Generally speaking (and i say that because there will always be numerous exceptions to which one can point) the Jews of eastern Europe were not farmers before they immigrated. Small scale market gardening, dairy and livestock farming would have been practiced by Jews who surrounded Jewish enclave villages, but they had little reason to leave, having a more or less assured income providing kosher foods. A great deal of immigration among eastern European Jews and many of the "forty-eighters" was made up of townspeople and city dwellers. In most cases, one needed a certain at least modest degree of prosperity to afford to immigrate (one needed the passage money and what we call a grub-stake), and among these people, the skilled craftsman was the most likely candidate. Poles who emmigrated most often fled the iron fist of the Russians, or the indifference and exploitation of the Prussians and Austrians--all three of which crushed uprisings ruthlessly and as expeditiously as possible. The Poles rose against their "masters" with what must have been for those masters alarming regularity. Even among the Pans (the Polish equivalent of the baronage), poverty was common, and i doubt that many Polish farmers could afford to emmigrate. Members of old aristocratic families not affiliated with one of the conquerors (such as the Czartoriskis or the Radziwills) often found it expedient to emmigrate quickly after a failed uprising, and skilled workers from the towns and cities were often their recruits in the failed uprisings who emmigrated as well. A great many factors affected who emmigrated and why. For example, the Empress Catherine II was actually German, and had settled a great many Germans in the Ukraine. But from the era of her brutal and reactionary grandson, Nicholas (whom she had taken into her apartmenst to raise "by hand") onward, these ethnic Germans were suspect in the eyes of the government--especially to Nicholas, who demanded that all Russians be Orthodox, but failed at imposing it on much of the German population of the Ukraine. Those emmigrants would often have been successful farmers.
By and large, although not necessarily with intent, European nations exported their troubles or drove out their skilled farmers and craftsmen. Especially among the Germans after 1848, emmigrants were skilled workers or experienced factory hands, among whom the Socialists were better represented and organized than in any other European nation. Prussians, of the true, east German variety, who emmigrated were usually ambitious farmers, who could make no headway against the ensconsed Junker class and against the poverty of the farm land. The Irish who emmigrated were usually successful tenant farmers who could afford it, or the refugees of any of their numerous abortive uprisings.
Once again, it is very difficult to give a simple answer, because so many factors went into the decision to emmigrate.
Setanta
Thanks, Set. What seems to be driving emigration today with the social classes of peoples in your examples? From South and Central America, for example? It seems like a repeat of the European experience. Is North America repeating the mistakes made in Europe?
BBB
Walter Hinteler wrote:
And it's most certainly so that I'm not so well-read in US academic literature to have noticed that liberalism is equaled there to socialism and social-democratic as well.
You are quite correct. That, in part, is what I was trying to say. The word and the image of socialism has a bad odor here - even among people who hold political ideas and advocate political programs that would be called Socialistic or Social Democratic in Europe. Interesting in that many here have ancestors who left Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia and other places, in part, because of the suppression of Socialist movements in their former countries. There were other factors operating as well, but many of these ancestors identified themselvers with socialist movements in their former countries, and when they arrived here.
How, over successive generations this identification was lost or changed is an interesting question for speculation. I believe the principal factor in this change was the rapid rise, socially and economically possible for immigrants who had the foresight and expended the energy to pursue it.
georgeob1 wrote: The word and the image of socialism has a bad odor here - even among people who hold political ideas and advocate political programs that would be called Socialistic or Social Democratic in Europe.
Well, okay then.
Although especially this puzzles me a lot.
The libertarians have so much in common with social-democrats as conservatives have with them.
Blair is really the leader of the Labour Party in the UK .... and has even been the leader of Socialist Internationale for a period.
I'll never understand this.
Re: Setanta
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:Thanks, Set. What seems to be driving emigration today with the social classes of peoples in your examples? From South and Central America, for example? It seems like a repeat of the European experience. Is North America repeating the mistakes made in Europe?
