THE ORIGINS OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

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 by

Harry McBeath Cleaver, Jr.

November 1974

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 © Copyright 1974

by

Harry McBeath Cleaver, Jr.

3
I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a
dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

(Principal Adviser)

I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a
dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a
dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

(Education)

Approved for the University Committee on Graduate Studies:

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Prefatory Note
As I make my dissertation publicly available here for the first time (previously it was only available through
University Microfilms - now ProQuest), I want to explain why for over 40 years I have left it, as Marx said of the
manuscripts that became The German Ideology, to the “gnawing criticism of the mice”. I have had two reasons.
First, I ceased to agree with its theoretical framework even as I was finishing it up and then went on to develop a
new theoretical framework in its wake. Second, since I finished the dissertation a number of works have appeared
that have shed more light on the Green Revolution than were available when I wrote it.

With respect to the first reason, I explained my disagreement with my framing in the Preface to the Second Edition
(2002) of Reading Capital Politically (RCP).

As part of the anti-war movement, in the years that I was a graduate student at Stanford (1967-1971), I
investigated the role of the university within the complexity of the whole US counterinsurgency effort. That
investigation led me, along with a number of others to form a study group to focus on the introduction of new
high-yielding rice to the area. That introduction was being done with the purpose of increasing food production
in order to undercut peasant discontent and support for revolution against the neocolonialism of the time. In
order to grasp theoretically this political use of technology to transform rural Asian society I was led to Marx
and to Marxist analyses of the transformation of precapitalist modes of production by capitalism through
processes of more or less primitive accumulation.

Unfortunately, the more I studied the history, the more one-sided and narrow this analysis seemed to me. While
it highlighted and made some sense of what US policy makers were doing, it virtually ignored the self-activity
of the peasants in Southeast Asia against whose struggles the new technologies and "nation/elite building" were
aimed.

By failing to grasp the struggles of those peasants, and their allies, I decided that the analysis in the dissertation
“could not even accurately understand the actions of capital itself – which always developed in an interplay with that
resistance and those attacks.” The implication for me was the need for “a complete rethinking of Marxian theory to
see if it could be understood in a way that was not one-sided and which grasped both sides of the social conflicts I
had been studying and involved in.” The upshot of that rethinking was the theory laid out in RCP and a couple of
articles.1

With respect to the second reason, as time passed, research by others has added to our knowledge about capitalist
policies, with respect both to the Green Revolution and to the evolution of agrarian policies more generally. Not
only have some researchers dug more deeply into capitalist archives than I had done, but discussions with peasants
in India and then twelve years of involvement with the struggles of indigenous Zapatista communities in Chiapas
have given me a greater understanding of the complexities of peasant communities than I had when writing the
dissertation. As a result, I have felt, more and more, the need to take that research and experience into account in
recasting the substance of the dissertation.

In other words, the implication for me of these two considerations was that before offering the research in my
dissertation to the public in book form I should rewrite it. But the need for more research into both capitalist policy-
making and the struggles of peasants and farmers obviously implies a lot more work!

To date, all I have accomplished in this direction is reformatting the dissertation in my preferred form as a prelude to
revising it in a serious manner and accumulating some of the new materials now available. For the moment, it
remains “on the back burner” while I write on other topics. I do hope that I live long enough to do the work that I
1
Whereas my article on “The Contradictions of the Green Revolution” (1972) was written in the midst of working on my dissertation, two
subsequent articles applied some of the rethinking in RCP to agrarian questions. The first, “Internationalization of Capital and Mode of
Production in Agriculture” (1976) was prepared as a paper to the Seminar on the Political Economy of Agriculture at the A. N. S. Institute of
Social Studies in Patna, India and subsequently published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XI, No. 13, Review of Agriculture, March
27, 1976, pp. A2-A16. It critiqued the focus on modes of production that I had used in the dissertation and that others were using in India. The
second, “Food, Famine and International Crisis” (1977), was written as an intervention into the “food movement” mobilized in the 1970s in
response to widespread famine in Africa and Asia and published in the second issue of Zerowork, pp. 7-69.

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think needs to be done – especially because these days there is much talk of a “new” Green Revolution, especially
but not uniquely in Africa. Evaluating current policies and appropriate responses to them can only benefit, I believe,
from a clear understanding of the past. That said, I have been persuaded to offer this unedited version of the
dissertation here because I have been repeatedly reminded by those few who have sought it out that its historical
perspective and much of its research results are of interest, quite irrespective of one’s theoretical orientation.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
(Page numbers have been adjusted for new single-space format.)

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Chapters

I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Questioning the Green Revolution 1

A Survey of the Answers 1
The Inadequacies of these Answers and the Aims of this Study 5
The Concept of Mode of Production 6
The Problem of the Coexistence of Modes 8
The Problem of Transition 9
Transition and the Theory of Imperialism 11
Transition and Revolution 13
The Case of Agriculture and the Green Revolution 14
The Structure of This Study 15

II. Empire Building at Home: Capitalism vs. Slavery and

the Beginnings of Capitalism in Southern Agriculture 17

Interpreting the Conflict: A Survey of Relevant Debate 17

The Slave Mode of Production 19
Slavery, Merchant Capital, Capitalism and the Civil War 22
Reconstruction and the Problem of Transition 24
Survivals, New Modes of Production, and the Byways of Transition 26
Merchant Capital, Money Relations, and Neocolonialism 28
The Agrarian Revolt Against Neocolonialism 29

III. The Second Reconstruction, or The attempt to transform southern agriculture and
make it safe for "democracy" and profits

Introduction 32
Progressive Education for Peace and Profits 33
Rockefeller Takes Over and Broadens the Movement 36
Public Health for Education and Productivity 39
The Effort to Transform Southern Agriculture 40
The Parallel Role of Business 42
The Government Takes Over 43
Successes and Failures 44

IV. China: The First Intervention Abroad, or How philanthropy followed business through
some open doors and they both got kicked out together 47

American Business and the Open Door in China 47

Missionaries and Business in China 50
Secular Philanthropy: Exemplary Institutions and Elite Building 53
Chinese Agriculture, The Rockefeller Foundations, and Anti-Communism 56
The Joint Commission for Rural Reconstruction and the Last Gasp of Reformism 65
Conclusion 66

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V. Expansion and Revolution, or How the new empire builders drew on their previous experience
in the South and in China to deal with the agrarian regions of the Third World 69

The Third World Agrarian Strategy 69

The Role of Education in the Agrarian Strategy 71
Elites and the Peasant Revolution 71
Salvaging Past Efforts: Refugee Intellectuals 73
Medicine, Public Health, and Anti-Communism in the Countryside 77
Engineering Change in Third World Agriculture 80
From Rural Reconstruction to Community Development 80
Changing the Forces of Production: Agricultural Research 84
Government Programs: Reactions to Guerrilla Threats 85
Private Programs: Launching the Green Revolution 87
Agricultural Economics and the CECA 93
Property in Land: The Failure to Change the Relations of Production 97

VI. Conclusion, or Theses on agricultural development and the Green Revolution 103

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 Preface
This thesis gradually emerged from a study of the Green Revolution which I began about 1969. By that
time, the dramatic series of American military interventions in Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and
above all in Vietnam and throughout Indochina had focused my attention on two related problems. The first was
the immediate involvement of Stanford University and its various departments, laboratories and research institutes
in the war against Vietnam and in the broader pattern of American intervention throughout the Third World. The
second was the theoretical question of peasant-based Third World revolution and its relation to the expansion of
American capitalism. I realized that these two things were intimately related both in the theory and the practice of
imperialism. What also needed to be integrated was my analysis of imperialism and my political opposition to it.
My search for a theoretical understanding of the Vietnam War proceeded dialectically through my political
struggles against it. At the time I came to Stanford, community opposition to the University's involvement in the war
was directed against the most obvious elements of its participation: things such as electronic warfare research or war
profiteering on the part of corporations tied to the University. Analysis of the role of corporations in the war was
limited to discussion of the so-called "military-industrial complex." That concept was broadened to the "military-
industrial-university complex" as investigations of university involvement in war research and corporate ties
deepened, not only at Stanford but across the country. This led to the post-Cold War pressure-group theories of
"political scientists" that the impetus to military spending came from a clique of generals and immoral businessmen
out to gain prestige and profits through the arms race and limited war.
Beyond these political theories, neo-Keynesian economics, taught both at undergraduate and graduate
levels, provided an explanation for the role of military spending in maintaining domestic prosperity through
government fiscal policy. Both the economic and the political theories held out the rationalization for reformism: the
war profiteering could be stopped without endangering the domestic economic welfare simply by increasing
government spending in some other direction – preferably a morally acceptable one such as health, education or
welfare. Within this framework one could intellectually oppose the war and military research, and continue graduate
studies in economics with no fear of any basic contradiction.
But as the war raged on, the suggestion began to spread that its economic causes went far beyond concern
with either war profits or immediate domestic prosperity. Increasingly, it was argued that the war represented a
crisis in what had been, up until then, an expanding American empire. Building on a few ideas of the old left and a
rapidly growing body of revisionist American history, opponents of the war began to analyze its economic
underpinnings.
This focus on economics was reinforced by the results of the continuing research into the university's role
in the war. That investigation revealed a pattern of counterrevolutionary research which went far beyond weaponry
into the basic social and economic structures of Third World societies. Not only were the projects of electronics and
chemistry laboratories contributing to the fight against revolution, but so also were the projects of many "social
scientists" such as those in anthropology, education, sociology and economics. It also revealed a pattern of business
support for the war that could not be explained by the "military-industrial-university complex" theory. The war
profiteers were there, but it became clear that support for the war also flowed from many multinational corporations
with no direct interest in arms sales or even in domestic military spending. They saw the war and other foreign
interventions as vital to the protection and expansion of their foreign trade and investments. This was something
which Keynesian macroeconomics could not explain.
When we turned to the other aspects of economic theory, we were being taught in order to try to understand
theoretically how the war fit into the international aspects of the American economy, we discovered little of direct
relevance. The only literature which seemed to come close to dealing with the realities of the American empire was
concerned with multinational corporations, and that was more descriptive than analytical. Nevertheless, it might
provide a starting point for trying to understand what was going on. I worked on that approach within the context of
graduate seminars for almost a year. This period also saw the rise of radical economics at several other American
universities as more and more economics students realized the inability of orthodox theory to explain the important
issues of the day.
At the same time, some of us began to explore, largely on our own, that body of economic literature which
deals most directly with problems of imperialism, but which at the time was relegated to the ignored underground of
economics: Marxism. In particular, the works of Paul Baran, who had taught at Stanford, were "rediscovered" and
had a profound impact on our understanding of imperialism. Although at the time we read far more of contemporary
neo-Marxists such as Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy or Andre Gunder Frank than we did of Marx himself (or even of
Lenin or Mao), nevertheless, we discovered that that approach provided an exciting and promising alternative for

ix
analyzing American economic involvement in the Third World.2 It also provided the basis for understanding why
orthodox theory failed to deal with the basic issues, and how its reformism really amounted to either apologetics or
naivete. An important event marking both resistance to the war within the university and the beginning of an
associated theoretical orientation away from orthodox economic theory toward Marxism, was the initiation of
courses on economic imperialism by Professor John Gurley. These provided the first opportunity since the death of
Paul Baran for undergraduates in economics to study the U.S. empire within the context of credited course work.
For a few of us at the graduate level it also provided an opportunity for rigorous thought and discussion of relevant
theory.
Besides my work on the multinational corporation during this period, I also took courses in economic
development in the hope that something useful would be said about American economic relations with the rural
Third World – those agrarian parts of it which seemed to be at the heart of its revolutions. And indeed, I did learn
some things about these relations. But in the process, it became obvious that the theoretical structures being used in
"economic development" were based on orthodox theory and contained all its weaknesses. Moreover, I saw that the
myriad approaches to development inevitably focused on the problems of capital. They were not concerned with
explaining either the various forms of exploitation which are orchestrated by capital or the dialectic of resistance and
repression which sometimes leads to war. I increasingly came to see those approaches for what they were: attempts
by bourgeois economists to find ways to facilitate the expansion of capitalism.
Now, just as apparent inadequacies of the "military-industrial-university complex" theories led us to further
research into the real pattern of university and corporate interest in the war, so did the inadequacies of economic
development theory lead us to try to see what was really happening in the rural Third World. Power structure and
muckraking research of domestic university-corporate-government interlocks and strategies found their counterpart
in empirical research into rural development. In both cases the research was guided by contemporary neo-Marxist
theories of modern imperialism. At that time the single biggest "breakthrough" in agricultural development was the
Green Revolution and it naturally attracted our attention. My work on the Green Revolution contributed to the
formation of an interdisciplinary study group made up of individuals with training in history, communications,
chemistry, biology, ecology and economics.3
Over a period of about a year we pooled our individual knowledge in a far-reaching study of all aspects of
the Green Revolution. We worked individually on technical materials in our fields, and we met regularly to integrate
different aspects through group discussion. We studied articles and reports, but we also interviewed outside
specialists and representatives of organizations linked to the creation of the Green Revolution. Over this period, this
work was repeatedly disrupted for considerable periods by the demands of our political practice. That practice
included the intensification of our opposition to the war and to Stanford's involvement in it following the
Cambodian and Laotian invasions of 1970 and 1971. Yet, as always, the immediate exigencies of struggle produced
useful new perspectives on our own research and new directions for future work.
This group study project led to the decision by Steve Weissman and myself to collect our work together
into book form. With the financial support of Ramparts Press, the two of us were able to supplement our previous
research with two information-gathering trips: one to the East Coast (which I undertook) to interview representatives
of the major elite organizations responsible for the Green Revolution, and one around the world, to Turkey, India,
Pakistan, and the Philippines to make first-hand observations and to carry out field interviews of a variety of key
researchers and policy makers. These trips further enhanced our understanding of how the Green Revolution had
been put together and how it was progressing.
Unfortunately, this project, which by 1971 had become a sweeping study of many aspects of post-World
War II American imperialism, was set back when financial considerations forced me to leave California to take a
teaching job in Quebec and then forced Steve Weissman to take a job in England. Consequently, the book project
and manuscripts were at least temporarily shelved. In these circumstances only partial results of our work have
appeared so far, in a few articles either by us or by others to whom we have supplied materials.

2
This bias toward reading contemporary Marxists rather than Marx stemmed from several sources. Politically the new left sought to escape not
only the confines of capitalism and bourgeois theory, but also the dogmatism of orthodox Communism in which Marxism had been reduced to a
counterrevolutionary ideology. Rejecting the one, we were discouraged from exploring the other. In terms of study we also suffered from being
inculcated with the attitude that whatever was worthwhile in the work of previous authors was incorporated into the latest literature so that there
was little point in going back, behind Baran or Sweezy, to Marx. Furthermore, we were confused by the nature of class struggle within the
United States. We were told again and again by both liberals (i.e., Galbraith) and leftists (i.e., Marcuse) that the struggles of blacks, women,
students, the unemployed, etc., did not fit into "traditional" Marxist theory. As one might expect, it has only been the progress of our own work
which has shown us the inadequacies of these interpretations and has led us back to Marx.
3
These individuals were, respectively: Steve Weissman, Judy Strasser, Steve Ela, Lee and Lynn Herzenberg, Dale Hattis, and myself.

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 In the midst of collecting information about the Green Revolution and the formulation of American foreign
policy, I came to feel increasingly dissatisfied with both the level of our theoretical understanding and with the
limitation of our historical work to the post-1940 period. While we had learned more and more about the
development of American imperialism we were still working primarily within the neo-Marxist framework. While
we had traced the origins of the Green Revolution back to the 1940s, we were fairly certain that they began much
earlier; we just had not done the work necessary to trace them back. Both of these limitations show up in an article I
wrote for the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in 1972.4 In terms of theory the article reflects
the strange mixture of Marxism and orthodox economics which constitutes neo-Marxist theory. In terms of history it
begins with the Mexico crisis of the late 1930s and 1940s. The results of work which I undertook to rectify these
limitations make up the bulk of this thesis. Over the period 1972-1974 I sought a more solid theoretical base for
understanding the Green Revolution in the work of Marx, whose writings I had begun to explore some time before.
It had become apparent to me that, despite disclaimers to the contrary, neo-Marxist writing had largely discarded
Marxist value theory and adopted much of the theoretical framework of orthodox macroeconomics with all its dan-
gers. I also expanded our very limited pre-1940 historical researches to locate the "origins" of the Green Revolution
in the earliest agricultural work of the big capitalist foundations. These historical and theoretical researches I
gradually knitted together into an analysis of the expansion of capital into precapitalist modes of production. This
analysis involves a return to the fundamental Marxist concepts of capital, value and mode of production. All of these
had been largely ignored in the neo-Marxist literature in the United States and Latin America. 5 Hopefully this thesis
will serve at least two purposes: first, to help reorient Marxist theory and practice back along the lines originally
developed by Marx; and second, to show how capitalist approaches to agricultural development are based on the
past experience of imperialism and how that experience suggests that they will once again fail to improve the
welfare of the rural masses. This, in turn, should contribute to our understanding of the sources and dangers of
capitalism in the Third World and thus help us develop better ways to destroy it.
In the preparation of this thesis I have benefited from the knowledge of many persons in several ways. An
outgrowth of a collective research project, this thesis was unfortunately undertaken outside the framework of that
project and could not benefit from its collective wisdom and criticism. Nevertheless, that earlier group provided a
depth and breadth of study which facilitated an escape from the confines of traditional economic theory and which
provided an opportunity to explore alternative approaches. I can only be grateful to the other members of that group
for that experience – a determining one in the "origins" of this thesis. During my subsequent work I received
invaluable criticism from a number of persons. Steve Weissman read and commented on almost all of the chapter
drafts despite numerous other obligations. Sam Bowles of the University of Massachusetts provided helpful
comments on the treatment of educational history in a draft of Chapter III. Howard Berliner of Johns Hopkins was
most helpful with both comments and materials on the development of public health programs. Discussions with
Donald Harris played an important role in the development of my thinking about American slavery and the proper
approach to its analysis. The members of my committee, Martin Carnoy, Donald Harris, and John Gurley, patiently
criticized the different drafts of each chapter. The comments of each led to substantial improvements. I would
especially like to thank John Gurley for the stimulus of our repeated discussions of theory over the last few years
and for his continual encouragement and patience despite the difficulties of directing a thesis being written some
2500 miles away.
The staffs of Cornell University Archives and the Rockefeller Foundation Archives provided help without
which my historical work would have proceeded with much more difficulty. Among the many individuals linked to
the propagation of the Green Revolution who graciously agreed to be interviewed, I would particularly like to thank
William I. Myers and Arthur T. Mosher. Their discussions of the history of the Rockefeller foundations' work in
agriculture were especially helpful.6 Finally, I must thank my brother William T. Cleaver for his numerous critical
comments on drafts of several chapters, for his assistance in research, and for his absolutely indispensable aid in the
final, painful production of this manuscript.
Needless to say, despite their influence, none of the above are responsible for any of the formulations or
interpretations contained herein.

4
Harry M. Cleaver, Jr., "The Contradictions of the Green Revolution," American Economic Review, May 1972.
5
Important work in Europe and Africa has been done in recent years by French-speaking Marxists such as Samir Amin, Pierre-Philippe Rey,
Maurice Godelier and Louis Althusser. Unfortunately, my work on this thesis could not take much of their very important work into account
because I was unfamiliar with most of it during the time of writing.
6
Almost all the many taped interviews in the United States and abroad, carried out within the context of the Green Revolution study group, were
concerned with the 1960s and 1970s and thus not directly relevant to this study.

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November 1974
Harry M. Cleaver, Jr.
New York

xii
 I
Introduction
Questioning the Green Revolution
The sudden upsurge of enthusiasm for the Green Revolution in the late 1960s and the equally rapid spread
of skepticism in the early 1970s has provoked a new, albeit confused reassessment of the role of agriculture in Third
World economic development. President John Kennedy had barely announced his Decade of Development and his
Alliance for Progress when a dark cloud of neo-Malthusian ecologists, population bombers, and famine prophets
heralded the imminent arrival not of a New Frontier for the Third World but of the old specter of mass starvation,
nameless suffering, and social turmoil. Soon supported by more respectable specialists in economics and panels of
eminent senior statesmen these visions of gloom cast a grey pall over a period already numbed by the Bay of Pigs,
the Dominican Republic, and the war against Vietnam.
And then, rising out of Mexico and the Philippines like a patch of clear green sky, came the "miracle
seeds." The outgrowth of quiet research, financed by self-effacing philanthropies; here was a new, dramatic solution
to Famine 1975. Technology had done it again, the agricultural economists chimed. As long as you can keep shifting
those production functions up, you just don't have to worry about the diminishing returns. Yes, the neo-Malthusians
responded skeptically, but for how long and by how much can they shift? Long enough for you to give a vasectomy
to the population bomb came the answer. And so, everyone joined in to celebrate the spread of the Green
Revolution, and miracle seed breeder Norman Borlaug was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the
welfare of mankind.
But almost as soon as this new panacea began to spread out across the Third World, doubters appeared.
Mumblings about "second generation" effects soon crystallized, and critics pointed to uneven patches in the Green
Revolution – some brown, some pink. Scattered social scientists and journalists pointed out that the new seeds were
only being used in certain areas and not others. It was in those countries where the seeds were most successful that
they were also widening the gap between rich and poor regions. They also pointed to the heavy input requirements
of the new seeds and noted that the requirements for investible funds were limiting their adoption to those with cash
or access to credit – namely the rich. Once again, the seeds seemed to be helping the rich get richer relative to the
poor. Finally, they added, the new profits from the higher productivity were pushing land prices up, tenants off their
land, and financing agricultural mechanization which was threatening to cause massive unemployment in both
countryside and city. The possible arrival of capitalist-wage laborer class relationships in the countryside and of an
unemployable lumpen in the cities raised fears that the Green Revolution might run Red. To top it all off ecologists
joined in, pointing to simplified eco-systems and warning of miracle blights and miracle pests doing in the miracle
seeds at the first opportunity. The Green Revolution, it would seem, was doing more harm than good.
The most passionate exponents of the new technologies, like Norman Borlaug, lashed back accusing the
critics of mounting a "vicious, hysterical campaign" and called for more seeds. Cooler heads within sponsoring
groups were more deeply troubled by the critics. Officials of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the World
Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), all of whom happily shared credit for the upsurge
in food production, are now anxiously trying to buy the answers to three important questions: How much of the
criticism is justified – in other words: how bad is it likely to get? Why did things go wrong? How can we correct the
situation?

A Survey of the Answers

There is hardly any disagreement over the fact that success of the new varieties has been subject to sharp
regional limitations in each of the countries where there has been substantial adoption. In Mexico, for example, the
new wheats were planted overwhelmingly in the Northwest and it has been this area alone which is responsible for
the rapid growth in wheat output. The rest of the country where most of the people live has remained virtually
untouched by the new varieties.7 In India, adoption has been concentrated in the wheat areas of northern and
northwestern states like the Punjab.8 In Turkey, the use of the new wheat varieties has been largely limited to the
coastal lowlands. But these wheat lands account for only about 15 per cent of Turkey's total wheat acreage. The
7
Donald K. Freebairn, "The Dichotomy of Prosperity and Poverty in Mexican Agriculture," Land Economics, February 19697 W. Whitney
Hicks, "Agricultural Development in Northern Mexico, 1940-1960," Land Economics, November 1967.

1
traditional wheat area of the country is the vast Anatolian plateau which, like the poverty stricken East, has not
benefited at all from the new package.9 In Thailand, where local research has produced new rice varieties similar to
Philippine strains, their use has largely been confined to the central lowlands and has not reached into the large
northern and northeastern poverty areas.10
But nowhere did the Green Revolution exacerbate uneven regional development more than in Pakistan. In
West Pakistan, the new wheats spread magnificently. In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the new rice varieties
failed. The result: the West became a food surplus area, while the East became heavily dependent on food imports
and relatively poorer than before.11
In all of these countries the Green Revolution is indeed benefiting those regions which are already the most
developed and neglecting the poorest and least developed areas.
If there is agreement over the existence of regional inequalities there is also agreement over the cause:
technology.12 It has been pointed out time and again that the new varieties of wheat and rice give maximum results
only on carefully irrigated land. They have short, stiff stems which permit heavy fertilization and grain weight
without breaking. But the short height and sensitivity to the timing of watering necessitate the availability of
carefully controlled irrigation. Since they have been bred for shorter growing periods and reduced sensitivity to day
length, they also permit considerable increases in yield per year through double and even triple cropping – provided
there is adequate irrigation.13 Therefore, in all of the countries mentioned above adoption has been primarily in areas
of controlled irrigation. Where irrigation is non-existent (the Anatolian Plateau and East in Turkey, most of Mexico,
the North and Northwest of Thailand, and much of India) or poorly controlled (Bangladesh, part of India, etc.) the
new varieties often give worse results than local strains.
If technology is the cause, then, it is usually suggested, technological change is the obvious answer. Either
the area of controlled irrigation should be expanded by the use of dams and tube wells or more research should be
undertaken to develop new varieties capable of producing more on drier, unirrigated lands. At any rate no one is to
blame, it is said, since these kinds of bottlenecks are inherent in any period of rapid technological change. Chalk up
one round to the critics but the solution is obvious.
If it is true that the Green Revolution appears to accentuate regional differences, what about the inequalities
within the successful regions? Is it true that larger farms and wealthier farmers have profited most from the new
technology? During the initial introduction into many countries this seemed to have indeed been the case, largely
because Foundation and government officials often turned first to established, commercial farmers for initial field
trials.14 Since then, following wider adoption, the case is not so clear. The results of numerous studies on both rice
and wheat have been far from unanimous, but if there is a trend, it is that "them what has, gets." 15 This usually does
mean larger, commercial farmers,16 but it has also meant small peasants close to extension and market centers, 17 and

8
Ralph W. Cummings, Jr. and S. K. Ray, "The New Agricultural Strategy: Its Contribution to 1967-68 Production," Economic and Political
Weekly, March 19697 R. W. Cummings, Jr. and S. K. Ray, "1968-69 Foodgrain Production: Relative Contribution of Weather and New
Technology," Economic and Political Weekly, September 19697 J. S. Kanwar, "From Protective to Productive Irrigation," Economic and
Political Weekly, March 19697 A. A. Johnson, Indian Agriculture in the 1970s (New Delhi: Ford Foundation, August 1970)7 etc.
9
Lester Brown, Seeds of Change (New York: Praeger, 1970), pp. 79-807 USAID/Turkey, "Turkey Crop Paper," Spring Review of New Cereal
Varieties, (Washington, D.C.: USAID, 1969), p. 15.
10
Resources for the Future, Agricultural Development in the Mekong Basin: Goals, Priorities and Strategies: A Staff Study (Washington, D.C.,
1971).
11
L. Brown, op. cit., p. 807 USAID/Pakistan, "Rice and Wheat in Pakistan," Spring Review of New Cereal Varieties, (Washington, D.C.:
USAID, March 1969).
12
In India differential distribution of small farms due to population pressures and obstruction by local "left-wing" state governments have also
been blamed for regional discrepancies. Marcus F. Franda, "Policy Responses to India's Green Revolution," LTC Newsletter, January-March
1973, pp. 9-10.
13
See D.G. Dalrymple, "Imports and Plantings of High-Yielding Varieties of Wheat and Rice in the Less Developed Countries," U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Foreign Economic Development Report No. 8, January 1971; D.G. Dalrymple, "Technological Change in
Agriculture," USDA and USAID, April 1969; and annual reports of the International Rice Research Institute.
14
This is made clear in the histories of the introduction of the new varieties prepared for AID 1969 Spring Review, as well as elsewhere.
15
This shows up particularly in N. S. Shetty, "Agricultural Innovations: Leaders and Laggards," Economic and Political Weekly, August 17,
1968, where adopters systematically showed higher characteristics like larger farm size, more education, more extension contacts and more total
assets.
16
P.V. Krishna, "Hybrid Maize in Karymnagiar," Economic and Political Weekly, May 3, 1969, p. 755; N.S. Shetty, op. cit., p. 1273; G.
Parthasathy, "Economics of IR-8 Paddy," Economic and Political Weekly, September 20, 1969, p. 1520; and S.S. Acharya, "Comparative
Efficiency of HYVP: Case Study of Udaipur District," Economic and Political Weekly, November 1, 1969, p. 1755.
17
Krishna, op. cit., p. 755.

2
sometimes tenants where landowners have supplied financing.18 At least two of the studies show that in some areas
where the initial adoption rate was higher for larger farmers, others caught up rapidly. 19 The problem with most of
these studies is that they concentrate on the diffusion of the new seeds alone, whereas the real question is that of the
diffusion of the package. There is some indication that while more wealthy farmers may not use a higher percentage
of seeds, they do use more of the complementary inputs.20
From these studies, however representative they might be, it appears that the new combination of inputs is
largely neutral with respect to the technical economies of scale. But other costs are not. The rich, it was noted, can
have accumulated wealth in the form of liquid savings or they can borrow money more cheaply. They can also get
education more easily. In the case of the Green Revolution it is apparently this availability of capital and knowledge
which may account for part of the bias toward the wealthy.
For those wealthier farmers who can adopt the new grains and afford the complementary inputs, studies
have shown that the change can be very profitable. A study by AID shows impressive differentials in average cash
profits between traditional and new methods. For example, it shows 157 and 258 per cent increases in returns over
cash costs per acre in the Philippines and India respectively. Overall the study concludes that per acre returns over
cash costs have been about doubled by the use of the new technology (rice in this case). 21
This is obviously quite a generalization to make, since profits are directly related to grain-support prices
and input prices and both of these have varied considerably over time and between countries. Nevertheless, it seems
safe to make the tentative assumption that sizable profit rates have been earned by many of the adopters, and for the
larger commercial farmers this probably means enormous absolute profits. Viewed together with the higher adoption
rate for the entire package by large farmers, the implied greater profit differential suggests that the Green Revolution
is indeed resulting in a serious increase in income inequality between different classes of farmers in those areas
where it is being adopted. To the degree that this is so, the critics again score a point. But in as much as this is due to
differential access to knowledge and credit, many have pointed out that these are old problems with well-known
solutions. More credit should be made available to poor farmers so that they can use the whole technological
package. This can be done through a variety of institutions including agricultural banks and farmer cooperatives.
The problem of knowledge can be handled by increasing investment in agricultural extension services and other
institutions which can educate the ignorant.
Well, what about rising land prices, peasant evictions, and unemployment problems? One oft-quoted
observer, Wolf Ladejinsky of the World Bank, claims that in the Indian Punjab high profits have led to an increased
demand for land which has driven its price up as much as 500 per cent. In order to reduce costs, he explains,
landlords are trying to acquire more land and to convert their tenants into hired laborers. 22 Another study reports that
in 1969 there were almost forty thousand eviction suits filed against sharecroppers in the Indian state of Bihar and
double that in the state of Mysore.23 A recent study of the Punjab shows that very big farmers (over 100 acres) have
been increasing their holdings for some time: about 40 per cent between 1955/56 and 1967/68.24 There are few data
to indicate just how widespread is the growth in tenant evictions, though their occurrence is neither new nor limited
to the Green Revolution.25 Many observers have pointed to this growth, and under some situations it does seem to be
an optimal strategy for a landlord trying to maximize his own profits. To the degree that it is occurring, such a
change could have significant implications for the class structure of the countryside. A shift from a quasi-feudal
18
R.E. Huke and J. Duncan, "Special Aspects of HYV Diffusion," International Rice Research, 1969?, (mimeo); and Shetty, op. cit., p.
1273.
19
Max K. Lowdermilk, "Preliminary Report of the Diffusion and Adoption of Dwarf Wheat Varieties in Khanewal Tehsil, West Pakistan,"
Cornell University, 1971, (mimeo), cited in Refugio I. Rochin, "The Impact of Dwarf Wheats on Farmers with Small Holdings in West
Pakistan: Excerpts from Recent Studies," Ford Foundation, April 1971, (mimeo); and Huke and Duncan, op. cit.
20
Survey Unit, 4th Plan Economic Research Project, Bureau of Statistics, Planning and Development Department, Government of Punjab,
"Fertilizer and Mexican Wheat Survey in Lyallpur, Sheikhupura, Sahiwal Districts, 1970," 1970, cited in Rochin, op. cit.
21
Floyd L. Corty, "Global Crop Paper: Rice," Spring Review of the New Cereal Varieties, (Washington, D.C.: AID, May 13-15, 1969).
22
W. Ladejinsky, "The Ironies of India's Green Revolution," Foreign Affairs, July 1970, p. 764.
23
Lester Brown, "The Social Impact of the Green Revolution," International Conciliation, January 1971, No. 581, p. 44.
24
Ashok Rudra, A. Majid, and B.D. Talib, "Big Farmers of the Punjab: Some Preliminary Findings of a Sample Survey," Economic and Political
Weekly, March 1969; also see B.S. Minhas, "Rural Poverty, Land Redistribution and Development Strategy: Facts and Policy," Economic
Development Institute, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, September 1970, on the rush to buy land.
25
R.H. Day, "The Economics of Technological Change and the Demise of the Sharecropper," American Economic Review, June 1967; Carl
Gotsch, "Utilization of Human Resources in the Mississippi Delta: Some Preliminary Results," Harvard Development Advisory Service, (undated
mimeo), on tenant and labor displacement in the southern United States; and H.B. Shivamaggi, "The Agricultural Labour Problem: Past
Misconceptions and New Guidelines," Economic and Political Weekly, March 1969, on the displacement of tenants in India before the Green
Revolution.

3
structure of tenancy and sharecropping to a concentration of land in large operational units dependent on wage labor
suggests a trend toward some variation of the classical capitalist two-class dichotomy.
With the growth of a rural class of agricultural laborers, already very large in India, the amount of
unemployment is also reported to be swelling. For, encouraged by increasing profits and new land acquisitions,
capitalist farmers are accumulating more and more of their capital in the form of mechanical equipment. Overvalued
currencies and government subsidies have sharply reduced the relative cost of equipment to farmers – often below
world prices. "Labor shortages" in some Green Revolution areas are also accentuating this trend by raising cash
wage rates.26 Mechanical pumps, tractors, threshers, reapers, and combines all contribute to raising yields and output
but there is considerable evidence accumulating that their net effect in employment is labor displacing. In their
absence, the new inputs actually demand more labor for planting and cultivation and, by increasing output and
permitting double-cropping in some cases, for harvest operations as well. But reapers, threshers, and combines can
dramatically cut back employment at harvest time – the one period in which seasonally unemployed workers felt
reasonably sure of finding work. The labor impact of irrigation pumps and tractors used for land preparation is less
certain.27
The overall outlook indicated by the various studies points to the possibility of considerable increase in
rural unemployment in those areas where mechanization proceeds rapidly. This effect, especially if combined with
the eviction of an appreciable number of tenants, could generate a growth in both the size and insecurity of the rural
landless labor force. Some of the displaced workers might fall back on other rural areas, joining family members or
finding their own subsistence holdings. Such a movement would intensify subsistence farming in less advanced
areas and increase poverty there. It also seems likely that such intra-rural migration would simply tend to expand the
prevalence of an unemployed wage labor force rather than dissipate it in a return to subsistence farming.
If this is so, then growing numbers of unemployed might leave the countryside and join the migration to the
cities, swelling the urban slums. The critics may be right again. The problem of unemployment is currently given so
much attention that in many quarters it is replacing food deficits as the "development problem of the 1970s." 28
What are the answers which have been put forward in the face of these developments? There are sharply
differing points of view. On the one side are those who want to plunge ahead with production. They include people
like Borlaug who feel that the need for more food is so great that the current approach should be reinforced despite
any negative impact on employment. It also includes those who think that nothing could really be done to slow
down the trends in land tenure and mechanization even where it might be desirable to do so. Mechanization is a fact,
they argue, and it is helping increase production which has always been the primary aim of the Green Revolution.
Land reform is impractical because the landed elite still hold too much power and can block any effective
legislation. Whatever problems of unemployment may exist should be dealt with in separate programs like rural
public works.29
On the other side are the reformists, either too optimistic or too scared to give up hope. Mechanization still
has a long way to go, they say, and labor-displacing equipment is imported and could be blocked by prohibitive
tariff duties or local taxes which would equalize private and social costs. Land reform must also be achieved
because even with the development of rural workshops (to make tube well pumps and equipment geared to bullock
power) and public works, there simply will not be enough jobs. And in the end of course, as always, the only way
ultimately to control the unemployment problem is to limit population growth. Bruce Johnston of Stanford

26
I.M.D. Little, T. Scitovsky, and M. Scott, Industry and Trade in Some Developing Countries: A Comparative Study, (London, 1970).
27
For detailed discussions of the labor-creating effects of the Green Revolution and the labor-displacing effects of mechanization, see Bruce F.
Johnson and J. Cownie, "The Seed-Fertilizer Revolution and Labor Force Absorption," American Economic Review, September 1969; Robert
D'A. Shaw, Jobs and Agricultural Development, (Overseas Development Council Monograph No. 3, Washington D.C., 1970); Martin Billings
and A. Singh, "Employment Effects of HYV and its Implications for Mechanization," USAID, New Delhi, 1969? (mimeo); M. Billings and A.
Singh, "Farm Mechanization and the Green Revolution, 1968-84: The Punjab Case," (New Delhi: USAID, April 22, 1970); S.R. Bose, "The
Green Revolution, and Agricultural Employment under Conditions of Rapid Population Growth: The Pakistan Problem," Near East/South Asia
Conference in Kathmandu, July 6-9, 1970 (mimeo); and R. Barker, M. Mangahas, and William H. Meyers, "The Probable Impact of the Seed-
Fertilizer Revolution on Grain Production and on Farm Labor Requirements," paper presented at the Conference on Strategies for Agricultural
Development in the 1970s, December 13-16, 1971, at Stanford University.
28
David Turnham, The Employment Problem in Less Developed Countries: A Review of the Evidence, (Paris: OECD, June 1970); James P.
Grant, "Marginal Men: The Global Employment Crisis," Foreign Affairs, October 1971; and W.C. Thiesenhusen, "Latin America's Employment
Problem," Science, March 5, 1971.
29
For this side of the debate see M. H. Billings and A. Singh, "Employment Effects of HYV and its Implications for Mechanization," (New
Delhi: USAID, 1969?, mimeo); M.H. Billings and A. Singh, "Farm Mechanization and the Green Revolution, 1968-84: The Punjab Case," (New
Delhi: USAID, April 22, 1970, mimeo); S.S. Johl, "Mechanization, Labor Use and Productivity in Indian Agriculture," (Columbus: Ohio State
University, Department of Agriculture Economics and Rural Sociology, Economics and Sociology Occasional Paper No. 23, 1970, mimeo); and
R.P. Dore, "On Learning to Live with Second Best," Economic and Political Weekly, November 8, 1969.

4
University, one of the most concerned advocates of this second position, argues that the choice is narrow. Either
land reform and tariffs are imposed, which he believes would enable agricultural development along the lines of
Japan and Taiwan, or the current trend will continue toward a "Mexican" model of a countryside sharply divided
between prosperous mechanized commercial farms and poor subsistence farms. 30
Finally, what about ecological predictions of disaster? Very little has been written on this phase of the
Green Revolution, but what literature there is does point to some real problems.31 Among the chemical inputs
required by the new varieties are heavy applications of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. Pesticides, when required
in heavy doses, can have important side effects. There are cases reported of broad spectrum pesticides used in Asian
rice fields killing not only the pests but the fish in rice field ponds and thus depriving whole communities of their
protein supply.32 Runoffs from the heavy fertilizer applications of the new technology, by producing widespread
eutrophication of lakes and streams, can similarly be dangerous to protein supply.
Still other problems can come from the wholesale distribution of a limited number of new plant varieties.
This oversimplification of the ecosystem does create an inviting and highly vulnerable target for pests and disease.
This was demonstrated dramatically in the recent United States experience with Southern corn leaf blight. Many
areas of the Gulf states lost over 50 per cent of their crop; the country as a whole lost close to $1 billion. 33 Serious
problems of this kind impeded wheat production in Turkey in 1968 and 1969, while virus in 1971 set back the
Philippine rice boom so badly that the country had to resort to imports.34
Once again, the solution to these kinds of problems is said to be technological. It is a commonplace that
agricultural research is only one jump ahead of disease and pests. What is needed is expanded research facilities,
more plant breeders, entomologists, and chemists; in short, more not less technology.
This survey has not touched on all of the "second generation" effects of the Green Revolution which are
currently causing concern, but has rather emphasized primarily those that are receiving the greatest amount of
attention.35 The kind of specific policy suggestions which seem to be emerging from these many studies conducted
over the last few years run something like this: As far as regional inequalities and ecological hazards go the proper
response is expanded investment in technology. As for the growing gap between large and small farmers, this can be
met by expanding agricultural extension services and rural credit. The problem of tenant insecurity and evictions
can be dealt with by land reform measures. Finally, the growth of agricultural unemployment can be attacked by
land reforms, limiting labor displacing mechanization, and of course population control measures.

The Inadequacies of these Answers and the Aims of this Study

It is the contention of this thesis that the foregoing analyses and recommendations are neither new nor
likely to be fruitful in solving the problems of agricultural development in the Third World. Rather the approaches
suggested are simply dressed up versions of strategies which have been tried time and again over the last 70 years
and have failed to eliminate hunger, or poverty, or to result in any substantial improvement in the welfare of most
peasant farmers, except in rare and limited occasions.
The immediate reasons for this lie with the methods and approaches of the agricultural technicians and
social scientists currently preoccupied with the Green Revolution. But these methods, like the goals and intentions
of the members and institutions of the American ruling class who are responsible for their creation and propagation,
are outgrowths of capitalist development. I attempt to show that the Green Revolution is not simply a technological
solution to agricultural development involving research, new seeds, and higher yields; but rather that it is the latest
chapter in a decades long attempt by the U.S. ruling class to expand capitalism into pre-capitalist agrarian areas of
the world and there to contain social revolution and make the hinterland safe for the expansion of trade and

30
On this side see Johnston and Cownie, op. cit.; B.F. Johnston and P. Kilby, "Agricultural Strategies, Rural-Urban Interactions, and the
Expansion of Income Opportunities," draft, November 5, 1971 (mimeo); R. D'A. Shaw, 22. cit.; L.R. Brown, Seeds of Change (New York:
Praeger, 1970); and John W. Mellor, "Expanding Domestic Markets for Food," Paper No. 7, presented to the Cornell Workshop on some
Emerging Issues Accompanying Recent Breakthroughs in Food Production, March 30-April 3 1970, (mimeo).
31
Paul R. Ehrlich, "Ecology and the War on Hunger," War on Hunger, December 1970; "Who's for DDT?", Time, November 22, 1971; and L.R.
Brown, "Man's Quest for Food: Its Ecological Consequences," ZPG National Reporter, March 1971.
32
D. Hattis, untitled memorandum, 1971, pp. 1423; "Who's for DDT?", Ibid.
33
D. Hattis, Ibid., p. 10.
34
M. Ojala, "Impact of the New Production Possibilities on the Structure of International Trade in Agricultural Products," paper presented to the
Conference on Strategies for Agricultural Development in the 1970s, December 13-16, 1971, at Stanford University, pp. 5, 7, 11.
35
For a broader survey of the "second generation" effects including those in the area of circulation, see H. Cleaver, "The Contradictions of the
Green Revolution" Monthly Review, June 1972, from which this section was largely drawn.

5
investment. Therefore, the Green Revolution encompasses not only technological change but also the conflicts
among social classes and differing modes of production, which shape that change, as well as struggles between
competing ideologies and their supporting institutions.
To show this I have traced the development of the Green Revolution from its unrecognized American
origins in the 19th Century struggle between the capitalist North and the slave South, to its latest, only slightly
better-known role in the global struggle between capitalism and socialist revolution. Because the period covered is
considerable, and in order to give concreteness to the analysis, I have focused on those members of the ruling class,
those elite institutions and those key experiences, which have played the most important role in this development.
These include primarily but not exclusively the men associated with the large philanthropic foundations and their
work in the American South, in pre-war China, and in post-war Mexico and Asia.
The approach of this thesis is based on a theoretical critique of contemporary analyses of
underdevelopment by both orthodox economists and by Marxists. Both suffer from a common fatal flaw: the effort
to universally apply in the Third World the tools of analysis developed for capitalism. In the case of orthodox
economics this stems from a conviction that the "laws of economics" based on "homo economicus" are universally
valid. Marxists, of course, criticize this position. They point out the need for different theories for the economic
structures of different epochs. Yet as a result of the way they study the impact of capitalist imperialism throughout
the Third World, some of the most influential of those Marxists have been led to see capitalism everywhere and thus
essentially to commit the same error as the orthodox economists whom they criticize. The result is a focus on the
extraction of surplus from Third World economies and the resultant international hierarchical concentration of
wealth and uneven development of "world capitalism."36 In both cases, orthodox and Marxist, there is thus a failure
to recognize in the Third World the existence of distinct economic structures requiring different tools of analysis and
different theoretical approaches. In the case of orthodox economics, the failure stems from the basic methodological
characteristic of all bourgeois ideology – the search for universal laws which reflect universal (bourgeois) man. In
the case of Marxism, the failure is also methodological and stems from the failure to follow Marx in placing the
structure of production at the center of socio-economic analysis. It is this failure which must be rectified in order for
both Marxist theory and practice to advance. This introduction tries to suggest the overall direction of theoretical
development which is implied by such a procedure and, in so doing, to explain the basis for the subsequent analysis
of the origins of the Green Revolution.

The Concept of Mode of Production

Since it is my contention that Marx was right to focus on the mode of production as central to the
theoretical analysis of economic structures, including those of agriculture, I shall begin by trying to make clear what
this term means.37 The mode of production at any given moment is defined by the nature of the material forces of
production and the social relations which prevail among those involved with production. By forces of production I
mean the combination of natural resources, man-made tools, skills, knowledge and labor which are coordinated by
and through the worker in the process of production. The nature of the inputs, of their combination, etc. obviously
varies considerably according to the branch and epoch of production. The relations of production refer to the
structure of social relations among those connected to production. The mode of production thus has two aspects:
relations between the men and the material upon and with which they work; and the relations between those who are
associated with that production. These two aspects are dialectically related. That is, the forces of production
ultimately determine the structures of relations between men and in turn these relations influence the development
of the forces. It is these dialectical relations which make the mode of production not a static but a dynamic concept
reflecting a process of development and change.
Since this definition relates to a mode of production at any given moment I am here designating only those
elements of the concept which can be abstracted from the particular historical situation. The concept of mode of
production in general, with no further qualifiers, is, as such, ahistorical. It is ahistorical in the sense that the concept
reflects common characteristics of all epochs and all phases of human society. Men have always produced (even
though the methods have varied) and have always done so within some structure of social relations (which has also
varied). General in this way, it has a definite usefulness because it allows us to see elements of continuity in
different periods. But its very generality limits its usefulness in the analysis of specific historical periods. For by
36
I am referring here to those Marxist authors like A.G. Frank, R. Stavenhagen, and others who have been concerned with fighting the bourgeois
notion of dual economy. See below pp. 39-48 where I return to these positions in greater detail.
37
The following discussion is based on my understanding and acceptance of Marx's scattered discussions in Capital, the "Introduction" and the
"Preface," to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, German Ideology, and the Grundrisse.

