Operationalizing evil: Christian realism, liberal economics, and industrial agriculture

Agriculture and Human Values 19: 205–216, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Operationalizing evil: Christian realism, liberal economics, and industrialagriculture

Leland GlennaDepartment of Rural Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

Accepted in revised form January 22, 2002

Abstract. The Enlightenment marked a shift in moral debates away from notions of sin and evil toward themore secular concept of virtue based in reason. Perhaps the most notable example of such liberal thought canbe found in John Dewey’s 1934 A Common Faith, where he argues that people should set aside bickering overreligious differences and work in a utilitarian spirit to achieve public good through science. Hitler’s Germany,Stalin’s Soviet Union, the Chinese cultural revolution, and the Cold War’s threat of mutually assured destructionhave inspired philosophers and theologians to revive the concept of evil to explain atrocities too extreme to beincorporated into conventional understandings of virtue and reason. In their struggle to explain the enormity ofhuman capacities for destruction, they have replaced traditional religious definitions of evil with a more secularone: the construction and defense of a systemic contempt for life. Assuming that bad consequences are simplythe unintended result of good intentions, social scientists have resisted employing such a conception of evil.Persisting in this assumption may prevent us from seeing the perversity of the liberal economic justificationfor promoting and perpetuating destructive tendencies in the industrial agricultural system. This paper seeks tooperationalize a conception of evil and to apply it to policy debates surrounding the 1985 Food Security Actin the hope of evaluating our society’s inability to resolve social and environmental consequences generated byindustrial agriculture.

Key words: Agricultural policy, Christian realism, Critical theology, Economic rationality

Leland Glenna is a Research Specialist at the University of California at Davis, where he studies the roleof agricultural biotechnologies in university-industry relationships. After earning a M.Div. from the HarvardUniversity School of Divinity and a Ph.D. in Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri, he worked as aPost-Doctoral Associate and Lecturer at Cornell University’s Department of Rural Sociology.

Introduction

Liberal economic rationality has been Westernsociety’s primary governing principle for much ofthe past two centuries (Polanyi, 1944). The assump-tion behind this rationality is that market mechanisms,when freed from restrictions that derail the pursuitof self-interest, will promote public ends (Dryzek,1997: 102). Scientific rationality is the appropriate titlefor a secondary governing principle that assumes thatscientifically trained political planners must managethe economy to promote the public’s interest. In theUnited States, this political ideology, which becameinstitutionalized in the New Deal, has been calledProgressivism because of its origins in the ProgressiveEra of the first two decades of the twentieth century(Lash and Urry, 1987: 76, 167). Although thewelfare states of Western Europe did not carry theProgressive label, they shared the basic scientificmanagement principles (Lash and Urry, 1987: 76;

Bonanno, 1998; Habermas, 1970). Progressives (a.k.a.revisionist liberals, pragmatists, Keynesians) like JohnMaynard Keynes in Great Britain and John Dewey inthe United States assumed that the scientific methodcould provide the necessary disinterested perspectivein the policy arena to counter the self-interested drivein the economic one (see Dewey, 1934: 77).

Progressives became prominent managers of thenation-states political economy from the Great Depres-sion until the 1980s, when neoliberals,1 such asPresident Reagan in the United States and PrimeMinister Thatcher in Britain, drove them into retreat(Spoor, 1997; Bonanno, 1998). Now even progressiveeconomists like Paul Krugman (2001) defend theliberal economic rationality by arguing that the opposi-tion to neoliberalism “. . . has a remarkable trackrecord of hurting the very people and causes itclaims to champion.” What makes the emergenceof neoliberalism so baffling to Progressives is thatappeals to scientific evidence cannot undermine its

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popularity. Krugman (1994: xiv) once called it “oneof the wonders of the age” how the neoliberals couldconvince the public that more free markets can solvethe problems those free markets cause.

Oddly, it is this reliance on scientific evidencethat may be the Progressives’ greatest shortcoming.Believing that there are no transcendent conditionsor values by which we may declare right or wrong,only historically contextualized problems that mustbe solved, Progressives have hoped that science willsupplant religion as the foundation upon which tomake decisions (Hodgson, 1989: 32). Critical theor-ists have pointed to Progressives’ absence of concernfor more than material wellbeing in this program.Dahrendorf (1959, 1975), Marcuse (1964), andHabermas (1970) noted that Progressives lost touchwith broader issues of vocation and alienation whenthey accepted the idea that money could serve as asubstitute “. . . in the sphere of consumption, for thesatisfaction [workers] had lost in the sphere of produc-tion . . .” (Wiggershaus, 1994: 540). Lerner (1996)and Wuthnow (1992: 21) assert that the economy thatpromotes selfishness and materialism has left peoplelonging for purpose and meaning in life, and those whowould scientifically manage the political economyignore these metaphysical components of life.

Lerner (1996: 124–125) contends that neoliberals(comprised of extreme liberal economists and theChristian Right) in the United States have capital-ized on the “crisis of meaning” left by the scientificmanagers of the economy by combining patriotism,old-time religion, and liberal economics into a moraltraditionalism that they use to blame the Progres-sives for the individualism and selfishness that aredestroying social cohesiveness. According to Kintz(1997: 234–235), this right-wing politics attractssupporters because the neoliberal theocracy2 appealsto people on an emotional level. The blend of Christiandogma and emotional appeals has enabled the right tocoopt the religious discourse of prophecy.

