What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Bush's Worst Appointment
Yet?
Read Jeffrey
St Clair's blazing expose of the new Interior Secretary nominee
, Dirk Kempthorne, and make up your own mind. Even in the dingy
history of Idaho's predators, Kempthorne stood proud as the dingiest
of them all. Now he's poised to seize his place in history. Will
he be the sleaziest Interior Secretary in history, sleazier than
Watt, fouler than Fall?
More on the great Israel Lobby debate! Norman Finkelstein cuts
a new path, asks "Are the Neo-Cons really committed Zionists?" "Bliss was it
in that dawn" Not in Michigan! Raymond Garcia describes
Dem governor's appalling plan to scapegoat youth and teachers. Plus the full print version of Virginia
Tilley's savage dissection on this website of the double-standard
onslaught on Hamas by the US and EU. CounterPunch Online is read by millions
of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely
by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
Economics, it's the elephant in the
room that can't be denied. And this elephant in its corporate
exploitive mode is stomping on every one of us and destroying
everything in its wake. How about a new paradigm, like a "just
distribution of wealth and resources"? Now there's a novel
idea! Occasionally there is information that helps to justify
this glaring need for economic justice, and for me the study
by anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt in the 1940's is one of
the most compelling!
If we think we've been manipulated and lied to by the Bush administration
in the 21st century at the behest of corporate America, just
hearken back to the mid-20th century. Franklin Roosevelt was
President. In response to the 1930's depression, he had been
successful in establishing his New Deal policies and for the
first time the U.S. government assumed a central role in the
responsibility for the economic security of the people and the
economic growth of the nation. More than anything, Roosevelt
probably saved American capitalism. A lot of the New Deal measures
(i.e. social security, insurance for the jobless) served in the
interest of American capitalists to ensure there was a pool of
satisfied workers available to them. But these corporate elite
were not going to let the government go too far in protection
of workers and certainly not in wealth creation for average Americans.
The Roosevelt era was also a time of reflection and analysis
on the impact of unregulated capital along with the concentration
of wealth and its impact on the economy, society and culture.
An abundance of questions arose as Americans lived through what
is referred to as the Great Depression of the 1930's. One division
within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was
central to this debate and it was the legendary and now defunct
Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE). This is a rather innocuous
sounding name of a USDA department that was so incredibly threatening
to the American corporate giants. The BAE and the Bureau of Reclamation
had the temerity to actually consider the impact of excessive
wealth on the quality of life in rural America.
In the 1940's the BAE wanted to study whether the 160-acre limitation
should be applied to the growing California agricultural production
sector. BAE wisely thought it best to engage in a scientific
study of the issue. (Someone please tell Bush about this--that
the impacts should actually be known or at the very least intelligently
understood before initiating policy!)
The young social anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt was given
the responsibility for conducting this California research. Now
at age 91, Goldschmidt ultimately became the president of the
American Anthropological Association. The results of his work
resonate for today's and the world's rural and urban communities.
Prior to him receiving the contract from USDA, Goldschmidt had
looked at similar issues in Wasco, California. In his "What
If" presentation in 1993, Goldschmidt said:
"Half a century ago I
was in the town of Wasco, California making a study of community
life and social organization. The study showed that industrial
farming creates an urbanized social system. That is, where agricultural
production is dominated by highly mechanized labor with necessarily
high capital requirements and the use of large amounts of hired
labor the result is a social order characterized by impersonal
social relationships, social class differentiation and conflict,
and the dominance of monetary over other social values. As you
sow, so shall you reap? The study was published under the title
"As You Sow."
This finding was far from trivial, obvious as it may now seem.
Republicans as well as Democrats have espoused the Jeffersonian
agrarian philosophy; the Great American Myth is fundamentally
agrarian and the small town has long been seen as the bastion
of basic American values.
It is the very heart and soul of our egalitarianism and therefore
our democratic institutions and central to our values. In this
view the California situation was seen as an aberration, as had
the slavery of our southern plantation economy --- over which
we fought a major war.
Three years after Wasco, I was asked to provide an answer to
a simple question: What difference does it make if the farm units
are large or small? The question was asked as part of the Central
Valley Project Studies; a research program designed to examine
the impact of that project and set the basis for policy matters.
The Central Valley Project (CVP) in California was developed
by the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Bureau operated under a
then 40-year old ruling that irrigation waters developed (and
subsidized) by it must be sold to land units of 160 acres or
less. The Question therefore was: Should this ruling be applied
to the beneficiaries of CVP?
I initiated a study comparing the two towns of Arvin and Dinuba,
one representing those communities dominated by large-scale enterprises
and the other representing the towns where small family-sized
operations were the rule.
The study showed unequivocally that the town surrounded by the
small farms was far superior by every measure that I could devise."
Agriculture scholar Al Krebs
notes the following regarding Goldschmidt's research:
"What the Arvin-Dinuba
study revealed has become near legend in the argument for perpetuating
the "family farm system" of agriculture throughout
rural America. Dinuba was found far superior to Arvin as the
quality of life in each community was directly related to the
inequities in landholdings and directly reflected in the difference
in the community's economic, political and social stability.