6
emphasizing only the elements of continuity it is one-sided and fails to capture the specifics of particular,
historically-determined economic formations. It thus has the same strength and weakness as concepts like labor,
production, or surplus product.38
Although there is a weakness in this lack of historical specificity, at the same time it is clear that this
generality arises out of specificity. Just as we recognize as justification for generalization that the general obtains in
the specific, so too do we recognize even more quickly that the general carries the specific explicitly within it. In
order to obtain the notion of "mode of production" we must abstract the common aspects from a number of specific
modes having common characteristics. The more general concept of mode therefore exists through multiple
determinations and carries the specific modes explicitly within it; although subsumed and passed from view. This
holds with its constituent concepts of forces and relations as well. We therefore have both the concept of mode of
production in general with some ideas about its basic internal structure and various specific concepts of individual
modes of production, differentiated according to their essential, historically determined differences. Because of
these differences the internal dialectic between the forces and relations of production of each mode will similarly be
specific.
It is useful, I think, to note a couple of examples of particular modes of production before proceeding. The
most completely analyzed mode is the capitalist. Put very simply it is defined in terms of forces and relations
essentially by the utilization of modern capital-intensive technology requiring a considerable division of labor and
by the existence of a sharp separation between the actual workers, whose labor is obtained through a wage contract,
and the possessors of the means of production who, as such, play no direct role in production but who appropriate
the product. Another example is the slave mode of production. Here the forces of production have historically been
less advanced, requiring less division of labor, and while here again there is a conflict between the laborer and the
owner of the means of production the relationship is not contractual but that of slavery.
These rapid definitions are meant only to be suggestive at the moment. In fact, it would be next to
impossible and largely meaningless to give an exhaustive typology of different modes of production. Nor do I think
there is any reason to do so. What is needed is the detailed analysis of particular cases which one wishes to study
and understand. At one time, there was a rigid classification of all modes into categories of primitive communism,
slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. It was argued not only that these modes encompassed all human social
structures but that they appeared historically in the foregoing order. That formulation produced considerable
stagnation and little useful work. It came to an end with the "discovery" of the Asiatic mode of production which
broke through the rigidity and stimulated a greater readiness to confront existing situations on their own grounds.
However, even today, there is still the danger of categorization as an end in itself.39
The concept of mode of production must be clearly distinguished from the larger concept of social
formation of which it is an element. A social formation is the theoretical totality of social activities which constitute
a given kind of society. Production is clearly only one activity among many and the mode of production or structure
of human and technical relations associated with production make up only one component within that sector of
social activity which we generally call economic. The other major elements making up the structure of economic
activities within the social formation are distribution and exchange. Together distribution, exchange, and the mode
of production, make up the economic base of the social formation. It was a major theoretical contribution of Marx to
argue that distribution and exchange are largely derivative of the mode of production.40 And this of course is the
reason the latter should be given center stage in any economic analysis of society. The economic base constitutes
only part of the total gamut of social activities which make up any social formation. The other activities are
regrouped analytically in the so-called superstructure and include the various social, political, intellectual, religious,
artistic, and philosophical aspects of the social formation. Once again it is that aspect of Marxist social analysis
which sees these various activities as ultimately determined historically by the structures making up the economic
base, which again implies that an understanding of the mode of production is essential and central to the analysis of
society and its historic development.
This general scheme of analysis, this concept of the social formation, which sees the mode of production as
central to the economic structure and the latter as central to the total formation, is in reality more complex than it at
first appears. There is no assumption of one-way causal determinism which would for example see social change
originating only in changes in the mode of production. Moreover, as I noted above, changes in the mode should not
38
Marx's observations on this methodological point with respect to the notion of production in the "Introduction" are of general validity.
39
Eric J. Hobsbawm's introduction to Karl Marx, Pre-capitalist Economic Formations, (New York: International Publishers), pp. 60-64. Also
Maurice Godelier's "preface" to Sur les Sociétés Précapitalistes, (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1970), prepared by the Centre d'Etudes et de
Recherches Marxistes.
40
Marx, "Introduction," op. cit.

7
be thought of as always originating in modifications of the technical forces. This kind of approach would amount to
economic or technological determinism which Marxism is not. Particularly over the short term the fluctuations of
history are often generated by semi-autonomous or exogenous changes in either elements of the economic base
other than the mode of production or in those of the superstructure. Indeed, in this thesis I examine a number of
influential actions the initiation of which is not directly traceable to fundamental economic changes. Such actions,
however, are the outgrowth of existing social conditions which over the longer run are shaped by the structure of
production and economic life. It is because this theory has proven so useful in historical and current analysis that we
should focus on the mode of production when seeking to understand social change.
An important implication of the way in which the concept of mode of production is defined is that one may
speak of the mode of production of a country, of a region, or even of a single production unit within a given
industry. In agriculture, for instance, because one can identify both the relations and forces of production, one can
even speak in terms of the mode of production of a single farm. This is the direct implication of defining mode of
production in terms of forces and relations of production. In this way, it is unlike the concept of social formation
which could hardly be applied to less than a governed community.41

The Problem of the Coexistence of Modes

When we approach concrete historical reality through the concept of mode of production and analyse the
structures of production, we discover that there is almost always a simultaneous existence of different modes of
production within a given country or area at a given moment in history.
This raises a number of critical difficulties for analysis. As long as one thinks in terms of one homogeneous
mode of production, then the implications for the rest of the social formation might be worked out fairly directly.
That is, if the mode of production constitutes the fundamental element within the economic base of society, then a
theory of the other aspects of that base and the superstructure which make up the rest of the social formation might
be elaborated fairly directly. Based on one unique mode of production, one can theorize without ambiguity about
(say) a capitalist social formation or a capitalist society based on a capitalist mode of production. In the absence of
homogeneity, the usefulness of this theoretical formulation is limited. There appears not a "pure" derivative social
formation, but a complex one whose classes, political conflicts, and economic relations reflect the underlying
coexistence and conflict between modes.42
Besides the problem of simultaneous existence of different modes in agriculture – say of a capitalist farm
next to a subsistence one – the same kind of problem arises within even a single family. One may often find a
strange combination of such diverse phenomenon as land ownership and subsistence production, hiring out for wage
labor, renting of land for commercial production, etc., which makes it difficult to identify either a farm’s mode or
the class roles of the family members.43 But it is one thing to say that this farm has a capitalist mode of production,
or that this farmer is being reduced from an independent producer to a worker. It is an entirely different order of
analysis to say that agriculture in this country – or area – is characterized by the capitalist mode of production. In the
former case, we are dealing with individuals and family behavior and in the latter case with class structure and class
behavior. In terms of political economy, we are only interested in the appearance of particular modes of production
when they have reached the degree of adoption for a class to appear. 44 Until that point is reached there may be great
interest in the psychology of individuals or of small groups, i.e., the family, but there is no appreciable impact upon

41
A.G. Frank's misplaced mocking of Utsa Patnaik's use of the concept mode of production to identify capitalist farms, apparently stems from a
confusion between mode of production and social formation, A.G. Frank, "On 'Feudal" Modes, Models and Methods of Escaping Capitalist
Reality," Economic and Political Weekly, January 6, 1973.
42
Although Marx rarely dealt directly with this problem in his theoretical work which focused on the capitalist mode of production (and to a
minor extent the nature of non-capitalist modes) his recognition of the problem shows up clearly in his concrete historical studies, of which the
18th Brumaire is perhaps the best example.
43
This problem has been clearly recognized in the excellent article by Ashwani Saith and Ajay Tankha, "Agrarian Transition and the
Differentiation of the Peasantry: A Study of a West U.P. Village," Economic and Political Weekly, April 1, 1972. Where other Indian authors
have been content to recognize the uneven development of "capitalist" institutions, Saith and Tankha offer a better and more complete
methodology and analysis of the transition process. This approach is in some ways similar to the one I suggest below.
44
This comment refers to modes which do give rise to classes. There are non-capitalist modes which do not. The notion of class within the
Asiatic mode of production, for example, is weak.

8
the overall economy.45 It is only with the appearance of class that an emerging mode of production begins to affect
the development of the superstructure of legal, political, and ideological activities.46:"
The construction of a theory able to explain the nature and dynamics of a complex social formation
wherein two or more modes of production (and other elements of their respective social formations) coexist requires
the analysis of the various ways the modes both complement and struggle with each other. Since the contradictions
of such coexistence provide the basic impulse to development and change, and since the resolution of such
contradictions tends to give rise to a single dominant mode, what we are dealing with in the case of coexisting
modes is really a period of transition from one dominant mode to another. Dominant is used here in the sense that
the kinds of relations and forces of production characteristic of the dominant mode (and the derivative forms of
exchange, distribution, etc.) determine the pattern of these relations in general, and other modes, which are either
disappearing or emerging, are subordinated and shaped by it.
The conditions under which we might expect the simultaneous existence in a given area of different modes
of production and their associated classes are those of transition. Transition is the process by which one mode of
production is replaced by another. Put somewhat differently it is the process by which the existing relations of
production and the forces of production are transformed into something new. Roughly speaking, transition may
occur in at least three different ways: 1. self-transformation, which occurs when the contradictions internal to a
mode bring about its destruction and the creation of new relations and forces; 2. conquest, through which alien
modes are either united under one political unit, i.e., the nationstate, or a given mode is forcibly changed by the
conqueror; and 3. penetration, in which an "outside" mode reshapes (the mode of production in question) through
economic and social mechanisms. In all these cases one can expect, and history shows, that the process of change
will not be sudden and there will be fairly long periods where the transformation has only partly occurred. The
classic case of "self-transformation" is the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe. The epoch of
capitalist colonialism was one of transformation by conquest and direct coercion. Beyond conquest both the periods
of colonialism and neocolonialism have been characterized by the rapid undermining or slow dissolution of
traditional pre-capitalist modes by socio-economic mechanisms together with direct force. It is primarily this last
situation which is of major interest for the analysis of current conditions in the Third World.

The Problem of Transition

It is exactly these last two conditions (conquest and dissolution) which have been the key elements in the
study of capitalist imperialism. (Though I should add that they may also interact with the first where the local mode
of production is changing.) This Marx noted early in his work. In the Manifesto, he writes:

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic
relations . . . The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the
whole surface of the globe . . . All old-established national industries have been destroyed . . . It compels
all nations, on pain of extinctio/).4 to adopt the bourgeois mode of production . .47

This theme, the destruction of pre-capitalist modes of production by an expanding capitalism, has persisted in
Marxist political economy ever since. Unfortunately, the process of destruction has too often been treated as a fait
accompli and too quickly have Marxist authors tried to apply the categories appropriate to capitalism itself. Perhaps
because Marx himself focused on capitalism, this process of interaction with and penetration into another mode of
production has been little studied. What is needed is a theory of transition which recognizes both aspects of the
contradiction and explains the outcome. Because by far most research has been consecrated to the capitalist modes
or for those of transition. This is as true for Marx as for those who have followed him.

45
If Marxism is understood as a science of human society, then clearly the analysis of individuals and subclass groups must ultimately be
integrated with the class-based analysis of political economy. This has been the subject of a long standing dialogue among Marxists of which
perhaps the most interesting recent contribution is Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique de la Raison Dialectique. So far however, discussion of this work
has been more in the domain of modern psychology than of economics. An exception is Pierre-Philip Rey's attack on Sartre in Colonialism,
Neocolonialism et Transition au Capitalisme (Paris: Maspero, 1971), pp. 17-21.
46
Marx and Engels' recognition of the existence of minor "forms" of exploitation and other relations which do not yet form a distinct mode or
class is noted by Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 59.
47
K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1968), pp. 33-34.

9
 The transition which has received by far the most attention is that from feudalism to capitalism in Europe.
Second, and much further down in terms of the amount of effort, is the transition wrought by colonial conquest. In
both cases there has been little agreement about the nature of the change partly because there has been little
agreement about the nature of the pre-capitalist modes involved.48
Now it seems to me that once we recognize the existence of a multiplicity of modes of production we are
forced to recognize two more things. First, there can be no such thing as a general theory of transition. There can
only be theories of transition from a particular mode to another particular mode. Or from a combination of modes to
another mode. The kind of transition which will occur will depend upon the modes in question and obviously many
combinations are possible. Second, it is not necessary for the confrontation of two modes of production to give rise
to the replacement of one by the other, at least not directly. Capitalism, for example, may confront an alien mode of
production and destroy it outright without necessarily creating capitalism in its wake. The solution to the
contradiction is, at least in the short term, something else. This was clearly the case during the colonialization of
North America when the confrontation between mercantile and then industrial capital and the various modes of
production of the American Indians produced considerable subsistence family farming on the one hand and the slave
mode on the other. This was equally true for the subsequent confrontation between the capitalist mode and the slave
mode which ended in the Civil War without creating capitalist agriculture in the South.49 The prolonged impact
upon a dependent sector by a given mode, capitalism for instance, may eventually transform the intermediary forms
into its own image. But there is no a priori reason to expect that the transformation will be rapid or direct. The
problem in each case is to understand the existing mode and the reasons why the transition proceeds as it does.
One of the most outstanding characteristics of the pre-capitalist modes of production in Third World
agriculture is their apparent ability to resist pressure from capitalism to transform into the capitalist mode. A reason
for this is perhaps that the attempted penetration and transformation began at a time when the modes themselves
were nowhere near transforming themselves into capitalism. What capitalism then faced was often well-structured
modes of production with their own class structures including a ruling class whose interests were challenged by the
arrival of capitalism. Another factor could be that some transition was underway but not toward capitalism. In this
case both the declining and rising classes would have interests opposed to those of the capitalist ruling class. Where
capitalism created a new mode, as in the case of American slavery, or where there were existing pre-capitalist
modes, the mechanisms and needs of capitalist expansion and its world market have undoubtedly acted at times to
strengthen and preserve these modes, at least for extended periods. This is particularly suggested during the early
period of colonialization when lack of power and the mandates of indirect rule may have foreclosed the direct
penetration or transformation of whole sectors of colonies, thus leaving intact local social formations. This
occasioned the capitalist ruling class to establish a modus vivendi with the ruling classes or leadership of the
traditional pre-capitalist societies which for a time acted to reinforce the old rulers rather than to undermine them. In
agriculture, the history of land tenure struggles in Third World countries dominated by U.S. capitalism largely
appears to have been shaped by the degree to which the U.S. ruling class supported or undermined local landowning
classes. One may expect, however, that such cross-mode ruling class alliances would eventually give way as the
capitalist sector expands and feels the need to diminish the power of its erstwhile allies. Indeed, it may be argued, as
Marx did for England, that the undermining of traditional agriculture based modes is often a sine qua non for
continued development of capitalism inasmuch as it is necessary for the creation of a "free" work force separated
from the land and forced to sell its labor. This process, however, may be stretched out over a very long time and at-
tempts may be made to gear it to the development of manpower requirements. The existence of revolutionary
organizations and the threat of social disorder and upheaval seem to have become one check on the dissolution of
pre-capitalist modes in the face of slow capital accumulation in the capitalist sector. But more on this later.
Just as colonial or neocolonial capitalism may encounter resistance from local modes of production, so too
must it often confront other established elements of the social formation. The attempt to transpose methods of
distribution, types of exchange, legal relations, religious structures and so on, meets not a clean sheet upon which
the encroaching capitalist class can write at will, but local systems of distribution and exchange, local political and
legal structures, etc. which must be dealt with. As with classes, the outcome of alliance and struggle is rarely an
outright victory for capitalism in the sense that it unambiguously substitutes its forms for those of the local social
formation.
But even if there can be no theory of transition, the foregoing discussion does suggest that a method of
study may be implied which is susceptible to generalization, at least in its main outlines. The problem which
48
For a rapid survey of the state of the debate which notes the limited work of Marx and his followers on the dynamics of feudal development, see
Hobsbawm, op. cit., pp. 52-57.
49
This is argued in some limited detail for the case of the post-Bellum South in chapter III below.

10
interests me here is that of understanding the transformation of a pre-capitalist mode of agricultural production
occasioned by the penetration of the capitalist mode, (or more generally the penetration and resultant transformation
of a pre-capitalist social formation by capitalism). The very way of posing the problem suggests that the first step in
its resolution must involve: 1. the elaboration of theories for the different modes of production concerned; and 2. the
study of the process by which the two modes and ultimately the two social formations confront each other and
resolve the contradiction of their opposition. In other words, in order to understand the outcome of a capitalist
penetration of a pre-capitalist society, we must understand the internal laws of development of the latter in order to
judge how it will respond to different kinds of penetration. Now this approach appears useful whether we are faced
with the confrontation of two totally different modes and social formations which have never before been in contact
(an exceedingly rare occurrence today, although more frequent in the period of colonialism) or whether we are
interested in a situation which has been changing for quite some time. This last is certainly the more current today
where often the "pre-" capitalist modes have already been either created or transformed from something else during
colonialism and thus their very structure has been and probably still is bound up with that of local and world
capitalism.50 Whatever the origins however – and they are vitally important to any adequate analysis – as long as the
structures of relations and forces of production are not those of the capitalist mode, we are still faced with a
confrontation and interaction between modes and thus with the problem of transition.

Transition and the Theory of Imperialism

If it is only possible to discuss the penetration and transition process situation by situation, and that no
general theory of transition is possible, does this mean that it is impossible to formulate a general theory of
imperialism? Only partially. Contemporary theories of imperialism do offer elements of a general theory because
they deal with it in terms of: 1. the laws of expansion of capitalism which drives it into all corners of the world and
which leads to the penetration of other modes, and 2. the ways in which capitalism has exploited those countries it
has penetrated. The discussion of capitalist expansion runs from Marx through Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg to
modern day Marxists like Baran and Sweezy and Frank. Whether during the early period of finance capital or during
the epoch of the multinational corporation, the focus has been on draining the surplus through capital investments
(short or long term, financial or physical – mines, plantations, etc.) and trade. The driving force is the continuous
accumulation of value through capitalist reproduction which leads to expansion of investment in order to mobilize
evermore variable and constant capital, and to the search for markets to permit the realization of the surplus value.
What has generally received far less attention is the impact upon the pre-capitalist modes penetrated by this quest
for investment and markets. From Marx on it has been a commonplace to say that the result is destruction, that the
old modes and social formations are uprooted and transformed. Among most contemporary Marxist economists, the
major focus, following Paul Baran's early work on the "roots of backwardness," has been the development of
underdevelopment due to the drain of surplus either through primitive accumulation or through trade and
investment.51 This approach has provided the basis for attacking the bourgeois analysis of dualism and has shown
that most of what appear to be backward and untouched sectors either are tied in to the capitalist system or their
current state of underdevelopment is due to past ties.52
The emphasis on this exploitation, this draining of surplus (which has complemented Marx and Lenin's
focus on the tendency to invest abroad in search of a higher rate of profit) has been very useful in explaining the
hierarchical international structure of wealth and power – the overall result of capitalist imperialism and the
associated lack of growth in many poor countries. Where it has been weak is in analyzing the effect of both the drain
(and other aspects of penetration) on the structure of local modes and social formations. Moreover, in reacting
against the tendency to argue in terms of dualism, isolation, or feudalism, the emphasis on exploitation and drain has
led to the inclusion of virtually any and all socio-economic formations within the "system of international
capitalism" no matter what the mode of production.
This latter procedure is obviously in error and several critiques are immediately suggested in the light of
the foregoing discussion. There is no reason to assume that a mode of production is capitalist simply because it has
commercial or investment relations with another (capitalist) mode of a sort which causes the former to be exploited
by the latter. If, as is often asserted this exploitation is based on the monopoly power of some capitalist which
50
The dependency theorists have quite correctly emphasized that virtually every existing "underdeveloped" social formation in the Third World
today has been profoundly influenced by world capitalism. I note below some of the reasons why they have failed to grasp all the implications of
the situation.
51
Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).
52
Especially the work of A.G. Frank, see footnote 55 below.

11
allows exchange at exploitative rates this no more makes the exploited mode "capitalist" than the rape and pillage of
conquest did. Once we recognize the distinctiveness of the non-capitalist modes of production now being exploited
by the penetrating capitalist economy we must also recognize that the nature of that exploitation will vary, a
function of the mode of production being drained. It was perhaps the recognition of this diversity of kinds of
exploitation which led Paul Baran to formulate the concept of "surplus" to include them all.53 The concept in its
most general interpretation is generic and is equivalent to Marx's term "surplus product" which he used freely to
characterize the excess (over the costs of reproducing the conditions of production) produced in any mode of
production.54 As one might expect the use of such a generic term led Baran and his followers straight down the road
to an overall view of national and international exploitation and ultimately to focusing on the unity and
interrelatedness of world capitalism. This is all to the good, but it is nevertheless one sided.
What it led them away from was concern with the specific nature of surplus and exploitation under
different modes of production.55 This has produced the unfortunate result that Marxist third world studies are being
divided into two fields. The study of national and international exploitation is being fairly well advanced by Marxist
"economists." But the study of kinds of surplus, and of local exploitation in pre-capitalist modes has largely been
relegated to the work of Marxist "anthropologists."56 This division reflects not so much a racially or culturally
biased refusal on the part of Marxist economists to consider tin pre-capitalist modes worthy of study in their
uniqueness as it does the conceptual framework of undifferentiated "surplus." The attractive simplicity of this
concept seems to prelude examination of its constituent elements and the implied problem of aggregation. What is
clearly needed is a fusion of these two realms of study – a reunification of a presently divided Marxist political
economy.
Now the elements of such a reunification, which opens the door to theories of transition, are largely
present: in the work of Marx himself, and in the work of both contemporary Marxist economists and anthropologists
(among others). As for Marx, he was explicitly concerned with the variety of forms of exploitation which
characterized the emergence and growth of capitalism. This meant that he examined the forms of exploitation
characteristic of feudalism, primitive accumulation, the development of mercantile and finance capital and finally
capitalism itself. Marx's analysis of the feudal mode of production focused on two classes: the landowning feudal
nobility and the landworking serfs. Here with agriculture the dominant productive activity, exploitation occurs under
the mechanism of ground rent whereby the surplus product produced by the laboring serfs is drained off to maintain
the nobility. Their power to obtain this surplus product is a direct result of their control of the land. Yet the
mechanism of exploitation is in one sense extra-economic and occurs through sociopolitical structures of coercion.
This analysis is clearly different than that of exploitation under capitalism where the mechanism is money wages in
a labor market. Here again there are two classes: capitalists and wage laborers. But now the surplus product of the
latter appears as surplus value which is appropriated by the capitalist through economic mechanisms. Ground rent is
no longer central but is relegated to a single element of surplus value which the landowner obtains via his monopoly
over land – still a factor of production even if non-productive of value. With respect to value, then, ground rent
appears only as a relation of distribution (similar to interest on money capital or merchant profits) since it is not
payment for productive services.57
Thus, as far as the transition from feudalism to capitalism is concerned Marx gives us the basic elements of
the first part of the analysis suggested above – an understanding of the nature of each mode of production (even if
only a beginning in the case of feudalism). But he does more, for he also outlines the intermediate steps of transition
and thus furnishes the basis for a theory of transition. In particular, he discusses three things: 1. the evolution of
ground rent – the basic mechanism of exploitation under feudalism – toward its form under capitalism; 58 2. the
evolution and impact of merchant capital which grows on and transforms the feudal structure;59 3. primitive

53
This hypothesis as to reasons for the substitution of surplus for surplus value in dealing with the Third World countries emerged from
discussions with Harry Magdoff. Such a consideration can help explain, if not justify, the use of the term both in Baran's book and in Baran and
Sweezy's Monopoly Capital. For other considerations on this concept see below, and H. Cleaver, "Some notes on surplus and surplus value,"
(mimeo).
54
Baran's formulation of actual surplus was an empiricist concept, formulated at the level of appearance with no explicit grounding in value
theory. His formulation of potential and planned surplus were utopian and based on his personal notion of rationality.
55
Ernesto Laclau is one of those who has pointed this out concerning Frank's work. See his "Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America," New
Left Review, May/June 1971.
56
This includes the work of men like Meillassoux, Chassard, Godelier, Terray and recently Sahlins.
57
Productive of surplus value.
58
Especially K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, pt. VI, chapter XLVII, "The Genesis of Capitalist Ground Rent."
59
Especially K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Pt. IV, chapter XX, "Historical Facts about Merchant's Capital."

12
accumulation by which the rising capitalist class accelerates the disintegration of the old mode of production and at
the same time creates the conditions for its own advancement.60 Marx offers us in Capital not only a method and
approach to the analysis of capitalism (which is the prime aim of the work) but also a method and approach to the
study of transition from one mode to another in general.
In the work of those Marxist economists working on the surplus draining aspect of imperialism we have the
beginnings of an analysis of the role of circulation in the process of exploitation. In the work of A.G. Frank or
Rudolpho Stavenhayen for example, we are shown time and again the market mechanisms by which the locally
produced surplus product is drained off toward the capitalist centers.61
The existence of this drain is an important key to understanding the slowness of growth in the given mode
of production whatever its structure. In many ways, this work appears most fundamentally as a continuation of
Marx's work on the impact of merchant capital. The work of Marxist anthropologists on the structure of production
and exploitation in "primitive" and peasant societies is fortunately helping to offset the aforementioned weaknesses
of all such market oriented approaches. Reacting against a similar Weberian tendency in their own field to focus on
the development of exchange relationships, they are now emphasizing the underlying importance of production in
explaining the structure of exchange. Because the third world today is still replete with "primitive" and peasant
social formations as well as those partly transformed, this work is providing an important analytical and empirical
base for the elaboration of more adequate theories of transition.62
In short then, because there are a multiplicity of modes of production there exists a large number of
mechanisms of exploitation corresponding to those modes plus a variety of intermediary or transitional forms. To
those modes of exploitation internal to the mode of production and forming a central aspect of the relations of
production one must also add other economic and superstructural elements of exploitation by which the surplus
product is distributed among non-productive groups, including the state.
In a complicated social formation undergoing transition there may coexist. in struggle or in temporary
alliance two or more modes of production and modes of exploitation. The existence of a national and international
process of exploitation by which the capitalist center exploits the periphery clearly suggests that in general the
mechanisms of the world "private" markets for trade and capital as well as those of intergovernmental trade and aid
may act to reduce all of the various forms of surplus product to a common denominator – thus the notion of
international or world values. But even if this notion is correct, (and on it must ultimately rest the validity of much
of contemporary work on imperialism including the notion of surplus,) it does not eliminate the necessity of
analyzing the unique structures of production and exploitation, etc., which characterize the process of transition in
Third World countries. This is critical both to the understanding of social development as a whole and more
particularly to the understanding of the nature of class struggle which appear in these countries.

Transition and Revolution

Now one of the striking results of the penetration of pre-capitalist modes by capitalism is that the
transformations which it has caused have often produced violent upheavals – sometimes against the change itself,
sometimes against the new forms of exploitation which have developed. The long history of violence which has
characterized the expansion of capitalism is remarkable not only for the ferocity of the initial conquests and periods
of primitive accumulation but also for the renewal of violence over long periods of colonialism and neocolonialism.
What is important here is the fact that for the most part these periods or episodes of violent revolt and revolution
have not been examples of class struggle within capitalism. They have often been revolts of classes indirectly
exploited by capital – either the product of conflicts between classes within pre-capitalist modes or between classes
adhering to different modes of production. If the aim of Marxist social science is to further the development of
revolutionary practice then ultimately we must seek the best possible understanding of class structure and evolution
in order to be able to draw practical conclusions concerning proper political strategy. The recognition of the

60
Especially K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I., Pt. VIII, "The So-called Primitive Accumulation."
61
A.G. Frank, "Not Feudalism--Capitalism," Monthly Review, Dec.1963; A.G. Frank, Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); A.G. Frank, Latin America; Underdevelopment and Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969);
Rudolfo Stavenhagen, "Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America," New University Thought, Vol. 4, No. 4, winter 1966/67. Other
dependency theorists include Osvaldo Sunkel, Fernando Cardoso and Enzo Faletto.
62
For an update on the relevance of Marx and Engels' work and on advances since their time see Hobsbawm, 22. cit. and M. Godelier's "Preface"
to Sur les societes pre-capitalistes, 22. cit. Also on the current debate with the functionalists see M. Godelier, ed., Un Domaine Conteste:
l'Anthropologie Economigue, (Paris: Mouton, 1974).

13
existence of different modes and consequently of class distinctions can only help throw light on the nature and
dynamics of class struggle.
The expansion of capitalism has generally been an offensive effort to extend itself and its control of other
modes, but periodically it has been forced on the defensive by the intensification of the contradictions between it
and the modes it penetrates and/or dominates. (I ignore here conflicts between competitive expanding capitals
whether colonial or neocolonial.) It has been exactly this resistance to capitalist expansion which has led the
bourgeoisie to bring state power to bear in its behalf, just as it does within its domain to control class struggle. If
there was no resistance to the expansion of capital it could peaceably extend its control everywhere, gradually
transforming social and economic structures into its own image. This is its fondest desire and a course which,
according to its apologists, if allowed to continue would lead to the peaceful development of the world. Despite
these oft-repeated assurances, there has been frequent, widespread, and intense resistance everywhere capitalism has
extended its control because of the various kinds of exploitation it encourages and creates.
The reaction of capital and more particularly of the capitalist class to this resistance has been to use
whatever means it could devise to overcome the opposition and reaffirm its dominion. More often than not its
reaction has been out and out repression ranging from limited war to genocide. But even when it has resorted to
force, it has also sought means of establishing a more profitable peace. In this effort, it has often formed alliances
with other classes, frequently with those of different modes of production. The political alliances with local ruling
classes mentioned above are the most obvious of these. Yet at other times where capitalism is weak – as in the
beginning in Europe or in the case of some nationalist movements in the Third World today, it has been willing to
form temporary alliances with classes within and without its mode which are oppressed by the more powerful ruling
class it opposes. For example, in the French revolution, as is well known, the nascent bourgeoisie sought the support
of both proletariat and peasantry to overthrow the feudal nobility. National capitalists today may similarly appeal to
other classes in their struggle to reduce the share of locally produced surplus product which escapes their control
into the hands of multinational corporations, etc.
Capitalism has also taken the trouble to form intermediate classes or groups which can mediate its
domination and play a caretaker or comprador role in its interest. The development of this strategy seems to have
been characteristic of the degree of penetration and of the kind of exploitation which characterized the latter phases
of capitalist colonialism when the use of local ruling classes was decreasingly expedient. This appears to be
associated with the need for more complex and elaborate control over an expanding system which was also
undermining the old elites and as a way to dampen local resistence to the expanding control. The structure of this
new "indirect rule" thus varied considerably over time depending upon the circumstances. Nor was this method
without its dangers. To create a local intermediate ruling class of capitalist entrepreneurs and government
bureaucrats capable of handling the local institutions of empire was to risk the eventual revolt against being
exploited by the exploiters for whom it was exploiting(!). Needless to say, it was just this threat which crystalized
and contributed to the anti-colonial independence movements.

The Case of Agriculture and the Green Revolution

Of all those sectors of production which expanding capital has sought to exploit and dominate, the one
which its penetration and domination has generally been the least successful in transforming into capitalist mode is
agriculture. There can be little doubt that capital has exerted a tremendous impact and often achieved dramatic
transformations of existing modes. But the outcome of these transformations has more often than not been
something other than capitalism. In the Third World countries capitalist agricultural production has often been
limited to foreign plantations or a small number of latifundia operating with wage labor. Outside of these enclaves,
agricultural production is carried on either in traditional modes or in some transitional mode created by the impact
of colonialism and the world market. Even in the capitalist countries where capitalism dominates the rest of the
economy, agriculture has exhibited a tendency to resist change. In Europe, the destruction of feudal landed property
only occasionally developed into capitalist farming, leaving primarily small peasant production as its legacy. In the
U.S. the successive destruction of the Indian modes of production, the slave mode in the South, and finally the
small, partly subsistence, family farmer has taken over a hundred years to put the bulk of production under capitalist
mode. It is the combination of these aborted transformations and the successful establishment of mechanisms for
extracting the surplus product from these various modes of production that has made the countryside one of the most
important areas of revolt. If the countryside has emerged as an important source of revolution it has also
demonstrated an enormous complexity of motivation and sources of revolt. This complexity it seems to me can be
approached most directly by recognizing the underlying complexity of modes of production and associated relations

14
of production and distribution. Rural revolt has involved among others: peasant revolts against land rent imposed by
quasi-feudal landlords,63 wage labor revolts against capitalist farmers – often for land not wages (demand for the
tools of production); tribal revolt of either subsistence agricultural or hunting and gathering groups against the
encroachment on their land area or attempts at surplus extraction, and regional revolts of peripheral areas by a
combination of classes against exploitation by the center. This last includes the revolt of capitalist and pre-capitalist
agriculture as a bloc against unfavorable terms of trade with industry and finance. There is no simple theory which
will explain all of these different conflicts in one blow. But the framework I have outlined here does give us a way
to pose the problem which may lead to useful analysis. But by analyzing the underlying structure of modes of
production, the associated class structures and the nature of inter-mode exploitation and influence we can begin to
understand the fundamental economic and ideological aspects of each struggle.
The response of capital to agrarian revolt has been similar to its response elsewhere, sometimes violent,
sometimes more subtle but always aimed at reestablishing control and forestalling further instability. As elsewhere
the capitalist class has undergone a long process of developing strategies and techniques of control as its domination
has expanded and developed.
This is the general framework within which I examine the experience of conflict between the capitalist
class and the classes of the pre-capitalist modes of agricultural production into which it has expanded its economic
and political control since the early 19th Century. During over a century of conflict at home and abroad the
American capitalist class gradually developed an approach to expanding its domination in agriculture and
controlling agrarian revolt which involved an effort to control the transformation of pre-capitalist modes. It was this
approach which led to the Green Revolution. Over time the goals of the transformation varied but there were some
constant aims: to create a structure of production which was tied into the market economy through commercial sales
and use of manufactured inputs, to increase production as rapidly as possible, and to create a social structure which
would insure a supply of labor while not threatening the rule of capital. This was the ruling class image of capitalist
production in agriculture. The embodiment of this structure was the "farmer businessman" (whether his production
unit was the family farm, the cooperative or the agribusiness corporation). Where he did not exist, they would try to
create him, in the American South, in China, and then throughout the Third World.
But as we have seen, no class is free to write the structure of history as it pleases, not even the world
dominant American capitalist class. So their efforts to transform pre-capitalist social structures have been frought
with opposition and conflicts. Although the scope of this study, which sweeps across a world experience of decades,
forbids detailed analysis of the process of transition in particular cases, I do try to indicate some of the forces and
contradictions which have time and again frustrated the aims of the American ruling class and often produced results
sharply different from its desires and expectations. By providing this historical perspective, I hope to show why the
methods used in the Green Revolution which have produced so many unanticipated "second generation" effects
(contradictions) are not the result of accident or whim but are the outcome of social forces shaped by the expansion
of and resistance to American capitalism.

The Structure of This Study.

What I am concerned with here is less an analysis of the expanding nature of the capitalist mode of
production or the dynamics of pre-capitalist modes than I am with the programs and strategies by which the former
seeks to dominate and transform the latter and the contradictions provoked by those efforts. The Green Revolution
appears as less a technological innovation or successful attempt to increase production than as one phase of a larger
pattern of historical intervention in the rural hinterland.
For any historical study, there is always the problem of where to begin and where to end. In the case of the
Green Revolution the ending point is the more easily determined of the two. It is the period just before the rapid
dissemination of the new technology. As the analysis of the first part of the introduction has shown, it was during
that period that the implementation of the basic approach, technological solution to growth based on elite farmers,
set the pattern for the subsequent successes and contradictions. Since the aim here is not the analysis of those
contradictions and their future, but rather that of the origins of the approach which produced them, this study ends
naturally enough before its massive application.
The appropriate starting point is much less clear and depends upon the level of analysis. If we deal with the
Green Revolution as the latest chapter in a struggle between capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production, as
suggested above, then there is a temptation to search for its origins during the very birth of the capitalist mode of
63
Quasi-feudal because I prefer to use the term "feudal" only in the European context where it designates a whole social formation as well as a
mode of production.

15
production as it emerged out of a basically agrarian feudal mode. But the Green Revolution after all is a very
contemporary phenomenon. The development and distribution of the particular new cereal varieties which underlay
the "revolutionary" increases in production go back no more than about thirty years. Looked at in that perspective a
history might be conceived in terms of the particular men and institutions responsible for bringing forth this new
technology. This indeed is the way in which all official and quasi-official historical treatments have proceeded.
In between these two approaches – one which seeks comprehension at the level of theory and which traces
the entire history of capitalism and one which traces merely recent appearances – lies at least one other possibility:
the one chosen for this thesis. If the theoretical framework of modes and interaction of modes of production appears
essential to get beneath the external appearances, the analysis of the actual activities of men and their organizations
appear no less necessary to avoid the pitfalls of idealistic theorizing. Moreover, the fact that only a limited number
of men and organizations have been directly responsible for the development of the approach which led to the Green
Revolution suggests that their history offers a natural starting point of analysis. The problem is to understand and to
explain the actions of this group not only on the level of motivation and strategy but as manifestations of class
interests which in turn reflect the underlying conflicts between modes of production. Approached in this way the
study should begin not with the program of agricultural research in Mexico, which is usually taken as a starting
point, but with the creation of the capitalist philanthropies in the 19th Century which set out consciously to influence
the development of pre-capitalist agriculture. Beginning with that period the study divides up naturally into three
parts: the turn of the century effort to shape agriculture in the American South, the programs in China where for the
first time the lessons of the South were put to work abroad, and finally, the post-World War II period where these
experiences were applied to the control of agriculture throughout the Third World.
In each period, I will show how a variety of apparently disparate and unconnected interventionist programs
came to be knit together in such a way that they formed an increasingly coherent strategy of transformation and
counterrevolution. This knitting together was the work of a variety of institutions of which the large philanthropic
foundations and later the federal government were the most important. Since it is my contention that the programs of
these institutions represented the interests of the capitalist class, and were thus one expression of the expanding
capitalist mode of production, I point out not only the class bias of the programs but also the class origin and
allegience of the individuals who developed and carried them out. In the South and then in China where these efforts
to develop ways of shaping the development of agrarian regions were first elaborated and put into practice, the
actual number of key groups and individuals was fairly limited. I will show how they not only could but did oversee
the implementation and coordination of the various aspects of intervention. During the post-World War II period the
largely private programs were joined by a wide number of government programs and the number of countries
involved expanded dramatically. Here, in order to buttress the affirmation that class interests were involved I make
an attempt, albeit not systematic, to indicate how the increased number of groups and individuals were interlocked
and how their activities were coordinated. Ultimately of course the existence of such coordination is not central to
the question of class bias. It is the structure of the actual activities and their effects which are of primary importance
and not motives. But the partial focus on concrete individuals and organizations serves another purpose. If in
essence I am dealing with the impact of an expanding capitalist mode of production on pre-capitalist modes and
social formations, that is on the level of theory. In the real world, classes only appear through the individuals which
constitute them and these efforts at transformation by an expanding American capitalism can only be grasped
empirically through the concrete programs undertaken by real men.
Each of the periods and experiences is intimately linked to the others through the activities of these
individuals and their institutions. There is no need here to speculate idly on possible influences. As I show in the
chapters which follow there was a steady accumulation of knowledge and experience which was adapted and
applied in each new situation.
But beneath these individual and group actions there are always the interests of class and the dynamics of
the mode of production which they reflect. So, in order to provide background to the intricacies of their economic
strategy and motivation, I begin not with these groups but rather with a more theoretical and general discussion of
conditions surrounding their first major effort: the South. This involves a reinterpretation of the Civil War in terms
of two expanding social formations based on the capitalist and slave modes of production. It also involves an
analysis of the ways in which the larger capitalist mode of production was undermining and transforming southern
agriculture during and after Reconstruction.

16
 II
Empire Building at Home: Capitalism vs. Slavery and
the Beginnings of Capitalism in Southern Agriculture
The conflict between northern industrial capitalism and southern agrarian slavery culminated in a war by
which the former destroyed the latter in an attempt to establish its own national hegemony. An understanding of the
roots of this brutal intervention, the most dramatic internal conflict in American history, and of the reasons why
there was only a very limited development of capitalism in southern agriculture after the war is necessary to grasp
the situation in the South at the turn of the Century. It was then, in the South, that northern capital began to develop
those more subtle forms of socio-economic intervention which eventually led to the Green Revolution. In the first
part of this chapter I suggest a way of reinterpreting the nature and origins of this conflict based on distinctions
among the slave mode of production, the capitalist mode of production, and merchant capital. The civil war is
presented as the solution to fundamental contradictions between the slave and capitalist modes with merchant capital
playing a subsidiary role. In the second part of the chapter I examine the outcome of the war: the transitionary rise of
new, non-capitalist modes of production in agriculture and the consequent reemergence of intramode contradictions
which resulted in the agrarian revolt of the late 19th century.

Interpreting the Conflict: A Survey of Relevant Debate

Over a century of debate about the economic and political struggle which arose between northern capitalists
and southern slavers has produced very little consensus. Should the Civil War be interpreted as a conflict of social
systems, of social classes, or rather as a conflict between sectional interests within an essentially unified capitalist
economy and democratic political system? How important were the roles of individuals, of economic interest
groups, or of competing political ideologies? There is hardly more agreement among historians about this most vital
phase of American history than there was among the contestants of the time.64
Indeed, perhaps no aspect of American history has been treated more intensively than the Civil War. The
resultant literature is vast and divided in many ways. For my purpose, which is to suggest a new theoretical structure
within which to interpret much of the 19th Century, an extensive analysis of this literature is not really necessary.
Instead I will confine myself to a very brief historiographic sketch of the main trends and conflicts of interpretation
which will serve more as a counterpoint to the model I present than a thorough critique, although such a critique is
certainly called for and the following few remarks could to virtually any length.
At the risk of oversimplification easily be expanded we can group the writings on this period into roughly
two parts: the "traditional" and the "revisionist."652 For a time in academia the most influential interpretations of this
period were in the writings of U. B. Philipps and Charles W. Ramsdell on slavery and in those of Charles and Mary
Beard and their followers on the Civil War. Philipps and Ramsdell analyzed the workings of the slave economy and
found tendencies to stagnation which they felt would lead the system to self-destruction. Central to a general
concern with the deleterious effects of slavery on the South was Philipps' focus on what he felt was the declining
profitability of slavery – a condition which he thought had rendered it moribund on the eve of the war. This decline
he attributed to a fall in the price ratio between cotton and slaves, which he explained mainly by the end of the slave
trade and the consequent monopoly of and speculation on slaves which raised their prices. Ramsdell in turn tried to
show that there was also an overproduction of cotton on rapidly expanding acreage which led to a fall in cotton
prices.
64
It seems continually to amaze contemporary historians that this disagreement is very old and that current debates reflect many arguments
of the antebellum period. Kenneth Stampp, in his Causes of the Civil War, asks: "Is it not all the more discouraging to find . . . that twentieth
century historians often merely go back to interpretations advanced by partisans while the war was still in progress . . . ?" He concludes that one
should not be too discouraged because "a continuing debate . . . [is] the best promise that research and writing in this period of American history
will continue to have vitality." While it is difficult to argue about the virtues of debate, one wonders whether historians like Stampp understand
that, no matter how much information is brought to light no ultimate agreement will ever be reached because historians study through the bias of
different world views and theoretical frameworks --views that are often, in the final analysis, incompatible. Kenneth Stampp, The Causes of the
Civil War (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965).
65
0ne important way this sketch simplifies the historiography in this area is in limiting the term revisionists to the most recent group of
historians who carry that title with pride. For their work represents not only a revision of Philips, Beard, et. al., but also a revision of an important
intermediary group of historians including A. Craven, J. Randall and A. Nevins. These last were self-styled revisionists who attacked the notion
of "irrepressible conflict" and favored explanations of the war based on bungling or irresponsible politicians. Their successors, the group I
mention above, accepted their emphasis on politics but treated the political conflicts under question as deadly serious and not the result of
bungling.

17
 The Beards were-much less concerned about slavery per se, and in their epic work, The Rise of American
Civilization, they analyzed the Civil War in terms of a clash between northern capitalists and southern planters.
They focused on struggles between the ruling classes of both sections but explained them in terms of conflicts over
particular economic questions. The war was not a fight about slavery, or its abolition, but rather a struggle over such
issues as tariffs and land policy.
The Beards were influenced by, and later exercised their own influence on, "traditional" Marxian
interpretations of the 19th Century. Dating from the journalistic commentaries of Marx and Engels, Marxian
writing, even when presenting the war as a clash between opposing social systems and emphasizing the role of class
struggle, has often given a rather one-sided economic view which is somewhat different from the Beards' work but
like it tends to economic determinism.
By economic determinism I mean historical theories based on economic first causes. The level at which
such theories are developed, however, varies considerably. On the most superficial level economic determinism
turns around the immediate goals and actions of economic interest groups – a view which can come dangerously
close to conspiracy theory. The Beards barely avoid this view by keeping their analysis focused on the class
interests of capitalists and planters. Yet because of their inability to go beneath specific economic issues or to
sufficiently recognize the role of other elements in this conflict between social formations, their reasoning appears
as basically deterministic. Among Marxists, economic determinism takes another form, more complex and profound
but still unsatisfactory. Specific social developments are seen as directly explainable by the development of internal
economic structures, especially those of economic classes and the modes of production on which they are based.
From here it is only one step to technological determinism by which exogenous changes in the forces of production
are seen as the cause of changes in the mode of production, etc.
Both the revisionist historians, presently dominant in academia, and some contemporary Marxists have
largely built their arguments as refutations of this earlier body of work. as Kenneth Stampp, Richard Hofsteader, and
economists such as A. H. Conrad, J. R. Meyer, Y. Yasuba, R. W. Fogel, and S. L. Engerman argue that the
economic difficulties of the South and the difference between the North and the South, which the Beards and others
emphasized, were more apparent than real.66
Convincing demonstrations that slavery was profitable, that the North benefited from the cotton trade, that
northern industry was booming, even without a tariff, and that the northern capitalists were divided, have led them
to treat both North and South as "capitalistic" and to conclude that the ultimate struggle was political rather than
economic. Slavery thus emerges as a central issue not for moral or economic reasons but for political ones. In this
view, politicians led the struggle, and capitalists of North and South remained largely in the background. The
northern victory, which for the Beards was that of capitalists over planters, appears to the revisionists as more of a
"political victory for freedom." For them the essential incompatibility in the two societies was that two political
forms of capitalism developed such that an undemocratic southern slavery stood opposed to "competitive
democratic capitalism." The political notion of equal opportunity was in conflict with the inequality of slavery. 67
Among some contemporary Marxists and those who recognize their debt to the Marxist tradition, there has
been a similar attempt to reemphasize the political and ideological side of the conflicts. Barrington Moore and
William A. Williams, for example, both of whom have been heavily influenced by Marxism, also reinterpret the
struggle between North and South in terms of the clash of ideas. Williams focuses on the struggle between the
ideologies of "mercantilism" and "laissez-faire." Moore sees southern slavery as an integral part of North Atlantic
capitalism, and he passes quickly over underlying economic conflicts to interpret the struggle mainly in terms of a
debate over the political notions of competitive equality and democracy. 68
Now it was often true that ideology was uppermost in the minds of many involved in the struggle. Yet this
continual presentation of the relative importance of the political as opposed to the economic factors constitutes a
rather sterile debate. Any approach which fails to explain the sources of political conflicts must be unsatisfactory.
The argument always states that economic factors seem inadequate and thus "the inquiry leads back toward political
questions." This way of dealing with the problem is as unproductive as the forms of economic determinism which
these arguments are intended to refute.
In the case of the non-Marxist authors the emphasis on politics seems to arise from a methodological
orientation which poses ideas, in this case philosophical and political ones, as prior and as fundamental. In such a
view there is no need to discover any "sources" of the ideas. Yet what could be more obvious than the observation
66
Among economists the fashionable title is not revisionist but "new" economic history.
67
Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 18651877 (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 99-102; Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins
of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).
68
W.A. Williams, The Contours of American History, (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1966), pp. 285-3197 B. Moore, op. cit., p. 152.

18
that the southern notions of culture were developed after and reflected the underlying production relations of the
slave society, or that the bourgeois notions of freedom were the offspring of capitalism? 69 To say as Kenneth Stampp
does that the northern position, most clearly expressed by the radical republicans, ought to be seen as "the last great
crusade of the 19th Century romantic reformers," without showing how these abolitionist and radical ideas were
derived from 19th Century capitalist ideology, is to tell only part of the story.70
With Moore and Williams this tendency comes more from an attempt to go beyond simple economic
determinism, which ignores the realm of ideology. Thus they recognize certain basic differences in economic
structures and in social classes but then argue that the essence of the conflict is to be found in the derivative
ideologies.
The beginnings of a synthesis of these two approaches – one focusing basically on economic conflicts and
one on political and ideological struggles--is to be found in the work of Eugene Genovese, perhaps the most
influential of Marxian historians of slavery. His treatment of the place and interrelationship of economic and
political factors shows a more complex grasp of Marxist method and points the way for future research. Unlike
those Marxists who see changes in ideology as always reflecting changes in economic conditions, and unlike the
bourgeois historians who see them as evolving largely independently of the material conditions in a society,
Genovese tries to grasp both sides of the dialectical relationship and to show that "superstructure . . . develops
according to its own logic as well as in response to the development of the base." He also insists that "changes in the
superstructure, including those generated by inner logic must [in turn] modify the base itself." Genovese fails to
follow up these comments with any further theoretical development but in his work on the South he does illustrate
some of the ways these things occur. 71
Genovese's most important contribution, and the one which I take as my point of departure for developing a
new model, has arisen from his focus on the concreteness of the southern aristocracy as an identifiable, coherent
ruling class.729 His studies, which have indicated the pervasive influence of slavery on all economic institutions,
slave and non-slave, and his work on the cohesiveness and independence of the southern ruling-class ideology (vis-
a-vis capitalist ideology), have given us a better understanding of the aristocracy's economic and political hegemony
in the South. This has led him to see the South as resting on a distinct mode of production. Moreover, he correctly
points out the historical distinctiveness of this mode, noting that it was "as different from the feudal as from the
capitalist." Slavery was its foundation, not feudal obligations or capitalist wage labor. 73

The Slave Mode of Production

Seeing the slave system as a mode of production Genovese then argues that the development of the
productive forces of that mode was limited by the relations of production and elements of the superstructure. He
argues that it was the slave/master relations of production together with the exigencies of the ideological structure
developed by the slave owning aristocracy (and this mediation of relations and forces of production by ideology
differentiates him from simple economic determinism) which explains the fact that the plantation-based ruling class
was reluctant to introduce technological innovations which could have increased productivity and to support those
measures which would have furthered the development of non-agricultural industries.
If we want to understand the South I think we must follow up these beginnings and further explore the
unique characteristics of this mode of production in order to discover the internal dynamic of its development. A
comprehensive study of this mode should involve a much more thorough examination of the material forces of
production and their organization and reproduction. This would necessitate a reappraisal of the existing literature on
the technology and efficiency of slavery in both agriculture and industry. On the level of the relations of production
it would imply the continuation of Genovese's work on the southern ruling class and a reappraisal of previous work
on the other two major classes of the South (which he neglects far too much): the black slaves and the white yeoman
farmers.

