The Freedom to Farm:
TREADGOLD, DONALD W.
Extremely conscious of political rights, Western intellectuals tend to overlook the world appeal of individual farming THE FREEDOM TO FARM By Donald W Treadgold TWO-THIRDS of the world's...
...Our statesmen are ready enough to mention our valued and understood civil freedoms, which the peasant cannot fully value and understand while his own economic status is fundamentally insecure...
...Recently, in THE NEW LEADER, Reinhold Niebuhr declared: "The danger is that Asian people may exchange the authoritarianism of the old agrarian feudal order for the totalitarianism of Communism, without knowing what price in liberty has been paid...
...The International Peasant Union, for example, assembles some of the most capable and admirable exiled leaders of Eastern Europe who speak along these lines...
...It will not soon be overthrown, nor should it be...
...Whether the charge is just or not, although Marx certainly idealized the worker it is generally conceded that he also noted carefully some of his characteristics, and even the idealization has excited few sneers...
...Extremely conscious of political rights, Western intellectuals tend to overlook the world appeal of individual farming THE FREEDOM TO FARM By Donald W Treadgold TWO-THIRDS of the world's population derives its living from the land--put simply, most people are peasants...
...Niebuhr does not sound very hopeful...
...like Victor Chernov, tried to be both sophisticated (which to the Russian SR meant socialist) and pro-peasant (individualist), and fell between the two stools...
...The basis of many Easterners' outlook has become Lenin's theory of imperialism and much of Marxism which preceded and followed its enunciation...
...Furthermore, we must acknowledge that certain conditions which seem damaging to the democratic case prevail in many countries where Communism took over yesterday or threatens today...
...In any case, it is evident that, historically speaking, smallholding has been preferred by peasants...
...Let the McCarthyites gnash their teeth and the "ritualistic" civil-libertarians relax...
...It is thus my belief that not merely the peasant, but the intellectual's image of him, is the key to much that is going on in this unhappy world, and that that image must be considered in the context of the rest of the intellectual's views...
...Very well...
...The most numerous and oppressed dweller on the planet, remained a stepchild--though not in the Communist orbit, where from Lenin to Mao to Khrushchev (1953, not 1950 version) the bosses have ever more boldly and gaily taken up their task of duping the peasants for the sake of destroying them in the future...
...He is now on leave at Harvard University, on Ford Foundation fellowship...
...The freedom to farm is one which America gained and exhibited to the world as early as any other country...
...The position of the peasant himself, whatever his color or religion or population density, is not taken very seriously...
...We do not minimize the chances that, in the short run, political agreements, military force, or sheer coup or conspiracy may win or lose nations...
...The coming of the First World War found the Russian peasants improving their position vis-a-vis the declining gentry, and in Siberia and elsewhere they already were free farmers in fact if not in law...
...intensive, diversified and smallholding agriculture was yielding results in terms of social and, to an extent, economic stability...
...It is, rather: What shall be the fate of the peasant masses...
...It is, in a sense, our loss in dealing with the peasant world that the American is no longer characteristically a farmer...
...some charged that he had "idealized" the peasant...
...We may accept it as likely that, in comparison with the Communists, we have indeed a great deal "more to offer the Far East" and other areas, and that the peasants can only be convinced of the contrary if they are totally deceived about what it is that the Communists "offer...
...Even if it were not so branded, it would excite in some persons suspicions of special pleading...
...Yet, the "proving of the democratic case" is left to a nebulous future...
...Our intellectuals are not guilty for all the victories of Communism, nor are they going to be responsible for all the future victories of freedom...
...Even among Western proponents of "land reform," only a few couple suggested changes in tenure with any broad vision of social and ethical goals which depend upon the prevalence of a free farmer class...
...This is tedious work, but it is essential if the intellectuals are to come to grips with two important issues: whether the outlook of the peasant is going to be accepted, suppressed, or simply ignored as often heretofore...
...but who holds that he has ceased to be an individualist and to prize private property...
...In any event, the semi-Marxist intelligentsia of the "backward" areas will build factories whenever they have a chance, and when they have no chance will lament the fact...
...Donald W. Treadgold, an Oregonian, is Assistant Professor of Russian History at the University of Washington...
...The freedom to farm, the freedom of the peasant to be neither a tenant nor a sharecropper nor, above all, a kolkhoznik, to be master of his own destiny within the limits which modern civilization permits, to enter or leave a farm producers' or marketing or consumers' cooperative at will, to farm a single unencumbered holding and thereby feed his family decently --this is a goal toward which the intellectual and the peasant might, after all these centuries, work with a common will, on the basis of a reasonable view of recent history and of the nature of man...
...If the freedom to farm, which would better secure the civil freedoms, were attained everywhere, the result would certainly be no Utopia...
...Let us recall that just before 1800 the French peasantry was not destroyed but freed, and that the same good fortune befell much of the Western European peasantry under Napoleon and afterward...
...and that he either does not wish to become a socialist or, if he is under a socialist regime, detests it...
...In economics, he did receive some attention from those who studied Communism, but chiefly as the raw material with which the Soviet managers work...
