Development of Cooperatives - Studies in Political Economy

State Intervention and the Development of Cooperatives (Old and New) in Quebec, 1968-1988* BENOIT LEVESQUE oth political economists and neo-classical economists tend to view cooperatives as enterprises like any other. Political economists insist that cooperatives exhibit the same tendencies towards concentration and centralization, as do other enterprises and that, in consequence, they are not a means of transition toward socialism.' Neo-classical economists have traditionally focused on the enterprise and on production factors. For them the cooperative is simply the result of a particular application of economic principles in which the role of the entrepreneur is played collectively by modestincome social groups.2 Both perspectives have limitations. To obtain a relatively complete picture of the relationship between the state and cooperatives, it is essential to realize that a cooperative is not an enterprise like any other. A cooperative is generally defined as "the combination of an association of persons and an enterprise linked together reciprocally through their activities and social relations.,,3

B

"'Translated by Jo-Anne Andre and Marie Boti.

Studies in Political Economy 31, Spring 1990

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Cooperatives can thus be examined not only from the point of view of capital accumulation (through the lenses of politicalor neoclassical economy), but should also be examined from the point of view of social relations (within the context of the sociology of social movements). The relationship between the 'association of persons' and the 'enterprise' will be variable. In most cooperatives, the 'association of persons' controls the 'enterprise' initially, all the more so since the enterprise is usually a small one. A group of people of modest social origins associate in order to maintain an economic activity that is threatened by capitalist development (small farmers), or in order to improve their living conditions, by obtaining services which are either unavailable on the market (natural products at the end of the 1960s), or inaccessible because of their price (downtown housing for lower-income classes). The initial energy for the cooperative thus comes from the dynamic of social change. What distinguishes the cooperative from other similar forms of organization, such as tenant or consumer groups, is that the cooperative group actually sets up an enterprise which becomes a means of reorganizing its activities and reaching its objectives. As the cooperative evolves, the 'association of persons' will have a tendency to become secondary while the 'enterprise' will increasingly operate according to commercial logic. It must be understood from the start, however, that a cooperative enterprise follows a dual - and ambiguous - rationale. On the one hand, it is reacting to the effects of capitalism and, on the other, it is functionally adapting to a new organization of production and its attendant changes." The cooperative's objective is not simply to tum a profit. Its earnings are distributed through use and not according to the amount of capital invested. It operates according to the principle of one person, one vote, and not according to the number of shares a person owns, as in the capitalist enterprise. But at the same time, the cooperative enterprise can only sustain itself if it is competitive with other types of enterprises.

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Once income (surplus or profit) has been reinvested in the enterprise, members will see their participation modified, as has been illustrated in the case of farm co-ops. These changes will in turn have an impact on the identity of the members as socio-economic agents and on the cooperative's rules and regulations. Ultimately, rules may even be reversed to the point where the enterprise, or its managers, end up defining the criteria for membership and admission. In other words, the cooperative, in its efforts to meet market requirements, may end up imposing conditions on its members which could lead some of them, particularly the most disadvantaged, to abandon their activities.S Hence, the advantage of making a distinction between 'new' cooperatives - by which we not only mean recently formed co-ops (i.e.in the 1970s, or later), but also those which are the product of new social movements - and 'old' cooperatives - those which over time have become highly institutionalized and whose development is governed by the logic of business rather than that of associations. Through legislation, funding, support and supervision, the state often plays a decisive role in the emergence and later transformation of the cooperative association. It must be said that the state is neither a neutral arbiter of conflicting interests, nor a tool serving one class exclusively, as state monopoly capitalism supposes.'' Rather, the state is an expression of the power struggles that shape society.7 State policies change within the framework of this power struggle, depending on the circumstances. What is more, the struggle is ongoing; the state form specific to one period (i.e. the Keynesian or welfare state in the current period) can experience crises. Regulation theorists have shown that the form adopted by the state is a result of a social compromise, reflecting the asymmetrical and une~al power relations between classes in any given period. The state generally institutionalizes the social compromise through legislation (i.e. labour legislation). Major economic crises are thus also political crises since the social compromises which allowed growth to take place, and ensured some stability, are called into question when they no longer channel or regulate the tensions caused by social struggle.9 109


Quebec constitutes an excellent subject for the study of state/cooperative relations. For one thing, Quebec is the province where cooperatives are most numerous: 43% of the co-ops in Canada are located in Quebec which has only 26% of the total population of Canada.IO Cooperatives are not a marginal phenomenon in Quebec, neither economically or socially. What is more, Quebec is the most interventionist province in this field in Canada. I I In this article, I argue that Quebec government policies, while generally favourable to co-op development since the 1960s have always had instrumentalist aims. In other words, policies favouring co-ops have allowed the state to reach its own objectives. These are unrelated to the goals of the co-ops themselves or to the promotion of a more socialized, democratized economy. More specifically, in the first part of the paper I show how state intervention in 'old' cooperatives has been guided by economic policy based either on economic nationalism or neo-liberalism. In the second part, I argue that since the middle of the 1970s, social regulation and the state's desire to disengage itself from the social realm, have shaped intervention in the 'new' cooperatives. This latter period marked a turning point in state intervention regarding cooperatives. The State and the 'Old' Cooperatives 'Old' cooperatives are more structured than the 'new' ones, and include secondlevel authorities, like regional federations, and even thirdlevel confederations. Their enterprises have become large enough to occupy a sizeable part of the market in their sectors of activity. These co-ops were established in two waves in Quebec: the farm co-ops and the savings and credit unions at the tum of the century, and the fishing and food co-ops after the 1930s crisis.12 Initially established in rural areas, the cooperatives multiplied thanks to the support of the Catholic Church and the Quebec state. In the spirit of cultural nationalism, co-ops were seen as a means of preserving the French language and the Catholic religion, and of supporting a traditional way of life as a bulwark against the North American lifestyle prevalent in the large cities.13 Starting in the 1960s, with the rise of consumer society, 110

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most Quebec institutions became non-denominational. State support was maintained, however, in line with the neonationalism of the time, although re-defined in economic rather than cultural terms. The establishment of the welfare state and the adoption of Keynesian policies was accompanied in Quebec by a neo-nationalist plan to take control of the economy, commonly referred to as the Quiet Revolution. As Dorval Brunelle has shown, there was an alliance of sorts at the outset between employers (the Chamber of Commerce) and workers (the unions) in support of the modernization of the Quebec economy and the public service, with the object of ensuring that they would be controlled by Quebecois interests." At the beginning of the 1950s, it appeared that Quebecois enterprises were threatened by takeovers from Anglo-Saxon capital. Paradoxically, as Yves Belanger points out, at this time when Quebecois ente?,rises were short of capital, Quebec actually exported it.1 For the native bourgeoisie, at any rate, the state appeared to be the principal guarantor and the preferred instrument of internal transformation of the Quebecois economy. In fact, the Quebec government, from the 1960s on, was involved in all aspects of planning and administering the economy through the establishment of economic ministries, crown corporations, industrial programs and policies. These transformations, which consolidated the ties between industrial and finance capital, could not have occurred without a reorganization of alliances within the bourgeoisie and without new social compromises - between employers and unions at the level of production, and between the technocrats and the working classes at the level of collective consumption. In most developed countries, these new compromises were brought to full flower under social democratic governments, as was the case in the Scandinavian countries, West Germay, and Austria, among others. In Canada, the federal Liberals were in power between 1963 and 1968. Their minority government status was such that to stay in power they had to ally themselves with the NDP, whose ties with unions were quasi-organic and whose positive predisposi111


