We
are glad to find our kinsman across the waters reading the works of Southerners
like Thomas Jefferson and Wendell Berry.
From a report by the Australian National University E Press, Tracking Rural Change (ch. 3):
Agrarianism and country-mindedness
In
his fascinating history of agrarianism, Montmarquet (1989) tracks the idea and
its many interpretations from the early classical thinkers, through the French
physiocrats and Thomas Jefferson, to Wendell Berry in the twentieth century.
His book illustrates the point made by rural sociologists that the agrarian
concept is both nebulous and malleable, and that it can be used rhetorically
for apparently contradictory purposes (Beus and Dunlap 1994; see, for example,
Halpin and Martin 1996:21). The seminal definition of agrarianism is provided
by Flinn and Johnson, who identify the following five ‘tenets of agrarianism’:
·
‘farming is the basic occupation on which all other
economic pursuits depend for raw materials and food’
·
‘agricultural life is the natural life for man;
therefore, being natural, it is good, while city life is artificial and evil’
·
farming
delivers the ‘complete economic
independence of the farmer’
·
‘the farmer should work hard to demonstrate his
virtue, which is made possible only though [sic] an orderly society’
·
‘family farms have become indissolubly connected with
American democracy’ (Flinn and Johnson 1974:189–94; italics in
original).
This
description encapsulates two important features of agrarianism. First,
agrarianism rests on the belief that agricultural pursuits are inherently
worthwhile and wholesome. Montmarquet (1989:viii) summarises this as ‘the idea
that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially
important and valuable elements of society’. Farming pursuits are regarded as
conducive to the development of moral behaviour and thinkers such as J. S. Mill
and Thomas Jefferson advocated small-scale agriculture for social rather than
economic reasons. Mill argued of small-scale peasant agriculture as practised
in Europe that ‘no other existing state of agricultural economy has so
beneficial effect on the industry, the intelligence, the frugality, and
prudence of the population…no existing state, therefore is on the whole so
favourable both to their moral and physical welfare’ (Mill 1893:374).
Griswold
(1946:667) explains that, for Jefferson,
‘agriculture was not primarily a source of wealth, but of human virtues and
traits most congenial to popular self-government. It had a sociological rather
than an economic value. This is the dominant note in all his writings on the
subject.’
More
recently, Wendell Berry (1977:11) linked the demise of small-scale agriculture
to the rise of undesirable characteristics of exploitation, waste and fraud,
suggesting that modern life had caused a ‘disastrous breach…between our bodies
and our souls’. His contrast between the exploitative mind and nurturing is
consistent with earlier interpretations of agriculture’s worth, which extends
beyond the economic to the moral. As well as promoting virtue, agricultural
activity is seen as valuable because it is regarded as the starting point of
civilisation—without settlement, art, culture and other pursuits that depend on
large groups of people could not have evolved. Settlement allowed for
specialisation. Agriculture, as opposed to hunting and gathering, provided the
basis for settlement.
The
second important characteristic of agrarianism is that it is half of a
dichotomy, the other half of which is non-farm life and which on all counts
fails to measure up to the morally superior, if economically inferior, status
of farming. Flinn and Johnson (1974:194) refer to the agrarian perception that
‘city life is artificial and evil’ and they go on to argue that ‘[w]ithin
agrarian belief there is pride, a certain nobility, in what man accomplishes by
the sweat of his brow. There is suspicion about a man who makes a living by
using his head and not his hands.’
This
dualism was evident in Jefferson’s thought.
Initially, he hoped that the United States
would remain an agrarian society, allowing Europe
to house manufacturing activity and cities and their associated social
problems. He argued that:
The loss by the transportation of commodities
across the Atlantic will be made up in
happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so
much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the
human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic
in vigor. (Cited in Griswold 1946:668)
In
the Australian context, Don Aitkin has summed up agrarianism as country-mindedness.
The term is of uncertain origin but is traceable to the beginnings of the
Country Party in the 1920s. Aitkin’s formulation of the characteristics of
Australian agrarianism reflects many of the points just discussed: the
wholesome nature of agricultural activity and the contrast between the virtues
of farming and the unpleasantness of urban life:
(i) Australia
depends on its primary producers for its high standards of living, for only
those who produce a physical good add to a country’s wealth.
(ii) Therefore all Australians, from city and
country alike, should in their own interest support policies aimed at improving
the position of primary industries.
(iii) Farming and grazing, and rural pursuits
generally, are virtuous, ennobling and cooperative; they bring out the best in
people.
(iv) In contrast, city life is competitive and
nasty, as well as parasitical.
(v) The characteristic Australian is a countryman,
and the core elements of the national character come from the struggles of
country people to tame their environment and make it productive. City people
are much the same the world over.
(vi) For all these reasons, and others like
defence, people should be encouraged to settle in the country, not in the city.
…
(viii) But power resides in the city, where
politics is trapped in a sterile debate about classes. There has to be a
separate political party for country people to articulate the true voice of the
nation. (Aitkin 1985:35)
. . .
Source:
Merlan and Raftery, eds., http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p21821/mobile/ch03s03.html,
opened 16 Dec. 2016
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the
Souð!
Anathema
to the Union!
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