The success of the right-wing strategy reveals thatProgressives have been wrong to think that debatesabout ultimate truth and the transcendence of right andwrong are mere holdovers from pre-Enlightenmentsociety. First, ideas about the lack of moral truthare based on faulty anthropological assumptions aboutthe relative isolation of individual cultures (Moody-Adams, 1997). Second, Kintz’s (1997) emphasis onthe conservative’s theocracy is important because itreveals that neoliberalism has managed to fill themoral-ethical vacuum left by Progressives. Economicrationality is especially well-suited to the theocraticagenda, because it is a religion. To explain how it waspossible for social benefits to emerge from a marketin which individuals pursue selfish interests, Adam

Smith drew upon a hybrid of Stoicism and Christianityto explain how God-ordained Natural Laws make themarkets work the way they do. As a result, Smithgenerated a theological model for explaining economicactivity (Glenna, 2002). Because policy makers oftenrely upon this theological model to interpret reality andmake policies, Progressives need more than empiricalevidence to counter it.

To challenge the neoliberal theocracy in the publicsphere, we need to add moral and ethical deliberationto scientific reasoning and empirical evidence. Evenif we accept Dewey’s (1934: 72–73) description ofhow all values begin as mundane but are assignedtranscendent qualities, we must still accept that thosetranscendent qualities may take on religious meaningand, therefore, must be countered at the level ofreligion.3 If we are to generate the kind of reflexivemodernization that Bonanno (1998) claims is neces-sary to create a more socially and ecologically justsociety, we must begin to address the religious andemotional concerns of society.

This sense of a need for metaphysical considera-tions is at least implicit in the growing demand foran ethics-oriented policy analysis. Unfortunately, fewpolicy analysts have done it, because policy analystsbelieve that they would forfeit the air of scientificdisinterest that gives them legitimacy (Amy, 1987:56–61). Moreover, ethical and religious concepts donot easily lend themselves to operationalization orpractical applications. The goal of this paper will beto demonstrate that such concepts can be operation-alized by revealing the role of evil in the econom-ically rational defense of the agricultural systemduring the 1985 farm bill debates. Reinhold Niehbur’s“Christian realism” will be useful for operationalizingevil because his understanding of evil is built uponan implicit structure-agency theory. The agriculturalsystem is the appropriate arena for testing this conceptbecause, as Dudley (1996) has demonstrated, agricul-ture in rural America is where religious, economic, andpatriotic values of sanctimony, competitive efficiency,and American superiority are fused into a conservativereligious ideology.

Christian realism and the concept of evil

Until the rise of science and the critical-empiricalstudy of history in the seventeenth-century, the Jewishand Christian salvation history that explained how another-worldly divine being shapes the events in thisworld was dominant in Western society. Althoughmany have assumed that science has liberated modernsociety from religious presupposition, the liberaltheory of progress, scientific descriptions of evolu-

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tion, and Marxist-Leninist theories of class strugglestill portray history as unfolding towards some ulti-mate end-point (Hodgson, 1989: 11–12; Niehbur,1953: 3). These secular salvation histories are distinctfrom Judaism and Christianity to the extent that theyreject notions of human sin and evil. They assumethat humans are innately good, but may do bad thingsbecause of ignorance or false consciousness.

Progressives and Marxists believe that earthlysalvation might come though education and rightthinking, which could overcome the greed and selfish-ness that the Christian Church called sinful. Liberaleconomists hold that people did not even need to beconverted to the right religion or to right thinking. Theearliest articulator of this position, Adam Smith (1976:184–185), did assume a level of moral education tocondition market society. But his greatest assump-tion was that God-ordained natural laws would governthe markets, so that even the pursuits that the Chris-tian Church called sinful might yield social benefits,namely wealth (Glenna, 2002).

The important point here is that the notion ofhuman fallibility was dramatically changed after theEnlightenment. Perhaps the ultimate expression of theliberal faith in the perfectibility of humanity is evidentin John Dewey’s (1934) A Common Faith, where heholds out the potential that the scientific method mayprovide a universally valid viewpoint that would bridgereligious and ideological differences, so that peoplemight achieve consensus on how to solve problems.The Progressives’ underlying positivistic assumption– that objectively recognizable facts can be used tobring the human project to completion – presents twoproblematic positions. The first is that technologicalrationality can replace moral and ethical debates. Thesecond is that the metaphysical component of life is oflittle significance. Dewey (1934: 79) was challengingreligious people to act in the world and to move beyonda belief that God would fix the world’s problems. Buthis pragmatic appeal to replace supernaturalism withthe scientific method reduced religion to a secondarystatus. His subsequent appeal to retain religious peoplebecause they remind us that our “desire for justice andsecurity are realities in human nature” ignored howreligions also point to the reality of selfishness andgreed in human nature.

Christian socialists and critical theorists challengedthe widespread secular and religious humanistic notionthat human beings are inherently good, but occasion-ally misguided. Karl Barth (1968 [1932]) exposed reli-gion’s scientifically cultured despisers as having thetendency to mistake themselves for God. Horkheimerand Adorno (1999 [1944]) asked how it could bepossible that science and the modern consciousness,which were expected to bring forth a new humanity,

could be leading to a new barbarism. Reinhold Niebuhr(1953: 7) stated that,

. . . the belief that the power of man’s lusts and ambi-tions is no more than some sub-rational impulse,which can be managed with more astute socialengineering or more psychiatric help, lends an air ofsentimentality and unreality to the political opinionsof the liberal world.

