乡村合作运动是南京政府在建立现代民族国家过程中, 为整合乡村而强制推行的一项经济措施。其起始于江浙两省, 然在自上而下进行中, 因其与基层的政治体制变革紧密相系, 过多依靠国家行政力量推行, 导致合作社为乡村政权“内卷化”现象所侵蚀, “变异”为地主富农豪绅的牟利工具。大异于政府的“拯救乡村”、“救济农民”之旨趣。此事例揭示: 乡村自治和自组织能力的养成只应依靠农民和村落社会自身, 而非政府单独的“行政杠杆”强制力量所能奏效。

The rural cooperative movement, first arising in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, was a socio - economic measure taken forcibly by the Nanjing government so as to reorganize rural society in the process of establishing a modern nation - state. With the development of such a movement from top to bottom, however, cooperative societies gradually came to be controlled by rural political powers and finally became landowners' and despotic gentry's tools of seeking profits. The causes for this not only lay in a close relation of the cooperative movement to the transformation of local political institutions, but also in an excessive dependence on the state administrative power (for example, its enforcement of the neighborhood administrative system). In the end the cooperative movement was not successful and drifted off the government's purpose of "saving the rural area" and "relieving peasantry". It exemplifies that the rural autonomy and the cultivation of ability in self - organization can only depend on farmers and their communities themselves instead of the government administrative power.