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MLT Newsletter

April 1987


A STOLEN SPRING MORNING
Sally Kaufman

The wind was cold, hut it was a bright sunny day when my sister-in-law and I headed for the woods, leaving children and husbands behind. Our goal was a small patch of watercress in the stream that curls itself through the woods and swamp to the Black River.   Now that watercress has a history.  Being a town girl I had many Eden-like dreams of what country living was about.  One of those was a clear cold stream complete with all the watercress we could eat growing along its banks. When we moved to Bangor there was the stream, but no watercress. For three springs I started pots of watercress which we then carried to the stream, and carefully sunk them into the dirt at the edge of it. Each summer high waters carried the plants away to garnish some other family’s lunch table. To make a long story short, we eventually found two large patches of watercress where tree roots had caught the plants and held them. One was deep in the swamp and since I never was very accomplished at hummock-hopping I opted for the more accessible patch.

We moved over the soft ground, stepping on branches and humps of grass to avoid sinking into the mud. The watercress was still small, but there it lay, suspended in the clear cold water. We carefully nipped enough to spark our dinner salad. Our gift to the woods had been accepted, made its own, and now held the promise of an abundant return.

Through the tree branches the sun winked, beckoning us on. We decided to see what other treasures the woods could yield. Sure enough there was witch hazel covered with tiny yellow buds. And below them were the beginnings of a yellow glow where the lowland is covered with marsh marigolds.

Heading up toward drier ground we found hepaticas in bloom, bright dots of blue and white against the brown of fallen leaves. There were May apples unfurling their bright green umbrellas. And the final surprise was a clump of partridgeberry with several red berries that the birds hadn’t yet found. Soon I must go back to see what new treasures spring will bring.



Welcome to the spring Newsletter. This issue focuses on reviews that are pertinent to MLT concerns. Maynard Kaufman opens with reviews of Beyond Oil and Future Work. Bob Applegate reviews Paul Gilk’s Nature’s Unruly Mob. Bob lives on a 58 acre fruit farm near Kalamazoo, is a member of Organic Growers of Michigan, and writes OGM’s Newsletter.

Sally Kaufman, Editor

BEYOND OIL:The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades.  John Gever, Robert Kaufman,David Skole and Charles Vorosmarty.  Baflinger Publishing Company. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986.


We have not heard much about the energy crisis for several years. Low prices for oil have allowed us to become complacent, and this complacency has been reinforced by the illusion of prosperity which the Reagan administration has created. The oil shortages of the 197Os resulted im more energy efficiency and some conservation while world oil production continued to increase.

In reviewing these conditions, the authors of Beyond Oil suggest that the energy crisis is still with us and that its present form is a “crisis of abundance” (p. 27) as it generates a dangerous complacency. Thus the first two chapters of the book challenge the attitude of technological optimism so prevalent in our society today. As these introductory chapters review our declining resource base they focus on the refutation of cornucopians such as Julian Simon. Here and throughout the book the authors show that wishful thinking about energy production must he disciplined by awareness of what they call “energy profit ratios.” Net energy production decreases as more energy is required to drill deeper wells.

Beyond Oil generally verifies the projections about oil production made by M.K. Hubbert in 1956. Hubbert evolved a bell-shaped curve of domestic production which showed that the twentieth century is unique as the oil century. Oil was commercially important since about 1920 and domestic reserves will be virtually depleted by about 2020. And in fact domestic oil production did peak about 1970--midway between these dates. World oil production is expected to peak about 2000 and will be increasingly expensive as demand exceeds supply.

In the central part of the book, chapters 3 and 4 explore the correlations between economic growth and energy availability. In these chapters the authors demonstrate that just as economic growth was accompanied by increasing energy use, so economic contraction will accompany constraints in energy supply. The authors challenge conventional economic thinking as they argue that actual physical availability of resources determines price rather than the reverse. These chapters reinforced the main hypothesis of the book, that “the supply of fuels and other natural resources is becoming the limiting factor constraining the rate of economic growth” (p. 9). The authors suggest that with energy conservation measures and some renewable fuel supplies in place the GNP will begin dropping shortly after the turn of the century and that the decline would be more precipitous if renewable energy sources are not phased in.

