Agrarianism

Agrarianism is a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society and 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.

Philosophy[edit]

M. Thomas Inge defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:^[2]

• Farming is the sole occupation that offers total independence and self-sufficiency.
• Urban life, capitalism, and technology destroy independence and dignity and foster vice and weakness.
• The agricultural community, with its fellowship of labor and co-operation, is the model society.
• The farmer has a solid, stable position in the world order. They have "a sense of identity, a sense of historical and religious tradition, a feeling of belonging to a concrete family, place, and region, which are psychologically and culturally beneficial." The harmony of their life checks the encroachments of a fragmented, alienated modern society.
• Cultivation of the soil "has within it a positive spiritual good" and from it the cultivator acquires the virtues of "honor, manliness, self-reliance, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality." They result from a direct contact with nature and, through nature, a closer relationship to God. The agrarian is blessed in that they follow the example of God in creating order out of chaos.

History[edit]

The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers; the Chinese school of Agriculturalism (农家/農家) 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;^[3] that influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay, an avid Confucianist and advocate of China's agrarian policies, in forming the French agrarian philosophy of physiocracy.^[4] The physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism.

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.^[5]

Agrarian parties[edit]

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.

Tunisia[edit]

The Farmers' Voice Party won a seat in the district of Jendouba after the parliamentary election of 2014.^[6]

Europe[edit]

Bulgaria[edit]

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[edit]

In Czechoslovakia, the 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 National Front after the Second World War.^[7]

France[edit]

In France, the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party is a moderate conservative, agrarianist party, reaching a peak of 4.23% in the French presidential election, 2002. It would later on become affiliated to France's main conservative party, Union for a Popular Movement.

Ireland[edit]

In the late 19th century, the Irish National Land League aimed to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on; the "Land War" of 1878–1909 led to the Irish Land Acts, ending absentee landlords and ground rent and redistributing land among peasant farmers.

Post-independence, the Farmers' Party operated in the Irish Free State from 1922, folding into the National Centre Party in 1932, it was mostly supported by wealthy farmers in the east of Ireland.

Clann na Talmhan (Family of the Land; also called the National Agricultural Party) was founded in 1938, they focused more on the poor smallholders of the west, supporting land reclamation, afforestation, social democracy and rates reform. They formed part of the governing coalition of the Government of the 13th Dáil and Government of the 15th Dáil. Economic improvement in the 1960s saw farmers vote for other parties and Clann na Talmhan disbanded in 1965.

Latvia[edit]

In Latvia, the Union of Greens and Farmers is supportive of traditional small farms and perceives them as more environmentally friendly than large-scale farming: Nature is threatened by development, while small farms are threatened by large industrial-scale farms.

Lithuania[edit]

In Lithuania, as of 2017, the government is led by the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, under the leadership of industrial farmer Ramūnas Karbauskis.

Poland[edit]

In Poland, the Polish People's Party traces its tradition to an agrarian party in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Galician Poland. After the fall of the communist regime, PPP's biggest success came in 1993 elections, where it won 132 out of 460 parliamentary seats. Since then, PPP's support has steadily declined.

Romania[edit]

In Romania, older parties from Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia merged to become the National Peasants' Party in 1926. Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) was a prime minister with an agrarian cabinet from 1928–1930 and briefly in 1932–1933, but the Great Depression made proposed reforms impossible; the communist regime dissolved the party in 1947, but it reformed in 1989 after they fell from power.

The reformed party, which also incorporated elements of Christian democracy in its ideology, governed Romania as part of the Romanian Democratic Convention between 1996–2000.

Serbia[edit]

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.

Ukraine[edit]

In Ukraine, the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko has promised to purify the country of oligarchs "with a pitchfork";^[8] the party advocates a number of traditional left-wing positions (lower salary taxes, a ban on agricultural land sale and eliminating the illegal land market, a tenfold increase in budget spending on health, setting up primary health centres in every village ^[9]), and mixes them with strong nationalist sentiments.^[10]

Oceania[edit]

Australia[edit]

Historian F.K. Crowley finds that:

Australian farmers and their spokesman have always considered that life on the land is inherently more virtuous, as well as more healthy, more important and more productive, than life in the towns and cities....The farmers complained that something was wrong with an electoral system which produced parliamentarians who spent money beautifying vampire-cities instead of developing the interior.^[11]

The National Party of Australia (formerly called 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.^[12]

New Zealand[edit]

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 its 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."^[13] 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.^[14][15]

Back-to-the-land movement[edit]

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.^[16]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Agrarian values[edit]

• Brass, Tom. Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism: The Return of the Agrarian Myth (2000)
• Brass, Tom. Class, Culture and the Agrarian Myth (2014)
• Danbom, David B. "Romantic Agrarianism in Twentieth-Century America," Agricultural History, Vol. 65#4 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 1–12 in JSTOR
• Grampp, William D. "John Taylor: Economist of Southern Agrarianism," Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 11#3 (Jan., 1945), pp. 255–268 in JSTOR
• Hofstadter, Richard. "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Oct., 1941), pp. 391–400 in JSTOR
• Inge, M. Thomas. Agrarianism in American Literature (1969)
• Kolodny, Annette. The Land before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860 (1984). onlin edition
• Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964).
• Murphy, Paul V. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2000)
• Parrington, Vernon. Main Currents in American Thought (1927), 3-vol online
• Quinn, Patrick F. "Agrarianism and the Jeffersonian Philosophy," Review of Politics, Vol. 2#1 (Jan., 1940), pp. 87–104 in JSTOR
• Thompson, Paul, and Thomas C. Hilde, eds. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism (2000)

