In a joint introduction written by John Crowe Ransom, the Agrarians provided "A Statement of Principles". They state that all 12 contributors agree on the following:
... all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian versus Industrial.They state an opposition to applied science (technology), which sounds reactionary enough in itself:
Industrialism is the economic organization of the collective American society. It means the decision of society to invest its economic resources in the applied sciences. But the word science has acquired a certain sanctitude. It is out of order to quarrel with science in the abstract, or even with the applied sciences when their applications are made subject to criticism and intelligence. The capitalization of the applied sciences has now become extravagant and uncritical; it has enslaved our human energies to a degree now clearly felt to be burdensome. The apologists of industrialism do not like to meet this charge directly; so they often take refuge in saying that they are devoted simply to science! They are really devoted to the applied sciences and to practical production. Therefore it is necessary to employ a certain skepticism even at the expense of the Cult of Science, and to say, It is an Americanism, which looks innocent and disinterested, but really is not either. [my emphasis]But they are not indulging in a critical analysis of the way technological priorities are shaped by dominant economic powers or related social assumptions. In fact, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that they are using their superficial criticism of technology as opposition to science itself. They are, after all, defending a conservative South that a few years before staged had its melodramatic confrontation with science in the Scopes Trial.
In a reflection of the kind of muddled thinking that we still see today among American reactionaries, the Agrarians declared that supporters of Northern "Industrialism" are "Sovietists." They write: "With respect to these last it must be insisted that the true Sovietists or Communists - if the term may be used here in the European sense - are the Industrialists themselves."They declare, "Opposed to the industrial society is the agrarian, which does not stand in particular need of definition." This is a telling claim, that they don't need to define their ideal state of society, which they find partially realized in the American South of 1930. Because what they are actually defending is their version of the white South, a Southern way of life which they explicitly oppose to the American way of life, a set of white Southern values for which "Americanism" is an insult to be cast at defenders of Yankee "Industrialism." And they state their general values in a way that is disturbingly suggestive of Blut und Boden mythology:
An agrarian society is hardly one that has no use at all for industries, for professional vocations, for scholars and artists, and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps, an agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or for prestige - a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that becomes the model to which the other forms approach as well as they may. But an agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous industries are not allowed to rise against it. The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers. [my emphasis]The Agrarians' statement of principles is a piece of whiny white Southern victimology, one which takes for granted the Jim Crow system of white supremacy and doesn't even pretend to see white racism and its institutions of the time as the least bit problematic.
In the following statements, it helps to clarify the tone if one understands that "the South" in this context means "the white South", and that the "American industrial ideal" also includes the Constitutional system of democracy which the Southern Jim Crow political system was violating in the most egregious ways:
Nobody now proposes for the South, or for any other community in this country, an independent political destiny. That idea is thought to have been finished in 1865. But how far shall the South surrender its moral, social, and economic nutonomy to the victorious principle of Union? That question remains open. The South is a minority section that has hitherto been jealous of its minority right to live its own kind of life.This is a somewhat Orwellian instance of white whining. They are representing white Southerners as a minority among Americans, guarding their "own" Jim Crow segregation "kind of life" which involved the political and social subjugation of the African-American minority relative to whites.
The South scarcely hopes to determine the other sections, but it does propose to determine itself, within the utmost limits of legal action. Of late, however, there is the melancholy fact that the South itself has wavered a little and shown signs of wanting to join up behind the common or American industrial ideal. It is against that tendency that this book is written. ...Foreign industry in this case would include industries from other parts of the United States, some of which white Southerners feared might demand adjustments to the racially segregated "life-pattern of the community", which included Jim Crow laws, lynch-law and a thoroughly neurotic set of social customs and manners governing relationships between whites and blacks.
These principles do not intend to be very specific in proposing any practical measures. How may the little agrarian community resist the Chamber of Commerce of its county seat, which is always trying to import some foreign industry that cannot be assimilated to the life-pattern of the community? [my emphasis]
Just what must the Southern leaders do to defend the traditional Southern life? How may the Southern and the Western agrarians unite for effective action? Should the agrarian forces try to capture the Democratic party, which historically is so closely affiliated with the defense of individualism, the small community, the state, the South? Or must the agrarians - even the Southern ones - abandon the Democratic party to its fate and try a new one? ...This was the attitude that led to Southern Governors standing in the schoolhouse doors to defy federal law to integrate Southern universities, a well-known symbol of the segregationists bitter fight against having the American Constitution and the American way of life prevail in the Jim Crow South.
For, in conclusion, this much is clear: If a community, or a section, or a race, or an age, is groaning under industrialism, and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find the way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if the whole community, section, race, or age thinks it cannot be done, then it has simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence. [my emphasis]
The Southern Agrarians presented a highbrow, intellectual brand of reactionary ideology whose purpose was focused on preserving the segregation system in the South and the various economic and social restrictions on white workers that were very much a part of it.
In these posts over the next several days, I'll be looking at each of these essays individually.
Tags: confederate heritage month 2011, john crowe ransom, southern agrarians, us south
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