Blog Mirror. The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.: 

Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.

Farm in Louisiana, 1940.

A few weeks ago, with John Pondoro Taylor, on our companion blog Going Feral, we made a controversial entry.  Keeping with that theme, we do the same here.

If a person has agrarian interests, there's no escaping The Southern Agrarians as there is not escaping their magnum opus, I'll Take My Stand.  It is one of the great, if highly flawed, works of modern agrarian thought.

The irony, I suppose, of the work and the group needs to be mentioned from the onset. They did not make their living from the land, although it's not necessary to do that in order to be an agrarian. Rather, they were twelve men of letters who wrote what amounted to an agrarian last stand, which they were very conscious of it being at the time.  They were:

• Donald Davidson, from Tennessee, poet, essayist, reviewer and historian. He was also a segregationist.
• John Gould Fletcher, from Arkansas, poet and historian.  He was the first Southerner to win the Pulitzer Prize
• Henry Blue Kline, a writer educated at Vanderbilt who taught at Tennessee, before ironically taking government employment for the rest of his life.
• Lyle H. Lanier, an experimental psychologist from Tennessee.
• Andrew Nelson Lytle,, also of Tennessee and also of Vanderbilt. a poet, novelist and essayist
• Herman Clarence Nixon, of Alabama and a political scientist.
• Frank Lawrence Owsley, also of Alabama and Vanderbilt. a historian
• John Crowe Ransom, of Tennessee and Vanderbilt poet, professor, essayist
• Allen Tate, poet, and of Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
• John Donald Wade, of Georgia, and a professor at Harvard and Columbia, biographer and essayist
• Robert Penn Warren, of Kentucky, and who was a university professor in a variety of universities, and a poet, novelist, essayist and critic, later first poet laureate of the United States
• Stark Young, of Mississippi, a novelist, drama and literary critic, playwright

What marks them is their monumental work, which was a Depression Era, anti-New Deal, strike against the modern world and capitalism. It is flawed, in that its view of the American South was highly romantic, and frankly they were not bothered by its inherent racism and manged to basically not even see it.  The work, while important, includes muted strain of Lost Cause yearning which are not admirable at all.  Indeed, it's hard not to notice that they didn't notice that the class that was hurt the most by New Deal farm policies were African American tenant farmers.

Still, as noted, there'rs no escaping this work.  It remains the magnum opus of American Agrarianism.

The Agrarian's Lament:

The Agrarian's Lament:  :  

 

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week, Wendell Berry

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week, Wendell Berry: 

Agrarian of the Week, Wendell Berry

Surely known to everyone who might stop by this blog, polymath intellectual Wendell Erdman Berry of Kentucky is a farmer, a novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, and profound cultural critic.  His writings have had an enormous impact on a variety of areas, not the least of which being American agrarianism.

Last edition:

Subsistence hunter/fisherman of the week, and Agrarian of the Week, Tom Bell.

Friday Farming: The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week, Thomas Jefferson.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week, Thomas Jefferson.:   

Agrarian of the Week, Thomas Jefferson.

 

Thomas Jefferson is on that cast of characters that's gone from deeply admired as a hero to treated as a goat in later years, the latter due to his problematic relationship with slavery, that latter being uniquely personally problematic in his case.

Jefferson was an agrarian, but he was not a member of the agrarian class.  Indeed, as a planter, his class was in some ways in opposition to the yeomanry.  But he saw them as the foundation for the republic and feared the day when that would cease to be the case, an act which led to his support for acquiring Louisiana, which he inaccurately believed would give the country 1,000 years breathing room.  His warnings once seemed too dire, but now seem to be rapidly coming into fruition.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week. G. K. Chesterton

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week. G. K. Chesterton:  

Agrarian of the Week. G. K. Chesterton

 

The Agrarian's Lament: Blog Mirror: Business As A Calling.

The Agrarian's Lament: Blog Mirror: Business As A Calling.:

Blog Mirror: Business As A Calling.

Another reason a distributist economy is more just:

Business as a Calling

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week. Emiliano Zapata.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian of the Week. Emiliano Zapata.:   

Agrarian of the Week. Emiliano Zapata.

 

The land belongs to those who work it with their hands.

Emiliano Zapata.

Blog Mirror: The We The People Amendment.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington):

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights and privileges protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights and privileges of natural persons only.

An artificial entity, such as a corporation, limited liability company, or other for-profit entity, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign State shall have no rights under the Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law. 

The privileges of artificial entity shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

Section 3. 

This amendment shall not be construed to abridge the privilege secured by the Constitution of the United States of the freedom of the press.”.

I like it. The concept that corporation are people is problematic in every sense, but particularly in regard to the idea that they have the same rights, or some of them, as natural-born real people.

This clearly attacks the Citizens United decision, which frankly was decided wrongly.  Indeed, early in the country's history not only was this idea completely foreign, but the formation of corporations was strictly constrained and relatively rare.

Unfortunately, of course, even in this hyper populist era, this populist idea, as it's from the populist left, is probably stillborn.  The McCarthy GOP isn't going to pass anything that a Democrat comes up with, particularly as its a minoritarian party in some significant ways that might fear the result.

Blog Mirror: Small Business Saturday: Remembering Quadragesimo Anno.

Small Business Saturday: Remembering Quadragesimo Anno.

It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. 

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931

I suppose this entry here is mistitled in that not only do most people not remember Quadragesimo Anno, most have no clue what it is.

It was a Papal Encyclical issued in 1931 on economic matters and the social order.  

Because I write, of course, from the United States, the land of "rugged individualism" which has, curiously, turned the economy completely over to government sponsored and therefore, quasi state created economic entities, I can't expect that anyone will actually think of the Pope and economics, let alone as sort of a radical economic theorist.  But perhaps they should.  After all, the focus of the Faith isn't on economic profit, but on the wellbeing of body and soul.