Stalinism, Hitler and the Holocaust, Vietnam,Cambodia, the arms race, and the threat of ecolog-ical disaster served to confirm these prophetic voicesand have shaken the confidence in historical progress(Hodgson, 1989: 30; Niebuhr, 1953: 12). Recognizingthat these events stretched the limits of conventionalunderstandings of virtue and reason, a number ofphilosophers and theologians have sought to revivethe concept of evil. In their struggle to explainthe enormity of human capacities for destruction,however, they have departed from the traditional reli-gious definitions of evil. Evil as something rooted inthe human rebellion against a deity has given way toa more secular definition of evil: the construction anddefense of a systemic contempt for life.

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt (1963) observedthat the evil of the Holocaust was not the resultof moral backsliding on the part of Hitler or otherGermans, but was something that grew out of theconstruction of a deadly system that also allowedindividuals to ignore and deny responsibility for thehuman suffering (Moody-Adams, 1997: 20). Far frompreventing evil, the scientifically rationalized Germansociety perpetuated evil by systematically coordinatingdiffused responsibility so that no one person couldbe assigned full responsibility, even though maliciouspeople actively harnessed it. Arendt calls this evilbanal because, although it was intentional, it did notrequire courageous intentional action from individualperpetrators. Rather, brutality and false rhetoric wereinstitutionalized to the point where people could fostermass murder simply by following their daily routines.

Gordon Kaufman (1985) also challenges the notionthat scientific reason will redeem humanity whenhe asserts that the threat of nuclear annihilation haschanged the Christian worldview. By developing thecapacity to destroy creation, human beings havesurpassed the destructive potential of any mythicalanthropomorphic malevolent god, like Satan. Evil isnot the result of weakness in the face of an other-worldly supernatural force, but the result of humancreativity and strength. Hodgson extends this conceptto argue that a society that has been scientificallyrationalized – so that individuals can assign responsi-bility to the system – enables cruel people with mali-cious belief systems to enact the most deadly events

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in human history (Hodgson 1987: 30–31). It is whenour creative methods for changing things for the betterare combined with a malicious belief system, evil isunleashed. “Reason run amok, put to destructive anddeceptive uses, is what gives evil its terrible power”(1989: 183).

In their challenge to the Western notion of socialprogress, Arendt, Kaufman, and Hodgeson reveal thatbelieving that managing society scientifically wouldliberate us from the need to be wary of maliciousbelief systems and mean-spirited people is foolishness.However, they do revive a concept of evil that is notplagued by the supernaturalism that Dewey rejected.After all, the source of evil is humanity, according tothese thinkers, not an otherworldly being.

What is most interesting from a social sciencestandpoint is their locating evil at the intersection ofthe system and individual. Neibuhr (1953) is especiallyimportant on this point because his articulation of eviloffers an implicit structure-agency theory. Based onwhat he calls Christian Realism, Niebuhr lays out twolimitations to the Progressive faith in science. First,he introduces the social structural element when heargues that even well-intentioned efforts may go awrywhen we recognize that those efforts take place ina market society structured to encourage people topursue selfish interests and to ignore the outcomesof those pursuits. Second, he preserves the role ofindividual agents when he rejects the notion that badoutcomes are merely the unintended result of well-intentioned efforts. People often act for malevolentreasons (Niebuhr, 1953: 6, 17). Thus, we need atwo-tiered analysis.

On the systemic level, market society convertshuman beings into labor and nature into land so thatboth commodities might become subject to laws ofsupply and demand. Because commodifying peopleand nature institutionalizes self-interested competitionand exploitation, Polanyi (1944: 131) claimed that “. . .leaving the fate of soil and people to the market wouldbe tantamount to annihilating them.” In a society thatinstitutionalizes sin, a “value-free” scientific methodperpetuates the destructive tendencies of the status quoby failing to question the underlying values and beliefsthat uphold it (Glenna, 2002; Dahrendorf, 1975: 85–86; Dryzek, 1997: 99). Because social scientists insiston value-free analysis, Niebuhr’s (1932: xvi) statementin 1932 is as true today as it was then: they

. . . usually interpret social conflict as the result of aclash between different kinds of ‘behavior patterns,’which can be eliminated if the contending partieswill only allow the social scientist to furnish themwith a new and more perfect pattern which will dojustice to the needs of both parties . . . they regard

ignorance rather than self-interest as the cause ofconflict.

As a result, any victories of social justice over thepower of economic oligarchs have been achieved inspite of the social scientists who are striving for a“scientific” or “disinterested” justice (Niebuhr, 1952:34).

Although many policy failures may be the resultof unintended outcomes of otherwise well-intentionedactions, social scientists are being naïve to ignore therole that institutionalized sin and individual malevolentintent may also play in the policy arena. Operational-izing a concept of evil is important because it will helpus to acknowledge that institutionalized and individualpower, greed, and contempt also lie behind human andecological destruction.

Methodology: Operationalizing evil

By pointing to the limitations of the scientific methods,I am not suggesting that we should abandon effortsto achieve objectivity. I simply want to rescue thescientific method from a scientism that prevents usfrom critiquing assumed beliefs, values, and motiva-tions. Popper (1950) and others (Zuckerman, 1988:515) have argued that science is as much about crit-ical reflection as it is about empirical methods ofobservation. Liberal economics and creation scienceare bad science because they assume that empiricalmethods and mathematical rigor mask the fact thattheir projects rest upon theological presuppositionsthat are never opened to critical evaluation (Glenna,2002). Risk assessments are not theological, but theyare bad science because they too lack critical reflec-tion. They tend to focus on technological definitions ofhealth and environmental safety, as opposed to socialconsequences, which undermines the moral-ethicaldebates that might otherwise arise (Thompson, 1997:236; Busch, 2000).