tion towards cooperatives was well known. Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau advanced the idea of the "just society" and declared himself to be a social democrat. At the same time, moreover, the establishment of the "consumer society" (resting, according to the regulationists, on intensive accumulation accompanied by monopolist or Fordist regulation) demanded the modernization of agriculture and the availability of consumer credit, two sectors where we find the great majority of cooperatives. In Quebec and in the western provinces (Manitoba and Saskatchewan), cooperatives established in these two sectors drew on regional sources of capital.i'' From this point on, provincial governments assumed control of the cooperatives, passing legislation as the need arose and supporting coo~eratives through ministries concerned with development. 7 In this period 1960-1970, the interventionist state favoured the development of cooperatives more than is generally admitted. State-cooperative relations worked in two directions: on the one hand, the cooperative sector participated in the reformulation of the state (this is particularly the case in Quebec with the Desjardins Movement) and, on the other hand, this new interventionist state facilitated the transformation of well-established cooperatives. Thus, at the request of the Quebec Chamber of Commerce in February 1961, the Cooperative federee du Quebec, the Federation des caisses populaires Desjardins and La Sauvegarde (acquired in 1962 by the Desjardins Movement) became members of the Conseil d'orientation economique du Quebec (COEQ). The COEQ came to act as the planning group for state economic intervention. To assure the modernization of the Quebec economy with greater control in the hands of Quebecois capital, the COEQ proposed a development plan for Quebec in which the state was to play "a major role in the control and direct placement of investment" .18 The realization of a development plan for Quebec supposed as a precondition the capacity to channel "an appreciable fraction of savings in institutions for investment within the objectives of the Plan".19 The creation of the Societe generale de financement (SGF) in 1962 and the es-

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tablishment of the Caisse de depOt et de placement in 1965 were steps in this direction. By participating in the COEQ, the cooperative sector revealed itself as statist; But as Yves Belanger has shown in a remarkable doctoral thesis, since the middle of the 1950s, the voices of co-operativism (Melancon, Minville and Angers) had been statist.20 Roland Parenteau also affirms that the cooperatives traditional "phobia of the state" corresponded to an earlier time, "to a time when the dominant forms of economic organization were artisanal or even patriarchal. ,,21 In participating in the COEQ, the cooperative sector superseded its anti-statism and went one step further: it "liberated itself from its taboos with regard to the private sector" in order to "participate in the renewal and the strengthening of the Quebec bourgeoisie". Thus, along with crown corporations, the Desjardins Movement constituted one of the principal links between the state and finance capital. Yves Belanger concludes that "cooperativism is probably the form of capital holding that responded best to the ideals conveyed by the Quiet Revolution" and that, for the state, "it constituted, in this regard, one of the preferred areas of intervention in the promotion of development and local control. ,,22 To become "the principal financial channel of importance under provincial jurisdiction," the Desjardins Movement needed the support of the Quebec government. From 1963 on, the government of Jean Lesage adopted a specific law governing credit unions, the Loi sur les caisses d' epargne et de credit, that allowed them to acquire obligations (bonds) in other cooperatives and that gave them the right to belong to the SGF. The Desjardins Movement pursued its course of consolidation in the area of insurance through its purchase of La Sauvegarde and La Securite, and its course of diversification in fiduciary activities through its acquisition of La Fiducie du Quebec. When the new legislation was adopted, the government created a new agency, the "Service des cooperatives," for the administration and supervision of this law. "In 1968, this agency was reorganized into two divisions: the Direction des caisses d'epargne et de credit to administer the law governing 113


savings and credit unions, and the Direction des associations cooperatives to administer the laws governing agricultural cooperatives, cooperative associations and cooperative unions.,,23 The Parizeau Committee, which had been formed to study the legislation governing financial institutions, tabled its report in 1969. "It suggested," writes Yves Belanger, "the creation of the conditions necessary for the growth of nonbanking institutions within a framework of competition with regard to government interests. ,,24In the spirit of this report, the 1963 law was amended in 1971 to permit the creation of the Societe d'investissement Desjardins (SOl), which was essentially aimed at providing share capital investment funds. This body was complemented by the creation of Credit industriel Desjardins, a subsidiary of SOl, the "objective of which is strictly to make loans to enterprises, in the form of term loans (on mortgages or security) and of lease-loans.,,25 In this way, the SOl became one of the principal industrial holdings in Quebec. As well as being regulated by the law governing savings and credit unions, the Federation de Quebec des caisses populaires Desjardins was also governed by a specific law adopted initially in 1971. This law recognized the full powers of the Federation and thus favoured centralization of power. Moreover, the Federation de Quebec held all of the voting rights of the SDI. Other amendments were adopted but the turning point had come at the beginning of the 1970s. According to Yves Belanger, "the government of Robert Bourassa was the architect of Quebec financial reform. Thanks to the reform of the legislative framework for institutions within its jurisdiction," he continues, "and thanks to the unprecedented contribution of government enterprises, it made possible a unique convergence of the industrial and financial spheres and local capitalism. The development of the SOl (Desjardins Movement), of Quebecois trust and insurance companies, of the SGF and the interventions of the MIC and the Caisse de depot constitute the very soul of the monopolization of Quebecois capital.,,26

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In the agricultural cooperative sector, legislative intervention by the state was equally important. The specific law pertaining to the Cooperative federee du Quebec was recast in 1968, then amended in 1973 and 1977. Moreover, legislation concerning the agricultural sector, whether governing price supports and stabilization or else joint planning or that covering agricultural marketing, was of the greatest interest to cooperatives in this sector. A thorough analysis of these interventions is outside the scope of this article, but it can be said that the state favoured the grouping of cooperatives into six large regional entities along with the modernization and conversion of factories.27 Moreover, the creation of the Societe quebecoise d'intiative agroalimentaire (SOQUIA, the Quebec agriculture and food business incentive organization) provided the meeting ground between crown corporations and these cooperatives. This and the timely interventions of the Caisse de depOt facilitated agricultural concentration. The purchase of Quebec Poultry by the Cooperative federee in 1972 affords but one example of this trend. Finally, for cooperatives as a whole, after 1968, the state occupied a position of considerable importance. According to Adrien Rioux, then deputy associate minister in the Department of Cooperatives: Now its [the state's] presence is constant: it gives them [cooperatives] life through its legal framework; it demands the deposit of their annual reports; it oversees the application of the law regulating ... their legal existence in various situations: liquidation, voluntary dissolution or dissolution by decree; it has the power to make inspections as the law allows; and, at its discretion, it has the power to place savings and credit unions under guardianship and provisionary administration. 28

In Quebec, state-cooperative relations for the period between 1960-1970 were extremely friendly. It would be an exaggeration to speak of a "golden age" since the attitude of the Quebec government was more one of "sympathetic goodwill" than of "favourable disposition," to use the terms of Roch Bastien.29 If in retrospect this period was seen as a favourable one for institutionalized cooperatives, it is because of the social compromises which made possible the 115


