What ever happened to the Ideal of Jeffersonian democracy?

[dawgman]

Was it a myth?

Was it out of sync with a modernizing world?

Was it killed (as a prof of mine, a long time ago, hypothesized) by corporate America?

He thought that with the advent of agricultural stations and genetic engineering and modern farm equipment that the small farmer had no choice but to die out. Selling seed to farmers used to be a one time gig, after the agriculture stations taught those who grew seed corn comercially to make the seed corn sterile (so you couldn't buy it once and then use the offspring to plant next year),this forced the small farmer to buy seed corn every year. After this came the advent of various new forms of farm equipment which led to more product being grown which meant that the price of corn, wheat, whatever dropped which forced them to grow more in order to maintain the same level of profit. And of course all of these improvements were beyond the means of the average farmer. So they financed everything. THey got into the kind of debt (see McMansion) which could lead to disaster with the smallest hic-up.

So whatcha think?

[BadFaith]

1. It doesn't fit into any category

It wasn't a myth, because much of the Jeffersonian Ideal did in fact exist. Not entirely, of course, but it's worth remembering that the anti-Federalists had completely obliterated the Federalist Party by 1824. Jefferson's election, as well as the "Virginia Dynasty" (Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe) brought about an alliance between Southern agrarians and Northern city dwellers, an alliance that grew to be the dominating coalition of the Democratic Republican Party (in 1828 the Democratic Party). And because up until the 1860s the DP was for all intents and purposes the ONLY political party with any power, that coalition was itself the dominant interest in American politics. In an ironic twist, after the Democratic Party was torn apart at the seams over slavery, it was Lincoln who took up the mantle of Jefferson's political ideals.

It wasn't until the rise of "corporate personhood" (that is, corprations were given the same rights as citizens) that Jeffersonian Democracy started to wane. By the time of the McKinley Adminstration corporate interests had a firm hold on the Presidency, and the role of corporations in our society was a hotly contested issue of that day. So much so that Theodore Roosevelt, who was McKinley's VP and successor after the assassination, left the Republicans to form the Bull Moose Party essentially because the Republican Party had abandoned its Jeffersonian roots. It wasn't really until FDR and the triumph of the Trade Union movement that Jeffersonian Democracy started making its slow comeback.

I don't follow the technology argument, as that implies there is a labor cieling in agriculture. Frankly, I'm not sure if there is or if there isn't, but the same argument was made concerning manufacturing automation, implying a labor cieling, and the predictions didn't materialize.

[dawgman]

2. It was a History of American science and

this was just a five or six sentence of a 12 week course. Honestly I think the guy taught straight from his Phd thesis (not that that is bad). He spent essentially 12 weeks (5 credit quarter course) lecturing on the relevance of his "geo-political matrix." It was a great course and really made sense at the time. As the years go by my memory betrays me more and more.

Must admit I am not following the "labor ceiling" thing. could you elaborate?