What are the conditions and benefits of establishing rural cooperatives?

First, the concept and theory of cooperatives

We are no strangers to cooperatives. In the process of socialist transformation of agriculture in socialist countries, cooperatives have become an important means of transition from individual and private agriculture to collectivization and public agriculture. Lenin once wrote On Cooperatives, proposing to attach great importance to the role of cooperatives in agricultural socialist transformation, and expounding the ownership nature of cooperatives. During the socialist transformation of agriculture in the 1950s, New China also took the establishment of production cooperatives and handicraft cooperatives as an important way to realize agricultural collectivization. However, today's cooperatives are different from those under the planned economy system, farmers' rights and obligations to cooperatives are also different, and the role and status of cooperatives in the process of agricultural development are also very different.

1. The concept of cooperatives

Cooperative is the most important and common rural economic cooperation organization. In China, rural economic cooperation organizations are generally equivalent to rural cooperatives. Rural cooperatives under the condition of market economy can be divided into two categories, one is professional cooperatives and the other is comprehensive cooperatives. Professional cooperatives are established with the function or sales of commodities as the object; Comprehensive cooperatives involve production, sales and material supply. , a wider range. Domestic and foreign views on the concept and connotation of cooperatives under market economy conditions are not completely consistent, but the basic points are the same, and most of them regard cooperatives as a specific organizational form for farmers to carry out social labor. 1995 the 3rd1general meeting of the international cooperative union gave an authoritative and latest definition of cooperative: cooperative is an autonomous society formed by people joining together voluntarily to meet their own economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through jointly owned and democratically managed enterprises. Therefore, cooperative is a special form of enterprise organization, which is owned by members and managed democratically. It has a purely "private" nature, and recognizes that its members' families are still an independent commercial entity, and recognizes members' property ownership and some rights to participate in distribution. Cooperatives have several common characteristics: first, cooperatives are economic organizations in which members share shares, jointly own them, and are controlled and benefited by members; Second, cooperatives are economic entities with disposable property; Third, cooperatives are cooperative legal persons, which are different from corporate enterprises.

2. Cooperative theory: why cooperatives are needed and how they are possible.

At present, China's agriculture is basically production-oriented, which is contradictory to the modern market economy characterized by sales-oriented and order-oriented economy. As a result, a large number of agricultural products are marketable and have low added value. One of the important reasons is the inherent weakness of agriculture as a decentralized industry and farmers as a technologically disadvantaged group. The decentralized management of one household increases the difficulty of cooperation among producers, and the technical weakness makes it impossible for farmers to overcome the defects of professional division of labor. This requires the establishment of professional economic institutions and the employment of professionals to provide scattered farmers with the possibility of reducing transaction costs and expanding production and marketing information and functions. This is the necessity of the establishment of rural cooperatives. Theoretically speaking, the development of rural cooperatives involves two basic problems, one is how to solve the transaction cost problem, and the other is how to break through the dilemma of collective action, that is, why cooperatives need it and why it is possible.

Why do cooperatives need it? Western traditional economics assumes that the transaction cost or transaction cost between market subjects is zero, and thinks that the only decisive factor affecting economic activities or exchange behavior is the price mechanism of commodities. However, according to the new institutional economics, this assumption does not conform to the reality of market exchange, that is, transaction cost has become one of the important variables affecting market exchange activities. The new institutional economics reinterprets the enterprise theory of economics on the basis of introducing transaction cost into economic explanation. The traditional economic theory only regards companies and enterprises as an economic institution of production and exchange, while the new institutional economic theory updates and expands the explanation of the reasons for the existence of enterprises. In its view, one of the purposes of the existence of enterprises is to reduce the transaction cost between the owners of internal factors and the external market. The difference between the self-employed and the enterprise is that a set of relatively formal and perfect organizations or departments, such as production, sales, warehousing, transportation and management departments, have been established within the enterprise to realize professional division of labor, save transaction costs and expand the operating space of professional functions, while the self-employed pay attention to production, sales and transportation, with low efficiency and high cost. Cooperative is such an enterprise, which employs a group of managers and professionals to build a bridge between farmers as producers and the terminal market, provide production and marketing information through professional and effective division of labor, and reduce transaction costs. Why do cooperatives need farmers to participate themselves? Because farmers share in cooperatives with assets or labor force, they can have closer ties with farmers, thus reducing the costs of operation, management and information and enjoying the preferential policies of the state.

Fund Project: Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, a major project of the Ministry of Education in 2005, "International Experience Research on Rural Grassroots Organizations, Public Service System and Government Policies for Promoting Agriculture" (project approval number: 05JJDZH 233).

How is it possible to establish a cooperative? A cooperative is an organization. There are two ways to set up an organization. One is led by a capable individual or a few individuals, and the other is composed of most individuals. Common sense in economics holds that individuals are selfish and short-sighted. Establishing a cooperative is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also requires each participant to invest a certain amount of equity, and the future income is difficult to predict. Do farmers who are "economic men" have the willingness to cooperate? According to the theory of cooperation, this kind of large-scale collective cooperation is really difficult, because everyone is afraid that others will benefit more than themselves, and they are unwilling to sacrifice and dedicate themselves. They are willing to hitchhike and enjoy public goods for free. This is the principle of hitchhiking and the phenomenon of "tragedy of the commons", which shows that there is a dilemma of collective action. However, under the background of market economy, it is difficult to produce economies of scale without alliance. In this case, it is necessary to give full play to the role of the government and large-scale agriculture-related companies, carry out "first promotion", promote the establishment of cooperatives, and then gradually guide farmers to participate in cooperatives through demonstration. The initial establishment of cooperatives, especially cooperatives, has the nature of providing public goods. A unit that can provide public goods must have two related conditions, one is to have super interests related to public goods, and the other is to have super strength. The government obviously has this strength, but also has the motivation and willingness to promote the national economy and people's livelihood; Large-scale agriculture-related companies also need to unite small and medium-sized farmers, who also have the strength and are willing to bear the cost to obtain longer-term benefits, because the benefits brought by the alliance will obviously not be too small. Therefore, the current development of rural cooperatives should adopt laws and regulations, with these two as the main driving forces.