This too, of course, will be a bit radical in the US. The US is a Protestant country still, and to an enormous degree, the "Protestant work ethic" defines how economic matters are viewed, even among Catholics and the fully secular.  That early heritage, which relied to a degree on a Calvinistic world view in which wealth was regarded as a sign of God's favor, remains even in an era in which liberalism has made major societal inroads.  And those inroads interestingly have not taken the view that the Catholic teaching of Subsidiarity would have taken us, which would seemingly be more natural for our society in which individualism is nearly worshiped, but rather into a morphed version of the American System, in which the government simply takes over certain areas of the economy, but in a hidden background fashion.

This may be why economic debates in the US are so fundamentally weird.  It's much like arriving late at an extended family dinner, in which two cousins are in a raging debate over whether the 1968 or 1969 Mets are the better team, and then turn to you to demand your opinion just as you find the little crackers with salami and cheese on them, you aren't going to come out well in this debate, no matter what.

So let's turn to the encyclical, in much reduced part:

QUADRAGESIMO ANNO

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL ORDER TO OUR VENERABLE BRETHREN, THE PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, AND OTHER ORDINARIES IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE, AND LIKEWISE TO ALL THE FAITHFUL OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

Forty years have passed since Leo XIII's peerless Encyclical, On the Condition of Workers, first saw the light, and the whole Catholic world, filled with grateful recollection, is undertaking to commemorate it with befitting solemnity.

2. Other Encyclicals of Our Predecessor had in a way prepared the path for that outstanding document and proof of pastoral care: namely, those on the family and the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony as the source of human society,[1] on the origin of civil authority[2] and its proper relations with the Church,[3] on the chief duties of Christian citizens,[4] against the tenets of Socialism[5] against false teachings on human liberty,[6] and others of the same nature fully expressing the mind of Leo XIII. Yet the Encyclical, On the Condition of Workers, compared with the rest had this special distinction that at a time when it was most opportune and actually necessary to do so, it laid down for all mankind the surest rules to solve aright that difficult problem of human relations called "the social question."

* * *

49. It follows from what We have termed the individual and at the same time social character of ownership, that men must consider in this matter not only their own advantage but also the common good. To define these duties in detail when necessity requires and the natural law has not done so, is the function of those in charge of the State. Therefore, public authority, under the guiding light always of the natural and divine law, can determine more accurately upon consideration of the true requirements of the common good, what is permitted and what is not permitted to owners in the use of their property. Moreover, Leo XIII wisely taught "that God has left the limits of private possessions to be fixed by the industry of men and institutions of peoples."[32] That history proves ownership, like other elements of social life, to be not absolutely unchanging, We once declared as follows: "What divers forms has property had, from that primitive form among rude and savage peoples, which may be observed in some places even in our time, to the form of possession in the patriarchal age; and so further to the various forms under tyranny (We are using the word tyranny in its classical sense); and then through the feudal and monarchial forms down to the various types which are to be found in more recent times."[33] That the State is not permitted to discharge its duty arbitrarily is, however, clear. The natural right itself both of owning goods privately and of passing them on by inheritance ought always to remain intact and inviolate, since this indeed is a right that the State cannot take away: "For man is older than the State,"[34] and also "domestic living together is prior both in thought and in fact to uniting into a polity."[35] Wherefore the wise Pontiff declared that it is grossly unjust for a State to exhaust private wealth through the weight of imposts and taxes. "For since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man's law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal."[36] Yet when the State brings private ownership into harmony with the needs of the common good, it does not commit a hostile act against private owners but rather does them a friendly service; for it thereby effectively prevents the private possession of goods, which the Author of nature in His most wise providence ordained for the support of human life, from causing intolerable evils and thus rushing to its own destruction; it does not destroy private possessions, but safeguards them; and it does not weaken private property rights, but strengthens them.

50. Furthermore, a person's superfluous income, that is, income which he does not need to sustain life fittingly and with dignity, is not left wholly to his own free determination. Rather the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church constantly declare in the most explicit language that the rich are bound by a very grave precept to practice almsgiving, beneficence, and munificence.

51. Expending larger incomes so that opportunity for gainful work may be abundant, provided, however, that this work is applied to producing really useful goods, ought to be considered, as We deduce from the principles of the Angelic Doctor,[37] an outstanding exemplification of the virtue of munificence and one particularly suited to the needs of the times.

52. That ownership is originally acquired both by occupancy of a thing not owned by any one and by labor, or, as is said, by specification, the tradition of all ages as well as the teaching of Our Predecessor Leo clearly testifies. For, whatever some idly say to the contrary, no injury is done to any person when a thing is occupied that is available to all but belongs to no one; however, only that labor which a man performs in his own name and by virtue of which a new form or increase has been given to a thing grants him title to these fruits.

53. Far different is the nature of work that is hired out to others and expended on the property of others. To this indeed especially applies what Leo XIII says is "incontestible," namely, that "the wealth of nations originates from no other source than from the labor of workers."[38] For is it not plain that the enormous volume of goods that makes up human wealth is produced by and issues from the hands of the workers that either toil unaided or have their efficiency marvelously increased by being equipped with tools or machines? Every one knows, too, that no nation has ever risen out of want and poverty to a better and nobler condition save by the enormous and combined toil of all the people, both those who manage work and those who carry out directions. But it is no less evident that, had not God the Creator of all things, in keeping with His goodness, first generously bestowed natural riches and resources - the wealth and forces of nature - such supreme efforts would have been idle and vain, indeed could never even have begun. For what else is work but to use or exercise the energies of mind and body on or through these very things? And in the application of natural resources to human use the law of nature, or rather God's will promulgated by it, demands that right order be observed. This order consists in this: that each thing have its proper owner. Hence it follows that unless a man is expending labor on his own property, the labor of one person and the property of another must be associated, for neither can produce anything without the other. Leo XIII certainly had this in mind when he wrote: "Neither capital can do without labor, nor labor without capital."[39] Wherefore it is wholly false to ascribe to property alone or to labor alone whatever has been obtained through the combined effort of both, and it is wholly unjust for either, denying the efficacy of the other, to arrogate to itself whatever has been produced.