Primary sources[edit]

• Sorokin, Pitirim A. et al., eds. A Systematic Source Book in Rural Sociology (3 vol. 1930) vol 1 pp. 1–146 covers many major thinkers down to 1800

Europe[edit]

• Batory, Agnes, and Nick Sitter. "Cleavages, competition and coalition building: Agrarian parties and the European question in Western and East Central Europe" European Journal of Political Research, (2004) Vol. 43, pp. 523–546.
• Bell, John D. Peasants in Power: Alexander Stamboliski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, 1899–1923(1923)
• Donnelly, James S. Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–1824 (2009)
• Donnelly, James S. Irish Agrarian Rebellion, 1760–1800 (2006)
• Gross, Feliks, ed. European Ideologies: A Survey of 20th Century Political Ideas (1948) pp. 391–481 online edition, on Russia and Bulgaria
• Kubricht, Andrew Paul. "The Czech Agrarian Party, 1899-1914: a study of national and economic agitation in the Habsburg monarchy" (PhD thesis, Ohio State University Press, 1974)
• Merlan, Francesca (2009). Tracking Rural Change: Community, Policy and Technology in Australia, New Zealand and Europe. ANU E Press. p. 60. ISBN 9781921536533.
• Narkiewicz, Olga A. The Green Flag: Polish Populist Politics, 1867–1970 (1976).
• Oren, Nissan. Revolution Administered: Agrarianism and Communism in Bulgaria (1973), focus is post 1945
• Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice (1794)
• Patterson, James G. In the Wake of the Great Rebellion: Republican, Agrarianism and Banditry in Ireland After 1798 (2008)
• Roberts, Henry L. Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (1951).
• Zagorin, Perez. Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660: Volume 1, Agrarian and Urban Rebellions : Society, States and Early Modern Revolution (1982)

North America[edit]

• Eisinger, Chester E. "The Influence of Natural Rights and Physiocratic Doctrines on American Agrarian Thought during the Revolutionary Period," Agricultural History (1947) 21#1 pp. 13–23 in JSTOR
• Griswold, A. Whitney. "The Agrarian Democracy of Thomas Jefferson," American Political Science Review (1946) 40#4 pp. 657–681 in JSTOR
• Goodwyn, Lawrence. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (1978), 1880s and 1890s in U.S.
• Hofstadter, Richard. "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition," Journal of the History of Ideas (1941) 2#4 pp. 391–400 in JSTOR
• Johnson, Jeffrey K. "The Countryside Triumphant: Jefferson's Ideal of Rural Superiority in Modern Superhero Mythology." Journal of Popular Culture 43#4 (2010): 720-737. online^{[permanent dead link]}
• Lipset, Seymour Martin. Agrarian socialism: the Coöperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (1950), 1930s-1940s
• McConnell, Grant. The decline of agrarian democracy(1953), 20th century U.S.
• Mark, Irving. Agrarian conflicts in colonial New York, 1711–1775 (1940)
• Ochiai, Akiko. Harvesting Freedom: African American Agrarianism in Civil War Era South Carolina (2007)
• Robison, Dan Merritt. Bob Taylor and the agrarian revolt in Tennessee (1935)
• Stine, Harold E. The agrarian revolt in South Carolina;: Ben Tillman and the Farmers' Alliance (1974)
• Summerhill, Thomas. Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York (2005)
• Szatmary, David P. Shay's Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (1984), 1787 in Massachusetts
• Woodward, C. Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (1938) online edition
• Woodward, C. Vann. "Tom Watson and the Negro in Agrarian Politics," The Journal of Southern History, (1938) 4#1 pp. 14–33 in JSTOR

Global South[edit]

• Brass, Tom (ed.). New Farmers' Movements in India (1995) 304 pages.
• Brass, Tom (ed.). Latin American Peasants (2003) 432 pages.
• Ginzberg, Eitan. "State Agrarianism versus Democratic Agrarianism: Adalberto Tejeda's Experiment in Veracruz, 1928–32," Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 30#2 (May, 1998), pp. 341–372 in JSTOR
• Handy, Jim. Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944–1954 (1994)
• Jacoby, Erich H. Agrarian unrest in Southeast Asia (1949)
• Newbury, David, and Catharine Newbury. "Bringing the peasants back in: Agrarian themes in the construction and corrosion of statist historiography in Rwanda." American Historical Review (2000): 832-877. in JSTOR
• Paige, Jeffery M. Agrarian revolution: social movements and export agriculture in the underdeveloped world (1978) 435 pages excerpt and text search
• Sanderson, Steven E. Agrarian populism and the Mexican state: the struggle for land in Sonora (1981)
• Stokes, Eric. The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (1980)
• Springer, S. (2012). "Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia." Journal of Agrarian Change.
• Tannenbaum, Frank. The Mexican Agrarian Revolution (1930)

External links[edit]

• Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian
• The New Agrarian