THE FOUNDATIONS OF AGRARIAN SOCIALISM: CO-OPERATIVE ECONOMIC ACTION IN SASKATCHEWAN, 1905-1960

摘要

This study investigates the rise of agrarian co-operation—and the historical bloc it helped structure—in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan from 1905 to i960. A brief discussion of Territorial co-operation sets the demographic, economic and political context. Following Fairbairn's (2005) periodization, provincial movement history is then discussed in terms of three waves: the settlement period, dominated by producer co-operation (from 1905 to about 1930); the diversification period ushered in bythe Great Depression, in which the movement broadened-out but remained farmer-led (from about 1930 to 1940); and the post-war expansion (from the 1940s to the 1960s), characterized by rapid growth and co-existence with North America's first socialist state. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, agriculture consolidated into fewer, larger farms. A technocratic managerialism dominated the provincial state and co-operative sector. Ironically, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation—largely built on co-operative movement foundations—increasingly turned toward state and investor-led development strategies. These economic and political developments eroded farmer-led collective action on the Prairies. By the turn of the twenty-first century, these trends would drive privatizations in grains, dairy and poultry and spell the end of co-operation's agrarian era—and agrarian socialism—in Saskatchewan.