Beyond State vs. Society: Theories of the State and New Deal...

Beyond "State vs. Society": Theories of the State and New Deal Agricultural PoliciesAuthor(s): Jess Gilbert and Carolyn HoweSource: American Sociological Review, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 204-220Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095780Accessed: 17/03/2009 18:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toAmerican Sociological Review.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095780?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa

BEYOND "STATE VS. SOCIETY": THEORIES OF THE STATE AND NEW DEAL AGRICULTURAL POLICIES*

JEss GILBERT CAROLYN HowE University of Wisconsin College of the Holy Cross

Political sociologists studying social classes, state structures, and public policies are en- gaged in a debate between "society-centered" and "state-centered" theories. We challenge the state-centered approach by analyzing the interrelationship of state and society, focusing on the convergence of state institutional capacity and class capacity. We explore the social origins of state-building in U.S. agriculture and show the historical class biases of state agricultural institutions. Through an examination of the majorNewDealfarm policy themes, particularly the rise andfall of reform in the AgriculturalAdjustmentAdministration and the Resettlement/Farm Security Administration, we demonstrate the interdependence of state and society. We analyze statelsociety relations as they affected each agency and examine class conflict both within and beyond the state. Instead of assuming the separation of the state and social forces, we investigate how they interact to shape policy.

T he social and economic policies of the New Deal offer rich empirical grounding for

current debates in political sociology between so- called "society-centered" and "state-centered" perspectives.1 The basic theoretical issue concerns the relationship among social classes, state structures, and public policies. Skocpol and Amenta (1986, p. 136) held that autonomous state factors are often "more causally significant" than class factors. In discussions of New Deal agricultural policy, which has emerged as a key case, such "state-centered" analyses remain unchal-

lenged (Finegold 1981; Skocpol and Finegold 1982; Finegold and Skocpol 1980, 1984; Wier and Skocpol 1985; Hooks 1990).

We believe this argument has been too one- sided. We therefore focus on the uneven development of both state structures and class capacities as they converged in the 1930s. After outlin- ing recent theories of the state and reviewing state-centered interpretations of New Deal agricultural policy, we offer our own theoretical syn- thesis of the "state vs. society" debate. We then examine the institutional capacities of the state, detailing agricultural state-building before the New Deal and showing how this development cemented a state/society relationship that favored the dominant class. We also identify the capacities of dominant and subordinate agricultural classes, which varied by region in the 1930s and stimulated a New Deal in agriculture. In the final section, we analyze the dominant policy themes of the New Deal, focusing on the rise and fall of reform in the Agricultural Adjustment Adminis- tration and the Resettlement/Farm Security Ad- ministration. Each agency is treated in terms of the convergence of institutional and class capacities. We argue that state-centered theorists dis- regard the interrelation of state and society; in

* Direct correspondence to Jess Gilbert, Depart- ment of Rural Sociology, 340 Agriculture Hall, Uni- versity of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706 or Carolyn Howe, Department of Sociology, Holy Cross College, Box 65A, Worchester, MA 01610. Both authors contributed equally to this article; the ordering of our names is alphabetical. We thank the following people for comments on earlier versions: Bill Friedland, Harriet Friedmann, Gary Green, Rog- ers Hollingsworth, Greg Hooks, Bob Jessop, Rogers Johnson, Lane Kenworthy, Joleen Kirschenman, Dan Kleinman, David Lachman, Jerry Lembcke, Scott McNall, Max Pfeffer, Rachel Schurman, Spencer Wood, Brigitte Young, members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Sociology's So- cial Organization Colloquium, and several ASR re- viewers. We appreciate financial support from the Graduate School and the Agricultural Experiment Station (USDA Hatch Grants 2554 and 3395), both of UW-Madison, and from the Holy Cross College Bachelor Ford Summer Faculty Fellowship. We also thank Nancy Carlisle for typing the paper.

l We say "so-called" because, while state-centered

theorists have adopted that label for themselves, they are the ones who refer to works by McConnell ([1953] 1969), pluralists, power structure researchers, and Marxists as "society-centered." A careful reading of many of these theories reveals more complex analyses than admitted by state-centered advocates.

204 American Sociological Review, 1991,Vol. 56 (April:204-220)

BEYOND STATE VS. SOCIETY 205

viewing the state as an independent entity, they fail to see how it is related to the wider society. Further, they oversimplify societal forces and ignore class conflict within and beyond the state. State and society are interdependent, and must be analyzed as such.

THE "STATE VS. SOCIETY" DEBATE AND NEW DEAL AGRICULTURAL POLICY

Since the mid-1970s, Marxist political sociologists have held that the state is an institution that is both constrained by the structural requirements of capitalism and shaped by concrete class demands (Offe 1974; Esping-Andersen, Friedland, and Wright 1976; Block 1977, 1980; Therborn 1978; Poulantzas 1978; Wright 1978; Harrington 1983; Jessop 1985; cf. Lindblom 1977). They emphasize the role of class struggle in forming and transforming state policies and institutions. However, these theorists recognize both the ir- reducibility of state institutions to class forces and the effect that state structures have on society. They also criticize a "statism" whereby government bureaucracies and political elites appear as autonomous agents, isolated from society. Instead, they see states in relation to class actors; class relations are concentrated in and through state institutions. The state thus contains systematic institutional biases or structural privileges in favor of certain classes and against others. However, hegemony is never guaranteed to the privileged class, precisely because the state is a terrain of struggle that modifies as well as reflects the relative power (balance) of class forces. This theoretical position has not been applied to New Deal farm policy; we integrate it into our analysis below.

In the 1980s, Skocpol and associates developed a state-centered challenge to existing state theories. They showed that states are not mere reflections of social classes but rather have their own structures and capacities that affect society. They presented the state as an organizer of class interests and stressed the role of key policy intellectuals and bureaucrats. According to this perspective, state managers create and implement policies stemming from their own expert training and commitment to public service rather than in response to pressures from social forces. The state-centered approach rejects the pluralist view that the state is a neutral arena open to societal influence, the power structure view that a ruling class governs through the state, and the Marxist perspective that the state is shaped by either the structural requirements of capitalism or class

struggles (see Skocpol 1980, 1985). State-centered analysts have examined New Deal agricultural policy extensively; it remains their strongest empirical case (Finegold 1981; Finegold and Skocpol 1980,1984; Skocpol and Finegold 1982; Weir and Skocpol 1985; Hooks 1990).

Skocpol and Finegold's (1982) analysis of the New Deal compared the National Recovery Ad- ministration (NRA) for industry and the Agri- cultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). They argued that while the U.S. state generally lacked autonomy in the 1930s, the AAA was an excep- tion. They held that the state had developed sufficient institutional capacity through the land- grant colleges and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to design and successfully implement the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Through the prior history of institution-building within the USDA (particularly the Extension Service and the Bureau of Agricultural Eco- nomics), a process of political learning had oc- cuffed. The basic idea behind the AAA - vol- untary production controls to raise farm prices - was developed by "state-broken" agricultural economists. Skocpol and Finegold (1982, p. 260) argued that since the economists proposed the legislation themselves (indeed, major farm organizations offered other policies), they were autonomous from social forces.

Unlike the AAA, the NRA was not housed in an existing agency like the Department of Com- merce. New Deal industrial policy was developed and directed by self-interested business leaders. Despite upper-class dominance of the NRA, the New Deal led to "unwanted outcomes" for the capitalists, including "losing power to labor unions." However, the less organized "commercial farmers" were able to "beat back all challenges from the agricultural underclasses" and gain an enduring niche within the government. The AAA's success is not attributable to the "demands, the organization, or the class economic power of social groups"; rather, it succeeded because of the state's autonomous capacity to use its "own knowledgeable administrative organizations" established through years of institution-building (Skocpol and Finegold 1982, pp. 258-61).

While state-centered theorists have given us valuable insights into institution-building and varying state capacities, they have done so by virtually neglecting the social forces within and beyond the state that influence those developments. Agricultural economists did develop the AAA's production control scheme, yet Skocpol and Finegold (1982) overlooked the class biases

206 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

built into the plan and minimized the role of class forces in bringing it about. They scarcely men- tioned the historical dominant-class orientation of the state agencies governing agriculture. This omission becomes more important when analyzing the AAA's implementation. Skocpol and Finegold confused two very different types of policy elites: agricultural economists who origi- nated the production control plan and conservative agribusinessmen who dominated the AAA's implementation and gave it an explicit class content. By not analyzing the different class interests advanced by each, they conflate the two groups as the state's "agricultural experts" and misinterpret the AAA's class results as "surpris- ing" (Skocpol and Finegold 1982, p. 259), even ironic and unintended (Finegold 1981, p. 26; Fi- negold and Skocpol 1980). Furthermore, the state- centered analysts' concepts ("commercial farmer" and "underclass") are too imprecise theoret- ically to explain the actual dynamics of the New Deal years.

