Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]> quotes Ezra Pound on the subject of the relations between peasants and landowners in Italy, without comment. I would ask, how do you interpret this quote? Pound said, "Get it into your head that Italy was, even in 1900, immeasurably ahead of England in so far as land laws and the rights of the man who works on the soil are concerned. Some of the follies and cruelties of great English owners would not now be permitted in Italy. Certain kinds of domestic enemy would be shipped to the _confino_." One might ask how relevant this is to the practices in fascist Italy? "You can buy and own pretty villas and ancient architectural triumphs, but you can't cut down olive- trees just when you like and you can't drive the "colonno" of his fields. He can, I think, still be your "colonno" instead of the "colonno" of the former proprietor, but you don't by any means own him despite the feudal decorations or courtesy. Secular habit, picturesque, etc., as in the case of "the sailor." There is, near here, an antient villa, and a nabob therein, and "the sailor" just came and sat in the kitchen where there was plenty of room, he adopted the villa, and he ulti- mately adopted the chauffeur's seat, etc. That don't prove anything about anything except certain phases of mentality. " Maybe Pound should have stuck with the first part of his sentence, "that don't prove anything about anything . . .". As far as certain phases of "mentality" are concerned, Pound quite often praised the feudal and pre-feudal attitudes of Chinese land-lords, seeking to find historical justifications for fascism. I will elaborate on this below. <<ask twice as much from people with big houses as from people with cottages and small flats. PRIMITIVE SENSE OF EQUITY AND JUSTICE OR LATIN COMMON-SENSE." [emphasis supplied] -- EP JEFFERSON and/or MUSSOLINI, chapter XV>> Pound assertions about the servants seem to reveal a highly patriarchical attitude toward the servant class, an attitude which does not even question the economic basis of a system which allows the people in the "big houses" or "small flats" to exploit the lower strata. He simply says the ultra-rich who can afford servants pay more to their servants than the moderately rich who can afford servants. What sort of insight is this? It seems a carry-over into present times of the distinction between the poor serf and the less poor serf, or the inhouse slave, and the field slave. What does Pound's observation have to do with "EQUITY" in any meaningful modern sense of the word? And what are the assertions about the Latin sense of equity but undisguised racist statements about the supposed superiority of the Latin race? Let us look more carefully at the feudal and prefeudal mentality, which Pound was so fond of. In his essay "Mang Tze" Pound frequently praises what he called the "great chapter" in the works of the Confucian philosopher Mencius, as setting out the basis of an "equitable" system of a land tenure for Chinese peasants. This is supposed to serve as a model for the modern social reformer. The so-called "great chapter" in Mencius concerns the manner whereby the surplus product has been extracted from agricultural workers in times past. Mencius describes the systems devised by the founders of the Hsia, Yin , and Chau (Zhou) dynasties for allotting "mau" (units of land to be cultivated by the peasants). These systems of land alotment are contrasted with one another, as are the systems of extracting the surplus product. (Recall we are talking of systems which are well over five thousand years old, in the case of Hsia). The sovereign of Hsia enacted the fifty mau allot- ment and the payment of a tax. The founder of Yin enacted the seventy mau allotment, and the system of mutual aid. The founder of Chau enacted the hun- dred mau allotment and the share system. In reality what was paid in all of these was a tithe. The share system means mutual division. The aid system means mutual dependence. (Mencius I. iii. iii. 6). This is the entirety of what Pound refers to as "the great chapter in Mencius." By itself, it yields very little information. Of the three methods "for regulating the lands," the text goes on to say, "there is no system better than that of mutual aid," i.e., the second system put into effect under the Yin dynasty (c. 1600-1027 B.C.). Mencius' strong approval of this system had a significant impact on Pound's economic thought. The poet likened the Yin system or "system of mutual aid" to the Italian fascist system of "grain pools" or ammassi. According to Legge, under the Yin system 630 mau were divided into nine equal allotments of seventy mau each, the central one being reserved for the government, and eight families on the other eight uniting in its cultivation. (Legge, The Chinese Classics, Vol II "The Works of Mencius, 241). I I ---I---I--- I I ---I---I--- I I One might imagine a giant tic-tac-toe board # , with the central square as the area jointly cultivated by the surrounding eight family-run plots. Pound, in his essay "Mang Tsze (The Ethics of Mencius)," does print such a symbol of this system, a large bounded tic-tac-toe board, which resembles the Chinese character Ching3 (or Tsing). Ching3 # means "well or pit," according to Mathews, and represents "a village... divided between eight families, the central square cultivated in common for tax purposes and containing a village well...[or]... a design of the nine squares of the village, the [middle] point marking the well." (K, 1084). Underneath the illustration of the nine-square method in his essay "Mang Tsze," Pound tries to show the relevance of Mencius' reflections on feudal economy to the modern era. Straining in his use of modern terms to transform the archaic into the innovative, Pound essentially paraphrases the comments of Legge and Mencius concerning the Yin system. The earlier politica of ammassi was as follows: in a square divided in nine equal parts, the central one was cultivated by the eight sur- rounding families, and its produce went to the administration. This was commuted to a ten per cent on central or as you might say in the metropolitan areas where "things aren't as simple as all that." In an irregular country a just equiv- alence of what would be an equal measuring of flat acreage. Marketing customs similarly equitable. The profit motive is specifically denounced. I mean you will get no more accurate translation of the ideograms in Mencius' talk with King Hwey than "profit motive." ("Mang Tsze", SP, 91) To say there was no profit motive is a bit absurd. To say the ancient system was EQUITABLE, was ridiculous. There was a process of extraction of the surplus product BY THE LANDLORD, who employed a combination of slave labor and serfdom. (I mean slave labor, literally). We are talking about systems thousands of years old, where the peasants lived in complete servitude, systems which in no way are comparable to the GENUINELY EQUITABLE cooperative systems which were put forward by the Spanish Republicans in the 30's. Those were true systems of MUTUAL AID. based on democratic control of the cooperatives by their members, and coordinated democratic confederation. Yet Pound supported Mussolini's and Hitler's military intervention on the behalf of Franco, as the latter suppressed some of the most innovative attempts to create a genuine system of peasant controlled cooperatives thoughout much of Spain. If Pound truly believed in Chinese feudal and pre-feudal systems of organizing production (as he appeared to) then he was consistent in supporting Mussolini. Mussolini's fascism was the closest thing imaginable in the twentieth century to a revival of the most reactionary forms of feudal and pre-feudal social organization. The Mencian system and its modern fascist equivalent guaranteed that peasants would remain dependent semi-slaves, while the elite bureacratic class (and their landlord backers) would retain control of profit, distribution, and the conditions of production (without any interference from the laboring class). Salut et fraternite, Wei http://www.geocities.com/weienlin/econ.html ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com