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Community and Economic Affection

Thread ID: 15939 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2004-12-11

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weisbrot [OP]

2004-12-11 12:34 | User Profile

[url]http://theagrarianfoundation.com/blog/index.php?p=3[/url]

Community & Economic Affection

Virtue: “He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.” ~ Samuel Adams

Do you love strangers and foreigners with equal zeal and devotion as you do your wife, children, and friends? Or do you prefer your wife, children and friends and seek their well-being above that of others? Despite decades of wailings against all forms of discrimination, most people instinctively have soft and tender spots of affection for their family. We bear with and endure far more presumption and abuse from family members than we do from others. Most parents, brothers and sisters come to the aid of a family member far more quickly than they do others. We instinctively have higher regard for ‘our own’ than for strangers, and this often extends to close friends and acquaintances. We simply dont love and treat all humans equally.

What we seem embarrassed to openly admit is that this preferential regard for some humans over other humans is plainly anti-egalitarian. That every person is not regarded with equal affection and obligation, especially our spouses and children, points to different scales of moral obligation and responsibility to the people on earth. However true, it seems unmannerly to admit to unequal moral obligation to love, care for, nurture, educate and provide for other peoples’ spouses and children. Yet the Scriptures assure us that “he who does not care for his own is worse than an infidel.” (1 Timothy 5:8)

This inequality of affection and moral obligation extends farther, historically, by varying degree to our neighbors and countrymen. The citizens of my neighborhood and town are far more connected to each others’ well-being than they are to the well-being of the people of say, Massachusetts or Oregon. Likewise the citizens of Iran, Mexico and Japan are far more committed to their own countrymen than to other countries. We might call this instinct one root of patriotism. Our language, civil government, customs, and the close proximity of our property links our interests in a sort of social covenantal bond. We simply do not regard the prosperity and well being of ALL countries with equal affection and with equal moral obligation.

Enter Modern Egalitarian Economics OR Capitalistic Internationalism. Have you noticed how corporate America uses the U. S. flag to advance its corporate image and profits? Emory Philosophy professor, Dr. Donald Livingston, once commented that the flag is now as much a corporate symbol as it is a national symbol. This is telling and consistent with the trend of corporate Fascism – that old union of big-government and big-business. We often forget or even imagine one can exist without the other. Perhaps for this reason, neo-patriot Ralph Nader (who once called for ‘socialism’ or communism of one sort or another), sent a letter years ago to the CEOs of 100 American corporations calling them, incredibly, to “establish a regular practice at every annual shareholders meeting whereby you and the board of directors stand and, in the name of your domestically chartered corporation, ‘pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands.’”

How did they respond? Kodak claimed that, “to maintain a global perspective to compete effectively in a global economy, [the pledge idea] would not be productive.” Allstate said it would be “inappropriate at a business meeting,” while Ford Motor Company said, “We do not believe that the concept of ‘corporate allegiance’ is possible” (The New American, 31 August 1998, p. 8 ). That there are sound reasons for not wishing to pledge to the U.S. flag is not my point. Despite their steady use of the U.S. Flag for economic gain, modern American corporations’ open lack of economic affection is what should be noticed here. Profit has swallowed affectionate regard for country.

Here is the modern ethic of capitalistic internationalism. All lands, peoples and governments are abstractly held in a sort of indifferent egalitarian neutrality, and reduced to mere profit centers. What really matters is that modern god before whom all must bow—profit. Before we become too indignant, we should pause to note that a similar attitude increasingly exists at the local level. Little affection and moral obligation exists in our local communities. Do you regard the economic success and well being of your friends and neighbors above that of giant national and foreign corporations? Most locals do not and have become economic modernists. We’ve reduced economics to one issue : price/profit. Thus, we routinely shun our local grocers, famers, merchants, etc. for giant national chains, which we wrongly believe are always cheaper. They are not! We sacrifice affection and moral obligation to local community upon the altar of price. Chambers of Commerce have led the way for decades. Now the great egalitarian ethic has been successfully engrafted in us!