Beyond Oil is unique in the very considerable emphasis it places on the prospects for agricultural production relative to energy. As in the case of cheap oil, agricultural surpluses have distracted public awareness of how threatened our future food supply really is. In chapters 5 and 6 the authors explain how the use of fossil fuels has increased farm output since about 1940 and simultaneously degraded the natural systems on which agriculture depends. There is evidence that productive capacity in agriculture is saturated with fossil fuels. During the 197Os farms used 50% more energy and increased productivity only 30%. (p. 152).

Fossil fuels have contributed to increased agricultural productivity as tractors replaced horses so each farm could produce more for the market, as chemical fertilizers increased crop yields, as fossil fueled irrigation pumps boosted yields, and as chemical pest control methods protected crops. But the ways in which these increased yields were achieved simultaneously diminished organic matter in the soil, reducing its inherent productivity and leaving the soil open to more erosion. In other words, the use of fossil fuels has generated an artificially high level of productivity in agriculture which has damaged physical and ecological systems. Thus , when the fossil fuel subsidy is removed productivity will likely be lower than it was before the subsidy while the population to be supported will be greater.

Beyond Oil reminds policy-makers, and all of us, that we face some important choices. The final chapter spells out some of these choices and trade-offs. The main choice is between a hard path in energy development, with emphasis on nuclear power, and a soft path with emphasis on renewable energy sources. The authors recommend a soft path and with it a transition to organic farming methods. But since all tillage systems create problems, the authors emphasize the long term value of backyard gardening and of tree crops--what we call permaculture.




FUTURE WORK: Jobs, Self-employment and Leisure after the Industrial Age.  James Robertson. Universe Books, New York, 1985.

In Future Work, James Robertson does two things very well. First, he helps the reader recognize that work was generally recognized as employment only since the industrial age evolved during the past couple centuries. Second, he reviews social and economic trends which reflect changing attitudes about work and point to the possibility of “ownwork.”

Robertson’s discussion of future work is placed in the real life context of increasing unemployment in the present. What possibilities for work are implied by rising levels of unemployment? Answers to this question are shaped by three visions of the future which Robertson calls “Business as Usual,” “Hyper-Expansionist” or HE, and “Sane, Humane, Ecological,” or SHE. These scenarios were originally developed in Robertson’s fine book of 1978, The Sane Alternative, and Future Work continues its argument.

“Business as Usual” is the vision which continues to dominate political thinking as politicians vie with each other to provide jobs and more jobs to bring us back to the full employment of the good old days. And of course this is the vision of organized labor. Even though the power of organized labor is diminishing, the “Business as Usual” vision remains a powerful influence in our society as it carries on the traditional values of the work ethic which evolved with the industrial age. People are expected to find work in jobs which pay them money to purchase the goods and services they need and want. Money is essential and central as it mediates between production and consumption. Welfare is tolerated as a temporary aid for the unfortunate people who are between jobs, but everyone is expected to have a job.

Both HE and SHE visions differ from the “Business as Usual” view of the future in that they do not expect to see full employment again. The “Hyper-Expansionist” or HE vision is of a high technology future in which there would be a minority of highly skilled workers while the unskilled “drones” are given leisure to consume goods and services. The HE future of work is very appealing to technological optimists and to many industrial leaders. According to Robertson, “these people will be putting the space colonies into orbit, installing and monitoring the automated factories, managing the nuclear power stations, running the psychiatric institutes and genetic laboratories, operating the communications networks, and carrying out all the other highly skilled tasks on which a super-industrial society will depend” (p. 14). The prosperity brought on by this high technology is expected to pay for a growing leisure society.