Hooks's (1990) recent account differs from Skocpol's and her associates' primarily through its more historical treatment of changes in New Deal agencies, examining how and when state autonomy occurs. In all crucial respects, however, Hooks's analysis is another state-centered treatment of the New Deal. His disagreement with Skocpol and associates is empirical, not theoretical, and he further reifies the state/society dis- tinction. Hooks (1990, pp. 32-35) challenges Skocpol and Finegold's (1982) claims that the AAA lost autonomy in the late 1930s and that the state was autonomous only in agriculture; he shows that the USDA's successful efforts at state- building in the latter 1930s were closely linked to developments in the Executive branch. The USDA's ability to increase its control over agricultural policy was tied both to its prior history of institution-building and to Executive efforts.

Despite disclaimers to the contrary (Hooks 1990, pp. 32, 41), Hooks repeatedly sets up a simple dichotomy in which explanations are either state-centered or society-centered (pp. 32-40). In his analysis, it is always the former. He fails to see the contribution that both factors must make to any satisfactory account of New Deal agricultural policies. For example, in 1938, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) became the central planning agency of the USDA. In the early 1940s, a new Secretary of Agriculture attempted to consolidate his power by demoting the influential BAE (Hooks 1990, p. 36). By giving causal primacy to internal administrative

power-plays as an explanation for the BAE's de- motion, Hooks downplays societal factors and looks only at the Farm Bureau. He then claims that "the actions of the [Farm Bureau] and its Congressional allies were not responsible for the decline of the BAE" (Hooks 1990, p. 38). Hooks's own historical sources could not disagree more.2 In our view, bureaucratic decisions were important, but to discount the role of the Farm Bureau and Congress is simply wrong. As the most recent treatment of the "state vs. society" debate, it is unfortunate that Hooks's insights ultimately re- inforce the dichotomy. We argue that the opposition is a false one.

In the remainder of this paper we clarify how the state and society are interrelated by examining variations within New Deal agricultural policies both over time and across agencies. We synthesize positive aspects of the state-centered case with the contributions of recent Marxist theory. While state institutions and class relations can be analytically separate, the former are part of the whole society and thus reflect, shape, and contain social relations. Similarly, class relations are in part constituted by the state. Our argument centers on state institutional capacities and social class capacities that converged to produce the specific outcomes of the 1930s. Institutional capacities include structural maturity and efficacy - to implement effectively both policy objectives and specific programs. The capacity of a state institution is affected by the timing of its own historical development, the social forces influencing its creation, and its specific structure. Newer institutional structures tend to be more vulnerable to influence from the oppositional classes; older structures tend to be more resistant to such influences.3 Class capacities are defined

2 For example, while quoting Kirkendall that Sec- retary of Agriculture "Wickard's role was crucial," Hooks (1990, p. 36) omits Kirkendall's (1966, pp. 195-238) broader discussion of the important role of the Farm Bureau in the attack on the BAE. See also Campbell (1962, pp. 177-94).

3 By structural maturity we suggest that the longer an institution has been in existence, the more imper- meable it is to structural changes. This does not mean that dramatic historical events can't weaken older institutions; rather, newer ones are simply more vulnerable. A "mature" institution is able to draw upon agencies and resources that allow it to be more effi- cient and effective in its operation, partly because, as Skocpol and Finegold (1982, pp. 276-77) say, state managers develop a degree of "political leading" from their experience. An efficacious agency is one that can develop and implement policies quickly, effi-


as the ability of particular classes or class seg- ments to obtain the outcomes they desire. The capacities of classes to act in their interests de- pends largely on their organizational strength and resources in relation to those of other classes. These are affected by how intensively they have organized the human and financial resources of their potential members, how extensively they have organized in a geographical sense, and how hegemonic their ideological and political vision is (Therborn 1983; Lembcke 1988).

Our model is exemplified by the late nineteenth-century U.S. Department of Agriculture, which was open to influence from both subordinate and dominant classes. Early on, however, the orientation of USDA officials to a scientific agriculture led them to structural ties with the most prosperous farmers. By the 1930s, the USDA was more responsive to the dominant farm classes, and its Agricultural Adjustment Admin- istration was relatively resistant to pressures from the subordinate classes. The Resettlement Ad- ministration, on the other hand, a new agency housed outside the USDA, was created in response to subordinate class influences and ad- ministrators' concerns with rural reform. How- ever, because of its newness and the precarious balance of power between dominant and subordinate classes, it was vulnerable to challenges from the dominant classes.

It is thus the convergence of the state factor - institutional capacity - and the society factor - class capacity - that must be examined to ad- vance our empirical and theoretical understanding of the state. Furthermore, it is their mutually shaping relationship that determines the nature of these factors. The state-centered approach rests on a partial and one-sided reading of the historical record. We need instead to grasp the interrelation of state and society.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNEVEN INSTITUTIONAL AND CLASS CAPACITIES

We examine the development of capacities both within agricultural state institutions and among farming classes - capacities that converged to shape New Deal farm policy. First, the USDA/ land-grant complex developed in a way that increased the capacity of the dominant farm classes and structurally privileged them within the state. Our dispute with state-centered theorists concerns their claim that the AAA was an instance of "state autonomy" and that state managers created and implemented policies "independent of social groups" (Hooks 1990, p. 32; Skocpol and Finegold 1982). Rather, our historical review of these institutions suggests "a blurring of boundaries between state and society" (Quadag- no 1987, p. 119).

Second, we outline the diverse class structures of the three major agricultural regions, showing that simple reference to "commercial farmers" and an "underclass" (Skocpol and Finegold 1982, p. 258) is an inadequate conceptualization of complex societal forces. In addition, these agricultural regions faced serious unrest in the early 1930s. This threat of disruption, combined with widespread organizing in agriculture and industry, led to a shift in the balance of class power. The importance of these social forces in creating a need for government intervention in agriculture is downplayed by state-centered theorists.

Institutional Capacities: Agricultural State- Building before the New Deal

The context within which the institutional complex of agriculture developed is crucial. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state land-grant colleges arose during the Civil War, following a period of class struggle within agriculture. These institutions were created in a progressive climate, and their creation was a victory for small farmers.

The USDA and the land-grant agricultural colleges worked together as institutions to develop agriculture. The former was created largely as a result of agitation by an association of farm groups called the United States Agricultural Society. The department was one of the first fruits of the alliance between newly-elected President Lincoln and the farmers who supported him. Protest and lobbying by the National Grange and the Farmers' Alliance helped elevate the USDA to cabinet status in 1889 (Baker 1939). The state colleges

ciently, and smoothly. This does not mean that the institution is autonomous from class forces. An institution's organizational structure can be responsive or nonresponsive to influence "from below." It can de- rive its strength from membership participation (more participatory) or primarily from financial resources and donations (less participatory). Whether organizations develop participatory or nonparticipatory structures has political implications that affect the institution's responsiveness to subordinate groups. In the case of nonparticipatory structures, the class or group that wields power at the outset will likely shape the direction of that organization indefinitely, commensurate with its power within society. Insight into these organizational dynamics comes from Lembcke (1988), Lembcke and Howe (1986), Offe and Wiesenthal (1980), and Therborn (1983).


were originally teaching institutions; 25 years later Congress added research units called Agricultural Experiment Stations. With an orientation toward scientific agriculture, most of the research con- ducted in the state Experiment Stations benefited primarily larger and wealthier farmers (Rosenberg 1978, pp. 170-76).

The agricultural education leaders "strongly partook of the ideological suppositions of the existing order" (McConnell [1953] 1969, p. 23). They believed that farmers should mediate the class conflict between capital and labor. From the outset, concerns about class conflict and the development of a particular (scientific) form of agriculture shaped the mission of these state institutions. Society-centered factors - social disruption and economic change - help explain the origins of these institutions; state-centered factors come into play as intellectuals within the institutions developed their own agendas for solving agricultural problems. Those agendas, however, were developed within the context of late nineteenth-century industrial development. The particular problems the intellectuals tried to solve depended on the vulnerability of their institutions to social pressures as well as their own class biases, shaped by the "ideological suppositions" of the time: scientism, private property, and laissez-faire capitalism.

