Food Police: Chapter 3

America's Socialist Roots

Believe it or not, the first government established by the Pilgrims was a socialist government. It sounds outlandish, I know, but it it true. They were probably inspired by the New Testament gospels and a sixteenth century book by Thomas More (you know, the man who had his head chopped off by Henry VIII) called Utopia. Fortunately, the Pilgrims soon recognized the incentive problems inherent in a socialist economy, and embraced an  economic system which allowed for private property. The video below tells this story.

Video 1—America's Socialist Pilgrims

The Pilgrims initially liked the idea of no private property. In England, property resided solely in the hands of the rich and politically powerful—the same people the Pilgrims wanted to leave behind. Perhaps the Pilgrims associated private property with the rich landowners, and wanted none to do with either. This avoidance of private property is somewhat alive in America today, where our democratic system regularly passes laws which takes property through taxation and places limits on what can be done with property.

The Pilgrims didn't cross the Atlantic just to escape the rich, but an oppressive monarchy as well. They yearned to be self-governed, and this disapprovel for a powerful government is also alive today, for there are limits to which we will allow government to grow. The desire for a socialist colony where all property was shared emanated from their feelings of community among one another and an insistence that no one person will rule the others. They went too far though, for holding their property in common almost killed them.

The Soviet Union tried More's Utopia, and we know how that turned out (in case you don't, it was famine and starvation). China tried it, then decided some private property was needed, for like the Pilgrims, they found More's Utopia to result in poverty and hunger. North Korea and Cuba still live according to More's Utopia, and people risk their lives trying to escape. More's Utopia has always failed, except in instances when people are disciplined by religious orders, like Catholic and Orthodox monasteries and the various religious sects existing in nineteenth century American, including the Shakers.

Video 2—How Chinese Adopted Capitalism
If you have trouble viewing the video click here

However religious and devoted to one another the Pilgrims and the Chinese were, they still didn't want to work hard for others, especially if they saw others shirking their duty. Why harvest grain for others when they don't seem to be harvesting much for you? Once it became evident that communal property was dragging them into to starvation, they realized their error and began assigning households roughly equal amounts of private property. Knowing each person would receive the rewards of their hard work, they worked hard. They were also allowed to produce goods to sell and trade with others, and the Pilgrim community soon teemed with activity, good food, and a better life. Because each person had roughly the same amount of property, they could enhance their lives through hard work without having to worry about someone gaining enough power to take the fruits of their labor.

Colonists in America learned from their Pilgrim experience, and grew a strong fondness for property. So strong, in fact, that when Great Britain sought to confiscate its property by onerous taxation Americans decided to risk their lives in a bolt for independence. You know how that turned out (USA! USA! ...). This love of property and the individuals' right to make an honest profit thrives in America today, where both Democrats and Republicans approve of small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs. We should be grateful; from this blend of political ideologies emanates a society with a rather harmonious balance between the private and public sector, and from this, one of the most wealthy and free countries to ever exist.

Figure 1—The Political Ideologies of Contemporary Americans^(N3)

Big government, European style

From that small colony of Pilgrims arose modern America, where the government is roughly one-third of the economy, and most of that one-third devoted to transferring wealth from the working young and rich to the old and poor (but mostly the old), resulting in what many call a welfare state. Most Americans find that for every extra dollar they earn 40% goes to a federal or local government, and for many Californians that percentage is 60%.^(P2) Think of that! When a Californian makes a dollar, the government takes more than half of it! In addition to transferring large amounts of money between citizens, the government attempts to enforce around 160,000 rules and regulations each year—and that's just from the federal government! So many new rules are passed by federal, state, and local governments that the American Bar Association says it can't eaven count all the laws currently in place.^(S1)

Yet, despite this Leviathon of a government, people around the world are trying to enter the United States, where they expect to earn more money, possess more freedoms, and live in a more tolerant society. Every day, people are risking their lives to enter our great nation. Perhaps this big government is actually good for its citizens?

It is also an economy where the richest one percent of Americans controls around 35% of the nations wealth. How did that egalitarian, free society of Pilgrims because a nation of big government and powerfully wealthy people? Let's answer the government question first.