BBB
Aunt Bee, now you're confusing me--current immigration undoubtedly has an economic motive, although a bounty of available land is not longer a factor. I can't for the life of me understand what you mean about the mistakes of Europe in regard to immigration. Europe comes very late to the immigration arena, compared to North and South America--where it has always been a strength in the nations. You'd need to make clearer to me what you mean for me to speculate on such a question.
Re: Setanta
Setanta wrote:BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:Thanks, Set. What seems to be driving emigration today with the social classes of peoples in your examples? From South and Central America, for example? It seems like a repeat of the European experience. Is North America repeating the mistakes made in Europe?
BBB
Aunt Bee, now you're confusing me--current immigration undoubtedly has an economic motive, although a bounty of available land is not longer a factor. I can't for the life of me understand what you mean about the mistakes of Europe in regard to immigration. Europe comes very late to the immigration arena, compared to North and South America--where it has always been a strength in the nations. You'd need to make clearer to me what you mean for me to speculate on such a question.
Set, I'm sorry I'm not informed enough to be clear in my question. I will try again.
I suppose changing ownership of land was achieved in Europe by revolution and the spoils of war rather than land reform. The only other event I can think of that enabled the lower classes to acquire land was following the Black Plague. The shortage of laborers, especially skilled craftsmen, increased their value and earnings. Some were able to purchase small patches of land. Also, the cooperative trade guilds improved the economic condition of some so they could also buy land.
I was comparing this to the lack of land reform in so many countries in Central and South America. The huge gap between rich and poor and the monopoly of land ownership by a wealthy few. You had mentioned how land reform has the potential to prevent revolutions. Is this a cause of emigration from those countries to North America?
BBB
It may well be, in that "peasants" in central and South America have little prospect to gain any significant acreage. The problem of land in central America, though, was made painfully clear by Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua in the 1920s and -30s--he told the peons that they ought not to plant cash crops (coffee, pineaple, bananas, etc.) until they had planted the corn and beans and squash to feed themselves. This is why American investors in the produce of those countries complained to Hoover, who sent the Marines in to hunt him down. Hence, the left wing revolutionaries against the Somoza regime called themselves Sandinistas. The Marines never caught Sandino, even though they were there from 1927 to 1933, but they set up Somoza and the National Guard, and Somoza set up a right-wing dictatorship.
Economic injustice, whether in the form of land-ownership, tenantry, exploitation of factory workers, or the exploitation of small holders, is a common theme in central and South America. As stable governments form in the region, these issues are usually addressed through legislation. But large gaps still exist between the traditional land owning families--the plantation owners--and their labor or their tenants.
My remark about land ownership and revolutions is not that it prevents them, although that is a reasonable proposition. Rather, i was pointing out that at a point at which the redistribution of land creates a successful land-owning peasantry, you will see the rise of a conservative political bloc which has a stake in the end of revolution and the ratification of their ownership. The revolutionary government in France attempted to create a liquid credit exchange system (a monetary basis for their money) with the use of assignats, or receipts for tracts of land carved up from land, most of it taken from the Church, the rest from forfeited estates of the nobility. The monetary system failed miserably, but the natural working of a commodity exchange market put viable tracts of land (viable in the sense of large enough to yield a profit) into the hands of a great many peasants, and gave them the incentive to support a reactionary government such as the Directory, which had as its purpose the end of the revolution and the ratification of the gains of the middle class.
Stalin created a bogey-man, the Kulaks, a vaguely-defined monster of exploitative land-owning peasants which never actually existed (the land-owning peasants did, but not as a fearsome middle class of exploitative capitalists). The principle opposition to Lenin in the 1920's had been the Socialist Revolutionary Party allied to the Peasant Party. In 1918, a member of that party, Fanya Kaplan (known to history as Dora Kaplan), shot Lenin, who survived, but never again showed the same vigor in party politics. Not long after she was executed, the head of the Petrograd Cheka (acronmyn from the Russian for: "Extraordinary State Committe for Security"--it was the agency established by Felix Dershinsky to hunt down enemies of the October revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the ancestor of the NKVD and its child, the KGB) was assassinated, and the "Red Terror" began, with nearly a thousand Socialists executed after "show trials" or no trials at all. It is estimated that more than six thousand people were murdered in the first year after those events.