"consumer society" and, specifically in the case of Quebec, because social forces converged around the goal of economic nationalism. In opting for the growth and strengthening of government, the "cooperative movement" accepted growing control by the government over its enterprises. Otherwise, the Quebec government's interest in cooperatives reveals itself upon analysis to be more instrumental than ideological. "Sympathetic goodwill" was less a response to the cooperative model as such than to the fact that these enterprises were Quebecois and could play some part in furthering the nationalist goals of the state. After 1974-1975, the interventionist state increasingly came into question in Canada. The adoption of monetarist economic policies subordinated the battle against unemployment to the battle against inflation. 30 Control of prices and especially of salaries clearly indicated that the maintenance of consumer demand no longer constituted a priority even if economic activity was decreasing. The crisis appeared not simply as economic but also as political, since it resulted principally from the rupture of the social compromises which had permitted growth and from a questioning of the nature of the state, itself an object of compromise. In Quebec, the questioning of the Keynesian interventionist state did not occur until a few years later. The PQ was elected in 1976 on the basis of a program inspired by social democracy and the promised referendum on sovereignty association stood in the way of a too-pronounced change of direction. The platform of the Parti Quebecois accorded "a place of overwhelming importance to the cooperative sector" of the financial services industry and would furnish "technical and financial aid important to the development of cooperative enterprises, particularly in the agricultural area and in forestry." The PQ undertook as well to encourage "cooperative ownership within the private sector of radio and television" and to support "housing and food cooperatives financially.,,31 Moreover, a summary of their economic program mentioned "the cooperative model in at least six places within the ten points which comprised the political declaration.',32 Following the election of the PQ, the editorialist 116

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of the journal Ensemble! thus wrote without hesitation: "the arrival of the PQ on parliament hill affords us hope for a better future for cooperativism in the province of Quebec. ,,33 If we exclude the references to independantist goals, the program for cooperative development (or at least those parts which concerned well established cooperatives) was not very different from that proposed by the Liberal government. Thus, the establishment in 1977 of the Societe de developpement cooperatif (SDC) was a revival of a project initiated by the Liberals.34 This was also the case with the modernization of the law governing cooperatives and that concerning the Federation des caisses populaires, the 1979 amendment to which permitted the creation of the Caisse centrale Desjardins. But, quickly enough, as is illustrated in the case of the SDC, the interest of the Pequiste government in cooperative development raised some worries in the well established cooperatives. From the time of its founding in August 1977, the SDC was an agency run jointly by the state and the cooperative movement. The cooperative movement had obtained from the state the majority of seats on the eleven-member administrative council. Besides this, the cooperative movement undertook to finance the agency, paying an equal share of costs with the government from the third year on (the annual budget was then estimated to be about one million dollars). The marriage was to be difficult.3S Before the SDC was even created, the cooperative movement expressed its uneasiness. The August IS, 1977 issue of the journal Ensemble!, noted that "the movement which had long wanted the participation of government in the development of cooperatives is asking itself if it does not find itself today in a reverse situation, and if the control of develoFment and of planning is not in the process of escaping it.,,3 The divorce came rapidly enough. In fact, from June 1979 on, the SDC became a government agency. Its financial means increased considerably. The state put at its disposal the total sum of thirty million dollars: $25 million for capitalization and $5 million for technical aid and operations. It had developed well beyond its initial modest aims.37 In that same year, 1979, the government announced that 117


the SDC would become an instrument for the intensive development of the consumer cooperative sector and the housing and forestry cooperative sectors.38 These priorities did not necessarily correspond to those of the cooperative movement which, moreover, did not agree with the plans adopted for developing the new sectors. The case of consumer cooperatives is also highly instructive since it reveals that the Pequiste government was interested in cooperatives only in the instrumental sense. Btitir te Quebec, the government's 1979 statement of economic policy, noted that the SDC would be expected "to authorize, within the coming years, more than 40 per cent of its funds to finance investment projects in the food distribution sector.,,39 This decision was justified solely in terms of economic nationalism. The document pointed out that "chain stores have claimed a large share of the market in Quebec," and elsewhere that "these stores are in large part controlled by non-Quebecois (81 % of sales).,,40 This policy fostered the emergence of Cooprix stores in urban centres, but it also likely led to the failure of the Federation des magasins Coop. Two reasons principally explain this failure. First, as has been clearly shown in studies by Claude Marenco for France and Marie-Claire Malo for Quebec,41 the proposed model for development was "copied from the operating logic of large capitalist enterprises." It corresponded to a chainstore model of development by expansion and centralization. The economic function and the associative function indispen sible to the vitality of all cooperatives were separated. This strategy also opened the door to the formation of cooperatives without co-operators; this would be manifestly the case when the Federation proceeded to acquire certain branches of the Dominion stores. In the second place,the state had privileged the cooperative model by default. As Jean-Claude Guerard states, "there was perhaps more economic nationalism than cooperativism in the support that the government and the cooperative movement provided to the Cooprix stores and to their Federation, with the result that the day the competitors became Provigo and Metro,

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rather than Dominion and Steinberg, some asked themselves why they continued to favour Cooprix.,,42 It would thus seem that by the end of the 1970s, the old cooperatives had become victims of the success of economic nationalism. On the one hand, preferential support for cooperatives from the state was not guaranteed when the coops were competing with Ouebeccis-controlled capitalist enterprises. On the other hand, the success of Quebecois enterprises in new sectors43 reduced the possibilities for co-op expansion even more, confining them to the less profitable sectors. State intervention among co-ops then took a neo-liberal direction, as part of the general stance adopted by the PQ itself at the start of the 1980s. With Bdtir le Quebec, the Pequiste government clearly asserted the primacy of private enterprise and revised its goal of economic nationalism in favour of accommodating local capital with monopolies.f" After three years of preparation, the economic summit on cooperatives came off only with great difficulty in February 1980. From the outset, Bernard Landry affirmed that "the state should not be the motor of the action.,,45 Highly structured cooperatives and the CCQ asked the state to limit its intervention to changes in the legislative framework, which would permit cooperatives "to act with the same ease as other enterprises operating in Canada,,,46 specifically in the areas of investment and savings.47 New cooperatives, and particularly those in the sectors of housing, work, and forestry, had more precise demands to make of government and were far more receptive to government intervention. This summit meeting clearly marked a turning point in government policy. The new cooperatives would now be the ones favoured by the state, while traditional co-ops would be left more or less to themselves. The Pequiste government was indifferent to the serious effects of the 1981-82 recession on the traditional cooperatives. These included: the disbandment of the Caisses d'entraide economlque; the liquidation of the Federation des magasins Coop and the failure of several Cooprix stores; the financial difficulties, then failure, of Pecheurs-Unis; the disappearance of the Ligue des Caisses d'economie; the 119


mergers (to consolidate enterprises in financial difficulties) of the Federation des Caisses d'economle and of the small Federation de Montreal with the Federation de Montreal et de I'Ouest-du-Quebec: the reduction in the number of federation members of the CCQ and the marginalization of this organization; not to mention the diseappearance of the journal Ensemble! In the face of this disaster, the Pequiste government was rather passive. It followed the neo-liberal strategy for dealing with lame ducks. Except for a tightening of controls, an exhibition of paternalism rather than an attempt at collaboration, it did very little. The former deputy minister responsible for the Direction des cooperatives labelled the Pequiste government "a murderer rather than a promoter of cooperati ves.,,48 But if the Pequiste government seemed to ignore traditional cooperatives (even when this appeared to be at odds with the goals dictated by its economic nationalism), its interest in new cooperatives - housing, worker, and forestry - was far too avid for the CCQ, which became more worried than ever before about government intervention. "To what point can the state extend its economic leadership without interfering with the hands-on participation of groups of citizens themselves ... 7" It seems, the CCQ continued, "that government projects or programs direct cooperative development, since they privilege this or that sector of activity, or certain types of cooperatives to the detriment of others which do not receive the same support.,,49 Even if the CCQ was then much less representative than it had been in the past (in 1983, the IS-member administrative council included seven representatives from the insurance sector and four from the savings and credit sector, "comprising a 74% representation coming from the financial sector"),50 the fact remains that its worries were well founded. An important change in government-cooperative relations had occurred. These relations involved the CCQ less and less, and were characterized by a retreat from support of traditional cocoperatives and by a commitment to new cooperatives. The coming to power of Robert Bourassa's Liberals only confirmed this neo-liberal direction with regard to co-ops. 120