Perhaps surprisingly, the welfare state began with war-loving Prussians of the nineteenth century, who were ruled by a Kaiser (German, for "Caesar") and his Prime Minister, Otto von Bismarck (yes, that Bismarck). Even a Kaiser needed the support of his people, and Bismarck concluded the best way to win the people's loyalty was to give them money. Thus began a system of providing direct government payments to the poor, the elderly, and the unemployed. Bismarck had foresight, as he recognized the growing power of unions and socialists. He figured the they were becoming popular due to their promises to give people money, so he elected to take their power by fulfilling those promises himself. The Russian Tsars made no such efforts to help their people, and the Communists repaid the Tsars in 1917 by murdering Tsar Nicholas II and his family, thereby ending the Romanov dynasty that had lasted over 300 years. The Kaisers at least hung on until World War I.

Video 3—Bismarck Creates the Welfare State in 19^th Century Germany
(Note: the bald guy is Prime Minister Bismarck)
(As depicted by 1974 mini-series Fall of Eagles)

As World War I ended, many nations ended their monarchy (or made the monarch irrelevant, as in the UK) and replaced it with a mixture of democracy, capitalism, and socialism. At times it stumbled (e.g., the Weimer Republic Germany) and did not always bring stability, but after the worldwide depression of the 1930's and World War II the free world adopted democratic governments overseeing a vast welfare state.

Figure 2—Humorous Excerpt from Stephen Colbert's Book America Again

America didn't just copy the evolution of European politics, we had our own struggle of capitalism versus government that intensified during the Industrial Revolution, as masses of low-wage workers were brought together in factories, and learned they could exert might through their numbers. As democracy spread to a greater number of people they voted to preserve our system of property and free-enterprise while also asking the government to play a larger role in the economy and social life. As time went by the capitalist part of the economy grew and grew, allowing us to enjoy a prosperity our ancestors could only dream about, but we also began to rely more on government to redistribute wealth and establish laws about how people interact with one another.

In regards to food, thanks to free-enterprise we are the world's leader in food productivity, but many say we should also thank the government for helping to ensure food is safe and healthy without causing much pollution.. Just look at China and all

more more more

One of the big players in America's transition for a large government overseeing a vast welfare state and enforcing endless laws was Upton Sinclair, a novelist and unapologetic socialist that every agriculture student should know.

Upton Sinclair and food regulations

Can you imagine a self-proclaimed socialist being elected Governor of California? It almost happened during the Great Depression, and the candidate was Upton Sinclair, whose fame can be traced to his 1906 novel, The Jungle. In this work of fiction Sinclair depicted the Chicago meatpacking industry as a place where the lives of ordinary people are chopped up much like the pigs they slaughtered, all for the benefit of a few rich men. The main characters are a family of Lithuanian immigrants who move to Chicago in search of good jobs, and find it at the packing plants. It goes downhill fast, and becomes a tear-jerker. In every page this family is tricked, oppressed, cornered, cheated, or intimidated by a consortium of businessmen and politicians. Profits in Chicago, the book suggests, are made only by oppressing the working class. The businessmen get away with this because they not only own the packing plants but the politicians and judges as well.

The Jungle is different from most books because its clear purpose is to promote socialism, but the reader isn't made aware of this until the end. Sinclair was a socialist and he wanted America to become socialist, too. Ostensibly the book is based on his journalistic work in Chicago, but it is almost certain that he greatly exaggerated the bad things he saw. It reflects some of the things he saw, but is nevertheless a work of fiction.

   It seemed as if every time you met a person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new crimes. There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning only; and to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on "whisky-malt," the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called "steerly"— which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face; and when a man's sleeves were smeared with blood, and his hands steeped in it, how was he ever to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that he could see? It was stuff such as this that made the "embalmed beef" that had killed several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for years in the cellars.
   ...
   Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,— for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,— sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!
—Upton Sinclair. 1906. The Jungle.

The book was a huge success, but not exactly in the way Sinclair planned. Americans may have agreed with the need for a more active government but they thought socialism was too extreme. What attracted Americans to the book was Sinclair's descriptions of how meatpacking plants were operated. Any time the packing plants could sacrifice nutrition and safety for larger profits, they did so. Sinclair even suggested that some foods contained human parts! For the first time, Americans became truly concerned about the food they were eating, for in The Jungle, packing plants cut every conceivable corner for a buck, and the food they sold was akin to poison. Instead of making money by providing value to others, they made money by harming people through the sale of unsafe food. The meatpackers got away with this because every policeman and every politician was under their control. In reaction to public concerns, President Theodore Roosevelt and Congress passed a series of food regulations that serve as the foundation to the food regulation system in place today.