Although I admit that my research question growsout of theological inquiry, my perspective is not incon-sistent with scientific objectivity. According to Weber(1949: 92–93), objectivity is not an ontological realitythat we discover. Nor is it some thing that transcendstime and space. Rather, objectivity is something thatwe socially construct as we devise instruments tomeasure hypotheses about the world. We are beingobjective and disinterested when we are honest enoughto admit when our measurements disprove our hypoth-eses. Following Weber, I will construct a definitionof evil so that I can measure its presence or absencein a policy debate, thus meeting the definition ofobjectivity. Furthermore, I welcome critical reflections


and moral-ethical debates regarding my definition andapplication of evil. Therefore, my position is notdogmatic or supernaturalistic, like liberal economicsand creation science.

My operationalization of evil rests upon Niebuhr’s(1952: viii) articulation of irony.4 Irony is an incon-gruity that appears at first glance to have occurred bychance but, after further investigation, is discoverednot to have been.

If virtue becomes vice through some hidden defectin the virtue; if strength becomes weakness becauseof the vanity to which strength may prompt themighty man or nation; if security is transmuted intoinsecurity because too much reliance is placed uponit; if wisdom becomes folly because it does notknow its own limits – in all such cases the situationis ironic.

Irony is distinct from tragedy and pathos, accordingto Niebuhr (1952). A pathetic event is an incongruityin which no fault can be ascribed to anyone, so pity isappropriate. For example, victims of a natural disasterdeserve pity. A tragic event is an incongruity thatforces a sacrifice of a higher ideal or a life for thesake of some other higher ideal or life. A man jumpingon a hand grenade to save his comrades may deserveadmiration for his willingness to sacrifice his life forhis friends’ lives. Irony, then, differs from pathosbecause people are responsible for an ironic outcome.Yet, it is different from a tragedy because the ironicoutcome is not chosen.

To illustrate irony, Niebuhr (1953: 13–16) high-lights components of the United States’ relationshipwith the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It is ironicthat a middle class man in the United States will use theideal of equality to justify capitalism’s triumph overfeudalism, while ignoring that ideal when confrontedwith the inequality of those below him. Meanwhile,in order to provide the equality that is ignored in theUnited States, the Soviet Union oppressed the veryclass of people that it hoped to liberate. Both nationscompounded irony when they threatened to destroy theentire world with nuclear weapons so that they mightsave it from the other’s ideology. The very strength thatwould save us would also destroy us.

Irony is also different from tragedy and pathosbecause it requires a response, and it is in that responsewhere evil may be located. When people becomeaware of a tragic or pathetic situation, there is nochance of dissolving it. After all, the tragic event isintentional (even though undesirable), and the patheticevent is unintentional. Since irony occurs when aneffort to achieve an intended outcome but yields anunintended one, a response is necessary. “This realiza-tion either must lead to an abatement of the pretension,

which means contrition; or it leads to a desperateaccentuation of the vanities to the point where ironyturns into pure evil” (Niebuhr, 1952: viii). In otherwords, it would be evil to insist that no contritionis warranted because the unintended outcomes of anintentional effort are so good and right.

It is important to emphasize here that evil is asocial phenomenon, which means that it cannot bereduced to the sum of the aggregation of individualmotivations and actions. Since evil is dependent upona system of institutionalized sin, no one individualcan produce evil. Yet individuals cannot be madeimmune from responsibility because individuals mustshow a depraved indifference towards the destructiveoutcomes of institutionalized sin in order for evil toappear in history. Evil, then, relies upon the conver-gence of particular kinds of structural conditions andindividual agency.

Baum (1994: 190–191) recognizes four levels ofevil. The first is a structure or institution that causesdamage based upon its inner logic. The second level isthe accompanying ideology that makes the inherentlydestructive structure or institution legitimate. The thirdis the uncritical acceptance of this ideology on the partof individuals. And the fourth is the ability of someto reaffirm the ideology and destructive institution orstructure even after they have recognized the inherentdestructiveness.

Recognizing that Baum’s four levels are actuallyfour components that exist on two levels, I haveconstructed a diagram to illustrate the concept of evil.

SYSTEMIC LEVEL:INSTITUTIONALIZED SIN & ACCOMPANYING IDEOLOGY

� ⇒ EVILINDIVIDUAL LEVEL:PRIVATE MALICE & APPROVING CONSCIOUSNESS

Evil emerges when destructive structures or insti-tutions intersect with unrepentant proponents of thosestructures and institutions. Individuals are not relievedfrom responsibility for evil, but repentance andredemption require more than individual penitence.Penitent individuals must also change the system thatpromotes the sinful behavior. As Baum (1994: 191)argues, “According to this analysis, the redemptionfrom structural sin begins with graced individualsenabled to see clearly, to resist, to communicate and toorganize.” No one person can be assigned full respon-sibility for evil (although one can be said to have actedwith malice or ignorance), but no one person can bepardoned from responsibility for evil if that personacted to create or maintain the destructive system.

I will apply this framework to a policy settingby examining the debates preceding the formationof the 1985 Farm Bill. My method for determiningthe presence of evil is very straight forward. First,

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I will need to demonstrate that policy makers arefully aware of the destructive consequences of thepolicies in question. I will draw from statements madeby policy makers during public policy hearings todetermine their assessment of the nature of the socialand environmental problems.5 Second, I will need todetermine if the policy makers respond with contri-tion or vanity after the irony has been exposed. Ifthey respond with cultivated ignorance and/or privatemalice,6 defend the superiority of the ironic system,and express a determination to preserve it, I will labelthe process evil.