The interpenetration of state and society is no- where better exemplified than in the creation of another part of the land-grant system: the Agri- cultural Extension Service. Extension grew out of the educational efforts of county demonstration agents who were funded by the Rockefeller-en- dowed General Education Board, Chambers of Commerce, and local business communities. County agents demonstrated the effectiveness of new farming methods on willing farmers' land. Believing that a prosperous country depended on prosperity in agriculture, the American Bankers' Association sought to help farmers become " 'more successful producers, a better credit risk, and a more contented and prosperous people"' (McConnell 1969, p. 31). Lobbyists for such business associations helped pass the Smith-Le- ver Extension Act of 1914, establishing the official county agent system with funding and spon- sorship from business organizations and the USDA (Baker 1939; McConnell 1969, p. 45).

The importance of the county agent system for our thesis is twofold. First, the rise of Extension includes a remarkable story of public/private cooperation in institution-building that shows the interaction of state and society. In 1911, a

Chamber of Commerce in New York set up an agency to sponsor a county demonstration agent and called it a "farm bureau." The name stuck, even after Smith-Lever federalized the agents. From 1914 on, Extension agents organized thousands of farmers into farm bureaus to help them work more effectively with local farmers. These local organizations soon began associating at the state level. In 1919-1920 the American Farm Bureau Federation was founded, "a direct outgrowth of the county agent system" (McCo- nnell 1969, p. 48). A government bureaucracy - the Extension Service - had suddenly created the largest and most powerful "private" farm organization in the country. In many instances, the county agents became publicly-paid organizers of the Farm Bureau (McConnell 1969, p. 47).

The strength of the Farm Bureau by the early 1930s accounts in part for the absence of a nationwide, progressive farm organization. The early Farm Bureau, with USDA support, undermined potentially powerful radical farm groups such as the Nonpartisan League and the Farmer- Labor Party. These latter groups sought to help farmers defend against powerful agribusiness interests through state ownership (of banks, rail- roads, and granaries) and political organizations uniting farmers and workers. The Farm Bureau, appealing to the property interests of farmers, offered instead a comprehensive business-oriented ideology (Howe 1986, p. 133). The class capacities of smaller and poorer farmers were ultimately no match for the powerful American Farm Bureau Federation.

Second, creation of the county Extension Ser- vice set in place an institutional structure that linked the federal government with the most prosperous farmers at the local level. Through the Farm Bureau's ties to Extension, larger and wealthier farmers had privileged access to the state. In the 1930s, the Farm Bureau/Extension relationship precluded the development of alternative structures for implementing the Agricul- tural Adjustment Act - structures that might have been more responsive to popular demands. As the state's institutional capacity created and built the Farm Bureau, it simultaneously strengthened the class capacity of those large farmers who were best able to take advantage of Extension.

In summary, the USDA/land-grant complex developed in a way that increased the class capacity of the dominant farm classes, subverted that of oppositional groups, and structurally privileged the former within the state. When the


Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed in 1933, the institutional structure was in place, as Skocpol and Finegold (1982) claimed, to create an effective new agency. The USDA could draw on its own Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the land- grant colleges, the Extension Service, and the quasi-public Farm Bureau for trained, willing leaders capable of creating and implementing its policies. Yet our point remains: The development of state capacity cannot be separated from class capacities and the balance of class forces; in turn, class capacities are shaped by the state.

Class Capacities: Three Regional Structures in U.S. Agriculture

Contrary to Skocpol and Finegold's (1982) treatment, there was no common type of "commercial farm" in the 1930s. Rather, each major U.S. agricultural region had its own distinctive class structure oriented toward commercial production: plantation sharecropping in the South, capitalist agriculture in the Pacific West (Cali- fornia particularly), and family farming in the Midwest, Plains, and Northeast (Kirby 1987; Pfeffer 1983). The natural constraints imposed by agricultural production interacted with different forms of labor to yield these three modal systems, each with its own dominant and subordinate class interests. Agricultural policy thus had to deal with extremely divergent interests among farmers, but, as we have seen, the existing state institutions already had a structural bias. New Dealers themselves recognized this. A leading New Dealer, Rexford Tugwell, early on linked "the Land Grant College system with its State Extension Directors and corps of County Agents ... with the ruling caste of farmers, the most conservative Farm Bureau leaders, the cotton barons of the South, the emerging Associated Farmers of California, the banker-farmers of the Middle West" (Lord 1947, p. 381). These agricultural regions faced serious disruption in the early 1930s, leading to a shifting balance of class power. The organizing efforts and unrest among family farmers, sharecroppers, and farm workers were serious enough to threaten the interests of the dominant classes and to push for unprece- dented government intervention in agriculture.

Only in California did full capitalist relations dominate, resulting in industrial-type conflicts between growers and workers.4 Ten major strikes

took place from 1930 to 1932, three involving over 1,000 workers. The next year, when the New Deal began, there were 37 farm labor strikes in California. These culminated with the "great- est single strike in the history of agricultural labor relations in America" (Daniel 1981, p. 165): the cotton strike of 1933 that involved 18,000 workers. Daniel (1981, p. 175) concluded that the New Deal "could hardly ignore the active and militant labor movement among California farm workers in mid-1933." Nor could the growers. The California Chamber of Commerce formed the Associated Farmers to fight union- ization. The organization initiated physical attacks on strikers and received information on militant farm workers from state government offices (Jamieson 1945; Majka and Majka 1982). Both classes in capitalist agriculture had a high degree of unity and consciousness of their divergent interests.

The class structure in southern agriculture, especially the "Cotton Belt," involved planter- landlords and landless tenants or sharecroppers. The Depression-era plantation owners were quite conscious of their class interests and pursued them vigorously -- most clearly in relation to the two major tenant unions. After organizing the Ala- bama Sharecroppers' Union in 1931, several African-Americans were killed. The union later called a strike and the "struggle soon developed into a miniature civil war" (Jamieson 1945, p. 299). The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, though, was the major organizing effort in the region. Founded by black and white farmers in Arkansas in 1934, three years later it claimed 30,000 members in six states. The planters reacted violently. The union called one period in 1935 a "reign of terror." The New York Post editorialized that "'there can be no doubt of the reversion to slave law, mob violence, and Fascist methods in Arkansas"' (Jamieson 1945, p. 313). The organizing and protest of southern tenants played a significant role in bringing about the reformist Resettlement Administration.

Those who worked the land in the Midwest and Northeast were usually landowners. Self- employed family farmers confronted the dominant class of bankers and agribusiness firms. In late 1932, about half of Midwestern farms were threatened by foreclosure (Dyson 1986, p. 87). That year, 2,000 men and women, mainly Na-

I The struggles of farm workers affected both industrial and agricultural policy. Farm workers lost the

right to unionize under the Wagner Act (Majka and Majka 1982) but pro-labor wage and hour standards were later set by the Farm Security Administration.


tional Farmers' Union members, gathered in Des Moines to form the Farmers' Holiday Associa- tion. Throughout Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska, the organization gained support as thousands of farmers picketed, blockaded roads, marched on courthouses, and held "penny auctions" to prevent foreclosures (Shover 1965). Midwestern farmers, in the words of USDA's leading historian, "were nearer armed revolt than any group had been since the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794" (Rasmussen 1983, p. 1158). In the fall of 1933, after Congress had passed the Agricul- tural Adjustment Act, the Farmers' Holiday As- sociation continued its pressure on state and federal governments. Five midwestern governors endorsed more radical farm legislation and lob- bied in Washington, leading President Roosevelt to announce additional farm relief. The Farmers' Holiday historian notes: "Never had a national administration been subjected to such potential and unknown pressure from the farm belt" (Shover 1965, p. 96).

In sum, different agricultural regions had very different class structures that cannot be homoge- nized into "commercial farmers" and the "agricultural underclass," as Skocpol and Finegold (1982, p. 258) did. These regional farming systems - California capitalism, southern plantations, and midwestern family farming - provide the essential background to New Deal agricultural policy. The regional class conflicts directly affected policy-making, despite Skocpol and Finegold's (1982) contrary claim. One par- ticipant in 1933 recalled:

Those [protest] movements were more influential than all the farm organization presidents and farm economists bundled together. In the final analysis, farm and congressional leaders were willing to gamble on an Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 because they were scared. (Breimyer 1983, p. 1 155)

It is the role of widespread farm protest, not specific policy proposals of farm organizations, that supports the insights of so-called society-centered theories regarding the origins of state policy. The absence of a progressive farm alliance capable of making direct policy proposals was certainly important - an absence of class capacity that was determined by the state and by the earlier strength of the dominant farm groups. Nonethe- less, the ability to mount significant social protest was present and helped create the necessity for a New Deal.