54. Property, that is, "capital," has undoubtedly long been able to appropriate too much to itself. Whatever was produced, whatever returns accrued, capital claimed for itself, hardly leaving to the worker enough to restore and renew his strength. For the doctrine was preached that all accumulation of capital falls by an absolutely insuperable economic law to the rich, and that by the same law the workers are given over and bound to perpetual want, to the scantiest of livelihoods. It is true, indeed, that things have not always and everywhere corresponded with this sort of teaching of the so-called Manchesterian Liberals; yet it cannot be denied that economic social institutions have moved steadily in that direction. That these false ideas, these erroneous suppositions, have been vigorously assailed, and not by those alone who through them were being deprived of their innate right to obtain better conditions, will surprise no one.

* * *

57. But not every distribution among human beings of property and wealth is of a character to attain either completely or to a satisfactory degree of perfection the end which God intends. Therefore, the riches that economic-social developments constantly increase ought to be so distributed among individual persons and classes that the common advantage of all, which Leo XIII had praised, will be safeguarded; in other words, that the common good of all society will be kept inviolate. By this law of social justice, one class is forbidden to exclude the other from sharing in the benefits. Hence the class of the wealthy violates this law no less, when, as if free from care on account of its wealth, it thinks it the right order of things for it to get everything and the worker nothing, than does the non-owning working class when, angered deeply at outraged justice and too ready to assert wrongly the one right it is conscious of, it demands for itself everything as if produced by its own hands, and attacks and seeks to abolish, therefore, all property and returns or incomes, of whatever kind they are or whatever the function they perform in human society, that have not been obtained by labor, and for no other reason save that they are of such a nature. And in this connection We must not pass over the unwarranted and unmerited appeal made by some to the Apostle when he said: "If any man will not work neither let him eat."[41] For the Apostle is passing judgment on those who are unwilling to work, although they can and ought to, and he admonishes us that we ought diligently to use our time and energies of body, and mind and not be a burden to others when we can provide for ourselves. But the Apostle in no wise teaches that labor is the sole title to a living or an income.[42]

58. To each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.

59. The redemption of the non-owning workers - this is the goal that Our Predecessor declared must necessarily be sought. And the point is the more emphatically to be asserted and more insistently repeated because the commands of the Pontiff, salutary as they are, have not infrequently been consigned to oblivion either because they were deliberately suppressed by silence or thought impracticable although they both can and ought to be put into effect. And these commands have not lost their force and wisdom for our time because that "pauperism" which Leo XIII beheld in all its horror is less widespread. Certainly the condition of the workers has been improved and made more equitable especially in the more civilized and wealthy countries where the workers can no longer be considered universally overwhelmed with misery and lacking the necessities of life. But since manufacturing and industry have so rapidly pervaded and occupied countless regions, not only in the countries called new, but also in the realms of the Far East that have been civilized from antiquity, the number of the non-owning working poor has increased enormously and their groans cry to God from the earth. Added to them is the huge army of rural wage workers, pushed to the lowest level of existence and deprived of all hope of ever acquiring "some property in land,"[43] and, therefore, permanently bound to the status of non-owning worker unless suitable and effective remedies are applied.

60. Yet while it is true that the status of non owning worker is to be carefully distinguished from pauperism, nevertheless the immense multitude of the non-owning workers on the one hand and the enormous riches of certain very wealthy men on the other establish an unanswerable argument that the riches which are so abundantly produced in our age of "industrialism," as it is called, are not rightly distributed and equitably made available to the various classes of the people.

61. Therefore, with all our strength and effort we must strive that at least in the future the abundant fruits of production will accrue equitably to those who are rich and will be distributed in ample sufficiency among the workers - not that these may become remiss in work, for man is born to labor as the bird to fly - but that they may increase their property by thrift, that they may bear, by wise management of this increase in property, the burdens of family life with greater ease and security, and that, emerging from the insecure lot in life in whose uncertainties non-owning workers are cast, they may be able not only to endure the vicissitudes of earthly existence but have also assurance that when their lives are ended they will provide in some measure for those they leave after them.

62. All these things which Our Predecessor has not only suggested but clearly and openly proclaimed, We emphasize with renewed insistence in our present Encyclical; and unless utmost efforts are made without delay to put them into effect, let no one persuade himself that public order, peace, and the tranquillity of human society can be effectively defended against agitators of revolution.

* * *

64. First of all, those who declare that a contract of hiring and being hired is unjust of its own nature, and hence a partnership-contract must take its place, are certainly in error and gravely misrepresent Our Predecessor whose Encyclical not only accepts working for wages or salaries but deals at some length with it regulation in accordance with the rules of justice.

65. We consider it more advisable, however, in the present condition of human society that, so far as is possible, the work-contract be somewhat modified by a partnership-contract, as is already being done in various ways and with no small advantage to workers and owners. Workers and other employees thus become sharers in ownership or management or participate in some fashion in the profits received.