Applying an operationalization of evil

Reviewing the debates leading up to the passage of the1985 Food Security Act reveals that policy makers andfarm advocates openly decried the severe economiccrisis in agriculture. Although agriculture had sufferedfrom high surpluses and low prices since the 1920s,the US monetary and tax policies and the agricul-tural system’s increasing dependence on internationalmarkets made the problems in the 1980s more severeand complex. As a result, the 1980s saw even medium-sized and large farm producers failing.

This widespread decline, along with predicteddeclines in crop acreage, investments, and inputpurchases, led agricultural input industries, lendingagencies, and processing firms to take a greater interestin the 1985 farm bill debate. The economic conditionswere so severe that even Congressional Republicanswere unwilling to support President Reagan’s proposalto eliminate farm subsidies. When the American FarmBureau Federation, the nation’s largest farm organi-zation that usually supports free-market policies, wasconflicted over how to address the economic crisis,the farm bill debates were opened to the NationalFarmers Union, the National Farmers Organization,the American Agricultural Movement, and other farmgroups that tend to support the New Deal commodityprograms. According to Browne (1988: 218), thesecircumstances created a context in which “It was diffi-cult to find any participants who did not express theopinion that time for major agricultural policy reformwas at hand.”

Congressional representatives realized that theintensive export policies exposed farmers to greatereconomic instability. During a Joint EconomicCommittee’s special hearing in 1984 to consider howthey might better understand the economic contextsthat were leading to so much turmoil, CommitteeChairman Senator Roger Jepsen stated, “. . . agri-culture has been ushered into the ‘major leagues’after decades of being relegated to lower status

following the industrial revolution . . . the farm sectoris competing in a fierce international market-place andwe have lost ground in the past few years” (JointEconomic Committee, 1985: 1).

Policy makers were also aware of environmentalproblems. Soil erosion caused by export-oriented agri-culture gained the attention of lawmakers in the mid-1970s. Farmers, urged by Secretary Butz to “produceas much as [they] can,” destroyed many of the conser-vation structures and abandoned many of the conser-vation plans that had been implemented since the1930s, prompting the public to question the legit-imacy of soil conservation programs. Responding topublic criticism, Senators Dole and Talmadge in 1976demanded evidence from the USDA that soil conserva-tion programs were having an effect. While attemptingto provide the evidence, the USDA discovered thatthey had none. Congress passed the Soil and WaterResource Conservation Act (RCA) in 1977 to evaluatethe USDA’s effectiveness in controlling soil erosion(Batie, 1985: 16; Helms, 1990: 14). These RCAreports on soil erosion became an important source ofdata for soil conservation proponents during the hear-ings leading up to the passage of the Food Security Act(Helms, 1990: 14). An Office of Technology Assess-ment (OTA) study, which was commissioned by theJoint Economic Committee and both the House andSenate Agricultural Committees, also pointed to prob-lems associated with intensive production for export:“Now, with economic goals shifting to full produc-tion, additional erosive or otherwise fragile land iscoming into production, making the need for integra-tion [of economic and conservation goals] much moresignificant” (OTA, 1982: 16). A New York Times articleargued that our agricultural export policies made theUnited Sates “. . . like a third world country, miningour natural resources in order to pay for our imports”(Crittendon, 1980: A-1).

During the Sustainable Agricultural Systems hear-ings in 1982, Representative William Wamplerresponded that many ask if “. . . instead of exportingour farm products, we are exporting our soil andwater. To answer these critics, we need to have astrong conservation policy that is effective” (HouseSubcommittee on Department Operations, Research,and Foreign Agriculture, 1982: 60–61). Likewise, aJoint Economic Committee staff study compiled afterthe Toward the Next Generation of Farm Policy hear-ings concluded: “Agriculture’s attribute as a renew-able resource is in serious jeopardy. . . . Once primefarmland now is incapable of producing crops” (JointEconomic Committee, Staff Study, 1984: 27).

The important point here is that policy makersrecognized that intensifying agricultural productionto balance the trade deficit was causing economic


problems associated with overproduction and environ-mental problems of soil erosion. There were evencalls for contrition as policy makers recommendedreforming the agricultural system. Iowa Senator RogerJepsen, the chair of the Joint Economic Committee,called for dramatic structural change during a hearingentitled “Toward the Next Generation of Farm Policy”:

Today, U.S. Agriculture is at a crossroads in itsevolution as an industry. There is growing concernthat the selection of and implementation of inappro-priate farm programs could lead U.S. agriculturedown a road of recession, decay, and perhapseconomic oblivion. The alternative is a new genera-tion of farm programs that will lead U.S. agricultureinto an era of prosperity. And today, we make thefirst step in that journey. . . . I think it is time wemove toward the next generation of farm policy(Toward the Next Generation I, 1983: 2–3).

However, the call for contrition gave way to vanity.Before analyzing the policy makers’ responses, I

will lay out the historical and social context shaped bythe past 100+ years of agricultural policies. Throughinitiatives supported by major industrial and urbaninterests, the United States Government establishedthe USDA, the land-grant university system, and theagricultural extension system to encourage farmers toadopt new technologies that would increase productiveefficiency. Farmers interested in economic efficiencyresisted at first.7 But during the First World War,extension agents succeeded in coercing farmers intoadopting a productive efficiency model (Danbom,1979).