...It should be repeated that their importance depends not in the first instance on the peasants themselves, but on the intellectuals--chiefly those of the West...
...Had its premises been revised, it would have been easier to evaluate some other puzzling phenomena, such as the taming of revolutionary socialism in Western Europe, the persistence of anti-socialism in the American workingman, the new flight to the suburban frontiers of the American city --today the subject of cartoonists, tomorrow perhaps the object of serious analysis...
...I do not believe it necessary--or, indeed, possible--to attempt to solve in some universal fashion the economic question of whether small or large farms are preferable...
...What is to be found in such regions...
...If the goals include a more balanced diet and improved standards of living for the farmer, then diversified small farming, coupled with livestock-raising and some home crafts, is often clearly the best way...
...Most of America's are not, but some of them have ceased to be without finding their bearings again...
...and that they have unequivocally convinced the peasants that this is so...
...Many of them may confess that this word really means "under-industrialized," but any other objective than industrialization (or "modernization" or "technological change") strikes them as either subsidiary or a trifle mad...
...One must persuade such persons that they--like everyone else, including the peasant--have values or assumptions before one can debate whether any particular one is justified...
...By default, the Western social scientists are in fact also the politicians as regards the peasantry...
...Many of the world's intellectuals are pro-Communist or pro-Marxist, from Japan to India to Iran to France...
...There and in Russia before 1917 (or even 1929), the peasants' lot improved...
...The intellectually satisfying and internally consistent doctrines of urban socialism and capitalism proved their staying power in this age of turmoil, and the peasant was by silent consent of the intellectuals left in the limbo of the irrelevant or marginal...
...We may approach the task of "proving the case of democracy" for the benefit of the real masses of the world, the peasantry...
...Marx, Lenin and many other socialist and Communist theorists fully recognized, and did not hesitate to generalize about, the tenacity of this peasant attitude...
...If anyone is willing to admit that he falls into such a group, he may be urged not to give up seeking the answers to important problems whether posed by Mill or Marx, Schumpeter or Mao, not to revert to what has been called a "pre-Marxist" position out of a justifiable desire to avoid social dogmatism and simplism...
...We have urged certain propositions about the development, the attitudes and the potentialities of peasants...
...Such a battle the present State Department is probably either too frightened or too unsophisticated to wage...
...Let us for a moment leave aside contemplation of the triumphant progress of industrialism from England eastward and westward after 1800, remembering that the English solution of sacrificing peasant agriculture in return for international trade remains almost unique in the world...
...but it is forced to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and as such can scarcely hope to reshape American foreign policy...
...but the facts are ready, even overripe...
...Certain Easterners have feverishly dumped "the wisdom of the East" on the scrap-heap...
...We have contended that "industrialization" is an idol...
...That revelation ought to have been the signal for a general re-examination of the assumptions of social theory in the West...
...Industrialization" is an idol of Western as it is of Communist social scientists—who are also the Communist politicians...
...Since almost any businessmen's luncheon club is likely to accept instantly the desirability of independent farming as a world goal--as more than one lecturer can testify--it is difficult to see why it is necessary to be so coy...
...Marx thought that the peasant would be swallowed up by the bourgeoisie and proletariat...
...If so, it is only the intellectuals, and not just economists, who can guide them to technical improvement and agronomical rationality--of a sort which includes in its calculations the physical and moral welfare of the peasant producers, not merely the tax yield or capital increment or gross national product measured in terms of sales...
...Men like Ricardo and Marx either lacked comprehension of the peasant's real plight or were not interested in sketching a viable future for him...
...It is puzzling that social theory has not taken fuller account of this fact and all its ramifications, and even more striking that its consequences in terms of desired political goals have not been more closely examined...
...Our politicians might be persuaded to blow a few trumpets, but the foot-soldiers will be the Western intellectuals or none...
...Whereas the Communists successfully neutralized the Russian peasants, those of Eastern Europe made further gains between the wars...
...Niebuhr and others emphasize is the sacrifice of political liberty involved in past and possible future Communist conquests...
...They saw the fact, but shrank from its consequences to their theory...
...Some intellectuals have already taken up the job and have labored at it for long years...
...It would, however, mean the destruction of all Communist regimes, the end of the managerial exploitation of the peoples of the Communist orbit, the radical reform of the social order of many Asian, African and Latin American states, and very possibly a better life for most people in the world than they have ever known...
...In the twentieth century, the fate of the peasant was overshadowed by the general upheavals of war and depression and the consequent popularity of apocalyptic thinking (either negative like Spengler or positive like the prophets of "One World...
...It is not sufficient to give the peasant his head, for he is no more sure where he is going than any other non-intellectual...
...No one can reach Mr...
...In such nations, there is no sizable middle class and what there is is often chiefly of foreign origin...
...It is difficult to get a patient hearing for the peasant, in large part because his characteristically individualist and religious outlook involves values not shared by many contemporary social scientists...
...He was as before the subject of anthropology and folklore, and now also of "rural sociology," "agricultural economics" (though not in the West, where the theory of the farm as "firm" rules) and "agricultural history" (considered so specialized a subject that the Widener Library does not subscribe to its chief journal...
