Down with the Cities Part 19

Thus the merchants, waving the golden banner of "market principle," used the necessity and preservability of agricultural products to their own advantage. We must not fall for such tricks. Food is none other than that which supports life. Even if the harvest brings in more than is needed, the food that ends up in the stomachs of the idlers must have, as that which supports their lives, a very great value. If, Mr. Ibuka, agriculture has only 1/1,500th the productive capacity of industry, then agricultural produce must have 1,500 times the value of industrial products, right? This is the true market principle, and the just appropriation of value. A proper deal would exchange 1,500 transistor radios at 30,000 each for one bag of rice.

Thus the market principle is a tricky scheme whereby the merchants do the same with the essential portion of agricultural produce (i.e., that which goes into the bellies of the idlers) as they do with the excess -- they cause the price to hit rock bottom. In Nature, where there is no such scheming, there is also no market principle. No matter how many zebras there are, if all it takes is one to fill the belly of a lion, the lion will find infinite value in that one zebra.

Therefore, the market principle is the illegitimate child of the money economy. Merchants cannot carry on business without money.

It is money that causes prices to nose-dive. With bartering, it is impossible to get a head of cabbage from someone without giving something fair in return. Getting that head of cabbage without giving something of like value in return is robbery, pure and simple. The techniques of business, then, are the same as the laws by which robbers operate.

We must get rid of the robbers. We must also get rid of the city, which inevitably brings robbers into existence. And we must get rid of money, which makes possible the functions and activities of the city. If we allow the continued existence of money, it will not only keep plundering agriculture, but it will also destroy us.

Getting away from Money: The Bagworm Revolution

Money makes us squander resources, destroy Nature, and contaminate the environment. These urban evils (the activities of the city) are all carried out "under duress" because of money. It is because of money (the pursuit of profit) that, even though there is absolutely no need, we continue to squander resources, strew pollution, and compete madly in the production of yet more.

[52] It is because of money that we search desperately for more construction work to do. The purpose of public works projects is to "make the money circulate," but this cannot be done without destroying Nature. Money is tras.h.i.+ng the Earth.

"Money is the root of all evil. Since money appeared, all of creation has been dark, and greed and evil have ruled the world."

Shoeki was already saying this in the middle of the Edo Period, before the advent of industrial society.

Money is the root of all the above evils, and if we do not immediately (it may already be too late) banish it from the Earth, we will experience a most grave crisis, but since money is the life blood of the city, banis.h.i.+ng it will require an earthshaking occurrence, and the useless softies in the city will not be able to bear it. They will put up a desperate struggle, and, using everything at their disposal (the cream of science and technology), they will try to preserve money. It is for this very reason that we will be unable to avoid disaster.

This is a despairing situation. We must despair of banis.h.i.+ng money, and we must despair of avoiding catastrophe. Previously I examined this problem from a different angle, and said that we must not waste our effort trying to change something that is hopeless to change, but that we should begin by putting distance between ourselves and money. Should we continue to cling to, and depend upon, that which is a weapon of plunder and the ultimate cause of destruction, the plundering will become worse, and we will advance toward ruin with ever greater speed. Before anything else, we must cease our tightrope act. Getting away from money will not insure our safety, but we can at least avoid direct entanglement. The more we depend upon economic ties with the city, the greater is the danger, but the more distance we can put between ourselves and the city's poisons, the less chance there is of our being dragged directly into the mora.s.s when the city begins to disintegrate. To depend completely upon the city (listen up, you large-scale farmers!) while expecting at the same time to come out unscathed when the city falls is like hoping for safety in an airplane that is about to crash. When the city begins to disintegrate, shrink, and recede, pollution will lessen and Nature's power of recovery will awaken by the same degree. In time we will again have a livable environment.

Until that time comes, we must, without the help of the city, establish ourselves so that we can survive without it. This is the Bagworm Revolution.

City Prosperity, Country Dest.i.tution

Parting company with money is exactly the same as parting company with the city. In Chapter VI, I wrote in detail about this, but I would like to make some comments here on lessening one's dependence on the city, and increasing one's dependence on Nature. Here I offer some concrete proposals for Natural Cycle Organic Farming.

Until relatively recently, almost all j.a.panese farmers practiced self-sufficient farming; they had some domestic animals, returned the manure and their own wastes to the Land, and fed themselves and their animals with the food harvested from the Land. If one farms thus, it is not at all difficult to be independent, and the blessings (i.e., interference) of the city are totally unnecessary. Even though these farmers are independent, they were poverty-stricken, but this was not at all due to the retrogressive and closed nature of self-sufficient agriculture.

Their dest.i.tution was due fully to the high-handed plunder of the city. You critics out there! You must not evade the real question. If the farmers of both former and modern ages were dest.i.tute because of agriculture's retrogressive character, then why is modern petroleum-based agriculture, as represented by American agriculture, suffering under such onerous debts? There has never been any problem other than that which has always dogged agriculture: the plunder of the city. The problem is that the critics and politicians take for granted their right to fill their bellies without soiling their own hands.

Note that the proletariat and farmer literature of the recent past examined in detail the dest.i.tution, greed, and ignorance of the farmers, and wrote that almost all of it had been brought about by the high-handedness of the bourgeoisie and the evil landlords, but this is ridiculous. As I demonstrated in Chapter V, the true criminals are the vast hordes of non-tilling, gluttonous idlers, the proletariat writers among them. The landlords, who were held up for criticism as the bad guys, were merely the medium though which the city carried on its plunder.