For a better appreciation of the impact of Upton Sinclair without having to read a book, I encourage you to listen to this Planet Money podcast about lard .^(P1)

Theodore Roosevelt, to whom...Sinclair had sent copies of The Jungle, also read the novel with care. On March 9, he wrote to Sinclair, suggesting that he get in touch with his commissioner of corporations to discuss the charges he had made against the meatpackers...Roosevelt agreed entirely that action was needed to soften the pernicious effects of the arrogant and greedy meatpackers. But Sinclair was wrong about socialism.
—Arthur, Anthony. 1906. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. Random House: NY, NY.

When Sinclair reflected on his book he remarked, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit its stomach." That is certainly the case, but even without Sinclair it is likely we would have just as many food regulations or more. When you have large corporations involved in making food and a substantial portion of the population who distrusts corporations, they will call on the government to oversee the food system and ensure safety.

Authority and food

Whether it be religious, social, or political authority, there is just something about food that matters what one person eats another person's business. The food police are nothing new.

In some cases people just think they know better than others about what foods are healthy and ethical. Way back in the 6^th century, BC, the philosopher Pythagorus were forbidden from eating flesh, eggs, or beans (for reasons we don't understand, but it had something to do with the transmission of the soul from one living being to another).^(D1) In the first century AD the influential Roman Musonius Rufus instructed that one should eat the same food given to slaves, as he recognized that slaves seemed more healthy than Roman nobles (what he didn't understand was that the unhealthy slaves died quickly, so only those with good health would be alive to be observed.^(R1) You read about Mr. Kellogg in Food Police, but he was not the first member of the Food Police!

The Catholic Church has always maintained rules about the foods one should eat to earn God's favor, like giving up meat on certain days. On certain occasions eating bread and drinking wine is, for Catholics and Orthodox christians, is said to be literally consuming the body of a god. This is not a Christian invention, though, as each ancient Greek family used to "hold communion" with the one god specifically associated with that family. Jews long ago decided to avoid pork, and it may have nothing to do with the perceived safety of pork. The Book of Genesis suggests that a vegetarian diet best resembles the Garden of Eden, and thus it was more holy to eat only animals which maintained a vegetarian diet. This is why they eat beef but not pork (hogs will eat anything).^(D1,N1)

Because food is the most important need next to water it becomes a political issue, and just like modern governments provide welfare programs to earn the public's support, governments see food security as necessary for maintaining polical power. America seems to have been born as much by the French Revolution as the American Revolution. After the French killed their king and established a republic they set about writing their own constitution. Though they borrowed much from the U.S. they were more eager for big government. The more leftist politicians did not only advocate man's political rights but his food rights, arguing that man (including women) had a right to exist, and thus a right to the substance of his existence—food.^(D2) The modern U.S. agrees, and today one in four Americans participated in one of America's food assistance programs.^(S2)

[Society has the duty to] guarantee the means of existence to all members of society; all other laws are subordinate to this one.
—Robespierre, Maximilien de (1758-1794), the Thomas Jefferson of the French Revolution.^(D1)

Even today's animal rights activists are not as original as they seem. Some French Revolutionaries not only wanted to liberate man but animals as well, and some advocated vegetarianism because it freed up agricultural resources to help feed the poor (raising fruits, grains, and vegetables for food requires less resources than meat, eggs, and dairy). At the same time, just like today, we can't help but to love meat. Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the intellectual father of the French Revolution) served and ate meat at his home, while simultaneouly telling others in writing that they should be vegetarians!^(S1)

References

(D1) Will Durant. 1939. The Story of Civilization Part II: The Life of Greece. Chapter 7: The Greeks in the West. Page 162.

(D2) Desan, Suzanne, M. 2013. "Lecture 25: The Pressure Cooker of Politics." Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napolean [lectures]. The Great Courses.

(N1) Norwood , F. B. and Jayson L. Lusk. 2011. Compassion by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare. Oxford University Press.

(R1) Rufus, Musonius (30-100 AD) Musonius Rufus. Translated by Cynthia King. Self-Published and available at Amazon.

(S1) Smith, Rod. April 8, 2013. "Food assistance helps many." Feedstuffs. Page 9.

(S2) Stoller-Conrad, Jessica. July 14, 2013. "Let Them Eat Kale: Vegetarians And The French Revolution." The Salt [blog]. National Public Radio.