The coming New Deal undertook to restore prosperity and quell unrest in agriculture. Indeed,

the New Deal was able to unite the dominant farmers in each region because of their common interest in higher commodity prices. Structural- ly, they were all sizable property owners and many were employers, giving them similar class interests despite their commodity-based differ- ences. However, the regional subordinate classes were structurally differentiated by class position and interest. They were unable to develop a nationwide organization that could challenge the power of the Farm Bureau. California farm workers sought collective bargaining rights, not property rights. Without collective bargaining they could not benefit from higher farm prices; the early New Deal failed them. Midwestern farmers lost their motivation for militancy with a moratorium on foreclosures. By emphasizing higher prices, the New Deal reinforced the financial and property interests of family farmers, who benefited somewhat from the early programs. In the South, though, the early New Deal harmed the subordinate class of tenants and sharecroppers, and they organized against it. The class struggle intensified in the South. Therefore, southern class relations play a central role in the subsequent story of New Deal agricultural policies.

STATE AND SOCIETY: THE NEW DEAL IN AGRICULTURE

New Deal agricultural policies included three divergent themes: production controls to raise farm prices, land-use planning to rationalize agriculture, and economic reform to increase social justice in rural America. Tied to these policy directions were different government personnel, political ideologies, and class interests (Soth 1982, Hooks 1983). Only production control would survive the early years of World War II and become the core of farm policy. That eventuality, however, was neither apparent nor inevitable in 1933. Rather, the U.S. Department of Agriculture housed all three themes within the early Agri- cultural Adjustment Administration. By mid- decade, both planning and reform settled into other USDA agencies. In 1937-1938, all three policies achieved a degree of institutional rein- forcement. The next five years, though, would bring about the destruction of both land-use planning and rural reform. We trace these developments from 1933 to 1943, concentrating on the political extremes of increasing commodity prices and social-economic reform. We look beyond intrastate power struggles to focus on the most vocal and class-conscious organizations that


provided state agencies with opposing views: the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union.

Convergence of Capacities: The Early Agricul- tural Adjustment Administration, 1933- 9335

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, established in 1933, contained all three New Deal policy themes: production control, land-use planning, and rural reform. The actors in the subsequent drama of implementation - culmi- nating in the AAA's 1935 "purge of liberals" - included other USDA agencies, Congress, the state agricultural colleges, and farm organizations as well as rural social classes. We concentrate here on the three main groups within the AAA: conservative agriculturalists (large farmers and agribusinessmen), economist-planners, and liberal reformers. Table 1 summarizes these three factions.

The largest and most powerful of the three AAA groups comprised the conservative agriculturalists who believed that the major (if not sole) government effort should be to increase farm prices (row 1 in Table 1). Production control was the preferred policy tool.5 This group included the "Triple-A" Administrator in the mid- thirties, agribusinessman Chester Davis, as well as most leaders of the AAA commodity sections. Most important was the Cotton Section, directed by farm editor Cully Cobb. Cotton accounted for over one-fourth of all U.S. (and half of southern) farms, and nearly three-quarters of all cotton farms were operated by tenants (Turner 1936, p. 2). Davis and Cobb "personified the established agricultural complex" of the Midwest and the South, respectively (Daniel 1985, p. 104). Cobb's fellow Mississippian, Oscar Johnston, head of the world's largest cotton plantation, was the AAA's Finance Director and resident expert on cotton issues (Nelson 1983). Their primary concern was increasing agricultural prices to assist in farm recovery. They and most other USDA officials assumed that the AAA's main beneficiaries would naturally be large farmers and that their primary clientele was the "better class" of farmers. These traditional land-grant attitudes strongly influenced the AAA (Gray 1938; Saloutos 1982, p. 261; Wilson 1940). In the coming AAA conflict over

southern landlord/tenant relations, these agency leaders from the "triple alliance of Extension Service, Farm Bureau, and land-grant colleges" sided entirely with the dominant agricultural classes. Moreover, "they were the ones who made the AAA work" (Conrad 1965, p. 105).

A quite different group existed in the land- grant/USDA system: public service-oriented agricultural economists (row 2, Table 1). They were represented by M. L. Wilson, L. C. Gray, and Howard Tolley.6 They were mostly University of Wisconsin-trained institutional economists who, during the 1920s, had continued their Pro- gressive "education" in the USDA's new Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Wilson's views were typical of the group. While seeing the need for social change, he was a gradualist. Wilson and the others saw no inherent class contradictions in society, abhorred radical agitation, and thought the state could rationally mediate social conflicts. They believed that all people could benefit equally from economic planning, which should take place at the local level with equal participation by farmers and agricultural experts. Although their main policy goal was long-range agricultural planning, Wilson himself developed the Volun- tary Domestic Allotment Plan that became the basis of AAA production controls. As a strong advocate of grassroots democracy, Wilson hoped the plan would be a first step in establishing the principle of planning for more rational land use; as a pragmatist, he knew that a quick rise in farm prices was needed (Conkin 1959, pp. 73-97; Kirkendall 1966, pp. 22-25, 182-90). Unlike the first group, however, the economists saw that withdrawing land from production on each farm was haphazard and irrational. Overall, Wilson and his group best represented the interests of successful family farmers and landowners (Gray 1938; Wilson 1940).

Unlike the above two groups, the third group within the early AAA - the social reformers - were decidedly not agrarians (row 3, Table 1). A small group close to Rexford Tugwell, they were largely young, idealistic, Eastern lawyers in the AAA's Consumers' Division and its Legal Divi- sion, led by Jerome Frank. They exemplified a

I Production control sought to raise farm prices by creating artificial shortages. Farmers were paid to take a percentage of their land out of production; larger farms received larger payments.

6 Wilson was head of AAA's Wheat Section in 1933, USDA's Assistant Secretary and later Under- secreatry through the decade, and national Extension Service director from 1940 to 1953. Gray was the USDA's leading land-use expert. Tolley was the first head of AAA's Program Planning Division, AAA Administrator for 1936-1938, and Bureau of Agricul- tural Economics chief from 1938 to 1946.


Table 1. Policy Themes and Class Interests in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1934-1935

Important Supportive Agencies/ Class Interests Policy Themes Personnel Organizations Supported Outcome

1. Farm production Davis USDA "Establishment," Capitalist farmers Victory (immediate controls Johnston Extension Service, and southern landlords and long-term)

Cobb agricultural colleges, Farm Bureau

2. Long-term Wilson Program Planning Family farmers Success initially agricultural Tolley Division of AAA and and landowners (failure in 1942) planning Gray Bureau of Agricultural

Economics

3. Rural social Tugwell AAA Legal and Consumers' Farm/labor alliance, Defeat in 1935 (followed reform Frank Divisions, STFU, Farmers' small farmers, share- by Resettlement/Farm

Holiday Association, croppers, farm workers Security Administration Farmers' Union "radicals" defeat in 1943)

new type in Washington, especially for the USDA, where they became known as the "urban liberals." Tugwell, their intellectual leader, was not in the AAA but had broader responsibilities, first as Assistant Secretary, then Undersecretary, of the entire USDA. Tugwell's political ideology had radical social and economic reform as its goal; while a strong supporter of production controls and land-use planning, it was the Re- settlement Administration that embodied many of his ideas. An Ivy League institutional economist, he rejected neoclassical economics and proposed centralized planning. While pro-industry (Tugwell was no Jeffersonian), he had little faith in business leaders and did not mind saying so publicly. One speech in 1935, for instance, emphasized the need for a progressive farmer/worker alliance (Kirkendall 1966, p. 118; Tugwell 1937). The agricultural class interests supported by USDA's liberal reformers were those of small farmers, sharecroppers, and farm workers. They were in contact with members of the National Farmers' Union, midwestern fann- er cooperatives, and the new Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (Grubbs 1971, p. 94; Lord 1947, p. 459; Saloutos 1982, p. 115).

The AAA, then, contained three different and important groups: traditional conservatives, moderate economist-planners, and liberal reformers. Which of their views would dominate policy? The outcome rested on both the institutional structures already in place and the class capacities of different types of farmers. Institu- tionally, the prior existence of the Extension Ser- vice provided a federal agency to implement production control at the local level, where large farmer interests already dominated. These factors converged such that the narrower version of

production control won out. Wilson took the lead in encouraging the election of state and community "farmer committees" to run the program lo- cally although the need to act quickly led him to rely on the Extension Service. The decentralized organization of Extension and its early ties to the Farm Bureau ensured the latter organization's control at the local level (Baldwin 1968, pp. 410- 1 1; Kirkendall 1966, pp. 91-94). The Iowa Farm Bureau, for example, boasted in 1934 that "'the Farm Bureau and the A.A.A. are inseparable"' (McConnell 1969, p. 75).

