Editor's note: When Stalin came to Casa Grande – Part 1 Previously published in The Prickly Pear. We recommend reading both essays in sequence or together. The history of this failed socialist experiment, the New Deal, is an enlightening one for Americans, as well as an insight into the importance of free market capitalism, the realities of human nature, individual sovereignty, and how progressive top-down policies It is also a historical indicator that reveals whether humanity will be destroyed. There are incentives and we need government power to move this forward. The parallels to America's current political, academic, and cultural climate are frightening.
Regarding the intellectual trends of the late 1920s and 1930s, American academia, as it is today, was steeped in collectivist thinking. Many intellectuals, writers, and others openly flirted with the fascism of communist Russia, Italy, and Germany.I strongly recommend it 3 new deals A comparison of similar trends in the United States, Italy, and Germany by Wolfgang Schivelbusch. The idea is Central planning was a better way to organize society And it should encourage human cooperation, rather than doing so through the free voluntary choice of markets and private property.
Only after Soviet communism started killing and starving people in large numbers, fascist regimes started doing the same, and at least a few people started having second thoughts. But many took the position that progressives take today. “True” socialism has never been attempted. They never ask themselves why it keeps failing and evolving into tyranny.
Various collectivist experiments were initiated by FDR and his brain entrusters. From cooperative housing For agricultural planning. In agriculture, there were attempts by government authorities to limit production, destroy crops to maintain prices, and give land to homesteaders and collective farms.in the case of Casa Grande Valley Farm is a serious attempt at collective farming on approximately 3,500 acres in the Arizona desert.
To be fair, they tried to deal with the farm crisis as best they could, but their lens through which they viewed the problem was a socialist lens, and so the picture that developed was that more than a million poor It became a collective solution to a pressing problem for farmers. .
The best researcher in this entire experiment received a Ph.D. A treatise by Edward Banfield that was later developed into a book. This book has long been out of print, but older copies have long been prized by scholars. Recently republished by the American Enterprise Institute. government project.
Banfield started out as an enthusiastic “New Dealer” but was crushed by reality and later turned conservative. He later became very famous for his criticism of urban planning. His most famous student, James Q. Wilson, was influential in his own right, contributing ideas about the “broken windows” police theory. He also has a great influence on Christopher Demuth, the current leader of “National Conservatism”.
Banfield's commentary is fascinating for a book that many would consider dry subject matter, and the story unfolds in Casa Grande, a sleepy farming community about 105 miles from Phoenix at the time. Ru. Fundamentally, it's the study of how humans cooperate, or don't cooperate.
Indeed, this program was set up to succeed, to vindicate the claims of central planners. Quite the opposite has been proven, and that is the enduring value of this story.
It was well-funded and supervised. The families were selected by a “professional'' sociologist.'', the first hint that they've stacked the deck for success. At its peak, 57 families worked on the cooperative farm.
Each person was provided with a new home like the one pictured above. It kept its uniform, had a screened porch for sleeping (in front of the air conditioner), multiple bedrooms, running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, and modern appliances. Each participant received a share of the co-op's profits.
The backgrounds of many of the participants, or “settlers'' as they are called, are austere, as shown below. Many lived in tar paper huts or tents. Many were families with children. Most became participants because they had previous experience in farming and farming was considered the best option for them under difficult circumstances. Unlike kibbutzim, they did not all have similar religious or philosophical motivations.
They were all paid more than decent wages for the time. Started in 1937, it was initially successful, but began to fail and was shut down after about six years. Most of the co-op members fell back into poverty.
Although Banfield's book was first published in 1951, he worked for the government and observed events firsthand, and many of the participants were still alive and experienced when he wrote his book. He was talking about.
What remained of the farm is now a new home and shopping mall. If you drove past Casa Grande today, you would never know it was there.
It's a long story about why the experiment failed, but the Pilgrims' experience provides an overview.
Everyone received a paycheck, whether they worked hard or not. It was like this No incentive to be special. People treat their money and time differently than other people's money and time. People have a special love for their newborn children, but they are also kind to others. Whether you were a cotton picker or an experienced mechanic, you were paid the same. There was no incentive to take on more difficult tasks or responsibilities. Everyone received equal pay. No one could move on because no one could be left behind. Still, someone has to provide order and organization so that people don't all run in different directions. Who decides this and how?
In the case of the Casa Grande Valley farm, there was a very experienced and dedicated “foreman” appointed by the bureaucracy, but he quickly got people wrong because he had to placate them and get them to do their jobs. I moved it in the opposite direction. It was like a typical homeowner's association, with infighting, petty power struggles, and a little bit of power that can cause chaos. The government began making decisions that were far removed from the situation on the ground, without consulting the “subjects'' and with no legitimacy. discovered that people cannot cooperate in a socialist structure..
Government officials were somewhat perplexed. Given the obvious economic improvements that have resulted, why couldn't rational people strive to continue that common good?
The real fundamental problem is: How can people cooperate with each other voluntarily and peacefully? In a market economy, it is all voluntary, there is an incentive to succeed, each person makes a trade precisely because he thinks it is best for him and his family, and the idealism of the “community” It's not for the sake of perspective.
One of the more evocative explanations of cooperation is the famous one: I pencil essay, This explains how complicated it is to make a simple pencil, yet the market coordinates the interests of people all over the world to make the pencil, and each one benefits from doing so. . Each does its own work without even knowing about the other partners in the production environment. Free housing and coercion are not necessary to involve people in the production process.
Tugwell wrote the foreword to his 1951 book, noting that the experiment failed “at a time when seemingly the chances of prosperity and success were greatest.” He continues, “…some in government were itching to create a real, living utopia, and thought that capitalist agriculture would be overthrown by the mere example of a successful group. There may have been some people,” he continued.
He went on to suggest that it failed simply because there weren't enough people to make it work. They have not evolved beyond selfish motives. He said, “It was a failed character.'' He did not explain which aspects of his personality he was referring to. It's as if people are saying my theory isn't good enough. If so, the experiment would have been a success.
This goes to the heart of the question of what human nature is. If we have to force people to behave, behave, or believe in a certain way, it probably goes against human nature. However, it is human nature to want to do better for ourselves and our families. Freedom allows humans to flourish. This is because conflicting self-interests can be reconciled without using force using market mechanisms.
Socialists continue to try to create a “new human being” by defeating the qualities they despise from people and replacing them with the qualities they want to believe in. That is why socialist experiments either fail or become totalitarian.
For Casa Grande Valley Farm, it was an expensive and educational experiment, but it didn't do much harm. The same cannot be said about what happened on collective farms in Russia, China and Ukraine.
It's a shame that so little has been written about this massive effort to change America and how it failed miserably. If the actual results of these programs were better known, perhaps our politicians would stop repeating the same mistakes. It was certainly a waste of money as the lessons were not learned.
The essence of the Casa Grande experiment is Progressives and conservatives have very different views of human nature. Conservatives want to improve humans from the inside out (generally through religion and civil society), while progressives want to use the blunt force of government to change humans from the outside in. It is believed that if you change your environment, you will also change. However, governments are organized forces and are the opposite of cooperation. People thrive on freedom and being left alone to live their lives.
What happened to Tugwell? He had serious problems with aspects of the welfare state, but after World War II he hit it off with fellow Progressive Party member Henry Wallace and supported the Progressive Party, and after that his theories clashed with reality. I continued my career in academia where I didn't have to. He passed away in his 1979 year.
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Image credit: Library of Congress