There was no longer any question of providing financial support to cooperatives in difficulty, as had been done many times in the past. However, traditional co-ops which had the potential to become 'monopoly' enterprises were supported, both through changes in cooperative legislation and by the creation of conditions which would encourage such a transformation. The new law on credit unions illustrates this trend.51 Once again, there was no question of helping lame ducks, but winners were to be encouraged, especially at a time when the Free-Trade Agreement necessitated a continental perspective on the economy. The State and the 'New' Cooperatives The "new cooperatives" made their appearance in most of the Western countries by the end of the 1960s.52 These cooperatives emerged under the impetus of "new social movements ••53 which saw co-ops as an appropriate instrument to begin building an alternative society. In Quebec, the new co-ops were no longer inspired so much by neo-nationalism as by the idea of building an alternative society. Supported by the working classes, in alliance with what has been called the "new petite bourgeoisie," the new co-ops were associated with a variety of networks and ideals, including the environmentalist movement, the women's movement, along with regional, ethnic minority and other movements. These projects shared the same objectives as the new social movements, namely to foster lifestyles which would be markedly different from those dictated by a productivist society; other objectives were autonomy and self-management, a reaction against the bureaucratic interventions of the state and big business. 54 In other words, what distinguished the new cooperatives from the traditional ones was not so much their size, but rather their plans for a new society. As Andree Fortin notes: "the big cooperatives personify collective Quebecois entrepreneuship" while "the little ones are seeking a different lifestyle." She adds: "They are little because often their members prefer to remain small, allowing the number of co-ops to multiply so that each can operate more democratically,',55 The plans for building an alternative society influence the cooperative project itself and raise new 121


questions about "membership participation, the place and working conditions of male and female employees, the organization of labour, management techniques, bureaucratization, not to mention the matter of collaboration with capitalist firms.,,56 Overall, these new co-coperatives give substance to an alternative cooperative project. This is obviously the case when they refuse to be organized within a federation (centralization) and choose rather to set up information exchange and service networks or regional associations which do not undermine the autonomy of the local co-op and democratic control by the membership. The new co-coperatives are found in a variety of sectors: cultural services (theatre, radio and newspapers, bookstores, research groups); material services (transportation, maintenance); social services (health, daycare and youth centres) and in production (print shops, textile and clothing, and farm products). Most of the new co-ops can be grouped into three major sectors: housing with some 700 co-ops; worker co-ops which number about 300; and 'new' food co-ops (natural foods, neighbourhood food outlets, cooperative clubs) numbering about 120.57 The new co-ops actually make up the majority of cooperatives in Quebec (excluding the credit unions) with about 65% of the whole. Because the new cooperatives are smaller than the others, they have ony 14% of the total membership,'but their economic clout is not negligible: their assets represent 34% of total co-op assets. Their economic activities involve much voluntary labour, however, and so their wage budgets make up only 8.5% of the total. Their business volume comprises only 6.5% of the whole, indicating that a major part of the activity of these co-ops involves the non-market sector. Finally, there has been some innovation in the financial sector through the solidarity funds, the best known of which is the Fonds de solidarite des travailleurs du Quebec (FTQ) with assets of over $200 million. 58 All of these organizations may, of course, be contributing to the strengthening of Quebecois control over business but most of them also aim at democratizing the economy and valorizing the participation of workers.

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Considering that few of the new cooperatives existed at the beginning of the 1970s (they made up less than 10% of all non-financial co-ops), their growth has been spectacular. This rapid growth can only be explained with reference to the crisis which occurred at the beginning of the 1970s, to the rupture of social compromises, whose impact went beyond the strictly economic. New social demands arose in the wake of this rupture, which could not find satisfaction except through experimentation at the margins of society. In this regard, the crisis, to the extent that it revealed the inflexibility of existing structural forms, promoted this social experimentation and the formalization of the new social demands. It is under these circumstances in the 1970s that the new cooperatives appeared. Let us look more closely at how an opportunity was created for new compromises favourable to new cooperatives in the areas of production and consumption. First, workers rejected to a greater and greater extent the notion that, in exchange for salary advantages, they would submit to monotonous, taylorized work while management would exercise exclusive control over the process. 59 The demands of workers were no longer limited to higher salaries, but were concerned more and more with control over conditions of work. Some enterprises attempted to make the unions toe the line or tried to bypass them by subcontracting work or by relocating in areas where the labour force was more docile. Certain innovative enterprises tried to put into place new methods of management.P'' From this perspective, the new manifestation of concern by workers about quality of worklife, combined with the shrinking labour market, encouraged the sfread of alternative enterprises and worker cooperatives.f Secondly, the crisis of the welfare state was related to its incapacity to respond to new social demands concerning 'collective' consumption in the areas of education, health, social services and so on. Especially from the middle of the 1970s, the efficacy of 'collective' provision of certain services was called into question not only by technocrats but also by citizens and, more specifically, by diverse social categories such as the elderly, youth and women. The tech123


nocrats stressed as much the ineffectiveness of certain programs or services as they did the increase in costs, whereas the citizen groups rejected the technocratic control of these services and the dependence induced by this control. 62 Dissatisfaction with government services as well as the search for better quality (and less costly) services defined a space for new compromises, favourable to community and cooperative enterprises which offered so-called 'alternative' services. The evolution of the budget of the Ministry of Health and Social Services for the financing of community agencies illustrates the increase in demand for such services. At the beginning of the 1970s until 1978, the portion of the budget of this Ministry designated for "support of community agencies did not exceed $1.5 million per year, distributed among about fifty agencies," while in 1986-87 "this budget had increased to $26 million and was distributed to 1,000 agencies. ,,63 One can suppose that other ministries and government agencies made similar use of community enterprises and cooperatives which could deliver, in an 'alternative' way, a portion of the services for which the state was responsible. Finally, the crisis of the 1970s put in question a third level of relations, that concerning the international division of labour. The creation of OPEC and the 1973 oil crisis demonstrated that countries producing primary resources intended to modify the terms of exchange. This came at a time when the two superpowers showed themselves to be incapable of playing the role of gendarme, a role which had been theirs since the end of the Second World War, when they had divided the world between them.64 The emergence of newly industrialized nations foreshadowed the possibility of a new international division of labour, including competition between the advanced capitalist and the newlyindustrialized countries in some areas of production. Within 'developed' countries, the growth of a dual economy, combined with immigration from southern countries, increasingly gave the impression that the Third World was no longer an external reality but an internal one as well. Some analysts argue that the growth of comumuni\y enterprises and cooperatives is part of this restructuring.f This might 124


explain why the 1974-1982 crisis had paradoxical effects on cooperatives, including the disappearance of some sectors and the emergence of new ones. The Quebec state was unconcerned about the disappearance of traditional cooperatives in the food sector, for example, but, at the same time, it intervened in often decisive ways in the development of new cooperatives. To list these interventions since the end of the 1970s is outside the scope of this article. They affected especially the cooperative housing, worker cooperative, and forestry cooperative sectors. These cases are exemplary, as much for the density and volume of government interventions as for the nature of their relations with government and resulting ambiguities. In only ten years, the number of housing cooperatives jumped from about 30 in 197766 to more than 700 in 1988, with 18,784 housing units.67 This phenomenal growth in the number of cooperatives in a period of recession was made possible by financing from the federal Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) after 1973 and from the Societe d'habitation du Quebec's Logiprop program after 1977. The decisive stimulus came from Quebec with the establishment in 1977 of about twenty technical resource groups (GTRs), intervention by SDC-Habitation, a branch of the SDC, and the creation of the Societe d'habitation Alphonse Desjardins (SHAD).68 The social compromises that permitted a forceful intervention by the state in the development of housing cooperatives arose from an acute housing problem and above all from a new willingness on the part of citizens to participate directly in the solution of this problem. From then on, in such circumstances, the policy of 'Iaissez-faire ' and the disengagement of the state were the order of the day. At least on the ideological level, the cooperative model met the requirements posed by the state's desire to reduce its own involvement (and thus reduce social costs) just as well as it did the requirements of citizens anxious to take a hands-on approach to the problem. Moreover, the nature of the compromise led each of the parties to hope that they would emerge as its beneficiaries. 125


