Theses developed from discussions at the first International Conference of Communist Cooperators held around the E.C.C.I. Plenum in March, 1926.

‘Communist Work in Consumers’ Cooperatives’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 6 No. 39. May 6, 1926.

Theses of the Cooperative Conference During the E.C.C.I. Plenum in March, 1926, endorsed at the Session of the Org Bureau on April 10, 1926.

1. Consumers’ Cooperatives are a mass organisation in which Communist Parties must carry on systematic practical work for the capture of the rank and file and for the purpose of bringing cooperatives into the united proletarian fighting front against capitalism.

2. Working class consumers’ cooperatives were established to counteract capitalist exploitation through commerce. When cooperatives had mainly to fight against the unorganised retail traders, they were able to provide certain advantages for their members merely by improved technical organisational methods of trading.

3. Under the domination of finance capital of the all-powerful banks, trusts and syndicates, in the epoch of big stores multiple shops, big food concerns, etc., consumers’ cooperatives can offer their members only very few advantages by mere improved trading methods. It goes without saying that cooperatives must adopt the best possible business and organisation methods, but they cannot do justice to their tasks unless they carry on the struggle for lower prices and a higher standard of living for the workers as an organised proletarian class struggle together with the trade unions and with other proletarian class organisations, as a struggle against high cost of living, price dictatorship on the part of syndicates and trusts, and the taxation and tariff policy of the capitalist governments, as a struggle against the entire capitalist regime in general.

4. Communist Parties should see to it that the importance and the tasks of consumers’ cooperatives be fully realised by large sections of proletarian consumers.

Linking up with the everyday demands of the proletarian membership, by supporting these demands by means of business like and practical everyday work carried on with revolutionary energy and by exemplary cooperative collaboration, Communists can and must extend their influence over over-growing sections of rank and file cooperators, they must draw the cooperatives into the proletarian class struggle, rallying to their banner the proletarian opposition and leaving them in this class struggle.

5. Experiences gathered in the most important countries have given us the following picture:

a) In Great Britain where the recently inaugurated cooperative work is not carried on as an isolated branch of work, but is included in the entire work of the Party and is closely connected with revolutionary trade union work, considerable results have already been achieved with respect to increasing the influence of the Party over the masses. The fact that local cooperative organisations and Women’s Guilds have been induced through the C.P.G.B. to support the demands and campaigns of the trade union Minority Movement, and that there are already signs of the formation of a Left Wing in the British Cooperative movement, show that well-organised and regulated cooperative work can do much towards increasing communist influence.

b) In Germany good opportunities for Communist work among cooperators were to a certain extent neglected even after the adoption of the Party’s new course. The existence of a number of consumers’ cooperatives with Communist executives and a number of fractions must be an encouragement to the Party as a whole and to its executive to further cooperative activity much more than hitherto. Cooperatives were not drawn into important campaigns (for instance the expropriation of the royal houses’ campaign) to the extent that they should have been.

c) The Communists of Czechoslovakia, who have captured good positions in the Czech Cooperative movement, did not make the most of their opportunities for the mobilisation of cooperators for the struggle (for instance for the struggle against high prices). In many cases Communists limited themselves to purely cooperative business activity without linking up sufficiently cooperative work with the political demands of the proletariat, although certain progress in this direction has been noticeable during the past few years. Systematic fraction work is the necessary premise for success in this field of activity.

d) The Communist Party of France has done systematic cooperative work only in the Paris district, whilst hardly any beginning has been made with this work in the provincial organisations. Cooperative work is carried on without linking it up sufficiently with the entire Party work. There is lack of clearness with respect to many important questions: on the one hand, there are tendencies to establish special Communist organisations (instead of fractions, revolutionary cooperative circles), whilst on the other hand cooperative methods are propagated which might create reformist illusions (for instance under the title “committees of action against high prices” organisations were formed which are in reality discount societies).

e) The activity of the Cooperative Section has been instrumental in the linking up of cooperative questions with Comintern work. However, efforts must be made to bring about a still closer contact between cooperative and general Comintern work.