There are, of course, some problems and flaws in this high technology HE future. It requires a hard energy path with heavy reliance on nuclear energy and the more authoritarian and centralized political system that implies. Robertson also suggests that, given the work ethic in our society, “a leisure society would automatically transform itself, at least to some extent, into an ownwork society” (p. 25). As Kurt Vonnegut showed in his early novel, Player Piano, a life without meaningful work is a meaningless life.

“Ownwork” is the term Robertson coined to characterize the essential feature of a SHE future which is “Sane, Ecological and Humane.” “Ownwork” denotes activities by which people choose to produce their own goods and services locally and directly without the mediation of the money economy. Production in this informal economy is primarily for use rather than for exchange. The SHE vision of the future also includes an emphasis on leisure. Like work, leisure is self-organized in a SHE future. The distinction between work and leisure is blurred as leisure activities shade into useful work. But just as work is not so commercially oriented in a SHE future, so leisure is not the consumption of goods and services produced by the leisure industries.

Robertson argues the case for ownwork in a SHE future largely as an alternative to employment as automation is replacing human labor. But in the light of studies such as Beyond Oil a future of ownwork may emerge out of necessity rather than by choice as the cost of energy rises and leads to economic recession. The wisdom of choosing ownwork and of developing the institutions which make it possible, before it becomes necessary, can be brought into focus by considering a world without oil. Oil companies will have capital to invest, and some will move into agriculture, as Tenneco has already done. Human muscle now does less than .17% of the work done in our economy (Beyond Oil, p. 80.) When the oil is gone more work will be done by human muscle, and if corporations own the means of production much work in the future will be done by hired hands. Thus a future of ownwork, which could preserve the American values of independence and self-reliance, presupposes that people have access to productive assets, and especially land. Robertson repeatedly emphasizes the need for community land trusts so that people without capital would have access to land (pp. 51 and 177.)

The chapters in Future Work are organized into four major parts. The first part, “What Comes after the Employment Age,” has already been discussed.

Part 2, “Changing Perceptions of Work,” reviews the evolution of the work ethic as work took the form of employment during the past two or three centuries. An important aspect of this process has been the higher prestige attached to the outside jobs held by men as compared to the domestic work women did as they were enclosed in the home. The fact that this sexist division of labor is challenged by the women’ s movement opens interesting possibilities. On the one hand, as more women seek and find employment there is growth in the formal economy where services such as food preparation and child care are purchased with the woman’s wages. But on the other hand, as this process occurs on one level of society during a time of reduced overall employment opportunities, more men and women on another level of society are motivated to explore possibilities of ownwork in the informal economy. Also, as more men are choosing ownwork over employment, something like the feminization of work” (p. 87) is beginning to develop and the outside job loses its prestige.

In Part 3, “The End of the Employment Empire,” the transition to a post-industrial future with a larger percentage of ownwork is discussed with reference to its impact on labor, money, politics and government. In this part of the book Robertson clearly shows how ownwork is the key to the process of decentralization. Increased levels of ownwork are also essential in the transition to soft energy paths. These are basic planks in a Green Party platform, and most Green theorists emphasize growth in the informal economy and less dependence on commodities. These emphases both reflect and reinforce the growth of personal empowerment.

Finally, on Part 4, “Practicalities of the Transition,” Robertson gives evidence to show that the shift to ownwork has already begun. In the immediate future, of course, we will continue to see a mixture of jobs, leisure, and ownwork. Certainly more and more aspects of a HE future are already part of our present reality. But in the long run the values, social institutions and economic structures of the HE and SHE futures are incompatible and mutually exclusive. In her great novel, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy has given us a full-bodied vision of HE and SHE futures, and how they are in conflict.

There may be a trend toward ownwork, but a full-fledged SHE future is by no means inevitable. Robertson recognizes that a future of ownwork will be resisted-”because ownwork will imply an increase in personal and local autonomy in a political as well as an economic sense, the transition to it will also be resisted by those with a vested interest in the existing processes of representation politics and bureaucratic government.” (p. 144.) But he holds out the hope that the prospect of breakdown will appear more likely as more people liberate themselves from total dependence on employment and from dependence on the commodities produced by employed labor.