Relations with the state, however, revealed themselves to be profoundly ambiguous. On the one hand, the state, through its machinery and services, sought to widen its control, to realize that which Louis Maheu refers to as a "government appropriation of the social fabric,,69 and, thus, to conserve its leadership in cooperative development. If the SCHL did not hesitate to determine "the length of the kitchen counters,',70 the SOC-Habitation went a step further in forming "cooperatives without co-operators", and, a bit like the SHAD, it opened the way for another category of members, those whose incomes were sufficiently high to allow them to become homeowners and who saw the housing cooperative as an instrument which would allow them to accumulate the necessary funds. On the other hand, in the face of these changes, those who initially fought for government involvement mobilized themselves anew, but this time against government intervention and in support of preserving the option provided by alternative housing. The model of state intervention applied to cooperative housing inspired the policies which governed the development of worker cooperatives from 1982-83. In five years, the number of workers cooperatives tripled, from about a hundred to more than three hundi-ed.71 This increase was largely fostered by the formation of advisory groups (groupes-conseil) that corresponded to the GRTs in the housing sector. Community and cooperative management groups were first formed in 1983 as a pilot project in three regions before being proposed for all the regions of Quebec in 1985. The SOC played a significant role here as well. The comparison with housing is equally valid at the level of compromises which made possible government interventionin this new sector. At the outset, the program "formed part of the Quebec government's program of temporary job creation, which consisted of putting social welfare recipients to work for a period of twenty weeks in order to transfer them to unemployment insurance."n For cooperators, the intervention of the state supplied technical aid and financial support to those who wished "to be masters of their destinies," to create their own jobs and, in many cases, to work "differently" or in their own region. 126


In this sector, as in housing, government intervention was not without ambiguity, as revealed in certain respects by the record of the transformation of healthy enterprises, where cooperatives acquired only part of the assets of the enterprise (majority control being held by an individual entrepreneur). If this model is not necessarily without interest from the point of view of participation in ownership, it remains ambiguous, nonetheless, because in a period of financial crisis there exists a danger that workers will simply become suppliers of feebly remunerated capital. This is what the deputy associate minister for cooperatives meant when he wrote in 1983 that the worker cooperative was "the organizational enterprise form which is the best suited for economic recovery from recession, having no shareholders who demand a return on their invested capital.,,73 If this danger is real for all worker cooperatives, it is even more real in the case of transformations of enterprises where the cooperative does not have true control. Still, at the present time, the regional offices of the MIC, which have replaced the groupes-conseil in serveral regions, have made themselves exclusively promoters of this hybrid form of worker cooperative. After mobilizing to lobby for state support for the development of their enterprises, worker cooperatives did not have time to question the development policy. The Liberals' return to power in 1985 signalled renewed questioning of some of the support programs for cooperatives. At this point, demands for government support remained, although some asked themselves if the change of government might create an opportunity to organize for more autonomous development. The forestry cooperative sector is much more complex than the two other sectors. The members are forestry workers, but most of the cooperatives "are midway between artisanal cooperatives and worker production cooperatives since the members are paid by the job and use their own machinery.r'/" Some, however, are authentic worker cooperatives "in which workers receive a salary and share in the profits in proportion to the work done by each." Most of these cooperatives were founded between 1940 and 1950 127


although some were founded in the 1970s. Almost all are involved in primary forestry work (cutting and transportation) but some are also involved in the construction and maintenance of forestry roads, reforestation and sylviculture. Some went into, and occasionally even specialized in, reprocessing and the sawmill industry. The size of these cooperatives may var?, but they have on average about a hundred employees." Some forestry cooperatives are traditional cooperatives while others, like the Cooperative forestiere des HautesLaurentides, are part of the group of new cooperatives; moreover, even the old cooperatives have in a sense been redefined or more or less consolidated by the forestry ROlicy described by Yves Berube at the beginning of 1977.7 This policy created conditions favourable to the development of cooperatives since it delegated to them the role of "contractors of forestry work commissioned by the government within management units of the public forest.,,77 In this way, the state gave these enterprises guarantees of a supply of wood, and accorded manufacturing permits to the cooperatives that specialized in processing forestry products. In practice, some cooperatives had to fight in order to obtain this preferential treatment. Moreover, they had to fight to have restrictions on their activity lifted when the imperatives of integrated resource management demanded diversification.78 State policies for the development of forestry cooperatives have proven to be just as unclear as those involving housing and worker co-ops. In all cases, active state support for undertakings with primarily social objectives is not provided. Rather a state strategy of disengagement from the social realm permits development without aiding it. Furthermore, because of the unequal relationships of power between the parties within the co-ops, and the differences in their goals, the social dimension of the cooperative will increasingly become subject to market requirements. In the case of forestry cooperatives, workers seek first and foremost to operate within their own region and accordingly are concerned about the co-ops contribution to regional development. Such development encompasses standards of 128


living and environmental quality. Forest engineers and technocrats in contrast are usually allied with the large paper mills which aim to maintain their control over forest mangement and make as much money as possible from forest exploitation. The ambiguities in state policies result from the fact that this divergence in goals was not so apparent, in the beginning. In this context, the survival of cooperatives, and in particular, their alternative development plan remains uncertain. In conclusion, it is evident that the state under the Pequiste regime was able to play a major role in the development of new cooperatives while the traditional cooperatives isolated themselves from demands arising from the new social movements. These found their expression in the new cooperatives. Yvon Gauthier goes even further noting that the "petite bourgeoisie" who reigned over the Caisses populaires had little faith "in housing cooperatives, in consumer cooperatives and even less in worker (production) cooperatives.,,79 The dominant opinion within the new cooperatives was that the Caisses populaires became involved in such ventures only when the state assumed the risks or else when the new cooperatives had proved themselves to be successful (as in the case of housing cooperatives). The traditional cooperatives rejected the role of initiators or promoters of new cooperatives. In the sort term, it is doubtful that the retreat of government in this area has set in motion an important change on the part of traditional cooperatives. Conclusion The recent history of government-cooperative relations may be divided into two periods: the first (19601975) when the state generally favoured traditional cooperatives, and a second (1978 to the present) when it encouraged instead the formation and growth of new cooperatives. The social compromises at the base of the Keynesian welfare state opened up, in the area of production and consumption, a space favourable to the development of traditional cooperatives. Social demands in the area of collective consumption were satisfied for the most part by the nationalization of services (for example, in education and health). But the etablishment of a "society of mass con129