Stalin took it a step further, to create an image of the land-owning peasant "Kulaks" as a reactionary enemy of the Revolution. There had been a failed uprising in 1905, by the Mensheviks, predecessors of the Bolsheviks (too long a story to explain that one), to which Peter Stolypin, the Prime Minister, responded with land reform. Kulak means literally, fist, and the kulaks were legendarily tight-fisted. Serfs were emmancipated in 1861, but were locked into a failed system of collective farms, with scattered family allotments and control of the collectives by the family elders. This was feudalism revisited, with the council of elders replacing the feudal lord. This was what the Stolypin reform sought to rectify. The new land owners became known as kulaks for their tight-fisted exploitation of the labor of their fellow, less fortunate peasants. Ironically, Stalin's collectivization program resembled nothing so much as the obshchina, the collective farms of the liberated serfs which had been the object of Stolypin's reform--with the council of elders replaced by the agricultural soviets (soviet means, roughly, a committee).
Stalin's branding of the new land-owners as Kulaks was a demonization of them, and allowed him to successfully break up the new land reforms pushed by the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Peasant Party. Literally millions of "Kulaks" died in forced immigrations, and millions more died of starvation in the first failed attempts at collectivization in lands totally foreign to them to which they had been sent.
Land ownership may prevent revolution, but it has been historically more significant in ending revolutions.
Chile
Chile is a good example of how far the oligarchy will go to prevent land reform.
The coastal areas of what is now Chile were brought under Spanish rule in the mid 16th century: Santiago de Chile was founded in 1541. In 1778 Chile became a captaincy-general within the Spanish Empire. In 1818 the Spanish settlers declared the country independent, and Bernardo O'Higgins, the local patriotic leader, became President. Following his resignation there was a long period of disorder. But from 1833 an oligarchy of landowners established a stable government which endured for a century.
Parliamentary government was introduced in 1891, but in 1925 a new constitution restored the presidential system. But intense class conflict led to a period of authoritarian rule from 1927 to 1932, followed by a restored constitutional regime under a succession of conservative presidents.
A demand for land reform fueled a political revolt. The modern period of Chilean politics began with the election of a liberal, Eduardo Frei, as president in 1964. Many reforms were carried out, and the hopes of the poor were raised, but not satisfied. This led to the election, on a minority vote, of the Socialist Salvador Allende in 1970.
The first set of initiatives to affect agriculture included the land reforms begun under Christian Democratic President Eduardo Frei in 1965 and extended under Socialist Salvador Allende, who was President from 1970 until the military coup of September 11, 1973. In 1965, 55 percent of Chile's agricultural land, measured by productive capacity, was held by about 5,000 large farms, while the remaining 45 percent of land was held in 238,000 smaller farms. This highly skewed distribution of land was progressively reduced under the Frei and Allende administrations.
Between 1965 and 1973, around 43 percent of Chile's land, including many of Chile's largest farms, was expropriated. Often, there was some form of payment to the owners. This, however, frequently took the form of long-term government bonds that were not inflation-indexed and that therefore lost value over time.
Although Augusto Pinochet's military government, which ruled from 1973 to 1990, partially reversed some of the land reforms, it also maintained an important process of land redistribution after it assumed power. After 1974, around 57 percent of previously expropriated land was distributed to approximately 50,000 land reform beneficiaries, while 28 percent of the expropriated land was returned to previous landowners and the remaining 15 percent was retained by the government or auctioned off. In total, an amount equal to about 25 percent of Chile's land was redistributed to land reform beneficiaries. Still, land reform fell far short of creating a class of viable small-scale farmers. In part, this was due to the military government's failure to provide reasonable operational assistance to the land reform beneficiaries. In part, it was due to the effects of both the fruit export boom that began in Chile in 1974 and a second set of reforms, the economic reforms adopted by the Pinochet regime.