69
I cannot begin to deal here with the complex problems of ideology, but these comments draw on Paul Nizan, The Watchdogs: Philosophers
and the Established Order (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972)7 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison Dialectique (Paris: Gallimard,
1960), and Eugene D. Genoese, The World the Slaveholders Made (New York: Pantheon, 1969), among others.
70 7
K. Stampp, op. cit., p. 101.
71
Eugene D. Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South," in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past (Pantheon, N.Y., 1968), p.
97.
72
See Genovese's essays on George Fitzhugh in The World, op. cit.
73
Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations," op. cit., p. 112.

19
 The understanding needed is of the basic mechanisms which underlie the structure of classes and of class
struggle. For example, what theoretical structure can adequately explain the pattern of exploitation and its
evolution? What are the laws governing the production and distribution of surplus product? In exactly what sense is
value produced and how do we theoretically aggregate that value when imported into capitalist countries?74 Or, in
turn, how do we deal, on a theoretical level, with the importation of values from the North and from Europe into the
South, etc.?
As this last suggests, beyond the "internal" laws of development there is the necessity of linking them with
the world context within which the South was born and grew. We need to see how the day-to-day forces and
relations of production were influenced and shaped by the export orientation of the economy, the dependence on
imports, etc. There is no doubt that the existing literature contains much material that is valuable for this
understanding. But without an adequate theoretical framework, which to date has not been provided, it is also
certain that material is now being badly interpreted. Such a development is necessary to provide the theoretical
underpinnings of the kind of work on both the mode of production and the superstructure which Genovese has
begun.
Needless to say, I have no intention of undertaking such a vast task here. What I do want to do, however, is
sketch out some thoughts suggested by seeing the southern society in terms of a slave mode of production, and then
to look at the struggles of the 19th Century in terms of interaction between different modes of production.
The starting point for such a sketch must be the meaning of applying the notion of "slave mode of
production" to the South. For just as Genovese objects to the application of the category of feudalism, which
designates a European situation, so too might one be suspicious of a "slave mode" which usually refers to the
classical cases of antiquity. Yet slavery – the total actual and legal control of one person over the life, work, and
death of another – is slavery. And what we need is not to coin a new term but specify the unique characteristics of
southern slavery which differentiates it from other cases.
The slavery of the South was indeed different in important ways. It arose during the mercantile phase of
capitalism as a solution to a unique problem: that of producing agricultural staples for a North Atlantic market in the
absence of sufficient free labor.

The developmental problem was one of bringing into production tracts of fertile land available for the
asking, or little more, but in the absence of an adequate labor supply . . . But from the point of view of the
entrepreneur, free labor would not do for plantation development, since land was free. Freemen provide
opportunities for the garnering of entrepreneurial profit when they have no access to the means of
production (particularly land), at any price they can pay, and must instead sell their labor at the market
price . . . 75

Negro slavery was the major but not the first form of coercive labor control in the South. The inflow of black slaves
followed the use of white indentured servants, Indians, and convicts. It was the difficulty of control, insufficient
numbers, and, in the case of the Indians, susceptibility to European diseases which made black slavery attractive.
The growth of the plantation economy in the American South thus became identical with the growth of a slave mode
of production.
This birth and development of American slavery took place within a world market. And that meant that it
was shaped in historically unique ways not only by its material conditions of production but also by the emerging
North Atlantic capitalist system. "In this sense capitalism certainly did make its appearance in southern agriculture;
in this sense the South certainly was part of the capitalist world. "76
This circumstance suggests the danger of viewing the form of this mode purely as an outgrowth of the
available forces of production: the particular combination of abundant land, contemporary agricultural technology,
and scarce labor power. Such a technological determinism fails to recognize that the way in which these "factors of
production" were combined (the slave plantation) was not the only one possible. Plentiful land and scarce labor were
characteristic of the country as a whole and homesteading and family farming were often the result, not plantations.
The birth of plantations was also a function of the availability of investible funds and the evolving relations of
production which the colonialists brought with them from Europe: namely transitional forms between feudalism and

74
The meaning of value is explained below, p. 75.
75
Sidney W. Mintz, "Slavery and Emergent Capitalisms," in L. Foner and E.D. Genovese, eds., Slavery in the New World (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1969), p. 29.
76
Genovese, "Marxian Interpretations," op. cit., p. 112.

20
capitalism which combined the aristocratic traditions of the former with some of the accumulation tendencies of the
latter.77
But being an outgrowth and a part of that world did not make slavery capitalism. Capitalism, as a specific
mode of production, only appears with the emergence of capital and the production and accumulation of value. It is
true that, unlike the slave economies of antiquity, the production of exchange-values was the primary aim of the
southern economy, even though much slave labor was also used on the plantation for the production of use-values. It
is also true that southern slaves, just as northern and western family farmers, produced a surplus product--over and
above their consumption needs--but they did not produce surplus value in the same sense that wage-labor does. For
value is the product of the more advanced division of labor which characterizes modern industry. Abstract labor, the
phenomenon which is embodied in the notion of value, exists only where workers can pass easily from one kind of
job to another. That situation no more existed in southern agriculture than it did in Ancient Greece. As Marx said:
"to attribute value to commodities, is merely a way of expressing all labor as equal human labor, and consequently
as labor of equal quality." A society founded on slavery has as "its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their
labor powers." Where the labor of men is not equal, there is no equality and hence no way to bring their produce
into relation to each other through the notion of value.78
In the text below the following surplus value refers to the excess of capitalism over and above payments to
capital; surplus product refers to product produced in non-capitalist, e.g., slave, modes of production; surplus is used
as a generic term to refer to either surplus value or surplus product or the two together.
How did the larger capitalist market shape the southern economy? Unfortunately, this is one area where
adequate groundwork seems to be lacking. Because of the specialized, export-oriented character of its production,
the South was forced to import most manufactured goods. The need to realize exchange values in order to import
made the southern economy dependent on the larger capitalist world market. The realization of the exchange value
of the surplus product produced by slaves was a function of conditions in that market, including the growth of
European demand and the competition from other countries. Decreases in the former or increases in the latter
influenced the short-term market price of the South's primary products. The growth of competition with production
from other countries (as well as internal competition) undoubtedly influenced the development of the mode of
production. To this extent, the South was shaped by the world market.
The southern planters were in an unusually strong position both economically and culturally vis-a-vis the
mercantile capitalists who handled their import and export trade. And in this they differed from those slave
economies of the ancient world, say during the Roman empire, which produced for sale to the center but which were
dominated by merchant capital.7916 Within the South there is reason to believe that rather than exerting a dominant
influence on the social habits and economic aspirations of the planters, the merchants and financiers were
themselves drawn into the plantation culture of slavery and aristocratic consumption.80
Yet the booming industrialization of the North and of Europe also influenced the southern economy as
some wealthy planters and merchants tried to adapt slavery to this new type of production. The emergence of the
bizarre phenomenon of slave industrialism has been traced by Robert Starobin, who opens new questions about how
the South might have developed had the slave economy been able to continue expanding and growing.81 Whether
slavery as such could have been adapted to a form of production which involves considerable division of labor and a
resultant need for labor mobility is still an open question. It has been suggested that the use of slaves in industrial
activity was often made possible only by the granting of privileges and incentives that made the slaves more like
free workers and less like slaves – even to the point of letting them choose their own employers. In this view, the
opposition to industry from the planters came in part from the fear that this tendency would undermine the stability
of the slave system as a whole. Serious consideration of just how justified these fears were has hardly begun.
What is of more importance here is that Starobin's evidence on the rise of slave industrialization suggests
not that Marxian theorists like Genovese, who have seen limits to the planters propensity to accumulate and to
internal growth in productivity of the slave mode, are wrong, but rather that this was one way in which the influence
of the larger, industrializing capitalist world was beginning to override these characteristics of the slave mode of
77
*absent in original*
78
Karl Marx, Capital, (International Publishers: New York), Vol. I, pp. 59-60. This was less true in the case of southern industry where the
technology, often taken from capitalist countries, enforced the same factory level division of labor found elsewhere under capitalism.
79
Domination here means that production was subjected to direct or indirect control by merchant capital rather than the latter playing only a
subsidiary role of syphoning off its share of the surplus. In the South this form of domination developed later, in the post-Civil War period.
80
Genovese has shown how even these "capitalist" institutions of the South were bound to the plantations. E. Genovese, The Political Economy
of Slavery (New York: Pantheon, 1965), pp. 19-26, 180-208.
81
Robert S. Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).

21
production. The impact was thus a reshaping of the forces of production and then, perhaps, in consequence, of the
relations of production. Viewing the phenomenon as a step toward transition away from the slave mode is likely to
prove more productive than looking at it as a case of adaptability.

Slavery, Merchant Capital, Capitalism and the Civil War

But if southern slavers were not capitalists, neither were the mercantile "capitalists" who dominated
northern economic and political life throughout the 17th and most of the 18th centuries. If by merchant capital we
mean commercial and financial capital, then by the fact that it operates only within the sphere of circulation it
produces no surplus whatever and thrives only as a parasitic activity by apportioning to itself some part of the
surplus produced in other sectors. Even when it employs wage labor that labor only permits it to realize a portion of
surplus and not its production. Because of this, merchant capital lives in dialectical relation to productive sectors
like the slave plantations. On the one hand, there is conflict over the division of the surplus.82 If during the period of
the rise of industrial capital in the north, the southern planters were politically allied with northern merchants it was
only because the latter controlled the trade routes to England and Europe and thus their cooperation was necessary
to the planters. But nevertheless conflict was continuous and endemic. It was frequently reflected in Southern
charges of exploitation.
For the planters exploitation meant that the northern merchants were exercising their monopoly power to
charge high freight and interest rates. But whatever the rates, and the existence of monopoly pricing is not easy to
establish, the reality of the situation was that merchant capital was apportioning part of the surplus to itself and since
its home and prime investment center was in the North this meant a slowing of surplus accumulation and investment
in the South.83 Added to the planter's propensity to reinvest in more slaves and land and to consume a considerable
part of his surplus, this draining of available surplus out of the South may provide a partial explanation of the
South's failure to industrialize. Even within the context of orthodox economic history there is little doubt that the
accumulation of capital in the North was partly based on the production of surplus product by slaves in the South
and contributed to the early growth of industrial capitalism.84
The rise of industrial capitalism brought it into contradiction with both slavery and merchant capital.
Whether surplus product or surplus value, the financiers and traders could only seek to maximize their share and so
reduce the part of the surplus going to the producers. But, as I have said, the other side of conflict is unity and
during the period leading up to the Civil War the growing ties between some merchants and industrial capitalists led
some of the former to shift political alliances. Among those merchants who did maintain their ties with the South
there was no theoretical reason to explain their behavior. They simply defended their traditional source of profits,
established business connections, etc.
Now one of the key areas of debate among traditional and revisionist historians can be illuminated by the
recognition of these divisions and ties among slavers, capitalists, and merchant-financiers. The debate turns on the
unity of northern capitalists in dealing with the South. The revisionists try to show a lack of unity in order to break
down the Beards' thesis of opposed economic systems. I have no argument about the splits which the revisionists
show. However, in the first place, they overstate the Beards' belief in a two sector (planter/capitalist) opposition.
The Beards argued that "in general" and "on the whole" this was important and then gave examples of exceptions. 85
The revisionists pick up and develop the exceptions into the rule. But the evidence on splits among "capitalists" in
fact shows us the developing contradictions between industrial capital and merchant capital on the one hand and the
splits in the ranks of merchant capital on the other.86
For those merchants and financiers who were still handling and profiting from the southern trade lined up
with the planters against the industrialists, and those merchants who had established ties with northern industry sided

82
On the history of merchant capital and its relations to capitalism see: K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Part IV.
83
To the extent that southern outrage was directed at transportation costs and if we take transportation to be a productive activity, then the
outrage was only reasonable to the degree that monopoly rates were charged.
84
On surplus removal and economic growth see the references in the Introduction plus, William N. Parker, "The Slave Plantation in American
Agriculture," in A. W. Coats and R.M. Robertson, Essays in American Economic History, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969), p. 136. On the
importance of cotton to the North see: Douglas C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860, (New York: W. W.:Norton,
1966), p. 68, etc. The Beards discuss the southern reaction to northern "exploitation." See Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American
Civilization, (New York: MacMillan, 1927), Vol. I, pp. 679-682.
85
For the Beards' discussion of the tariff issue see The Rise, 22. cit. Vol. I., pp. 678-682.
86
For the Revisionist rebuttal, see Stanley Coben, "Northern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Reexamination," The Mississippi Valley
Historical Review, June 1959, or Richard Hofstader, "The Tariff Issue of the Eve of Civil War," American Historical Review, October 1938.

22
with them. The central actors in this drama of social revolution emerge more clearly than before as the capitalist and
slave modes of production. Merchant capital can now be seen and treated for what it was--a major but rapidly fading
force (in relative terms) in both economics and politics.87
The contradictions between the new class of industrial capitalists and the South were fundamental. The
revisionists are right to play down the Beards' emphasis on the tariff although, as noted, they missed the key
implication of the divisions involved. It was divisive but certainly not fundamental. They were also apparently right
to reject the argument that the slave mode of production was already declining before the war, at least when it is
formulated in terms of profitability – an argument sometimes used to say that the war was not necessary. Recent
studies have given us good reason to believe that not only was slavery profitable but that the rate of growth in the
South was not lagging behind that of the rest of the country.
But neither of these over-debated topics is critical, and by applying the label "capitalism" in a Weberian
way they underplay or ignore more important things.88 The self-expansion of value makes capitalism an expanding
system, and ultimately slavery stood in the way of that expansion. At the time of the war the economic dimensions
of this conflict were more potential than actual, but the associated political struggle was well under way in
anticipation. An expanding capitalism needs growing numbers of free laborers and markets for its goods. The South
provided too little of either. Slavery held a vast population in bondage, and the poverty of that population plus its
own production of use values limited it as a market.89 Moreover, the slave mode of production was also
expansionist. Slow to adopt new agricultural technology and quick to destroy the weak southern latosols, the
plantations moved westward in search of new land.90 This led to a conflict over the division of the western
territories. Of course, the immediate champions of free land weren't scheming northern capitalists but free soil
farmers also moving west. This struggle over free versus slave soil broke down the expansionist political alliance
over foreign trade and tariffs that had united export-oriented southern planters and western farmers. 91 It also offset
the immediate market ties between the two sections.
While the growing conflict pushed farmers and planters apart, the expanding transportation network was
making West and East more and more interdependent. Industrialization drew an increasing percentage of the West's
produce and the West loomed ever larger as a market for eastern goods. These developments reinforced the common
ideological outlook which linked West more to the East than to the slave South. This was the reality of slavery's
limitations as a market. Dominated by King Cotton, the South neither industrialized nor consumed. While cotton
boomed, the South thrived, but for all its growth it was becoming more and more an underdeveloped area.
Western farmers came to see the East more in terms of markets than as the domain of exploiters and class
enemies. But as Moore points out, the eastern industrialists were slower to see their own interests. For a long time,
they had opposed the opening of free lands because they feared it would attract workers away from the factories. 92
But it is more likely that the long-term effect of free western lands was to help them, both by giving workers the
hope of eventually obtaining their own land (even if the hope was mainly illusory), 93 and by "spreading the interest
in property."94 But they did need allies, and in the end were willing to give much to obtain them. Promises were
made on both sides: protection and monetary policy to help industry, in exchange for measures to help agriculture.
87
It is true that certain manufacturers often sided with the South, on such issues as the tariff. But my rapid examination suggests that they were
few in number and like the merchants limited to those who had a direct interest in southern markets. The relative size and nature of that market
placed a limit on the possibilities of such alliances. A good summary of the rebuttal to Philipps and Cairnes is given in R.W. Fogel and S. L.
Engerman, "The Economics of Slavery," in R. W. Fogel and S. L. Engerman, eds., The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (New
York: Harper and Row, 1971). To put the importance of the whole debate in perspective see Genovese's "Note on the Place of Economics in the
Political Economy of Slavery," in his Political Economy of Slavery, op. cit.
88
In what follows I focus primarily on "economic" factors involved in the various political alliances. Space forbids the needed exploration of the
interaction among economics, ideology and politics.
89
There was indeed some market for northern goods, and its existence helps explain some of the divisions in the North. But on the limitations of
this market see: Genovese, Ibid., chapters 7 and 8; and Fogel and Engerman, op. cit., p. 337
90
Genovese's "The Origins of Slavery Expansionism," in The Political Economy of Slavery, is a good rebuttal to Ramsdell, Nevins and others
who have tried to prove the existence of various kinds of natural limits to slavery expansionism. Even the new historians, in the end, accept the
importance of the need for expansionism: for example, see A. H. Conrad and J. R. Meyer, "The Economics of Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South,"
in R. W. Fogel and S. L. Engerman, eds., The Reinterpretation, op. cit., p. 360, and Moore, Social Origins," op. cit., pp. 119-120.
91
W.A. Williams, in his The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York: Random House, 1969), argues that although the northern grain
farmers were already committed to the foreign market before the Civil War, the North was still their prime customer and exports were not yet
enough of an overriding concern to offset the struggle over western lands, pp. 10-11.
92
B. Moore, op. cit., pp. 129-130.
93
The Beards evoke this thought with their much-quoted reference to the Homestead Acts: ". . . the national domain was flung by the Republican
Party to the hungry proletariat as a free gift, more significant than bread and circuses …” The Rise, op. cit., p. 131.
94
B. Moore sees the implications as more philosophical, op. cit., p. 131.

23
 89

At the center of much of this bargaining was Justin Morrill, representative from Vermont, and two of the
major bills that emerged bore his name. To aide eastern industry, the farmers' representatives passed such measures
as the Morrill Tariff which raised duties to a new high. In return, congressmen representing industry voted several
pieces of legislation to help agriculture: the Morrill act, giving land grants to the States to finance agricultural
colleges; the Homestead Act, with its 160 acres of free public land; and the Department of Agriculture with power
to finance agronomic and biological research.
Of these measures, the Department of Agriculture and especially the Homestead Act had the widest appeal.
They passed easily in both Houses of Congress. But the movement for agricultural education was keyed more to the
hopes of "prosperous farmers, farm editors, and college educated social reformers sympathetic to the ideals of
agrarian democracy," than to the needs and desires of most farmers. 95 The major support for Morrill's land grant bill
was in the East, not the West. The western reluctance came from multiple suspicions about the bill's impact:

Not only would the measure contribute to speculative accumulation of land and thus reduce the value of the
homestead measure, which was in process of adoption at the same time; it would provide for large grants to
wealthy and populous eastern states while giving inadequate aid to the new states whose taxable resources
were small.96

In its final form the bill was passed over western opposition in both House and Senate.97 It was not long be-
fore western farmers would begin to decide that their suspicions had been well founded and that they had gotten the
short end of the deal. As Shannon writes:

Thus New York, which needed no assistance, got 990,000 acres of the choicest western lands, while
Kansas and some others got 90,000 much poorer acres . . . . the total endowment for all was only a little
over $10,000,000, most of it in a few eastern states.98

Moreover, for the three decades which followed the passing of the Morrill Act, even those colleges which were
created
with land grant money did not serve the farmers' needs. It was not until the agrarian revolt of the 1890s that
admissions and programmes of these schools were turned mainly toward agriculture. But in the 1860s, by the time
the farmers realized what they had done, the strategy of divide and conquer would already have allowed the eastern
industrialists to defeat the South and consolidate their power.
What needs to be stressed again is the essential unity of the underlying conflict between modes of
production and the "political" battles which raged over specific issues. The very expansion of free-soil farmers to
the West was an outgrowth of northern economic expansion. Even though the family farmers were generally not
capitalist themselves, they carried with them the capitalist ideology which rationalized their desire for free land. Just
as a slave mode of production born during the early growth of capitalism reflected the larger system in many ways,
so too did the western farmers. They no more created a new American "peasantry" than the slaveowners did an
American "feudalism." Individual property, individual initiative, and individual freedom – the basic tenets of
capitalist ideology – complemented their family undertakings and founded their notion of agrarian democracy. If at
a given moment or in a given dispute, ideological arguments (say over "freedom") seem to predominate over
"economic" arguments, that is not evidence that "ideas" determine history. It only illustrates that the social conflicts
of history are fought on many interrelated levels.

Reconstruction and the Problem of Transition

Even though the Civil War resolved many of the contradictions between the two antagonistic modes of
production, victory on the battlefield could mean only the destruction of slavery and with it the political power of
the southern aristocracy. What it could not mean was an immediate transformation of the economic and social
structures of the South into capitalist forms compatible with those of the North. The end to slavery was a necessary
first step, but the real transformation would have to be undertaken after the war when control had been secured over
95
Bill Lazonick, "The Integration of Higher Education in Agriculture into the Process of Agricultural Production," 1971, (unpublished mimeo),
p. 14.
96
P. W. Gates, The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860, (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. 380.
97
Lazonick, 22. cit., p. 25-33. The vote in the Senate showed 6 out of 7 Western votes against, 21 out of 25 against in the House.
98
Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897, (New York: Harper, 1945), pp. 274-275.

24
the institutions of government. It was at that time that the future of the South for decades to come would be decided.
The struggle over the kind and degree of transformation underlay the drama of Reconstruction.
The Radical Republicans were the major proponents of far reaching programs to aid capitalist development
and to change permanently the South into an economy and society compatible with northern industrial interests.
That relatively small group of influential congressional leaders, led by men such as iron manufacturer Thaddeus
Stevens and corporation lawyer Roscoe Conkling, were able, for a time, to swing their more moderate colleagues
behind a combination of economic measures (higher tariffs, railroad subsidies, etc.) and political reforms (negro
reforms, disenfranchisement of southern aristocrats, etc.) which promised a permanent restructuring of the South.
With slavery gone and the South presumably open to northern capital and trade, the immediate
preoccupation was with the political structure. The Radical Republicans wanted to use civil rights as a means of
establishing the blacks as a voting block freed of white control. They thought that if they could bring the new black
votes into the Republican party this would not only permanently break the power of the southern aristocracy but
would also undercut any tendency for the pre-war alliance between southern planters and western farmers to
reform.99
Because they also realized that such an upheaval in political structure could only be viable if it was based
on a permanent change in the southern economy the Radicals favored a variety of measures destined to bring about
such a change. On the one hand they favored businessmen, whether from the North or South, who were interested in
adopting capitalist methods and in developing ties with the East. Examples of those benefiting from the policies of
the Radical governments were northern railroads pushing South and southern industrialists, quick to switch from
slave to wage labor. They also undertook measures to help the freedmen economically. They created the Freedmen's
Bureau to help with programs of emergency food, clothing and legal aid and school support. On the other hand, they
sought to move against the old aristocracy with land taxes and land reform.
Land reform was a key element in the radical plans. The power of the planter elite had been based both on
slavery and on land ownership. Abolition had ended the first, but without land reform there was the possibility that
the planters could rebuild their strength on the basis of some other method of securing workers. For the Radicals,
land reform would kill two birds with one stone. It would end forever the possibility of a "planter" renaissance and it
would provide a solid base for the creation of thousands of new "yeoman" farmers, sometimes black, sometimes
white, but always grateful to the Republican Party. The accomplishment of these projects would initiate in the South
a socioeconomic order parallel to, albeit more agrarian than, that of the North. Within such a framework, the
capitalist mode of production would have as much freedom to expand as it had in the North and West. Such was the
plan.
But the alliance the Republicans had been able to knit together was more solid in war than in peace. When
the immediate threat of dissolution of the Union came to an end in 1865, the Radical Republicans had great
difficulty maintaining any support for their southern programs. Slowly but surely they lost ground in their efforts to
build a new society in the South. First, and most importantly, they were unable to get the votes necessary to include
land reform in the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. This meant that the planters would retain one economic basis of
their power and that the blacks would remain economically dependent. The Freedmen's Bureau was able to give
some immediate aid and spent about $5 million on Negro schools, but these schools were segregated, and congress
soon refused any further aid – killing the Bureau in 1869. As disenfranchisement was lifted through ever-extending
amnesty, the failure of Reconstruction was assured. One by one the Reconstruction governments fell. The political
and social gains made by blacks under those early governments were wiped out by law, guns, and lynching. By
1877, the official end of Reconstruction, it was clear that many of the original hopes of transforming the South had
failed.
The abandonment of Reconstruction was part of the major realignment of forces which was occurring at
this time. After the western farmers had achieved what they desired from the alliance – free land and an end to
competition from slavery – they had no interest in further meddling in southern affairs. Not only were they
uninterested in reforming the South, they were beginning to rebel once more against exploitation by the East. The
war had accentuated their dependence on eastern capital and issues of transportation and foreign sales were coming
more and more to preoccupy their thoughts and actions. The first shots were being fired in the Thirty-Years War
with "metropolitan" interests.
Just as importantly, the new northern ruling class itself began to question the goals of its radical
representatives. The early defeat of land reform was a sign of things to come. Northern capitalists could not bring
themselves to support a wholesale attack on property rights, even in the South.100 Confiscation in the South might
99
Stampp, Reconstruction, op. cit., p. 93.
100
Moore, Social Origins, op. cit., pp. 146-7.

25
give ideas to restless northern workers. Later, two other factors turned the capitalists against Reconstruction. First
was the rising tide of violence as the southern ruling class fought to regain control of the state governments. Was
Reconstruction worth the trouble? After all, slavery was gone and many slave industrialists had become capitalist
businessmen and were working alongside the northern capital which had gone South. These were men with whom
northern interests could and often did join forces. They were no threat. Rather it was the continuing violence which
was increasingly seen as obstructing investment and disrupting production. Even if the Democrats took control it
was clear that capital would not be in jeopardy.101 Secondly, in the early 1870s, northern interests grew more and
more concerned as blacks became involved in the farm and labor movements. Black farmers were forming Granges
and black workers were organizing labor unions.102 It seems likely that because of these developments the black
population, once seen as a block of potential Republican voters, came to be viewed instead as a class threat. Better
perhaps to let more "reasonable" men take over. In short, the new ruling class that was emerging in the South
appeared less dangerous than the growing movements among workers and farmers.

Survivals, New Modes of Production, and the Byways of Transition

The abolition of southern slavery, even without the enactment of the whole Radical republican plan, was
enough to ensure that the Post Bellum South would be far different from its old self. But with the failure of
Reconstruction, the postwar transition of the South to capitalism was neither quick nor uniform. The period 1865-
1900 saw considerable evolution in the relative importance of different institutions, but the end of the century found
non-capitalist techniques and relations of production still predominant, at least in the countryside. To understand the
situation facing the Rockefellers and other northern capitalists who focused their attention on the South at the turn of
the century, we need to sketch at least briefly how the South, particularly its agriculture, was transformed after the
ending of slavery and how the trial of that transformation eventually led to the agrarian revolts of the 1880s and
1890s.
Industry was the sphere of production most rapidly transformed into a capitalist mode. With the exception
of those businessmen who used the convict lease system extensively (see below), the change from slave to wage
labor came easily enough. For the employer, often the only difference was that he paid wages directly to the workers
instead of paying the slave owner for their hire. At the same time, however, the limited development of industry and
sometimes the legally enforced limitations on labor mobility (see below) meant that many of the ante-bellum
institutions such as the company town – where all workers lived in company-provided housing and bought from
company owned stores – persisted.
In turn, these institutions, characteristic of an underdeveloped capitalist mode, were reinforced by the neo-
colonial status of all of Southern production.103 Throughout this last part of the 19th Century (and long into the

101
Stampp, Reconstruction, op. cit., p. 164.
102 39
Ibid., p. 204, and J.S. Allen, Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy 1865-1876, (New York: International Publishers, 1937), Chapters VI
and VII.
103
The use of the terms colonial and neocolonial has been very loose in recent Marxian writing and so it may not be out-of-place for me to set
down here what I understand by these terms. Bowing to the meaning of colonial during its classic period – that of capitalist colonialism of the
19th and 20th century, I take the term as designating a situation where (1) the trade and production of an identifiable, usually geographically
isolatable, social formation is organized so as to permit the colonizing power to extract a portion of the surplus and moreover that the nature of
the surplus product is usually geared to the colonizer's needs for raw materials and manpower; and (2) that this economic control is obtained,
not only indirectly through economic mechanisms, but also directly through the control of the political apparatus and mechanisms of
government. Neo-colonialism on the other hand designates the first of these two criteria to a greater or lesser degree but, with respect to the
second, control is exercised for the most part indirectly through collusion with local elites, the training and education of those elites, irregular
political pressure and through a variety of economic mechanisms including foreign aid and debt manipulation, trade practices, and foreign
investment. In so far as the South is concerned, application of these terms suggests that the only period during which the South may
legitimately be called colonial was during Reconstruction occupation i.e., between 1865 and 1877. Thereafter because direct control over
government ended while indirect economic control continued it is better qualified as neocolonial.
It is my feeling that because of the history of these terms they must be defined broadly in this way and not be limited to any narrow
"economic" interpretation. Because the notion of surplus extraction is-key to both, one such narrow approach has been in terms of rates of
exploitation or surplus redistribution. In constructing a critique of the careless use of the term colonialism to describe black ghettos in the United
States, Donald Harris has suggested that "colony" might only become meaningful when (1) there is the existence of a persistently higher rate of
exploitation, of "super-exploitation," in the ghetto and (2) when relative organic compositions of capital (and presumably the actions of the state)
are such that there is a general tendency for surplus value to be redistributed out of the ghetto. Both of these phenomena, and they are
independent to a certain degree, are important and Harris is right to point to them because they are fundamental. Yet while necessary they do not
seem to me to be sufficient to define colonial and neocolonial, most obviously because they do not permit a distinction between the two. As I
suggest in what follows, there is evidence of both super-exploitation and surplus extraction in the South with northern capital the prime
beneficiary throughout the 19th century. These need to be investigated empirically and their extent determined. But the South was first a colony
and then a neo-colony for more reasons than this and the definitions offered above try to grasp both the economic and political dimensions of the

26
20th), southern agriculture and industry were dominated by the production of raw materials for export to the rest of
the country or to foreign markets – cotton, tobacco, turpentine, coal and iron, lumber, etc. – which financed the
importation of food and manufactured goods. The early rise of manufacturing dominated by the labor-intensive
textile and apparel industries did little to change the pattern of "paternalistic" capitalism 104 which characterized both
mill and mining town. After all, these last were only small enclaves of industry in a primarily agricultural economy.
But if the change to capitalist relations of production came rapidly enough for some businessmen, the
weight of the slave/master relationship characteristic of the slave mode of production was still marked in the post-
bellum attempts to work out new production relations in both town and country. Most striking, of course, was the
replacement of a racial slave system by a racial caste system. After the fall of the Reconstruction governments and
in the face of the Populist uprising, this system pitted poor farmers and workers of both colors against each other
and in the end gave members of the black lower caste almost as few civil rights as they had held as slaves. This
caste system was instituted not only in the fields and factories but throughout the social structure and
institutionalized by law.
In agriculture and industry, landlords and businessmen tried to adapt an unchanged technology to wage
labor in such a way as to achieve the old rate of surplus extraction. In the fields this meant an attempt to reinstitute
plantation agriculture based on salaried work gangs laboring under the same old brutal coercion as the previous
slave gangs. But the freedman, long promised 40 acres and a mule by abolitionists and reconstructionists alike, often
refused voluntarily to accept the old methods and broke away from such employers to seek work or land elsewhere.
To maintain control over the labor force a variety of methods was brought into play by the owners of land
and capital. Besides refusing almost totally to sell land to freedmen and seeking foreign migrants to bolster the size
of the laboring and reserve armies, they also drew on the state governments for helpful legislation. Through them
they obtained vagrancy laws very similar to those of the English industrial revolution. Beginning with the Black
codes of 1865-1866, these helped force black workers and white to work under conditions not so different from the
pre-war period.
Planters and other businessmen used the state in another way to obtain labor that could be exploited at
above the market rate. Through the use of convict labor many were able virtually to replicate the conditions of
slavery.
Indeed, given the constant inflow of new laborers under this system, there was not even the old incentive of
providing enough resources to permit the natural reproduction of the work force. In a situation similar to the period
of the slave trade--where there was a low buying price (now the convict lease price) and easy replacement--
treatment was harsh and death rates high.105
This labor system was a continuation of the plantation system in another sense, too. Besides the question of
the degree of control over the laborer there was also the fact that the slave workplace had been both a site of
production and one of penal correction. With the slave system ended, the convict lease system provided the state
with a solution to the problem of dealing with the "crimes" of a large newly-freed population--at a profit. Yet
considering the degree to which convicts were obtained on trumped up charges this aspect of the system has
probably been much overstated.
As the use of wage labor spread in the South during the last years of the century, the role of convict labor
shifted somewhat. Convicts represented a continually falling percentage of workers but they had an importance
beyond their numbers. For their competition, director indirect, at such a low price, helped keep "free" workers in
line.106
But if wage labor--often disciplined by leased convicts--replaced slaves on some plantations and in many
businesses after the war, the system was only one of many in the southern countryside. Alongside the capitalist
plantations employing wage labor were many forms of land tenancy worked out by which the mass of available
labor could be put to work on the available soil. The practices varied greatly both among landlords and in a given
landlord's dealings with his different tenants. They ranged from the rare feudal-like agreements where the tenant

situation. As work on such things as cultural imperialism and the psychology of the colonized has shown there are many other dimensions as well
which need to be taken into account for any fully adequate study. Donald J. Harris, "The Black Ghetto as Colony: A Theoretical Critique and
Alternative Formulation," The Review of Black Political Economy, Vol. II, No. 4, Summer 1972, pp. 10-14.
104
This designates the conditions in company towns (referred to in the previous paragraph) or on capitalist plantations where virtually every
aspect of the worker's life and that of his family was controlled by the company: production, housing, consumption, recreation, health, etc. The
outcome of this control was a closed-in society whose economic ties with the larger economy were largely limited to those exchanges carried on
by the company or plantation management. In the South these characteristics were survivals of ante-bellum plantation practices and part of the
slow process of transition toward the universal exchange relationships characteristic of a fully developed capitalist economy.
105
C. V. Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), pp. 212-215.
106
Ibid., pp. 232-234.

27
would work several days a week on the landlord's acreage in exchange for a few acres which he could use for
garden and commercial production, to the out-and-out renting of land for cash payments. In between these extremes
fell two other forms of contracts: those for share tenancy and share cropping. These two arrangements were similar
in that the landlord was paid a share of the crop. But they differed in the relations of production. In share tenancy the
tenant was a more independent agent, providing all or most of his inputs, except the land, and in general handling
the choice and marketing of the crop. The sharecropper, in contrast, provided only his labor and was forced to use
the inputs provided by the landlord and to be subject to frequent and often close supervision as to choice of crop,
methods of cultivation, and sales.
Although there are few statistical data on the relative growth and decline of these various ways of
organizing production, the usual interpretation which emphasizes the rise and dominance of sharecropping until the
advent after World War II of the mechanical cotton picker seems oversimplified and inadequate. This interpretation
focuses on the "feudal" or "stagnant" aspects of the "plantation" economy and therefore fails to see how southern
agriculture was being slowly penetrated by the capitalist institutions surrounding it. 107
It is true that many of the early attempts to employ wage labor were abandoned for various forms of
tenancy--of which sharecropping predominated. This was due to many factors including the immediate difficulties
of maintaining control over wage laborers and failure to attract adequate numbers of either foreign migrants or poor
white farmers to the plantations under the traditional conditions of labor exploitation. But there is also evidence of a
considerable resurgence of the use of wage labor in the later years of the century. A study of over 5,000 farms in the
cotton belt shows that by 1880 some one-third of all blacks in agriculture were wage laborers. 108 A comparison of
the censuses of 1890 and 1910 shows an increase of about 87 percent in the expenditures for hired labor in southern
agriculture as a whole. While these last figures are not corrected for average wage changes, the censuses of 1900
and 1910 show a 27 percent increase in the absolute number of hired agricultural laborers.10946 Figures like these
suggest that southern agriculture was not as impervious to the penetration of capitalist relations of productions as it
is often made out to be.
Another indicator of shifts toward capitalist institutions in this period is the relative increase in cash as
opposed to share tenancy and sharecropping. A more rapid relative rise in the former at least suggests the expansion
of monetary relations that are one characteristic of the emergence of capitalism. Census results indicate this by a rise
in the percentage of cash tenants from about 12 percent in 1880 to about 17.5 percent in 1900 while share cropping
and share tenancy, although representing a larger percentage of farmers, expanded less rapidly from about 24
percent in 1880 to 29 percent in 1900.110 If the use of wage labor was indeed expanding during this period, as
suggested by the figures given above, then the relative rapid rise in cash tenancy would seem to be more at the
expense of either share cropping, share tenancy, or owner-operators than of hired labor.

Merchant Capital, Money Relations, and Neocolonialism

Just as one might expect a priori that the end of the slave mode of production would be followed by a slow
transition to capitalist relations of production--faster in industry than in agriculture--so too does Marxist theory
suggest that there would also be an expansion of commercial/monetary relationships beyond those of the
labor/employer relationship (be the latter landlord or businessman). There is indeed evidence that this was the case.
Most importantly the ante-bellum commercial relationship between the planter and the factors (those commission
merchants who marketed the planters crop and purchased his supplies) and the noncommercial relationships
between the planter and his slaves (in terms of their acquisition of goods) were replaced by the crop-lien system and
a complementary system of auctioneers, merchants, brokers, and speculators who made up the marketing system.
The crop-lien system, which tied the vast numbers of tenants and croppers to a large, though smaller, number of
supply merchants (the country store of tale and fable) vastly multiplied the number and frequency of commercial
transactions. The new marketing system was at once more fragmented in its dealings with large numbers of owners
(not always the producers--i.e., when the supply merchant sold the crop on which he had a lien) and more complex.
It should be noticed here, however, that the increasing prominence of commercial arrangements did not mean a
107 44
The discussion of sharecropping is usually tied to that of the crop-lien system (discussed below) and the negative impact of both on southern
development is the main point of emphasis. Ibid., pp. 178-1847 Shannon, op. cit. pp. 80-95, etc.
108
Roger L. Ransom and R. Sutch, "The Ex-Slave in the Post-Bellum South: A Study of the Economic Impact of Racism in a Market
Environment," Journal of Economic History, March 1973, pp. 137-8.
109
The data are provided in V.I. Lenin, "Capitalism and Agriculture in the U.S.A.," Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 33-35. This article which
studies the development of capitalism in American agriculture is based almost entirely on U.S. census material.
110
Shannon, op. cit., p. 418.

28
rapid transition to a cash economy. In the place of barter came not cash but credit more than anything else. For the
cash tenant or independent owner, the prevalence of the crop-lien system meant that the best many producers and
some landlords could hope for was the accumulation of dollar credit in their local store accounts. The exception was
the large landowner who frequently took on the role of commercial intermediary. Unfortunately, there has been no
study of the growth of actual cash payments and of the money economy in southern agriculture which would allow
us to trace clearly the direction of these trends.
Most farmers obtained credit from the supply merchants--often at outrageous rates of interest and under
merchant supervision. The obviously parasitic activity of this class-particularly where it merged with the landlord
class--made the farmers' exploitation obvious to them. But as before the Civil Wax it was also through merchants
that the farmers were in turn tied to and exploited by northern capital. During the entire postwar period of the 19th
century, there was some flow of northern capital into the South. It began with carpetbaggers buying up ruined
plantations and continued with some investment in mining, railroads, and finally in oil and manufacturing. But this
direct capitalist investment was limited and the really important northern presence in the South was the supply
system operating through the country store. The local supply merchant was only the lowest level in a commercial
and financial flow of goods and credit which led directly from the warehouses and banks of the North. If the
merchants charged the farmers high rates of interest, they also paid them to their suppliers. As C. Vann Woodward
has written: "The merchant was only a bucket on an endless chain by which the agricultural well of a tributary
region was drained of its flow." Yet even if the merchants were in fact only the sharp penetrating edge of northern
capital and not the ultimate source of exploitation, they were nevertheless perceived as such by the farmers, and
their control was one of the first aims of the agrarian alliances which blossomed in the 1880s.
There is thus some evidence that during the period 1865-1900 the southern economy and agriculture in
particular was undergoing a slow and not always steady growth of capitalist institutions. Sometimes the transition
was more rapid, as in the case of industry using wage labor. Sometimes it was long and painful, as in the evolution
of tenancy arrangements and the spread of the crop-lien system. Some institutions like sharecropping and racial
castes clearly reflected the weight of the almost, but not quite, abandoned slave/master relationship and slowed
down these transformations. Others like northern investment and the crop-lien system were the results of rather
direct impingements on southern development by the larger capitalist economy. But on the whole, in southern
agriculture the evolution was slow and marked by both capitalist and mercantile exploitation at each step of the way.

The Agrarian Revolt Against Neocolonialism

This "development" was taking place while the rest of the country, especially the northeast, was
experiencing much more rapid growth. It was the period of rapid growth and concentration of manufacturing
industry which culminated in the massive merger movement of 1896-1904. In the place of the struggling
entrepreneurs of the prewar period with their relatively small factories and markets, there arose a new kind of
businessman. These were the industrial magnates and financial giants, men like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan.
These were men whose enterprises were rapidly spanning the continent as they reached out over their railroads and
shipping lines to penetrate all corners of the American hinterland. The expansion of these lines of transportation
brought commercial relations to farmers everywhere, including the South, where beyond the freight head stood the
country store. Like his fellows elsewhere, the southern farmer was being tied more directly than ever into the
capitalist system.
The reaction to the relatively slow development of southern agriculture, with all its immediate
consequences of poverty and exploitation, was a rising discontent of farmers with the workings of this expanding
economy dominated by northeastern businessmen. As their terms of trade worsened and income fell, the farmers
grew convinced that they were being exploited to the benefit of others: the supply merchants, the railroads, the
bankers, the manufacturers. The last remnants of the war-time alliance between East and West disintegrated as
western farmers experienced circumstances similar to those of southern farmers. Western optimism about markets
was replaced by the same resentment of domination that was stirring the South. In what was to be the last significant
challenge to the industrial ruling class by farmers as an independent bloc, they rose up in a series of grass roots
movements that led to national political confrontation in the 1890s.
The rise of monopoly capitalism and the agrarian revolt were part of the same process--the one by which
industrial capitalism grew to national dimensions and finally secured its political and economic hegemony over all
major sectors of the country. Although farmers would remain a significant, though minor, force for many years, they
would increasingly experience a cleavage between large scale agribusiness and smaller farmers which would divide
them politically. The capitalist industrialization of the city would bring eventually the capitalist industrialization of

29
the countryside and with it a similar movement of concentration that would drive increasing numbers of
unsuccessful farmers into the cities.
The years 1864-1896 were hard times for most farmers. Although farm population and output were rising,
prices of farm output everywhere were falling due to inadequate demand both in the industrial east and in foreign
markets. In the South this was particularly true in cotton which continued to expand even as prices fell. At the same
time the prices farmers had to pay for transportation, credit, and inputs were rising. The results of these trends were
that gross farm income grew little and income per farm unit decreased. 111 The farmers were faced with a myriad of
problems which made their lot difficult, particularly when viewed in contrast to the rapidly accumulating wealth of
the captains of industry. The terms of trade, particularly in the 1870s, were turning against the farmers.
Transportation rates were high and abuses were multiple, especially in the West and the South. The railroads' land
monopoly, granted by the government, and their control over elevators and local governments, made them particular
targets for farm resentment. Inadequate and expensive credit in the West as well as in the South, patent monopolies,
and land speculation also turned the farmers against the financiers and industrialists who dominated economy and
government alike.
The agrarian movements in their reaction against these problems did make some concrete gains. For
example, in the South, opposition to the supply merchants and the cotton-marketing system favored the creation of a
large number of cooperatives. Yet overall, whatever the justice of the farmers' needs, their attempts to regulate the
railroads, abolish the national banking system, etc. yielded little fruit. Never able to coordinate sufficient opposition
to oust the national capitalist class from power, the Granges, the Alliances, the Greenback advocates, and finally the
Populist party all failed. The many reasons for failure ranged from lack of financial resources and racial divisions
(particularly in the South) to bad politics. Most fundamentally perhaps was the fact that the whole effort was
basically a reform movement of sectoral interest and in many ways an historically reactionary one at that. It was
reactionary in the sense that, while the farmers resented and resisted the decline of "agrarian democracy," they
looked to their past for guidelines for the future. The populists attacked monopoly power but not capitalism. They
sought nationalization of the railroads and banks which exploited them but no overall pattern of socialization. The
leadership was mainly drawn from the ranks of the more prosperous farmers whose needs were not always those of
the rank and file. The mass support for the agrarian movement came from the poorer farmers who were gradually
disappearing as a class, as their farms failed and they left the land. As Shannon puts it:

. . . it was this class of small, white farmers, struggling against submergence, that furnished the main
support of the alliances movement and Populism in the South, as it was the debt-ridden or foreclosed
classes in the West.112

Only shared opposition to northeastern capital and the joint need for new policies brought these farmers together
under the leadership of their more affluent neighbors. It is common to refer to farmers of the West and North, even
before the Civil war, as capitalist farmers. But in reality, many of them were small family farmers, using only family
labor. They were often tenants and frequently were forced to hire themselves out to the larger farmers. For many of
them, sizable market sales were few and far between. Hard times in the countryside were primarily hard times for
these small farmers. The concentration of land and the increase in the use of hired labor that characterized the
growth of capitalism in agriculture allowed a growing number of rich farmers to escape many of the problems that
troubled the majority. Yet it was these farmers and their political representatives who were most prominent in
articulating what was needed to help their industry. It was they who developed and pushed the notions of foreign
trade expansion, re-monetization of silver, and the like.
At the same time many wealthy farmers, and of course the landlords and supply merchants of the South,
joined with the capitalists in opposing the program of the Populists. So, too, for the most part, did organized labor.
As an agrarian reform movement, Populism had little concrete to offer industrial workers, even though it often
supported their causes and fought against the monopolists who were also the class enemies of the working class.
There were exceptions, of course, but unable to create nationally the kinds of bonds that united say the Southern
Alliance and the Knights of Labor in 1889, the Populists became increasingly isolated.

111
Recent attempts to show that things were not deteriorating on the farm are less than satisfactory. Such conclusions as those advanced by Allan
Bogue and Douglass North in recent studies are based on the most tenuous kind of data and lack the kind of subtle analysis characteristic of Fred
Shannon's classic. Anne Mayhew," A Reappraisal of the Causes of Farm Protest in the United States, 1870-1900," Journal of Economic History,
June 1972 points out some but by no means all of the deficiencies of their data and analysis. More convincing work will have to be done before
the present consensus will be set aside.
112
Shannon, op. cit., p. 314.

30
 Although it is now clear that the agrarian movement was doomed to failure, it was not at all obvious to the
Eastern capitalist of the day. From their point of view, things were deteriorating all over. During the depression of
the 1890s, huge industrial strikes exploded frequently and Coxey's army marched on Washington. In the South,
workers lashed out against the use of convict labor in violent uprisings such as that of the coal miners against the
Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company in 1891. Writing to his ex-partner President Grover Cleveland in 1894,
J.P. Morgan's lawyer Francis L. Stetson warned, "We are on the eve of a very dark night unless a return of
commercial prosperity relieves popular discontent."113
Stirred into action by rising discontent, the Republican Congress turned again to old methods to buy off the
farmers. In 1887, the Hatch Act was passed which authorized federal funds for the establishment of agricultural
experiment stations to be associated with the land grant colleges. But in 1890, the year the Populist party was
formed, the Republican dilemma of pacifying farmers and yet supporting industrial protection was still acute. Farm
interest in lower tariffs was keener than ever as exports were coming to play an ever-greater role in the markets for
agricultural output. During the congressional debates one representative stated the link between farm protest and
economic issues succinctly:

The real animus, the real purpose of this legislation is simply this: the agricultural classes are in a state of
unrest, and the great agricultural communities that have given Republican majorities year after year are
asking themselves to what end they have given these majorities. Now . . . if you give the American farmer
the same chance that you give the manufacturing class, if you will remove from him the burden of unjust
tariff taxation that has weighted heavily upon him for a quarter of a century, he will be able to educate his
own sons in his own way without governmental aid.114

But once more when farmers wanted lower tariffs, they got schools instead. The McKinley Act was passed which
increased tariffs and protection for industry. Then a Second Morrill Act was passed which raised appropriations for
the Land Grant Colleges. It even stipulated that some of the funds be used for black schools. But this time there was
no Homestead Act, or anything like it, to pacify the farmers, and they were furious. The Republicans lost control of
Congress as a large number of Populists and Democrats were elected in the 1890 elections.115 But the Populist
victories were limited and short-lived. The elections of 1896 proved to be both the high point and the beginning of
the end of the movement. For upon its heels came an economic upswing that undercut much popular support.
The period 1896-1915 has been termed agriculture's Golden Era--largely perhaps because the improvement
in farm income during that period almost seemed an answer to the prayers of the industrial ruling class. Domestic
markets improved rapidly and although foreign sales declined this was compensated by a rise in export prices. What
were the causes of this boom? and who benefited? Unfortunately for the small farmer the boom came, not from a
sudden expansion in demand, but from a fall in agricultural production. The years of depression had taken their toll.
The growth of agricultural population had come to a standstill as thousands fled the land toward the cities. In good
times as in bad the capitalist farmers progressed while the weaker, family farmers or tenants suffered. As Ross
Robertson so gently puts it to undergraduates when speaking of this Golden Era: "Many people on the land were
still abysmally poor, but the economic position of major producers was much improved.116
In short, those better off segments of the farming communities which had provided leadership to the
movement found less and less to protest as their profits rose. Yet it would be wrong to explain the passing of the
revolt as simply a betrayal of the masses by the leadership. For in general throughout the countryside, where
incomes rose, political action diminished. This had been implicit in the politics of this reform movement. If large
numbers of farmers remained poor and continued to leave the land they were just casualties in the growth of
capitalist competition and concentration in agriculture.