sumption" also required an unprecedented widening and deepening of consumer credit. The car and the bungalow in the suburbs, which constituted the symbols of mass consumption, could not be acquired even by the middle class without access to consumer credit. In the same way, the development of the working class and of mass consumption in rural regions depended on, among other things, the modernization of agriculture and an increased integration of agriculture within the market economy. As part of this process, the state in most western countries encouraged the federation and the modernization of agricultural cooperatives. In Quebec, favourable circumstances for the development of traditional cooperatives were reinforced by the nationalist convergence between 1960 and 1980. The different political parties that came to power over this period encouraged the most important cooperatives to become creditors of the Quebec bourgeoisie. Especially for the PQ at the beginning of its mandate, these co-ops were the preferred instruments for the acquisition and maintenance of local control of the Quebec economy. In this respect, the Desjardins Movement occupied a special place. Cooperative enterprises were given special treatment by the state because they served a nationalist purpose and because they had no Quebecois competitors likely to overtake them. In the cases where they found themselves facing a serious Quebecois competitor (for example, Provigo for the Cooprix stores), their cooperative nature was not enough to sustain government support. From the end of the 1970s onwards, the PQ revised its policies for the attainment of local economic control, tried to retard the expansion of the welfare state, and adopted a more neo-liberal (as opposed to Keynesian) outlook. In a time of crumbling social compromises, when public demand for control over collective services and the environment became louder and more vigorous, the Quebec government established programs that promoted the emergence and growth of new cooperatives. The phenomenal growth of housing cooperatives responded both to the need for better quality housing and to a willingness on the part of government to assume only part of the costs associated with a 130


social housing policy. In the same way, the growth of worker cooperatives resulted both from new demands by workers for more control over their work and life ("to be one's own boss"), and from the support offered by a government that was more worried about reducing the number of citizens dependent on the public purse than it was about promoting a policy of full employment. This new policy of cooperative development contributed without a doubt to a restructuring of the Quebec economy because it enlarged the space reserved until then to the dual economy. But if the "new cooperatives" were favoured by the state from the beginning of the 1980s, it is because they became an instrument for reducing the costs of social policies. From this perspective, the state more or less explicity sub-contracted its responsibilities, while retaining government control over cooperative enterprises to an extent never before imagined. In fact, the state assumed the leadership of the movement of new cooperatives. This radical change in government-cooperative relations worried the traditional cooperatives even more than if the state had remained entirely passive. To assess the impact of government intervention on cooperatives, a distinction must be made between the old coops and the new ones if for no other reason than because the relationship between the association of persons and the enterprise differs substantially in each case: in the first, the association of persons is subordinate to the enterprise, whereas in the second, the enterprise is at the service of the association of persons. In the old cooperatives, most state intervention, whether through legislation or through funding, encourages centralization and concentration. The intervention is in accordance with existing economic policy. In this regard, the Quebec state has treated cooperatives like any other indigenous capitalist enterprises. In so doing, the state reinforces the tendency of functional adaptation to capitalism already present in the cooperative enterprise. By amending legislation to soften legal constraints on cooperatives, the state allowed cooperative rules to be reversed and the co-op's relationship with its members and with its activities to be transformed. 131


As we have seen, the Quebec state, in accordance with nationalist economic objectives, played a decisive role in enabling the Caisses populaires to finance and invest in capitalist enterprises. Yet this opening constituted a radical change in the co-op's relationship to its members and its activities. The transformation took place by stages starting in the 1960s. Initially, Caisses activities were limited to the local community, and were intended to develop savings and provide loans to families in difficulty or to farmers who wished to improve their operations - to serve, in other words, those who were excluded by the banks. After the Second World War and especially with the rise of consumer society, the Caisses became firmly planted in the urban environment and opened their doors to consumer loans. This modernization was still in line with their initial objectives. But the Desjardins Movement broke with the past when its principal objective became economic and industrial development. This objective was not in which each individual Caisse could participate. It required both a centralization of control and new institutions. As a result, by 1986, about 20% of the Desjardins Movement's assets "were under the control of organizations not answerable to the local caisses and thus to the membership directly."SO This recent trend towards disenfranchising the members is likely to gain strength especially since new legislation governing the credit unions will open the door to outside financing for higher capitalization. New cooperatives also feel the impact of state intervention in their relationship with their members and their activities. Once again, this intervention tends to encourage greater functional adaptation to the market regardless of the consequences on the control by the association of persons. But the main threat is not so much from greater market pressures as from dependence on the state. This danger is evident in the area of social housing, job creation and local development. In the case of housing co-ops, for example, state-sponsored programs impose stricter and stricter constraints on the socio-economic composition of co-op membership. One of the consequences of this policy "of imposing economic criteria blindly in the composition of groups is 132


that a number of co-ops are experiencing increasing difficulty in resolving internal conflicts.,,81 These new difficulties open the door to closer monitoring of housing co-ops by the government. In short, the greatest threat to these co-ops is the state's attempt to use them "more for its own ends than for the ends of the cooperators ."82 The dependence created by state sub-contracting is all the more strongly felt since autonomy and self-rnangement are the most mobilizing elements of the alternative cooperative project. Programs which do not adapt themselves to the state's subcontracting philosophy, as has happened with consultants' groups for worker co-ops, have seen their funding cut back or the programs have simply been abolished by a Liberal government even more faithful to nee-liberal ideals than its predecessor. In this context, "it appears ever more difficult (for alternative co-ops) to pirate the system and take advantage of government subsidies in order to really change things."S3 If with Andre Gorz84 and Karl Poianyi8S we define socialism as "the subordination of economic activity to social aims and values," then there is no doubt that the "new cooperatives" have socialist aims. But this subordination is the very factor which attracts state interest. The state does not hesitate to use cooperatives to implement some of its social policies: the funds are sure to reach the target clientele and the cooperative will mobilize its own membership for good measure. The danger which this entails of a loss of autonomy is none the less real, as I have argued. Meanwhile, it would be an error to write off traditional cooperatives as negligible. One thing is certain: the lack of interest by the labour movement and so-called progressive organizations in traditional cooperatives has left them open to state manipulation and to the demands of other social groups. These all push the traditional cooperatives in the same direction, towards functional adaptation to capitalism and the transformation of cooperativism into cooptation.

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Notes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

134

Charles Bettelheim clearly showed the limits of the cooperative. As an enterprise, it remains a production unit separate from others and its multiplication can not ensure a transition towards socialism. C. Bettelheim, Calcul economique et formes de proprUte (Paris: Maspero, 1976), p. 70. True to their namesake, Marxists have preferred worker co-ops to consumer co-ops because in the former, "the antagonism between Capital and labour is overcome". K. Marx, Le Capital (Paris: Ed. Gallimard [La Pleiade], 1965) p. 1178-1179. Trotskyists, on the contrary, would see this as a dangerous illusion. E. Mandel, "Self-Management Danger and Possibilities," International, 2/3, p. 3-9. See also Y. Sartan, "L'autogestion II la lumiere du marxisme,' Autogestion 2 (1979), P- 79-84. See, among others, Leon Walras, Les associations populaires de production, de consommation et de credit (Paris: Dentre, 1865). Also H. Boson, La pensee sociale et cooperative de Leon Walras (Paris: Institut des etudes cooperatives, 1963). Claude Vienney, Socio-economique des organisations cooperatives (Paris: CIEM, 1980), vol. I, p. 12-15. Ibid., p. 91. In some ways, the reversal of the rules corresponds to the conclusions drawn in the "theory of the degeneration of cooperatives" as explained by Robert Michels. Political Parties. A Sociological Study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Collier Books, 1962) [First edition 1911]. The difference is that the reversal in this case is not fatal, and leaves the door open for a return to the original project, depending on how social relations evolve. For the analysis of a concrete case of rules reversal, see Alain Cote, La cooperative agricole du Bas Saint-Laurent (Rimouski: GRIDEQ, 1986). See, among others, Paul Boccara, Etudes sur Ie capitalisme manopoliste d'Etat, sa crise et son issue (Paris: Ed. Sociales, 1973). Following Nicos Poulantzas, the state can be defined as "the condensation of power struggle among classes". Nicos Poulantzas, Pouvoir politique et classes sociales (Paris: Maspero, 1972), tome I, p. 139 sq. Quote translated. Robert Delorme and Christine Andre, L' Etat et I' economie. Un essai d' explication de I' evolution de depenses publiques en France, 1870· 1980 (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1983), P: 672. Quote translated. Michel Aglietta, Regulation et crises du capitalisme. L' experience des Etats-Unis (Paris: Calmann-Uvy, 1982), p. IX. Quote translated. National Task Force on Cooperative Development, A Cooperative Development Strategy for Canada (Ottawa: Cooperative Housing Foundation, 1984). All co-ops in Canada are registered under provincial laws. David Laycock, Cooperative Government Relations in Canada: Lobbying Public Policy Development System (Saskatoon: Centre for the Study of Co-operation, 1987), p. 24 sq.