The most serious problems of implementation arose in the cotton-growing South where the planters joined with Extension and the Farm Bu- reau to guarantee "the class nature of the committee system of the AAA" (James 1986, p. 151). Part of the AAA plan to cut supply and raise prices was that farmers would take land out of production in exchange for government payments. Many southern landlords, however, did not share the AAA payments with their tenants. As a result, in mid- 1934 Arkansas Socialists and sharecroppers organized the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU). The union sought a number of objectives, but as its co-founder recalled, the STFU's "real basis was the sharecroppers who wanted their share of the government money. It was that simple. That's why they organized" (Mitchell, n.d.; 1979, pp. 40-47). The STFU mounted a vigorous critique of the New Deal farm policy. The union's first "Program for Action" called for a fairer AAA. The agency did not ensure that the actual cultivators would receive payments, and there was widespread displace- ment of croppers and their families. AAA's implementation was undemocratic in that it failed to provide for tenant representation on the local


committees. The AAA was biased against tenant farmers, and the STFU fought it (Kester 1936). This struggle soon erupted within the AAA itself.

In January, 1935, the STFU sued a landlord for evicting union members from his plantation. It also asked the AAA to intervene on behalf of the tenants. The agency's Legal Division, led by Jerome Frank, reviewed the AAA's cotton contract and gave an opinion that favored the tenants.7 AAA Administrator Chester Davis received hundreds of complaints from planters, Extension agents, and Chambers of Commerce over the proposed legal interpretation. He also got pressure from within the agency. Oscar Johnston warned him that a pro-tenant decision would be "absolutely fatal to the success of the cotton program." Davis agreed with Johnston that the lawyers had overstepped their bounds in trying to use the AAA to reform the social system of southern agriculture (Kirkendall 1966, pp. 100- 1; Nelson 1983, pp. 427-28). Davis took the issue to Secretary Wallace who rejected the Legal Di- vision's opinion. Thereupon, on February 5,1935, Davis dismissed Frank and three other "urban liberals" from the AAA; others were demoted or soon resigned. Tugwell offered his resignation, but Roosevelt urged him to stay on (Conrad 1965, pp. 136-53).

Several factors led to this "purge," including administrative problems and personality conflicts (McConnell 1969, pp. 72-73). The two major factors, however, were institutional maintenance and class conflict. First, without the purge, Davis, most of the Cotton Section, and many elsewhere in the AAA may have resigned. Cotton landlords themselves may have withdrawn from the program, as Johnston warned. Wallace feared of- fending powerful Southerners in Congress, who were tied to landlord interests and could, moreover, force his own resignation (Conrad 1965, pp. 146-53, 207; Grubbs 1971, pp. 52-57; Lord 1947, pp. 406-8; Lowitt 1979; Nelson 1983). In- stitutional maintenance, then, was the first moti- vating force behind the purge. However, this as-

pect cannot be separated from the societal factors impinging on the institution's survival: the economic importance of cotton and the political clout of cotton growers in both Congress and the AAA. With the growth of the STFU, planters could not afford to have the New Deal's main farm program favor sharecroppers. Wallace, Davis, and others wanted to avoid any possible challenge to the dominant farm groups, even if it meant sacrificing the AAA liberals (Conrad 1965, p. 206; Grubbs 1971, p. 60).

The second factor reflected class conflict in the field. Johnston advised Wallace that "'our agricultural program should [not] be distorted into or used as a weapon to bring about so-called "social reform" or to revolutionize the social and economic life of the cotton belt"' (Nelson 1983, p. 428). More secure land tenure for sharecroppers, as proposed in the Legal Division's ruling, could have undermined landlords' labor control and reinforced interracial union organization - serious threats to the southern plantation system. This was understood by one Memphis newspaper, which hailed the purge as "'a victory over radicals and agitators who were organizing sharecroppers and tenants"' (Nelson 1983, p. 433). A farm journalist added: "'It is clear that Wallace has no intentions of taking any steps likely to conflict with the interests of the planters"' (Grubbs 1971, p. 52). The political salience of class conflict seemed clear enough at the time - in contrast to the state-centered view that dis- misses it (Skocpol and Finegold 1982).

For their part, the moderate USDA economists supported the purge (Kirkendall 1966, pp. 101, 152; Lowitt 1979; Saloutos 1982, p. 119). Wil- son and Tolley were not simply public servants taking "the point of view of the state" (Skocpol and Finegold 1982, pp. 274-75), for the state's interest was being determined by the AAA's actions to appease the cotton growers. And while the economists were not fully "captured" by the dominant farm groups, as were the Cotton Sec- tion personnel, they were unwilling to challenge existing power arrangements in U.S. agriculture (Kirkendall 1966, pp. 102, 159, 193). Their "ideological blinders" prevented them from seeing that large-grower dominance over the AAA's implementation made it extremely difficult to redress tenant grievances (Hamilton 1986, p. 43; Hawley 1983, p.217).

Among the AAA's divergent policy directions - recovery through production control, long- term planning, and social reform - the first had won decisively. Economic planning was reduced

7 Most AAA leaders and landlords interpreted the contract to read that landlords should keep approxi- mately the same number of tenants on their farms as they had in 1933. The Legal Division lawyers ruled that landlords were required to keep the same people, both to protect the rural poor and to prevent landlords from evicting union activists. "In fact, the new interpretation had been advocated for some time by the Tenant Farmers' Union, and the opinion was given as a consequence of the efforts of that organization" (Kirkendall 1966, p. 99).


to local production control committees under the direction of Extension. Rural reform programs would not be housed within the USDA again until 1937. Sharecroppers lost in the AAA struggle, first, because the agency's institutional structure made landlords the key agents to implement the plan at the county level, which en- couraged the historical bias toward large farmers. Second, sharecroppers lost because they faced the greater class capacities of planters, which included domination of Farm Bureaus and Chambers of Commerce as well as strong influence in Congress and the USDA. In addition, landlords possessed greater financial and political resources than did tenant farmers, who were poor, weak, and largely disorganized - conditions that the local AAA reinforced (James 1986, p. 174). Landlords and capitalist farmers not only dominated sharecroppers and laborers in the field; they also held the state hostage, forcing it to use its capacities in their favor. Successful policy implementation relied on the institutional capacity of the state. This capacity was, in turn, based on the support that the dominant farm classes and the state gave each other.

Convergence of Capacities. The Resettlement/ Farm Security Administration, 1935-1943

Although the AAA failed the poorest producers in U.S. agriculture, other New Deal agencies were more sympathetic to their troubles. Three months after the AAA purge, President Roosevelt established the Resettlement (later Farm Security) Administration, which consolidated and expanded New Deal programs to attack rural poverty.8 This contrasting case to the AAA substantiates our argument for the interdependence of state and society. Neither state capacities nor class capaci-

ties alone can explain the rise and fall of this agency, the "poor man's Department of Agricul- ture" (McConnell 1969, p. 89). Administrative will and know-how - key state-centered vari- ables - cannot account for the initial success and subsequent failure of the Farm Security Admin- istration. Equally important are the social forces that created a need for the agency and shaped its programs. Its incorporation into the USDA in 1937, with all that department's historical state- building and institutional capacity (Skocpol and Finegold 1982), did not protect Farm Security from an eventual fatal attack by dominant class forces.

Given the recent "purge of liberals" from the AAA, Roosevelt and his advisors realized that the USDA was inhospitable to rural poverty efforts. Nonetheless, something had to be done. The Administration was receiving heavy criti- cism from the political left for its treatment of small farmers and sharecroppers. In 1934, Nor- man Thomas, well-known national leader of the Socialist Party, wrote The Plight of the Share- cropper, a booklet critical of New Deal agricultural policy; that title became a popular phrase in the national media. In early 1935, Thomas was physically assaulted while addressing the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union in Arkansas - part of the widely publicized "reign of terror" against the sharecroppers. At the same time, three prominent liberals released research findings that claimed the "government under the AAA has assumed many of the risks of the landowners, and thrown them on the tenant" (Johnson, Em- bree, and Alexander 1935, p. 50). Populist U.S. Senator Huey Long also attacked the program. Many nationwide groups urged the President to address rural poverty directly (Grubbs 1971, pp. 70-80).

