FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Buzz saves China
Big business will destroy farming around the world
by Hamish MacAulayDear President Jiang Zemin:
If this letter actually gets through your legions of communist bureaucrats and secret agents, you probably are wondering what on earth a farm implement dealer from Red Deer, Alberta is doing writing a letter to the president of China. Well, your predecessor there, Deng, was the lucky recipient of a few of my ideas on what you call agrarian reform. Now that you boys have finally come around to the right way of thinking, you can use my advice on how to go about privatizing the means of production.
Here in Alberta we have a tough time pronouncing agrarian, but we know all about reform and how it should really work. I mean, even the toughest conservatives are tickled pink to hear you guys are going entrepreneurial. As a successful small businessman, I've got a few ideas on what you fellows should be doing about that, but that's another letter.
Like I always do, I'll get straight to the point. I keep up on events out your way. The information isn't always accurate, but my latest intelligence says you plan to privatize your collective farms by simply turning them over to the party-faithful middle-managers who are already in control. I have to say that obedient bureaucrats who are good at party politics do not make the best of farmers. Great farmers are made when they are working for the benefit of their great-grandchildren. That's when you get hard-working, innovative, independent comrades who can feed one billion mouths.
You probably think this is just another case of western cultural imperialism, but I am talking from experience. North America is destroying its farming sector and its democracy by throwing the heritage of the family farm to the dogs and replacing it with corporate farming. Oh, it looks like it's working out okay right now, but the seeds of a dark future reside in the granaries of big business.
As a communist, you may not be aware of the intricacies of the capitalist system. Fortunately, you have an experienced observer like myself to explain that capitalism actually has a few warts of its own. Big business, whether it is making cars or growing barley, only looks at creating short-term profits. Just like The Party, you have to keep those shareholders or party members happy at every turn. Unfortunately, good farming isn't a quarter-to-quarter business. It's a long-term thing that happens when people believe that the land is theirs to cherish and pass on to their sons and daughters.
Now that we know the great farming culture of China would become the world's largest communist experiment, it's unfortunate Marx wasn't a farmer. In North America the means of agriculture used to be in the hands of the worker, the workers happened to be called farmers. Today a lot of interesting types such as gun owners and journalists keep telling us that they are democracy's protectors, but farmers are the only true protectors of the democratic way.
That protection is disappearing now that corporations and their friends the banks are buying up farms left, right and center. It shouldn't matter what political stripe you are, if you understand anything about human nature, you know that putting your most important economic sector in the hands of middle-managers - communist or capitalist - is just asking for trouble. If you don't listen to me, and let these guys destroy your farming sector, please remember, it was "Buzz" Angus who told you so.
Yours in the revolution,
Stanley "Buzz" Angus
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