Such off-the-mark literary investigation does not even rate a snort.

If, as Shoeki wrote, we establish a system wherein emperors, scholars, and beggars all till the soil and produce their own food, then how can there possibly be "the glory that plunders,"

"the prosperity of the city," and "the dest.i.tution of the country"?

Independent Agriculture

Let us now imagine a kind of agriculture that is like the natural cycle self-sufficient farming of former times (the kind they told us needed nothing as long as they had salt), but which in addition is not the object of plunder. And, using this as a blueprint, let us see how we can establish it in this modern world, in which modern agriculture is flouris.h.i.+ng.

Since I have some chickens, I will talk about this from my own experience of chicken farming. If one has chickens then rice is free, vegetables are free, potatoes and fruit are free; things we human beings eat -- that which keeps us alive -- are all free.

Since I produce rice to feed myself, I do not sell it, and I do not produce much more than I need. And of course there is no need to pile on agricultural chemicals. Even if for this reason the amount harvested drops a little, no one will complain. As long as I grow enough to eat for one year, it is not worth worrying about the amount of the harvest. If one applies poisons and produces so much poisoned rice that one cannot eat it at all, the final result is only damage to one's health.

I sell a few eggs. Since they are natural eggs, they have great value, sometimes selling for twice the market price. I feed the chickens many things that are ordinarily thrown away, so I spend about half as much as usual on feed. Even when the chickens lay fewer eggs than usual I always come out ahead. The money I get from these eggs represents what I described in Chapter VI: the smallest possible link with the meddling city. With this money I pay what I must, like taxes, contributions, education, and the like. When the cities perish I will no longer need this money, and I will not have to sell eggs any more. When that time comes I will substantially reduce the number of chickens down to where I can supply all their feed myself.

Every year I apply chicken manure to my fields to build up the soil, so my plants are highly resistant to insects and disease.

Of course there are insects, and disease sometimes occurs during cold and wet weather. However, I have never lost everything to insects or disease, and for the past 30 years I have always had enough to eat.

Healthy human beings have resistance to worms, tuberculosis, tooth decay, and viruses, but sickly people are always suffering illness. We can observe the same phenomenon in food plants. If one raises the plants organically and supplies them sufficiently with the blessings of Nature (air, sunlight, water, the Land), one will have healthy plants that are highly resistant to disease and insects. Even if you lose 20 percent, the other 80 percent will survive. We need only eat this to insure our own survival.

This is what I mean by self-sufficient agriculture.

We must also supply ourselves with farm implements and items for household use. Our forebears all did this, and that is why they apparently "needed only salt." In addition, almost all of these implements were made of recyclable materials like bamboo, wood, and straw, where they did not have to live in fear of running out of underground resources, and they did not pollute the environment in their manufacture. What is more, once these things wore out, they could be discarded just as they were, for they would in time decompose and return to the soil.

Is there any room in this kind of agriculture for contamination, destruction, and profligacy? What need is there of money, or of living in fear of the self-destruction brought about by money?

Become a Lone Wolf

To summarize: Independent farming signifies that which is independent of money, and independence from money is the same as independence from the city. Independence from the city means independence from government, from agricultural cooperatives, from the manufacturers and services, and, if we go a little bit further, independence from the consumers. The consumers are not being kind to the farmers by buying their produce; the farmers are blessing the consumers with what is left over after they grow enough for themselves. So if we stop giving food to the consumers, we will become independent of them.

The independence described above is independence from our immediate enemy, so our mission is clear. If one has the determination and resolution to carry through it should somehow be possible. As a matter of fact, though our numbers are still small, people doing just this are scattered throughout the entire country, so it is not at all impossible. Though difficult, one can in fact avoid the disaster a.s.sured by our present society of prosperity.

But there is one thing I would like to emphasize here, and it is that we must endeavor to achieve an even more difficult kind of independence. Allow me to explain.

First of all, independence from one's neighbors (this can be construed as independence from custom, from convention, and from history).

"Solidarity" and "cooperation" sound good, but in reality this means merely giving in to the meddling of one's neighbors, and what is more, those neighbors are repulsive cowards who have been dirtied by their toadying to the city. The "common sense"

and "reality" that they value so highly are none other than the old customs that have been cultivated in order to make them nourish and preserve the city. Do you have the bravery to become independent of these shackles?

The farmer spirit is almost the same as the sycophant spirit.

That spirit of sycophancy -- it is licking the boots of the feudal lords, the landlords, the politicians, and the agricultural cooperatives; it is sucking up to the extravagant and self-centered city housewives, to the teachers, to the policemen, to the celebrities and writers and critics (just recall the servile fawning of the farmer who is asked to say something on television in front of some celebrities).

That spirit of sycophancy is directly concerned with the farmer next door. If the neighbor does it, I will too. "What? The neighbor got a new combine? Quick -- call the co-op!" In the world there are legions of farmers like this. They must stay abreast of their neighbors in everything. They cannot stand to get behind their neighbors in rice planting, harvesting, contributions, or travel.

But it is not only their neighbors. They observe the movements of everyone in the neighborhood, worrying so much about getting behind that they are quite forlorn. This mental state has been brought about by the strong will to stay together with the other farmers, a strategy which was meant to help them bear the oppression of the city. It is not mistaken to say that this crisis mentality -- the constant fear of falling out of step with the group and being trampled to death -- has engendered this complex toward "the farmer next door."