Subject: Re: Ethics in Agriculture (fwd)...Drucker (fwd)
From: [email-masked] (Larry London)
Date: 4 Jun 1994 14:26:52 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

From: Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup) <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list SUSTAG-L <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Ethics in Agriculture (fwd)...Drucker (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- 
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 1994 16:24:36-0400 (EDT) 
From:[email-masked] 
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked] 
Subject: Re: Ethics in Agriculture(fwd)...Drucker (fwd)

> > WWII brought many significant and irreversible changes in our social /
> > governmental / educational / research / financial / communications
> > infrastructures.  The common thread, according to Drucker (and he is
> > an acknowledged expert), was *new* ways of organizing human capital to
> > large scale goals.
>
> significant changes yes; whether they were irreversible or not is
> irrelevant; whether these changes are something that we can and
> should sustain is a relevant question,

I think your line of argument *presumes* that living on a small holding
is *automatically* a socially sustainable economic mode...my grandparents
left Italy and Lithuania before and after the turn of the century *precisely*
because they were being devastated by a larger scale economic system that
was "by passing" them...and deserate poverty was an irresistable impetus to
"go to America."

In fact, the pastoral life has a limited carrying capacity and the excess
is redundant...and obligated to move on to something else or starve.  The
question is (for them): where to go, what to do.  And ditto today for our
urban populations!

And from your other comments, I think we define "industrial ag"
differently...soybeans, cotton, corn, etc are commodities that must
be grown by systems that benefit from scale....tea roses must be
grown by specialty operations....above all: the market system
of today demands comformance to the system's rules.

> ......................and one that Drucker seems to
> have decided the answer is "No" based on my reading of "The Post
> Capitalist Society"  by the same Peter Drucker in 1993.  In this book
> Drucker argues that we are in the middle of a reoganization of
> society that is so profound that we can't know where it is heading.
> In these matters, the alleged expertise of Drucker is largely an
> irrelevant issue.

Well, I read "Post Capitalist Society" first, and dug out the others
because he referred to them here and there....I wanted to see why
he kept making references to things written so *long ago.*  And I
discovered that he was not recanting his earlier writings.  (Drucker
has been a significant thinker and contributer in the areas of
industrial management science...coining concepts that are commonplace today.)

But, I interpret Drucker's latest book is a significantly different
light than you....WWII and the Cold War delayed in time the Great
Questioning...today's discussions are a natural extension & continuation
of debate in the 1930's and not so _de novo_ brain storming....and just
as in the 1930's we could not know where where the Great Churning afoot
would take us, neither can we foresee it for ourselves today...the
World after 1939 underwent cataclysmic change and perhaps we will experience
unimaginable change again...more so...and I'm not referring to war in
*either* case.  War was a bitter catalyst...hopefully we won't go that
path again.

Drucker claims a number of things in his 1993 book:

        We have failed to form a unified identity at the level of nation...
        and have taken up "group identities" of various sorts...some
        being ethnic, but others not.

        Capitalism, socialism and communism (Marxism) remain dead issues
        as before, but the *market place* will continue to play a
        central role...

        All significant economies will be "western" in style...not
        because it is culturally superior, but because it has proven
        to be the most efficient available among competitors...or
        as the Japanese say: we will import all the smart ideas we can
        find and make them "japanese."  :^)

        New economic forces, such as Pension Funds, are groping their
        way to discover their social and economic *managerial* roles....

        Narrow discipline expertise is ascendant...and umbrella information
        coordination will dominate: wealth creation will depend on
        new information specialities...actual manufacturing capacity will
        remain at 40% GDP while the *number* of people employed in that
        area will continue to drop...paralleling the *earlier* evacuation
        of on-farm employment!

        Drucker also believes that *social* product has come to be *more*
        important than economic product...and our struggle is to plan,
        implement and develop that social product sector of the Post
        Capitalist Society....that it can be seen as a clean slate,
        given how great the changes ahead are likely to be.

        And where does he place agriculture?  :^)  For the most part,
        it did not warrant any serious mention...in other words, it's
        been a "settled issue" since at least WWII.  :^)

Now we may not look at it as settled...but he really pays no attention
to it.  Ag is an environmental issue, in the way that smoke stacks
and car exhausts are environmental issues...that's how the central
political forces in our societes see them...so that is the new reality.
Not so?  Then why does the EPA now chase ethanol emissions from
the stacks of Wonder Bread bakeries?  In 2020, will you have to have
a permit to bake a loaf of bread at home?

:^)

I highly recommend "Post Capitalist Society"...but continue to recommend
reading at least "The End of Economic Man"...if only to cast the current
book in historical terms...and to realize truly how much *revisionism*
has become our societal norm

Steve Modena   [email-masked]