Support Your Local “Socialist”
Posted on October 4th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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I am not interested in bashing the original Crunchy-Con; what I would like to make clear is that trying to “get” Berry via a critique of Dreher makes probably less sense than, say, claiming to have discredited Russell Kirk via a scathing deconstruction of William F. Buckley. It is also a bit thick that Gordon—a senior fellow at a think-tank which is devoted to promoting a single, exceedingly specific school of economic thought—has the gall to label a farmer an ideologue. ~Jerry Salyer
Salyer responds here to David Gordon’s broadside against “crunchy” cons and Berry himself. I have been a bit slow to comment on Gordon’s piece, partly out of frustration with the habit of labeling anything remotely “crunchy” or agrarian as socialist. Especially at the end of a week when we have seen a plainly socialistic program pass Congress in the service of central government and concentrated wealth, the very antithesis of everything that these people believe, I have to marvel at the idea that the socialists among us are the ones stressing localism, self-sufficiency and independence. One might be inclined to say that if he thinks these people are socialists, Mr. Gordon demonstrates ignorance of socialism, but that is not really fair, either. Salyer addresses most of the problems with Gordon’s critique, and I would concur that even if it were true that Berry is not well-versed in the Austrian school he is reasonably familiar with the running of a household and farm and may have some relevant perspective on economics derived from practical experience. I’ll let Salyer have the last word, which states things quite well:
I only wish Gordon had treated the honorable gentleman from Henry County, Kentucky, with the same diligence he applies to Rothbard, the same fair-mindedness he applies even to Strauss. Had he done so Gordon would probably still disagree with Mr. Berry on a great many important issues. He would, however, recognize that Berry is not a trendy policy-lobbyist trying to get subsidies for organic farmers’ markets but a good man who is trying to convince people to give more care to their heritage, to their families, and to the little corner of the Earth upon which they live.
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2 Responses to “Support Your Local “Socialist””
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I posted the following comment to the Chronicles website and it is now awaiting moderation.
I regret that my article has caused any distress, but one key phrase in your comments shows that you take me to be saying more more than I had in mind. You attribute to me the view that Berry’s work repays careful study “on those rare occasions” when he sticks to what he knows. The quoted phrase is something you have added and is not my opinion at all. My objections to Berry’s views are entirely confined to those passages in his work where he advocates certain types of economic intervention by the state, e.g., parity pricing and those where he makes various claims about the way a capitalist economy works. I don’t think that these passages are central to Berry’s thought but they were the ones about which I was writing.
More specifically, I do not claim that Berry’s is wrong to think that community dissolution and loss of connection with the land are problems. That is an issue I don’t address: His views seem to be thoughtful, but I don’t know enough about agriculture to comment on them and it wasn’t my purpose to do so. Berry is in my view certainly right to object if the government interferes with efforts by small farmers to survive; my concern, again, was only with proposals to enlist the state to intervene in their behalf.
When I said that farmers haven’t been expelled by force, I of course wasn’t referring to the government’s removing farmers to build the TVA. I meant only that if farmers are producing for a market, then they must secure enough customers to keep them in business. If they cannot do so, and have to go into some other line of work, they haven’t in my view been expelled by force.
My complaint about Berry is that he makes claims about economics, e.g., that a free market tends toward monopoly, about which there is a large literature that he doesn’t seem to know. He no doubt has practical business experience but, if he wishes to criticize economics , he needs to know the theory also..
I certainly don’t regard Berry as a communist and my title wasn’t intended to liken him to Khrushchev. My—no doubt bad—pun was rather directed against an attitude in many of his followers, in which his every pronouncement is taken with the utmost seriousness. We must remember, we are told, that he is a “world class” novelist, etc. Well, Tolstoy was also a world class novelist who didn’t know much about economics.
I do think that my remarks about his being a tobacco farmer were hitting below the belt and I withdraw them.
FYI - I did take the title as painting Berry a Socialist. As for his support of some governmental interventions, I can’t place if I read it from him or had it quoted to me by a listener, but I’ve got it in my head that he holds such views in the same way he refers to traveling by automobile - there are costs involved in such things that he’d rather not pay, but to function within the status quo, when he absolutely has to get from A to C he’ll consider going through B if it lies on the only road that goes there.
Sadly, most people won’t know about Mr. Berry until he’s passed away, and a bewildered country looks for smart commentary on what to do with a failing empire.