...David Mitrany has brilliantly told the story of the struggle of Marx Against the Peasant, but he did not feel justified in drawing overt political conclusions for the West...
...There need be no promiscuous promises to turn Nepals into Americas, but that does not mean that Americans cannot help Nepalese to cast off "the old agrarian order" without falling into the far worse rigors of Communism...
...Recall those Indian intellectuals who have hastened to ridicule such representatives of their own traditions as Vinoba Bhave...
...There is no attempt to sketch the potentialities of the economic order which might attend such an alternative...
...Recent reports of negative peasant reaction to the ejido system in Mexico and to the attempt to spread "cooperative farming" in India, and especially the continued stubborn opposition of Soviet and Eastern European peasants to collectivization, provide evidence of the same attitude which made Japanese, South Korean and Formosan peasants support land-reform measures designed to extend smallholding...
...Mitrany's book occasioned both bewilderment and derision...
...The careful comparison of peasant reality with both capitalist and socialist doctrines on agriculture may show that the peasant producer is not in fact a capitalist by Marxian standards, because he works for himself, nor by Ricardo's standards, because he does not work chiefly for profit...
...His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including American Slavic and East European Review, Russian Review and Agricultural Review...
...Locke and Jefferson are unknown to the Asian masses...
...and, if it is accepted, whether it can form the basis for an educational awakening and a liberation of productive energies for the good of all...
...A few...
...His champions have usually been men like John Ball ("when Adam delved and Eve span") and Pugachev ("down with the landlord...
...There is the further difficulty that some of these individuals like to deny that one ought to have any philosophical assumptions or values--which entails the absurd boast that they either have none or could manage somehow without any...
...Nevertheless, one may doubt if, in the long run, any foreign policy can succeed which fails to appeal to the spirit as well as the stomach of the peasants and which is not supported powerfully by a private offensive of our freedom-loving intellectuals...
...Tread-gold's book, Lenin and His Rivals: The Struggle for Russia's Future, 1898 1906, is scheduled for publication this month by Frederic A. Praeger...
...There is no "tradition of Anglo-Saxon law...
...Neither is it sufficient to turn the peasant over to the economists who specialize in "underdeveloped" areas...
...Yet, one may try to talk with him...
...New terms, new analyses are needed...
...The best we can do is to hold our ground until we can prove the democratic case, and until the full flavor of modern, technically-equipped tyranny disillusions the illusionists among the Asians...
...But the real and immediate economic issue in the "underdeveloped" nations is not: Shall industry become the cornerstone of the economy...
...Prevailing urbanist attitudes about the peasant bear the mark of the theorists of early industrialism, whether they were willing to justify the recruitment of cheap industrial labor or condemned its social consequences...
...It seems likely that not only the social fate of the world's peasantry, but the political fate of the remaining non-Communist nations, will not be decided in a manner acceptable to lovers of freedom without a serious ideological battle...
...If we are to seek to "prove the democratic case" in socio-economic terms, we ought first to admit that, if the grounds for doing so do not exist now, the time for "proof" will never come...
...The peasant has seldom if ever had a spokesman from urban intellectuals to plead his case, to point boldly to his human potentialities, to urge that he could enter the brotherhood of man without first being transmuted by the fires of industrial technology...
...Assume then that, for better or worse economic consequences, the peasants of much of the world are in search of smallholding at the hands of whoever promises it to them...
...It is an important and justified emphasis...
...David Riesman refers to the prevalence of a still less hopeful attitude when he writes (in Individualism Reconsidered): "It now seems likely that we shall fall for the idea that the Russians have more to offer the Far East than we...
...There is a tendency to speak as if political liberty and democracy would be the chief or sole attractive features of the Western alternative to both "the old agrarian feudal order" and Communism...
...The German Social Democrats, however, came to perceive that the peasant was going to remain and even increase in number under industrialism...
...Our diplomats are a bit wary of talking about "land reform" even while they quietly urge it on confused Asian statesmen...
...Industry will yield benefits to the welfare of peasants as of other people, if it is not erected on a foundation of peasant blood and slavery as in the Soviet orbit...
...Why do they not mention the freedom to farm, which is being sought by the peasants of the "underdeveloped areas" and is still dearer to the peasant of the Communist world, since he has been allowed to sniff at this freedom before having it torn away...
...Nehru, for example, to "investigate" him...
...From the latter the Eastern intellectuals, for better or worse (we should say emphatically worse), have been taking cues for some time...
...It may now be time, however, for us to tell the Justice Department and the Congressional committees to go back to their proper business, that we are ready--albeit some of us belatedly--to fight for freedom again as we did against Nazism, not in the first instance with arms, but with the inexhaustible resources of our proper weapon, the free human intellect...
...who lacked the sophistication to organize their following or to gain intellectual support...
...Unfortunately, "land reform" as a phrase and as an idea has sometimes become confused with the Communist tactic of temporarily pandering to peasant desires in a perilous but unavoidable detour on the road to collectivization...
...In politics, he...
...What Dr...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 49