66. The just amount of pay, however, must be calculated not on a single basis but on several, as Leo XIII already wisely declared in these words: "To establish a rule of pay in accord with justice, many factors must be taken into account."[45]

67. By this statement he plainly condemned the shallowness of those who think that this most difficult matter is easily solved by the application of a single rule or measure - and one quite false.

68. For they are greatly in error who do not hesitate to spread the principle that labor is worth and must be paid as much as its products are worth, and that consequently the one who hires out his labor has the right to demand all that is produced through his labor. How far this is from the truth is evident from that We have already explained in treating of property and labor.

69. It is obvious that, as in the case of ownership, so in the case of work, especially work hired out to others, there is a social aspect also to be considered in addition to the personal or individual aspect. For man's productive effort cannot yield its fruits unless a truly social and organic body exists, unless a social and juridical order watches over the exercise of work, unless the various occupations, being interdependent, cooperate with and mutually complete one another, and, what is still more important, unless mind, material things, and work combine and form as it were a single whole. Therefore, where the social and individual nature of work is neglected, it will be impossible to evaluate work justly and pay it according to justice.

70. Conclusions of the greatest importance follow from this twofold character which nature has impressed on human work, and it is in accordance with these that wages ought to be regulated and established.

71. In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.[46] That the rest of the family should also contribute to the common support, according to the capacity of each, is certainly right, as can be observed especially in the families of farmers, but also in the families of many craftsmen and small shopkeepers. But to abuse the years of childhood and the limited strength of women is grossly wrong. Mothers, concentrating on household duties, should work primarily in the home or in its immediate vicinity. It is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all cost, for mothers on account of the father's low wage to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children. Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced as soon as possible whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman. It will not be out of place here to render merited praise to all, who with a wise and useful purpose, have tried and tested various ways of adjusting the pay for work to family burdens in such a way that, as these increase, the former may be raised and indeed, if the contingency arises, there may be enough to meet extraordinary needs.

72. In determining the amount of the wage, the condition of a business and of the one carrying it on must also be taken into account; for it would be unjust to demand excessive wages which a business cannot stand without its ruin and consequent calamity to the workers. If, however, a business makes too little money, because of lack of energy or lack of initiative or because of indifference to technical and economic progress, that must not be regarded a just reason for reducing the compensation of the workers. But if the business in question is not making enough money to pay the workers an equitable wage because it is being crushed by unjust burdens or forced to sell its product at less than a just price, those who are thus the cause of the injury are guilty of grave wrong, for they deprive workers of their just wage and force them under the pinch of necessity to accept a wage less than fair.

73. Let, then, both workers and employers strive with united strength and counsel to overcome the difficulties and obstacles and let a wise provision on the part of public authority aid them in so salutary a work. If, however, matters come to an extreme crisis, it must be finally considered whether the business can continue or the workers are to be cared for in some other way. In such a situation, certainly most serious, a feeling of close relationship and a Christian concord of minds ought to prevail and function effectively among employers and workers.

74. Lastly, the amount of the pay must be adjusted to the public economic good. We have shown above how much it helps the common good for workers and other employees, by setting aside some part of their income which remains after necessary expenditures, to attain gradually to the possession of a moderate amount of wealth. But another point, scarcely less important, and especially vital in our times, must not be overlooked: namely, that the opportunity to work be provided to those who are able and willing to work. This opportunity depends largely on the wage and salary rate, which can help as long as it is kept within proper limits, but which on the other hand can be an obstacle if it exceeds these limits. For everyone knows that an excessive lowering of wages, or their increase beyond due measure, causes unemployment. This evil, indeed, especially as we see it prolonged and injuring so many during the years of Our Pontificate, has plunged workers into misery and temptations, ruined the prosperity of nations, and put in jeopardy the public order, peace, and tranquillity of the whole world. Hence it is contrary to social justice when, for the sake of personal gain and without regard for the common good, wages and salaries are excessively lowered or raised; and this same social justice demands that wages and salaries be so managed, through agreement of plans and wills, in so far as can be done, as to offer to the greatest possible number the opportunity of getting work and obtaining suitable means of livelihood.

75. A right proportion among wages and salaries also contributes directly to the same result; and with this is closely connected a right proportion in the prices at which the goods are sold that are produced by the various occupations, such as agriculture, manufacturing, and others. If all these relations are properly maintained, the various occupations will combine and coalesce into, as it were, a single body and like members of the body mutually aid and complete one another. For then only will the social economy be rightly established and attain its purposes when all and each are supplied with all the goods that the wealth and resources of nature, technical achievement, and the social organization of economic life can furnish. And these goods ought indeed to be enough both to meet the demands of necessity and decent comfort and to advance people to that happier and fuller condition of life which, when it is wisely cared for, is not only no hindrance to virtue but helps it greatly.[47]

76. What We have thus far stated regarding an equitable distribution of property and regarding just wages concerns individual persons and only indirectly touches social order, to the restoration of which according to the principles of sound philosophy and to its perfection according to the sublime precepts of the law of the Gospel, Our Predecessor, Leo XIII, devoted all his thought and care.

* * *

79. As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

80. The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of "subsidiary function," the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State.

* * *

Given at Rome, at Saint Peter's, the fifteenth day of May, in the year 1931, the tenth year of Our Pontificate.

PIUS XI

And hence the irony. Pope Pius XI was pointing towards a more democratic, more distributist and more free market economy than any economist or politician in the American mainstream today.  Robert Reich may rail against corporate profits, but he's not going to go there.  Harriet Hageman may note that "she grew up on a ranch", but she's not going to work towards an economy that would remove corporate interests from the agricultural picture.  President Biden isn't going there either, and neither will candidate Trump.

So today we have Small Business Saturday.

