in fact, different degrees of the same mode of socio-economic association, and are in turn subject to gradation.