12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

See Benoit Levesque. "Les cooperatives au Quebec, un secteur strategique, a la recherche d'un projet pour l'an 2000" in Annals of Public and Cooperative Economy [Liege. Belgium]. September 1989. Also Gaston Deschenes. "Le premier siecle du mouvement cooperatif," Revue du CIRIEC [Quebec]. vol. 13. nos. 1-2 (19801982). pp. 15-22. Jean-Louis Martel. "Emergence du mouvement cooperatif agricole au Quebec: d 'un mouvement populaire a une politique de developpement," Cooperatives et Developpemeni, vol. 18, no 1 (1986). pp. 13-40. Also Claude Beauchamp. "La cooperation au Quebec: evolution du projet et de 1a pratique au XXe siecle" Revue du CIRIEC [Quebec]. vol, 13. nos 1-2 (1980-1981). pp. 23-36. Dorval Brunelle. La des illusion tranquille (Montreal: HMH. 1978). p.100. Yves Belanger. Genese du developpement de I' entreprise quebecoise. 1850-1950. Essai sur t' evotutian de la bourgeoisie quebecoise Departement de science politique, UQAM. These de doctorat, 1984. pp. 288-289. With crown corporations. cooperatives constitute a component of the Quebecois bourgeoisie. as shown by Pierre Fournier. Le capitalisme au Quebec (Montreal: Ed. Cooperatives Albert Saint-Martin. 1978). See also Yves Belanger and Pierre Fournier. L'entreprise quebecoise. Developpement historique et dynamique contemporaine (Montreal: HMH.1988). David Laycock. Cooperative Government Relations ...• p. 24 sq. Dorval Brunelle. La disillusion ...• p, 115. Quote translated. COEQ cited in Ibid. Quote translated. Yves Belanger, Genese du developpement ...• p. 337. Roland Parenteau. "Quelques raisons de la faiblesse economique de 1a nation canadienne-francaise,' L'Action nationale, vol. 45. no 4. p. 327-328. Quote translated. Yves Belanger. Genese du developpement., .• p. 280. Quote translated. Adrien Rioux. "L'Etat et la cooperation," Revue du CIRIEC, vol. 13. no 1-2 (1980-81). p. 145. Quote translated. Yves Belanger. Genese du developpemen: ...• p. 303. Quote translated. OPDQ. Les cooperatives au Quebec: probUmatique et potentiel de developpement (Quebec. 1980). p. 7. Quote translated. Yves Belanger. Genese du developpemem ...• p. 328-329. Quote translated. OPDQ. Les cooperatives au Quebec ...• p. 7. Adrien Rioux. "L'Etat et la cooperation," p. 328-329. Quote translated. Roch Bastien. "Les cooperatives: des entreprises consciemment ou subitement Iimitees par l'Etat quebecois," Communication faite au Colloque international sur les relations Btat-cooperatives. IRECUS, 31 mai-4 juin 1987. Quote translated. Le collectif, "Emploi et politiques economiquea au Canada." Interventions economiques nos. 12-13 (1984). p. 91-107. Quote translated.

135


31. 32.

Parti Quebecois. programme. 1976. p. 23. Quote translated. Fernando Noel. "Reflexions sur une politiques de developpement cooperatif," Ensemble! 15 avril 1977. p. 6. Quote translated. 33. Jean-Paul Legare. "~ditorial." Ensemblel IS decembre 1976. Quote translated. 34. It was under the Bourassa government in 1975 that a joint CCQgovernment committee was created to map the outlines of the SDC. The idea for this agency dated back to 1967. 35. See Loi 110 44 tabled June 9. 1977 and adopted August 23. 1977. See Ensemble! document. vol. 24. no 12 (17 juin 1977) and vol. 24. no 15 (12 septembre 1977). 36. Ensemblel, vol. 24. no 8 (15 avril 1977). 37. Alfred Rouleau. Ensemble], 8 octobre 1976. Quote translated. 38. Gouvernement du Quebec. Bdtir le Quebec. ElIollce de polltiue ecollomique (Quebec: ~diteur officiel, 1979). p. 125. Quote translated. 39. Ibid. Quote translated. 40. Ibid .• p, 203. Quote translated. 41. Claude Marenco, "Naissance, evolution et declin des cooperatives de consommation en France et au Quebec." Cooperatives et developpement (forthcoming); Marie-Claire Malo et Gaetan Theberge. "Distribution alimentaire et protection du consommateur au Quebec: support ou contrainte au developpement cooperatif?" in Cooperatives et developpement (forthcoming). 42. Jean-Claude Guerard cited by Jean-Robert Sanfacon, "Nostalgiques a'abstenir," Le Devoir ecanomiqu«, vol. II. no 5 (1986). p. 13. Quote translated. 43. Yves Belanger and Pierre Fournier. L'entreprlse quebecoise ...• p. 147. 44. Dorval Brunelle. "Batir le Quebec: continuite et apologie," Le Devoir 22 octobre 1979; see also the thesis of Yves Belanger. Genese du developpement.: Quote translated. 45. Bernard Landry in Les Conferences socio-economiques du Quebec. L' entreprise cooperative dans Ie developpemem ecollomique. Rapport. (Quebec: Editeur officiel, 1980). P- 12. Quote translated. 46. Ibid .• P- 73. Quote translated. 47. Ibid .• p. 201. Quote translated. 48. Adrien Rioux. "VEtat et la cooperation ...••• (1987). 49. CCQ. "L'interventionnisme de PEtat et la cooperation,' Le Devoir 27 avril 1984. p. 18. SO. Gilles Chatillon. "Le mouvement cooperatif en crise,' Le Devoir 21 avril 1983. p. 11-15. Quote translated. S1. Although this new law does not fully comply with the Mouvement Desjardins requirements. it does provide permanent shares. in addition to non-transferable company shares. This serves. indirectly. to create a new category of members. Moreover, provision is also made for a portion of the overpayments to serve as interest payments on these permanent shares. This action introduces some capital logic into the capitalization of cooperative funds. Furthermore. the new lawen-