At least there's this day in the year.  But it's worth pondering that, in spite of what Americans like to claim, we do not have a truly free market economy, but a capitalistic corpratized one.  This is so much the case, that most Americans aren't capable of realizing that this is a government created and supported structure, or the reasons therefore.  Indeed, ironically the same people who run around erroneously claiming that "we're a republic, not a democracy", apparently not knowing that we're a democratic republic, will note the glories of the free market system in contrast with what they deem "socialism", apparently not realizing at all that our economy is a capitalistic economic system with heavy doses of the old American System.

Small business provide a huge amount of the national employment. They suffer the most in the economy even when it's good, and suffer more yet when the economy is bad.

Give them a chance.  If you are shopping today, visit a small business.

Related Threads:

Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday.

Lex Anteinternet: Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday

Blog Mirror: "We keep you alive to serve this ship", Part 1 of societal institutions and work. - November 04, 2022

"We keep you alive to serve this ship"

Ben Hur

Just observing things, It's really struck me over time how certain social programs, of the left and the right, basically amount to nothing other than serving the needs of businesses, particularly large business entities, no matter how they are styled. This is so much the case that certain huge proponents of some programs who would regard themselves as real fire breathing leftists are actually heavy-duty capitalists, and don't know it.

This shows in their justification for the programs.

Let's, once again, make reference to our evolved place in a state of nature, and where we are actually at.

In a state of nature we'd not do what most of us do daily, which is to leave our abode and clock in time somewhere else, to come back to our home.  In our natural state, while we would leave our families, the family would be the focus all the time.  In our industrial societies, our work is.  Most people spend most of their lives with people they are brought in contact with solely because they serve an economic interest, and nothing else.

Men got there first, long before women. But starting in the early part of the 20th Century, if not slightly before, that changed for women and now women are basically expected to work away from their homes and families.

Everyone is.

When looked at this way, we see why left wing emphasis on child care, and paradoxically abortion, are part and parcel of serving industry.  If women can be prevented from having children, they can, ie., they'll have to, go to work. That's what they should be doing, working.  If they must have children for some weird biological and psychological reason, well then government sponsored child warehousing, i.e., daycare, will force them back into work in another fashion.

Either way, they'll be freed, i.e., forced, to serve work.

Almost all the post 1945 liberalization of domestic law and structure works this way.  Easy no-fault divorce makes it easy to dump families, sending everyone unhindered and untethered into work. Where that results in women falling below the poverty line due to their children, as they foolishly chose to have children, government funded daycare will address it.  Abortion must be kept legal, we are told, as it means women can go to work.

What if things didn't work this way?

Well, men would still be men, and women be women, but they'd have to fund their families themselves, and at least attempt to choose more wisely.  That would have a lot of collateral impacts, but chief among them would be, frankly, less of a focus on work and more of a focus on the domestic.

But that would also mean that a society based on consumption, and which reduced its members to consumers, would be focused on families instead.

And then who is going to make and buy all that crap?

So the next time you here Bernie Sanders spouting off about something like universal child care, remember, what he's really saying, whether he means it or not, is:

"We keep you alive to serve this ship"

The Mental Health Crisis. Okay. . . but why?

In the current debate, discussion, etc., or whatever it is on violence in the United States, we continually hear that the country has a "mental health crisis".

Vagrant sleeping on the street in Denver, a common sight.

Nobody seems to doubt this, and indeed it seems true.

We hear a lot of other common things stated by Americans about the United States, including that it's the "greatest nation on Earth". But does a great nation have a massive mental health crisis.

What's going on?

Well, it should be apparent that the crisis is an existential one.  If we have a massive crisis, it's because there's something massively wrong in the culture itself.  Other nations have lots of firearms in circulation without having what we're experiencing, and that alone tells us something.

And we also know that, contrary to what we often hear, our society is getting less and less violent, but at the same time our mental health is getting worse.  But mental health getting worse isn't a good thing by any measure.

And here's another fact of this crisis. From at least an external view, nobody whatsoever is going to do anything about this, really.

And here's why.

What is going on is that we've erased a set of standards that governed our society that were nearly wholly based on a Christian world view, on everything.  In their place we've erected nothing at all, other than a concept that whatever pleases you, you should do, even though every indicator is that this in fact doesn't make for a happy society at all.  Most recently we've even tried to erase biological lines written into our DNA, and simultaneously flooded our society with new intoxicants of all types, as the old ones apparently were sufficient.  Lines that at one time, if they were crossed, resulted in some sort of institutional intervention, no longer do.  Those in society crying for help aren't going to get it, as our new libertine society simply holds that their crying is simply an expression of their soul, rather than a desperate cry for help.

To add to it, we've wiped out meaningful and productive labor for an entire class of individual, which was often all that kept them tethered to something.  For many more, we've erased the change that tehir employment and daily endeavors are their own, rather than some board of directors living far away who care little about them. And the dream of working on the land, the most elemental dream of all, is just about dead in the United States.

And, added to that, the erasing of the natural bonds of family in an aggressive way means that entire generations of children are essentially raised in conditions that no human being has been since some prior variant of our genus started to become really intelligent.

Mental health crisis?

Yes, indeed.

Are we going to do something about it?

Probably not more than doping up as many people as we can and sending many more to bogus therapy.

2021 Holiday Reflections. The Agricultural Edition.

 2021 Holiday Reflections. The Agricultural Edition.

- January 01, 2022

This will be an unusual post for here, as I'm doing something unusual in general.

Most but not all years, I post a "Resolutions" thread on our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet.  This started off, quite frankly, as being satirical in nature, but this year it's much less so.  Satire is a delicate form of humor, often ineffectively done, and this past year hasn't been very funny, so there's not much that satire would really do, for the most part, other than be super snarky.  Snark is almost never helpful.