'Large scale farm operations was immediately seen to take an
important part in the creation of the conditions found in Arvin,'
Goldschmidt reported. 'Its direct causative effect is to create
a community made up of a few persons of high economic position,
and a mass of individuals whose economic status and whose security
and stability are low, and who are economically dependent directly
on the few. In the framework of American culture, more particularly
that of industrialized farming, this creates immediately a situation
where community participation and leadership, economic well-being,
and business activities are relatively impoverished.'
The small-farm community of Dinuba was supporting 62 separate
businesses with a volume of trade of $4.3 million, while the
large-farm community of Arvin had 35 established business establishments;
expenditures for household supplies and building equipment were
over three times greater in the small-farm community; Dinuba
had a larger dollar-volume of agricultural production; over one-half
of the breadwinners in the small-farm community were independently
employed, while in the large-farm community less than one-fifth
were so employed: public services in the small-farm community
were far better; the small farm community had two newspapers
while the large-farm community had one, and the small-farm community
had twice the number of organizations for civic improvement and
recreation. As applied to a small-farm community the 160 acreage
limitation principle was also found not only to be justified,
but one that should be encouraged and supported.
Reaction to the Arvin-Dinuba study was immediate and ominous.
Repeated efforts were made to block its publication, the study
having been completed in 1944. When it finally was issued in
December, 1946, due principally to the efforts of Dewey Anderson
of the Senate Small Business Committee and U.S. Senator James
E. Murray, committee chairman, it was with a quid pro quo that
no mention WHATSOEVER be made of USDA's involvement in the study.
Efforts, principally by the
American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and its corporate agribusiness
allies, were made in the press, on the radio, and in Congress
to discredit the study and the activities of the BAE, a long-time
adversary of the AFBF.
In fact, the USDA's Appropriations Act for 1947 contained the
following codicil: 'That no part of the funds herein appropriated
or made available to the [BAE] under the heading `Economic Investigation'
shall be used for state or county land and planning, for conducting
cultural surveys, or for the maintenance of regional offices.'
(emphasis added)
In further reflection on the events surrounding this study, Goldschmidt
now believes those who sabotaged his expanded research into a
larger sample of communities knew exactly what it would reveal.
It was much easier to discount the Arvin-Dinuba conclusions than
it would have been to dismiss the results of a much more comprehensive
study.
Nearly sixty years later that "sabotaging" by corporate
agribusiness and its same allies like the AFBF who sought to
discount Goldschmidt's findings, continues to this very day.
(Goldschmidt said further that,)
'My recommendations in "As You Sow" were that it was
essential to recognize the industrial quality of farming, which
clearly was already diffusing throughout the nation, and its
urban consequences, (this) meant that the regulations of the
Labor Relations Act should be applied to the agricultural sector
and that unions should not only be allowed to develop, but should
be encouraged. What was needed was a professionalization of the
farm worker.'
He continues, 'These recommendations were also not followed.
Instead, we have had the continued exploitation of the farm workers,
the increased concentration of land ownership in the hands of
the few, greater difficulties for the small farmer precisely
because they were not protected from such centralized control
of the markets, and all the other difficulties that derive from
an unregulated industrialized agricultural system.'
As mentioned above, corporate
America and the USDA did not want Goldschmidt's findings to be
revealed and Congress made sure that the BAE no longer engaged
in rural 'quality of life' studies. Once again, corporate America
attempted to belittle the opportunities for wealth creation and
creative competition in the American economy--both rural and
urban. Americans lost considerably because the government, as
it is inclined, bowed to corporate America rather then in the
interests of the masses of American citizens.
Since the Goldschmidt study in the 1940's numerous rural anthropologists
and economists have attempted to replicate his study, which has
never been successfully refuted.
More than that, however, we lost efficiency and land saving policies.
As Goldschmidt and others have noted we have let industrial agriculture
expand almost unabated. Yet, small family farmers and a diverse
economy in rural or urban America are not only best for the development
of a strong thriving economy, but for a healthy planet as well.
Small farmers have always been known as the most efficient producers
and the best conservationists and many Americans, at long last,
are finally beginning to realize this fact.
What we have witnessed in the past century, of course, is the
Walmartization of the American economy and it is being applied
to American foreign policy as well as through trade initiatives
and the likes of the World Trade Organization. Under the NAFTA
agreement, for example, the U.S. forced Mexico to change its
land tenure laws allowing for foreigners to purchase land for
the first time and to open up more intensive dumping of industrially
produced cheap corn and other products on the Mexican markets.
As we expected, the trade policies, resulted in the undercutting
of prices and destabilization of small farmers. This has had
a devastating impact on Mexico's excellent small farming communities
and likely one of the reasons we are seeing larger numbers of
Mexican economic refugees attempting to come across the U.S.
borders. The "poor" immigrants are unfairly blamed
for disruption when the finger needs to be pointed at corporate
America and the U.S. trade policies.
Concentrated wealth is not healthy for any community--rural or
urban - and is counter-productive to quality of life and democratic
principals. The current U.S. paradigm of support for excessive
wealth and trickle down economics doesn't work, is not good for
anyone. A new paradigm of common wealth and resource distribution
is necessary to let human genius have an opportunity to flourish
and be sustainable. Americans need to pay attention to this and
stop bowing to greed. As Goldschmidt concludes, "the price
of liberty is external vigilance. I fear that we have been insufficiently
vigilant."
Heather Gray is the producer of "Just Peace"
on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and
international news. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be
reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.