In addition, Rexford Tugwell, disillusioned by the AAA purge, was increasingly concerned about the problems of the rural poor. This concern, plus his desire to coordinate the many agencies governing land use, led him to approach the President and the Secretary of Agriculture with alternative ways of implementing rural reform. In April, 1935, by Executive Order, Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration (RA), led by Tugwell and staffed largely by liberals who were not land-grant-trained agriculturalists. Rather than seek change in the USDA, the RA was established outside of the large-farmer-oriented department so that Tugwell could operate more freely. It was explicitly recognized that different government agencies would serve differ-

8 The Resettlement/Farm Security Administration had several antipoverty programs. Rural Rehabilita- tion made farm loans and grants to help needy families become more self-sufficient, and also provided technical assistance. The Tenant-Purchase program issued loans to assist landless farmers in becoming owners. The poorest region of the country, the South, received most of the funds from the "rehab" and tenant-purchase programs, although poor midwestern farmers also benefited. The Resettlement programs set up migrant labor camps (primarily in the Far West) and provided displaced farm families and industrial workers with plots of land for subsistence production. The agency also organized some large-scale cooperative farms. In addition, the FSA tried to enforce wage, housing, and working standards for farm labor (Bald- win 1968; McConnell 1969).


ent group interests. The RA brought together various rural relief programs as well as the land- use planning parts of the AAA. Tugwell believed that rural poverty was related to inefficient resource use; the government should "buy the acres that were being used improperly, switch them to better uses, move the people to places where they could make a living, and help these people with loans and supervision" (Kirkendall 1966, p. 109; Baldwin 1968, pp. 85-92).

The origins and purposes of the AAA and RA illustrate how the state is not a monolithic entity with interests of its own but rather a set of institutions variously penetrated by different social forces. The way that legislation on rural poverty was eventually achieved further shows the interaction of state and social forces. Because it was created by Presidential decree, the RA had no legislative foundation. One of its major political problems was this lack of legitimacy with Con- gress. In 1935, Congress considered farm tenant legislation and over the next two years a host of liberals testified on the bill. As early as March, 1936, the family-farm-oriented National Farmers' Union endorsed rural poverty efforts (Kirkendall 1966, p. 117). Leading USDA economists L. C. Gray and M. L. Wilson also supported tenant legislation because it would promote small farm ownership and treat rural poverty without threatening the AAA (Mertz 1978, pp. 115, 259).

The notion that the state both reflects and me- diates class conflict is also illustrated in the RA case. Secretary Wallace declared in 1935:

"The present conditions, particularly in the South, provide fertile soil for Communist and Socialist agitators. I do not like the bitterness that is aroused by this sort of agitation, but I realize that the cure is not violence or oppressive legislation to curb these activities but rather to give these dispossessed people a stake in the social system. The American way to preserve the traditional order is to provide these refugees of the economic system with an opportunity to build and develop their own homes and to live on the land which they may call their own and on which they can make a modest living year after year." (Baldwin 1968, p. 135)

Wallace was referring to the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU), which also testified on the farm-tenant legislation (Gilbert and Brown 1981). In fact, the STFU helped make rural poverty a national issue in the election of 1936, when Roosevelt finally committed himself to action. In November, the President appointed a Com- mittee on Farm Tenancy that included Assistant

Resettlement Administrator Will Alexander, Wallace, Tugwell, Wilson, Gray, and represen- tatives from the Farm Bureau and the STFU - the latter added only after protest (Baldwin 1968, pp. 124-36, 157-69; Grubbs 1971, pp. 109-61; Mitchell 1979). Tugwell's outspoken calls for reform had become a political liability, however, and he left the government at year's end, leaving Alexander as head of the RA (Tugwell 1937; Kirkendall 1966, pp. 118-22).

In its report of early 1937, the Committee on Farm Tenancy endorsed expansion of the Reset- tlement Administration (which had just become part of USDA). This was too radical for the Farm Bureau representative, who held that local Ex- tension agents rather than a centralized federal agency should direct the antipoverty programs. The Farm Bureau's control over USDA's field staff would be threatened by an expanded RA. The STFU, in contrast, feared administration by either Extension or the USDA. Both, the union maintained, were dominated "by the rich and large landowning class of farmers and their political- pressure lobbies" (National Resources Commit- tee 1937, pp. 20-23; Baldwin 1968, pp. 167-74; Gilbert and Brown 1981). In July, 1937, Congress passed the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. This gave a legislative basis to rural poverty programs, but failed to endorse the main activities of the RA, which in September was rechristened the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Despite this lack of legislative mandate for RA programs, FSA head Alexander and his staff followed the progressive recommendations of the President's Committee more than the narrow provisions of Bankhead-Jones (Baldwin 1968, pp. 187-92; Conkin 1959, pp. 183-85; Grubbs 1971, pp. 155- 57; Mertz 1978, pp. 169-75).

The FSA grew into a major federal agency between 1937 and 1942, despite insufficient funds and attacks from the political right. Conservative agricultural forces, both within and outside the state, had some cause for alarm. The FSA's challenge lay precisely in its commitment to the rural poor.9 Its constituency was large and oppressed

9 FSA personnel numbered over 19,000. It had nearly 2,300 county offices working with more than 800,000 client families, 20 percent of whom were black. Through FSA programs, over 12,000 tenant families became owner-operators while ten percent of all U.S. farmers received rehabilitation loans. More than 16,000 purchasing cooperatives were established, as well as over 1,000 medical and dental groups serv- ing 142,000 families in 41 states. The Resettlement program furnished 10,000 families with homes. The


but generally unorganized - a condition the agency meant to change. An FSA official declared: "'If out of all our work there does not ... arise a leadership which can take over and carry on where our "management" leaves off, our new white houses are destined to become tombstones for a great idea"' (Baldwin 1968, p. 283). In addition, the FSA strengthened its ties to the Na- tional Farmers' Union and STFU as well as to the American Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and other progressive organizations (Baldwin 1968, pp. 298-303). The FSA was also an affront to southern racism. "Now comes the New Deal," a Mississippi planter re- marked, "with a law to acquire our plantations ... and divide the land up again into family sized farms of 40 acres and a mule - the same prom- ise the other Yankees made to the negroes during the other Civil War." The Farm Bureau reacted to the agency with pamphlets headlined: "'Rad- ical Group in Department of Agriculture Urging Triple Alliance of FSA-Farmers' Union-CIO"' (Holley 1975, pp. 242, 255).

The mainstream agricultural institutions never liked most of the FSA programs, which were criticized throughout their existence. Yet during the 1930's the conservative USDA agencies, Extension, most of the land-grant colleges, and the Farm Bureau tolerated them as emergency "relief" measures. During the Great Depression, even the AFBF President could see the need for "the dole." However, the FSA came to threaten the Farm Bureau's hegemony at the local level. As the official Farm Bureau historian wrote:

What started out during the depression years as meritorious rural relief undertakings, or at least as interesting experiments, developed into one of the weirdest, most fantastic examples of government bureaucracy gone mad. (Kite 1948, p. 264)

By the early 1940s, tolerance turned to confron- tation as Congress, the Farm Bureau, and other conservative organizations launched an aggres- sive attack on the FSA. Why did they go on the offensive then? What had changed since the mid- thirties? New institutional factors had converged with important societal elements.

The first factor was a growing rift between Henry Wallace's USDA and the largest and most

conservative farm organization, the Farm Bu- reau. Since 1938 the department had grown less dependent on the AFBF. Wallace elevated the liberal Bureau of Agricultural Economics as US- DA's central planning agency, which began a new program of coordinated county land-use planning (Kirkendall 1966, pp. 137-80; Hooks 1990). In 1940, USDA/Farm Bureau relations worsened as Wallace stepped up his anti-Repub- lican rhetoric in the Presidential campaign, and the AFBF accused him of being too labor and consumer oriented (Kile 1948, p. 260). When he resigned as Secretary to be the Democratic Vice- Presidential candidate (and Roosevelt lost the midwestern farm vote for the first time), the FSA lost an important ally. Another personnel shift was even more crucial: C. B. Baldwin became Farm Security Administrator in 1940. The Farm Bureau was outraged; it could "work with" his predecessor, Will Alexander, but Baldwin was too militant, too much like his former RA boss, "Rex the Red" Tugwell (Campbell 1962, pp. 173- 94; Baldwin 1968, pp. 325-43).

A second factor that facilitated the attack on the FSA was wartime mobilization. Within the state, war fever and military production replaced the economic crisis as the major policy concern. This led to administrative shifts that weakened the capacity of the FSA and its allies to implement reform programs. The U.S. economy was im- proving and the political-economic crisis ap- peared to be over. Most significant, the outbreak of war altered nearly everyone's priorities, from President Roosevelt on down. With concern about the Depression abating, conservatives mounted an attack on reform efforts and the Administra- tion no longer defended the reformers. The most innovative New Deal agencies (e.g., FSA, Works Projects Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Resource Planning Board) became the targets of conservatives in and out of government.