Anyhow, this blog, which used to simply be a catalog of agrarian themed entries on Lex Anteinternet, has grown into its own a bit and now has a little original content, although not much. Anyhow, we're going to run this post independently, even though another Resolutions thread will already be up on Lex Anteinternet.

Well, two, actually.

Anyhow, this past two years, if anything, have been ones that have shown how Chesteron, Leopold and Abbey were quite right, even though they remain voices crying in the wilderness. The voices we've heard instead, most often that of an ex President and his hard core acolytes, haven't been helpful.  Maybe it's time to drag out the Vanderbilt Agrarians, Chesteron, and Wendell Berry and see what they have to say.

Indeed, that will be our first resolution for agrarians, farmers, would be farmers, and just folks in general.

1.  Check out Berry, Abbey, Leopold, or Chesterton

The current pack of yappers is offering little in the way of deep content, and a lot of what they have to say about anything is outright destructive.  Every now and then something of value is stated, but it's hard to hear it in the general mess of things.

Let's be honest.  Almost all of the current "we need to go in this direction" is at least a little bit misinformed.  If you aren't grounded in what's real, any wind can blow you over.

Doing a little reading of some grounded folks would be a really good start in things.

And things be Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold and G. K. Chesterton would be really good starts.

2.  Cut out the citations to the "I’m a billionth generation farmer/rancher" in the wrong context, and don't support it when its made in the wrong context.

This is one of a couple of posts here that are really directed at a very narrow few, rather than the majority of ranchers. 

Actually, it's not directed at ranchers at all, but rather at the rancher ex pats. Those who hail originally from the soil, but now no longer are working it.  For those who descend from prior generations of ranchers and are still in it, the more power to you.

I've posted on this already, but it really doesn't matter if your great-great-grandfather broke the sod in Niobrara County in 1890 if that doesn't mean you are in agriculture today.  And it doesn't make you royalty.  And. . .

3. Knock off the "agriculture is a hard way to make a living" line

Now, I want to be careful here.

Agriculture is a hard way to make a living, because of economics.

What it isn't, however, is a hard way to live.

This has been on my mind, to the political year, anyhow, but it recally came into the forefront of my mind again recently listening to an episode of  Wyoming:  My 307.  It was the one on ranching, which you can find here:

RANCHING IN WYOMING

In it, it had a long session pondering "why do we do this?" which arrived at a very interesting conclusion, that being "it's a vocation".

I think there's something to that.

But, we ought to be careful thinking that somehow because we're out in nature, and nature is a bit rough, that we're suffering. Far from it.

I've been a lawyer, a solider, worked on drilling rigs, a writer and a stockman in what now amounts to a whopping 45 years of working (I started working for pay at age 13).  So I think I know a little about work and what hard work is, and isn't. And what work is like for most people.

Somewhere at some point in time somebody fed a line of crap to agriculturalist that their work is uniquely difficult in an existential sense.  Perhaps in a physical sense, that's somewhat true, but there's plenty of other dangerous physical work that puts you out in all kids of weather.

And most modern work is, quite frankly, utterly meaningless.  Most Americans don't like their jobs, as no rational scientient mammal would like most of the jobs that now exist. 

What agriculture isn't is something that makes you work more hours per day than other people, particularly professional people, in  horrible conditions.  Not even close, quite often. And the working conditions and nature of agriculture are far better than that for most other people.  If you think that your job is somehow worse than a computer engineer in a cubicle, you are fooling yourselves massively.

Indeed, this sort of whining, and that's what it is, really needs to stop.  It's self deceptive.

Indeed, its harmful it two ways.  It's self-delusion and makes us think that, if we believe it, we are really working a lot harder than other people, when in fact that's just not true, and it also causes us to force children off the land for a better "town job" that won't be better.

Almost everything about life in the towns and cities is worse.  We ought to realize that.

If you doubt it, leave the ranch or farm and go into town.  You can't come back, and you'll regret you left.  Pleantly of people will line up to take your place.

4.  Having land doesn't make you "landed" nobility.

This, I'll note, is also directed at a narrow few, not the broader majority, of those in agriculture.

Something really disturbing has developed in the US over the past century in which those lucky enough to be born in to agriculture sometimes sort of regard themselves as petty nobility in a way.  It expresses itself in all sorts of odd ways.

Now, I don't want to suggest this is common.  

Most farmers and ranchers aren't this way at all.  But you'll see examples of it where people in agriculture will express a degree of contempt, on rare occasion, about average people.  It feeds into the thing above, in a reverse fashion, in that there's a sort of "we work hard for a living" without realizing that a lot of other people do as well.

I'll be frank that the last two items are sort of in reaction to a current political campaign.  I'm not going to get into the pluses and minuses of the merits of any candidate, but something about the videos of the campaign really strike me the wrong way for their strong rancher pull.  I'm tired of people appearing on political ads in cowboy hats arguing that you need to vote for somebody because they came from an agricultural family that knows what real values are.  It's insulting.

5.  Support getting people into agriculture.

The worst enemy of ranchers in the west are ranchers and by extension this is true about agriculture in general.  Agriculturalist decry those who regard their units as big public parks, which they should, but at the same time they don't do anything to try to help average people get into agriculture.

The reason for that, in no small part, is that it would mean a big personal sacrifice.  We could support legislation that made agriculture and agricultural land tied to actually working the land as your real and sole occupation, but we don't as that would massively depress the value of the land. It's that value that operates against us in the first place, as it means the Warren Buffets of the world become the only one who can afford the land.

We could pull this up by the root and cut it off at the head.  If we really think we're special and the real examples of the common men, we should.

6.  Think local and organize.

My entire life I've heard complaints about the midstream in agriculture.  The price of beef goes up, and cattle on the hoof do too, and the very few packers there are reap the rewards.  It's hard on consumers, and it's hard on ranchers.

