Anti-Economy

Wendell Berry, the great agrarian writer from Kentucky, wrote this recently in The Progressive magazine:

My economic point of view is from ground level. It is a point of view
sometimes described as “agrarian.” That means that in ordering the economy of a
household or community or nation, I would put nature first, the economies of
land use second, the manufacturing economy third, and the consumer economy
fourth.

A properly ordered economy, putting nature first and consumption last,
would start with the subsistence or household economy and proceed from that to
the economy of markets. It would be the means by which people provide to
themselves and to others the things necessary to support life: goods coming from
nature and human work. It would distinguish between needs and mere wants, and it
would grant a firm precedence to needs.

The present and now-failing economy is just about exactly opposite to the
economy I have just described. Over a long time, and by means of a set of handy
prevarications, our economy has become an anti-economy, a financial system
without a sound economic basis and without economic virtues.

It has inverted the economic order that puts nature first. This economy
is based upon consumption, which ultimately serves not the ordinary consumers
but a tiny class of excessively wealthy people for whose further enrichment the
economy is understood (by them) to exist. For the purpose of their further
enrichment, these plutocrats and the great corporations that serve them have
controlled the economy by the purchase of political power. The purchased
governments do not act in the interest of the governed; they act instead as
agents for the corporations.