34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.

Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.
Bob Komives
::

Robert Reich argued that, in order to arrive at a consensus for progress, we must acknowledge that the social and economic components of our national well-being are linked powerfully together. We must search for the right mixture of socialism and marketplace. This search is basic to resolving problems of food production and distribution. Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy have done an excellent job of pointing this out. While small, individually owned and operated farms tend to be the most productive, nations increasingly look to large, corporate farms (or in the case of some communist countries, communal farms). In poor countries with little industry, governments promote agricultural exports in exchange for foreign goods and services. In the process, self-sufficient farmers become undernourished wards of the state. In U.S. America the family farm seems endangered as more farmers go bankrupt and corporate farming expands. These are complex issues from which I will draw only a couple of points.

The socialized ethic that says everyone should have enough to eat comes in a heritage older than our own species. In our enthusiasm for marketplace, we should never forget that only more recently in the biosphere's evolution did we socialize the market into our culture. It is no more inconsistent for a nation that values the dynamics of its marketplaces to make sure that every citizen has enough to eat, than it is for a family to feed all of its members -even if some produce nothing for the marketplace.

Similarly, a nation should never forget that if it fosters either corporation or commune it fosters delegated socialism. There is nothing especially natural or inevitable about either. They exist through communal law and policy.

Where individual families produce enough food
..... (for themselves and nation)
..... and have not wrought havoc with the landscape, why substitute larger,
..... less efficient,
..... private corporations and state communes?
Since corporations are socialized creations of government,
..... there would be nothing un-American
..... in keeping them out of farming in the USA.
Since families are communes,
..... there was nothing uncommunistic
..... in reverting to family farms
..... in countries leaving the Soviet.
Of course,
..... the complement too is true.
..... Corporate,
..... communal,
..... and cooperative farms may be useful
..... where family farms cannot achieve
..... marketplace, social, and environmental goals.
There is irony in U.S. America
..... (and nations that follow its example)
..... where, in the name of free enterprise,
..... the most free of enterprises
..... (the productive family)
..... gets displaced by less efficient groups
..... that socialize risk and profit.
Communist countries displayed similar irony
..... imposing communal structure
..... that more mimics impersonal corporation
..... than traditional communism of family.

||

We can see human culture as an arena of continuously overlapping organizations, ranging from small families up to associations among nations. Each organization is itself an organ of others. Each has a communal core where it determines how to distribute its wealth internally. Our arena can also be seen as an intricate web of edges through which organizations exchange wealth. At these edges, a marketplace can facilitate interchange. Core socialism and edge marketplace complement one another. The world and its nations need not choose between them. The world and its nations cannot choose between them. Rather, they can organize themselves so that both socialism and marketplace help to capture wealth nondestructively, distribute it fairly, and recirculate it repeatedly.

I sell fish.
You sell fish.
He sell fish.

We sell fish.
She sell fish.
They sell fish.

Upon a Cherry Table

Upon a Cherry Table

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table. ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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