I'm sure the same is true in other fields of agriculture as well.

Well, enough of that. We know it's unfair, so what we have to do is to replace the middle men with processors of our own. We could do it.  

Indeed, some agricultural enterprises, like sugar, do in fact do just this.  But it should expand. Co-ops for this purpose, organized to process for the member's benefits and not their own, would be ideal, and could more than compete with the big packers.

7. Think Agrarian

Modern agriculture suffers heavily from the worship of materialism that intruded heavily into the 20th Century and, along with it, specialization of everything.  We in agriculture often hear of "monocultures", but we almost all do just that.

Our predecessors did this much less.  Up into the mid 20th Century it was really rare to find ranches that didn't also farm a little bit, for the table, and every rancher hunted (often illegally) as well.  Farmers were the same way. A wheat farmer in Kansas was a wheat farmer, but he was probably also taking some game with a shotgun and probably kept a few pigs for the table,, and so on.

We have the resources and could lead the say on that, and indeed, some do. But the real banner carriers on this sort of thing shouldn't be people in the "homestead" movement, who are mostly chopping up big parcels of land to the ultimate detriment of everyone.

8.  Know who is your friend and who isn't.

This doesn't apply to everyone either, but I'm sometimes surprised how some in agriculture can be hostile, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who aren't, but who want to enjoy something on the land.

"No Trespassing" signs and "No Hunting" signs are signs to locals that they aren't welcome. Signs stating "This Land Leased To Outfitter" are the same thing, except they show that the lack of welcome has been monetized.

Bills to privatize wildlife are the ultimate acts of hostility. Falling in second are bills to transfer public lands into private hands.

We should realize that there are people who are genuinely hostile to agriculture.  The local newspaper publishes op ed articles by members of an organization that definitely is.  There are a lot more people who aren't in agriculture than who are, and we tend to forget that, as for most of us most of our friends are in it.

Given this, at some point we really risk public hostility.  Shut access off to the land, and next thing you know you'll be seeing "tax ag land like other land" and things of that nature, and you are out of business  and out of cash.

It doesn't really take that much to be friendly to people.

Likewise, for some reason those in agriculture often support entities and operations that are land destroying.  I've never understood that, indeed as we'll often complain about the same entities if they're on our places.  

9. Think really local.

None of us are here forever.  Try to keep that place, and keep the familiy in it.

People do a lot of things for a lot of reasons, but every time I encounter somebody, and I do fairly frequently, who ends up telling me "I grew up on a ranch", and I find them working as a lawyer, doctor, accountant, or whatever, I think it's a tragedy. That shouldn't have had to happen.

Blog Mirror: The Good Old Days.

The Good Old Days

- July 08, 2021

Among the blogs linked in to our companion blog Lex Anteinternet is the blog of the Adam Smith Institute.

I'll confess when I linked it in, I'd run across it and had confused it with another entity, perhaps The Philadelphia Society.  No matter, this British institution celebrates the thinking of Scottish economist Adam Smith, a person whom free marketers herald, and with good reason.

In terms of economics, I'm a distributist, which puts me in a group of about five people or so, all of whom have to spend endless time, if the topic comes up, just trying to explain what distributism is.  Distributism, a species of free market economics, hasn't been popular in the main since the Second World War, and to compound the problem of its obscurity, its not only saddled with an unfortunate name, but it attracts people who are sometimes on fringe of wacky, or not outright wacky.  For example, as its modern founders were Catholics (Chesterton and Belloc), and English, it'll attract very conservative  Catholics who have strayed into thinking they are monarchists.  As Belloc had an absurdly romantic concept of the Middle Ages, and as some Belloc fans think everything he said must be accepted without analysis, perhaps there was some inevitability to that, and to a completely inaccurate view of what Medieval economics were like (and I do mean completely inaccurate).

Anyhow, the Adam Smith Society posts some really thought provoking items, and todays' entry is not exception.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS ARE RIGHT NOW - AND DON'T FORGET IT

I'll admit, I don't really fully agree with what the headline relates, but in some significant ways, this is really correct.  They correctly note, for example:

We’re richer, live longer lives, have more choices, are, in general, just the generation of our species living highest upon the hog. At levels quite literally beyond the dreams or imagination of those significantly before us.

They go on to honestly note, however:

The good old days are now.

However, happier is more complex, one correspondent grasping this point:

People had lower expectations and were less bombarded with images of all the other lives they could be aspiring to.

The nub here is that second important lesson of economics, there are always opportunity costs. The true price of something is what is given up to get it. If we have more choices then the price of gaining any one of them is giving up many more of those alternatives.

Here's an interesting item on this:

This is why all those surveys showing that female - self-reported - happiness has been declining to standard male levels over recent decades. That wholly righteous economic and social liberation of women has led to greater choice and thus higher opportunity costs. As women gain those same choices as men therefore happiness rates converge.

The article doesn't really draw any conclusions, save for one, these are the "good old days".  And it makes some pretty solid arguments.

All of this is in reply to a post in The Guardian, which posed the question of "when", or "what" were the good old days. [1].   It wanted reader comments on the same.

The Guardian is a notoriously left wing newspaper with frequently very radical ideas.  It's gained global circulation in the age of the Internet, and it now is fairly widely read in the US, helped in part by the fact that it lacks a "pay wall", unlike the Washington Post or New York Times.  My point here isn't to criticize those latter papers, but to simply note that's how The Guardian is now read by the same folks in rural Wyoming who read the NYT.  Indeed, perhaps they're more like to read The Guardian, even though its radically "green" position is likely to make some folks pretty upset locally and they are, in my view, often way off in left field.[2]. 