113
Quoted in Charles H. Hession and Hyman Sardy, Ascent to Affluence: A History of American Economic Development, (Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 1969), p. 499.
114
Quoted in Lazonick, op. cit., p. 40.
115
For a discussion of the battle of 1890 and its role in the growth of an expansionist consensus, see Williams, The Roots, op. cit., pp. 31-35.
116
R. Robertson, History of the American Economy. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), p. 265.

31
 III
The Second Reconstruction, or The attempt to transform southern agriculture
and make it safe for "democracy" and profits
Introduction
Where the first chapter swept across the whole span of the 19th Century attempting to provide an overview
of the struggle of American capitalism to achieve dominance over its agrarian rivals, this second chapter is much
more modest. Its time horizon covers only the space of some 15 years from about 1900 to about 1915. It was during
these few years that members of the now unquestionably dominant capitalist class began to develop and work out
ways of extending their mode of production into hostile, underdeveloped, mainly agrarian satellite societies. During
the agrarian revolt they had been opposed by important, organized political forces. The turn of the century found
them masters of their nation yet needful of finding ways to defuse both the continuing (though reduced) agrarian
opposition and the rising antipathy of the industrial working class. This chapter deals primarily with the attempts to
pacify the countryside but mentions the related efforts to deal with labor when necessary.
The area of the most intense and most concerted action was the South. The focus of a giant civil war and
later one of the most tumultuous centers of farm unrest, the South, though not entirely unique in its characteristics,
can usefully be singled out for intensive study. In a very real sense it was the first populous, underdeveloped country
that the new capitalist ruling class had to deal with after its rise to power. The South was underdeveloped in the
sense that Andre G. Frank and others use the term; namely the South's depressed condition was not due to a lack of
contact with the developing capitalist world, i.e., undeveloped (as was much of the West) but rather was due
precisely to its long term and intimate relationship to the center. It was this relationship which had played an
important role in helping to determine the specialized nature of its production, its lack of industry, etc.
For historians these first fifteen years of the century have provided several important themes of study in the
area of social change. For the student of educational history – the rise of the progressive education movement in
general and of a public school system in the South; for the agricultural historian – the birth of agricultural extension;
for black studies – the institutionalization of a new form of racism; and for medical history – the creation of a public
health apparatus in the South. It is the aim of this chapter to try to show how, in terms of the South in particular and
of the hinterland in general, all of these themes are interrelated and can best be understood in terms of a Second
Reconstruction. During this period a model of social intervention began to emerge as capitalist interests, working
primarily but not uniquely through the institution of philanthropy, sought to find ways of influencing and controlling
social development.
For the most part this model was not formally exposited as such, or even understood for what it was – at
least not clearly. No capitalist or administrative assistant ever explicitly formulated his programs in terms of a
transition between modes of production – although there was, in some of the aspects a conscious element of social
control. It was rather a series of experiences and lessons which gave to its backers and executioners a set of ideas
about how to achieve social change. It is often remarkable just how conscious some men were that their ultimate
enemy was not just a backwardness (of pre-capitalist modes of production) which limited the profitability of
commerce and investment but was also the threat to the capitalist system by workers and farmers alike – and the
spreading vision of socialism which reflected and gave direction to this threat. But it is from the perspective of
contemporary hindsight that these ideas can be conceived as a far more coherent whole than even their sponsors
realized. These are the ideas and the methods which, as we will see in the next chapter, were later carried abroad.
There, over a long period of time, they would provide the basis for and finally shape the outline of government
policy.
Although the Populists' defeat in 1896 signaled the beginning of the end of the agrarian revolt and a victory
for capitalism, eastern businessmen were still reeling from their prolonged struggle with agriculture. As the
twentieth century opened, the agrarian movement appeared to them to be far from dead. Some major spokesmen of
the movement, such as Tom Watson, had withdrawn for a time, but others in the Grange and elsewhere carried on
the effort.117 Just how much alive the old spirit was is testified to by the birth of two new and militant farm
organizations: the Farmers' Union in 1902 and the Non-Partisan League in 1915. There was clearly little reason for
business interests to believe that the farmer had been pacified or that his political power was permanently destroyed.

117
Tom Watson turned to seclusion and writing for some eight years after the "debacle of 1896," but his influence persisted and he was back on
the political stage in 1904. C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963).

32
Moreover, the continued rise of industrial unrest gave businessmen a very practical reason to fear the reopening of
the farm front and a desire to find some permanent solution to the farmer problem.
Farmers everywhere had risen up against eastern capital but nowhere was the situation more complex nor
the hostility more evident than in the South. The failure of reconstruction and the limited spread of capitalism in
southern agriculture left both the social and economic structure of the South in disorder and stagnation. Disease,
ignorance, and racial turmoil reduced the usefulness of the work force to capitalist enterprise. Poverty, now as
before, limited the growth of the market for both consumer and farm investment goods. It was in the South that the
Farmers' Union would receive its greatest support during its first decade. Clearly, if something was to be done about
the farmer, this was the place to start.
Against this background, two other factors would combine to focus business interest on the South and to
stimulate a Second Reconstruction. The first of these was the earlier experience of a few northern reformers in trying
to reconstruct the South through the development of education. The second was the dietary proclivities of a small
bug: the cotton boll weevil.

Progressive Education for Peace and Profits

Even before the abandonment of reconstruction left the problem of dealing with the South in private hands,
a small number of northern capitalists had come South with ideas about how to educate southern workers, white and
black, for usefulness in capitalist industry – a goal many felt was necessary to permit the reintegration of the South
into the national economy. The problem of education grew as the advances of the early postwar years were
undermined and weakened by the return to power of much of the old ruling class.
Not surprisingly, an analysis of these men reveals that they belonged to that group of northern business
interests which had had close ties to the South before the war. The first substantial effort was the creation of the
Peabody Fund in 1867 by the Massachusetts merchant banker George Peabody. Peabody had built his early fortune
in Baltimore selling southern cotton to England and importing European luxury goods to the South.118 Based in
London after 1837 he had sadly decided to give his support to the North following secession. 119 At the close of the
war he set aside some two million dollars to try to help with the process of reintegration. On one level, the Peabody
Fund fostered closer ties between the North and the South by bringing together northern businessmen and southern
aristocrats on its board of trustees. On another, its educational programs, directed first by Barnas Sears of
Massachusetts and then by Jabez Curry of Alabama, sought to support and popularize public schooling of both
whites and blacks.120
The second important intervention was the founding the same year of Hampton Normal and Agricultural
Institute for Negro Education by ex-northern general Samuel C. Armstrong with the financial backing of Robert C.
Ogden, Philadelphia partner of the well-known retail merchant John Wannamaker. 121 Besides Hampton itself which
became a model for negro education in the South, Armstrong's and Ogden's greatest success was the education of
Booker T. Washington. Educated and trained by Armstrong at Hampton, Washington later founded his school at
Tuskegee and became a major spokesman for the "Hampton" approach to industrial education for blacks. 122
Finally, the third major contribution from northern business came from John F. Slater, a wealthy textile
manufacturer from Connecticut. In 1883 with the help of Rutherford B. Hayes and such business colleagues as
Morris K. Jesup, he set up the Slater Fund to support southern education.123 Devoted primarily to negro education,
the Fund supported Hampton and Tuskegee as well as many other smaller negro schools in town and country.

118
Franklin Parker, George Peabody: A Biography (Nashville: Vanderbuilt Univ. Press, 1971), Chapter 3. Parker's book is based on exhaustive
use of Peabody's papers and all previous material on him.
119
Ibid., Chapter 15.
120
lbid., Chapter 21. While Parker's biography is the best available on Peabody himself it gives only superficial coverage of the Peabody Fund
which survived its founder by many decades. On the Fund see: J.L.M. Curry, Brief Sketch of George Peabody and a History of the Peabody
Education Fund Through Thirty Years, Cambridge, 1898; Hugh C. Bailey, Liberalism in the New South (Coral Gables: University of Miami
Press, 1969); Robert D. Corner, "The Peabody Education Fund," South Atlantic Quarterly, April 1905; Edgar W. Knight, "The Peabody Fund and
its Early Operation in N. Carolina," South Atlantic Quarterly, April 1915; Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, (Totowa, N. J.:
Littlefield-Adams, 1966); Daniel Gilman, "Thirty Years of the Peabody Fund," Atlantic Monthly, February 1897.
121
See Curti, 22. cit., pp. 283-5; P.W. Wilson, An Unofficial Statesman: Robert C. Ogden, (Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1924).
122
See Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, for the story of his grooming at Hampton and his subsequent work at Tuskegee.
123
Henry L. Swint, "Rutherford B. Hayes, Educator," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, June 1952, gives an account of Hayes part in the
movement and of the founding of the Slater Fund, based on Hayes papers.

33
 Although the men behind these various efforts came to form a fairly intimate circle where they shared and
developed their ideas and programs in a complementary way, their efforts were isolated and sharply limited by the
wealth of the contributors. It was not until the turn of the century that private interests in the North, goaded into
action by their struggle with the farmers' revolt and desirous of stabilizing the South, coalesced around an attempt to
launch what amounted to a Second Reconstruction. It was not until the movement of competition and concentration
had produced a generation of industrial giants with hitherto unheard-of fortunes that broadly effective private
intervention was possible.
The beginning of that coalition was the attraction of a growing number of northern businessmen to the
movement for education in the South. On the heels of founders like Peabody, Ogden, and Slater, came other
representatives of northern business interests: George Foster Peabody, a banker who would become governor of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Albert Shaw, editor of the influential Review of Reviews; William H. Baldwin,
Jr., then vice president of Southern Railway, later president of the Rock Island Line; and Walter Hines Page, son of
an old North Carolina family, who made his fame and fortune as a publisher and editor in New York and Boston. 124
Why education? Why did these men turn to education rather than an attempt to influence the agrarian South
through some other mechanism? The answer lies partly in the fact that the core of a movement already existed. The
men associated with and influenced by the Peabody and Slater Funds had a fairly well-developed approach and
philosophy. But more broadly it was the emergence of the Progressive era of educational reform in the North that
helps explain why this particular orientation was so appealing.
Northern capitalists were already vitally concerned with reorienting the development of the educational
system not only in the South but throughout the country. The rapid growth of international trade brought the demand
for business training in higher education to help provide the commercial and financial professionals necessary to an
expanding foreign business. But more central to business interests was the use of secondary schools to produce a
more skilled and productive work force. Sparked by an exhibit of Russian technical education at the Philadelphia
Centennial Exposition in 1876, capitalist interest in training workers through practical experience spread quickly.
Businessmen with international contacts were also impressed by the rapid growth in German manufacturing which
they felt was aided by the widespread use of industrial education. They listened closely to educators who argued that
correct training could produce not only more disciplined workers but could also raise productivity and stimulate
demand. The 1880s saw the establishment of a number of private manual training schools financed primarily by
businessmen in northern cities. Even J.P. Morgan joined the movement in 1892 when he donated $500,000 to the
New York Trade Schools.125
When these reform-minded businessmen looked south they could only be impressed by the southern
education movement which had focused on industrial training from its inception. The agents of the Peabody and
Slater Funds had backed Hampton and Tuskegee largely because of the manual training philosophy of Armstrong
and Washington. Jabez Curry, who in 1891 became general agent of both the Peabody and the Slater Funds, was an
ardent spokesman for industrial training and proclaimed education a vital prerequisite for the expansion of northern
capital into the South. According to historian Henry Bullock, one of those most interested in this aspect of the
movement was William Baldwin:

He went South as a businessman conscious of the value of Negro labor. He considered this labor necessary
to the efficient operation of his railroad, for he needed thousands of Negro workers – but needed them
trained. He was convinced that the prosperity of the South, as well as his railroad, depended on the
productive ability of the population, and he felt that the source of this ability was and always would be the
negro.126

It is also clear that business was not interested in productivity alone. Industrial training in public schools
also offered the possibility of controlling the reproduction of the labor force in such a way as to produce more docile
and disciplined workers. What the industrialists wanted was clearly stated: a system that would achieve both training
and discipline – a system beyond the control of their class enemies, the unions. In particular, union control of

124
The best study of these men and their southern associates is Hugh C. Bailey, op. cit. Bailey's focus is on the contribution of southerners to the
movement so he underplays the importance of northern businessmen; but even in his account their key importance comes through. Also see: John
Graham Brooks, An American Citizen, the Life of W.H. Baldwin, Jr., 1910, and Burton J. Hendrick, ed., The Life and letters of Walter H. Page
(New York: Doubleday-Page, 1922). George Foster Peabody (1852-1938) appears to have been no relation of George Peabody (1795-1869)
125
The standard history of the Progressive era in education is L.A. Cremin The Transformation of the School (New York: Random House, 1961).
See pp. 23-41 on the spread of manual training and business interest in it.
126
Henry Allen Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 100-1.

34
apprenticeships had to be ended. Writing in 1906 the National Association of Manufacturers was most explicit: "It is
plain to see that trade schools properly protected from the domination and withering blight of organized labor are the
one and only remedy for the present intolerable conditions."127 Education, then, was also seen as a political tool of
the first order. Its control had become essential to the smooth reproduction of the established, industrial labor force.
In the South a similar need was felt: namely that of integrating into the capitalist mode of production workers whose
lives and work habits had developed in very different kinds of methods and relations of production. (This process of
integration of southern workers – or of the extension of the capitalist mode of production in the case of direct
investment – was very much like the integration of foreign immigrants in the North.) Nor were such self-serving
views likely to cause consternation among the ranks of the educators of the time.
With few exceptions, the educational establishment had long since ranged itself on the side of capitalists in
the struggle with farmers and workers. Educational leaders had been outspoken in their opposition to the agrarian
movement. The editorial columns of the educational journals and the annual meetings of the National Education
Association provided ample opportunity for educators to attack each of the various movements, especially the
Populists. But beyond agitation for anti-populist votes, educational leaders saw that the schools could be used to
teach farmers' sons the virtues of capitalism and to direct them away from militancy and socialism. 128
The ideological commitment of the majority of educators was even more marked with respect to the
struggle between workers and capitalists. Here the growth of labor organizations and Marxist philosophy gave them
an even better-defined objective: to oppose unions and use the schools to fight communism. Again, educators took
public stands on specific issues. As they opposed Bryan in 1896 so also did they condemn union strikes. Typical of
their attitude was the National Education Association's support of the use of troops in the famous Pullman strike.
Within the schools they supported such methods as the teaching of economics, and industrial education, as ways of
fighting "imported" socialism.
Nor were the interest in education as a tool for dealing with unrest in agriculture and the interest in its use
to shape industrial relations unrelated. Many key men were concerned with both. Senator Morrill, who had been so
influential in pushing the Land Grant Colleges for agriculture, saw in industrial education an alternative to "the
imported barbarous despotism reigning over our trade unions." In an analysis that predated contemporary concern,
others saw a direct link between the large numbers of unemployed in the cities, labor agitation, and the outmigration
from the countryside. Keeping them down on the farm became a major concern of many capitalists, educators, and
politicians alike.
So conscious were the educators of the benefits of education to the capitalist class that in their frequent
appeals to the wealthy for support they often emphasized the counterinsurgency aspects of their work. Public
schooling, claimed N.E.A. president James H. Smart in 1881, does more "to suppress the latent flame of
communism than all other agencies combined." Whatever the accuracy of their analysis – and modern evidence does
much to put it in doubt – it made clear to businessmen that here was an ally not to be ignored. 129
Business found just such sympathy and support among the men working in southern education. Robert C.
Ogden, for example, saw his educational philosophy as a way to undercut the development of socialist ideas. Curry,
who was very much a spokesman for the movement, proclaimed bitterly against the farmers' Alliances. Workers'
strikes against the railroads deserved only "prompt repression, at any sacrifice." As for the militant poor, he called
for the punishment of the leaders of Coxey's "idiotic, perhaps wicked army." Curry's ardent support of private
property and capitalism could not be doubted. "Socialism, agrarianism, (and) communism," he pronounced, "so far
as they mean participation of property, are absurd and criminal, for all true civilization rests on the security of
property." With fellow businessmen like Ogden in control and southerners like Curry working in the field, this small
group of early reformers certainly offered the beginnings of an attractive program to northern businessmen desirous
of influencing southern development.130
Beginning in 1899, this slowly widening circle of businessmen-reformers came together in a series of
Conferences for Southern Education to found a new, more grandiose movement. Under the auspices of northern
business, many of the southern educators who shared their views came together to discuss the development of new
programs. Among these were Hollis Burke Frissell, president of Hampton, Charles W. Dabney, president of the
University of Tennessee, J. L. M. Curry of the Peabody and Slater Funds, and Wallace Buttrick, chairman of the
Baptist Home Mission Society's Committee on Education and an agent for the Slater Fund.

127
'National Association of Manufacturers; Proceedings, 1897, p. 92, cited in Cremin, op. cit., p. 38.
128
Curti, op. cit., documents the pro-business attitudes and programs during this period. See pp. 212-218 for anti-agrarian attitudes.
129
Ibid., pp. 218-232, for anti-labor attitudes.
130
Ibid., pp. 283, 274-5.

35
 From the beginning, these men saw education as necessary to the disciplining of a southern labor force
whose creation would expand investment opportunities in the South. In the very first issue of their pamphlet series,
Southern Education Notes, they approvingly quoted from the Manufacturer's Record on this very theme:

Every element for success exist in the South – in raw material, in climate, in the forces of Nature, and
above all, in an abundant supply of labor, which when properly trained and disciplined will be the main
reliance of the South in the future for its prosperity. It only remains for the South to do its duty to its black
population by way of training and educating in the simple manual trades. 131

During the first three annual sessions of the Conference and in the meetings of its executive committee, the
Southern Education Board, businessmen, and educators hammered out together an organization and plan for a series
of campaigns for the expansion of public schooling in the South. Dinners, receptions, sessions at (George Foster)
Peabody's summer house, annual trips throughout the South on an Ogden chartered train, and the journalism of Page
and Shaw were their propaganda tools for changing the South.132
How successful they would have been with this type of effort alone is problematical because almost as soon
as they began they and their activities were absorbed and transformed by the involvement of the greatest northern
capitalist of them all: John D. Rockefeller.

Rockefeller Takes Over and Broadens the Movement

Rockefeller had been increasingly interested in both the South and in education for some time. To
adequately lay out all of the factors which encouraged this particular capitalist to decide to become the major
sponsor of southern reform would require a biographical essay of some length. But there were a few obvious
elements which can be stated briefly.
To begin with, muckrakers and the leaders of the recent agrarian unrest had often attacked Rockefeller both
for his own business activities and as a representative of his class. These attacks questioned the legitimacy of both
industrial monopoly in general and the lawfulness of Rockefeller's operations in particular. The establishment of
large philanthropies can be seen as a demonstration of how concentrated private wealth could be socially
responsible. Although the importance of the propaganda and legitimizing function of his philanthropies has often
been overstated, it should probably be recognized as at least one factor in his decision to expand his charities.
A second, more cynical view of Rockefeller's motives can see the organizations he set up as simple shelters
for some of his wealth. This view emphasizes the legal attacks on Rockefeller's empire as well as the general rise of
antitrust legislation which might have come to threaten his fortune. While this, like the legitimizing function, may
have had some influence in his decision, it fails to explain why he focused on the rural South rather than some other
area.
Part of the reasons for the focus on the South have already been suggested – namely the virulence of the
agrarian unrest and the desire to stabilize the area so that it would be more open to capitalist trade and investment.
Now Rockefeller had both direct and indirect interests in southern markets and investment possibilities.
Rockefeller's vast business holdings included such agribusiness companies as International Harvester – a major
manufacturer of agricultural implements.133 But he also had investments in a wide variety of related businesses
including banks and railroads. These two businesses had been prime targets for agrarian discontent exactly because
they were important in the financing and marketing of farm production. But more importantly, the nature and extent
of Rockefeller's investments gave him an interest in the development of the South in general – finance and industry
as well as agriculture. There is no need to look for immediate connections between Rockefeller philanthropic
spending and Rockefeller business profits (such as teaching farmers to use machinery and International Harvester
sales), when the general profitability of his broad investments in primary products (oil, iron, etc.) finance (banks)
and transportation (railroads) were dependent upon general social stability and free investment. Under these

131
Abram S. Hewitt in Manufacturers' Record, reprinted in Southern Education Notes, Series 1, No. 1, March 10, 1902, General Education
Board Papers, Sl, Box 720 (Rockefeller Foundation Archives).
132
The story of the founding of the Southern Education Board is told in H.C. Bailey, 22. cit., Chapter V and in Bullock, 22. cit., Chapter IV.
133
Rockefeller's ties to International Harvester went beyond financial interests. His daughter Edith married Harold Fowler McCormick the
younger son of the Harvester founder. Harold would later become president of the family business and one of the original three trustees of the
Rockefeller Foundation. Allan Nevins, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist, (New York: Scribner's, 1953), Vol.
II, pp. 296-297, 388.

36
circumstances Rockefeller would automatically gain from any contribution which his philanthropies made to
stability or growth.
It was the size and scope of his investments which led to his actions, and those of his organizations, taking
on a class nature which was broader than a personal one. With such a dependency on the general state of economic
development, this class of monopoly capitalists was moving away from a laissez-faire view of the state, which
limited the latter's role, toward the use of the state to regulate competition and the economy in general. The
developing class perspective of the foundations was one aspect of this wider trend of monopoly capital toward social
control.
Finally, there were the men whose views on business and philanthropy influenced and shaped Rockefeller's
own thinking: especially John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Reverend Frederick T. Gates. Gates, whose private papers
are now more available than those of the Rockefellers, was more than just an almoner. As a result of his key role in
expanding Rockefeller business interests, as well as his charities, he was a close advisor and personal friend. It was
Gates who is usually credited with having visualized and sold Rockefeller on the potentialities of "wholesale" phi-
lanthropy as a social activity complementary to the latter's business interests. 134 Gates' papers reveal him to have
been widely read and well aware of the currents of the threatening social movements surrounding him. For himself,
and at times for Rockefeller, he would write long memoranda discussing subjects ranging from class struggle and
the virtues of monopoly to scientific medicine or the profitability of philanthropy. 135 Everything suggests that the
clarity of his visions and his closeness to Rockefeller made him an important factor in the latter's decision to invest
in philanthropy.
Through Gates, Rockefeller's interests and investments in education had been directed primarily toward the
financing of a new generation of universities and colleges for the training of the middle and upper levels of the
growing bourgeoisie. But he had also followed the southern work of Ogden and others in technical education for
blacks. According to one of Rockefeller's biographers, Allan Nevins, "For some time just before the beginning of
the Century Rockefeller had talked with his son and Gates about establishing a generous trust fund to stimulate
Negro education."136
So in 1901 John Jr. journeyed south on Ogden's annual train, visiting Hampton and Tuskegee and attending
the Conference on Southern Education. He came back convinced and convincing. Within months, Rockefeller Sr.
moved into action. Just as he moved toward monopoly in business so now he moved to take over the budding
reconstruction movement. His tool was the General Education Board which he created in 1902. During its first
decade Rockefeller allocated over $50 million and before he died it would receive over $150 million.
The quantitative jump from the size of the endowment of the early efforts to that of the turn-of-the-century
philanthropies meant a shift in essence. The Peabody endowment was $2 million. The Slater endowment was $1
million. Those were insignificant alongside Rockefeller's $150 million. The change meant that, rather than making a
limited and marginal contribution to educational change as his predecessors had done, Rockefeller was able to
finance a vast experiment in social engineering where not one or two projects could be undertaken but rather a
multiplicity of interventions on all levels and across all geographical boundaries. This capacity to intervene in the
social sphere was, of course, a reflection of his (and others like him, e.g. Carnegie and Ford) tremendous power in
the economic life of the country. That power in turn was a new historical phenomenon, born in and constitutive of
the rise of monopoly capitalism in the United States.
While the source of the power lay in the concentration of wealth, the influence of its exercise was as much
due to the way it was organized as to its size. For the new breed of capitalists like Rockefeller, "rationality" lay in
the highly centralized control characteristic of monopoly (including "regulated" monopoly) and in the elimination of
ruinous competition. The application of such control is at the core of modern philanthropy. Almsgiving, bread and
circuses, the salon, charity, poorhouses – the ruling classes of different historical social formations have developed
means of using the private surplus at their disposal to deal with social conflicts and to underwrite their own class's
cultural hegemony. The new foundations (G.E.B., Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, etc.) reached out on a national and
international scale to bring order and class purpose to the myriad of competing religious and secular charities which
had preceded them. The South was one of the first areas where this new order would be systematically put to work.
Onto the board of the G.E.B., Gates and John Jr. drew their predecessors: Ogden, Peabody, Baldwin,
Buttrick. Later they would be joined by Page well as by other northern businessmen like Morris K. Jesup, Andrew
134
Some years later Gates wrote in his still unpublished memoirs: ". . . I gradually developed and introduced into all his charities the principle of
scientific giving, and he found himself in no time laying aside retail giving almost entirely and entering safely and pleasurably into the field of
wholesale philanthropy." Autobiography of Frederick T. Gates, 1928, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, p. 342.
135
See next chapter, pp. 180-185 for some details of Gates philosophy.
136
Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller, a one-volume abridgement by William Greenleaf of Allan Nevins, 22. cit., p. 290.

37
Carnegie, and Anson Phelps Stokes.137 In one stroke Rockefeller brought together under his sponsorship all of the
major businessmen and reformers concerned with southern education. Together with the character of its programs,
this widespread business representation made the work of the General Education Board more than just a Rockefeller
enterprise. Its activities expressed the interests and hopes of an important segment of the capitalist ruling class.
By the time Rockefeller created the General Education Board his predecessors had developed a fairly
comprehensive perspective on the overall problem: the pacification and integration of the "underdeveloped" South
into the national economy – that is, into the capitalist mode of production and into the larger capitalist social
formation. They had a firm grasp of how education could be used to fight anti-capitalism and achieve a more
productive and disciplined work force. They also understood the necessity of developing a southern task force
through which they could work to modify public opinion and gain support of state governments. But their limited
resources forced them to concentrate their efforts on only a few educational institutions and sharply circumscribed
their effectiveness in achieving their goals. All of these ideas and efforts were given new life by the creation of the
G.E.B.
Rockefeller's involvement transformed the movement in two important ways. Financially, his board
towered over southern public education. One need only compare the potential embodied in Rockefeller's early
endowment of $50 million with the expenditure of the state governments in the South to see this. In 1903, for
example, the Alabama school fund was only $1.2 million. Mississippi's total net disbursements were only $1.9
million and in Tennessee expenditures were only a little above $2.6 million in the same year. With its larger
resources, even the G.E.B.'s average yearly expenditures (over $1.5 million between 1902 and 1914) would rival
that of the states – especially since they went almost entirely to support change and not to maintain old structures. 138
Secondly, Rockefeller's men substituted an even more comprehensive notion of social engineering than that of his
forerunners.
While maintaining an interest in training an industrial work force, Gates and his colleagues extended the
program of restructuring the educational system to include support for modernizing colleges and universities to train
a more up-to-date southern elite – one more in tune with the needs of industrial capitalism. For the secondary level
the G.E.B. financed teacher training and funded a specialist in secondary education in universities throughout the
South. Where in the earlier period men like Curry and Washington had carried on their promotion of education
almost alone, the G.E.B. created in these specialists a front-line army of permanent propagandists to push high
school development. But this effort was in turn overshadowed by investment in colleges and universities which,
even in the beginning, received almost two-thirds of the total expenditures. 139 The men of the G.E.B. saw secondary
and higher education together as the key to the problem of creating a new, white southern elite. Decades later the
vision was still clear:

Between the urban elementary schools – such as they were – and the colleges and universities was a chasm
unbridged by any public institution, for outside of a few cities there were no high schools, and students who
qualified for college work were prepared in private academies, rooted in the aristocratic traditions of the
Old South, and constituting in themselves a roadblock to the establishment of public schools on the
secondary level.140

The influence of "the Old South" institutions had to be broken so that a new generation of leaders could be trained
who would help eventually to develop technical schools for the mass of black workers. As Buttrick wrote to Gates in
1904:

The chief hope of better public-school facilities for the Negroes of S. Carolina is in an awakened sense of
civic responsibility among the whites. The process will be a long one, but it must have its beginning in the
schools for higher learning. The problem is of raising up a group of publicists who will transform public
sentiment.141

137
There have been several official accounts of the General Education Board: The General Education Board: An Account of its Activities, 1902-
1914, New York 1915; Robert D. Calkins, "Historical Review, 1902-47," Annual Report, 1947-48; Raymond B. Fosdick, Adventure in Giving:
The Story of the General Education Board, New York 1962; and General Education Board: Review and Final Report: 1902-1964, 1964 which is
largely taken from Fosdick's history.
138
Unfortunately, published G.E.B. reports do not give a detailed enough breakdown of expenditures to make adequate direct comparisons here.
139
The General Education Board: An Account, 22. cit., pp. 17-20.
140
General Education Board: Review and Final Report, 22. cit., p. 2.

38
Nor were the men of the G.E.B. interested only in secular education. They saw the southern churches and their
schools as another avenue for preparing a black labor force for agriculture and industry:

Denominational schools still have a mission and for many years will continue to have. But they should
have well trained – modern trained – educators as principals, they should be 'Hamptonized' as far as is
practicable, they should largely eliminate Latin, Greek, etc. to say nothing of piano music and the like, they
should teach agriculture and related industries with constant and growing appreciation of the educational
values in such courses, . . . --such training of the negro for the life that now is shall make him a producer –
a servant – of his day and generation in the highest sense.142

But their hopes for the university went beyond the promulgation of educational leaders. They had in mind
the creation of a new elite which would play many roles in the restructuring of the South – an elite, many of whom
would not only be university trained but university based:

In the State of Wisconsin, now the best governed of all our states, the University writes every law that goes
on the statute books. University professors guide and control every department of state administration and
inquiry; nor is there a limit to the financial resources which a grateful people are placing at the disposal of
learning, thus consecrated to the service of the commonwealth. Our more ancient seats of learning pride
themselves justly on their antiquity . . . But it is yet theirs to reign over empires now undreamed; . . . to
write the laws of obedient states; . . .143

There can be little doubt about the value Gates and his fellow capitalists could see in having such a useful
intelligensia financed and groomed within the structures which their money could erect and fashion.

Public Health for Education and Productivity

The Rockefeller men also moved beyond education per se. Through the Board which financed medical
schools and then the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission which focused on rural problems, they sought to raise the
health and thus the productivity of the whole southern population.
At the turn of the century public health organizations were virtually non-existent in the South and work
time lost due to illness was a major factor limiting the productivity of the workforce both in the fields and mill
towns.144 In terms of agriculture, the most important part of the health work was the anti-hookworm campaign. An
anemia-producing, debilitating disease, hookworm was widespread throughout the South, especially in rural areas.
Education could hardly be expected to produce a more useful workforce in the South when many people were too
weak to learn, let alone work.
While serving on Roosevelt's Country Life Commission (see below), W. H. Page joined one of its
committees traveling through the South to study rural conditions. On that trip he met Dr. Charles W. Stiles, a
sanitarian of the U.S. Public Health Service, serving as scientific advisor to the Commission. Stiles, influenced by
work done to control hookworm among agricultural laborers in Puerto Rico, was convinced that much of the
lethargy and low productivity of southern workers could be explained by the same disease. Moreover, the work in
Puerto Rico had shown that it could be easily and cheaply cured. Page was soon convinced, and he and Stiles
persuaded Buttrick and Gates. By 190a Rockefeller had allocated $1 million and the Rockefeller Sanitary
commission was established. Dr. Wyckliffe Rose was chosen as a program director and he immediately visited
Puerto Rico where he talked with plantation owners, workers, and the public health men who had developed the
program.145
141
Buttrick to Gates, March 12, 1904, F.T. Gates papers, Gl, Box 717, Rockefeller Foundation Archives. The G.E.B. not only put far more
money into white schools than black, but the investment in the latter was restricted mainly to elementary education and vocational schools. Even
when the Board did finally turn to secondary education for blacks, it was geared once again to industrial education. G.E.B.: Review, 22. cit., pp.
21-25.
142
Buttrick to Gates, Oct. 14, 1904, Gates Papers, Gl, Box 717, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
143
F.T. Gates, "The Colleges and Rural Life," Confidential to the Members of the Board, presented to the meeting of the G.E.B. May 24, 1912.
Later reprinted as The Country Schools of Tomorrow," Occasional Paper No. 1, General Education Board, 1917.
144
M. Boccaccio, "Ground Itch and Dew Poison, The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 1909-14," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied
Sciences, January 1972, p. 40.
145
(Col.) Bailey K. Ashford, A Soldier in Science, 1934, pp. 93-99.

39
 The anti-hookworm campaign was linked to the educational programs because much of its propaganda
activity was aimed at the schools. The campaign was also carried on in close cooperation with local government. Its
educational efforts were often coordinated through the state departments of education. 146 Moreover, the goal was for
private initiative and finance to lead to governmental funding and takeover of the whole program. "The state," wrote
Dr. Rose, "must be sufficiently interested to risk something, to follow the plan critically, to take over the cost of the
work gradually but steadily, and within a reasonable period to assume the entire burden of direction and expense." 147
As with education this represented not only a private determination of the form and direction of new programs but
also a socialization of the private costs of production and a strengthening of the interventionist role of government
on the side of private interest.
Another important aspect of the Commission's health work was its direct appeal for the cooperation of farm
organizations – the very institutions through which much agrarian unrest was channeled. The active participation by
some farm unions in a Rockefeller enterprise must have been seen by the industrial sponsors of the campaign as a
small but significant step in breaking down farm antipathy toward big capital.
Interrelated to the education and health programs, and more central to my concerns here, was the G.E.B.'s
work in agriculture. Working first through its own programs and then alongside other groups of interested
capitalists, the General Education Board sought and partially achieved a change in the course of agricultural
development in the South.

The Effort to Transform Southern Agriculture

Almost 40 years after the end of the Civil War, agriculture was still the basis of the southern economy and
it had produced some of the most vociferous leaders of the agrarian revolt. Although, as I tried to show in the last
chapter, capitalist institutions were making some inroads into the structure of southern agriculture, pre-capitalist
modes of production like sharecropping were still very widespread. Other pre-capitalist survivals, like quasi-slave,
forced labor were still in scattered use in agricultural as well as in some industrial production. Mercantile capital in
the form of the country supply merchant and his suppliers still dominated much of southern agriculture, especially
the small farmers who made up the bulk of the agricultural producers. Farmer education was virtually nonexistent on
a local level and was confined for the most part to the few land grant colleges. As we have just seen, disease and
resultant low productivity were rampant. Before 1902 very little had been done by the reformers to deal directly with
this, the major sector of popular unrest. But the men of the G.E.B. soon saw that general support for public
education was not enough and that something more direct had to be done.
The first problem the Board faced was to decide where to intervene – in the schools or on the farms. Due to
a lack of teachers and public support, and probably to a desire for immediate results, the Board backed away from
trying to reshape public schools and decided to educate the farmer directly. 148 To find the best way of doing this
Gates asked the Board's secretary, Wallace Buttrick, to make an extended tour of agricultural colleges in the U.S.
and Canada. While visiting Texas A&M, Buttrick met Dr. Seaman A. Knapp who was helping the Federal Bureau of
Plant Industry fight a blight of cotton boll weevil by demonstrating new methods to local farmers.
Knapp, an influential ex-college president and successful businessman, had developed his demonstration
techniques while selling farm land in Louisiana in 1903.149 His basic approach was to try to work with the most
progressive and usually the wealthiest formers in a region. He felt that once they demonstrated the success of a new
method their less prosperous and more conservative neighbors would be more willing to follow suit. Working for
the U.S.D.A. in Terrell, Texas, Knapp undertook to convince skeptical farmers to adopt new ways of fighting the
boll weevil. To this end Knapp, in cooperation with leading local businessmen, began by using persuasion. From
local merchants and bankers, he obtained an agreement of financial guarantees for any farmer who would adopt the
new methods in his own fields. This approach proved successful in Terrel and in some parts of Texas cotton country.
But apparently Knapp was not a man to take no for an answer, and some of his sales techniques were more coercive
than persuasive:
146
M. Boccaccio, 22. cit., pp. 39, 45.
147
Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1923, p. 88.
148
The G.E.B.: An Account, 22. cit., p. 22.
149
While working at Iowa State Agricultural College, first as professor and then as president, Knapp played a major role lobbying for the Hatch
Act of 1887. He left Iowa for private business adventures in Louisiana where as land realtor banker, and editor, he became a "the motivating force
behind the Louisiana rice industry." H. Bailey, 22. cit., p. 143. J.C. Bailey, Seaman A. Knapp: Schoolmaster of American Agriculture, (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1945), gives by far the most complete account of Knapp's life. Roy V. Scott, The Reluctant Farmer, (Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1971) gives the single best description of his development of the demonstration method.

40
 A highly effective means of convincing his flock, Knapp found, was refusal by the town merchants and
bankers to grant credit except on condition of cooperation with Knapp or his agents. Accordingly, he took
care to see that these strategically placed citizens were members of his committees. 150

Buttrick was fascinated by Knapp's work and quickly brought him to Washington to meet with other Board
members. Impressed by his business-like approach and with his success in spreading new techniques, the Board was
won over.
Beginning in 1906 and working through the U.S.D.A., the G.E.B. financed the extension of Knapp's
program throughout the South.151 His demonstrations soon broadened into a full-scale rural reconstruction program.
His approach had never been narrowly technical and carried not only the clout but also the spirit of capitalism: "Dr.
Knapp endeavored to teach his hearers not only how to raise cotton and corn, but how to conduct farming as a
business – how to ascertain the cost of a crop, how to find out whether they were making or losing money. 152 Nor
was this a minor part of his goals: "Agriculture, he was accustomed to declaring, 'may be divided into eight parts:
one eighth is science; three eights is art; and four eights, business management.'" 153 For Knapp demonstration was
not just an educational tool, it was a means for changing a whole social order.
The extension of this effort beyond the farmers themselves came as he adopted the idea of Boys and Girls
Clubs. With Boys Corn Clubs, Knapp pushed the education of future farmers by teaching them through practical
experience – an agricultural application of the industrial arts idea. With Girls Clubs, Knapp reached into the
household teaching home economics and consumerism. This aspect of his rural effort was an important one in
Knapp's overall vision of social engineering. He wrote:

The home eventually controls the viewpoint of man; and you may do all that you are a mind to do in the
schools, but unless you reach in and get hold of that home and change its conditions you are nullifying the
uplift of the school. We are reaching for the home."154

In these programs as in the demonstration work, the G.E.B. bore the bulk of the expense. 155

Demonstration work, schools, boys and girls clubs, all had to be united in a coherent total effort to change
the South. By 1911 Buttrick could write to Peabody that things were progressing smoothly:

Dr. Rose tells me that he has had long interviews with Mr. Bradford Knapp [Seaman's son] and has arranged
with him so that demonstration work is becoming more and more closely related to the public schools,
particularly through the boys corn clubs and the girls canning clubs. Again and again Rose said to me all of our
forces are rapidly being correlated."156

By 1912, the G.E.B. program and approach were sufficiently coordinated and their possibilities so
apparently vast that Gates, the always keen visionary of philanthropy, was waxing lyrical behind the closed doors of
the G.E.B. Board of Directors: "In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with
perfect docility into our molding hand. . . . we work our own good will on a grateful and responsive rural folk."157
One dream which did not work as planned was a G.E.B.-financed attack on the southern supply
merchant/credit system. In his farm demonstration work, Knapp sought to undermine the crop-lien system. "He
150
Grant McConnell, The Decline of Agrarian Democracy (New York: Atheneum, 1969), pp. 29-30. McConnell's source is J.C. Bailey, 22. cit.,
p. 178. Also see Scott, 22. cit., p. 220.
151
By the end of 1913 the demonstration program had spread throughout the South. The G.E.B. was financing programs in Maryland, Virginia,
West Virginia, North Carolina, S. Carolina, Northern Georgia. The USDA funding programs in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas,
Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Southern Georgia. The G.E.B.: An Account, 22. cit., p. 35.
152
Ibid., p. 29.
153
Ibid., p. 30.
154
Cited in Grace E. Frysinger, "Home Demonstration Work, 1922," USDA, Department Circular 314, June 1924.
155
The G.E.B.'s programs of Boys and Girls Clubs did not originate with Knapp but under his direction and with G.E.B. money they expanded
greatly. In 1908 when Knapp began work in this area, enrollment in boys clubs was 10,343. Within a year it had jumped to 45,000 and by 1913 it
reached about 90,000. On the origins of the club idea see L.A. Cremin, 22. cit., pp.79, 81.
156
Buttrick to G.F. Peabody, Nov. 23, 1911, G.E.B. pers, P1 Box 719, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
157
F.T. Gates, "The Colleges and Rural Life," Confidential, 22. cit., p. 6.

41
never failed to expose the economic fallacy of the factoring system and urged that the farmer should raise what he
needed for his family and his stock, rather than buy at the village store, in exchange for his one crop." 158 Later the
G.E.B.in cooperation with the USDA established a Rural Organization Service in an "attempt to improve rural
marketing methods and farm credit in the Southern states." Apparently due to a bad selection of personnel (and
probably considerable resistance in the South from country supply merchants) the scheme failed and was abandoned
within a couple of years.159 At first glance it may appear paradoxical that the G.E.B. should undertake a project
which put it squarely against the system by which northern capital and commerce had controlled and sapped much
of southern agriculture.160 But this paradox is probably more apparent than real. For parallel to the Knapp effort was
that of input manufacturers and banks (see below) to open up and develop the southern market. Then as now the
crop-lien system and the supply merchant were often credited with being an important cause of southern
backwardness because it was felt that they pushed specialization and over-production of cotton. That, together with
the debt-peonage that characterized the system, prevented crop diversification on the one hand and hindered the
development of banks on the other. There is very little information so far on this conflict, but it may well be a case
of the G.E.B., intentionally or not, cooperating with capitalist input suppliers and associated banks against a petty
mercantile capital which they felt was hindering the expansion of the farms and thus of the market.
While Knapp was the major instrument for direct intervention in the southern countryside, one of the
Board's other, most active, members was busy pushing reconstruction in Washington. In 1908, concerned about
rural unrest and favorably impressed by Knapp's demonstration work, Theodore Roosevelt created a National
Commission on Country Life and charged it with the development of new policies for dealing with agriculture. To
that Commission, headed by Liberty Hyde Bailey, he appointed Walter H. Page of the General Education Board.
By that time Page had become a close friend of Knapp and an ardent supporter of this aspect of the G.E.B.
program. He brought his enthusiasm to the Commission. According to historian Hugh Bailey, Page "used" the
commission: "as a means of spreading Knapp's concepts and aided in framing the commission's sweeping
recommendations which sought to reorganize the entire basis of rural life."161 Although Bailey may overplay the
importance of Page's contribution, it is true enough that extension was the key proposal in the Commission's final
report: "To accomplish these ends, we suggest the establishment of a nationwide extension work . . . It is to the
extension department of these [land grant] colleges, that we must now look for the most effective rousing of the
people on the land.162

The Parallel Role of Business

These various activities of the General Education Board were in harmony with the interests of other
representatives of big business. Baldwin, Jesup, and Rockefeller were not the only men with interests in railroads
who were interested in reconstructing the South. During the 1890s many different railroads had begun to push
agricultural development through a variety of educational methods.163 The railroads had been one force prompting
the U.S.D.A. to undertake work in Texas and the South. It was E. H. R. Green of the Texas Midland Railroad who
brought Knapp together with the businessmen of Terrell to launch his boll weevil campaign. Once the effectiveness
of the demonstration methods became apparent, the railroads provided important help to Knapp by lending him their
agricultural agents, spreading his literature and providing free transportation for his agents. With agricultural
produce accounting for much of their cargo and being one of the major groups attacked by agrarian spokesmen, their
motives could not be in doubt. As historian Roy Scott reports:

158
G.E.B.: An Account, 22. cit., p. 30.
159
Some parts of the G.E.B. plan were continued within the USDA and are credited with being the roots of the Office of Markets and Rural
Organization and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. R. Fosdick, Adventure, 22. cit., p. 58.
160
See last chapter.
161
H. Bailey, 22. cit., p. 144.
162
Report of the Country Life Commission, Senate Document No. 705, 60th Congress, 2nd Session, 1909, p. 56. In fact Page recommended to
Bailey that the final Report not call for government appropriations for extension work and almost refused to sign. Page to Bailey, Jan. 14, 1909,
Bailey to Page Jan. 23, 1909, Page to Bailey Jan. 25, 1909, Bailey to Page Jan. 25, 1909. Liberty Hyde Bailey Papers, Cornell University
Archives, 21/3/541 Box No. 3, Page folder.
163
Roy V. Scott has chronicled these methods in "American Railroads and Agricultural Extension, 1900-1914; A study in Railway
Developmental Techniques," Business History Review, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, 1965 and in Chapter VI of his book, 22. cit.

42
 their spokesmen disclaimed any philanthropic motives and stated quite frankly that they were engaged in
agricultural extension because better farming methods "means more business, hence more money for us."
Nor did they deny their interest in the obvious public relations aspects of the work. 164

Many other sectors of the business community chimed in to support agricultural demonstration work in the
South and then elsewhere as the movement grew to national proportions. We have already seen how at the local
level merchants and bankers cooperated with Knapp in persuading and coercing individual farmers to adopt new
methods. One powerful national figure, Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck Company – a mail order house with a
long-standing interest in the rural market – offered $1000 to each of the first 100 counties to employ county agents.
Bankers were also active at the national level. In 1909 the American Bankers Association, seeing a chance to
improve both business and its image, officially declared its support. By 1913 it had formed an Agricultural
Commission which published the Banker-Farmer, a monthly that supported most aspects of the reconstruction
movement.
Second only to the railroads was the support of the agricultural input industry. Individual firms such as
John Deere and International Harvester (in which John Rockefeller held an important interest) saw in Knapp's work
a new approach to sales development. For not only did Knapp push business methods and new varieties of seeds and
cultivation techniques, he also taught the increased use of mechanical equipment and chemical agents. Soon these
companies were in the forefront of the movement, distributing literature, operating demonstration farms, and
cooperating with the railroads in the organizing of educational trains.
Many other input companies working on their own and through industry-wide associations joined the
movement. Typical of these were the National Fertilizer Association, the National Implement and Vehicle
Association, and the Southern Soil Improvement Committee. Finally, the marketing and processing wing of
agribusiness was drawn in as such groups as the Council of North American Grain Exchanges and the National
Federation of Millers moved to support agricultural extension.165
The motives behind this widespread capitalist backing for agricultural renovation were mixed, but
McConnell's general evaluation of the political aspects seems apt:

Although the populist threat had disappeared, the memory of it was still vivid in the minds of members of
grain exchanges, heads of farm equipment trusts, and directors of banks. It is even likely that some of these
glimpsed the possibility of enlisting organized agriculture, or rather, reorganized agriculture on the side of
capitalism. Whether or not there was such a deliberate intention, few better means to accomplish the result
could be imagined than the course which was followed.166

As the movement grew its most important business leaders came together to form the National Soil Fertility
League in 1911. Spearheaded in the field by Knapp and the G.E.B., the extension program was supported and
shaped by business participation. The movement finally turned to Congress for federal legislation to institutionalize
agricultural extension and to transfer the costs from private coffers to the public. Agricultural demonstration work
had turned out not only to be a way of undercutting rural unrest but also by increasing commercial production and
stimulating input sales to be very profitable for individual firms. Better yet to have the taxpayer carry the costs of
subsidizing both the farmer and private business.