Chile's return to democracy has been surprisingly calm, with few demands for retribution on either side. Pinochet's regime carried out a major liberalization of the economy which has given Chile unparalleled prosperity. In 2000 a moderate Socialist, Richardo Lagos, was peacefully elected President, marking an end to the divisions of the Allende-Pinochet period.
That greater mobility is a thing of the past, apparently. I'm afraid that time constraints mean secondary references will have to do here - all these from my
Class in America thread:
Quote:"Reality in the last half century has been quite different. [..] Comparing the incomes and occupations of 2,749 fathers and sons from the 1970s to the 1990s", a recent study showed that social mobility in America had actually decreased.
It is the combination of the unequaled amassing of wealth by the rich and the actual shrinking of the window of opportunity - however big or small it was in the first place - to join its ranks, that brings up the other taboo of American self-perception. "By the beginning of the century," [Gary Younge] quotes Kevin Phillips, the US "had become the west's citadel of inherited wealth."
(The assertion of decreased mobility here is based on a study by by Earl Wysong, Robert Perrucci and David Wright, "Organizations, Resources, and Class Analysis: The Distributional Model and the U.S. Class Structure".)
Thomas wrote:I don't care too much about income inequality, as long as poor can get ahead by being industrious, thriftful, and risk-taking. But this mobility is stalling and even declining, as the New York Times has documented in a series called
Class Matters. And not only that, the Wall Street Journal has confirmed this in a similar series. (
Subscribers only)This very much runs against the general spirit of their editorials, so observing them acknowledge it anyway strikes me as strong evidence that it's true.
nimh wrote:The Economist has an interesting survey this week:
Degrees of Separation.
This is from the accompanying editorial. [..]
America's great sorting out
The missing rungs in the ladder
Jul 14th 2005
From The Economist print edition
[..] The difference now is that the process is becoming slightly more clumpy: successful Americans are sticking together more than they used to. [W]orryingly, there has been a flood of statistics suggesting that income inequality is now reaching levels not seen since the Gilded Age in the late 19th century.
In 1979-2000, the real income of the poorest fifth of American households rose by 6.4%, while that of the top fifth rose by 70% (and of the top 1% by 184%). As of 2001, that top 1% nabbed a fifth of America's personal income and controlled a third of its net worth. Again, this would not necessarily be a cause for worry, as long as it was possible for people to work their way up and down the ladder.
Yet various studies also indicate that social mobility has weakened; indeed by some measures it may be worse than it is in crusty old Europe.
America fixed its class problem in the Gilded Age by becoming more meritocratic: money was poured into education, and ladders were created for young bright children to ease past the robber barons' doltish offspring. [But now] educated people are marrying each other and pouring money into their children's education to make sure they go to the same universities. That helps explain why American universities are so much better than their peers; but only one in 30 students at the most selective ones come from the poorest quarter of households. [..]
The growing income gap in the US
Why doesn't the US learn anything from the continuing value of the G.I. Bill and the higher education of the middle classes? ---BBB
Editorial: The Income Gap And The "Root Problem,"
By Jerry Politex - Bush Watch 8/1/05
"The income gap between the affluent and the wage-earners in the United States has widened as a result of the 'failing' education system and is a matter of concern, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, has said....The failure of the American educational system to ensure that children in middle school and high school were taught maths, science and technological skills they need to get good jobs was at the root of the problem, Greenspan told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee." (PTI)
Actually, our failure to educate the poor is the result of the root problem, the Bush Administration's war on the poor. Since he's been in office, Bush has worked to shift the tax burden and its resulting shortfalls from the wealthy to the poor and middle class, while he's dismantled or severely weakened programs in health, housing, and education specifically designed to help the poor. As any teacher will tell you, kids can't get educated if they come to school hungery, ill-housed, and dumbed-down.
nimh wrote:That greater mobility is a thing of the past, apparently. I'm afraid that time constraints mean secondary references will have to do here - all these from my
Class in America thread:
And yet the Economist piece you cite later on in your post goes to great lengths to assert that social and economic mobility of both the native born and immigrants in America is as high and strong as ever in our history. That is certainly my impression as well.