136


hances the Confederation's power, to the detriment of that of the Federation. Saving and Credit Union Act (Quebec: ~diteur Officiel du Quebec, 1988). 52. See, among others, for the United States: R.C. Ehrenreich and J.D. Edelstein, "Consumer and Organizational Democracy: American New Wave Cooperative" in C. Crouch and F. Heller, eds., Organizational Democracy and Political Processes (New York: John Wiley, 1983). For Scandinavian countries: Gunnar Olafsson, "After the Working-Class Movement? An Essay on What's New and What's Social in the New Social Movements," Acta Sociologica. Journal of the Scandinavian Sociological Association vol. 31, no 1 (1988), pp. 15-33. For Quebec: Paul R. Belanger and Benoit Levesque, "Le mouvement social au Quebec: continuite et rupture (1960-1985)" in Paul R. Belanger, Benoit Levesque, Rejean Mathieu and Franklin Midy, Animation et culture en mouvement, Fin ou debut d'une epoque? (Quebec: P.U.Q., 1987), pp. 253-266. For the United Kingdom: C. Coimforth, A. Thomas, J. Lewis, R. Spear, Developing Successful Worker Cooperatives (London: Sage, 1988). 53. The concept of "New Social Movements" was popularized, at least in French writings, by sociologist Alain Touraine. See also Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present. Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989). 54. Gabriel Gagnon and Marcel Rioux, A propos d'autogestion et d' emancipation. Deux essais (Quebec: IQAC, 1988). Also Harold Bherer and Andre Joyal, L' entreprise alternative, Mirages et realites (Montreal: ~d. Saint-Martin, 1987). Benoit Levesque, Andre Joyal et Omer Chouinard, L'autre economie, une economie alternative? (Quebec: PUQ, 1989). 55. Andree Fortin, Le Rezo, Essai sur les cooperatives d' alimentation au Quebec (lQRC, 1985), p. 128. 56. Claude Bariteau, "Cooperation et Autogestion au Quebec, Revue du CIRIEC [Quebecl, vol. 13, nos 1-2 (1981), pp. 101-113. 57. Figures are taken from Government of Quebec, Direction des cooperatives, Statistiques flnancieres des cooperatives (Quebec, 1988). For worker co-ops, see Conference of Ministers Responsible for Cooperatives, Une proposition des strategies natlonales pour l' essor des cooperatives des travailleurs. Report to Ministers (Ottawa, January 1989), p, 10. 58. See Le Fonds de solidarite des travailleurs du Quebec (FTQ), Rapport annuel (Montreal) 1986-1987. 59. On this subject, see regulation theoreticians, Michel Aglietta. Regulation et crise du capitalisme (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1976). R. Boyer et J. Mistral, Accumulation, inflation, crises (Paris: PUF, 1978), 344 pages. Alain Lipietz, Crise et inflation. Pourquoi? (Paris: Maspero, 1979). 60. This subject is well documented, see the excellent work of Phlippe Messine, Les Saturniens. Quand les patrons reinventent la societe (Paris: La Decouverte, 1987). 61. See Andre Joyal and Harold Bherer, L'entreprise alternative ...

137


62. 63.

64.

65.

66. 67. 68.

69.

70. 71.

72. 73.

138

Paul R. Belanger and Benoit Levesque. "Le mouvement social au Quebec ...••• p, 253-267. Commission d'enquete sur 1es services de sante et 1es services sociaux, Quelques plstes de reflexion. Les services de sante et les services sociaux [Rapport preliminaire de 1a Commission Rochon] (Quebec: Les Publications du Quebec. 1987). p. 17. Quote translated. See Alain Lipietz, "Les transformations dans 1adivision internationa1e du travail: consideration methodologique et esquisse de thecrisation,' in D. Cameron and F. Houle. eds .• Le.Canada et la nouvelle division lnternationale du travail/Canada and tM New International Division of Labour (Ottawa: Universite d'Ouawa, 1985). Also S. Bowles. D.M. Gordon and Thomas Weisskopf, L'Economie du gaspillage. La crise americaine et les politiques reaganiennes (Paris: Ed. La Decouverte. 1986), p. 75. Juan-Luis Klein. "Les groupes sociaux et l'Etat dans 1a gestion du local. Le cas du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean," Cooperatives et developpement (forthcoming). See also Juan-Luis Klein. Francine Savard. Richard Boudreault and Christine Gagnon. L' ancrage territorial du mouvement associatif en region peripherique (Chicoutimi: UQAC [GRIRl, 1986). See as well the dissertation by Marie-Joelle Brassard, La restructuration instiuaionnelle en region: l' exemple du Saguenay-Lac.Saint-Jean-Chibougamau, Departement des etudes regionales. Universite du Quebec a Chicoutimi, These de maitrise, 1987. OPDQ, Les cooperatives au Quebec ...• p. 129. Government of Quebec. Direction des cooperatives ... A number of studies have been done on this sector. See S. Bernard, M. Fafard, L. Maheu and C. Saucier, Cooperatives en habitation et lntellectuels des groupes de ressources techiques: le rapport d l' espace; un probleme de solldarite et de changement social (Montreal: Departement de sociologie, Universite de Montreal. 1980); Jean-Pierre Deslauriers. "Une analyse des cooperatives d'habitation locative, 1970-1984." Cooperatives et developpemesu, vol. 16, no 2 (1985). p. 139-160; Carol Saucier, "Les cooperatives d'habitation et le changement social" in Ibid., p. 161-196. For an indication of studies done on this sector, see Michelle Rheaume-Champagne, "Les cooperatives d'habitation au Canada: bibliographie" in Ibid. p. 223243. Louis Maheu. "Les mouvements de base et 1a 1utte contre l'appropriation etatique du tissue social," Sociologie et Societe vol. XV. no 1 (1983), p. 77-92. Quote translated. Sherry Olson. "L'equilibre fragile des coops d'habitation," Le Devoir 21 avril 1983. p. 15. Quote translated. Benoit Levesque. Alain Cote. Orner Chouinard, Jean-Louis Russell. L'autre economie... For more recent figures, see Johanne Berard. "Les cooperatives de travail au Quebec." Worker Co-ops vol. 7. no 1 (1987), p. 11-13. See also note 56. Adrien Rioux, "Le virage cooperatif," Le Devoir 21 avril 1983. p. 13. Quote translated. Ibid. Quote translated.


74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

82.

83. 84. 85.

OPDQ. Les cooperatives au Quebec ...• p. 113. Quote translated. Benoit Levesque et al.• L'autre economie ...• p, 45. Yves Berube. "Politique forestiere, Allocution du ministre des Terre et Forets, Colloque sur les Cooperatives forestieres," Ensemble! vol. 25. no 5 (9 mars 1978) (document). OPDQ. Les cooperatives au Quebec ...• p. 118. Quote translated. Hughes Dionne et al.• Amenagement integre iks ressources et luues en milieu rural (Rimouski: GRIDEQ. 1983). Quote translated. Yvon Gauthier. "La formule cooperative: bulletin de sante et option." Le Devoir 21 mars 1978. [Reprinted in Possibles vol, 2. no 4.] Yves Belanger. "Desjardins: la cooperation contre l'institution financiere," Cooperatives et Developpement vol. 20. no 2 (1989). p. 44. Ibid. Yves Hurtubise. "Programmes gouvemementaux et dynamisme interne des cooperatives d'habitation," Cooperatives et Developpement vol. 20. no 1 (1988-89). p. 204. Andre Fortin. Le Rezo ...• p. 211. Andre Gorz, Metamorphose du travail. Quite de sens, Critique de la raison economique (Paris: Galilee. 1988). pp. 164 and 166. Karl Polanyi, La grande transformation (Paris: Gallimard. 1983). p. 223 sq.

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