Maynard Kaufman


Nature’s Unruly Mob: Farming and the Crises in Rural Culture. Paul Gilk. The book is printed as a special issue of the North Country Anvil, No. 53, Fall 1986. Millville, Minnesota.

Gilk has packed into 75 pages an unyielding, unnerving, unswerving indictment of most everything the good ole U S of A mythologizes as sacred: urban civilization, nuclear family, Christian religion, science and technology, free enterprise, and belief in growth and future. You name it, he zocks it!

To Gilk, our hope of salvation is the rebuilding of rural America. Meanwhile rural America goes down the drain of factory-type farming labeled as “progress”.   Jethro Tull started us down the road to rural oblivion with a cultivator and planter that made row farming on a mechanized scale possible. And big industry and big chemicals have taken us from there... every farm a factory!

What was once the heart of Jeffersonian democracy and the body of the beginnings of American culture passed with the rural exodus to the cities. The folk culture, the crafts, the ingenuity, the ties of life to nature have been torn apart. To regain our balance as a nation and as a people-to reconnect, we must find ways of repopulating rural America. And we must regain that mystical contact with nature-which is with life instead of a headlong rush toward industrial destruction and nuclear death.

Gilk makes a frontal assault on our most cherished national myth of continued progress. And then he turns around and supplies his answer: “reform by retrogression”--in other words-back to the future. Wow! He advocates a deliberate slowing down of technology and industrialization. Science and technology would be applied to the necessity of living within our natural resources, such as solar, wind, wave energy. And more importantly, we would actively rebuild rural population from the existing 2% to 20%. How?

Small farming would again become the means rather than the exception in agriculture. The calories of energy required for production would once again be in line with the calories of food energy produced. Gilk’s vision is that we would have rural communes or groups of family units living and working together (the sixties revisited?). Apparently this would be made possible by some kind of communal homesteading type act.

In 75 pages one cannot expect a great deal of detail. And it is always easier to deal with the reality of the past and present than to describe a plan for the future. My own real criticism is an agreement with the introduction by Jack Miller that Paul Gilk packed a great deal-perhaps too much-into a short space.

Gilk has a way with words. He writes with fire in the belly. A reader may be shocked but he reads! To write this review, I underlined as I read. And then underlined his ideas again. And I found the whole book underlined. “Packed” is the right word.

It is also worthy of note that Gilk believes that the concept of “Land Trust” will mean much to the future continuance of rural populations, pointing out the flexibility possible with the trust instrument.

Bob Applegate



ACTIVITIES: PRESENT AND FUTURE

Two members of our Board of Directors, Maynard Kaufman and Swan Huntoon have been meeting with others to plan for the organization of Southwest Michigan Greens. To begin with the main activity will be a Green Politics Reading Group, but some of the group’s organizers anticipate more practical and political activities.

The Green Politics Reading Group is open to all interested persons. The first meeting is scheduled for May 18 at 7:30 in the Wesley Foundation on the WMU campus in Kalamazoo. A film in which James Robertson, Marvin Harris and Hazel Henderson discuss and evaluate various “Post-Industrial Futures” will be shown along with a general introduction to the purpose of the Reading Group. The book to be discussed at the June meeting, Green Politics by Spretnak and Capra, will be available.

On June 14 from 1 to 4 in the afternoon there will be a workshop on Permaculture and Household Food Systems. The Workshop will be at the Self Reliant Homestead on North Westnedge. The Workshop will be conducted by Jonathan Towne, Swan Huntoon, Maynard Kaufman, and Ignacio Villa from the Tillers Program, and will include a tour of the Homestead by Len Chase.

There is a fee of $8 and a limit of 15 persons in the Workshop. 

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