美国农业合作社的形态法定化及其启示

The Process of Delimiting the Forms of Agricultural Cooperatives through Statutes in the U.S. and Its Inspirations

在美国,农业合作社是农场主为了满足自身生存发展的需要,在借鉴欧洲合作社尤其是罗虚代尔公平先锋社先进经验的基础上,探索和创造出来的一种组织形态;这种组织形态最初并未体现于法律中。及至20世纪初期以后,在寻求农业合作社反垄断豁免及税收优惠的过程中,经由制定法和判例法的合力,农业合作社逐步实现了形态法定化,并在法律的助推下得以进一步勃兴。美国农业合作社形态法定化的实践给我们提供了如下启示:应重视并充分运用法律手段来提升农民合作经济组织的绩效;农民合作经济组织法律制度的确立应积极回应实践中的制度创新;我国农业反垄断豁免的主体界定可借鉴美国的成功经验。

In the United States, agricultural cooperative is a type of organizational form, created and explored by farmers in order to survive and develop, and also based on the experience of cooperatives in Europe, in particular, the Rochdale Equitable Pio-neers Society. This type of organizational form initially was not regulated by law. Until the early 20th century and later, in the process of seeking antitrust dispensation and tax preferences, agricultural cooperative Is forms have been gradually delimited through statutes and case law. Based on this, the agricultural cooperatives experienced further vigorous rising, which can still be witnessed today. Therefrom, we can gain inspirations as follows： to fully value and utilize legal systems so as to promote the per-formance of cooperative economic organizations of farmers ; to found legal systems for cooperative economic organizations of farm-ers in energetic response to institutional innovations in practice; to draw lessons from the U.S. experience in a proper way when delimiting subjects and seeking antitrust immunity.