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Another Turn of the Crank
by
Wendell Berry 1995
Field Observations: An interview with Wendell Berry
THE ESSAYS in this book deal with a number of important issues that have now become obscured by poor politics, and they deal with other issues, equally important, that are now little noticed, and are perhaps not noticeable, by politicians; The book is therefore vulnerable to some misconceptions that I would like to correct beforehand. Nothing that I have written here should be construed as an endorsement of either of our political parties as they presently function. |
Republicans who read this book should beware
either of approving it as "conservative" or of dismissing
it as "liberal". Democrats should beware of the opposite
errors.
One reason for this is that I am an agrarian; I think
that good farming is a high and difficult art, that it is
indispensable, and that it cannot be accomplished except under
certain conditions. Manifestly, good farming cannot be fostered or
maintained under the rule of the presently dominant economic and
cultural assumptions of our political parties.
Another reason
is that I am a member, by choice, of a local community. I believe
that healthy communities are indispensable, and I know that our
communities are disintegrating under the influence of economic
assumptions that are accepted without question by both our
parties-despite their lip service to various non-economic "values."
The "conservatives" believe that an economy that favors its
richest and most powerful participants will yet somehow serve the
best interest of everybody. The "liberals" believe just as
irrationally that a merely competitive economy, growing always larger
in scale and controlled by fewer and fewer people, can be corrected
by extending government charity to the inevitable victims: the
dispossessed, the unrepresented, and the unemployed. No agrarian or
community member could look kindly upon or wish to serve either
belief.
A reader would also be in error who concluded, from
this book's reiterated wish to restore local life by means of local
economies, that it is "antigovernment." On the contrary,
one of the fundamental purposes of these essays is to serve the cause
of democratic government as established by the Constitution. I do not
believe, however, that a nation can secure such a government merely
by means of a constitution. Political democracy can endure only as
the guardian of economic democracy, as I am by no means the first to
say. A democratic government fails in failing to protect the
integrity of ordinary lives and local communities. By now it should
be pretty obvious that central planning is of a piece with absentee
ownership and does not work. But to say as much is not to say that
there is no proper role for government. The proper role of a
government is to protect its citizens and its communities against
conquest - against economic conquest just as much as conquest by
overt violence.
Underlying all that I have written here is the
assumption that a people who are entirely lacking in economic
self-determination, either personal or local, and who are therefore
entirely passive in dealing with the suppliers of all their goods
and services, including political goods and services, cannot be
governed democratically - or not for long. This seems to be borne out
by the present decline of political dialogue into a rhetoric of
increasingly violent abstraction, without compassion, imagination,
manners, or goodwill. The voter is no longer understood as an
intelligent citizen to be persuaded, but rather as a benighted
consumer requiring only to be distracted or deceived.
Furthermore,
I am convinced that the present concentration of the best educated
and most able people in centers of power, industry, and culture is a
serious mistake. I believe that for many reasons-political,
ecological, and economic-the best intelligence and talent should be
at work and at home everywhere in the country. And therefore, my
wishes for our schools are opposite to those of the present day
political parties and the present-day politics of education and
culture. Wes
Jackson has argued that our schools - to balance or replace their
present single major in upward mobility - should offer a major in
homecoming. I agree.
Finally, it would be an error to think
that, because the arguments set forth in this book are not at present
spoken or heard by any prominent politician, they are the work of a
person thinking and writing in isolation. In fact, these essays
belong to a conversation that is current, vigorous, and growing.
There are now hundreds of organizations actively at work all over our
country on behalf of local health, conservation, and economy* The
members of these organizations have been my teachers, they have given
me hope, and I dedicate this book to them.
*For readers
wishing to contact such organizations, help may be available from the
Land Institute, 244 E.
Water Well Road, Salina, KS 67401.
The Essays:
Farming
& the Global Economy
Conserving
Communities
Conserving
Forest Communities
Private
Property & the Common Wealth
Health
is Membership
Sex,
Economy, Freedom & Community - The Joys of Sales Resistence
The
Idea of a Local Economy
Thoughts
in the Presence of Fear (Thoughts following 9/11)
God and Country (1988)
A Practical Harmony (1988)
Wendell Berry reading here the story
"Fly Away, Breath"
which is so far uncollected,
but was published in the Spring 2008 edition of The Threepenny Review.
Plenty more from Wendell Berry - a comprehensive site