These political, economic, and ideological shifts changed the balance of class forces. By the early 1940s, conservatives in business and in Congress were attacking progressive leaders in all walks of life. Radical union members were kicked out of CIO unions and entire CIO unions with leftist leadership were expelled (Keeran 1980; Lembcke and Tattam 1984). Strike activi- ty had declined drastically (Skocpol 1980, p. 188) and unrest was quickly receding from the national landscape. Liberal government agencies faced accusations of "communism" and began tem- pering their support for reform (Baldwin 1968,

migrant farm-labor program built 95 camps that ac- commodated more than 75,000 people. The FSA stood up for African-Americans in the South and experi- mented with long-term leases and cooperative farms (Baldwin 1968; Conkin 1959).


p. 323). Within this context, the conditions were ripe for the Farmn Bureau and other conservative forces to attack an agency they had tolerated but never supported.

The line-up of forces in the FSA struggle was both like and unlike that of the 1935 AAA purge. Instead of three factions, by the early 1940s there were only two: conservatives and liberals. The dominant-class groups had become anti-New Deal although still supportive of their own government programs. They were joined by key conservative midwestern and southern Con- gressmen, whose strength increased as World War II expanded. The National Farmers' Union, a major organization of family farmers, had become the New Deal's biggest supporter in agriculture. USDA's New Dealers were concentrated in the FSA and the BAE, which came to share a "community of interest" regarding social reform (Baldwin 1968, p. 303). The Farm Bureau/conservative Congress coalition attacked both agencies, first killing the BAE's land-use planning project.

The battle over the FSA was "one of the most bitter domestic issues during World War II" (Conkin 1959, p. 220). From early 1941 through 1943, both House and Senate budget and agriculture committees as well as the new Joint Committee on Reduction of Nonessential Federal Expenditures (chaired by Virginia conservative Harry F. Byrd) targeted the FSA. Economizers and anti-New Dealers sought to end the agency's "sociological experimentation." Congressmen alleged that the FSA promoted socialized medi- cine and "sovietism." Testifying before the Byrd Committee, the Farm Bureau repeatedly charged that the FSA had deceived Congress, solicited clients, assisted lobbyists, undermined individu- alism, and duplicated activities of the AAA and Extension. In 1943, the Farm Bureau's case was reinforced by powerful regional organizations of large growers, who complained about the FSA's enforcement of wage, housing, and working standards for farm labor. Both the Associated Farmers of California and the National Cotton Council testified. The latter was represented by Oscar Johnston, the Mississippi planter who had been so central to the early AAA. Johnston criticized the "un-American ideas" of Rexford Tug- well. He was aided in his attack on Farm Securi- ty by his former AAA boss, Chester Davis, who as War Food Administrator divested the FSA of its farm-labor program, thus gutting its main war effort (Baldwin 1968, pp. 343-85). Johnson's Cotton Council held that the FSA

". .. threatens the foundations of American agriculture and, through their contention for a minimum wage per hour for cotton picking, threatens to dis- rupt a fair and satisfactory system that has successfully operated in the Cotton Belt for over 100 years." (McConnell 1969, p. 107)

FSA Administrator Baldwin replied to such charges by insisting:

"The choice ... is whether the small independent farmer should be given an opportunity to maintain and improve his status or whether these large interests should be permitted to take advantage of the war situation to accumulate large land holdings and to make laborers out of farmers." (Baldwin 1968, p. 357)

For its defense, the FSA drew upon its liberal but weakened supporters, including the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the National Farm- ers' Union as well as USDA economists Wilson and Tolley - all to no avail. Congress effectively killed the FSA in 1943 by denying major appro- priations; agency personnel and budget were cut in half. In 1946, what was left of the FSA became the docile Farmers' Home Administration (Baldwin 1968, pp. 352-402; Conkin 1959, pp. 214-33; McConnell 1969, pp. 88-113).

The FSA story points to two conclusions. First, to understand the agency's development, we must examine the convergence of institutional and class capacities. A focus on one or the other is not enough. The subordinate classes won a significant victory in the creation and growth of the Reset- tlement/Farm Security Administration, from 1935 until World War II. The agency represented their interests in a department that generally opposed them. The RA/FSA succeeded during those years because of its own zealous institutional leadership, its support from progressive farm and labor organizations, and the relative "space" accorded it by Congress and the dominant agricultural classes, especially the Farm Bureau, during the Depression years.

By 1941, however, the FSA had attracted increasing opposition as reformers throughout the U.S. came under attack. Second, then, the FSA was defeated mainly because of a shift in the balance of class forces in society and in the state. By the early 1940s, the war had become the major policy concern. The weakened voices of subordinate classes in agriculture and industry had lost the ear of their allies in government. The capacity of those allies within the state to re- spond was also weakened by bureaucratic changes, specific policy decisions, and wartime


economizing that switched attention from New Deal reforms. The dominant classes and their state allies saw the FSA as a major threat. Under the new conditions of World War II, despite the best efforts of USDA liberals, conservatives proved powerful enough to kill the agency.

CONCLUSION

To understand the origins and fates of public policies, we need to go beyond the dualism of "state vs. society." We must analyze the uneven development of both institutional structures and class capacities as they converge in particular periods. While accepting Skocpol and Amenta's (1986, p. 136) call to identify "the political actors that initiate and shape public policies," we have challenged the state-centered analysis of New Deal farm policy in several ways. The Agricul- tural Adjustment Administration's institutional capacity cannot be viewed apart from the under- lying economic dimensions and historical struggles that gave rise to it; nor can the institutions and state managers be seen as autonomous from those social forces. Rather, state institutions structurally privileged the dominant agricultural classes, and state managers - including those who supported the subordinant classes - were constrained by these institutional biases. Differ- ent groups of agricultural experts supported divergent interests, which are best understood by a region-specific class analysis of U.S. agriculture. The state-centered use of general concepts like "commercial farmers" and "the underclass" is inadequate to capture such diversity.

Institutional capacities converged with a changing balance of class forces at different times during the Roosevelt era. They coalesced in 1933 to produce the Agricultural Adjustment Admin- istration, which, in turn, strengthened the conservative Farm Bureau and threatened the survival of many sharecroppers in the South. This threat gave rise to the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, which - supported by liberal intellectuals in and beyond the state - pressured the New Deal to address rural poverty. Because the AAA was housed in the USDA with its entrenched institutional bias, rural reform could be sustained only in a new, independent agency. This effort crys- tallized as the Resettlement/Farm Security Ad- ministration, which attempted to counter the USDA's structural bias favoring dominant classes. The FSA case shows that subordinate classes and their allies can influence state policy, and indeed may be structurally privileged within a

particular agency, at least for a time. However, the institutional capacities of the AAA were greater than those of the FSA, despite their common location in the USDA. Struggles within the state, linked to class struggles in society, resulted in the 1935 purge of AAA liberals and the 1943 gutting of the FSA.

Instead of trying to determine whether state structures or class forces have greater effects, we have examined how the two interact to shape policies. State-centered analysis has made a valuable contribution by focusing on the state, but it ignores the social nature of state institutions and policy intellectuals. It posits adualistic framework that precludes an understanding of the actual relationship between state and society. We have shown, in contrast, the dynamic interplay of state and social factors. The state helps constitute class relations, which also permeate state institutions. Viewed relationally, the state is not separate from, but rather part of, the larger society. It is time for political-sociological theory to move beyond the dualism of state vs. society.

JESS GILBERT is Associate Professor of Rural Sociol- ogy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has studied regional class structures and land tenure in U.S. agriculture. His current research is on state theory and agricultural reform and planning policies in the New Deal and World War II years. In addition to the USDA policy intellectuals and programs treated in this article, he is examining the Bureau ofAgricul- tural Economics' project of long-term county land- use planning (1938-1942).

CAROLYN HOWE is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. She has published articles on class structure and on the U.S. labor and farmers' movements. Her current research focuses on the relationship between race, class, and gender systems of inequality and social movement mobilization. She is currently writing a book on women's empowerment and community activism.

REFERENCES

Baker, Gladys. 1939. The County Agent. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Baldwin, Sidney. 1968. Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Block, Fred. 1977. "The Ruling Class Does Not Rule." Socialist Revolution 7:6-28.

. 1980. "Beyond Relative Autonomy." Pp. 227-42 in The Socialist Register, edited by R. Mil- iband and J. Saville. London: Merlin.

Breimyer, Harold. 1983. "Conceptualization and Cli- mate for New Deal Farm Laws of the 1930s." American Journal of Agricultural Economics


65:1153-57. Campbell, Cristiana McFayden. 1962. The Farm Bu-

reau and the New Deal: A Study of the Making of National Farm Policy 1933-1940. Urbana: Uni- versity of Illinois.