The Government Takes Over

The direct outcome of these concerted efforts was the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which is still with us. It
established a national extension program in agriculture and home economics based on a county agent system tied to
the Land Grant colleges. The county-agent being tied to the colleges was the result of opposition by the latter to a
big independent federal program. Under the Hatch Act, which gave them responsibility for agricultural experiment
stations, a number of small demonstration programs had been started which they were afraid would be
overshadowed by a national program. This reluctance was overcome by a compromise which located the state
extension director at the colleges while allowing the USDA to retain formal control. This expanded the college's

164
Scott, "American Railroads and Agricultural Extension," 22. cit., p. 85.
165
On the interests and activities of these various businessmen see: Scott, The Reluctant Farmer, 22. cit., Chapter VII, and McConnell, 22. cit.,
pp. 29-32.
166
McConnell, 22. cit., p. 20.

43
monopoly on agricultural education funding at the same time that it linked them only slightly to the Federal
government.
But the ultimate impact of Smith-Lever was much more complicated than this. On the one hand debate on
this legislation more than any before it made the Congress the focal point for discussion of national agricultural
policy. Henceforth it would be the major battleground over federal agricultural policy. Even more important were
the power structures which emerged out of Knapp's work and the extension system. The Smith-Lever Act, by
locating the direction of the county agents in the land grant colleges, seemed to place the colleges in control of
agricultural development – particularly since actual USDA intervention was limited. But in fact the reverse was true.
It was the local organizations of prosperous farmers built around the county agents – the Farm Bureaus – that came
to dominate and control the colleges.167 The big business drive in agriculture, spearheaded by the G.E.B.'s work in
the South, led to the creation not just of a new system of agricultural education but of a new structure of power in
the countryside. On the one side were input manufacturers, railroads, banks, and the wealthy, often capitalist farmers
who were their best customers linked through the research and extension services of the land grants. On the other
side, or rather largely left out in the cold, were the poorer small farmers and agricultural workers.
This development had been implicit in the whole approach although perhaps hidden to the men responsible
for it. There is no reason to doubt that Knapp, the G.E.B., and the other business interests thought that the
introduction of capitalist institutions would be the most efficient way to reduce the isolation of the South and end
poverty and unrest.168 The demonstration work itself, for the most part, followed the capitalist principle of investing
where the rate of return was highest – which in this case meant mainly the more prosperous farmers. 169 But this led
to a widening of the gap between "progressive" and "conservative" farmers. Success came, but mainly for the
already successful. Vast numbers of small, tenant farmers in the South never received the help necessary for
development from either the demonstration or business agents. They either remained tied to an underdeveloped land,
living in unrelieved poverty, or fled to the cities. Later when depression and farm mechanization came to the South
this trend would be accentuated.
Under the USDA, the attempt to organize farmers outside the old populist groups became quite clear. The
goal was a decentralized, "nonclass," "non-political" system of local farm bureaus organized around the county
agent. The Farm Bureaus, the Secretary of Agriculture stated in 1915: “. . . are expected to take the initiative in
securing local financial support for the agent, to join in his selection and appointment, and to stand behind him in his
efforts to advance agricultural interests."170 Out of this multitude of local groups arose the powerful American Farm
Bureau Federation whose subsequent long history of Congressional lobbying has shown it to be primarily a
powerful spokesman for industrial agribusiness even though it usually cloaks its demands with the rhetoric of family
farming.
In comparison to the AFBF, the Grange and other early agrarian groups either died out or paled to
insignificance. Only the National Farmers Union and a number of commodity organizations emerged to challenge
the influence of the AFBF. But these were all specialized groups and even the Union's appeal was restricted largely
to western wheat farmers and smaller southern cotton growers. In short, where the last three decades of the 19th
Century had seen the rise of a formidable agrarian political challenge to industrial capitalism and its control of the
state, the first two decades of the Twentieth saw the reduction of that impulse to a number of divided groups which
no longer represented the farmer in general. The most powerful of these were organizations of agrarian capitalists
devoted to working with, not against, their industrial and financial counterparts.

Successes and Failures

167
McConnell, 22. cit. together with G. McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy, 1966, gives an excellent analysis of this period
and the nature of the transformation of agrarian politics which took place.
168
It is always difficult to determine the contours of expressed motives and even harder to discover if they are only rhetoric behind which lie
other, different goals. More often than not reformers and social engineers operate day to day with the best of intentions. It is rare that they are
forced to think through the historical meaning of their actions. When they do, however, the logic of their actions, if not their conscious intentions
often becomes clear. Partly as a result of the publication by the radical Agribusiness Accountability Project of its critical study of the Land Grant
College Complex, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times, 1972, Chancellor John T. Caldwell of North Carolina was called before the Senate to testify on
behalf of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. According to the New York Times, (June 2, 1972) the following
exchange took place: "There seems to be a notion abroad that the family farmer is neglected, [by the Colleges] this is not true," Dr. Caldwell said.
All farmers, he went on, are free to use the machines developed by the universities or to use hand labor as they wish. When Senator Stevenson
demurred to the effect that some farmers could not afford the machines, Dr. Caldwell replied, "Then they are free to go out of business."
169
McConnell, Private Power, 22. cit., p. 76.
170
Report of the Secretary of Agriculture, 1915, p. 40.

44
 How then should we judge the successes and failures of this movement for a second reconstruction? If we
define it as an attempt to so restructure agricultural politics in the South and elsewhere, so as to eliminate the
possibility of a new agrarian revolt, then we must conclude that it was a resounding success. If we define it in terms
of the degree to which it led to the spread of capitalist institutions in agriculture – to hasten a transition to a capitalist
mode of production – then we must conclude that it was only a partial success. Some major strides were taken on
this road but a great many, perhaps most, farmers were left out. In the South, in particular, non-capitalist share-
tenant farming and sharecropping continued to be widespread. If on the other hand, we define it--as its sponsors did
– as an attempt to raise standards of living and improve the lives of rural southerners in general, then on the whole it
must be judged a failure. Some were helped, in farming and in health. But not only were many farmers excluded
from the movement, but it was also, despite disclaimers, devoted almost exclusively to improving the lives of whites
and by so doing steadily increased the gap between whites and blacks.171
Much of the earliest work, some of which had grown out of the First Reconstruction, was devoted to
blacks. The Peabody and Slater Funds supported black elementary and industrial schools and even Rockefeller was
originally thinking in these terms. Later however, during the G.E.B. period of 1902-1914, the emphasis shifted to
whites. This shift was not a dramatic one, nor did it represent a major reversal, because even before 1902 the kind of
work that was carried on with blacks was aimed at training them to be good, second-class workers, subservient to
white rule.
Just as business had abandoned Reconstruction in order to reestablish a profitable peace, so also was it
interested in dealing with the blacks thereafter in ways that would provoke minimum hostility from southern whites.
From the founding of Hampton and the Peabody fund, the guiding philosophy of the movement included the
acceptance of southern racism and the idea of segregation. When the northern businessmen and philanthropists
chose their southern agents, they chose men who could see the value of making better workers out of blacks but men
who were still as racist as their fellow countrymen. J. L. M. Curry was a good example of this type of racist
reformist. Raised on a plantation in Alabama he was a white supremacist of the old order and felt that the natural
capabilities of the black limited him to industrial work.172 Booker T. Washington, the ex-slave, was trained by his
hero, General Armstrong, to accept the notion of subservience and to teach it to his people. Washington developed
the idea until it became a widely influential doctrine. He taught that, if the black was poor, it was his fault, not that
of the southern white ruling class – to say nothing of northern capitalists. If blacks were denied the same privileges
as whites, it was because they had not shown the whites that they deserved them. The solution was for the black to
transform himself, to become a law-abiding, conscientious worker. It was undoubtedly this, at least in part, that
made Washington so attractive to businessmen north and south.173
The promise of a docile, trained labor force did little, however to slow the growth of racial violence. From
the end of reconstruction to the final disenfranchisement of the blacks throughout the South things only got worse.
The century ended for the southern black in a rampage of terror. It was a period of widespread lynchings, often
sanctioned by local officials. For the Southern Education Board and then the General Education Board to focus on
working with and through local governments and elites assured that their programs would be even less favorable to
blacks than the earlier work. On the ideological plane the result was a justifying philosophy which insisted that
"white education must be emphasized as a means of advancing the Negro."
Fear of white opposition time and again forced the General Education Board to tread carefully in
formulating its policies. Page, for example, wanted to develop demonstration work for blacks in each state, but
Buttrick rejected the idea unless the states asked for it. But waiting for the South to abandon racism was like waiting
for Godot, and as the years passed programs for the black population continued to be geared to producing second
class citizens.174 The cooperation with the southern white ruling class was so important to the Board that it felt that it
could not even afford the luxury of a token black on its Board of Directors. 175
Even the government policies enacted because of the reformers' efforts only continued their long history of
institutionalizing racism. The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 had created two separate and very unequal systems of
Land Grant Colleges. The Hatch Act had left the division of its funds between the two systems to the discretion of

171
See H. Bailey, E. cit., pp. 149-151.
172
Curti, 22. cit., pp. 264-280. Bullock, 22. cit., p. 93.
173
Bullock, 22. cit., pp. 74-85; B.T. Washington, 22. cit.; Curti, 22. cit., Chapter VIII; Bailey, 22. cit., Chapter III.
174
The G.E.B. slowly modified its programs in the period after 1914 and joined with a number of new philanthropies (Jeanes Fund, Rosenwald
Fund, Phelps-Stokes Fund) to support black education in a more thorough way.
175
See exchange of letters: Baldwin to Buttrick Aug. 17, 1903, Buttrick to Baldwin Aug. 21, 1903, and Baldwin to Buttrick, Aug. 23, 1903.
Baldwin argues that the Southern Education Board could not have a black on its board but that the G.E.B. should and can. He suggests Booker T.
Washington-- who never made it. G.E.B. Papers, box 305, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.

45
the state governments – with the expected results. Finally, the Smith-Lever Act, the final product of years of
business and reform effort, was as racist as its predecessors. "We do not . . . want the fund," declared Senate sponsor
Smith, "if it goes to any but the white colleges."176 So, like the Hatch Act before it, Smith-Lever turned its funds
over to the colleges chosen by the state government.
Even the General Education Board, in its own polite way, recognized that its programs in the South had
failed in the tasks set for them. While giving an historical survey of the Board's work in its 1947-1948 Annual
Report, then director Robert D. Calkins wrote:

by 1940 . . . it became increasingly apparent that a continuation of the Board's services was needed,
especially in the South, where the original objectives of the Board had not been fulfilled. Education in that
area had not reached the level of effectiveness which had been attained elsewhere, yet efforts to establish
higher standards of life in the South depended to an important degree on better education. 177

But this citation reveals far more than the simple recognition of failure. Forty-three years after its creation the Board
had still not understood the reality of its own efforts. It was still arguing that education was the key to development,
even though it was exactly the most successful of its effort – the extension program – which had widened the gap
between rich and poor. From its perspective, the Board, in the person of its director, concluded not that its approach
was fundamentally unsound, not that it had already done too much, but that it had done too little. If only more
money could be plowed into the program, then perhaps better results could be obtained. This blindness to the
reasons for failure has been a characteristic of both private and public "development" programs right down to the
present day. When the approach was used in the South it was called an "educational revival" or "the New South."
Later, when it was carried abroad it would be called "nation building" by some, "counterinsurgency" by others.

176
Agribusiness Accountability Project, R. cit., p. 20.
177
R.D. Calkins, op. cit., p. 5.

46
 IV
China: The First Intervention Abroad, or How philanthropy followed
business through some open doors and they both got kicked out together
The second step in the long process of social experimentation which led to the Green Revolution was the
experience of the American ruling class in China during the first half of the twentieth century.178 The last chapter
showed how the men associated with the various Rockefeller philanthropies undertook, in concert with private
business and government, to influence the development of Southern society: in agriculture, in secondary and
advanced education, and in health. This Second Reconstruction was aimed at integrating the South into the national
economy and thereby making it more profitable for investment, more substantial as a market, and more peaceable
politically. This chapter, in a somewhat parallel though not identical structure, tells how the foreign expansion of
American business, especially that of Standard Oil, led to the need to stabilize Chinese agriculture. Beginning with
the work of missionaries in health and agriculture, the efforts to change the Chinese countryside culminated in the
rural reconstruction effort of the Thirties and late Forties which was swept away by the Chinese Revolution.

American Business and the Open Door in China

The beginning of the American 20th century not only brought some relaxation in the economic and
ideological conflicts between farmers and industrialists over domestic political and economic policy, but it also
brought a new era of accord over foreign economic policy. Throughout the 19th century American agriculture was
increasingly conscious of its dependence on foreign markets to offset lagging demand at home. From the traditional
cotton exporters of the South to the wheat farmers of the western plains, agriculturalists looked more and more
beyond the markets of the East to Europe, and, with the opening of the transcontinental railroads, beyond the West
Coast to the Orient. In terms of its consciousness of the need for foreign commercial expansionism, agriculture was
way ahead of industry.179 Agricultural opposition to the tariff for example was not only due to fears of higher priced
imports but was gauged to free trade arguments and the desire for export growth. Their bimetallist concern with free
silver was not restricted to a desire to expand the domestic money supply, but was also aimed at facilitating entry
into foreign markets with a silver standard (e.g., China, Japan, India and some countries in Latin America). National
industry, however, on the whole, was more preoccupied with domestic struggles for dominion and concentration.
For a time foreign trade took a back seat to economic and legal problems at home. But from the late 1870s on, when
rapid expansion of agricultural and some manufacturing exports helped bring a severe depression to an end, some
elements of industry began to think more intensely about the interrelationship between domestic and international
trade. By the Spanish-American War (1898) an important consensus was reached among most of the principal
elements of the ruling capitalist class. The consensus was that foreign markets could and should provide a solution
to commercial and industrial depression at home. Say's law was still required reading for university students of
economics, but the economic discussions in corporate board rooms and in the private clubs of the business elite
turned more frequently around the idea of the disappearing frontier and the perceived realities of frequent industrial
gluts.
As businessmen became preoccupied with foreign markets, the government developed a complementary
foreign economic policy. From at least the second Cleveland administration on (1893-97), government policy was
clearly committed to favoring the overseas expansion of American business, in part as one cure for domestic
economic difficulties. Succeeding administrations took different approaches, which they pursued with varying
enthusiasm, but officials rarely questioned the advisability of expansion.
In the beginning, Cleveland pursued what historian Thomas McCormick has called a "laissez-faire" brand
of commercial imperialism--one which gave general government support for the Open Door but which left the
initiative and details of trade and investment in private hands. Later his support hardened into the kind of active,
direct diplomatic and military support for particular business projects that characterized the aggressive "Dollar
178
The China experience was the first major foreign experience in agriculture for the Rockefeller foundations and as I show below a step toward
the Green Revolution. It was not of course the first major experience in foreign intervention for the U.S. government. The administration of Cuba
and the Philippines, acquired during the Spanish-American War, came earlier and played a much more important role in the development of an
unofficial American colonial service. But these were not critical steps in the development of the Green Revolution.
179
The argument that the expansionist outlook of the turn of the century was one that was "entertained and acted upon by metropolitan American
leaders during and after the 1890s and that it was "actually a crystallization in industrial form of an outlook that had been developed in
agricultural terms by the agrarian majority of the country between 1860 and 1893," is based on W. A. Williams' major work, The Roots of the
Modern American Empire (New York: Random House, 1969). Citation, pp. xvi-xvii.

47
Diplomacy" of his successors: William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow
Wilson.180
Of all the potential markets which drew the attention of business and government alike, none seemed as
promising (or so elusive) as the mysterious China Market with its un-tapped, teeming millions. The history of both
business and government views of the possibilities of trade expansion in China not only characterizes an era of
foreign economic and political policy but also teaches a very basic lesson about American capitalism: imperial
strategies are often developed and followed, not on the basis of current profits, but with an eye to the future. 181 The
American Open Door policy in China was mainly geared, not to the protection of contemporary trade outlets and
investments--for on the whole they were rather limited--but rather to keeping China open to future business
ventures. Again and again both private and official reaction to European threats of partition reflected this long run
view. What is put in danger by carving up China, the New York Times wrote, in an editorial representative of
contemporary business views, . . . is not yet our present trade with all Chinese ports, but the right to all that trade
with its future increase . . .”182
The U.S. moved steadily into the Pacific during the 19th Century in a series of insular conquests which
included Hawaii, Wake, Guam and finally, as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Philippines. The
public debate over "imperialism" versus "anti-imperialism" which accompanied these steps was not so much over
ends--almost everyone concerned with business expansion agreed about the need for markets--as it was over means.
In the thinking of the day, it was clear enough that some kind of insular steppingstones to China were necessary. The
question was how many and what kind. The "anti-imperialists" argued that simple coaling, cable, and naval stations
would be enough. The "imperialists" felt that such stations could only be protected by controlling the surrounding
cities, ports, and hinterland. In the end, some of the islands--like Hawaii and Guam--were annexed, while others--the
Philippines--were placed under "temporary" American control to put down local nationalism and exclude foreign
influence.183
Business backing for these various policies of expansion was almost unanimous. Both trust builders and
smaller businessmen backed the movement, each in their own way. The former worked direct influence in
government and organized their own corporate expansion. The latter worked through business groups which lobbied
their cause in Washington and took concrete steps to facilitate trade expansion. This consensus spread over all parts
of the country--North, West, and South, with the businessmen of each area jockeying to achieve policies beneficial
to the expanded sales of their major exports. Many of these diverse groups came together to form specialized
lobbying and promoting organizations like the Committee on American Interests in China (later the American
Asiatic Association) or the Mississippi Valley Association.184
Among the giants of American industry and finance who looked with a particular interest to the China
market were such men as railroad magnate J. J. Hill, financiers J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman, and path-breaking
monopolist in many fields, John D. Rockefeller. Hill wanted to increase his transcontinental cargos of cotton
textiles, wheat, etc. Morgan and Harriman planned railroad and financial projects in China itself. Rockefeller not
only had immediate business interests in expanding the China market for American goods and finance, but following
the lead of his advisor Frederick T. Gates, he would also become the head of the one capitalist family to attempt to
increase the internal stability of Chinese society in order to bring it into harmony with the needs of the expanding
American empire.
Rockefeller business interest in China was old and lively. Standard Oil had been one of the first major
American manufacturing firms to follow agriculture onto the world market. Already by the 1880s Standard had
acquired a virtual monopoly in the sale of kerosene in China. Through a multitude of local dealers it built up an
efficient distribution system which marketed not only kerosene fuel but also the kind of lamps and stoves which
required its use. After 1898 Standard's interest in the Far East increased even more as the growth of sales in Europe

180
Thomas McCormick in his book China Market: America's Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901, (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), traces
the development of the official market-building policies.
181
This is a lesson which many China specialists refuse to understand. Witness the eminent John K. Fairbank in his classic The United States and
China (New York: Viking, 1958), pp. 258-9, trying to convince us that because the actual amount of dollars invested, etc., was small therefore,
"even in the minds of businessmen" dollars and cents were not that important in their policies toward China.
182
McCormick, op. cit., p. 91. The concern for future profits continued to influence American policy even into the 1940s. As Gabriel and Joyce
Kolko note in their Limits of Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 263, Secretary of State Avril Harriman "always saw Manchuria in
terms of its potential economic value." (my emphasis) President Nixon's recent pursuit of detente with China has also been accompanied by a
new round of speculation on the China market.
183
The acquisition of the Pacific islands is quickly summarized. But the actual military suppression of local opposition was long and exceedingly
vicious. See for example, William J. Pomeroy, American Neocolonialism: Its Emergence in the Philippines and Asia, (New York: International
Publishers, 1970), chapter IV.

48
began to slow and then decline. Although competition from other Western firms expanded considerably after 1902,
by 1911 far eastern markets still accounted for 35 per cent of Standard's net earnings outside North America. It is no
exaggeration to say that, during this period, among those businessmen and policymakers who saw overseas
expansion as a cure for domestic depression, Standard Oil was looked upon "as an important element in capturing
the China Market and expanding America's economic influence in the Far East."185
As this period of mercantile expansion into China lengthened Standard joined with other business interests
in seeking a more permanent base in China through direct investment. Outside of China the process of
colonialization opened up the possibility of direct investment for the firms of other Western countries--often
competitors of Standard. Royal Dutch and Moeara Enim, for example, were firmly ensconced in the Dutch East
Indies and denied Standard access. In India, Standard was not kept out directly but the British protected the Burmah
Oil Company with tariffs and denied Standard concessions in neighboring Burma. 186 In China the situation was more
complex.
Over the years the uneasy balance of power and America's Open Door policy had kept China from being
divided up and colonized outright. But the result was an incessant struggle by nations for "spheres of influence" and
by businessmen and bankers for "concessions" which would give them exclusive rights to some promising project or
region. Although these concessions were granted by an ostensibly independent Chinese government, in fact the real
independence was only marginal as it was buffeted back and forth between powers far stronger than itself. The
foreign powers' public affirmation of Chinese independence did give the government some leeway to play one
power off against the other. It also meant that the growth and development of various Chinese political groups were
not under the direct supervision of foreigners. The simple presence of foreign influence, however, both politically
and culturally, implied that the Chinese political scene would often take on a cast of nationalism versus cooperation
with foreigners--whether nationalism was defined in historically reactionary ways, indicating a return to traditional
Chinese social and political structures, or progressively, indicating the building of a new China modeled on some
Chinese adaptation of foreign models of capitalism, or later, of socialism. Generally speaking the social upheavals
which followed one another with regularity during the first half of China's 20th Century were directed against the
imperialism of the foreign powers. From the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 through the Revolutions of 1911 and the
student uprisings of 1919 to the war against Japan and finally the civil war of the Communists against the
Kuomintang, the most fundamental cause, even when the direct enemy was the Chinese government (1911, 1919,
1949) was the attempt to throw off foreign influence. It was in this almost continuously unstable political situation
that Standard Oil and other firms tried to penetrate and invest in China.
Directly through Standard Oil and indirectly through their National City Bank of New York, Rockefeller
business interests were involved in most of the major American and international investment plans put together in
China. The earliest and longest lived areas of investment were the loan and railroad businesses. 187 Major loans to the
Chinese government for the financing of anything from currency support to railroad development were sought by
foreign banks both for the interest to be earned on the loans--payment was usually guaranteed because foreigners
controlled the Chinese custom houses – And for the leverage it gave in obtaining further concessions. Railroads
were not only viewed as large and profitable investments in themselves but often promised new trade routes into the
Chinese hinterland (the ever-elusive China Market) as well as associated concessions in mining, timber, etc.
Standard was involved for example as early as 1898 in the ill-fated American China Development Company which
first failed to obtain the entire concession for a Hankow-Canton Railway and then failed to develop the portion that
it did obtain. The Rockefellers’ National City Bank was involved with the group of American banks(including J. P.
Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co., and others) which forced its way into the negotiations for the Hukuang Railway
and eventually obtained part of that international loan. National City also joined with J. P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn,
Loeb & co., and others to obtain the loan for the Chincow-Aigun Railway. In these negotiations, as in the Chinese
Currency Loan (1911) or the Chinese Consortium (1920), these groups of American bankers and businessmen were
backed up by the foreign service officers of the U.S. government in China and Washington. 188 Such official aid
made John D. Rockefeller well aware of the usefulness of government backing of his foreign business adventures:
"One of our greatest helpers [in foreign lands] has been the State Department in Washington. Our ambassadors and
184
See B. I. Kaufman, "Organization for Foreign Trade Expansion in the Mississippi Valley, 1900-1920," Business History Review, Winter 1972.
185
N. H. Pugach, "Standard Oil and Petroleum Development in Early Republican China," Business History Review, Winter 1971, p. 452. On
Standard in China also see: Ralph W. and M. E. Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882-1911, (New York: Harper, 1955), pp. 547-53.
186
Pugach, op. cit., pp. 454-5.
187
A useful survey of the history of these concessions is given in the classic Dollar Diplomacy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966) by
Scott Nearng and J. Freedman.
188
Ibid., pp. 42-62.

49
ministers have aided to push our way into new markets to the utmost corners of the world."189 The only significant
exception to this close government-business partnership was during the early years of the first Wilson administration
when the President withdrew official support from U.S. participation in the Six Power Loan of 1913. This hesitancy
was short lived however and it was the Wilson government itself which prompted the creation of the Chinese
Consortium in 1920. It is not, however, the pervasiveness of "Dollar Diplomacy" which is striking about the
American government's efforts in China during this period. Support for American business was indeed a mainstay of
its efforts in many parts of the world. What is of more interest here is that its efforts were almost always limited to
diplomacy—political and economic. With the exception of some money left over from the Boxer Indemnity Fund,
which was allocated to Chinese education, there was no real attempt to use foreign aid to reshape the politico-
economic social structure of the country. In China, unlike the colonial situations in Cuba and the Philippines where
the government took the leading role, that task was left in private hands. Indeed, as we shall see, the making of long-
term American policy in China, to the extent that there was any at all prior to World War II, was mainly the work of
private groups with private money.

Missionaries and Business in China

The most important private groups involved in China (besides business) were the various Christian
missionary organizations. Working in China since at least the 16th century were many denominations of Catholics
and Protestants. More often than not the first foreigners to penetrate hitherto unknown regions of China, the
missionaries brought not only the word of their God but also the technology and learning of the West. In their
schools and colleges, through the teaching of western languages and western technology, they sought not only to
convert the spirit but to build ties between China and the West.190 For American businessmen and diplomats eager to
expand trade, the most important aspect of this work of conversion and civilizing was its impact on the creation of
demand for western goods. The enthusiasm among American foreign service officers for the role of missionaries
predated the clear government commitment in actively assisting American entrepreneurs in their business goals,
which came in the later years of the Cleveland administration. During the anti-foreign and anti-missionary riots of
1895, the U.S. Minister to China, backed by the Secretary of State, refused the U.S. Navy's offer to evacuate a large
number of missionaries, arguing that their importance to commerce was too great to risk the chance of their not
returning later on. He wrote:

Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and commerce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants
which commerce supplies . . . The missionary, inspired by holy zeal, goes everywhere, and by degrees
foreign commerce and trade follow.191

That same Minister later ordered a systematic survey of "American missionary property and non-religious
businesses, the practice of medicine for fees, or the local sale of goods produced in missionary run industrial
schools." The goal of the survey was to provide useful information to the American government and to American
businessmen interested their simple presence with their foreign habits and modes of thought can provoke change and
reaction in "the trade and commerce with China."192 Later, when Cleveland abandoned his "laissez-faire" brand of
commercial imperialism and during the presidencies of McKinley and Roosevelt, concern for the commercial
aspects of missionary activity was not only continued but was backed up by much more direct intervention in the
cause of American business.
Rockefeller's original business interests in China were accompanied by a complementary interest in these
activities of American missions. He donated frequently to missionary activity, especially that activity carried on by
his own church, the Baptist. But until 1905 these contributions were not only sectarian but piecemeal and limited to
relatively small amounts. In that year, however, three years after the founding of the General Education Board,
Rockefeller began to expand his philanthropic activities connected to China.

189
Cited in David Horowitz, "Politics and Knowledge: An Unorthodox History of Modern China Studies, Supplement on Modern China Studies,
Bulletin of Concern Asian Scholars, Summer-Fall 1971, p. 144.
190
One readable account of several representative missionaries is J. Spence, To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620-1960 (Boston:
Little, Brown and Co., 1969). It is important to remember that much of the impact of missionary activity is independent of individuals' intentions
– their simple presence with their foreign habits and modes of thought can provide change and reaction.
191
McCormick, op. cit., p. 66.
192
Ibid., pp. 85-86.

50
 The reasons were complex why it was the Rockefeller group, more than any other capitalist group, which
would, over time, support activities more designed to engineer a fundamental restructuring of Chinese society than
simply to expand markets. One reason undoubtedly lies in the breadth of Rockefeller business interests. These were
not limited to either exports or finance but included both as well as direct investment. This gave the group a
necessary interest in the stability of a wider area of the Chinese economy than would simple concern with next
year's sales or loan repayments. Associated with this need to look ahead, to plan, was that same rationalizing
approach which had influenced Gates in his organization of Rockefeller's prior "scientific" philanthropy. And
finally, of course, there was the immediate experience of the various coordinated efforts in the South which were
also geared to obtaining a long-run neocolonial stability. Time and again the Rockefeller China projects would draw
on this southern experience in their formulation of approaches and techniques. All of these factors led Gates to focus
some of his energy and vision on the potential of international philanthropy, especially (but not uniquely) in China.
At the time, of course, that meant the missionaries, and Gates, ever one to abhor competition in any field, first turned
his attention to the potential of working through them on an expanded, more coordinated, scale.
Seasoned businessman as well as Baptist preacher, Gates was quick to grasp the commercial implications
of missionary activity and to think of it in the way so many of his fellow capitalists did: a divine spearhead for the
Western economic penetration of the uncivilized hinterland. A first important turning point in Rockefeller's
approach to China came when Gates, after much study and thought, convinced him to donate some $100,000 to the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to support a variety of missionary activities. As a result of
widespread public criticism of Rockefeller's gift--it was feared that the industrial magnate was now trying to take
over God as well as Mammon--Gates was forced to allow publication of the private letter he had sent to John D. to
convince him of the wisdom of the move. The letter, a rare historical document of private motives, leaves little
doubt that Gates at least (and presumably Rockefeller since he "singled out" the letter for words of approval) was
particularly interested in God when His disciples led the way to Mammon.193
In his discussion of missionary activity, Gates begins the letter with some remarks about how, at last, "all
the nations of the earth, all the islands of the sea are actually open and offer a free field for all the light which
English-speaking peoples can give them."194 He then perceives "divine presence" operating to coordinate the ranks
of the "invading army" of Protestant missions which are "pushing their outposts of conquest along strategic lines far
into the interior [of all coasts]." Which impact of this activity preoccupies him? On the religious side he has virtually
nothing to say: "Statistics of mere converts furnish no sort of measure." What really counts is the dissemination of
western technology and the growth of markets: "The fact is that heathen nations are being everywhere honeycombed
with light and with civilization, and with modern industrial life and applications of modern science, through the
direct or indirect agencies of the missionaries." "Quite apart from the question of persons converted," he continues,
"the mere commercial results of missionary effort to our own land is worth . . . a thousand-fold every year of what is
spent on missions." Missionary activity he insists is vital both in opening up foreign lands for the exploitation of
their resources and for their development as markets for American goods:

From the point of view of subsistence for Americans, our import trade, traceable mainly to the
channels of intercourse opened up by missionaries, is enormous. Imports from heathen lands furnish us
cheaply with many of the luxuries of life and not a few of the comforts, and with many things, indeed
which we regard as necessities
But out imports are balanced by our exports, to these same countries, of American manufactures. Our
export trade is growing by leaps and bounds. Such growth would have been utterly impossible but for the
commercial conquest of foreign lands under the lead of missionary endeavor.

As examples of export expansion Gates cites sales of steel and agricultural machinery--both areas of Rockefeller
investment. It does not matter of course whether missionaries are as important as Gates paints them, nor even if he
believes everything he says--he is attempting persuasion--what is interesting is the overwhelming emphasis he gives
to these aspects of the situation.
193
"Gates' Letter to Rockefeller," Boston Herald, April 17, 1905. All the subsequent quotes are taken from a reprint of the article,Gates papers,
Rockefeller Foundation Archives.
194
Gates was an inveterate bigot and racist in his attitudes to non-Anglo-Saxons. Of the "Mohammedan countries" he says: "Religious fanatics,
they have fought, enslaved and massacred the nations of civilization wherever possible . . . We may as well leave all Mohammedan countries to
the slow processes of geological time."7 Of Catholics: "Catholic ascendency in the Latin countries since mediaeval times has always produced
social degradation, poverty, beggary, ignorance, disease and crime among the masses . . . should leave Catholicism, like Mohammedanism to the
slow process of geological time." And, "Ethnologists have not found the Latin races to be intrinsically valuable to the well-being of humanity."
Citations from a Gates memo to Rockefeller on World Philanthropy, January 7, 1927; Rockefeller Foundation Archives, New York.

51
 Later, Gates commented on this emphasis on "secular balancing (read business) motives and made clear
that business and religion go hand in hand and that he could not separate the two. The motives emphasized may have
been secular, he says,

But in my religion there was no distinction between the sacred and the secular. All things had become
sacred. God loves Monday quite as much as Sunday. It was with reason that he made six times as many
secular days as sacred. The utter obliteration of this false distinction belongs to the very essence of the
teaching of Jesus.19518

The importance of this lies in the light it throws on the common but misled effort to separate out "good" humanitar-
ian or religious motives and "bad" or morally suspect economic motives. Gates' statement is useful because it il-
lustrates the fundamental unity in capitalist ideology. That ideology justifies individual initiative and private
business as the best means to the achievement of optimal states of social welfare and it is only to be expected that
ethical and religious aspects of capitalist culture would reflect this and be in harmony with it. 196
Gates goes on in the letter to argue that Rockefeller's personal interest in foreign business development is
wider than those of any other person and that it thus makes sense for him to reinvest some of his profits in
missionary activity. Toward the close of his letter, Gates lays out his vision of the possible global impact of
missionary activity:

In the long run, it will be found, I think, that the effect of the missionary enterprise of English-speaking
peoples will be to bring them the peaceful conquest of the world. Not political dominion, but dominion in
commerce and manufacture, in literature, science, philosophy, art refinement, morals, religion . . .

Others in the Foundation would soon come to think the missionaries too fragmented and divided to carry on alone
and, after Gates' retirement, would set out to experiment with other secular institutions. 197 But this vision of a world
order of economic and cultural domination without direct political control lay at the very heart of the politics of neo-
colonialism which were slowly being developed both at home, in dealings with the South, and in the Orient, in the
Open Door Policy towards China.
Now would the reinforcing of missionary activity be neglected in the years to come. In 1914 the
Rockefeller Foundation helped fund a New York based project to coordinate the activities of different mission
boards and to increase mutual cooperation and efficiency.198 When the International Education Board was
established in 1924, its very first project would be aimed at improving the stateside training of foreign teachers,
including many missionaries from the Far East. An allocation of some $100,000 to Columbia University's Teachers
College permitted the founding of an International Institute which offered specialized courses and experiences to
those who teach in foreign lands. Besides standard courses, such as comparative education and foreign cultures, the
Institute sought to train those teachers in the educational techniques developed in the South for dealing with that
"underdeveloped" country. This was done in part by organizing field trips into the South. There the teachers could
learn lessons from the General Education Board's experience to carry back to the Third World:

They visited the boy's and girl's clubs in the agricultural regions and studied with keen interest the
way in which Dr. Seaman Knapp and his associates of the United States Department of
Agriculture taught the children practical economics, and through them their elders.199

Secular Philanthropy: Exemplary Institutions and Elite Building

195
Gates' memo on "The Letter on Missions," F. T. Gates collection, Accession No. 4, Box 2, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, New York.
196
When M. Curti approvingly cites John Dewey on the "parental" nature of American philanthropic motives with respect to China--"a sense of
obligation to implant parental ideas and ideals"--and juxtaposes this view to one of economic motives, he is committing this error. Of course, the
philanthropists desired to implant their own "ideas and ideals." But those are exactly the ideas and ideals of free enterprise capitalism. Within the
analytical context I am using here such attempts appear clearly as aspects of a superstructural transformation designed to reinforce other changes
in the mode of production. M. Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 349.
197
Gates retired in protest over the founding of the Medical school in China (discussed below). This event showed that although he was a major
factor in the early work, the corporate structure and class makeup of the Rockefeller Foundations made them more than a one-man show. They
rapidly evolved beyond Gates' vision, which, as we saw above, could be quite limited in some ways.
198
Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1913-14, pp. 29-31.
199
George W. Gray, Education on an International Scale: A History of the International Education Board, 1923-1938, (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1941), p. 87.

52
 Rockefeller's financial support for missionary activities was soon followed by amore direct approach to the
problem of bringing English-speaking civilization to the Chinese: the creation of exemplary institutions which
would set new standards for others (mainly missionaries) working in the field. The original idea was to create a
major secular university, along the lines of the University of Chicago (which Rockefeller had founded in 1890).
Such a university would set an example and would itself spread the knowledge of Western culture to help develop a
new generation of Chinese teachers and leaders. This project combined two elements of the earlier Southern
experience: the teaching of capitalist values and the creation of local elites through which the Americans could more
effectively reach the local population. In terms of ideology, the goal went beyond the teaching of business principles
or proper labor attitudes. It was felt that fundamental notions of scientific method and "rational" thought would have
to be taught to the Chinese. In terms of elite building the development of a new generation of westernized
intellectuals presented the Rockefeller men with a somewhat different problem than they had had in the South.
There, intermediaries were already available when the G.E.B. was formed. In China it would be necessary to train
them the way the Peabody and Slater Funds had done.
The notion of using education to deal with social turmoil in Asian societies was given impetus during this
period by the experience of the American military mission in the Philippines. Secular educators had followed mis-
sionaries and troops into the Philippines during the Spanish-American War and were consciously involved in the
fight against the nationalist, anti-American guerrillas. Education, they urged, in an echo of the Populist era, "was a
cheaper and more effective way of pacifying the Filipinos than the sword."200 To that pacification program they
brought not only the American conception of democracy but also the orientation toward industrial and agricultural
education which characterized the philanthropic work in the South.
The Rockefeller project for a major university in China, however, soon ran into problems. An Oriental
Education Commission, financed by Rockefeller, was dispatched to China in 1909. Its final report rendered the
discouraging conclusion that neither the missionary community nor the Chinese government was willing to accept
such a large university project. It had to be scrapped.
Despite this disappointment, the Rockefeller philanthropies were soon to have considerable indirect
influence on the development of Chinese education. At the I.E.B. funded International Institute of Columbia
University, the training of missionaries went hand in hand with that of foreign teachers, many from China. Between
1925 and 1928 alone, over 200 Chinese teachers graduated from the Institute. Under the direction of Dr. Paul
Monroe, a trustee of the China Foundation, multiple studies were undertaken to determine how Chinese education
should be reshaped. The lessons learned were incorporated into the curriculum of the Chinese students. Surveying
the progress of this program in 1928, Monroe wrote: "Probably there is not an institution of higher learning either
governmental, private or missionary in China but has some one of the 200 Chinese graduates of the institute on its
staff.201 It is difficult to overstate the importance of this kind of overseas education in shaping the Chinese elite
during this period. A few years later one of Monroe's students, studying the growth of nationalism in Chinese
education would note:

. . . it is clear that the Chinese leaders in government, in business, in industry, in scholarship, and in
education are mainly returned students. In the diplomatic corps, in the faculties of universities and colleges
and in the military forces, the returned students occupy practically the entire state. 202

Unfortunately for the Rockefellers and other western interests many of these western-trained elites would ultimately
revolt against the role of intermediary for imperialism for which their education had prepared them.
Disappointed in its plans for a major university but hardly defeated, Rockefeller's interest in China
continued unabated. Standard Oil's sales continued to grow and in 1914 a dramatic agreement was signed with the
Chinese government for oil exploration in northern China. In the same year Rockefeller's philanthropic interests
turned from education per se to medicine. The turn to medicine at that point flowed naturally from two previous
lines of work. The first was the public health work of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in the South which was

200
Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators (New York: Scribners, 1935), p. 226.
201
Paul Monroe, "The Cross-Fertilization of Cultures," News Bulletin, Institute for Pacific Relations, February 1928, p. 6. Among the studies
undertaken prior to 1928 were four Ph.D. dissertations: G.R. Twiss, Science and Education in China: A Survey of the Present Status and a
Program for Progressive Improvement, (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1925). Among those done after 1928 were: You Kuang Chu, Some
Problems of a National System of Education in China (Shanghai, 1930), and R. Yu Soong Cheng, The Financing of Public Education in China
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1935). There were many others.
202
Chiu-sam Tsang, Nationalism in School Education in China, South China Morning Post, Ltd., 1933, (Columbia Ph.D. thesis), pp. 147-151.

53
rapidly being extended to the Third World via the International Health Board (later the International Health Division
of the Rockefeller Foundation). The second was the General Education Board's work in medical research and
medical education.
The extension of public health work overseas during this period was related to the same economic and
political factors which had spurred its development in the South: a desire to increase productivity and to gain the
goodwill and trust of the local population and government. Disease and the resulting low productivity of workers
was a basic and often dramatic problem for U.S. businessmen trying to set up operations abroad. Where sickness
was widespread the simple availability of workers was no guarantee of a usable labor force. 203 The United Fruit
Company, for example, was forced to set up hospitals for the workers on its Central American banana plantations as
early as 1899 in order to reduce excessive costs associated with illness.204 Years later a vice president of United Fruit
clearly stated the reasons for his company's concern with its workers health:

The work that has been done was done for a very practical hard-headed reason--that of self-interest . . . sick
people cannot work . . . It may have been an enlightened self-interest but it was largely done because they
(American companies) could not get out the ore, or raise the bananas or pump the oil unless these
fundamentals were taken care of.205

Much of the earliest foreign health work by Americans was directly related not only to business but also to the
military needs of American imperialism. It was the extremely high death rates of American soldiers in Cuba during
the Spanish-American war which pushed the military doctor Walter Reed to find a way to control yellow fever. It
was the imperialist acquisition of Panama to build a canal which brought Major William C. Gorgas from Cuba to
that country in 1904 to fight yellow fever and malaria.206
Work in public health was also seen to have an important public relations effect. If capitalist exploitation
and sometimes military occupation were the most blatant and obnoxious aspects of American imperialism to subject
peoples, health care and public health measures were portrayed and often accepted as the kindly and humanitarian
side of American intervention. Of the program of the Rockefeller Foundation, a Catholic curate, well-known in
Latin America, once publicly commented:

You all know we never cared for or trusted the Yankee, but since this institution has come and worked
here, and is showing us that they (the Yankees) have some heart in them, we feel like giving them the
embrace of brotherhood and making them feel more welcome hereafter. I should love to shake Mr.
Rockefeller's hand and say, "You are one of us."207

The Rockefeller foreign public health program was centered in the International Health Board which operated as a
complement and stimulant to both business and government interests for over thirty years.
203
Victor Heiser, who worked first with the Army and then with the Rockefeller Foundation, describes (in his autobiography) many situations
where disease was causing high, sometimes prohibitive costs to businessmen: An American Doctor's Odyssey (New York: Norton, 1936), pp. 37-
8, 269, 292, 295-7, 300-1, 449, 455, 456-7.
204
Among the costs of sickness incurred by United Fruit and other companies were: low productivity due to illness, time lost due to hospital
visits, excessive housing costs caused by the necessity of keeping more workers than would otherwise be necessary. Edward I. Salisbury (United
Fruit medical director), "Costs and Returns of Industrial Health Services," Industry and Tropical Health, Vol. 1, 1950, pp. 172-3.
205
John C. McClintock, "Responsibilities of Industry for Health of Local Populations Abroad," Industry and Tropical Health, Vol. II, 4/20-22,
1954, pp. 39-42. On the early need for plantation medicine in labor-scarce Hawaii, see Dr. William B. Patterson, "Plantation Medicine in
Hawaii," Industrial Medicine and Surgery, October 1949, pp. 426-7.
206
In 1916 Gorgas headed an I.H.B. commission to South and Central America to study the possibilities of a yellow fever control campaign.
When he retired from his job of Surgeon General in 1918, he joined the I.H.B. to head their yellow fever work. Rockefeller Foundation, Annual
Report, 1920, p. 38.
207
Quoted by Catherine Lewirth in her, "Sourcebook for a History of the Rockefeller Foundation," Vol. 5, p. 1272, Rockefeller
Foundation Archives, New York.
Another reason for developing public health abroad was also dictated from self-interest: that of eliminating foreign sources of disease
which could contaminate areas, including the United States itself, which had been cleared of dangerous illnesses. The danger to the continental
U.S. of the yellow fever in Cuba was "one of the principal reasons for our going to war with Spain" according to Dr. Victor Heiser, op. cit., p. 34.
While this unquestionably overrates the importance of the factor to the men responsible for the decision to go to war, it does reflect a point of
view apparently common in the Rockefeller Foundation. Frederick Gates, for example, approved the health work of the League of Nations
because, he said, ". . . it relieves America, and particularly the International Health Board in part from extensive operations among decadent
peoples justified in the past perhaps mainly as a protection against international infection." "Philanthropy and Civilization," Memo to the
Foundation board of Directors; Gates Papers, (1923) p. 19, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, New York.

54
 For the Foundation these medical men, "for whom there were few political constraints," were often the
gentle opening wedge to be followed by interventionists in other areas: ". . . medical and public health men paved
the way for agriculturalists in South America and Asia. The work of agriculturalists in turn gives credit to
populationists, social scientists and others who follow them."208 In China public health work was undertaken
through: (1) support for public health education by the Peking Union Medical College and by the Council for Health
Education; (2) cooperation with the Peking police department to establish a municipal public health station; and (3)
former foundation fellows and foundation representatives served as consultants and administrators of both national
and provincial health programs set up in the late 1920s.
The Rockefeller Foundation's world-wide support for medical research, public health, and medical
education was pursued through institution building, international fellowships, international conferences,
international professional journals, and cooperation with the League of Nations and other international
organizations. This support led, gradually but surely, not only to improved health services but to the development of
a world system of cooperative interpersonal and interorganizational relationships based on common ways of dealing
with health problems. The system facilitated the rapid distribution of new knowledge and techniques that fell within
these methods. The common way of dealing with health problems which the Foundation was fostering reflected that
developed earlier in the South-cooperation with established governments and a focus on a few elite institutions and
individuals who then dealt with the larger population. This pattern would later come to characterize the Foundation's
work in agricultural research and agricultural economics and lay the basis for both the rapid diffusion of the Green
Revolution technologies and its subsequent problems.
The second and more direct source of the focus on medicine in China was the continuing interest in
medical research and medical education of the General Education Board. If an exemplary university could not be set
up in China then perhaps a medical hospital and medical school could. Another commission (headed by Harry
Judson of the University of Chicago) was sent, and when it found no substantial opposition the trustees of the
Rockefeller Foundation (established in 1913) plunged ahead. Within weeks after the Judson Report and its
recommendations were presented at the Foundation, the trustees founded the China Medical Board with Wallace
Buttrick of the G.E.B. named director. The Board was charged with the creation of a high-quality hospital
(eventually the Peking Union Medical College--PUMC) to train Chinese doctors who in turn would teach in Chinese
medical schools. Complementary to this project would be supplemental aid to a variety of missionary and Chinese
hospitals and a program of fellowships for study in the U.S. At last the Rockefeller program in China was launched.
Over the years, until the Communist victory in 1949 terminated its program, the investment in the PUMC (some
$44.9 million) represented by far the bulk of Rockefeller philanthropic expenditures in China.209
With such a large undertaking one might expect that this project would have the longest-term and most-
widely felt effects. But, as it turned out, this grandiose project was not to have the greatest importance in the long
run, either in terms of social conditions in China or in terms of a strategy for dealing with the rural Third World.
Rather it was the Foundation's work in agriculture and rural reconstruction which would set the tone for the post-
World War II development of the Green Revolution. What the experience with the PUMC did do was to set a pattern
of top-down institution and elite building which would be reapplied in agriculture. It also provided a research and
personal base for later public health work which complemented agricultural development during the period of rural
reconstruction.

