Agriculturalism

Before the nineteenth century closed, industrial capitalism and agriculturalism came to a showdown.

The underlying motives of agriculturalism are obscure in the extreme: the agricultural sector as a source both of soldier-fodder and of cannon-fodder no longer enjoys the military importance it had in an earlier age of primitive and labor-intensive military technology; farmers and farmworkers are a numerically insignificant component of the electorate in all industrially advanced countries; agricultural production is an expensive and inefficient way of keeping the countryside well manicured for the delectation of the weekending or vacationing urban dweller; and the typical methods of subsidizing domestic farm production are very doubtful -- and in Europe largely unknown -- value in terms of promoting social objectives such as reduced income inequality, especially in these days of the stockbroker0landlord and the industrially employed part-time farmer. Nevertheless, agriculturalism has acquired a tenacious hold on policymaking, especially in the Common Market, where the Common Agricultural Policy is regarded as the foundation of the community even though it is badly in disarray ...

The first ideological struggle, that of industrialism versus agriculturalism, had already begun in the nineteenth century.

Agrarianism and agriculturalism do have common traits (most notably a reverence for the past, anticapitalism, and perhaps anti-industrialism; see below); yet, in contrast to agrarianism and in spite of what Brunet's definition might suggest, agriculturalism emphasizes agriculture not so much because of the latter's alleged edifying effects upon human beings, but because of the pivotal role farming supposedly plays in the French Canadian struggle for cultural survival: "L'attachement à la terre, que prêtres, juristes ou sociologues prônent avec zèle et intransigeance, n'est qu'un moyen au service de cette fin suprême: assurer la permanence de la nationalité coanadienne-française" (Maquoi 1972, 49).

Three phenomena have been identified as significant elements in the socio-economic structure of Quebec during Larose's lifetime: economic liberalism, agriculturalism, and egalitarianism.

In terms of declining agriculturalism, not far behind the five countries discussed above are three of the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Sweden), six other European countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Switzerland), and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.

By the first year of the Common Era (2,000 years ago) the globe was filled with humans living in one of five conditions depicted in FIGURE 41: (1) complex stratified agriculturalism, (2) simple peasant agriculturalism, (3) nomadic pastoralism, (4) general HFG, and (5) specialized HFG.

If, instead of grouping countries according to their degree of agriculturalism, we group them according to their degree of urbanization, it turns out that ...