An economic efficiency crisis emerged in the1920s, as increasing production efficiency underminedeconomic wellbeing. This had negative social andenvironmental effects. Overproduction drove pricesdown, so more and more farmers were forced off theirland. And the economic pressures led many farmersto overexploit their soil. The Great Depression andthe Dust Bowl of the 1930s were directly linked tothe industrialized agriculture policies of the 1910s.The New Deal programs of the Roosevelt Administra-tion sought to control production to ease farm pricedeclines and to promote soil conservation programs.Problems of overproduction and the resulting lowprices and soil exploitation persisted, but they weremoderated by the New Deal programs (Fite and Reese,1965: 629–630).

After the Second World War, policy makers soughtto manage economic problems connected to over-production by increasing exports instead of controllingsupply. Policy makers designed Public Law 480, whichwas trumpeted as a way to achieve two goals atonce: (1) dumping United States agricultural surpluses

while (2) fighting communism by building allianceswith developing nations. The Nixon administrationsought to expand P.L. 480 and to create other policiesto develop markets for US agricultural products. AsConstance et al. (1990: 57) put it: “It was the foreignexport markets which seemed to be the answer to manyof the State’s needs. Overproduction could become apowerful trade balancing asset if it could be sold forcash overseas. Overproduction would also continue toguarantee low-cost food to urban consumers.” Basedon this reasoning, along with the USSR’s demand forUS grain, Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz,called for an end to acreage reductions and proclaimedthat farm programs should be redirected to increaseproduction. After the OPEC oil embargo, the USsought to use agricultural exports to balance the tradedeficit and, thereby, “offset the rise in energy importcosts” (Constance et al., 1990: 64–65).

During the 1985 farm bill debates, policy makersrecognized that expanding international marketsimproved farmer incomes in the 1970s, but that thosesame policies caused environmental and economicproblems in the 1980s. Yet they remained committedto increasing productivity and expanding markets.They acknowledged that New Deal policies, such asthe Payment-In-Kind program,8 had stabilized farmprices, but they believed that they had accomplishedthis at the expense of international competitivenessand at the expense of higher consumer food prices(while recognizing that farm prices have only a smallimpact on consumer food prices) and higher taxes(Joint Economic Committee, Staff Study, 1984: v).

At first glance, the policy makers were in a tragicsituation: having to choose between difficult sacrifices.However, it would have been tragic only if they hadnot had a host of options that expanded their choices.They admitted that the industrial agricultural systemwas “an excellent example of market failure” (JointEconomic Committee, Staff Study, 1984: 27). In otherwords, they acknowledged that agricultural efficiencywas no more than a euphemism for externalizing socialand natural costs. They cited a CAST study and publichearings that presented options of scaling back thedrive for international exports to protect soil and waterand offering income insurance to protect farmers (JointEconomic Committee, Staff Study, 1984). The stagewas set for contrition to emerge, and they could havemade serious efforts to reduce the social and environ-mental damage. But they chose not to because “Wewould see less acres in production” (Joint EconomicCommittee, I, 1983: 10).

What makes this lack of contrition vanity in theface of irony is that the reasoning that led them to rejectthe options had nothing to do with protecting such highideals as the national interest or even a genuine belief

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in free market ideologies. What follows is evidencethat the policy makers decided to sacrifice the live-lihoods of many American farmers and the nation’snatural resources to protect the economic interestsof a few agribusinesses and to ensure the UnitedStates’ continued dominance of the world agriculturalmarkets.

Agricultural input and commodity processingcompanies opposed acreage reduction because thatwould translate into reduced expenditures on agricul-tural inputs and reduced commodity outputs. JohnWhipple of the Iowa Fertilizer and Chemical Associ-ation and Carrol Bolen of Pioneer Hi-Bred Interna-tional argued before the Joint Economic Committeethat supply control measures were hurting theirindustries and that a more appropriate approachwould be to secure international markets (Joint Eco-nomic Committee, III, 1983: 286–289). At anotherhearing, Barry Jarrett of the National FertilizerSolutions Association concurred: “the key to profitand growth for U.S. agriculture is in an aggressiveexport market expansion and development program”(House Committee on Agriculture, I, 1984: 249).Commodity processing firms agreed with the agri-cultural input representatives. Vernon McMinimy,from the A. E. Staley Manufacturing Co., and JohnReed, from Archer-Daniels-Midland argued thatprice supports should be geared towards movingagricultural commodities on the world market, nottowards reducing surpluses (House Committee onAgriculture, III, 1984: 162). McMinimy said thatpolicies that controlled production should not beconsidered because his company is “dependent ona reliable and reasonably priced long-term supplyof corn and soybeans for our raw material source”(House Committee on Agriculture, III, 1984: 162).Although recommendations for expanding exportmarkets varied, there was a consensus among agri-cultural industries testifying before Congress that theway to solve the nation’s farm problems was to expandmarkets, not to control surpluses.

A Wall Street Journal article, published on the eveof the “Toward the Next Generation of Farm Policy”hearing, further emboldened policy makers to resistcontrition. In that article, “Lost Exports: Long U.S.Dominance in World Grain Trade Is Slowly Diminish-ing,” Sue Shellenbarger and Jeffrey Birnbaum (1983:1) reported:

By cutting prices and taking advantage of politicaldiscord between the U.S. and some of its customers,other grain exporting nations are muscling in onthe traditional U.S. dominance in the world’s farmtrade. The U.S. share of the world trade in grains, itsbiggest farm export by far, has fallen to about 53%

this year from a high of 60% in 1980. The U.S. facesrough sledding in years to come.

