Abstract
This essay contends that the ascendancy of Western liberalism after the Enlightenment worked catalytically on the development of both the Industrial Revolution and a “modern agrarianism” based on the widespread dispersal of small-scale property ownership. Due to power dynamics, however, as well as the liberal faith in inevitable progress, agrarian thought has remained a marginal concern in Western politics, economics, and education. Although the agrarian philosophical tradition in the United States was created by the same liberal rhetoric and argumentation that gave birth to industrialism, the two world views hinged on vastly different interpretations of the same concepts. One aim of this essay is to sort out these differences and examine their implications for a contemporary reconsideration of agrarian thought.
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James A. Montmarquet,The Idea of Agrarianism: From Hunter-Gatherer to Radical Agrarian in Western Culture (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1989), viii.
This is meant quite literally. The patriarchy of the feudal Middle Ages was rarely questioned by the architects of liberalism. Mary Wollstonecraft and later John Stuart Mill with Harriet Taylor represent exceptions.
Montmarquet,The Idea of Agrarianism, 19.
Marvin Harris,Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures, (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 102.
Ibid., 102.
Montmarquet shared this observation from Montesquieu in “Philosophical Foundations for Agrarianism”Agriculture and Human Values 2 (Spring 1985): 7.
Montmarquet,The Idea of Agrarianism, 32.
One reviewer ofThe Idea of Agrarianism noted that Montmarquet does not adequately deal with “the role of slave labor in agriculture,” certainly “not enough to showcase its worldwide importance throughout history.” See Marilyn Holly, “A Review ofThe Idea of Agrarianism,”Agriculture and Human Values 7 (Winter 1990): 45.
Historian Jerome Blum maintained that “the plight of the peasantry and criticism of seigniorial privilege were minor themes in the assault of the old order.” SeeThe End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 305–306.
Oliver Goldsmith,The Vicar of Wakefield and Other Writtings (New York: Random House, 1955), 476.
Montmarquet,The Idea of Agrarianism, 241.
See Gary Kulik's “Dams, Fish, and Farmers: Defense of Public Rights in Eighteenth Century Rhode Island,” inThe Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America, edited by Steven Hahn and Jonathan Prude. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 25–50.
David E. Shi.In Search of the Simple Life: American Voices, Past and Present (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1986), 83.
David B. Greenberg (ed.).Countryman's Companion. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947. 119.
Taylor's words are quoted inThe Idea of Agrarianism, 54. Montmarquet analyzes the subtle differences in the moral positions of Jefferson, Taylor, and the aristocratic Roman philosopher Cato on pages 53–56.
Paul B. Thompson, “Agrarianism and the American Philosophical Tradition.”Agriculture and Human Values 7 (Winter 1990): 6. Ever the advocate of “progress,” Jefferson nevertheless was heavily influenced by the historicism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He thought feudalism to be a Norman import, that prior to 1066 England was a nation of small freeholding yeoman.
Thomas Paine, “Agrarian Justice.” InThe Life and Works of Thomas Paine edited by William M. Van der Weyde. (New Rochelle: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 10: 9, 13, 15. Paine's emphasis.
Paine,The Life and Works, 4: 47.
Ralph Waldo Emerson,The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Fireside Editions, 1898), 7: 137.
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David Tyack, “Forming the National Character: Paradox in the Educational Thought of the Revolutionary Generation,”Harvard Educational Review 36 (Winter 1966): 34.
Richard D. Heffner (Ed.). [Alexis de Tocqueville]Democracy in America (New York: Mentor Books, 1956), 198.
Henry David Thoreau,The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (New York: Ams Press, 1968), 19:67 Thoreau's emphasis.
Lawrence Cremin, Ed., The Republic and the School: Horace Mann and the Education of Free Man (New York: Teachers College Press, 1957), 87.
See, for example, David B. Tyack,The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974) and Michael Katz,The Irony of Early School Reform: Education in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
See Paul Theobald, “Democracy and the Origins of Midwest Rural Education: A Retrospective Essay,”Educational Theory 38 (Summer 1988): 363–368.
Emerson,Works of Emerson, 1:232.
Ibid. Emerson,Works of Emerson, 7:135, 134, 142. Emerson's notion of small economies within a great economy is not very dissimilar to a contemporary argument advanced by Wendell Berry in an essay entitled “Two Economies,” inHome Economics (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), 54–75.
Emerson,Works of Emerson, 7:161, 145.
Reference here is to Cooper's “Leatherstocking tales;” Caroline Kirkland's tremendously popular books about pioneer life in Michigan,A New Life —Who'll Follow?, Glimpses of Western Life, andWestern Clearings; as well as Donald Mitchell'sMy Farm at Edgewood andWet Days at Edgewood. Ray Stannard Baker wrote novels under the penname of David Grayson. His romanticized account of rural living,Adventures in Contentment came out one year before the Country Life Commission was created. Bolton Hall published a now classic back-to-the-land handbook,Three Acres and Liberty, in 1907.
Clarence J. Karier, “Testing for Order and Control in the Corporate State,”Educational Theory 22 (Spring 1972): 164.
See, for example, C. C. Brigham's “A Study of American Intelligence,” reprinted inShaping the American Educational State, edited by Clarence J. Karier. (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1975), 211–215.
Edward Allsworth Ross,The Social Trend (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 47.
Liberty Hyde Bailey,The State and the Farmer (New York: Macmillan, 1908), 20.
G. Walter Fiske,The Challenge of the Country (New York: Young Men's Christian Association Press, 1913), 35.
I should point out that Montmarquet goes to some length to chronicle Bailey's skepticism about large-scale irrigation projects in the US. However, while he had contemporaries who recognized how dramatic the demographic upheaval could be in response to technological development, Bailey showed surprisingly little concern in this regard. For example, Wilbert L. Anderson,The Country Town: A Study in Rural Evolution (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1906). Anderson wrote that “the first effect of farm machinery” will be the “departure of the farmer's boy from the home.” (p. 23).
See, for example, Grant McConnell,The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press), 20–32.
Berry,Home Economics, 170.
Wendell Berry,The Hidden Wound (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989), 124.
Peter A. Kropotkin,Field, Factories and Workshops (New York: Greenwood Press, 1967), 1. Originally published in 1898.
Berry,Home Economics, 165.
Ibid. Berry,Home Economics, 126. Also see Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Bruce Colman, Eds.,Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), 23.
Berry,Home Economics, 168.
Wendell Berry,A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972), 172.
Jackson, et al.Meeting the Expectations of the Land, 23.
Berry,The Hidden Wound, 126.
Berry,Home Economics, 65.
Ibid., Berry,Home Economics, 168.
Ibid., Berry,Home Economics, 169.
Berry,The Hidden Wound, 108, 113.
Wendell Berry,The Unsettling of America (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977), 220.
Jackson, et al.,Meeting the Expectations of the Land, 25.
Berry,The Hidden Wound, 104. Berry's emphasis.
Wendell Berry,Recollected Essays 1965–1980 (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981), 212.
Berry,A Continuous Harmony, 171.
Ibid., Berry,A Continuous Harmony, 173.
Berry,The Hidden Wound, 112.
Berry,Home Economics, 89.
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Theobald, P. The advent of liberalism and the subordination of agrarian thought in the United States. J Agric Environ Ethics 5, 161–181 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01966358
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01966358