Chinese Agriculture, The Rockefeller Foundations, and Anti-Communism

It is difficult to summarize quickly the characteristics of the Chinese countryside owing to its vast size and
the diversity of the modes of production of its agriculture. Similar in some ways to the specialized agriculture of the
American South, which was dominated by one major crop, Chinese agriculture (which was not export-oriented) was
divided into two great crop areas: wetland rice in the South and dryland wheat and millet in the North. Within these
areas there was considerable uniformity in production technology. Roughly the same combinations of land,
agricultural implements, irrigation systems, fertilizers, and human labor were used by all producers within each
region. These combinations had changed little for many centuries. Although there was a long tradition of importing
new crops and grain varieties, up until mid-twentieth century the new developments in agricultural mechanization
208
Kenneth W. Thompson, Foreign Assistance: A View from the Private Sector, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), pp. 11,
15. Thompson is vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

55
which had revolutionized western agriculture were virtually unknown. Variations in the structure of traditional
forces of production were mainly quantitative. Rich farmers might have more draft animals than poor farmers, or
more implements or fertilizers, etc., but the kind and quality of the available factors of production varied little. The
only striking qualitative difference in methods of production was that between South China with its elaborate
systems of public irrigation and North China's predominately dryland, rainfed agriculture.
Both the slow evolution of agricultural technology and the importance of irrigation systems have long held
prominent places in the many discussions of the mode of production in Chinese (as in Indian) agriculture, as have
the economic and superstructural aspects of the associated social formation, (especially the role of the state and the
self-contained economy of the villages). But whatever interpretation of the "Asiatic mode of production" which one
holds, and there is anything but consensus on the question today, the relevance of the debate to the situation in China
during the 1920s when the Rockefellers turned their attention to Chinese agriculture is limited at best. 210 In the first
place, if there ever was a single dominant social formation, it had already been broken up by the impact of capitalist
colonialism, the Revolution of 1911, and the growing struggles between warlords, the Kuomintang, and the
communists. Secondly, it is doubtful whether there ever was a single mode of production--even if slowness of
technological change and the important role of the state had characterized China for many centuries. The relations of
production in agriculture were diversified long before the Twentieth Century. And, if we wish to speak in terms of
mode of production, then we must take these relations into account just as much as the material forces of production.
Because of the diversity of relations of production, it is easiest to state which were not present, or present to
such a small degree that they were negligible. These included above all the isolated, "subsistence" farming of family
"owner-operators" and slavery. Present to a somewhat more important degree but still relatively insignificant when
viewed from the perspective of China as a whole were quasi-feudal and capitalist relations. Some quasi-feudal
relations existed in more isolated areas where there was high land concentration and few market opportunities for
converting farm surpluses into cash or manufactured goods. Here the rent of land was often paid not only through
rent-in-kind but also through a variety of labor services and gifts on special occasions. This pattern was reinforced
by the fact that isolation from central or provincial government agencies left local big landlords with the unthwarted
coercive power to exact whatever payment they could from their tenants who were thus reduced to almost serf-like
status. Wage labor was fairly widespread but existed primarily as a supplementary, part-time labor source especially
during harvest periods of peak labor demand. Wage labor as a dominant form in production was predicated on the
growth of markets for farm produce and land concentration which divorced the small farmer from his own or rented
land. It appeared mainly near urban commercial centers, but even here capitalist farming as such was not common.
The bulk of China's agriculture was still a village-oriented affair. A minority of peasants (about 30 per cent)
had to rent whatever land they tilled while a majority owned at least some land. These last, however, often joined
their less fortunate neighbors in renting more land from larger landowners. Among the landowners, who constituted
an important element of the ruling class, the majority (about 75 per cent) were absentee landlords whose acquisition
of land and exploitation of tenants were not feudal in character (no direct coercive control) but more often a business
activity complementing moneylending and commerce. Tenancy and ground rent then appear to have been the domi-
nant relations of production and mode of exploitation. Hired labor and wages either in kind or in cash also existed
but as a very secondary form of exploitation. More important was merchant capital in the form of moneylending and
high rates of interest on credit. This form of exploitation according to some observers, rivaled the land tenure system
in its oppression of the peasants. Finally, there was the role of the tax-levying and often landholding state which
competed with landowner and merchant alike for the peasant's surplus.
But if tenancy was the dominant relation of production (and this was more true in the South than in the
North) the diversity of the forms it took resembled the situation in the post-Civil War South and defies any easy
classification of a single or typical mode of production. Both the form of the tenure agreement and the form of the

209
For the report of the medical commission see: China Medical Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation, Medicine in China, New York,
1914. On the PUMC see, John Z. Bowers, Western Medicine in a Chinese Palace: PUMC, 1917-1951, The Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, 1972.
Raymond Fosdick, The Story of The Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952) gives a brief history of the development of
the program. The Rockefeller foundations were not the only U.S. philanthropies working in the area of health care in China. Besides various
missionary projects there were the modest programs of the Milbank Memorial Fund. The Fund, which also supported health programs at
Tuskegee and Hampton in the South, supported health education through the Council on Health Education in China, (which was also supported
by the China Medical Board), the International Association of Vacation Bible Schools in the Far East, and the Chinese National Association of
Mass Education. On this last see the discussion in the text which follows. See various issues of the Milbank Memorial Fund Annual Report and
the Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly Bulletin.
210
Summaries of the discussion of the Asiatic mode from three different points of view may be found in: Shlomo Avineri, Karl Marx on
Colonialism and Modernization (New York: Doubleday, 1969), Introduction; Ernest Mandel, The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl
Marx (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), chapter 8; and Maurice Godelier, Sur Les Sociétés Précapitalistes, (Paris: Editions Sociales,
1970), preface.

56
rent payments varied considerably. Tenure arrangements ranged from season-to-season contracts to hereditary
tenure rights. Ground rent was paid in kind (mainly grain) and in cash. It was organized through both fixed rents and
share tenancy. It may well be that this complex situation was one of transition between a relatively stable Asiatic
mode of production and some other, perhaps capitalist, mode arising under the economic and political impact of
colonialism and neocolonialism. Unfortunately, serious study from a Marxist perspective of the reasons for this
complexity and the way in which it was evolving during the first decades of the twentieth century is not very
advanced. The early studies undertaken by Mao to try to understand the class structure of the countryside in the
twenties and thirties focused more on a static classification than on a dynamic analysis of why and how those classes
were developing.211
His later study in 1939 of Chinese history followed the traditional Marxist classification into primitive
communism, slavery and feudalism. Under this conception "feudal" describes the mode or social formation which
has elsewhere been denoted by "Asiatic": a natural village economy exploited via land rent, tribute, taxes and corvee
services by the lords, nobility and emperor of an hierarchical, centralized state. Mao recognized that this structure
had been broken up under the impact of imperialism which was bankrupting peasants, destroying village handicrafts,
hastening the growth of a commodity economy and stimulating a limited growth of capitalism. He also saw that this
was occurring in such a way that alliance between imperialists and "feudal landlords" was slowing the transition to
capitalism and increasing the impoverishment of the peasantry. This new situation he called "colonial, semi-colonial
and semi-feudal." But while the analysis of landlord-tenant relations as semi-feudal in China after the fall of the
highly centralized dynasties probably made more sense, it still glossed over the complex changes occurring in rural
modes of production and exploitation mentioned above.21235
Fortunately, however, what matters here is not so much a positive analysis of the various, evolving modes
of production, as the recognition of the negative fact that they were not capitalist. Because of this the actions of mis-
sionaries and foundation reformers alike were actions undertaken at the interface between two modes of
production-in the sense that the methods of production which the reformers tried to introduce and the kinds of
business attitudes and labor and tenure arrangements which they favored were direct offshoots of the capitalist
economy whose expansion propelled them into China. As we will see, they came to understand that a fundamental
restructuring of rural Chinese society was necessary, not only to permit growth and widen markets but increasingly
as a defensive move against the threat of communist revolution.
The period of Rockefeller interest in reshaping Chinese agriculture held two distinct foci of activity and
planning. The first was the University of Nanking and its College of Agriculture. In and around that institution-one
of the major agricultural colleges in China--developed a large number of programs and projects which were often
financed directly or indirectly by one of the Rockefeller philanthropies. The second was the rural reconstruction
movement of the middle thirties. Far vaster in conception and application than the more limited programs of
Nanking, the movement built not only on the agricultural work there but was also patterned after earlier
reconstruction movements (of which by far the most important was Jimmy Yen's Mass Education Movement).
This period of Rockefeller involvement (1924-1943) was one during which the aim of foreign activity in
the Chinese countryside came more and more to be focused on resisting the expansion of the Chinese Communist
Party and the Chinese Revolution. The Rockefeller projects were only several among many with this aim. This
preoccupation of missionaries, private foundations, and other private groups in rural China stood in remarkable
contrast to the lack of interest demonstrated by official U.S. government actions. In terms of agriculture, government
involvement was limited to a small number of short-term technical missions uncoordinated by any overall plan. 213
There were but a few men in Washington, like Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who pushed a more vigorous
policy of intervention. There were also a number of coherent, detailed reports made by foreign service officers in
China which evidenced as high a consciousness of the communist threat in the countryside as that which pervaded
the private community. But until the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, Washington stood fast in its determination
not to become involved directly in any attempt to "reconstruct" China internally. 214 When American officials finally
did swing to large-scale aid for the Kuomintang government in the early 1940s they emphasized mainly military aid
and the amount of economic aid which they authorized was far too little to have any appreciable impact.

211
See for example: Mao Tse-Tung, "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society," 1926 and "How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural
Areas," 1933, Mao Tse-tung, (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), Vol. I, pp. 13-19, 137-139.
212
Mao Tse-tung, "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party," December 1939, in Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, 22. cit., Vol.
11, pp. 306-313.
213
Merle E. Curti and Kendall Birr, Prelude to Point Four (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1954), pp. 29-37, 144-149.
214
For a sample of American foreign service officers' understanding of the situation in China see: James C. Thomson, Jr., While China Faced
West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), chapter 2.

57
 Rockefeller work in Chinese agriculture began in 1924 when the International Education Board joined
forces with Cornell University's Department of Plant Breeding to build up a program of agricultural research and
extension in the University of Nanking. Like the Rockefeller philanthropies, Cornell had a long standing interest in
China. In the 1890s Cornell president Jacob Gould Schurman, at the request of a Chinese viceroy, had contracted
Gerow Brill, Cornell graduate and Dutchess County farmer to establish an "agricultural center for improving
Chinese farming and for training agricultural leaders" in Hupeh province. Although Brill's mission failed, partly due
to local indifference and partly to lack of help from American consular officials, it set a precedent that was long
remembered.215 For over two decades before the launching of the Cornell-Nanking project a growing number of
Chinese were brought to Cornell on scholarships from the Boxer Indemnity Fund. Among these were several from
the College of Agriculture at the University of Nanking.
The College, which had been established in 1914 by Joseph Bailie, a Presbyterian missionary, was financed
by missionary funds and some $675,000 from the Committee of One Hundred for China Famine Relief set up by
Woodrow Wilson and administered by a committee appointed by the American Minister to China--ex-Cornell
president Jacob Gould Schurman. Like the U.S. Land Grant Colleges several of its specialized research activities
were also supported by private business groups such as the American Silk Association and the Chinese Cotton Mill
Owners' Association. In 1919 College Dean John H. Reisner invited John Lossing Buck, a Cornell graduate who
was then working as an agricultural missionary in nearby Anhwei Province, to establish a Department of
Agricultural Economics within the Nanking College.216 Two years later Cornell-in-China, Inc. was founded during
the famine of 1921-22 and began sending aid to the College of Agriculture for famine prevention work.
The idea of a joint Cornell/Nanking agricultural project was first expressed in a letter from Reisner to H. H.
Love, professor of plant breeding at Cornell. Reisner proposed a crop improvement and student training program to
be run by visiting Cornell professors over a period of several years. The plan was accepted by Cornell and contact
was made with the Rockefeller International Education Board to cover expenses.217 The contact was easily made
because Albert R. Mann, Dean of the Cornell School of Agriculture had just gone on leave to direct the I.E.B.'s
agricultural program.
That program in agriculture was devoted explicitly to the internationalization of the lessons learned in the
G.E.B. work in the South. The program was also founded on the favorite principle of its director Wickliffe Rose
(earlier head of the Sanitary Commission, director of the International Health Board, and president of the G.E.B.):
"Make the peaks higher." That is, it sought to strengthen the programs of the strongest areas or institutions. Con-
sequently its work in agriculture was focused mainly on Europe where it pushed farm demonstration and boys' and
girls' clubs. Its decision to support the Cornell/Nanking project, however, partly reflected this policy because the
I.E.B. had judged the Nanking College of Agriculture to be the strongest in China. 218
The project which lasted from 1924 to 1931 had two aspects. One was the introduction of a systematic
program of plant breeding in China which would, it was hoped, lead to higher yields and thus to higher food output.
This would reduce the chances of famine and, by so doing, bring greater economic and social stability. This plant
research represented a departure from the kind of work the G.E.B. had pursued in the South. In China there was no
U.S.D.A. to take responsibility for the research which was a prerequisite to both training and extension. Thus the
I.E.B.'s initial support differed somewhat from both the G.E.B. work and its own prior policies of supporting
demonstration work in Europe. Later, as results from the breeding program began to produce new varieties,
extension work became a more important aspect of the Nanking program.219

215
M. Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad, op. cit., pp. 28-35. Although the lack of interest among consular and diplomatic officials which
Brill faced was characteristic of the period, their progressive involvement in helping American business did little to increase their support for later
projects like Brill's. What concern there was seemed to originate in narrow commercial hopes. As Curti notes when Brill sought official support
from the Department of Agriculture the point of major concern was that "should the mission succeed American enterprise might profit through
the sale of agricultural machinery in China."
216
The most complete story of the Department of Agricultural Economics is: J. Lossing Buck, "Development of Agricultural Economics at the
University of Nanking, Nanking, China, 1926-46," Cornell International Agricultural Development Bulletin, No. 25, September 1973.
217
The most complete account of the program is: H. H. Love and J. H. Reisner, “The Cornell-Nanking Story,” Cornell International Agricultural
Bulletin, No. 4, April 1964.
218
G. W. Gray, op. cit., pp. vii and 13.
219
Agronomic research by missionaries like Buck mainly involved crop selection rather than breeding and their extension work was limited.
A useful summary of the development of Agricultural in all of its different forms in China is given in Hsin-Pao Yang, "Promoting
Cooperative Agricultural Extension Services in China" in E. Brunner, et al., eds., Farmers of the World: The Development of Agricultural
Extension (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945).

58
 When extension work did come, Buck's education at Cornell (where views on farmer education were based
on the system of federal extension launched by Knapp and his prior work in Anhwei Province had already oriented
him towards the upper strata of Chinese farmers--the landlords.

I decided or felt that these resident landlords were the best hope for introducing new ideas into agriculture
because they were educated, they could understand and they were well enough off to try something new.220

Thus once again, as in the South, the stage was being set for a differential impact on the farming sector--one which
would favor rich over poor farmers.
The second aspect was the training of future Chinese specialists. This fitted in with the educational
programs of all three institutions: Nanking, Cornell, and the I.E. B. Like the PUMC which was aimed at training
Chinese doctors to replace foreign specialists, the Cornell/Nanking people were hoping to be able to build up a self-
sufficient Chinese research program. One of the key persons produced by this aspect of the program was one of
Love's students, T. H. Shen. Shen studied plant breeding under Love first at Cornell and then in China. In many
ways he was to become to the Cornell program what Booker T. Washington had been to the Peabody and Slater
Funds in the 19th century South. For just as Washington rose from his training under General Armstrong to become
a major leader of black education, so too would Shen rise from under Love's wing to play a prominent role in
Chinese agriculture both before and after 1949.221
As in the South, this elite building approach which focused on individuals reflected the Americans'
ideological bias toward working with the "best elements" in any society. From the beginning there was an
understanding that it was the peasant masses who had to be converted into more productive, and less hungry
consumers if China was to be stabilized. Yet the problem was conceived primarily in simple terms of raising
productivity through changes in agricultural technology and government policies. Since in their prior experience in
America such changes had always come through the efforts of specialized institutions and organizations built around
dynamic individuals, it was only natural for them to try to recreate those conditions in China. The alternative, an
approach which gave a central, active role to the large number of poor and landless peasants, was beyond the scope
of their experience or ideology. Even if they had wished to do so, it was virtually impossible for such a small, yet
immensely wealthy group of outsiders to go straight to the peasants. They had neither the men nor the knowledge of
China necessary to mobilize the peasants to take their land and tools into their own hands and to help them organize
themselves on a less fragmented, more productive basis. This the Chinese Communist Party could and would do,
through thousands of Chinese peasant cadres and an ideology which emphasized the strength and creativity of the
peasant masses.
As we will see, the closest the foreign reformers would come to such a mass-oriented approach was during
the later rural reconstruction movement. Yet even here, they would continue to work through only a small number of
non-peasant Chinese intellectuals whose sympathy and identification with the people stopped far short of the
revolutionary changes necessary to improve standards of living in the countryside.
Once launched, the crop improvement program grew rapidly to become a "cooperative" program involving
some 14 agricultural stations in China. Many of these stations were missionary projects and included the
Nanhsuchow Station in Anhwei where Buck had worked before coming to Nanking. This was a second way the
Rockefellers found for dealing with the existing missionary structure. The Peking Union Medical College stood out
above the medical missionaries to provide an example for emulation. The Cornell/Nanking Crop Improvement
Program (as it was called) reached out directly to its predecessors and enveloped them within its own structure. In
both cases the result was the training of a specialized elite skilled enough to carry on the work, and in the case of
agriculture, astute enough to later influence government policy.
There were many other fields in which the knowledge necessary for the formulation of agricultural projects
was available neither to private reformers nor to government agencies. In response to the need by both private and
Chinese government agencies for information on various conditions in the countryside, J. L. Buck initiated a series
of field surveys as part of the Department of Agricultural Economics' research activities. The first surveys conducted
in the period 1920-23 were devoted to discovering the structure of farm "management" practices on farms and to
investigating "the economic and social conditions in the rural communities." The results of the latter studies were
published and circulated to missionary groups and to several government organizations.

220
John Lossing Buck, Oral History Tape Transcript, 47/2/0.H.2, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca.
221
On Shen and his career see H. H. Love, 22. cit.: T. H. Shen, The Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1970), and his autobiography, T. H. Shen, Zhongnian zishu, 1957.

59
 During the subsequent period of 1924-27, at the time of the uneasy alliance between the Chinese
Communist Party and the Kuomintang, other surveys were made of population, prices, crop production, weights and
measures, and farm tenancy. The studies of land tenancy, which were carried out in 1926, were "spurred on by the
attention given to the problem by the revolutionary forces advancing from the South." They gave the first statistical
evidence on one of the basic conflicts in Chinese rural society. The studies indicated the existence of considerable
landlord-tenant conflict--with the excesses of absentee landlordism more prominent in the Southern rice regions than
in the Northern wheat area.222
Pulling together the various results of these studies, Buck was preparing a manuscript on The Chinese
Farm Economy when Communist troops of the Nationalist government invaded Nanking in March 1927. If there
had been any doubts in the minds of the Cornell/Nanking people about why they were there, they were erased as the
civil war came to their doorstep. In fact the war came not only to their doorstep but through it. Lossing and his wife
(Pear Buck) fled China. Weeks later, Pearl wrote to friends from their haven in Japan describing what had happened
and their feelings about it:

It seems that the Southern soldiers urged on the mobs of poor and idle people of the city and told them to
come in and take all the foreigners had, since now everything was to be in common, and there was to be no
more private property. We recognized this as the red teaching of Russia, and that the communists were in
control of Nanking, and not the Conservative Nationalists as we had hoped . . . The fight is just on now and
every one is going to have to line up on one side or the other.223

When Lossing wrote to Shen a few days later, he pointed more analytically to the cause of this debacle and the
difficulties they were going to have in avoiding others:

The Communist doctrine appeals to those who are near the starvation line and China has a great many such
people as you all too well know. The doctrine has taken such a hold that eradication now is going to be
very difficult before a greal deal of damage has been done . . . .224

But the Communist hold on Nanking was fleeting. In July the Kuomintang split with and expelled the C.C.P.
members. Lossing was able to return to Nanking in September. But, as he had feared the earlier revolts continued
and his return coincided with the abortive Autumn Harvest Uprising lead by Mao Tse-tung in Hunan.
During that same period, a conference of the Rockefeller-financed Institute of Pacific Relations was being
held in the Pacific which would give Buck and the Department of Agricultural Economics a new project in their
struggle against the Communists.
The Institute for Pacific Relations was founded with Rockefeller support in 1925. It was one of a number of
elite policy-making organizations set up by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace after the First World War. (The Foreign Policy Association was founded in 1918 and the
Council on Foreign Affairs in 1921.) Like the other groups, the I.P.R. provided funds for research in specific foreign
policy areas as well as forums where scholars, government officials, and international businessmen could come
together to freely exchange views and work out possible solutions to problems in foreign affairs. 225
At the Honolulu Conference, Dr. 0. E. Baker of the Division of Agricultural Economics of the U.S.D.A.
and advisor to the Milbank Memorial Fund suggested that, in order to be able to understand better what was taking
place in the Chinese countryside, studies should be undertaken of land utilization patterns. 226 The idea led to further
study in Washington and the next year Dr. J. B. Condliffe, I.P.R. research secretary, and Dr. L. T. Chen, secretary of
the I.P.R.'s China Council, approached Buck in Nanking. By that time Buck had finished his manuscript and the two
I.P.R. officials were sufficiently impressed with this presentation of the Nanking work to recommend that the I.P.R.

222
Studies by C. M. Chiao in Kiangsu and Anhwei provinces, described in J. L. Buck, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
223
Letter from Pearl Buck to "Friends," April 13, 1927, H. H. Love Papers, Box 1, folder 5, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca.
224
Letter from J. L. Buck to T. H. Shen, April 16, 1927, H. H. Love Papers, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca.
225
I argued in the last chapter that because of the makeup of its board of trustees and the breadth of its programs, the G.E.B. was a class rather
than family institution. So too are the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For more on the class nature
of such groups, see: David Horowitz, "Billion Dollar Brains," Ramparts, May 1969 and G. William Domhoff, The Higher Circles, (New York:
Vintage, 1970).
226
Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Institute for Pacific Relations, 1927. The I.P.R.'s concern and knowledge about
intelligence gathering made it a valuable source of both men and information for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, R. Harris
Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 267-8.

60
publish it. This was done in 1930. They also saw that the kind of data gathering that Nanking had been engaged in
was precisely a small-scale version of the kind of study which the I.P.R. wanted for China as a whole. At their
request, Buck drew up a 5-year plan of research which was submitted to the I.P.R.227 The plan was approved by a
trio of Rockefeller-funded organizations: the China Council of the I.P.R., the I.P.R. in New York, and the Social
Science Research Council.228
This data gathering project, the results of which were finally published in three volumes in 1937, far
outstripped all previous efforts of the kind. Not only were large numbers of Chinese and missionary personnel
mobilized for surveying some 16,786 farms throughout China, but foreign specialists were brought in to prepare
special studies in such diverse areas as soils, population, food consumption and nutrition, topography, and
meteorology. Some of these sub-studies obtained funding from other private sources. For example, the population
work was funded by the Milbank Memorial Fund. Dr. Edgar Sydenstricker, brother of Pearl Buck and research
director for the Fund, led a team of three to organize the data gathering and analysis. The Scripps Foundation also
funded a parallel study in population at this time.229 The food consumption study was financed by the Stanford Food
Research Institute, which in turn was partly funded by the Laura Spellman Memorial.
The considerable success of this project, which was carried on in many areas of China, including areas near
or under Communist control, was due in no small part to the fact that most field workers were Chinese and the
sponsoring institution--the University of Nanking--was a private organization. This, according to Buck, "obviated
fears that would have occurred from a survey by a government or-ganization."230 Nevertheless, a number of
incidents did occur in which Buck's field workers had to flee their assigned areas to avoid capture. The value of this
kind of data gathering--a euphemism during such times for intelligence work--was clear not only to the reformers at
Nanking and the I.P.R. but also to the Nationalist government. Only two days after the last regional investigators re-
turned from work on the Land Utilization Project in 1934, they were sent out again on a new survey for the govern-
ment. This time, the aim was out and out counterinsurgency. The field workers were sent into Anhwei, Hupeh,
Honan and especially Kiangsi province from which the Nationalist troops had just driven the Communist forces. The
survey was ordered by the Generalissimo himself, and was funded by the Farmers' Bank of China. The aim was to
gather as much information as possible which could be of use in the government's plans for reconstruction--read
pacification--of the area.231
Besides these kinds of surveys, which continued into the forties, after the Japanese invasion in 1937 forced
the University to move to Szechwan Province, the Department of Agricultural Economics undertook a number of
other significant projects designed to reshape Chinese agriculture. One of the most important of these was the
extension work based on the development of agricultural cooperatives. As early as 1922, Reisner and Buck were
appointed members of a Committee on Credit and Economic Improvement of the China International Famine Relief
Commission, which drew up plans and regulations for rural cooperatives to be funded by the Commission. 232 The
interest in organizing cooperatives spread fairly rapidly and included marketing as well as credit cooperatives. This
cooperative movement was soon backed by such important financial institutions as the Shanghai Commercial and
Savings Bank and the Bank of China. Besides its role in providing alternatives to communist organizing, the
movement seemed to be based on the same motives as those of the G.E.B. assault on the supply merchant/crop lien
system in the U.S. South.233 On the one hand, credit in rural China was seen to be largely controlled by local money
lenders who charged high rates of interest, provided only a small volume of credit, and kept the peasants in continual
debt. This, combined with a similar middleman squeeze on the marketing of commercial crops like cotton, was felt
to be an important weight holding down the productive potential of Chinese agriculture. The solution in this case
was the agricultural cooperative which by this time was in widespread use in Europe and the United States. The

227
The I.P.R. also funded an overall study of Chinese agriculture by R. H. Tawney who lived with Buck for a while in Nanking. His book Land
and Labor in China (Bostoh: Beacon, 1966) was widely circulated in China and abroad.
228
The SSRC, like the I.P.R., was at that time funded by the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial. It was created in 1923 by Beardsley Ruml,
then director of the Memorial, to "correlate and stimulate research in the social sciences." When the Memorial was merged with the Rockefeller
Foundation in 1929 the funding for these groups continued.
229
The results of the population studies were included in Buck's three volume opus, Land Utilization in China (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1937). They were also published separately with further analysis by the Milbank Fund in its Quarterly Bulletins of January, April, July,
October 1933 and July 1935.
230
J. L. Buck, op. cit., p. 32.
231
For more on Kiangsi reconstruction efforts, see below, pp. 225-27.
232
The CIFRC was formed in 1921 through the union of seven relief societies. Most of its directors were "missionaries, Chinese churchmen, and
Y.M.C.A. personnel." Thomson, 22. cit., p. 46.
233
See Chapter II, pp. 148-150.

61
cooperative would not only permit the pooling and reduction of risk--making agricultural loans more profitable to
banks--but would also provide an organizational structure within which business techniques and the virtues of
capitalism could be taught to the peasants.
There were other projects and programs which placed the College of Agriculture and its personnel in close
cooperation with either the Chinese or American governments. In 1931, Harry H. Love, head of the Crop
Improvement Program accepted an invitation from a joint Central/Provincial (Kiangsu and Chekiang) government
group to spend three and a half years helping to organize and set up a government sponsored crop improvement
program for both provinces. Love and Buck also helped set up the National Agricultural Research Bureau within the
National Ministry of Agriculture. The decision of the government to found the National Bureau was in part due to
the convincing arguments of K. S. Sie and T. H. Shen of the College of Agriculture that agricultural development
was necessary to the government's political aims. In his letter telling Love of the government's desire to have him
help out, R. G. Wiggins, a Cornell professor working at Nanking, wrote:

This invitation is the result of many contacts made by the department here with governmental officials
interested more or less in agriculture. . . They have finally begun to realize that their existence as a nation is
dependent upon agriculture and that any improvement in the condition of the farmer improves the
conditions and stability of the government . . . As a result of the plant breeding work here and . . . the
propaganda work of Shep, they have begun to see the possibilities . .234

K. S. Sie and T. S. Shen both became directors of the Bureau, which went on to survive all changes of government
until 1949, when its 12 members migrated to Taiwan (with the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction of which
they formed an important part of the staff).
Another area of interest at the Department of Agricultural Economics was the problem of price changes in
China. Early work on the impact of U.S. silver policy on the Chinese economy led to changes in the policies of both
the U.S. and Chinese governments. The U.S. had raised its buying price of silver which had stimulated silver exports
from China. This had caused a depletion of the metal base of China's domestic monetary system. The problem was
an old one which dated back to the silver outflows of the early 19th Century caused by the forced opening of China
to imports of opium and European textiles. In 1935 the Chinese government left silver for a managed paper currency
and at the same time J. L. Buck was called to Washington to explain the situation to Secretary of Treasury
Morgenthau and President Roosevelt. As a result of those meetings, Buck was appointed a treasury representative in
China and advisor to Morgenthau. Morgenthau, who was fighting a losing battle to convince Roosevelt to adopt a
more active policy of intervention in China, undertook to reverse the negative effects by paying the Nationalist
Government gold or U.S. dollars for its silver.235 Later work on prices at the College, financed by the Rockefeller
Foundation, was focused on the problem of spiraling inflation which gradually was undercutting not only
agricultural development, but also the Foundation's investments and in general the stability of the Nationalist
regime.
The second major focus of Rockefeller interest in Chinese agriculture was the rural reconstruction
movement of the thirties. Where support for various projects at the University of Nanking had been fragmentary and
often indirect--through intermediary institutions--the Foundation's involvement in the reconstruction movement was
both integrated and massive. The program resulted from two survey trips made by its representative Selskar M.
Gunn. Gunn, who had been working with the International Health Board in Europe, visited China in 1931 and again
in 1932-33. During those extensive trips, he visited dozens of institutions and programs, and became familiar with
the rural reconstruction movement which was at the time preoccupying reformers throughout China.236
The roots of the movement lay in the growing comprehension that the real struggle for China lay in the
countryside. That was where the Communist party was making its most important advances. The proclamation of
the Chinese Soviet Republic at Juichin, Kiangsi province, by Mao Tse-tung in 1931 and the subsequent expansion of
the revolutionary areas in South China were at last pushing both the Nationalist government and Christian
missionaries into an urgent quest for a solution. While the government massed its military forces under German
advisors, and tried to plan for post victory consolidation, the missionaries gathered in a series of special meetings to
discuss the Communist threat. Both groups leaned toward rural reconstruction. The government even broached the
idea to the missionaries of undertaking complementary projects in areas reclaimed from the Communists.
234
Letter to H. H. Love from R. G. Wiggins, April 30, 1930, H. H. Love Papers, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca.
235
Buck, 22. cit., pp. 36-38. Fairbank, op. cit., p. 260.
236
Thomson's book, op. cit., is the only available serious study of the reform efforts during the period of the Nanking Government, 1927-38. His
study has provided many of the facts presented in this section, if not the details of analysis.

62
 The major source of inspiration to both missionaries and government was the mass education movement of
James Y. C. Yen which had been developing since 1924. "Jimmy" Yen, educated at Yale and Princeton, had gone to
France during World War I as a Y.M.C.A. secretary to help supervise some 140,000-200,000 Chinese coolies (the
Chinese Labor Corps) who had been brought over to dig trenches and build roads for the allies. There he devised a
simple 1000-character vocabulary to teach the illiterate coolies to read and write. When he returned to China he split
away from the "foreign" Y.M.C.A. to found an indigenous and rather idealist movement based on promoting
literacy, economic improvement and citizenship among workers and peasants. Yet despite the idealism of its "back
to the people" orientation, Yen's Mass Education Movement for rural reconstruction was hardly revolutionary. He
not only cooperated with local gentry and government officials but was a dedicated anti-Communist. Years later
Yen described his aims this way:

The strategic way to combat totalitarianism is not through the traditional military approach but rather
through intelligent counterrevolution. Three-fourths of the people of the world are illiterate, under-
nourished, suffering from preventable disease, in debt, and misgoverned . . . We must have armaments, but
we also must have the imagination to face and solve the unrest and misery of humanity . . . With one-tenth
of our military appropriations we could carry on a vast and revolutionary work in reconstruction. The rice
field is even more important than the battle field.237

Nor was Yen too anti-foreign to solicit money from America's wealthy when in 1927 he decided to set up at
Ting Hsien and expand his mass education program to include public health, agricultural extension, industrial
education, social surveys and research in teaching. Henry Ford contributed a half a million dollars and the Milbank
Memorial Fund accepted fund work in the area of public health beginning in 1929.238 The Fund, headed by such
businessmen as Elihu Root and Albert Milbank, undertook the project fully aware of the political struggles then
rocking China. The program of the Department of Public Health, which their aid made possible, included data
surveys, vaccination campaigns, health education, and the establishment of regional clinics. These health programs
were conducted in coordination with the local gentry, the government and nearby units of the Nationalist army.239
The Department was headed by Dr. H.-Y. Yao, a graduate of Rockefeller's PUMC, and its program was developed
by Edgar Sydenstricker of the Milbank Fund in cooperation with officials of the PUMC. By 1932 the PUMC-Ting
Hsien relationship had been shaped into a formal program for the exchange of personnel and facilities.
The missionaries, who visited Yen's project both individually and en masse in organized meetings in 1930
and again in 1933, saw in his work the most imaginative and efficient approach yet devised to reach the mass of pea-
sants who were most susceptible to the attractions of Communism. Wrote one inspired missionary: "Jimmy Yen
accomplishes all of the Red Program, and more in a way that is Christian and acceptable to all who still believe that
Christ's principle of love and sacrifice is more powerful than violence and the sword." 240 Chiang Kai-shek, who in-
vited Yen to Nanking and subsequently asked him to develop plans for extending this kind of work, was also
convinced that the approach could have a place in his plans.
Missionary and government interests came together when Chiang, at the urging of representatives of the
League of Nations, decided to launch a sizable project for the rehabilitation of areas of Kiangsi Province from which
his armies were planning on chasing the Communist forces. To help organize the government effort, Chiang
requested and obtained the services of Harry Love from the Cornell/Nan-king project to act as advisor to the
provincial governor. Love's dedication to the government idea was a reaffirmation of Yen's point of view: "To
conquer communism we must have another program of social organization . . . a program, then that appeals to the
people more than the program of communism."241 To complement the government program Chiang wanted the
Christian missionaries to move into the ex-Communist areas "right behind the armies" to help organize local
Christians to support the Nationalist regime. After much hesitation the missionaries finally accepted the invitation

237
Jimmy Yen, They Dare to Believe, p. 89.
238
On the Ford grant see "Y. C. James Yen," Current Biography, 1946, p. 671.
239
On the beginnings of the project see: "A Rural Health Experiment in China," Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly Bulletin, Vol. VIII, No. 4,
October 1930. On its subsequent development see Bulletins: July 1931, October 1931, January 1932, April 1933, July 1934, October 1934,
January 1936, etc. The 1933 Annual dinner of the Fund's Boards of Council was addressed by Pearl Buck and Edward C. Carter, secretary of the
Institute for Pacific Relations who both spoke on the importance of the Ting-Hsien project in the development of China. Milbank Memorial Fund
Quarterly Bulletin, April 1933. Cornell University was also interlocked with the Milbank Fund by the presence on its Technical Board of Cornell
president Livingston Farrand.
240
Thomson, op. cit., p. 81.
241
Ibid., p. 88.

63
and when Chiang's armies did push the Red Army out of Kiangsi in 1934 and into the first stages of the Long
March, a Kiangsi Christian Rural Service Union (KCRSU) was established. Sponsored by the National Christian
Council of China, the KCRSU's project in Lichuan, Kiangsi, was headed by George Shepard, a missionary who had
himself been forced by the Communists out of a nearby area of Kiangsi. Shepard patterned his project after Yen's
movement and obtained additional financial backing from Chinese sources and from such foreign corporations as
the Rockefeller Standard Oil of New York and the British American Tobacco Company.242
The program at Lichuan had many projects: medical and public health services, three schools for primary
education, agricultural extension work, a Boy Scout troop and a variety of recreational activities. One activity it did
not have was any kind of land reform. But if there was neither land redistribution nor tenure reform it was not
through a lack of consciousness about its need. Among the missionaries at Lichuan, and elsewhere in China there
was clear awareness of the exploitative nature of land arrangements and of the needs of poor peasants for relief. Men
like George Shepard saw not only the problem but that it was being dealt with more swiftly and more effectively by
the Communists.243
This awareness was widespread among all those closely concerned with reform in China. The studies under
J. Los-sing Buck had indicated the existence of the problem to those too removed from the villages to see it
themselves. And where Buck's treatment was conservative and tended to understatement, the problem had received
wide publicity by other well-known observers. R. H. Tawney, whose 1930 study had been financed by the I.P.R.,
had pointed directly to the importance and dangers of the phenomenon:

The Revolution of 1911 was a bourgeois affair. The revolution of the peasants has still to come. If their
rulers continue to exploit them, or to permit them to be exploited, as remorselessly as hitherto, it is likely to
be p4pleasant. It will not, perhaps, be undeserved.' 244

A League of Nations' team of experts which had studied Kiangsi in 1933 had insisted that "the chief cause of unrest
was the tenancy system" and had proposed a land reform program to the government. This perception had been
echoed two years later by George E. Taylor (later to be head of OWI-Far East Division) after his visit to the area.
During the same year American government officials in China and the U.S. were writing reports about the urgent
need for reform in China and elsewhere in Asia. Finally, during a return trip to China in 1936 the League of Nations'
team visited Kiangsi again and chastised the government for ignoring its earlier recommendations. 245
The reason there was no land reform project in Lichuan, or anywhere else in Kiangsi, or in China for that
matter, was that the reformers, conscious though they were of the dire need of such programs, had no support from
the government. There were promises from time to time but never any action. Before the Kuomintang troops had
driven the Communists out of Kiangsi the government had talked about land reform as a part of the rural
rehabilitation program.246 But on the heels of the occupying Nationalist troops came not only the reformers but also
the landlords who had earlier fled the area. Not only did the government not undertake any land reform but it
allowed the undoing of the Communist land redistribution. The further North the Communists marched the less the
government was interested in any reform which would hurt the landlord class on which it had always depended for
support. This pattern of seriously considering land reform only under the most desperate of circumstances would
continue to characterize not only Chinese government policy (until 1948) but that of many landlord-based regimes
with which the United States would have to deal in the post-World War II period.
It was into this charged climate of excitement over the Nationalist victories and a new idea about how to
use socio-economic reform to fight communism that Selkar Gunn came during his two trips. He too was impressed
by the rural reconstruction movement and by Yen's work in particular. On the other hand, he leveled severe criticism
against some of the Rockefeller Foundation's pet projects, like the PUMC , which he felt were not reaching the
people. Although excited over the prospects of reconstruction he could also see that to date there were only a large
number of fragmented, uncoordinated efforts, inadequately linked to universities like Nanking which had expertise
which they could use. His final report on "China and the Rockefeller Foundation" mapped a whole new approach for
future efforts. He had no doubt that the Foundation could use its resources wisely and "take a significant part in
helping China in its struggle for stability and progress." The plan which he developed and which the Foundation

242
The admiring comment about Yen quoted on page 46 is from Shepard.
243
Thomson, op. cit., pp. 77-80, 94.
244
R. H. Tawney, op. cit., p. 74.
245
Thomson, op. cit., pp. 112-116.
246
There were even some land tenure reform laws in existence but their application was always to remain -virtually nonexistent.

64
undertook was one of regional reconstruction. As in the South where the General Education Board stepped in to pull
together a variety of private efforts, now the Rockefeller Foundation would create an umbrella of closely knit,
interrelated organizational structures which could give coherence and direction to the various individual movements.
It was a new era in Chinese rural reform efforts.
The Rockefeller program offered support for a limited number of key institutions: Yen's Mass Education
Movement, the agricultural program at the University of Nanking, Yenching University's natural science program,
Nankai University's program of economic studies of rural reconstruction, and three governmental institutions: the
National Health Administration (public health), National Central University's program of animal husbandry, and the
National Agricultural Research Bureau. All of these activities and more were then coordinated through a North
China Council for Rural Reconstruction which was created in 1936 and chaired by Jimmy Yen.
For education, agricultural economics, agronomy, extension, public health and administration the
Rockefeller Foundation provided money. But, like the missionaries at Lichuan and Jimmy Yen at Ting-Hsien,
nowhere in the rural reconstruction movement was there any land reform program. Once more there was no
government backing and hence no program for dealing with that long malignant and widely recognized problem.
Years later Raymond Fosdick, who was a trustee of the Foundation at the time of Gunn's report and who
accompanied him on a survey trip to China in 1935, was quoted as saying with respect to why the Foundation was
not involved in land reform: "In 1935 we weren't thinking at all about the Communists--they were way up in the
North West, all mixed up with warlords." Such naiveté from a man who in 1936 took over the presidency of the
Foundation, from a man who would also say that China "might become a vast laboratory in the social sciences, with
implications that would be international in scope," from a man intimately involved with all of those men and insti-
tutions concerned with the agrarian problems of China and the oft reiterated need for land reform in the face of
Communist revolution, is a bit much to swallow. More likely Fosdick, Gunn, and many others at the Foundation
were well aware of the situation--the needs and the limitations on what the Foundation could do without government
support. Like the men of the Cornell/Nanking project and the missionary project at Lichuan, the Foundation officials
decided to undertake their coordination and funding of rural reconstruction within the limits set by the Chiang
regime. In this they were following not only precedence in China but also the Rockefeller philanthropic tradition.
Despite a certain reluctance of the Foundation officers to be identified too closely with the Nanking
government the Rockefeller program was increasingly seen as complementary to the government programs by both
the Foundation and Chiang. Once more the aim was not the creation of a permanent Foundation role but rather
"pump priming," with the object of fostering an eventual adoption and takeover of the whole program by the
government.
With the revolutionaries forced into relative isolation in Shensi Province (Yenan) the government and the
private groups were free to expand their operations. This they did until the Japanese invasion in 1937 drastically
disrupted the whole program. But even during and after the massive western migration of the government and many
private organizations (like the University of Nanking), the movement continued simply by refocusing its main
efforts on the Southwest. Between the creation of the Rockefeller program in 1935 and 1944 when war and
economic chaos brought Foundation appropriations to an end, the Foundation spent some $1.9 million on rural
reconstruction in China.247 The program was the last and most comprehensive private effort to change Chinese
agriculture before the fall of the Nationalist government in 1949. As historian and former State Department official,
James C. Thomson, Jr. has written summarizing the position of the Rockefeller program:
If, indeed, there ever was a gradualist alternative to violent revolution in the Chinese countryside, the
program of the Rockefeller Foundation came closer to it than any previous effort by the many would-be reformers in
Kuomintang China.248

The Joint Commission for Rural Reconstruction and the Last Gasp of Reformism
Although Rockefeller support for rural reconstruction stopped in 1944, the movement was revived after
the end of the Sino-Japanese War (1945) in the form of a joint U.S.-Chinese government project. In October 1945
the Chinese government presented a proposal to the U.S. for a program of agricultural rehabilitation. As a result a
Joint China-United States Agricultural Mission was formed to draw up proposals.249 On that 11 member Mission
which traveled in China for several weeks, were T.H. Shen, ex-Cornell-Nanking student and professor, then
247
Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1944, p. 257
248
Thomson, op. cit., p. 150.
249
For an introduction to the story of the JCRR, see T. H. Shen, The Sino-American Joint Commission . . . op. cit., and Economic Cooperation
Administration, The Problem of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction in China, [1950].

65
working in the Chinese war-time food bureau, and Raymond T. Moyer, an old classmate of Shen's and ex-
agricultural missionary at the Oberlin-Shansi Station--one of those encompassed by the Cornell-Nanking crop
improvement project, then head of the Far Eastern Desk in the Bureau of Foreign Agricultural Relations,
U.S.D.A. Among those consulted was Jimmy Yen who "argued that the expenditure of U.S. $6 on a Chinese
should effectively prevent him from being influenced by Communist ideology" and who recommended that at
least 10 per cent of any aid package be devoted to rural reconstruction.250 That, of course, was one of the
Mission's major recommendations, among others, which reflected many of the earlier programs carried on by
private groups: modern input development, farm credit, public health, etc. The rationale for the proposed program
reflected the now familiar motives:

. . . as Communism was capitalizing on the poverty and miseries of the Chinese peasantry, it was felt that
the most effective way to steal the Communist thunder would be to solve, the agrarian problem through
peaceful reforms.251

The commission recommendations were followed up by an energetic lobbying campaign in Washington by the
Chinese--including Jimmy Yen. Among those whose support he obtained were Representatives Walter H. Judd and
Helen Gahagan Douglas, well known members of the China Lobby. When the China Aid Act was passed in April
1948 it incorporated the recommendations made by Yen and the Agricultural Mission.252 In October of that year the
Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction began operations in Nanking.
Among the original five commissioners were Jimmy Yen, T. H. Shen, R. T. Moyer, and J. E. Baker from
the China International Famine Relief. At first the J.C.R.R. supported a series of activities, such as Yen's Mass
Education Movement, which were patterned after earlier rural reconstruction methods. But in June of 1949
mounting Nationalist defeats jarred the Commission into the realization that the old methods just were not working.

The Communists had overrun North China, and had occupied Nanking, Shanghai, and Hankow. The
National Government had removed to Canton and the JCRR had established headquarters there. The Joint
Commission concluded that the program as adopted at the beginning could not influence the situation
significantly within the time which it foresaw would be allowed . . . The Joint Commission concluded that
only two things could prevent the remaining parts of Nationalist China from coming under Communist
control: effective military action, holding some portion of Nationalist China; and good government . . . to
hold the area from within.253

Now what good government really meant was something which had never played an appreciable part in any of the
rural reconstruction efforts to date: land reform. In a last desperate effort the JCRR decreed a program of land rent
reduction, security of tenure, and farmer associations to force compliance with the existing laws. Such programs
were begun in Kwangsi, Szechwan, and Formosa. Only the last survived the victorious advance of the revolutionary
forces in late 1949.
76

Conclusion
From the point of view of the American elite who undertook to change China there were some obvious
successes: the Cornell-Nanking crop improvement program certainly did develop new varieties and helped raise
crop yields; the multiple surveys carried out by the staff of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Nanking
substantially increased the amount of available knowledge on the conditions in the countryside; the college of
Agriculture (as well as many other institutions) did train appreciable numbers of competent persons to take over
many of the programs begun by foreigners--and some like T. H. Shen rose high into the policy-making circles of
government or business;254 a sizable number of stable, rural cooperatives were established which reduced marketing

250
H. L. Boorman, et al., eds., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970 Vol. 4, p. 53.
251
T. H. Shen, op. cit., p. 13.
252
William O. Douglas, North from Malaya (Garden City: Doubleday, 1953), pp. 266-7, and Time, May 19, 1947.
253
Economic Cooperation Administration, op. cit., p. 12.
254
Buck's data on graduates of the Department of Agricultural Economics show that between 1924 and 1946, of the 294 graduates some 121
went into either government or banking. Buck, op. cit., p. 61.

66
and credit costs; the rural reconstruction movement was eventually coordinated under an overall Council; and
finally, government help and cooperation for the reform movement was acquired.
On the other hand they had to face one glaring, overriding failure: in spite of all the partial successes in
technical fields, elite training, and private--government coordination, the whole effort to win the allegiance of the
Chinese peasant away from the Communist movement failed. Peasant support and its great well of strength flowed
to the Red Army, not Chiang. This failure was certainly one of many of the political, economic, and military factors
which helps explain the National collapse in 1949.
Why did the agricultural programs ultimately fail even when so many of them were ostensible successes?
One ready explanation is that because of the "pluralism" of the diverse groups involved--American missionaries,
Chinese Christians, "other Western trained Chinese, foundation personnel and visiting American experts"--there was
necessarily a high degree of fragmentation and the consequent lack of coordination doomed the whole effort. But the
bulk of this chapter has shown how so many of these so-called disparate groups were in fact closely interrelated.
Moreover, David Horowitz has demonstrated at some length in his summary history of China Area Studies how "the
vaunted pluralism of American academic, philanthropic, religious, economic and government institutions in China . .
. is largely an optical illusion."255
Another common interpretation is that the rural reconstruction movement--particularly the Rockefeller
program and later the JCRR--were too little and too late. Typical of this kind of reasoning is Raymond Moyer, JCRR
Commissioner writing in 1950:

In mainland China the JCRR program was an eleventh-hour program. It was too late . . . To be effective a
rural program must be implemented before serious economic deterioration has taken place, before people
lose confidence in the intentions and ability of their governments . . . The JCRR program . . . was in the
nature of a rear guard action undertaken in the midst of a situation which Rrogressively deteriorated and
finally crumbled.256

The implications of this kind of explanation--which resembles the GEB understanding of its work with blacks in the
South (see Chap. II, p. 33)--are that if only the work had gotten started earlier with more resources then maybe
everything would have worked out:

Results achieved in the JCRR program, however, encouraged those of us connected with this program to
believe that, if it could have been aggressively and steadily promoted, the end of three years would have
shown radical improvements in the conditions under which rural people live, including political and social
changes of lasting benefit to the country.257

What this implies of course is the belief that the content and structure of the programs were basically correct and
would have slowly gained the peasants' confidence. But it is not at all clear that this would have been so.
Most of the agricultural and reconstruction programs were based on a tacit acceptance of the current power
structure in the countryside and were focused on increasing the individual or productive power of the peasants. 258
The only important exceptions to this were the marketing and credit cooperatives which were apparently designed to
undercut local moneylenders and merchant middlemen. Such a strategy, however, can hope to improve the peasant's
lot only if he is in a social structure which allows him to reap the benefits of his individual improvement. But the
social relations of production in the Chinese countryside were, more often than not, that of landlord and tenant. For
most of those tenants every increase in income went to pay either old debts or new rents. This exploitative re-
lationship was at the bottom of much rural poverty and political oppression.259 Except for a couple of abortive
thoughts of land reform in Kiangsi in 1934 and the panic measures under the JCRR in 1949, the government

255
David Horowitz, "An Unorthodox History," op. cit., pp. 147-9.
256
Economic Cooperation Administration, op. cit., p. 29. Other commentators have repeated this line: ". . this program of modernization
without revolution failed in China (it was too little and too late), . . ." Horowitz, Ibid., p. 148. Thomson also emphasizes the lack of all
kinds of resources: skilled people, funds, adequate institutions. The Foundation was changing that he felt, but ". . . the Rockefeller effort
came too late for a fair evaluation . . .," p. 216.
257
Ibid., p. 33.
258
There was another side to the strategy which I have not discussed. That was a straightforward ideological offensive designed to win over the
people, especially the intellectuals. This involved the YMCA, the Chinese government, and the New Life Movement.
259
These problems of the peasants were of course complicated further by the impact of imperialism, i.e. debased currency, fluctuating markets
etc. See, J. Esherick, "Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, December 1972.