The article went on to argue that this market lossthreatened the entire agricultural system because “agri-culture, more than any other industry, is hooked toexports.” It blamed the Payment-In-Kind program,which inflated prices for US commodities, andaggressive international competition for the decline.

On the morning of the first day of hearings,South Dakota Senator James Abdnor cited the WallStreet Journal article and condemned supply-controlmeasures for contributing to the loss of internationalmarkets. Since other countries step up production tofill the void when the United States cuts production,“. . . export sales fall in proportion to the reductionin supplies, [and] there is not going to be any netgain in reducing burdensome stocks, and prices willremain depressed” (Joint Economic Committee, I,1983: 4).

Secretary of Agriculture Block agreed: “I concurwith the committee, especially Senator Abdnor, thatthe long-term solution is not cutting back produc-tion; the long-range solution has to be strengtheningdemand. We are in the business to produce in agri-culture in the United States.” Tempering productionis too expensive, according to Secretary Block. Worseyet, it “rewards, in my opinion, inefficient producers,penalizes the efficient producers, locks in produc-tion patterns and technology, and assures that theagricultural system does not adjust to change” (JointEconomic Committee, I, 1983: 7). Secretary Block’spoint is that the system is designed to maximize effi-ciency and production. Reducing production wouldnot be good for industry, “And we all know howimportant the agricultural industry is to this nation. Butit’s only important as long as it is creating jobs andselling a product to other countries and domestically”(Joint Economic Committee, I, 1983: 10).

What is striking about Secretary Block’s commentsis the omission of a reference to food production,the social and cultural problems associated with farmnumber declines, and the environmental problemsassociated with intensifying production. He was awareof the problems, but instead of addressing them, herecommended reducing government involvement inthe farm economy to insure that “the farmer feelsthe market, allows the farmer to receive the accurateand timely market signals and to be free to reactaccordingly.” He admitted that there would be socialcosts: “Certainly, it will not keep everyone in business.There will be some come and some go. Some wouldprosper and some would not. . . . But that’s part of theAmerican system. The American system provides theopportunity to take a risk and the opportunity to profit


if successful” (Joint Economic Committee, I, 1983:12).

Secretary Block and other policy makers drewfrom the economic rationality to cultivate an ignor-ance of the social and ecological destruction and tolimit their options. Smith (1976: 184–185) argued thatbecause “the rich only select from the heap what ismost precious and agreeable” and “consume little morethan the poor,” their “natural selfishness and rapacity”yields more goods, so that even the poor can enjoythe fruits of the rich person’s selfishness. As a result,“without intending it, without knowing it, [the greedy]advance the interest of the society . . .” (Glenna, 2002).The social and environmental problems revealed theirony of this ideology, but Secretary Block held firmto it.

After announcing a planned summit with farmproducers and agribusinesses to discuss future agricul-tural policies, Secretary Block announced:

Agriculture is in a new era of international interde-pendency. We must set a new course in our farmpolicy if we are to permit our Nation’s farmers toenjoy the prosperity that they are entitled to byvirtue of their productivity and their efficiency . . .

To preserve the most efficient agriculture in theworld is our challenge (Joint Economic Committee,I, 1983: 10–12).

Secretary Block’s vain commitment to efficiency atall cost reveals a shift beyond a cultivated ignoranceto one of private malice. After all, the assertion thatthe “come and go” is the result of an increased effi-ciency suggests that the negative social consequencesare desirable, since one would have to reject effi-ciency to diminish “come and go.” He then accentu-ated that vanity by insisting that America’s industrialagricultural system was the envy of the world.

The fact that academics and farm and environ-mental advocates were calling for fundamentalchanges and offering alternatives further highlight thevanity. For example, agricultural economist SandraBatie argued before the Joint Economic Committee:

Agricultural programs throughout the last 50 yearshave contributed to producing a commercial agri-cultural sector that is not conducive to husbandingthe soil resource. The price instabilities thatcharacterize agriculture, the dependence on exportmarkets, the reliance on single crop farms, thereliance on chemically enhanced production, thereturns on lands as an inflation hedge, all producedisincentives for conservation investments (Towardthe Next Generation, II, 1984: 249).

But empirical evidence and reasonable argumentswere unable to counter the obfuscation provided by

Secretary Block’s appeal to a belief system thatpresupposes a God-ordained self-regulating market.

Representative William Wampler’s commentsduring the “Sustainable Agricultural Systems”hearings, which are cited above, provide a perfectexample of the plan to promote marketization, despitesocial and ecological consequences. He did not denythe accuracy of the critics’ claims. But he did notcall for contrition either. Instead, he and other policymakers sought to construct a policy to maintainproduction efficiency while merely managing thesocial and environmental costs.

Policy makers were aware of counter argumentsand alternatives, but the 1985 Food Security Act didnot challenge the fundamental causes of the socialand environmental problems related to agriculture.By appealing to economic convictions, policy makerswere able to restore, at least for that moment, the sociallegitimacy of the agricultural system and the federalgovernment’s role as manager of that system withoutinstituting contrition (Glenna, 1999).

