Social Economy and Living Standards: Consumer Cooperatives in Barcelona, 1891–1935

The living standards of the working classes during industrialization continue to be the subject of debate in European historiography. However, other factors closely related to the institutional setting, such as the role played by social economy and the institutions for collective action, are seldom considered. This study focuses on these factors, and attempts to quantify the social impact of consumer cooperatives. We argue that these institutions substantially improved the lot of the working classes from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, helping them to increase their incomes, and access food and services, such as education and social services, which the state did not provide in sufficient measure. To demonstrate this point, we analyse thirty-five consumer cooperatives in Barcelona, an industrial centre in which these organizations were more popular than anywhere else in Spain. Our main conclusion is that consumer cooperatives increased the well-being of their members, helping them to meet their substantial calorific needs, although their diets were unbalanced and low-cost; members improved their income between five and ten per cent, by simply shopping at the institution, and gained access to basic welfare services.

Propaganda in the Guise of News

In the late 1940s, conservative radio commentator Fulton Lewis Jr. was embroiled in controversy after publicly criticizing consumer cooperatives for taking advantage of a federal tax loophole. Coinciding with the Federal Communications Commission’s reconsideration of its Mayflower doctrine—a ban on broadcast editorials—the dispute served as fodder for New Deal–era progressive media reformers. This article unpacks Lewis’s mostly forgotten role as an unwitting catalyst of progressive media regulations through reconsidering the FCC’s 1948 Mayflower hearings, which resulted in the fairness doctrine (1949–87). This doctrine mandated that broadcasters present controversial issues of public concern in an ideologically balanced manner. Lewis’s news-breaking thus became framed as a problem in need of federal regulatory solution by reformers who sought to sublimate radio into an idealized liberal public sphere. These reforms, however, framed political disagreement as an epistemological crisis and, in doing so, unintentionally bolstered a conservative critical disposition toward the mainstream press, exemplified in the “liberal media” trope.

THE ROLE OF PERSONAL AUXILIARY FA RMS IN ENSURING FOOD SECURITY IN THE CONDITIONS OF CONSUMER COOPERAT ION DEVELOPMENT

The subject of the research is to identify the place and role of personal subsidiary plots in social production in general and in agriculture in particular; object — personal subsidiary plots as a form of non-entrepreneurial activity for the production, processing and sale of agricultural products. The purpose of the study is to identify the importance of the functioning of personal subsidiary plots in ensuring the implementation of the state agrarian policy in terms of ensuring food security. The objectives of the study are to analyze the state of functioning of personal subsidiary plots, to identify their role in ensuring the country's food security. The novelty of the research: the relationship between consumer cooperation and personal subsidiary plots has been revealed. Conclusions: the role of consumer cooperatives in ensuring food security increases with the strengthening of their purchasing and marketing ties with personal subsidiary and peasant (farm) households.

Consumer cooperatives as an object or the subject of public control: legal and socio-economic analysis

This article is devoted to the analysis of consumer cooperatives regarding their participation in the procedure for implementing public control measures. The authors resolve the legal dilemma regarding the attribution of this type of non-profit corporate organizations to objects or subjects of public control. The article provides a system of arguments regarding their classification as objects of public control.

THE ACTIVITY OF UKRAINIAN CONSUMER COOPERATIVES IN DROHOBYCH REGION IN THE 1920‒1930s

Summary. The purpose of the study is to characterize the activities of Ukrainian consumer cooperatives in the Drohobych region in the 1920s and 1930s to show their role in the economic protection of the Galician population in the interwar Poland. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, systematization, scientificity, authorial objectivity as well as the use of general scientific and special-historical methods. The scientific novelty lies in the study of the development of consumer cooperation in Drohobych in the 1920s ‒ 1930s. Conclusions. Consumer cooperation in the Drohobych region in the interwar period was represented by two organizations ‒ "Narodna Torhivlya" (People’s Trade) and "Tsentrsouz" (the Central Union). These two centers cooperated actively in order to develop economic and consumer cooperation. Ukrainian consumer cooperation in the interwar period strengthened its position aimed at improving the quality of life, strengthening the economic independence of the Ukrainians in Galicia and contributing to the growth of their national consciousness.