67
agencies eschewed the idea as a manifestation of Communist fanaticism. Rather than accepting the insight of men
like Stamper from the League, R. H. Wawney or George Taylor, who saw how fundamental land reform was to any
change in the peasants' condition, the rural reconstruction movements often began by undoing the land reform which
the Communists had propagated as an integral part of their rural improvement programs. In short, the attempt to
"transform" Chinese agriculture was mainly a program of technological and ideological reform which never really
challenged the most important rural social structures. Without such a challenge--such as increasingly implemented
by the Communist agrarian programs--the rural reconstruction movements could hardly compete with the Chinese
Revolution.
In looking over the years of agricultural development and rural reconstruction during the four decades from
1910 to 1950, it appears that the various Rockefeller philanthropies and the Rockefeller and Carnegie financed
policy institutions tried to draw on fairly wide experience and to achieve an overview of the China situation which
was impossible for either the missionaries or the National government. From the early interest in commercial
advantages which spurred Frederick Gates to favor aiding missionaries to the Foundation's decision to intervene in
the rural reconstruction battle against the Chinese communist revolution, the Foundation's role was one of study and
cautious manipulation.260
But whatever the breadth of vision, the total situation in the Chinese countryside was beyond both compre-
hension and control. The reformers could control neither the Communist forces nor the Chiang Kai-shek
government. The acceptance of the Nationalist framework condemned the Foundation programs to ultimate failure
very much the same way that the acceptance of the Southern power structure by the G.E.B. meant that its policies
would do little to help the black and poor farmers of the South. In order to achieve substantive reform in the rural
social structure in China, it would have been necessary to attack and destroy that class of landlords and provincial
warlords which exploited the peasants. But because that was the very class upon which Chiang depended for
political support such a course was impossible.261 Later, on Formosa, when Chiang's basis of support was limited to
the army and the U.S. aid he received, there was no longer this overriding political constraint and more far reaching
reforms were carried out than any attempted on the mainland.
It would seem, then, that there was only one really thorough, far reaching agrarian reform program in China
during this whole period. There was only one which spoke directly to the basic needs and desires of the Chinese
peasants. There was thus only one which had any chance at all of transforming the agricultural mode of production.
That was the program of the Chinese Communist Party. The rural reconstruction movements developed by the
Nationalist government and the American reformers were always pale shadows of these programs and imposed from
above. Increasingly, the reformers acted out of fear of the revolutionaries; they were usually two steps behind in
terms of initiative and practice. And when some did begin to see the need to get ahead of the opposition they were
held back by the political and economic realities of the Nationalist power structure--until it was too late to matter.

260
In retrospect Foundation officers went so far as to label the China effort "an experiment," R. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller
Foundation, op. cit., p. 184. This is undoubtedly true to a degree. Indeed most of the Foundation new projects were experiments. But although it
is probable that the view from New York could be more analytical than that from Kiangsi (if not more informed) the length and depth of
participation bespeak a very lively concern with the short-term results of the program.
261
Impossible that is without circumventing or replacing Chiang. That is, without a much more massive American intervention which would
have involved the U.S. government in the kind of government juggling that it would later practice in countries like Vietnam.

68
 V
Expansion and Revolution, or How the new empire builders drew on their
previous experience in the South and in China to deal with the agrarian
regions of the Third World

The Third World Agrarian Strategy

In this chapter I show how the agricultural research which produced the miracle seeds of the Green
Revolution was developed as part of a wider effort to integrate the agrarian regions of the Third World into the
American empire. Faced with new areas of rural hinterland with which it had little familiarity, the American ruling
class drew upon its experience at home and in China to fashion a strategy which it hoped would facilitate the
expansion of American business while forestalling or reversing rural unrest and revolution. The elaboration of this
strategy took place during approximately the first fifteen years after World War II. By about 1960, the basic pattern
of intervention had taken the form it would hold throughout the Green Revolution. Programs would come and go,
minor modifications would be made almost continuously, but the basic approach to containing revolution and
transforming precapitalist Third World agriculture
was set.
The most crucial area for the development of this strategy was the Far East. There, crisis after crisis
threatened not only American expansion but the very future of capitalist institutions. The rapid deterioration of the
situation in China, soon to be followed by the victory of the Chinese Communists, was destroying decades of effort,
largely private, to "save" China. As the forties drew to a close, much of Southeast Asia was alive with rural guerrilla
war. In Malaysia, the British were fighting Communist insurgents. In the Philippines, the Hukbalahap had thrown
the American-supported government on the defensive. In Indochina, the French were rapidly losing ground to the
Vietminh. In Korea, rural uprisings were shaking the U.S.-created government.
These developments were a serious worry to the architects of the new American empire. They became an
even more central focus of concern as the stabilization of Europe permitted more attention to be directed to the Far
East. In order to prevent the success of revolutionary movements opposed to American interests, the U.S. would
have to intervene. As we now know from the Pentagon Papers, at least as early as 1949, counterrevolution was a
basic assumption of official American policy in Asia. Where the immediate problem was active Communist
revolution, the U.S. fought primarily with military force: war in Korea, military aid to the Filipino government and
to the French in Indochina. The effort to achieve longer run non-Communist stability, however, necessitated other,
nonmilitary measures of rural reform and "nation building." This would sometimes be done officially by a branch of
government. It would sometimes be undertaken by private groups. Dominating all the efforts was the understanding
that one of the major sources of danger was the rural Asian countryside. It was not the only danger. There were also
problems with uncooperative urban elites--neutralists and nationalists, but the experience of China had shown that
without stability in the countryside there could be no permanent stability anywhere in a predominantly agricultural
country. The problem was to build a new empire, a neocolonial empire, which, as Frederick T. Gates had said years
before, would not be based on direct political control but on economic and social dominion. In agrarian Asia it was
absolutely necessary that that dominion extend over the hinterland as well as the cities.
The unstable situations in Asia were seen to be at least partly due to the same cause as revolution in China:
widespread poverty. This, the American Asia experts felt, was caused by the inability of colonial or neocolonial
governments to stimulate food production sufficiently to provide a minimal standard of living. As in China, these
experts attributed this low agricultural productivity to several things: poor health of the peasantry, inadequate
education, and backward agricultural technology.
The association between food production and anti-Communism was quite as conscious during the early
postwar period as it had been in China. Echoing John Lossing Buck's analysis almost thirty years earlier, Fulbright
scholar John King wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1953:

69
 The major problem in the struggle to keep South and Southeast Asia free of Communist domination, is the
standard of living of these peoples. . . . The struggle of the East versus the West in Asia is in part a race for
production, and rice is the symbol and substance of it.262'

If a rapid growth in output was seen as essential to achieving stability, the American elite also felt that a
transformation of the structures of production and exchange would favor the emergence of capitalist institutions
necessary to permit this growth. The problem, then, was how such a transformation could be achieved.
We have already seen how a pattern of intervention had taken form in the South and in China as those
working in and around the Rockefeller foundations developed a multipronged approach to changing rural society. In
both cases, this approach involved complementary programs in education, health, and agriculture. These experiences
and the resulting pattern of intervention, in turn, influenced the post-World War II policies of rural development
which led to the Green Revolution.
Once again, there was a many-sided approach for dealing with the peasants. The American elite saw that
land reform could help break up the power relations of old agrarian orders and facilitate the emergence of new
farmer-entrepreneurs. They again saw education as the key to the formation of local elites capable of managing the
transformation of rural society. They used public health not only to increase productivity, but also for its propaganda
effects in winning the peasants away from the revolutionary insurgents. They once more employed a wide variety of
agricultural programs including plant breeding and agricultural economics to increase production, to create markets,
and to encourage farmer-businessmen. Finally, they tried at several points to adapt the earlier work with rural
reconstruction to bring together all of these aspects into an interrelated package which they called community
development.
Because these various "development" programs complemented military intervention and private trade and
investment offensives, they were the soft side of American policy. Although they were conceived as a possible
substitute for the mailed fist (and at times actually were for one reason or another), more often they were closely
integrated with overt or covert armed intervention. This was even more true with trade and investment. Where
development specialists recommended new production inputs and called on government aid to finance them, U.S.
capital was ready to intervene. Stability and profits would go hand in hand in this approach. Within this overall
context the plant-breeding programs which led to the new high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat cannot be
considered the isolated efforts of a few philanthropy-funded scientists; but rather they must be seen as an integral
part of the agrarian strategy of American imperialism.
As in the South and in China these efforts took place at the interface between an expanding American
capitalism and a variety of precapitalist modes of production and social formations. The programs were designed to
transform various aspects of these social formations or modes of production. Land reform, when implemented,
contributed directly to changing the structure of landed property and hence of the relations of production.
Agronomic research, public health, and education all contributed to the transformation of the forces of production,
human or nonhuman. Those aspects of education which fostered the creation of higher-level elites also hastened the
transformation of such superstructural elements as the state bureaucracy. The pro-capitalist, antirevolutionary form
of the programs contributed to shaping the ideological structure. In the case of each country an analysis of transition
between modes of production would require an examination of the nature and impact of particular programs. Here,
however, I sketch the overall strategy and the general impact sought and achieved
by its perpetrators.
In what follows I lay out the major elements of the agrarian strategy and show how they were interrelated
and coordinated to form a pattern of intervention. As in the last two chapters, I take up the various complementary
aspects of the strategy: the focus on elite building in agriculture, the utilization of public health campaigns, the role
of agricultural research in crop improvement, comprehensive community development programs, and finally the use
of agricultural economics to help shape and analyze the impact of the various private and public programs and
policies. In this period, as during Reconstruction in the South and rural reconstruction in China, land reform was
understood as an important aspect both of transformation and counter-revolution. implemented. contradiction.
Since it is impossible to deal with each case, by country by country, in great detail, I try to outline only the
general pattern of the strategy in Asia and in Mexico where Green Revolution has had its the greatest impact. In
particular, I show how a small number of specialists and institutions of the American ruling class were responsible
for shaping and coordinating the various aspects of the strategy both inside and outside of the government.263 I also
262
John K. King, "Rice Politics," Foreign Affairs, April 1953, p. 453.
263
As elsewhere in this thesis, the term ruling class is used to designate those members of the capitalist class (and their employees and allies)
who determine the basic direction and substance of economic and political policy. The composition of this class is enormously complex and the

70
examine the degree to which the particular groups and their programs as well as the strategy as a whole were
outgrowths of the prewar efforts. We discover a multitude of programs more or less well adapted to the specific
circumstances of each country. Some approaches worked, some did not; but all were designed to contribute to the
opening of the countryside to trade and capital investment and/or to the containment of any revolutionary opposition
to this intervention.

The Role of Education in the Agrarian Strategy

Elites and the Peasant Revolution

If policy makers in both government and private circles saw that defusing peasant discontent was vital to stemming
the revolutionary threat in rural Asia, they also felt that only through groups of intellectual organizers could a
Communist part apparatus mobilize and channel that support. In a lucid article, typical of much discussion of the
time, China expert John Fairbank wrote:

How does one organize peasants? The Communist formula has seemed simple and effective: two classes
are needed--the peasant masses of the villages and the intellectual youth recruited from the towns and
cities. Once indoctrinated and trained, the latter organize the former and the job is done. 264

The one "object lesson" of this technique was China. The desertion of the intellectuals to the Chinese Communist
Party had strengthened it, and had hastened the collapse of the Nationalist regime. The clear and frightening implica-
tion of this experience was that:

. . . the Communist system, with its Russian allegiance, can expand to almost any part of Asia that offers
conditions similar to those in China, Korea or Indo-China. An insecure peasantry and a frustrated
intelligentsia. . . .265

As we saw in the last chapter, the private groups working in China had tried to capture the allegiance of students and
intellectuals with approaches such as Jimmy Yen's Mass Education Program and the Cornell-Nanking work in
agriculture. If they failed in China, specialists like Fairbank could only conclude that, as with land reform, they had
gotten started too late with too small an effort. Those programs formed the prototypes for much postwar policy.
The lesson drawn from this analysis was that one high priority job must be the cultivation of intellectuals
throughout Asia. In particular, friendship and support should be extended to those committed to reform--the elusive
third force between Communism and reaction:

Our key problem is, therefore, to find and support those Asian leaders who have the youthful vision and the
dynamic idealism to seek a genuine reconstruction of the 5 life of the peasant masses on a non-totalitarian
basis.266

Over the long run, the most basic mechanism by which this support could be given was in the education of those
leaders--an education which would, in the jargon of bourgeois economics, augment the quantity of "human capital"
available. That education had to be adapted to the task of bringing about rural change and mobilizing the peasants in
non-Communist reform. There was an awareness that much effort in China had been wasted because so many of the
foreign-educated Chinese intellectuals were estranged from the peasant masses and unable to communicate with
them. Looking back at the China experience, Pearl Buck wrote of the "brilliant, self-confident Chinese graduates of
American universities and those of England wearing all sorts of degrees":
existence of internal division and conflict makes difficult any analysis of decision making. During the period discussed here, approximately 1945
to 1960, the ruling class was at times sharply divided, especially over American policy in the Far East. It was the period of the China Lobby and
the right-wing attacks on those internationalists whom it blamed for the "loss" of China. Despite this upheaval and subsequent struggles over the
form and quantity of foreign aid, it appears that not only did the feuding groups often work hand in hand in the field, but that there was definite
continuity in American policies toward the Third World. These circumstances make it possible, when undertaking the kind of overview which I
do here, to speak of "the" ruling class as if it were one, united mind.
264
John K. Fairbank, "The Problem of Revolutionary Asia," Foreign Affairs, October 1950, p. 103. During the war, Fair-bank served as a China
specialist both with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of War of Information (OWI).
265
Ibid., pp. 105-06.
266
Ibid., p. 109.

71
 The real downfall of the Nationalist Government in China was basically because the young Chinese men
and women who flocked to Chiang's government after 1927 could not, or at least did not understand the
necessity of living at the level of those who needed to be taught.267

Those who needed to be taught of course were the peasants. Chester Bowles saw the same problem in India when he
was Ambassador there in 1951-3:

Perhaps the largest obstacle to bold action in many of the state assemblies is the frightening gap between
the educated Indians and the villages . . . I began to realize that many of the Indian officials from Delhi on
down through the state capitals to the villages themselves, brilliantly educated and competent in Western
ways, were almost equally estranged, in one way or another, from village India. 268

Elite training, therefore, would have to be conceptualized in broad terms and would necessarily be on several levels.
In agriculture and peasant affairs, persons were needed in positions that ranged from community organizers
and agronomists working in the field to high level policy makers within the national government. On the lower
levels some had to be trained who could deal directly with peasants and organize and carry forward
nonrevolutionary institutions of reform. On higher levels what was needed were national leaders sensitive to the
needs of agrarian reform and willing to push the legal and economic measures necessary to successful enactment. In
underdeveloped Asia, even in countries the size of China or India, the number of persons so educated would never
be very large so it would be necessary to educate the educators and help build local schools which could multiply
the effort.
The kind of training and education depended upon the position in this hierarchy. On the lower level,
technical knowledge and a general appreciation of the institutional forms of capitalism might be enough. For higher
positions, extensive education to the Ph.D. level might be called for, often in economics, with a thorough
indoctrination into the virtues of capitalist relationships and institutions--particularly the advantages of private
investment and foreign capital for development. With such an equipment the young policy planner returning home
would henceforth, it was hoped, look to the United States and its system for models of agricultural "development."
Parallel to such technical training was a whole process of cultural and ideological indoctrination in the ideas and
institutions of democracy and freedom--capitalist style. 269
In both public and private technical assistance agricultural education and training were handled through
two kinds of programs. The first of these was the provision of scholarships and fellowships for academic education,
research, or administrative training. The second was the provision of support for institution building--primarily of
agricultural colleges at the university level. The tradition of fellowships for foreign students, faculty, and
administrators to work in the United States was an old one among private groups. Dating back to early missionary
work it had been adopted by the foundations before the war and continued thereafter. In terms of bilateral
government aid, Nelson Rockefeller's adoption of this method for his Institute of Inter-American Affairs (IIAA)

267
Quoted in Chester Bowles, Ambassador's Report (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), p. 92.
268
Ibid., p. 186. This focus on the importance of intellectuals was typical of the period. Also see: Morris Watnick, "The Appeal of Communism
to the Peoples of Underdeveloped Areas," Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1952/53 and its references. This
understanding gave birth to a voluminous and repetitive political science and sociological literature on Third World elites, both Communist and
non-Communist, e.g., Edward Shils, "The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States," in J. H. Kautsy, ed., Political Change in
Underdeveloped Countries (New York: John Wiley, 1962).

269
One particularly detailed study of a foreign elite group, prepared by U.S. foundations and universities to take over policy formation and to
redirect its course in directions more favorable to U.S. interests, is David Ransom, "The Berkeley Mafia and the Indonesia Massacres," Ramparts,
October 1970.

72
programs in education and health in Latin America set a pattern for later government practice.270 This kind of
educational assistance, which came to be called "participant training," received a second boost under the Marshall
Plan. In terms of the Third World the real growth in U.S. support began after the initiation of the Point Four program
of technical assistance. During the fifties by far the bulk of the trainees came from the Near East and Asia with a
rapidly growing proportion from East Asia. In 1959 the U.S. was paying for the training of nearly 5,000 persons
from these areas. In agriculture, as in other fields, participant training was carried out either in the U.S. or in some
third country. It was done within the context of a wide variety of programs including short or long term academic
education, on-the-job training (e.g., in plant breeding or extension work), and short term observation training tours
or survey trips.
An important part of this training was organized through government contracts with U.S. or third-country
universities. With such contracts the latter developed programs for the education of students from a given country, in
the same way in which Cornell University educated a large number of plant breeders from China before the war. 271
The development of agricultural colleges at the university level was also handled mainly through contracts
with American universities. American professors would help structure the programs of study, supplement the local
staff for teaching, and arrange more formal student and professor exchanges between the local and the contract
university.
These programs of institution building were similar to the Cooperative Crop Improvement Program
undertaken by Cornell University and Nanking College of Agriculture in China. In fact, the Cornell-Nanking project
was consciously taken as a model for these later efforts. H. H. Love quotes William I. Myers, Dean of the Cornell
School of Agriculture and trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, who was told by a state department official shortly
after the announcement of Point Four:

. . . that the success of the Cornell-Nanking project was one of the basic reasons for the initiation of a more
comprehensive program of cooperation between American Colleges and their overseas counterparts as an im-
portant part of the technical aid program.272

This kind of approach was initiated with U.S. aid money in many countries and in many kinds of fields besides
agriculture.
In almost every country in "free" Asia the U.S. elite undertook this kind of institution building in higher
education, either overtly through bilateral aid or their private foundations and/or covertly through various CIA
conduit organizations.273 This cultivation and building of elites was a central aspect of the general agrarian strategy.
In what follows we will see this repeated with community development, agricultural research, and the rural social
sciences.

Salvaging Past Efforts: Refugee Intellectuals

The first postwar programs reflecting the strategic focus on the cultivation of Third World elites actually
began during the war and constituted a direct link to the earlier China efforts. They dealt with Chinese refugees and
were as much a matter of picking up the pieces as they were a preparation for future battles in the rice fields. In
China, as a result of wartime upheavals and in the absence of official U.S. aid, the internationalists who had invested
so much during the previous decades educating a Chinese elite faced a dual problem. First, they had to undertake
rural reconstruction, complicated by wartime conditions. Second, as the failures of the Nationalist regime to resist
270
As early as 1942 Latin Americans were brought to the United States for training under the auspices of the IIAA. Between 1944 and 1949
some 1500 received some degree of training in different fields. Agency for International Development (AID), Operations Report, June 30, 1971,
p. 103. On Nelson Rockefeller and the Office of Inter-American Affairs, see: Steve Weissman, "The Many 'Successes' of the Alliance for
Progress," Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram, November 1970, p. 2, and Richard Barnett, The Roots of War (New York: Atheneum,
1972), pp. 34, 185. Barnett's interpretation of Rockefeller's policies as representing "a clear case of a powerful family using a temporary position
with the state to adopt policies designed to protect their private financial holdings" makes the same mistake as earlier muckrakers who saw his
grandfather's philanthropies solely in terms of public relations or tax evasion. The Rockefeller family does have extensive holdings and
investments in Latin America (see: "The Rockefeller Empire: Latin America," NACLA Newsletter, Vol. III, Nos. 2 and 3, 1969) but the strategies
developed by the brothers and the institutions which they have founded go far beyond personal greed and are intended to insure the continuing
expansion of American capitalism as a whole.
271
AID, op. cit. This pattern of organization is still characteristic of U.S. aid. For a description of the various kinds of programs see: AID,
Training for Development: The U.S. Participant Training Program, 1970.
272
H. H. Love and J. H. Reisner, "The Cornell-Nanking Story," Cornell International Agricultural Development Bulletin, No. 4, April 1964, p. 5.
273
At times the private and CIA monies flowed through the same institutions, demonstrating once again the way all aspects of intervention are
coordinated in the same direction.

73
either the Japanese or the Red Army became more apparent in the late 1940s, they had to try to hold together the
men and institutions so painfully prepared. These war-uprooted elites, who were referred to globally as
"intellectuals," included writers, bureaucrats, agricultural technicians, educators, attorneys, doctors, and
businessmen.
The dislocation of this valuable "human capital" began during the war with Japan and the western
migration of the government from Nanking to Chungking in 1937. At the same time many private institutions also
moved West. The University of Nanking became one of these when it moved to Chengtu. During those upheavals a
variety of private relief groups aided the institutions which they had sponsored. In the case of the agricultural college
at Nanking, Cornell-in-China, Inc., with help from the Cornell Cosmopolitan Club and the Chinese Students Club at
Cornell, sent funds to help relocate faculty, students, and their families.274
Besides such individual institutional efforts a variety of specialized groups also gave aid to displaced
teachers and students while helping to deal with the flow of all kinds of refugees. In 1941, seven of the most
important of these groups were brought together in one organization: United China Relief (UCR). 275 The new
organization, which would support some 300,000 students and professors, and provide health and welfare training
for some 100,000 "professional men and women," was launched by Bettis Garside, a missionary and the executive
secretary of the Associated Boards of Christian Colleges. 276 The power behind the organization, however, was not
missionaries, but rather American business. Backing Garside from the beginning was Henry Luce, the dedicated
anti-Communist and pro-Chiang publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune. Joining Luce on the UCR's board of directors
were such well-known capitalists as James G. Blaine of Marine Midland Trust, Paul Hoffman of Studebaker, and
John D. Rockefeller III, then trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.277 Virtually the entire third generation of the
Rockefeller family joined the cause through the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund, which contributed to the UCR. 278
With the backing of business leaders like these and the support of public figures such as Wendell Wilikie,
Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl Buck, David 0. Selznick, and Eugene O'Neill, the United China Relief was able to raise
over $5,000,000 in 1942. In 1943, when it became a member of the National War Fund, its resources soared to some
$8.6 mil-lion.279
Internationalist support for the UCR emanated from both the pro-Chiang interventionist group which would
later form the core of the China Lobby, and the "third force" group who still hoped to find a way of supporting an
alternative to both Mao and Chiang. Although this unity among internationalists later fell apart, they would often
continue to work side by side in the area of refugee relief.
With the defeat of Japan and the growth of civil war in China, the problem of refugee intellectuals
increased. In 1945 the Rockefeller Foundation began its own modest program ($1.5 million) to help bring some 300
refugee intellectuals to the United States. But as the civil war continued and public knowledge of the corruption and
inefficiency of the Chiang government spread (despite Luce's systematic distortions in his magazines), the difficulty
of raising money for such activities grew apace. The funds raised by the United Service to China (USC), UCR's new
name at war's end, decreased steadily from some $6.4 million in 1946 to only $406,252 in 1949.280
In an attempt to rekindle public interest, to increase donations for the processing of refugees, and to
pressure the Truman Administration to increase aid to China, a number of new organizations were formed between
1949 and 1952. These included the American China Policy Association (ACPA), the China Emergency Committee
(CEC), and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding anti-Communist China (CDA). These three were formed
mainly to lobby for U.S. government support for Chiang.281
274
Unsigned mimeo, H. H. Love Papers, Box 1, file 24, and Cornell-in-China, Inc. program folder, George J. Thompson file, 34/5/m.L63,
Cornell University Archives.
275
Among these were such groups as the Associated Boards of Christian Colleges in China (ABCC), the China Emergency Relief Committee
and the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China. The ABCC was supported in its efforts by the Rockefeller Foundation which gave special
emergency grants for its work.
276
See Merle Curti, American Philanthropy Abroad (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), pp. 348-59 for a survey of prewar relief
work; pp. 425-46, 465, 512 on the UCR. On Garside's role, see W. A. Swanberg, Luce and His Empire (New York: Dell, 1972), p. 262.
277
W. A. Swanberg, op. cit., pp. 262, 263. Curti, op. cit., p. 425.
278
Even the senior Rockefeller (J. D. R., Jr.) offered his personal services to the cause of "Free China" when, during Madame Chiang's 1943 trip
to the U.S., he accepted the chairmanship of the "Citizen's Committee to Welcome Madame Chiang Kai-shek," Swanberg, op. cit., p. 286.
279
Curti, op. cit., p. 465.
280
Ibid., pp. 476, 512.
281
The ACPA, which was formed in 1946, was headed by the "China Lobby Man" Alfred Kohlberg as well as others like Claire Booth Luce and
Representative Walter Judd. The CEC, formed in 1949 by Judd, Representative B. Carroll Reese and Pittsburgh industrialist Frederick C. McKee,
was replaced a year later by the CDA--also formed and chaired by McKee. The CDA's backing included such notables as James G. Blaine
(treasurer)--former director of UCR, General William J. Donovan (vice-chairman)--ex-head of the Office of Strategic Services, and Claire Booth

74
 The Committee for a Free Asia (CFA) (which later became the Asia Foundation) was more operational.
The CFA was launched in 1951 with funds and personnel from the CIA-backed Committee for a Free Europe
(CFE).282 The overt operations of the CFA-Asia Foundation during the early fifties included student exchanges,
work with Asian intellectuals (especially overseas Chinese) in "support of anti-Communist governments," and
support for "refugee colleges [in Hong Kong) that were taking in many students from the China mainland."
The major post-1949 push for the support of Chinese refugees began in 1952 with the founding of Aid
Refugee Chinese Intellectuals (which was joined with the ABMAC in 1954 to form the Free China Fund). The
ARCI brought together most of those groups and people concerned with this problem. Its initial survey work in
Hong Kong was done in cooperation with the Committee for a Free Asia. Its initial funding came from the Lilly
Endowment, the Kresge Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The ARCI was chaired by CDA's Rep.
Walter H. Judd and received executive direction from Bettis Garside, then executive director of USC and ABMAC.
Among its sponsors were businessmen J. Peter Grace, Jr., Cass Canfield, Henry Luce, William L. Clayton, S. S.
Kresge, and others such as William Donovan, George C. Marshall, Claire L. Chennault, and Joseph Grew (chairman
of the Committee for a Free Europe).283
The ARCI, like the UCR, looked upon the refugees as the "most valuable of Free China's surviving
leadership outside of Taiwan." "If they are permitted to perish," intoned an ARCI advertisement in the New York
Times, "one of the great human resources on our side in the battle between Freedom and Slavery in the Far East will
be lost." To preserve and mobilize this wasting manpower, the ARCI got underway programs of emergency aid
grants, resettlement loans, health training and health care (particularly in schools), aid for immigration to the United
States, and educational fellowships. The ARCI is reported to have eventually "registered" some 20,000
professionals, resettling some 12,500 of them, mainly on Taiwan. Some success was achieved in gaining
government support when Congress passed the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 permitting the entrance of five thousand
"Asian refugees from Communist tyranny into the United States."284
This massive effort to "save" the Chinese intellectuals and professionals was not undertaken for more than
the merely abstract goal of fighting Communism. It included short term efforts directed against the mainland as well
as a longer term contribution to agrarian change on Formosa. In the first place, there was the definite hope that the
new Communist regime in China would collapse or could be subverted. The CIA at that time was supporting
Nationalist forces in Southeast Asia and airdropping Kuomintang guerrillas into the mainland. Its support for
refugee groups was apparently only one edge of a multi-bladed policy.285 ARCI supporter and retiring Assistant
Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Dean Rusk, said that the purpose of the ARCI was to preserve intact "a
large body of trained and competent Chinese in communities outside the borders of China who could be available to
the Chinese people when freedom returns to that unhappy land."286 The ARCI also hinted at this hope in its publicity
Luce (director). The information on these groups comes from Ross T. Koen, The China Lobby in American Politics (New York: McMillan,
1960), which was withdrawn from circulation and burned after threats to the publisher from the Nationalist Chinese and others. These groups
were interlocked extensively (i.e., ten different persons served on both the boards of the CDA and the ACPA which numbered 58 and 51
respectively.
282
CFA vice-president Edward Kennedy had been special assistant to CFE president Joseph Grew. Other officials of the CFA included chairman
Brayton Wilbur, a trustee of the American Institute for Pacific Relations, president George Greene, ex-OSS and member of the U.S. aid mission
to China in 1949, and James Ivy, head of student contacts and ex-executive officer of the JCRR in Taiwan. When the CFA was dissolved in 1954
and refounded as the Asia Foundation, it continued to receive CIA funding while adding to its board of directors such well-known
internationalists as Paul Hoffman, Grayson Kirk of Columbia University, Walter Mallory of the Council on Foreign Relations, R. Allen Griffen,
head of the Griffen Mission, Eric A. Johnson, head of Eisenhower's International Development Advisory Board, and Robbins Milbank of the
Milbank Memorial Fund. On the origin and programs of the Asia Foundation, see Steve Weissman and John Shock, "CIAsia Foundation,"
Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram, September-October 1972, pp. 3-4. On its support for Hong Kong refugee colleges, see "Higher
Education in Hong Kong," Asia Foundation Program Bulletin, June 1962, pp. 1-4. Also Robert Blum, "The Work of the Asia Foundation,"
Pacific Affairs, March 1956, pp. 46-56.
283
"Group Seeks to Aid Chinese Scholars," New York Times, April 29, 1952, p. 2. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to detail the many links
between all of these groups and the U.S. intelligence community. It is worth noting, however, that the easily identifiable links to those programs
among refugee intellectuals suggest that (like similar work in Europe) these programs were not only aimed at overt elite building but were early
examples of the kind of manipulation of educated groups in which the CIA and its fellow intelligence agencies have engaged during the whole
postwar period. See G. William Domhoff, The Higher Circles (New York: Random House, 1970), Chapter Seven: "The Power Elite, the CIA and
the Struggle for Minds."
284 "
The Free China Fund," Reports No. 3 and No. 4, New York Times, October 13, 1953, p. 19; and April 21, 1954, p. 19; M. Curti, op. cit., p.
565.
285
David Wise and T. B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1964), pp. 106-10.
286
New York Times, April 29, 1952, p. 2. Rusk's statement was made at the dinner launching the ARCI where he shared the speakers' platform
with Walter Judd, W. Randolph Burgess of the National City Bank, and Hu Shih, the well-known anti-Communist, liberal Chinese intellectual.
Rusk at the time was a rising young light in the Truman State Department. After serving as deputy chief of staff to Stilwell in China and India, he
had worked on the military aspects of the U.N. Charter, replaced Alger Hiss as director of Special Political Affairs, taken over the job of Assistant

75
campaigns. The refugees, it said, should be resettled "in areas of greater safety and opportunity, where they can
maintain themselves and their skills until the day they may return to their homeland." How much those intentions
reflected a serious effort, how much wishful thinking, and how much appeasement to Chiang is hard to tell. Even
though this kind of thinking was present and influenced the refugee programs, it was only one of several goals.
A second, more open and more realistic desire was to keep mainland Communism from spreading to the 12
million overseas Chinese living in Chinese communities throughout Southeast Asia and to convince them not to join
the revolution in China.287 During the early years of the People's Republic the revolutionary leadership made a
conscious and open attempt to attract overseas Chinese (including refugees) to China to contribute their skills to the
construction of the newly independent socialist state. After a hundred years of foreign domination, the prospect of a
Chinese China was undoubtedly very appealing and many young Chinese availed themselves of the opportunity.
The ARCI was quite conscious of this:

Each month hundreds of Chinese youths from Southeast Asia return to the Communist-held mainland
because of the almost total lack of educational opportunity for them in the Free World. 288

It was partly to fight this attraction that the different groups focused on education, refugee colleges, and
fellowships.289
A third aim, linked to that of providing alternative educational opportunities to overseas Chinese and
refugees, was the reinforcement of the Nationalist regime on Formosa. In order to put together an effective civil
government and to carry out the agrarian programs of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, many
specially trained persons were needed. To that end, the ARCI, in cooperation with the Chiang regime, set up a
Leadership Training Institute on Formosa "to train young men in government and administration." In the language
of ARCI publicity it was hoped that:

Upon their graduation from an intensive two-year course they will devote their newly acquired training,
their youth, their spirit and their ideals to such vital government endeavors as land reform and social
services.290

In the field of agriculture, the creation of a solid group of anti-Communist agrarian experts on Formosa could not
only help with the JCRR program but would also make possible the later extension of their methods and techniques
into other countries in Southeast Asia.291
This pattern of mobilizing refugees for political ends -- saving the groups that are useful to the U.S. elite --
has come to form an integral part of the U.S. strategy for using Third World elites. 292 Needless to say, the relative

Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs at the height of the right-wing attack and played a major role in the Korean war mobilization. After his
work with the Rockefeller Foundation (1952-60) he would return to the State Department as Secretary to help Kennedy and Johnson shape the
flowering of the Green Revolution. Lester Tanzer, ed., The Kennedy Circle (Washington, D.C.: Luce, 1961), Chapter Five: "The Quiet
Diplomat--Dean Rusk."
287
J. D. Montgomery, The Politics of Foreign Aid (New York: Praeger for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1962), pp. 56-59.
288 "
The Free China Fund," Report No. 3, op. cit.
289
Another approach to this problem was ARCI's creation of a Free Chinese Literary Institute in Hong Kong where almost 200 refugee "writers,
editors and translators" were put to work producing anti-Communist propaganda and "battling for the minds of more than 10 million members of
overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia." Ibid.
290
Ibid.
291
This educational effort on Formosa, initiated by the ARCI, was soon joined by the United States government. Between 1954 and 1960 the
U.S. AID mission spent some 172.7 million New Taiwan dollars on special educational facilities for overseas Chinese. The number attracted to
Formosa by these programs rose from 195 in 1954 to 7,017 in 1959. While information on the number going to the mainland is scarce, one
estimate suggested 7,000 in 1953. J. D. Montgomery, op. cit., pp. 57-58.
292
See for example the cases discussed in: Judy Carnoy and L. Levison, "The Humanitarians," Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram,
January-February 1972.

76
neglect of the poor, nonelite refugee peasants (who only received aid if they threatened to become a problem) also
continued. As one might expect, those refugees from pro-Western oppression received little or no aid at all.293

Medicine, Public Health, and Anti-Communism in the Countryside

Before the war, the primary objective of developing rural health services was in guaranteeing a productive
labor force for capitalist enterprise. The public relations aspect had been important but apparently not primary.
Within the context of postwar, revolutionary Asia, however, political counterrevolutionary considerations shifted to
the fore. Health work was not simply a means to reshape the forces of production; it was one weapon among many
to fight Communist revolution in the rice fields and mountains.
In the previous section I have already alluded to the use of health care in the work with refugees. Perhaps
the best known of these attempts to use medicine to fight Communism and win friends for the American empire was
the dramatic and highly publicized exploits of Dr. Tom Dooley in Vietnam and Laos. While serving as a Navy
doctor in Haiphong in 1954, Dooley helped to administer the CIA-planned migration South. Later, he joined the
"Vietnam Lobby" and, with his books and speaking tours, helped enlist public opinion on the side of Diem and
increased American intervention in Southeast Asia. Dooley then worked with the International Rescue Committee
(IRC), one of the most important groups in the Lobby, to launch a new program of medical aid in neighboring Laos.
In Laos he carried the campaign to save the people from Communism right up to the border of China where the
people had "no allegiance to the central government" and were "just right for the Commie treatment."
This kind of work in isolated areas served no immediate role in providing a healthy labor force. It was
rather a first step in persuading the people to identify more with the government than with the guerrillas. After a
year's work Dooley and the IRC created the Medical International Corporation Organization (MEDICO) to spread
the work into other countries. After Dooley's death in 1961, this effort to win the peasants with health care was
continued by a variety of private organizations including the IRC, the Catholic Relief Service, CARE, and the
Thomas A. Dooley foundation.294
Considerably less spectacular than this work with the isolated and homeless, but no less dedicated, were the
continuing efforts of international businessmen. This included both concern for the health of Third World employees
and a broader interest in encouraging local governments to develop general public health services in order to
legitimize the existing order.
One of the expressions of business interest was a conference on "health problems of industries operating in
tropical countries" held in 1950 at the Harvard School of Public Health. The conference grew out of a discussion
between Dean James Simmons and Winthrop Rockefeller (who was working at that time in the foreign department
of the family's Socony-Vacuum Oil Company).295 The representatives of some twenty-three multinational
corporations were brought together with public health experts to discuss the danger of Communism and to exchange
information on how health work could be brought to bear in the fight against it. In his welcoming address, Simmons
made the focus of the conference clear to all:

Powerful Communist forces are at work in this country and throughout the world, taking advantage of sick
and impoverished people, exploiting their discontent and hopelessness to undermine their political beliefs.
Health is one of the safeguards against this propaganda. Health is not charity, it is not missionary work,
it is not merely good business--it is sheer self-preservation for us and for the way of life which we regard as
decent.

293
According to David Wise and Thomas Ross, one of the major reasons for the CIA efforts to overthrow Costa Rican President Figueres in
1956 was that he had "scrupulously recognized the right of asylum in Costa Rica--for non-Communists and Communists alike." D. Wise and T.
Ross, op. cit., p. 120. Refugee manipulation in the fifties became such an art that at times, not content to use those available, the U.S. government
actively undertook to create them. The best-documented case was in Vietnam in 1954. At that time the U.S. was backing Diem, who, lacking
substantial popular support and skilled manpower, was unable to control the peasants in South Vietnam. At the same time that Diem and the U.S.
violated the Geneva Settlement by refusing to hold elections, the CIA was covertly applying its psychological warfare techniques to scare some
900,000 (mainly Catholic) Vietnamese out of the North and into the South. The aim was nothing less than the creation of a political base for
Diem. As a result of this successful operation, Diem acquired the help he needed to create at least a semblance of government rule in the
predominantly agrarian and predominantly Buddhist South. Robert Scheer, "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley," Ramparts, January-February
1965, and Steve Weissman, "Tom Dooley--CIA," Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram, June 1972.
294
The story and importance of Dooley's use of medical care have been analyzed in R. Scheer, op. cit., and S. Weissman, op. cit.
295
Current Biography, 1959, p. 393.

77
 Through health we can . . . prove, to ourselves and to the world, the wholesomeness and rightness of
Democracy. Through health we can defeat the evil threat of Communism.296

Three years later, in a similar conference, American businessmen were still deeply worried about the political
implications of public health care. Although they might bicker over the respective merits of government programs
and private health plans, the political concerns behind their determination to support health care had not changed. "I
think that no matter what happens," declared the assistant vice-president of United Fruit Company, "a provision of
adequate public services to the populations in which our companies operate will not lapse. My reason is very simple.
Good public health is one of the strongest political factors that can be developed." 297
While private business girded its loins for fighting Communism, the Rockefeller Foundation was in the
process of limiting the operational aspects of its health programs. 298 This reduction stemmed not from a reluctance to
join business in the good fight, but because major new resources had entered the field. Along with such international
groups as the new World Health Organization (WHO) and the revitalized Pan American Sanitary Bureau, the U.S.
bilateral aid program (under Point Four) included investment in public health. The Foundation's prewar efforts to
stimulate government contributions had been successful. Accordingly, its program could be limited to a few research
projects and to the provision of expert advice and initiative to other groups.299 This shift from private to public
agencies in the area of international public health work took place during the war years, first to the U.S. government
and then, after 1945, to the U.N. and other international agencies.
The U.S. Public Health Service had had a number of scattered projects, largely in the Western Hemisphere,
before the war. These were brought together and coordinated within a more centralized program under Nelson
Rockefeller's Institute of Inter-American Affairs (IIAA). The IIAA public health program was part of the overall
wartime economic and psychological operations approach to Latin America. The resultant joint programs with other
hemispheric governments carried on projects in such areas as "malaria control, construction of sanitary water
systems and the operation of health centers." After the war this kind of work was continued under the auspices of the
IIAA and Point Four.300
Throughout this period these government public health programs were intended to play an important role in
fighting agrarian revolution. A 1952 field report from the public health division of the Economic Cooperation
Administration's mission to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam nicely summed up the aims of these programs:

Today, American public health specialists of all kinds-health officers, sanitary engineers, nurses, laboratory
technicians, and health educators--are participating in technical assistance programs being conducted . . . in
many parts of the world. These programs are not only contributing to the welfare of the countries in which
they operate, but, through their effect in bolstering the economic and health standards of the participating
nations, are aiding in the establishment of stable governments.301

The report, which was primarily concerned with describing a trachoma control project in North Vietnam, went on to
explain that in Southeast Asia technical aid "has as one of its primary purposes the strengthening of the democratic
bloc of nations." In fact, as the report makes clear, the public health programs were launched primarily for their
propaganda effects in hopes of counteracting France's deteriorating situation in Indochina.302 Other public health
projects in Vietnam included an anti-malaria DDT team which, under the cover of "political neutrality," could

296
James S. Simmons, "Welcoming Address," Industry and Tropical Health, Vol. 1, 1950, p. 13. During the conference, although the political
theme predominated, there was still much discussion of the profitability to private business of supporting both private and public health
programs. "Only as the surrounding populations are protected," the business representatives were told by Dr. Fred Soper of the Pan American
Sanitary Bureau, "can your groups be truly safe." Dr. Soper, who, prior to his job with the PASB, "held top posts in the Rockefeller Foundation's
International Health Division," concluded his talk by pointing out the implications of the impossibility of isolated health care: "It is good
business," he said, "for industrial concerns working abroad to foment in every way possible the development of local, national and international
health services." Dr. Fred L. Soper, "History and Present Problems," Industry and Tropical Health, Vol. 1, 1950, p. 95.
297
John C. McClintock, "Responsibilities of Industry for Health," Industry and Tropical Health, Vol. 1, 1954, p. 42.
298
During the war, the Rockefeller Foundation had worked closely with the allies in the production and dissemination of both vaccines and
techniques.
299
Kenneth W. Thompson, Foreign Assistance (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), pp. 38-39.
300
J. B. Bingham, Shirt-Sleeve Diplomacy: Point 4 in Action (New York: John Day, 1953). On the IIAA, see pp. 19-23. On Point 4 public health
programs, see pp. 82-103.
301
E. Braff and W. Winklestein, "Field Treatment of Trachoma in North Vietnam," Public Health Reports, Vol. 67, No. 12, December 1952, p.
1233.
302
Ibid., p. 1234.

78
penetrate Vietminh zones and demonstrate the government's "interest" in the peasants. Among the many other
countries in which public health played a political role were Iran, the Philippines, and Thailand.
In Iran, in 1951, Premier Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, breaking Britain's
monopoly control. Subsequently, while encouraging an embargo of Iranian oil and refusing Mossadegh's pleas for
financial aid, the U.S. maintained a technical aid program "with malaria control as a major feature." When the
Mossadegh government weakened under the economic pressure, it turned increasingly to the Communist Tudeh
Party for aid. The CIA organized a successful coup in 1953 which reestablished a system of Western control over
Iranian oil. That system gave American companies forty percent of the equity.303 A government report later said that
"Qualified non-public health observers" credited "the malaria component of the U.S. technical assistance program
with playing an important role in tipping the scales to the side of the free world."304
In the Philippines, a number of public health programs were launched after the establishment of the first
Mutual Security Agency (MSA) mission in 1951. Antimalaria campaigns conducted during the struggle against the
Hukbalahap guerrillas made "possible colonization of many previously uninhabited areas." In this way they
"contributed greatly to the conversion of Communist-inspired Huk terrorists to peaceful landowners." 305
In Thailand, an MSA summary of its public health work during this period reads: "An improvement in
public health is a major means of bringing the Thailand government closer to the people and thus of building
political stability." The report goes on to point out that most of the work was concentrated on the poverty-stricken
Korat Plateau, an area where "Communist agents work to best advantage and that the tendency to political
disaffection is greatest."306
In 1956, Eisenhower's International Development Advisory Board (IDAB) recommended expanded malaria
control programs to help counter Soviet aid programs in the Third World.307 The "Official Use Only" final report to
the
President examined the past political uses of malaria control in many countries:

The present governments of India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, among others, have undertaken
malaria programs as a major element of their efforts to build political strength and combat Communist
infiltration.308

These countries, the report noted, were recipients of "outstanding assistance" by the ICA. In India, for example, the
report quotes an Indian malariologist on the usefulness of the program in increasing government-peasant contacts:
"No service establishes contact with every individual home at least twice a year as the DDT service does unless it be
the collection of taxes."
During this study, the IDAB included among its members Rockefeller Foundation trustee Dean William I.
Myers of the Cornell School of Agriculture. The Board also heard testimony from the Foundation malaria expert Dr.
Paul Russell. A consultant to the WHO, Dr. Russell brought to the IDAB views developed during his many years of
work in this field with the Foundation:

Dr. Russell pointed out that although malaria is no longer a problem in the U.S. it is of tremendous
importance to the American businessman, as 60 percent of our imports come from and 40 percent of our
exports go to countries in which it is a problem. . . . In concluding Dr. Russell pointed out that a malaria
303
David Wise and T. B. Ross, op. cit., pp. 110-14. Also, Jerrold L. Walden, "Restraining the CIA," in Richard H. Blum, ed., Surveillance and
Espionage in a Free Society (New York: Praeger, 1972), p. 225.
304
International Development Advisory Board, "Malaria Eradication," Special Report to the President, April 13, 1956, pp. 8-9. William I. Myers
Papers, Box 6,21/2/466, Cornell University Archives. The Rockefeller Foundation had started a "local health service" in Iran in 1950 in
cooperation with the Ministry of Health and the Medical Faculty of the University of Tehran which was then taken over by the International
Cooperation Administration (ICA) in 1951. Rockefeller-controlled oil companies dominated the five companies in the new consortium which was
set up: Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum (Mobil).
305
IDAB, "Malaria Eradication," op. cit.
306
Mutual Security Agency, Southeast Asia, 1952, p. 51. The complementary roles of public health work and agricultural development in
Thailand were emphasized in the Griffen Report of 1950.
307
The IDAB was established by Truman to formulate policies for Point Four and was continued under Eisenhower. It was originally headed by
Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller's wartime international work in the Office of Inter-American Affairs had constituted a pioneering application in
government of the lessons learned during the prewar work of the Rockefeller Foundation. The IDAB was composed of prominent businessmen
(e.g., Harvey Firestone, J. P. Grace), educators (e.g., W. I. Myers of Cornell), and farm and labor leaders (e.g., H. D. Newsom of the National
Grange, L. Mashburn of the A.F.L.). The IDAB, whose importance has been little recognized by scholars, played a vital role not only in
formulating general foreign aid policy, but also in specific areas of policy such as the one discussed here.
308
IDAB, "Malaria Eradication," op. cit., p. 8.

