Some notes on A New Economics of Community and The Land (The Nation): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:27, 23 October 2012

In 1856, some years after the Great Famine in Ireland, an article appeared in the Irish nationalist newspaper The Nation titled A New Economics of Community and The Land. While the true author of the article is not known, it was credited under the pseudonym Thomas Brennan, coincidentally a namesake of the eventual founder and secretary of the Irish Land League in the late 1870s. The Nation had already become well known as the platform for radical nationalist discourse by the time the article was published, with its founders involved in various anti-union political and social organisations, such as Young Ireland. One of The Nation's recurrent themes was the issues surrounding tenant's rights: centuries before, the Penal Laws had removed the rights to land away from Irish natives and subsequently awarded them to a new class of wealthy Protestant settlers from England. The Irish farmers then had to rent their land from their new landlords - a system which continued throughout the 19th century during the Great Famine. The result was further hardship on the farmers, who were faced with the choice of selling their agricultural produce to pay rent on their land, or feed their families. The protests surrounding tenant's rights during the Great Famine inevitably lead to numerous impassioned and poetic articles in the Irish nationalist press, but Thomas Brennan's text stands out for its radical views on community and its focus on pragmatic economics. At the time of its publication, the article had little political influence, and is still largely forgotten to contemporary readings of Irish history.

Brennan's article reads like a proposal for the practical realisation of a new socioeconomic system, supported by a number of illustrations elaborating on specific details. His introduction is a brief overview of the change in labour practices since the start of the 19th century. Brennan describes how, as a result of the industrial revolution, labour was being deliberately centralised by the ruling classes in cities through a variety of gradual processes. Between the introduction of agricultural machinery, the resulting redundancy of many farm labourers, mass emigration, and the availability of unskilled work in the industrialised urban centers, the Irish population was greatly redistributed. Brennan described this as "the great tragedy of modern Ireland", arguing that it was triggering a major shift in the makeup of Irish culture.

Brennan's answer to this "great tragedy" was the formation of a new socioeconomic system based around a trading-network of rural communities, with the population of each community controlled with respect to the sustainability of its local resources. A few years previously, Young Ireland had already commissioned a survey detailing an estimation of yearly consumption of various necessities in rural areas. From this information, Brennan could calculate the levels of production required to sustain a community of a given population, and also the amount of land required to reach these levels of production on a sustainable basis. Per hundred of population, Brennan specified the required acreage of arable land, number of animal stock (cow, sheep), barrels of water, pounds of fuel (wood or turf) would have to be available to sustain them. Communities would be built on the following laws:

The community's population must be maintained at a sustainable level with respect to the availability of resources.
The labour, arable land, animal stock and environmental resources (wells, woodland etc) would be shared in ownership and responsibility by the people of the community.
Each "family" within the community would have one house, which is considered private property.
Each community would have land specifically allocated for staples that must be grown on an annual basis (potato, oats, for example).
Each community would also have land designated for extra produce.
The kind of produce would be decided three years in advance at the annual inter-community meetings. Each community could then produce alternate goods that could be traded between them.
Inter-community trade would be performed according to a natural economy - i.e. barter exchange.

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	In 1856, some years after the Great Famine in Ireland, an article appeared in the Irish nationalist newspaper ''The Nation'' titled ''A New Economics of Community and The Land''. While the true author of the article is not known, it was credited under the pseudonym Thomas Brennan, coincidentally a namesake of the eventual founder and secretary of the ''Irish Land League'' in the late 1870s. ''The Nation'' had already become well known as the platform for radical nationalist discourse by the time the article was published, with its founders involved in various anti-union political and social organisations, such as Young Ireland. One of ''The Nation's'' recurrent themes was the issues surrounding tenant's rights: centuries before, the Penal Laws had removed the rights to land away from Irish natives and subsequently awarded to a new class of wealthy Protestant settlers from England. The Irish farmers then had to rent their land from their new landlords - a system which continued throughout the 19th century during the Great Famine. The result was further hardship on the farmers, who were faced with the choice of selling their agricultural produce to pay rent on their land, or feed their families. The protests surrounding tenant's rights during the Great Famine inevitably lead to numerous impassioned and poetic articles in the Irish nationalist press, but Thomas Brennan's text stands out for its radical views on community and its focus on pragmatic economics. At the time of its publication, the article had little political influence, and is still largely forgotten to contemporary readings of Irish history.		In 1856, some years after the Great Famine in Ireland, an article appeared in the Irish nationalist newspaper ''The Nation'' titled ''A New Economics of Community and The Land''. While the true author of the article is not known, it was credited under the pseudonym Thomas Brennan, coincidentally a namesake of the eventual founder and secretary of the ''Irish Land League'' in the late 1870s. ''The Nation'' had already become well known as the platform for radical nationalist discourse by the time the article was published, with its founders involved in various anti-union political and social organisations, such as Young Ireland. One of ''The Nation's'' recurrent themes was the issues surrounding tenant's rights: centuries before, the Penal Laws had removed the rights to land away from Irish natives and subsequently awarded them to a new class of wealthy Protestant settlers from England. The Irish farmers then had to rent their land from their new landlords - a system which continued throughout the 19th century during the Great Famine. The result was further hardship on the farmers, who were faced with the choice of selling their agricultural produce to pay rent on their land, or feed their families. The protests surrounding tenant's rights during the Great Famine inevitably lead to numerous impassioned and poetic articles in the Irish nationalist press, but Thomas Brennan's text stands out for its radical views on community and its focus on pragmatic economics. At the time of its publication, the article had little political influence, and is still largely forgotten to contemporary readings of Irish history.

	Brennan's article reads like a proposal for the practical realisation of a new socioeconomic system, supported by a number of illustrations elaborating on specific details. His introduction is a brief overview of the change in labour practices since the start of the 19th century. Brennan describes how, as a result of the industrial revolution, labour was being deliberately centralised by the ruling classes in cities through a variety of gradual processes. Between the introduction of agricultural machinery, the resulting redundancy of many farm labourers, mass emigration, and the availability of unskilled work in the industrialised urban centers, the Irish population was greatly redistributed. Brennan described this as "the great tragedy of modern Ireland", arguing that it was triggering a major shift in the makeup of Irish culture.		Brennan's article reads like a proposal for the practical realisation of a new socioeconomic system, supported by a number of illustrations elaborating on specific details. His introduction is a brief overview of the change in labour practices since the start of the 19th century. Brennan describes how, as a result of the industrial revolution, labour was being deliberately centralised by the ruling classes in cities through a variety of gradual processes. Between the introduction of agricultural machinery, the resulting redundancy of many farm labourers, mass emigration, and the availability of unskilled work in the industrialised urban centers, the Irish population was greatly redistributed. Brennan described this as "the great tragedy of modern Ireland", arguing that it was triggering a major shift in the makeup of Irish culture.