Another Turn of the Crank. Essays

96 Pages·1996·0.55 MB·English

by  Wendell Berry (ed.)

Table of Contents

ALSO BY WENDELL BERRY
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments

Farming and the Global Economy

Conserving Communities

Conserving Forest Communities

Private Property and the Common Wealth

The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity

Health Is Membership
I
II

Copyright Page
For we are left but a few of many.
JEREMIAH 42:2

What to do? Stay green
Never mind the machine,
Whose fuel is human souls.
Live large, man, and dream small.
R. S. THOMAS
Foreword
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 noneconomic “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
1
economy. The members of these organizations have been my
teachers, they have given me hope, and I dedicate this book to
them.