6. Among the demands which are most likely to arouse the interest of large proletarian sections of cooperators bringing them over to our side, first place is given to the demand for the participation of cooperatives in the struggle against high prices.

With this object we must urge cooperatives that in their press and propaganda, in the decisions of meetings and sessions of local and central organisations, through sending delegations to state and municipal authorities and through organising mass demonstrations, they should advocate:

a) Compulsory measures against rising prices through the actions of trusts and the monopolist wholesale trade.

b) Abrogation or lowering of custom dues on articles of primary necessity and also abrogation of excise and duties.

c) Taxation exemption or preferential taxation treatment for consumers’ cooperatives.

d) Long term state and municipal credits for cooperatives without interest or at low interest.

e) Reduction of freight charges for articles of primary necessity. By way of direct measures on the part of consumers’ cooperatives themselves. Communists must, for the same object, demand:

a) establishment of business connections with small peasant cooperatives.

b) Establishment of direct trade relations with Soviet Russian Cooperatives and foreign trade institutions.

7. Communists should also bring forward in the cooperatives the following demands:

a) Support for the economic struggles of the proletariat and definite agreements with the trade unions for this purpose; material support for those engaged in the struggle and provision of food-stuffs on credit during struggles.

b) Energetic support for the demands of the unemployed, measures for their assistance on the part of the cooperatives themselves. Demand for special state and communal credits without interest to carry out “public work” (for the relief of unemployment) in the form of the extension of consumers’ cooperatives business premises (building of bakeries, slaughterhouses, etc.), also demand that cooperatives should sell foodstuffs at reduced prices to unemployed and part-time workers: Consumers cooperatives to be drawn into public distribution actions (municipalities).

c) Demand for closer connection and direct mutual representation of consumers’ cooperative and local trades councils.

d) Establishment of democratic self-government in the cooperatives, activisation of the membership by means of regular meetings, special efforts to draw women members into the work and complete freedom of opinion in the meetings and press of the cooperative movement.

e) Good labour and wages conditions in cooperative enterprises and obligatory trade union membership for cooperative manual and office workers.

f) The educational and training activity of the cooperatives, their press and publishing activity should have for their aim the class education of the membership.

8. Communists in the cooperative must make sure that the cooperative movement be linked up with the political struggle of the proletariat. Cooperatives should participate in the campaigns fa trade union unity, the should support all the efforts of the Anglo-Russian Unity Committee, they should take part in the struggle against the war peril, Fascist, White Terror, and class justice and in the campaigns for the liberation of colonial countries.

9. It is a matter of course that Communists take an active part in the work carried on in all the existing parallel and auxiliary organisations in the cooperative movement (Women’s Guilds, cooperative circles, recruiting committees, educational committees, debating clubs, etc.).

10. To enable Communists to carry out all these tasks in the cooperatives, the Communist Parties of the various countries must link up their cooperative work with the entire work of the Party. The necessary premises for this are: organisational measures by the Party which must be energetically carried out by a fixed date (control that Communists are members of the cooperatives, formation of fractions in the cooperatives, establishment of cooperative departments in the central and local organisations, appointment of cooperative chairmen in factory and street nuclei).

11. Communist cooperative fractions must be able to rally to themselves and to lead increasing members of working class members of Consumers’ Cooperatives by struggling for concrete questions, comprehensible to and of importance for the membership. Throughout their activity. Communist fractions should take care not to become isolated, but to keep in as close contact as possible with sympathisers, in order to encourage the proletarian opposition and the formation of a Left Wing within the cooperative movement.

12. In their programme of action, Party executives must also lay down the immediate tasks and demands of Communist cooperative work including it into the plan of work of the Party.

13. The Party press and the labour press under Communist influence, especially the trade union press, must deal with all questions of cooperative work and must above all publish letters from the membership.

14. In its work among Women the Party should pay special attention to cooperative activity. By means of agitation for consumers’ cooperatives measures likely to ease the household drudgery of proletarian housewives (in addition to the general struggle for raising the standard of living, a struggle should also be carried out for the establishment of laundries, public kitchens, crèches, etc.), we will be able to capture still backward female masses in order to educate them into class-conscious members of the proletariat.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecor, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

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