Anyhow, the Adam Smith Society likely is correct that in all sorts of substantial ways, we're in the good old days right now.  But it is interesting that female happiness is declining.  And what its declining to is the rate of male unhappiness.

A couple of years we reported on the finding that workplace discontent is way up over 50% in the United States. That makes it seem like Joanna might be right in her comment to Peter in Office Space that "everyone hates their job", but if that's true, it's really distressing, to say the least.

The Guardian item brought a lot of replies, and its clear that a lot of people really do look back on a prior era, material advances not withstanding, as happier than the current one.  Some people cited the 1950s, which seems to often hold this status in people's recollections, in spite of the really scary Cold War, the hot Korean War, and for the British the falling apart of the British Empire all being a feature of it.  One person commented that it was the 1970s, which wouldn't occur to me, as I lived through the 70s and have a pretty good recollection of it.

Indeed, there's a good case to be made that "the good old days" were the days in which you were young and without burdens, as your parents took care of them, or some past era you didn't experience, reflected through a mirror, inaccurately, with the bad things filtered out.  There are, for example, people who are real fans of the 1940s, and the 1940s were generally horrific on the main.  The British often look fondly back at the 40s, I'd note, as, at least in modern times, it really was "their finest hour."  Be that as it may, if you were on a beach at Dunkirk hoping not to become a casualty or a German prisoner of war, it would have been unlikely to be seen as a nifty time, at the time.

But I digress.

Focusing on the rising level of female discontent, the Adam Smith Institute correctly notes the following, in my view.

There are those who take this to mean that society should regress, to where those opportunity costs are lower and therefore we would be happier. The correct answer to which is that 50% child mortality rates did not in fact make people happier.

We’ll take the vague unease of having so many choices over parents having to bury half their children, thank you very much, we really do think we’re all truly happier this way around.

That's pretty hard to disagree with.

What that comment means is that the calls by those who would really return truly to the past are misguided due to the horrors of the past.  One of those was high infant, and female, mortality.

Both of those factors are well known but easily forgotten in romantic recollections of the past.  Indeed, its interesting to see how this has evolved over time.

To set things in a bit of context, if we went back, let's say, to the 1700s, we'd find that the normal state for men and women to live in was, not surprisingly, marriage.  No matter what moderns may like to believe, this is the normal state and for a society on thinner resources, it was actually the only one really safe if people were to yield to their reproductive instincts in any fashion.  This is not a surprise.

What might be a surprise, however, is that remarriage by males was extremely common at the time due to a high female mortality rate mostly associated with childbirth.  I.e., lots of women died in childbirth and the men usually went on to remarry.  It must of hung like a cloud over pregnant women like nothing else.

Additionally, infant mortality was really high.  Indeed, a lot of the illusion that we now live longer is based on the massive reduction in the deaths of infants and young children.  Take those figures out, and average lifespans aren't much different than they are now.  Additionally subtract those figures for women who died in childbirth and this is even more the case.

Not too many women in developed countries now die in childbirth and infant mortality is also way down.  We know this intellectually, but we have a hard time grasping it in real terms.  I don't know of a single person, personally, who has died in childbirth.  I know of couples that have lost infants in childbirth, but not many.

So the Adam Smith blogger certainly has a point.

But it also begs a point.  If being free from the high risks of death in childbirth and the risk of losing an infant aren't making women happier, why is that.

That gets back to what we've noted before.  People aren't really meant to live this way.  I.e, in an industrial society.

And that gets back to the overall happiness rate.

We noted the other day that what the Industrial Revolution achieved, in social terms, was to take people off the land and into factories and work places, but not all at once and not by gender all at once.  It took men first, due to their physical build in part but also in part as it was easier to spare them from the home.  I.e., you can take a young man with a child and send him down a coal mine without the child, but you really can't send a nursing young woman down the coal mine without the kid.  

We're so used to the concept of men being out of the home and away from their families that it not only seems the norm, it became celebrated as the social norm for a long time.  However, as we've also noted here in the past, the development of domestic machinery changed that for women over time and their labor became surplus to the home.  When that happened, they were redeployed in the economy in the workplace. That went from a more or less temporary matter in a lot of households to a necessary one over time and now the economy demands it.  It demands it so much, in fact, that a recent (and maybe still ongoing) effort in the U.S. Congress was to subsidize the workplace by government funding for daycares.  People are so used to this concept by now that they don't recognize that for what it is, which is a pure subsidy for employers so that women with children have no excuse but to go to work.

Starting to resist that are women themselves.  We just dealt with that more recently here:

A lamentation. The modern world.*

That post contained this item from a young woman in her early twenties from Twitter:

Kay (momma of two)

@jacelala

·

May 6

I don’t want to work. I want to be home with my baby and I can’t afford it. I hate that. I hate it so much.

I don't mean to keep belaboring this point, and this does all recall, kind of, Thomas Wolfe's comment that "you can't go home again and stay there". That seems to be sort of true, but then what Chesterton stated, and which is featured on the footer of this blog, about clocks being human contrivances and being capable of being set back is also completely true.  What we seem to have achieved, however, is to create a system that makes us materially much wealthier but its contributing to some degree to our misery.

Why is that?

Well, it might be that a major deep seated reason for all of these changes was to secure us from the wolf at the door, but it was never meant, psychologically, to take that door out of the field.    In other words, maybe we burned down the farm, in order to save it.

And we could always rebuild that.

Footnotes.

1.  My favorite reply to the question was this one:

I remember a time when nostalgia was a thing of the past.
I'll get my hat...

2.  The Guardian aids itself in being taken seriously, I'd note, by not prominently featuring Cheesecake like so many other British newspapers.