That communities suffer in this is undeniable. We are usually promised multitudinous benefits that giant corporations bring to communities—namely jobs, jobs and more jobs. But have you ever asked yourself why mammoth corporations wish to spend millions of dollars building a plant/center in a rural community? For example, ConAgra has a huge chicken processing plant and six paper companies have multimillion dollar plants within 40 miles of Monroe, Louisiana. Why? Do they simply seek to pour jobs and tax revenues into local rural communities? If so, why dont they just write a check? No! Jobs and tax revenues are simply by-products of their profit seeking: an obligation they have to millions of co-owning shareholders. Therefore, if we assume that international corporations earn a 5 percent average return on investment, then a $500 million plant takes $25 million dollars OUT of the local community each year for the corporation and shareholders. That is $250 million every ten years, or ONE BILLION dollars every 40 years. (Several local bankers have told me they dont want the Wal-Mart account because the service is high and their big deposits are wired out every night.)

By contrast, family business profits stay in the local community. Local city fathers and Chambers of Commerce have been shortsighted. They’ve seen only the benefits (promises?) of the invading corporation. Costs and debits in the accounting are all but absent. Indeed, some costs and debits cannot be quantified on a standard balance sheet.

Rather than sacrificing local merchants to international corporations, local leaders could instead seize upon similar local opportunities and potentials which international corporations so regularly exploit. Yet it would be different in two significant ways. First, the scale and pace would likely be less grandiose. They would start small and grow carefully. Invading mega-corporations usually dominate the town and county in a short five years. Secondly, local residents have a vested interest in preserving the environment for their children and grandchildren. Greater care would be given to the impact such developments would have on the local environment. Instead of one $500 million plant, local city fathers might determine to build one $150 million plant every ten years, and end with three plants of modest size, greater capacity, flexibility and conducive to local wealth and health. (Or ten, $15 million specialty plants.) Unlike international corporations with no affection for any ‘place,’ county leaders are unlikely to strip the assets of their rural community and desert it if profits lag a few years.

With corporate money, employment and propaganda, rural towns and countrysides lose control of their local property. The ghost-remnants of corporate railroad and coal towns are still with us. Some of us will live to be spooked by the ghosts of current ‘chicken towns’ and ‘paper-mill towns,’ now ruled and controlled by international outsiders with bought-and-paid-for local opportunists. The Agrarian way is better. It does not hide behind the shibboleth and enshrined libertarian-internationalist altar of ‘free-trade.’ It does not reduce economic morality to price, or strip economics of human affections and moral obligations.

No, we are not as obligated to pump profits to the Chinese military, Mexican ‘businessmen,’ or various foreign warlords, as we are to our families and neighbors. Indeed, if we were, we would do far more harm than good. Nor do we believe (like Gary North, George W. Bush, and the Wall Street elite) that salvation proceeds from economic and technological messiahs. Progress is a far more complex moral and cultural substance. Progress does not reduce life to economic and technological statistics. “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life does not consist of that which he possesses.” (Mk 15:7) Agrarianism champions a localism that reveres Place, Family and Community—those whom we prefer with a high sense of moral obligation, and with whom we seek communion and true Covenant – all but extinct in today’s Modernism.

Nor will we win the loyalty and affection of our countrymen with mere political and constitutional philosophy. We must not simply rail against the shamefulness of the modern status-quo. We must demonstrate how our vision of ‘the good life’ calls us not only to ‘abjure the realm’ of modernism, but to cultivate new and superior affections in local and neighbourhood economies. We must learn anew what our pre-modern fathers knew – diverse economies which included a healthy degree of self-sufficiency in landed property, an active bartering mentality of help and service to our neighbours, and an affectionate preference given to our local merchants. Otherwise, we are suckered to become contented and dependent proletariats, and like the modernists, our families will be altogether swallowed by the consumerist money economy. Increasingly, may it not be so among us. We must learn not only to out-think, but to out-live ‘those people.’

by David E. Rockett Article originally appeared in The Agrarian Steward, Vol. II, #6