"David and Goliath: Oil Politics, the International Cooperative Movement, and the Fight against Monopoly Capitalism, 1945-1951"

On May 18, 1945, the New York Post reported on a dramatic “David and Goliath” story taking shape at the United Nations conference in San Francisco:
"Behind the scenes of the world conference here a battle for oil is being fought between the international petroleum corporations and the Cooperative League [of the USA]—which is attempting to bring inexpensive gasoline to the people of a dozen nations. The mammoth oil companies have set up free-spending lobbies her to fight any move which would weaken their campaign for a monopoly of the world’s unexploited oil fields and sales outlets."
The cooperative side was led by Howard Cowden, who had built Consumer Cooperatives Association (CCA) of Kansas City, into an important US petroleum supplier, operating multiple refineries, and a network of US oil wells and pipelines. While promising cheaper gas to farmers, Cowden cultivated a wider vision of supplanting monopoly capitalism with global trade. Working closely with Albin Johannson of Sweden’s Kooperativa Förbundet, Cowden pursued a plan for a global co-op oil trade that would compete with the major oil corporations. Other historians of this period have traced the rise of multinational “Seven Sisters” and the oil geopolitics politics of the Middle East. his paper inserts a critical, but largely untold story, of efforts to create a “co-op” alternative to the international trade. It reveals the ways in which participants at the time saw the creation of the United Nations as an opening in an international reconstruction of multinational capitalism.