Conclusion

Evil was present in the 1985 Farm Bill debatesbecause policy makers acknowledged fundamentaldestructive tendencies in the agricultural system, andeven expressed a need for contrition in the form ofradical restructuring, but they then chose to glorify thevery structures and policies that created the problems.The policy makers needed to move beyond the mererehashing of New Deal policies. The Progressiveswho created and maintained the New Deal policiesattempted to manage the social and environmentalconsequences of the industrial agricultural system, butfailed to address the destructive tendencies in marketsociety brought on by the commodification of humanbeings and nature. The structural changes necessaryto protect farmers and farm land might involve suchthings as the formation of farm producer alliancesand community land trusts to remove agriculturalland from the speculative market (Mooney, 1986:465–466). It might also involve a reconsideration ofthe United States’ commitment to dominating inter-national markets for agricultural commodities and adramatic reformation of the agriculture system fromcommodity production to food production. But policymakers did not repent. Instead, they responded to ironywith vanity.

Let me clarify that I am not saying that anyoneor any group is evil. Doing such a thing would bedehumanizing. It would also be ineffective, because itwould ignore the structure-agency dynamic. As Baum(1994: 203) argues, we need more than “love and good

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will” at the individual level to transform a destructivesystem. Contrition will only come through the recog-nition that critical reflection and action at the personallevel must be combined with a replacement of thedestructive institutions, structures, and ideologies atthe systemic level. Let me also clarify that by citingphilosophers and theologians who used evil to refer toHitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the ColdWar’s threat of mutual annihilation to operationalizeevil, I am not equating those events with the 1980sfarm crisis. There are degrees of evil, just as there aredegrees of crimes and kindness. I would simply arguethat it is important to name the lesser degrees of evil inorder to address them, too.

Naming the evil of industrial agriculture is neces-sary to emphasize that the problems facing agri-culture in the United States are not the result ofwell-intentioned, but misguided policy makers. Theyare the result of an agricultural system that hasinstitutionalized an economic rationality which em-powers narrow economic interests and mean-spiritedideologues. Maintaining the scientific and technocraticapproach that Dewey and the Progressives promotedhas rendered moral-ethical questions inconsequential(Habermas, 1970: 113–114). And that has hinderedsocial scientists’ efforts to assist in the alleviation ofsocial and environmental injustice. We need to raisemoral-ethical questions if we are to generate the kindof prophetic voice capable of countering the normativeforce of the neoliberal rhetoric and to generate the kindof systemic and personal repentance that is necessaryto make a more socially and ecologically just agricul-ture system, as well as a more socially and ecologicallyjust society.

Notes

1. Assuming that “market relations take primacy over otherspheres of human activity,” neoliberals seek to restraingovernment from restraining markets (Bonanno, 1998:233).

2. Kintz (1997: 234) defines theocracy as “the literal matchbetween public policy and the divine mandate to assertChristian dominion across the globe . . .”

3. Religion for Durkheim (1965: 494) is a unified set of beliefsand values that allow people to raise themselves above their“own peculiar point of view.” However, since science couldbe called a religion according to this definition because it,too, provides universalizing forms and norms, Durkheimadds a substantive component to the functionalistic defini-tion. Science directs itself at describing the social and thenatural while religion is more interested in the metaphys-ical and the supernatural (Durkheim, 1965: 478). Thus, areligion serves a function similar to science and ideologyby providing social forms and norms that direct people’sreasoning toward the universal, but differs from science

and ideology because its forms and norms are believedto be ordained by the supernatural. Various religions tendto rely upon theological debates to balance the legal andcompassionate components of a religion. The classicaland revisionist economic debates are akin to a theologicaldebate on blaming or forgiving the victims of the marketreligion.

4. Busch (1989) also explained the importance of using irony,tragedy, and temporality in evaluating human endeavors,but Niebuhr’s definitions are especially important becausehe builds into his definitions the language for moral-ethicaldebates.

5. Cultivated ignorance would apply to the ability to convinceoneself that the destruction simply could not be real becausethe ideology says that it cannot be happening. Privatemalice would apply to those who insist that the destructionis acceptable because they or their constituents personallybenefit from it.

6. “Systems analysis cannot yield definitions of the mainte-nance of social systems from within the framework of itsown theory; instead, it has to allow them to be providedby an analysis that takes up the perceptual and interpretiveprocesses of social participants” (Schwinn, 1998: 84).

7. Economic efficiency is achieved through maximizing areturn on investment. Productive efficiency is achieved bymaximizing production from inputs. Economic efficiencyis dedicated to maximizing profit, while productive effi-ciency is dedicated to maximizing production. It is possiblethat these two efficiencies could be congruent. If a farmergets the most out of his or her inputs, he or she mayget the best return on his or her investment. However,productive efficiency in the context of debt and overproduc-tion is not congruent with economic efficiency. Producingmore drives the price of the commodity down, so thereturn on investment is lower. The farmer then needs toproduce more to raise the cash to pay off the debt. There-fore, productive efficiency was desirable for the industrial-izing state, but economic efficiency was desirable for theindividual farmers.

8. PIK was a government attempt to reduce overproductionand soil erosion by paying farmers with surplus commod-ities in exchange for the farmer’s reducing acreage ofcertain crops and setting that land aside for soil conserva-tion. Policy makers had data showing that the PIK programhad improved farm income (Joint Economic Committee,1983: 8).

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Address for corresponence: Leland Glenna, Department ofRural Sociology, 134 Warren Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca,NY 14853, USAPhone: +1607-255-2024; Fax: +1-607-254-2896;E-mail: [email protected]

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Operationalizing evil: Christian realism, liberal economics, and industrial agriculture