Two Agrarianisms: Shared Roots, Divergent Paths
In the early 20th century, two distinct philosophical movements emerged in response to American industrialization: the Mid-American philosophy of the Ohio Institute and the Southern Agrarianism associated with the Vanderbilt-based 'Fugitives' and their manifesto I'll Take My Stand. Both criticized industrial capitalism's corrosive effects on community and land, and both valorized agrarian life. However, a comparative analysis reveals profound differences in their social vision, historical consciousness, and political implications. While Southern Agrarianism often leaned toward a conservative, romantic, and hierarchical defense of a pre-modern way of life, Mid-American philosophy was fundamentally progressive, pragmatic, and democratic, seeking not to retreat from modernity but to humanize it through agrarian values.
Philosophy of History and Social Change
The Southern Agrarians largely viewed history as a story of decline from a lost aristocratic, pastoral ideal. Their response was often elegiac and defensive, championing tradition for tradition's sake and expressing deep skepticism toward democracy, which they associated with leveling mediocrity. In stark contrast, the Mid-American philosophers held a more complex, evolutionary view of history. They acknowledged the losses brought by change but believed in the possibility of a deliberate future, built by communities applying practical wisdom to new conditions. They saw tradition not as an inheritance to be preserved unchanged, but as a reservoir of adaptive practices to be critically sifted and reinvented. For them, democracy was not the problem but the essential tool for navigating change justly.
- View of Technology: Southern Agrarians were often outright Luddites. Mid-American thinkers were critical but selective, advocating for 'appropriate technology' that served community ends.
- Social Hierarchy: The Southern vision was explicitly hierarchical (planter, yeoman, slave/sharecropper). The Mid-American vision was egalitarian and cooperative, rooted in the ideal of the independent farm family within a network of mutual aid.
- Race and the Agrarian Ideal: Southern Agrarianism was inextricably linked to the racial caste system of the Jim Crow South. Mid-American philosophy, while not free from the racial prejudices of its time, was grounded in a civic ideal that, in theory, included all members of the community, and its later practitioners actively engaged with the Civil Rights movement.
- Economic Model: Southerners idealized a quasi-feudal model. Mid-Westerners promoted democratic cooperativism and economic pluralism.
Metaphysical and Aesthetic Differences
These political differences reflected deeper philosophical divides. Southern Agrarianism was often allied with a literary and philosophical traditionalism, drawing on classical and Christian sources to defend a static, ordered cosmos. Its aesthetic was one of nostalgia and tragedy. Mid-American philosophy, drawing on pragmatism and process thought, viewed reality as dynamic, relational, and open-ended. Its aesthetic, as expressed in the Prairie School of arts, was one of hopeful construction and integration, seeking beauty in the functional and the communal rather than the aristocratic and the antique.
Enduring Legacies and Lessons
This comparison is crucial for understanding the full spectrum of American responses to modernity. The Southern Agrarian legacy, for all its flaws, contributed to a powerful critique of rootless consumerism and a defense of local culture. The Mid-American legacy offers a more viable and inclusive path forward: a vision of how agrarian values of stewardship, community, and skilled work can be translated into the structures of a modern, democratic society. It demonstrates that one can critique industrial capitalism without rejecting democracy, science, or social progress. For contemporary scholars and activists seeking a sustainable and equitable future, the Mid-American model provides a more robust intellectual foundation, precisely because it engages with the realities of change rather than fleeing from them. The comparison reminds us that the label 'agrarian' can hide radically different political and philosophical commitments, and that the fight for the soul of place-based philosophy is a fight over the future itself.
The Institute's archives contain several fascinating polemical essays from the 1930s debating the Southern Agrarians, showcasing a moment of intense regional self-definition in American intellectual history.