Agrarianism

Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values.[1] It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity of city life, with its banks and factories.

Secondly, the term "agrarianism" means political proposals for land redistribution, specifically the distribution of land from the rich to the poor or landless. This terminology is common in many countries, and originated from the "Lex Sempronia Agraria" or "agrarian laws" of Rome in 133 BC, imposed by Tiberius Gracchus, that seized public land (ager publicus) used by the rich and distributed it to the poor.[2] This definition of agrarianism is commonly known as “agrarian reform.” In 18th- and 19th-century England and Ireland, the word identified any land reform movement that sought to redistribute farm lands more equally, especially to landless Irish families.[3]

Philosophy

M. Thomas Inge defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:[4]

History

The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers. The Chinese School of Agrarianism was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. In societies influenced by Confucianism, the farmer was considered an esteemed productive member of society, but merchants who made money were looked down upon.[5] That influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay, an avid Confucianist and advocate of China's agrarian policies, in form the French agrarian philosophy of Physiocracy.[6] The Physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism.

Former United States president (1801-1809) Thomas Jefferson was a representative agrarian who built Jeffersonian Democracy around the notion that farmers are “the most valuable citizens” and the truest republicans.[7]

Agrarian parties

Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity.

Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while, in the 1920s and the 1930s, there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right and never launched any significant activities.

Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduced many economic, social, and legal reforms. However, conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923). BZNS was made into a Communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party.

Czechoslovakia

In Czechoslovakia, he Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader, Antonin Svehla (1873–1933), was prime minister several times. It was consistently the strongest party, forming and dominating coalitions. It moved beyond its original agrarian base to reach middle-class voters.The party was banned by the communists after the Second World War.[8]

Romania

In Romania, older parties from Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia merged to become the National Peasants' Party. Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) was a prime minister with an agrarian cabinet from 1928 to 1930, but the Great Depression made proposed reforms impossible. The communists dissolved the party in 1947, but it reformed in 1989 after they fell from power.

Serbia

In Serbia, Nikola Pašić (1845–1926) and his People's Radical Party dominated Serbian politics after 1903. The party also monopolized power in Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1929. During the dictatorship of the 1930s, the prime minister was from that party.

Australia

In Australia, the Country Party, from the 1920s to the 1970s, promulgated its version of agrarianism, which it called "countrymindedness". The goal was to enhance the status of the graziers (operators of big sheep ranches) and small farmers and justified subsidies for them.[9]

New Zealand

The New Zealand Liberal Party aggressively promoted agrarianism in its heyday (1891–1912). The landed gentry and aristocracy ruled Britain at this time. New Zealand never had an aristocracy but it's wealthy landowners largely controlled politics before 1891. The Liberal Party set out to change that by a policy it called "populism." Richard Seddon had proclaimed the goal as early as 1884: "It is the rich and the poor; it is the wealthy and the landowners against the middle and labouring classes. That, Sir, shows the real political position of New Zealand."[10] The Liberal strategy was to create a large class of small landowning farmers who supported Liberal ideals. The Liberal government also established the basis of the later welfare state such as old age pensions and developed a system for settling industrial disputes, which was accepted by both employers and trade unions. In 1893, it extended voting rights to women, making New Zealand the first country in the world to do so.

To obtain land for farmers, the Liberal government from 1891 to 1911 purchased 3,100,000 acres (1,300,000 ha) of Maori land. The government also purchased 1,300,000 acres (530,000 ha) from large estate holders for subdivision and closer settlement by small farmers. The Advances to Settlers Act (1894) provided low-interest mortgages, and the Agriculture Department disseminated information on the best farming methods. The Liberals proclaimed success in forging an egalitarian, anti-monopoly land policy. The policy built up support for the Liberal party in rural North Island electorates. By 1903, the Liberals were so dominant that there was no longer an organized opposition in Parliament.[11][12]

Back-to-the-land movement

Agrarianism is similar to but not identical with the back-to-the-land movement. Agrarianism concentrates on the fundamental goods of the earth, on communities of more limited economic and political scale than in modern society, and on simple living, even when the shift involves questioning the "progressive" character of some recent social and economic developments. Thus, agrarianism is not industrial farming, with its specialization on products and industrial scale.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Thompson, Paul. 2010. “Interview Eighteen” in Sustainability Ethics: 5 Questions Ed. Ryne Raffaelle, Wade Robinson, and Evan Selinger. United States: Automatic Press
  2. ↑ H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (1963) ch 2
  3. ↑ Terry Mulhall (1993). The State and Agrarian Reform: The Case of Ireland 1800-1940. University of London.
  4. ↑ M. Thomas Inge, ed. Agrarianism in American Literature (1969), introduction; paraphrased
  5. ↑ Deutsch, Eliot; Ronald Bontekoei (1999). A companion to world philosophies. Wiley Blackwell. p. 183.
  6. ↑ L.A. Maverick, "Chinese Influences upon the Physiocrats," Economic History, 3:54–67 (February 1938),
  7. ↑ Thomas P. Govan, "Agrarian and Agrarianism: A Study in the Use and Abuse of Words," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 30#1 (Feb., 1964), pp. 35–47 in JSTOR
  8. ↑ Sharon Werning Rivera, "Historical cleavages or transition mode? Influences on the emerging party systems in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia." Party Politics (1996) 2#2 : 177-208.
  9. ↑ Rae Wear, "Countrymindedness Revisited," (Australian Political Science Association, 1990) online edition
  10. ↑ Leslie Lipson (1948). The Politics of Equality: New Zealand's Adventures in Democracy. U. of Chicago Press.
  11. ↑ James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A history of the New Zealanders (2001) pp. 39–46
  12. ↑ Tom Brooking, "'Busting Up' the Greatest Estate of All: Liberal Maori Land Policy, 1891–1911," New Zealand Journal of History (1992) 26#1 pp. 78–98 online
  13. ↑ Jeffrey Carl Jacob, New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future (Penn State University Press. 1997)

Further reading

Agrarian values

Primary sources

Europe

North America

Global South

External links