The Commons Wasn't Born Yesterday Looking back at the Cooperative Commonwealth movement of the 1930s

This essay doesnt focus on environmental sustainability but it offers much to those who are but from a different agnle: that of economic collapse and the role of the state in a more mixed model economic system that can regulate goods with an eye towards the "common interest" driven by the idea that resources are part of our "common wealth."  The result is a recovering of a model that lost out to the New Deal welfare state but is no back on the table.  mm

By Tom O’Connell

I am a veteran of the 1960’s New Left. I helped organize demonstrations in Minnesota against the Indochinese war and participated in small-scale efforts to build a new society from the ground up: communal living, free schools, community controlled neighborhood development.

Back in those days we had an unfortunate slogan, “Never trust anybody over thirty.” We were trying to construct a new world from scratch without realizing that in the not very distant past, there was an indigenous radical tradition flourishing right down the road. The discovery of Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor movement and the cooperative commonwealth vision that animated it, gave me grounding and inspiration. Now that I think of it, Farmer-Laborites were commoning,1930’s style. Their story has direct relevance to our commons work today.

Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor movement created the most successful state-level third party in U.S. history. From its roots in 1918 as a coalition of populist farmers and an emerging labor movement, the Farmer-Labor movement became the state’s dominant political force from 1930 to 1938. Before its merger with with the Democratic party in 1944 to form the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, as it is still known in the state, the Farmer-Labor party gained three governors, four U.S. Senators, and eight members of U.S. House, and competed closely with the Republicans for majorities in the state legislature. Farmer-Labor administrations won hard-fought battles to halt farm foreclosures, aid the unemployed, regulate banking, conserve Minnesota’s lakes and forests, support cooperative enterprises and establish a progressive tax system.