Quote:"Reality in the last half century has been quite different. [..] Comparing the incomes and occupations of 2,749 fathers and sons from the 1970s to the 1990s", a recent study showed that social mobility in America had actually decreased.
It is the combination of the unequaled amassing of wealth by the rich and the actual shrinking of the window of opportunity - however big or small it was in the first place - to join its ranks, that brings up the other taboo of American self-perception. "By the beginning of the century," [Gary Younge] quotes Kevin Phillips, the US "had become the west's citadel of inherited wealth."
(The assertion of decreased mobility here is based on a study by by Earl Wysong, Robert Perrucci and David Wright, "Organizations, Resources, and Class Analysis: The Distributional Model and the U.S. Class Structure".
I strongly suspect these were political pieces with a particular agenda in mind. Apart from the increasing wealth of top earners here there are no measured data that I have ever seen that would suggest otherwise. Moreover we has a very similar situation in the late 19th century with the development of a very wealthy class of entrepreneurs & financiers, coupled with a surge of immigration. Mobility increased as a result of these factors (and government policies as well). All of these conditions obtain today and there is no reason to expect a different result.
I have not read the NY Times & Wall Street Journal series to which Thomas referred. I do believe the mobility benefits (If that is the right term) attendant to WWII and Korea are wearing off as those generations here pass from the scene. In both cases we used conscript armies that had at least a significant measure of participation by elite classes and followed up with very generous educational benefits for veterans that were used widely with great effect. Popular war has been a leveler since Napoleon. These were such wars.
Beyond that observation, I strongly believe that social and economic mobility are as strong in this country as ever in our history, and the available facts support this thesis.[/quote]
nimh wrote:That greater mobility is a thing of the past, apparently.
You may be comparing apples to oranges in that post, nimh. George's claim was that social mobility is greater in America than in Europe, while the pieces I was quoting said that it was greater in the America of the 1970s than in the America of today. Both statements could be correct.
It is likely that both are indeed correct,
Much is made about the large and allegedly growing disparity between the incomes of the richest and poorest Americans. That and the far too many examples of corporate chieftains looting their public companies have become grist for the mills of those who would install more European-like mechanisms for the redistribution of incomes here. However it remains true that most Americans enjoy a physical standard of living that is better than that enjoyed by their Western European friends in corresponding segments of the economic ladders in their respective countries.
I find it odd that so often we are criticized in one breath for our wasteful consumption of resources and self-indulgent lifestyles, and in the next for our inattention to the economically deprived among us -- all by the same people.
The United States is a very competitive society which rewards and punishes its members for the choices they make relatively more than does Europe. As a result we are a sought after destination for immigrants from all over the world in search of a better life. Many find it here.
Europe employs more socialist forms of income redistribution, social safety nets, labor market regulation, etc. than do we. The U.S. pays for its system with a steep gradient of incomes and a system that rewards economically productive activity over other choices. Europe pays for its system with higher taxes, higher unemployment, slow economic growth, and greater government involvement in the lives of its people.
Both options are the evident choices of the respective nations, and no significant injury is done to either as a result of the choices of the other. It remains to be seen which choice yields better results and is more sustainable in the age which we are entering now, My bet is on the United States.
Well Set, it's true - I am predictable. Ya got me !
Good looking, even tempered, reasonably well-versed in my subject matter, moderately argumentative, but with sense of humor intact -- overall a good guy. But predictable!
I go along with one of those judgments . . .