Conkin, Paul K. 1959. Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program. Ithaca: Cornell University.

Conrad, David Eugene. 1965. The Forgotten Farm- ers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal. Urbana: University of Illinois.

Daniel, Cletus E. 1981. Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941. Berkeley: University of California.

Daniel, Pete. 1985. Breaking the Land: The Trans- formation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880. Urbana: University of Illinois.

Dyson, Lowell K. 1986. Farmers' Organizations. New York: Greenwood.

Esping-Andersen, Gosta, Roger Friedland, and Erik Olin Wright. 1976. "Modes of Class Struggle and the Capitalist State." Kapitalistate 4-5:186-220.

Finegold, Kenneth. 1981. "From Agrarianism to Ad- justment: The Political Origins of New Deal Agri- cultural Policy." Politics and Society 11:1-27.

Finegold, Kenneth and Theda Skocpol. 1980. "Capi- talists, Farmers, and Workers in the New Deal: The Ironies of Government Intervention." Paper presented at American Political Science Association.

. 1984. "State, Party, and Industry: From Business Recovery to the Wagner Act in Ameri- ca's New Deal." Pp. 159-92 in Statemaking and Social Movements, edited by C. Bright and S. Harding. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

Gilbert, Jess and Steve Brown. 1981. "Alternative Land Reform Proposals in the 1930s: The Nashville Agrarians and Southern Tenant Farmers' Union." Agricultural History 55:351-69.

Gray, L. C. 1938. "Disadvantaged Rural Classes." Journal of Farm Economics 20:71-85.

Grubbs, Donald H. 1971. Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Hamilton, David E. 1986. "From New Era to New Deal: American Farm Policy Between the Wars." Pp. 19-54 of Agricultural Distress in the Midwest, Past and Present, edited by L. E. Gelfand and R. J. Neymeyer. Iowa City: University of Iowa.

Harrington, Tim. 1983. "Explaining State Policy Making: A Critique of Some Recent 'Dualist' Models." International Journal of Urban and Re- gional Research 7:202-17.

Hawley, Ellis W. 1983. "Comment." The Annals of Iowa 47:215-19.

Holley, Donald. 1975. Uncle Sam's Farmers: The New Deal Communities in the Lower Mississippi Val- ley. Urbana: University of Illinois.

Hooks, Gregory M. 1983. "A New Deal for Farmers and Social Scientists: The Politics of Rural Sociol- ogy in the Depression Era." Rural Sociology 48:386-

408. . 1990. "From an Autonomous to a Cap-

tured State Agency: The Decline of the New Deal in Agriculture." American Sociological Review 55:29-43.

Howe, Carolyn. 1986. "Farmers' Movements and the Changing Structure of Agriculture." Pp. 104-49 in Studies in the Transformation of U.S. Agriculture, edited by A. E. Havens, G. Hooks, P. H. Mooney, and M. J. Pfeffer. Boulder: Westview.

James, David R. 1986. "Local State Structure and the Transformation of Southern Agriculture." Pp. 150- 78 in Studies in the Transformation of U.S. Agri- culture, edited by A. E. Havens, G. Hooks, P. H. Mooney, and M. J. Pfeffer. Boulder: Westview.

Jamieson, Stuart. 1945. Labor Unionism in American Agriculture (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 836). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Jessop, Bob. 1985. Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist Theo- ry and Political Strategy. New York: St. Martin's.

Johnson, Charles S., Edwin R. Embree, and W. W. Alexander. 1935. The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Keeran, Roger. 1980. The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions. Bloomington: Indiana Uni- versity.

Kester, Howard. 1936. Revolt Among the Sharecrop- pers. New York: Covici-Friede.

Kile, 0. M. 1948. The Farm Bureau Through Three Decades. Baltimore: Waverly.

Kirby, Jack Temple. 1987. Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960. Baton Rouge: Loui- siana State University.

Kirkendall, Richard S. 1966. Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt. Columbia: Uni- versity of Missouri.

Lembcke, Jerry. 1988. Capitalist Development and Class Capacities: Marxist Theory and Union Or- ganization. New York: Greenwood.

Lembcke, Jerry and Carolyn Howe. 1986. "Organiza- tional Structure and the Logic of Collective Action in Unions." Pp. 1-28 in Current Perspectives in Social Theory, edited by Scott McNall. Greenwich: JAI.

Lembcke, Jerry and WilliamTattam. 1984. One Union in Wood: A Political History of the International Woodworkers ofAmerica. New York: International.

Lindblom, Charles. 1977. Politics and Markets. New York: Basic Books.

Lord, Russell. 1947. The Wallaces of Iowa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Lowitt, Richard. 1979. "Henry A. Wallace and the 1935 Purge in the Department of Agriculture." Agricultural History 53:607-21.

Majka, Linda L. and Theo J. Majka. 1982. Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State. Philadel- phia: Temple University.

McConnell, Grant. [1953] 1969. The Decline of Agrarian Democracy. New York: Atheneum.


Mertz, Paul E. 1978. New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni- versity.

Mitchell, H. L. N.d. "Interview with H. L. Mitchell," Institute for Southern Studies Staff. In the South- ern Tenant Farmers' Union Papers, Southern His- torical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

_ . 1979. Mean Things Happening in This Land: The Life and Times of H. L. Mitchell, Co- Founder of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. Montclair, NJ: Allanheld, Osmun.

National Resources Committee. 1937. Farm Tenan- cy. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Nelson, Lawrence J. 1983. "The Art of the Possible: Another Look at the 'Purge' of the AAA Liberals in 1935." Agricultural History 57:416-35.

Offe, Claus. 1974. "Structural Problems of the Capi- talist State." Pp. 31-57 in German Political Stud- ies, edited by Klaus von Beyme. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Offe, Claus and Helmut Wiesenthal. 1980. "Two Logics of Collective Action: Theoretical Notes on Social Class and Organizational Form." Pp. 67- 1 15 in Political Power and Social Theory, edited by Maurice Zeitlin. Greenwich: JAI.

Pfeffer, Max J. 1983. "Social Origins of Three Sys- tems of Farm Production in the United States." Rural Sociology 48:540-62.

Poulantzas, Nicos. 1978. State, Power, Socialism. London: New Left Books.

Quadagno, Jill. 1987. "Theories of the Welfare State." Annual Review of Sociology 13:109-28.

Rasmussen, Wayne D. 1983. "The New Deal Farm Programs: What They Were and Why They Sur- vived." American Journal of Agricultural Eco- nomics 65:1158-62.

Rosenberg, Charles E. 1978. No Other Gods: On Sci- ence and American Social Thought. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

Saloutos, Theodore. 1982. The American Farmer and the New Deal. Ames: Iowa State University.

Shover, John L. 1965. Cornbelt Rebellion: The

Farmers' Holiday Association. Urbana: Universi- ty of Illinois.

Skocpol, Theda. 1980. "Political Response to Capital- ist Crisis: Neo-Marxist Theories of the State and the Case of the New Deal." Politics and Society 10:155-201.

. 1985. "Bringing the State Back In." Pp. 3- 37 in Bringing the State Back In, edited by P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, and T. Skocpol. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University.

Skocpol, Theda and Edwin Amenta. 1986. "States and Social Policies." Annual Review of Sociology 12:131-57.

Skocpol, Theda and Kenneth Finegold. 1982. "State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal." Political Science Quarterly 97:255-78.

Soth, Lauren. 1982. "Foreword." Pp. xi-xvi in Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roos- evelt (reprint edition), by Richard S. Kirkendall. Ames: Iowa State University.

Therborn, Goran. 1978. What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules?: State Apparatuses and State Power Under Feudalism, Capitalism, and Social- ism. London: New Left Books.

. 1983. "Why Some Classes Are More Suc- cessful than Others." New Left Review 138:37-55.

Tugwell, Rexford G. 1937. "Is a Farm-Labor Alli- ance Possible?" Harper's Magazine (May):65 1-61.

Turner, H. A. 1936. A Graphic Summary of Farm Tenure (U.S. Department of Agriculture Misc. Pub. No. 261). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Weir, Margaret and Theda Skocpol. 1985. "State Structures and the Possibilities for 'Keynesian' Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States." Pp. 107-63 in Bringing the State Back In, edited by P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, and T. Skocpol. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Wilson, M. L. 1940. "Problem of Poverty in Agricul- ture." Journal of Farm Economics 22:10-33.

Wright, Erik Olin. 1978. Class, Crisis and the State. London: New Left Books.

Beyond State vs. Society: Theories of the State and New Deal...

Documents

Transcript of Beyond State vs. Society: Theories of the State and New Deal...