79
 eradication program was a dramatic undertaking that would penetrate into the homes of people and would
benefit the U.S. politically and financially. The sort of aid that comes from the heart and would thereby
prove to people of these underdeveloped countries that we were really interested in their well-being. 309

Profits and counterinsurgency packaged in a humanitarian wrapping--an argument at least as old as Frederick Gates
and his holy duo: God and Mammon.
As a result of the IDAB report, Eisenhower decided to throw U.S. financial support behind the WHO
world-wide malaria eradication campaign which had been announced the previous year.31049
This American support for malaria eradication through an international body was
perfectly consistent with the IDAB report. The report had explicitly pointed out that the same political benefits from
U.S. aid could be obtained indirectly (by channeling funds through multilateral programs) in those "areas and
nations with which the United States is not directly working through the ICA."3115° Moreover, since the multilateral
agencies, especially WHO, were closely interrelated with American private and government programs, increased
funding for the former could only benefit the latter.
There was unanimity of support for the use of WHO that included private groups as well as the
government. This support was coordinated outside the government through the
National Citizens' Committee for the World Health Organization. Set up in 1952, the Committee brought together
in a series of annual conferences the members of the elite concerned with the use of public health in the Third
World. Typical of these was the National Conference on World Health held in 1959. Organized around the theme
"World Health for World Peace" it fielded an impressive list of internationalist speakers: chairman Milton S.
Eisenhower, then head of Johns Hopkins and director of Freedoms Foundation; Andrew W. Cordier, Ford
Foundation Trustee and executive assistant to the U.N. Secretary General; Leo Cherne, chairman of the In-
ternational Rescue Committee and close friend of Tom Dooley; Assistant Secretary of State Francis 0. Wilcox;
Senator Hubert Humphrey, architect of P.L.480; and Representative Walter H. Judd of the Committee to Defend
America and Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals. Each of these men approached the use of public health from his
own particular role in fighting Third World revolution. All were agreed about "the vital part that world health must
play in reaching world peace and stability."312
In short, public health had found its place within the agrarian strategy. During the early postwar period both
the American government and allied international agencies adopted the privately launched, international public
health effort.
The prewar "pump priming" by the Rockefeller Foundation had led successfully to a much strengthened
government role. Later on, the Foundations would have to build a whole new campaign of "birth control" to
counter the population problems brought on in part by these earlier "death control" programs.

Engineering Change in Third World Agriculture

From Rural Reconstruction to Community Development

One of the components of the struggle to control the countryside and peasants of Asia was a community
development movement based on Jimmy Yen's and the Rockefeller Foundation's rural reconstruction work in China.
The rural reconstruction effort had tried to combine the piecemeal attempts to revitalize the Chinese countryside into
a comprehensive program on the village level. This involved a back-to-the-people movement designed to enlist the
educated elite in carrying this multifaceted program into the villages. This kind of approach, Yen had written,
"represented a strategic way to combat totalitarianism . . . through intelligent counterrevolution." 313
In a postwar period fraught with revolution and rural upheaval, rural reconstruction continued to inspire the
more liberal elements of the American elite who were dissatisfied with narrow "impact projects" such as rural public
309
IDAB, "Summary Minutes," April 13, 1956, Myers Papers, Box 6,21/2/466, Cornell University Archives.
310
U.S. Gives $7 million to Malaria Eradication Campaign," U.S. Department of State Bulletin, December 23, 1957; also Charles H. Bell to
Harry A. Bullis, 8/18/58, p. 1, Bullis Papers, Minnesota Historical Society Archives.
311
IDAB, "Malaria Eradication," op. cit., p. 10.
312
Harold Ballou, "World Health for World Peace," Public Health Reports, Vol. 74, No. 11, November 1959, pp. 969-72.
313
Later, speaking of his postwar programs of community development, Jimmy Yen would also comment on the need to channel the energies of
the educated young: "Restless, jobless, such educated youth could be a menace to the nation; committed and trained, they become a dynamic
force in village and national reconstruction." Y. C. James Yen, et al., Rural Reconstruction and Development: A Manual for Field Workers (New
York: Praeger, 1967), pp. 21-22.

80
health. After all, they thought that the only reason why rural reconstruction had failed in China was because it was
insufficient in scope and developed too late. A rural reconstruction-style movement held out a model for opposing a
Communist revolution with a "democratic" one.
"Revolution is our business," wrote world traveling Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas in 1952.
Instead of "supporting corrupt reactionary regimes, putting money behind governments that are vicious governments
. . . wasting the wealth of America, trying to underwrite the status quo . . . ," America should undertake a positive
campaign to show the peasants that it is on their side. "The Peoples of Asia," he warned, "cannot be won by guns or
by dollars. The peoples of Asia must be won, if they are to be won, with ideas." But a war of "ideas" did not mean
for him the education of more estranged university students; rather, he said, "the educational program that will save
Asia from Communism is one that will be at the village level." And the best example of the right kind of program,
he felt, was Jimmy Yen's effort. Like Pearl Buck in China and Chester Bowles in India, who had expressed similar
ideas, Douglas became a crusader for community development.314
Ironically, the immediate continuation of the Chinese rural reconstruction movement on Taiwan, after
1949, rapidly moved away from the Yen formula. Although the board of commissioners of the Joint Commission on
Rural Reconstruction included T. H. Shen (from the Cornell-Nanking project) and Jimmy Yen, a split developed
within the Commission which led to Yen's resignation in 1951.31554 Instead of following Yen's integrated community
development approach, the JCRR became a coordinating group which influenced and financed projects primarily
carried out by established government agencies. Operating in this manner, it supported a wide variety of activities:
agricultural extension, research, public health, land reform, etc., which had made up the rural reconstruction
movement (and then some) but without the local level initiative and coordination. Closest perhaps to community
development precepts was its work with farmer associations.
Set up by the Japanese, the Formosa Farmers' Associations had traditionally been part of the colonial
politico-economic control structure. Under that system, the Associations were dominated by landlords and
commercial capital, and were used to keep the Chinese farmers in line. The JCRR efforts to restructure these groups
went hand in hand with the government attack on the Formosan elite after 1949.316 The reorganization of the Farmer
Associations, coupled with land reform measures, created a new power structure in the countryside. That structure
was more democratic but much less powerful. In ideological terms this transformation has been celebrated as a
major demonstration of the "commitment" to social justice and democracy of the JCRR (and hence of the Nationalist
government and its American backers). Yet these organizations were actually created to encourage local initiative
without provoking their emergence as a rural political force. "JCRR traditionally has been opposed to FA [Farmer
Associations] involvement, as an institution, in local and provincial politics. .The Chinese government's antipathy to
the FA getting pulled into politics is considerably stronger." In fact, the increasing political role of many
Associations has led the Chiang regime to initiate measures to limit this development.317 Once more the liberal
elements in the JCRR seem unable to bring about any important mobilization of farmers which might help constitute
a "third force."
But if community development was largely abandoned in Taiwan, it had many other backers such as Justice
Douglas ready to give it a chance elsewhere. Among the many active supporters of Yen's work (often board
members of his organizations) from all factions of the American internationalist elite were William Benton,
Encyclopedia Britannica executive and head of the United States Information Service, Pearl Buck, Representative
Helen Gahagan Douglas, Paul Hoffman, Henry R. Luce, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Thomas Watson. It was this kind of
support which enabled Yen to continue his work in the form of a New York-based International Mass Education
Movement (IMEM) established in 1951 to spread community development approach throughout the Third World.
The IMEM's major project was the establishment of a program in the Philippines. At that time the
Philippines were still in the midst of civil war between the Hukbalahap revolutionaries and the central government
backed by the United States. As a result of the Bell Economic Survey Mission to the Philippines under the auspices
of the National Security Agency, the U.S. had decided to undertake a program of socio-economic development
projects. These projects were intended to back up the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group whose counterinsurgency

314
William 0. Douglas, "Revolution Is Our Business," The Nation, May 31, 1952.
315
R. L. Hough, "Models of Rural Development: The JCRR Experience in Taiwan," SEADAG Papers, The Asia Society, May 1968, p. 5.
316
The reorganization followed a 1953 report by W. A. Anderson of the Cornell Department of Rural Sociology. W. I. Myers, "The Agricultural
Progress of the JCRR," Comparative Extension Publication, No. 14, Cornell, 1961, p. 9. To head the JCRR's Farmers' Organization Division
William H. Fippin was brought in from the ECA-Korea Mission in 1951. T. H. Shen, The Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural
Reconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), p. 20.
317
R. L. Hough, op. cit.

81
activities were headed by the legendary intelligence agent Edward Geary Lansdale. 318 Community development
would complement these U.S. programs nicely. Yen visited the Philippines in 1952 during a survey trip to many
Asian countries. He later commented in somewhat of an understatement that the "government at that time was inef-
fectual, the national economy unstable, and there was unrest throughout the country." But Yen found sufficient
support among "a small but influential group of public-spirited civic leaders" to convince him to choose the country
for a pilot project. The place picked was Nueva Ecija, in country only recently cleared of Huk guerrillas. Because of
its success in pacification of this area of rural unrest, the approach of the pilot project was soon adopted by President
Ramon Magsaysay. The new government program expanded the experiment into several areas in the Philippines.319
In 1956 the Council for Economic and Cultural Affairs (CECA), set up by John D. Rockefeller III in 1953,
added its support by providing an advisor to help found the Luzon Training Center for Community Development.
This center was "the principal center for the training of rural community development workers in the Philippines."
As its work in this field expanded, the CECA followed up by funding research at the Community Development
Research Council of the University of the Philippines on such projects as "factors inhibiting the acceptance of
improved agricultural and rural living in the Philippines."320
To all appearances the Philippine community development movement was never an important factor in
either increasing total agricultural production or in improving the standard of living of the mass of peasants. What
it did do, however, was to create structures which tied the barrios more closely to the central government and to
give the impression that the government had taken the initiative for social change away from the revolutionaries.
In the 1950s by far the largest and most extensive application of Yen's ideas was achieved not by his
organization but by a joint public-private program in India. After the loss of China, India rapidly emerged as the
central focus of American hopes to contain Communism and expand capitalism in underdeveloped Asia. If India, the
largest "free" Asian nation, followed China into the socialist camp, the future of capitalism in Asia would be bleak
indeed. If, on the other hand, it embraced the private enterprise system, in one form or another, it could become a
vitally important ally. It could become a diplomatic and propagandistic counterweight to China--an economic and
military power among its much smaller neighbors. However, in the early years following independence in 1947, the
future course of Indian development was not at all clear. Though Prime Minister Nehru dealt sternly enough with
domestic Communists, his neutralist foreign policy led to recognition of China and declarations of peaceful
coexistence. It also led to India's refusal to join the American-led anti-Communist alliances of CENTO and SEATO.
Regional military alliances, a little impact-aid, and hard line containment might be enough to keep the smaller
countries of Southeast Asia in line, but India was too large and too complex to be subject to direct American
manipulation. A more subtle approach would be necessary.
In the early fifties America's key man-on-the-spot for developing a soft line was Ambassador Chester
Bowles who arrived in New Delhi in 1951. Bowles, who had turned down more comfortable posts in Europe and
Washington, had at least three reasons for wanting to go to India. First, with China lost he was one of those who saw
India as "the key to Asia." The "whole underdeveloped world would be looking to India to see if another way were
possible." Second, the future of Asia was of vital importance to the future of the whole capitalist world. Citing Lenin
that "the road to Paris lies through Peking and Calcutta," he warned that:

Although the Marshall Plan and related policies for European reconstruction and defense had blocked the direct
path to Paris . . . even a firmly democratic Western Europe might eventually be undermined if all of Asia with
its billion or more people should go the way of Communist China.321

And third, he felt that the development of good relations with India might be a way to heal the breach within the
American ruling class which had opened over China policy. However, things were not going well in India at all. "If
Paul Hoffman was right," Bowles said in referring to a discussion with the head of the Ford Foundation, "that India
was now where China stood in 1945, then there was no time to lose."322 The United States should not oppose Indian

318
An incomplete account of Lansdale's activities is in his autobiography, In the Midst of Wars (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). He went
from the Philippines to Vietnam where, among other things he helped organize the refugee operation discussed in footnote 32.
319
Y. C. James Yen, et.al., op. cit., Chapter 2.
320
CECA, Annual Report, various issues.
321
Chester Bowles, Ambassador's Report (New York: Harper, 1954), p. 2. For a similar, more dramatic discussion of the dangers of Communist
victory in India, see, Barbara Ward, India and the West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), p. 14, etc.
322
C. Bowles, op. cit., p. 2. Paul Hoffman had visited India earlier in 1951 with a Foundation team to study the situation and to examine the
possibilities for Foundation projects. His preoccupations were similar to those of Bowles and he too felt that support for Indian development was
important in the struggle against South Asian Communism.

82
nationalism, Bowles thought, but woo it. Correctly done, India would become a front line defence against
Communist "imperialism" in Asia. The American wooing of Indian nationalism which began to take shape had at
least two important aspects.
The less obvious aspect was U.S. support for Nehru's anti-Communist, left flank opposition which was
coupled with a campaign to undercut Indian nonalignment and peaceful coexistence with China. Besides the more
obvious elements-such as the popularization of the "battle between China and India" for the leadership of Asia--this
involved the cultivation of a variety of political and academic leaders through such groups as the CIA-backed
Congress for Cultural Freedom. These potential "third force" leaders included men like the Praja Socialists'
Jayaprakash Narayan and Asoka Mehta who had a reputation for reform and were both more procapitalist and more
vehemently anti-Communist than Nehru. It also involved both a public and a clandestine effort in Tibet to create
conflict between India and China. That effort ultimately contributed to the Border War of 1962.323 A more obvious
effort was the official and private American support for economic aid to help shape the Indian economy. One of the
most important aspects of American aid was that devoted to transforming the Indian countryside. Besides the fact
that India was overwhelmingly agrarian and procapitalist, an emphasis on agriculture flowed naturally from at least
two concerns of American policy. First was the opposition to Indian dedication to rapid industrialization under a
plan which focused on public enterprise to the neglect of private. A budget emphasis on agriculture in the presence
of limited resources could not help but slow and limit the development of public sector industry. Second, some of
the rural upheaval in India was inspired by advocates of Communist revolution and, as we have just seen in the case
of Ambassador Bowles, the Americans felt that controlling the direction of rural change could be of determining
importance to the future of India as a whole.324 "If democratic India ever fails, and if a Communist civil war ever
breaks out there," Bowles warned, "the West would spend billions to save India from Communism. One would think
that the time to aid India is now while she is saving herself, and while the chance of success is good."325 The
combined private and public American aid effort to help save the countryside turned out to be a new application of
community development.
Village development had already been a mainstay of the Gandhian movement before independence; but it
was Chester Bowles who convinced Nehru to cooperate with the U.S. government and the Ford Foundation in
making community development the central theme in India's efforts to achieve unity and peace in the countryside.
Bowles' inspiration for this approach came from two sources. First, he was familiar with and impressed by the work
of Jimmy Yen in China. Second, Bowles had visited the Etawah project in Uttar Pradesh shortly after his arrival in
India. That project was "an effort to combine the Gandhian program of village development with the extension
service techniques of the U.S. Department of Agriculture." Financed by the Uttar Pradesh government and headed
by American consultants (one a former county agent from Tennessee who had worked with UNRRA in China), the
project covered some 97 villages, focusing on improved agricultural techniques, public health, and basic education.
Excited by this project, Bowles felt that Etawah incorporated the "very principles of multipurpose development
which Dr. Yen had developed in China." "This," he felt, "was the key to the future of India and Asia."326
When Bowles learned that Congress had allocated $54 million to India under Point Four technical aid, he
took to Nehru and the Ford Foundation a proposal for a nationwide community development program. Nehru
accepted and the Foundation agreed to help finance and coordinate some 55 community development projects
throughout India. Because it would involve the training of some 50,000 village workers at 30 training centers, the
program seemed at least a partial solution to the dual problem of engaging the imagination of the educated young
elites and of channeling peasant desires along nonrevolutionary paths. If they could be successfully trained and
brought together with the peasants in a new, egalitarian, village-level movement, then together they might be able to
transform the countryside and at the same time be less inclined to listen to the Communists.
The Community Development Program was organized around the division of all of India into "blocks" of
roughly 100 villages each. These were administered by a Block Development Officer and about five Village Level
Workers. Aided by a variety of technical assistants in such fields as agricultural extension, public health,
cooperatives, and local government, the Village Level Workers were basically extension agents who tried to help the
villagers improve their farming, gain some education, and generally modernize their production and living habits.

323
Steve Weissman, "Last Tangle in Tibet," Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram, July-August 1973. Another influential popularizer of
the India-China contest was John F. Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts; see John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace (New York:
Popular Library, 1961), Chapter 17: "India and China."
324
There were many other causes of instability in the countryside which were also of concern to both Indians and Americans: food shortages,
communalism, caste, regionalism, tribalism, etc.
325
Bowles, op. cit., p. 172.
326
Bowles, op. cit., p. 198.

83
 Despite the considerable investment in this program, by the end of the decade it had proven itself unable to
solve the basic problems of Indian agriculture.327 Not only did it fail to reach most of the Indian countryside but it
did not include the kind of institutional change such as land reform which was necessary to break up the sharp
wealth and power divisions in the villages. Without such reforms, the "egalitarian" peasant-intellectual alliance
appears to have been either frustrated by the local power structure--thus perhaps alienating both more than before--
or the alliance was made between the village workers, who lacked an independent political base, and the local elite.
In this case the mass of poorer peasants was excluded. In both cases development was frustrated by the inability to
achieve a collective local effort.
The program undoubtedly strengthened the structure of government influence and control over those areas
it did reach, but at the same time it failed to increase agricultural production enough to keep up with demand--not to
mention need. As a result India had to import increasing quantities of food grain to make up for this failure. Those
imports rose from an average of 1.8 million tons during the first plan (1951-56) to 5.1 million tons in 1960.32867
This growing difficulty was only part of India's economic failures which led to the dramatic budget deficit
and foreign exchange crisis in 1957. Measures undertaken by India to facilitate the entry of foreign capital, to cut
back on the role of the public sector, and to solicit aid from the U.S. and the World Bank gave those internationalists
such as Chester Bowles (then a trustee at the Rockefeller Foundation) the arguments to convince Congress to sup-
port more aid for the "key to Asia." The American response to the crisis led to the establishment of the Consortium
for India by the World Bank to deal with India's foreign exchange problems and to the increase of food aid to cover
the agricultural deficits. As the decade drew to a close it was clear that although the Indian government had been
brought several steps closer into dependence and alliance with the West, the progress in the Indian countryside was
still limited mainly to increased government control rather than increased welfare.
The failure of community development did not, however, lead to any fundamental change in the approach
to development such as land reform or a focus on the poorest peasants. On the contrary, the interpretation made was
that scarce resources were being spread too thinly and that better results, especially in terms of agricultural output,
could be obtained by concentrating those resources on fewer areas. These were the most important conclusions of a
special Ford Foundation-Indian study team created in 1959.329 The program which resulted from their report--the
Intensive Agricultural Districts Program (IADP)--called for available agricultural technicians, fertilizer, seeds and
credit to be used on the best, most "credit worthy" cultivators located in areas of assured irrigation and high
fertility.33069 This new program not only gave agricultural production the central role in Indian rural development but
did so in a way which necessarily increased inequalities. For all practical purposes, even the semblance of
equalitarian ideology represented by the community development approach was discarded in favor of a growth-
oriented strategy. Later, when the results of agricultural research in Mexico, India, and elsewhere would make
possible India's Green Revolution, it would take the form of a High Yielding Varieties Program based on the prin-
ciples inaugurated with the IADP.331
Despite the hopes of such peasant-level developers as Jimmy Yen, Chester Bowles, or William 0. Douglas,
capitalists are incapable of fomenting "democratic" revolution from the bottom up even when they try. The failure to
change the relations of production and the structure of power in the countryside necessarily limits the possibilities
for helping poorer peasants. Unable to give that help, which could aid the poor in increasing output, the overriding
goal of growth pushes capitalists to formulate programs based on the prin-ciple they know best: investing where the
rate of return is the highest.

Changing the Forces of Production: Agricultural Research

Because the postwar internationalists conceived of the struggle for the peasants of Asia partially in terms of
"rice politics"--as a race for production to stave off hunger and rural unrest--it was natural that an important part of
their programs was in the area of agricultural research on crop improvement. The work of the General Education
Board in the South was able to concentrate on agricultural extension because research was already taken care of by

327
Tom Weisskopf, "Dependence and Imperialism in India," The Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1973, p. 61.
328
Between 1952 and 1961 the U.S. government and the Ford Foundation together poured more than $100 million into the Community
Development Program. D. Brown, Agricultural Development in India's Districts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 4.
329
Ministry of Food and Agriculture, India's Food Crisis and Steps to Meet It (New Delhi: Government of India, 1949).
330
D. C. Brown, op. cit., pp. 8-10, etc.
331
Ibid., p. 85.

84
the Hatch Act experiment stations and the land-grant colleges. In underdeveloped China it had been necessary to
develop both research capability and extension. This proved to be the case in most of the countries of Asia with the
partial exception of Japan which already had the most productive agriculture of East Asia before the war.
Although the U.S. government supported a few projects in agricultural research during this period, crop
improvement was a distinctly minor activity in official foreign aid. During the 1950s it was linked to much larger
military and paramilitary actions directed against Asian revolutionaries and remained subordinate to those efforts.
This circumstance meant that those internationalists who insisted most strongly on the long term strategic
importance of increasing food supplies had to continue to rely on the initiative and funds of the Rockefeller
Foundation. Had the government program been more extensive and better coordinated, the private programs might
well have been transferred to government control--as was the case with many public health programs. But the
limited scope and scattered nature of the various government efforts prompted the Foundation to pursue programs
begun before 1950 and to initiate several others during the 1950s. Ultimately it was these more comprehensive
efforts which produced the technological foundations of the Green Revolution. Nevertheless, it was the trained
personnel and the research and extension facilities developed by government and private programs together which
would provide the infrastructure base for the subsequent rapid spread of the new technologies in the Third World.

Government Programs: Reactions to Guerrilla Threats

Government-financed aid to agricultural research was primarily the concern of the bilateral foreign aid
programs, often in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture. Agricultural research was an integral part of the
Mutual Security Program and was intended not only to help stabilize the countries in which it was supported, but in
the traditionally rice-surplus areas it was also aimed at increasing food exports to unstable deficit countries. 332
One example of U.S. bilateral aid to agricultural research was the ECA-Office of Foreign Agricultural
Relations project in Thailand. The project began in March 1950 when the OFAR sent Harry H. Love and Robert L.
Pendleton to Thailand to initiate an agricultural project in cooperation with the Thai government. Harry Love was
the Cornell plant breeder who had worked extensively in China, first with the Cornell-Nanking project and then with
the Chiang government. Robert Pendleton, a soils expert, had worked for the Thai government before the war and
had joined John Lossing Buck to do the soils survey for his China land utilization study financed by the IPR in the
thirties.333
The agricultural project was part of a growing U.S. response to reported Communist activities in Thailand.
The U.S. involvement had begun during the war. When Prime Minister Pibul Songgram agreed to join the war on
the side of Japan and Thailand was occupied by Japanese forces, the OSS moved to support pro-Western Thai
students and bureaucrats to form a Free Thai Opposition in the United States. With the help of "old Thai hands,"
especially former missionaries, the OSS and its Thai allies set up anti-Japanese guerrilla operations within Thailand.
This led to a bitter struggle with the English intelligence agency when that country declared war on Thailand in
1942. After the war, the determined American diplomatic intervention which prevented Thailand and its rice exports
from falling under English domination and preserved its "independence" led, of course, to a considerably
strengthened American influence.334
After 1948, as a result of British and French counterguerrilla actions in Malaysia and Indochina, Bangkok
and the Thai border provinces became sanctuaries for refugees from these campaigns of repression--both
Communist guerrillas and noncombatant peasants. How important Communist activity really was is difficult to
judge, but it is certain that it provided a rationale for the Thai government to crack down on non-Thai communities
(Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, Meo) and for the U.S. to launch a sizable program of military and economic aid.
An important increase in that aid followed the Griffen Mission's visit to Thailand in 1950. It received
extensive written and oral recommendations from Love and Pendleton about the need for broadening the agricultural
program, including research.335
The "classified" Mission report on Thailand focused on the Communist threat to stability and on the
traditional Thai policy of "following the winner." In the light of the Thai's rapid shift to the Japanese when it became
evident that they would seize most of Southeast Asia, the Americans were afraid they might turn toward China in
332
Mutual Security Agency, 2E. cit., p. 37.
333
R. L. Pendleton, Thailand, Aspects of Landscape and Life, 1962, preface.
334
The analysis of this section is based partly on R. Harris Smith's authoritative OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence
Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). Chapter Nine supports revisionist historians' interpretation of American expansionism
during and after the war.
335
Love also wrote to Paul Hoffman supporting the Griffen Mission report on Thailand; H. H. Love Papers, Box 9,21/ 28/890.

85
the wake of the 1949 debacle. "If we are to sustain the present [pro-Western] line of Thai orientation," the report
said, "prompt concrete evidence of our appreciation of its partnership should be produced. The speed and nature of
U.S. economic and technical aid should be planned with this in mind. . . . There is a political urgency." 336 The
report's recommendations for "prompt concrete evidence" emphasized programs in public health, agricultural
research (especially rice improvement), expanded irrigation, and agricultural ex-tension.337
The acceptance of these recommendations gave agriculture and public health the major role in the U.S. aid
package. Between 1951 and 1960 the U.S. expended some $12 million in agricultural assistance to Thailand.338
Among the specific projects included was an enlarged agricultural research program under the direction of Harry
Love. Writing in 1951, Love noted, "Under ECA our agricultural program for Thailand is being enlarged, and we
have a very extensive project on rice breeding planned. It is probably the biggest single project on rice that has ever
been planned any-where. . . . ,339
An associated project was the "in-service training of Thai technicians in the U.S." Between 1951 and 1960
some 604 agricultural participants were trained including more than 100 Thai extension workers. 340 The rice
improvement project which ran under ECA auspices from 1950 to 1956 involved the testing of over 200,000
selections together with cross-breeding. By 1956 a rice seed producing a 15 percent average increase in yields was
being distributed to cultiva-tors.341
In terms of Asian agriculture and the development of the Green Revolution, the most important government
investment in agricultural research was the rebuilding of the College of Agriculture of the University of the
Philippines. Not surprisingly, the Mutual Security Agency offered the contract for this project to the Cornell School
of Agriculture.342
At the time of the MSA offer in 1952, Cornell had also been invited to found agricultural colleges in
Thailand and Taiwan. According to William I. Myers, then Dean of the School of Agriculture and trustee of the
Rockefeller Foundation, the decision to go to the Philippines was based on several factors. First, it was judged that
the major danger from the Huks was passed (Lansdale considered the back of the movement to have been broken in
late 1951). Moreover, the American commitment to the Philippines showed that it "would be defended--we would
have at least 10-15 years regardless of what happened." This was undoubtedly an important consideration to a
generation of social engineers who had seen decades of work go down the drain in China. A second reason for
Cornell's choice was its long connection with the islands. From the turn of the century when Cornell President Jacob
Gould Schurman became U.S. commissioner, the University had educated many of the Filipino elite. In 1952 there
were several Cornell graduates already on the faculty of the School of Agriculture at Los Baños.343
During the next eight years (to 1960), the Cornell contribution to the rebuilding and development of the
College of Agriculture was substantial.344 During this period the college became the central focus for agricultural re-
search in the Philippines. Its expanding facilities also made it a major agricultural education center for other
336
Samuel P. Hayes, The Beginning of American Aid to Southeast Asia: The Griffen Mission, of 1950 (Toronto: Heath Lexington, 1971), p. 258.
337
Ibid., pp. 230-47. Also see H. H. Love and R. L. Pendleton, "Memorandum for the American Ambassador on the Implementation of
Agricultural Phases of the Griffen Report," H. H. Love Papers, Box 9.
338 "
Agricultural Diversification and Economic Development in Thailand," Foreign Agricultural Economic Report, No. 8, USDA, March 1963, p.
25.
339
H. H. Love to W. T. Pritchard, February 24, 1951, Love Papers, Box 9,21/28/890. In the same letter Love showed his awareness of the
political role of his project. In trying to estimate how long he would remain in Thailand he said: "We do not know just when we will be back in
Ithaca, but it may be a year or longer [it was five years]. Joe Stalin may have the answer for us. . . ."
340
Business Research Ltd., Participant Training Program:Thailand, 1951-1960, Vol. I (Bangkok: United States Operations Mission, 1963), pp.
6-7.
341
USOM, U.S. Economic and Technical Assistance to Thailand, 1950 to Date, 1960, p. PS-1. Also, USOM, Thai-American Economic
Cooperation, 1951-56, 1956, pp. 4-5.
342
The MSA contract complemented a major grant to Cornell from the Rockefeller Foundation, received the same year, to found a Southeast
Asia program designed in part to develop American experts and in part "to train scholars from the Southeast Asian countries." Education and
World Affairs, The University Looks Abroad (New York: Walker, 1964), p. 194.
343
William C. Cobb, "Interview with William I. Myers," Rockefeller Foundation Oral History Files, December 8, 1966, pp. 44-45. Also taped
interview with the author, August 20, 1973. H. H. Love also quotes Myers on the importance of the prior work in China: "The successful results
of the Cornell-Nanking program were certainly one of the major factors that encouraged us to undertake a similar but more comprehensive
contract with the University of the Philippines," H. Love and J. Reisner, 22. cit., p. 47. In Cobb, op. cit., Myers also said (pp. 44-45) that "Perhaps
we were influenced to a slight extent also by the fact that the Philippines are looked upon as a sort of show window of American democracy in
the Far East. . .
344
Some thirty-five Cornell professors, including seven department heads, served in the Philippines for a year or longer. At the same time,
"eighty-three faculty members from Los Baños were sent abroad for additional training and a majority of them studied at Cornell. Education and
World Affairs, op. cit., p. 187.

86
countries in Southeast Asia. Instead of sending trainees to the States, both government and private programs directed
more and more students to Los Barios.345

Private Programs: Launching the Green Revolution

Ironically, the program which was to produce the first "miracle grains" was not founded in revolutionary
Asia nor was it founded in reaction to the threat of Communist revolution. It was the Mexico agricultural program of
the Rockefeller Foundation which was established in 1943. By the late 1950s it was the success story in that decade
of agricultural development. The origins of the Mexico program are somewhat mysterious. According to the semi-
official history written by three of the early participants, it grew out of three sources: (1) the desire of Mexican
officials for help, (2) the Foundation's desire to expand its programs there (it already had a public health project),
and (3) the favorable support from U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Josephus Daniels and Vice-President Henry
Wallace.346 The Mexican officials, it seems, wanted an agricultural program simply to help raise production.
Wallace, then Secretary of Agriculture and Vice-President-elect, had a "genuine interest in Mexican agriculture and
other things Mexican," which had already prompted him to suggest corn breeding to the Mexicans. Ambassador
Daniels was a Southerner and trustee of the North Carolina State College of Agriculture. Impressed by the G.E.B.'s
campaigns against hookworm and for agricultural extension which he had witnessed in the South, Daniels had
"envisaged and persistently advocated an extension campaign of the Knapp type for Mexico." Unfortunately, by
themselves, none of these various explanations is sufficient in the light of the kind of considerations which had
moved the Foundation to action in the past and in the light of other events at the time.
The desire of Mexican officials to focus on increased production, perhaps independently or perhaps partly
in reaction to American pressure, conforms well with the general trend under Camacho to get away from the
disruptive land reforms and the expropriations of the Cardenas era.347 It was certainly in the interests of the U.S.
government to support any such reorientation away from further attacks on American business in Mexico. Daniels
was the U.S. representative for encouraging such developments and his prior experience at home undoubtedly gave
him ideas about alternative programs the Mexicans could develop. What explains the Rockefeller Foundation's
interest? One factor may have been that the Rockefellers' Standard Oil Company had been one of the most important
companies expropriated by Cardenas only two years before. The expropriation had been a blow not only to the
family company but to the Foundation as well (which held over one-half its financial assets in Standard Oil
Company stock). And of course the menace of such expropriation went far beyond Mexico and its oil fields--what if
it should spread to other countries? The company's reaction, like that of others involved, was vengeful. They
demanded considerable compensation and organized boycotts, blacklists and hidden pressures when it was not
immediately forthcom-ing.348 The Foundation, on the other hand, rather than pulling out its existing public health
programs moved to set up others in agriculture.
This difference in reaction is partly explainable by the Foundation's longer run view of such situations and
the difficulty from a public relations point of view of reacting like a business corporation. But more important is the
fact that as an instrument of the capitalist ruling class its officers and directors must necessarily take a broader view
of U.S. foreign relations than that of a single company. One young member of that class whose views probably
influenced the reaction of the Foundation was Nelson Rockefeller. As a result of an earlier survey trip to study
Standard Oil operations in Latin America, combined with the experience of personal negotiations with President
Cardenas, he had developed the view that rising Latin American nationalism should not be dealt with imprudently
but with subtlety. His views, which he undoubtedly shared with his brother John (who was on the Foundation board)
and others, were similar to the later position taken by Chester Bowles in India.349
Nelson Rockefeller had brought his experience and views into the government where he organized
programs to deal with a related problem: Nazi attempts to gain a foothold among the increasingly nationalistic
nations of the Western Hemisphere. This problem was particularly acute in Mexico where the boycotts organized by
the companies against Mexican oil were forcing that country to sell to the Axis powers. 350 Nelson's efforts paralleled

345
Bill (Myers) to Dick Bradfield, January 20, 1956, in Myers Papers. Also, Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1955, 1956. A measure
of this growth is given by the rise in enrollment from about 500 students in 1952 to over 3,700 in 1956.
346
E. C. Stakman, R. Bradfield, and P. C. Mangelsdorf, Campaigns against Hunger (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1967), Chapters 1 and 2.
347
Frank Tannenbaum, The Struggle for Peace and Bread (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 72-77.
348
On the company tactics and attitude, see Howard F. Cline, The United States and Mexico (New York: Atheneum, 1963), pp. 240-41.
349
Joe A. Morris, Nelson Rockefeller (New York: Harper, 1964), and James Desmond, Nelson Rockefeller (New York, MacMillan, 1964).
350
H. F. Cline, op. cit., pp. 243-47.

87
those of his tennis partner Henry Wallace, whose duties included chairmanship of the Board of Economic
Warfare.351 Both men were keenly aware of the need to cultivate ties between the United States and the countries of
Latin America. It seems likely that the Foundation trustees (including at that time internationalists such as John
Rockefeller, Wall Street lawyers like John Foster Dulles and Raymond Fosdick, businessmen such as Walter S.
Gifford of AT&T and Harold H. Swift, and the presidents of several elite universities such as M.I.T. and Dartmouth)
saw an agricultural program for Mexico as one way of making a friendly gesture to soften Mexican nationalism and
to keep the Germans at bay.352
During the initial studies in 1941, the Foundation drew heavily on its previous collaborator in the field of
agriculture: Cornell University. Dr. A. R. Mann, ex-Dean of the College of Agriculture and then vice-president of
the General Education Board, was appointed to the first investigatory committee. Dr. Richard Bradfield, an
agronomist from Cornell, was one of the three men who carried out the preliminary survey work in Mexico. 353 Most
importantly, William I. Myers, then head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Cornell was brought onto
the Foundation board by John D. Rockefeller III.
Myers had been a key advisor to Henry Morgenthau and President Roosevelt on farm policy during the
depression.354 His links to the Rockefeller philanthropies began when, as a student of A. R. Mann at Cornell, he
received a fellowship from the International Education Board to study agricultural extension and economics in
Europe in 1926. After leaving government service in 1938 he was invited by Mann to help the G.E.B. with a study
of agricultural economics in the South. Myers and Mann organized a series of conferences and surveys to develop a
G.E.B. program. As a result of this work, Myers met John D. Rockefeller III in November 1939. Soon afterwards,
Rockefeller invited him to join the boards of both the G.E.B. and the Rockefeller Foundation. Myers quickly became
a close personal advisor and made a series of study trips with him to different parts of the world. They toured the
South in 1941, Europe, Colombia, and Mexico in 1946, Mexico again in 1951, and Asia in 1953. As a Rockefeller
Foundation trustee, Myers played a very active role in the evaluation of the Survey Commission report on Mexico
and in the decision to launch an agricultural program which would focus on research. 355
The Mexican research project followed the China experience of focusing first on research instead of
extension. This was due to the inadequacies of available agricultural information and to the lack of trained
technicians. Following the Cornell-Nanking lead, the project was designed to develop new higher-yielding crops on
the one hand, and a new generation of agricultural scientists and technicians on the other. Like the later Cornell
project in the Philippines, it was intended to last at least ten years. To facilitate the educational aspects of the work,
it was coordinated with the development of the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo. Also following
Foundation precedent, the project was set up in close cooperation with the Mexican government. Even though it was
directed by Foundation professionals, it was organized within the Ministry of Agriculture as an Office of Special
Studies. The Rockefeller Foundation, through this project, was in a uniquely powerful position to influence the
pattern of agricultural development in Mexico.
Fundamental to the whole undertaking were two basic principles rooted in past experience. The first was
that the approach would be from the top down. "The plan presented assumes," wrote the Survey Commission, "that
most rapid progress can be made by starting at the top and expanding downward." The Commission recognized the
existence of an alternative, "to start at the bottom and work toward the top" (that is, to begin with the masses of
farmers). Because they reasoned in terms of technological solutions requiring specialized knowledge--a product of
their own training in the American hierarchy of agricultural institutions--starting at the bottom made no sense to
them at all. To begin with, even starting at the bottom was conceived in terms of teaching farms, a top-down
approach:

A program of improving the vocational schools of agriculture and of extension work directed toward the
farmers themselves might be undertaken. But the schools can hardly be improved until the teachers are
improved; extension work cannot be improved until extension men are improved; and investigational work
cannot be made more productive until investigators acquire greater competence. 356
351
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969), pp. 39-42.
352
For the makeup of the Board, see Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1941.
353
Several Cornell-trained agriculturists also served on the Mexican project once it was set up.
354
He served as president of the Federal Farm Mortgage Corporation and as director of both the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation and the
Commodity Credit Corporation.
355
W. C. Cobb, op. cit., biographical information from the Cornell Office of Public Relations and Information, and personal interviews with the
author.
356
E. C. Stakman, et al., op. cit., p. 33.

88
Since they could not, or would not, visualize the kind of social upheaval which could mobilize the peasant
population to deal directly with the basic social and economic inequities which underlay the technological
backwardness of Mexican agriculture, they started at the top.
The second basic principle of the Rockefeller program was closely related to the conception of the problem
in technological terms. The central objective of the program was to increase available "food supplies as quickly and
directly as possible."357 This was and has been the cardinal principle in all of the various phases of the Green
Revolution from its earliest roots to its latest developments. Besides being in tune with the quantitative, growth-
oriented ideology of capitalist development, it was also related, like "rice politics," to the ardent desire in Mexico
and the United States to obtain fast results for political reasons. In Mexico it meant that the plant breeders, soil
scientists, plant pathologists, and so on, would focus on the highest yields which could be obtained using all
available technology in whatever climate was under study. The result, as I noted earlier, was the production of
sophisticated, high-yielding plants--plants often requiring cultural techniques and inputs too expensive for most
peasants.
By 1945 the Mexican project had acquired a full basic staff of researchers--both American scientists and
Mexican interns. Best known among the former were Norman Borlaug, who later won the Nobel Prize, and J. G.
Harrar, the project leader, who went on to become president of the Rockefeller Foundation. During the first fifteen
years that the project was in full operation (1945-1960) this team worked on the development of a considerable
variety of crops: corn, wheat, beans, soybeans, sorghum, potatoes and other vegetables, and forage crops. It even
branched out into livestock research and work with cattle and chickens. But despite this variety the key projects
which have deservedly received the most attention were those which dealt with corn and wheat--corn because it is
the basic food crop in Mexico and wheat because it was the outstanding success story.
The results of these two programs throw the most light on an understanding of the later successes and
failures of the Green Revolution. Critics both hostile and friendly have pointed to the uneven development fostered
by the Mexican project. It is important to see why and how this uneven development emerged. In both cases (corn
and wheat) crop-improvement research yielded substantial success. In corn, between 1943 and 1960, average yields
under good conditions rose 8 to 14 bushels per acre. Over about the same period wheat yields jumped from 11.5
bushels an acre to an average of about 30.358 Almost double and triple previous yields--certainly a substantial gain
anywhere, especially in an underdeveloped country (also much higher than the results in Thailand during the same
period). In both cases these results were the outcome of the creation of new varieties using substantial quantities of
inputs which utilized fertilizer, irrigation, pesticides, and more sophisticated cultural methods. In both cases over
this period the increase in yields coupled with expanded acreage eliminated the need for imports.359 And in both
programs the combination of intern training and fellowships for study in the U.S. produced an elite staff of Mexican
agriculturalists capable of assuming responsibility for the research. 360
Here the list of successes must stop. As was pointed out in the Introduction, the spread of the new varieties
was drastically limited. Although it has been the case of wheat which has attracted the most attention, this was even
more true with corn. Already by 1951 new disease-resistant varieties of wheat had been sown on almost 70 percent
of Mexican wheatlands and a decade later they were being used on close to 100 percent of the area. As is now
widely recognized, the trouble was that the wheatlands were overwhelmingly concentrated in the newly opened
irrigation districts of Mexico's Pacific Northwest, and it was this area alone which was responsible for the rapid
growth in wheat output. The rest of the country, where most of the people live and farm, remained virtually
untouched by the increased productivity. Even within the Northwest the development was uneven for the same
reasons, favoring private buyers of newly opened land over the ejidos located on dry land or old broken-down irri-
gation systems.361 In the case of corn the limitations were serious enough to warrant calling the whole project a fail-
ure. Whereas wheat bread is a relative luxury in Mexico, corn is the basic food crop of most of the people. After 18
years of research and extension, new corn varieties had been planted on only 14 percent of Mexico's corn acreage. 362
357
Ibid., p. x.
358
Ibid., pp.70, 91. FAO data for all of Mexico gives a rise in wheat yields from 770 lbs. in 1952 to 2,280 in 1964. FAO, World Crop Statistics,
1948-64; D. K. Freebairn of the Mexico project reported yields up to 2,900 in the Rio Yaqui in 1964; D. K. Freebairn, "The Dichotomy of
Prosperity and Poverty in Mexican Agriculture," Land Economic; February 1969.
359
In 1953 Mexico imported some 164 metric tons of wheat and wheat flour. A decade later she was a net exporter of about 429,000 tons; FAO,
World Grain Trade Statistics, various issues.
360
There were 550 trainees all told at the Office for Special Studies up until 1960; E. C. Stakman, et al., op. cit., p. 184.
361
C. L. Dozier, "Mexico's Transformed Northwest," The Geographic Review, October 1963.
362
E. C. Stakman, op. cit., p. 70.

89
 Why these failures? In the case of wheat the answer seemed to be simple enough--not enough irrigated
land. (Even this was not really seen as an important problem in the early 1960s, since national production had
increased so substantially.) In the case of corn, however, irrigation played a less central role. There were many
varieties which could increase yields on rainfed land. What then? The authors of the semi-official history of the
Green Revolution blamed the failure on interference by the central government and its insistance on controlling the
production and distribution of improved seed. This, they insisted, limited the role of private enterprise.
Businessmen, they claimed, could have provided these services more cheaply and efficiently, presumably the way
they did with wheat. "Other countries," the authors went so far as to warn, "can learn from Mexico's experience that
government monopoly has not proved to be successful. . . .363
What this pro-capitalist argument overlooked was that it was exactly in the wheat areas where capitalism
was given fairly free reign that land was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a wealthy minority and the
position of the poorer farmers and ejidatorios deteriorated. The government, dominated by Mexico's industrial and
landed aristocracy, may not have been capable or interested in reaching the millions of small farms of the country;
but there is no reason to expect that private business would have done substantially better. This received
substantiation from later commentators on this period who have been less vociferous in their condemnation of
government meddling and have pointed to more "basic" reasons for the failure of new corn varieties to spread. In
particular they have noted that besides the relatively high prices of the required inputs, both the large number and
ignorance of Mexico's small corn farmers made agricultural extension extremely difficult.
The very structure of the approach--of concentrating on the development of a sophisticated, high level
research team (at the top)--placed project members and their protegees in a position removed from the Mexican
peasantry. The agricultural researchers could only work closely with small numbers in limited areas, and were hence
fated not to be able to understand, even through practice, either the social structure of Mexican agriculture or the
social and production attitudes of the Mexican peasants.
In theory, they knew that the problem of numbers would be a difficult one for their project, even when their
goal was that of increasing production rather than dealing with the poverty of the masses. Improved crops, they felt,
if coupled with an effective extension service, would at least solve the food problem. Because they were focusing on
agricultural technology, they gave only limited thought to the socio-economic problems of the agrarian economy
which ultimately determined the success and failure of their whole enterprise.
At first, the researchers' propensity to work with that "rather small class of relatively affluent farmers" who
understood and appreciated the aims of their work tended to push concern even for extension into the background.
Later the Foundation supplied personnel and guidance to help set up a Federal Extension Service in much the same
way the General Education Board had done in the South. By 1960, however, the number of extension workers
trained was still very low, less than half the number of agricultural scientists trained at the Office of Special Studies.
Moreover, the basic policy of the extension program from the start was to concentrate on the better-off farmers. In
Mexico, where the great majority of the farmers were "impoverished, illiterate, isolated, suspicious of strangers," it
was decided that the best course of action would be to concentrate effort where the rate of return would be the
highest. Again, the object was increased production, not the elimination of poverty. The problem, it was suggested,
was not that there was no desire to help poor peasants but that only it cost so much, and there were so few resources.
If only there were more resources, more foreign aid . . .364
What this reasoning ignores is that the shortage of resources is due primarily to the entire structure of
imperialism, whereby the countryside is drained of its wealth by the cities; and Mexico as a whole is caught up
within the American empire to the same effect. Furthermore, even if these exploitative relations did not exist, there
is little reason to expect that even a vast expansion of the National extension system would help the masses of poor
peasants. One has only to look at the United States to see the results of a much more successful extension effort also
initiated with Rockefeller money. Extension has not only been placed primarily at the disposal of wealthy farmers
and agribusiness but as a consequence it has probably contributed considerably to the long process of ruination of
small farmers which has provoked their migration from the countryside to the cities throughout the twentieth
century.365
We see then that the overall impact of the Mexico project on the structural transformation of the
precapitalist mode of agricultural production was sharply limited. It undoubtedly speeded the formation of a whole

363
E. C. Stakman, op. cit., p. 71.
364
See E. C. Stakman, et al., op. cit., Chapter 12, on "Extension: Getting Farms to Use the Results of Research."
365
See Agribusiness Accountability Project, Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: The Failure of the Land Grant College Complex (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Schenkman, 1973).

90
new class of capitalist farmers in the commercial Northwest, but it left the majority of peasants in the same old
precapitalist structures linked to the world capitalist system.
To sum up, the early experience of the Mexico project was an impressive success in terms of the usual
indicators of economic development: aggregate and per capita growth. It helped solve the problem of national food
production in aggregate terms; yet it failed to solve the problems of poverty in the countryside. As we have seen, the
reasons for this failure were probably less the quantitative ones usually cited--inadequacy of aid, too few trained
workers, too little technology--than they were the fundamental framework of growth-oriented technology and
"building on the best.366
The period of the 1940s saw not only the birth of a broad new Rockefeller Foundation agricultural program
in Mexico but also the death of its much older programs in China. The Communist victory removed from
Foundation influence and control its medical work and agricultural research. It also terminated the anti-Communist
reconstruction movement. As if this were not enough of a blow to the Foundation's hopes for influencing the
development of Asia, it was followed almost immediately by the China Lobby attack and the Congressional
examination of the Foundation by the Reece and Cox committees. Although in the face of these obstacles some
might have expected to see the Foundation abandon its Asian activities, it seems that these difficulties acted together
to produce only temporary caution, and for a while, a lower profile. In fact, it would have been surprising if it had
been otherwise. The role of the Rockefeller Foundation, like its Ford and Carnegie counterparts, was far too
important to abandon its long run goals because of a few setbacks. At home the Rockefeller Foundation continued to
help set up postwar Asian studies centers and to finance a new generation of scholars. Its staff and trustees continued
to play central roles in the making of official and private Asian policy. It was only natural that the Foundation's
agricultural work should be put back into service in Asia as quickly as possible.
The renewal of that work began quietly with a series of five Foundation survey missions to India between
1952 and 1956.367 The first two missions, which included J. G. Harrar from the Mexico project, were sent to study
the possibilities of expanding the Foundation's agricultural program into India. They arrived, however, just as the
U.S. aid mission together with the Ford Foundation were focusing their attention on the Community Development
Program. Har-rar and his colleagues quickly convinced the Rockefeller trustees that a program should be started; but
in India the emphasis on village organizing, health education, and agricultural extension had pushed agricultural
research into the background. There was little support for work on new technological solutions.368 The first two
missions were followed by a visit by John D. Rockefeller III and William I. Myers who spent a week in India as part
of a wider survey trip in Asia. During their visit, they met with such major Indian figures as Nehru, G. D. Birla, and
J. R. D. Tata along with Ambassador Bowles and members of the Ford Foundation. They discussed the Communist
threat, the community development program, and Indian attitudes toward foreign business. Impressed with the
recent results in Mexico and the lack of any significant interest among either the Indians or the Americans for
agricultural research, Myers suggested to Ford Foundation program director Douglas Ensminger (an ex-student of
his at Cornell) that agricultural extension without adequate research would lead nowhere. 369 A pattern of division of
labor between the Foundations was soon to emerge.
By the time Richard Bradfield and Robert Chandler were sent to India in 1955 on a follow-up trip, a
Technical Cooperation Administration (TCA) agricultural study committee had also questioned "the effectiveness of
known . . . yield increasing technology" and had favored a reallocation of funds from community development to
366
The Mexico project became the starting point for a series of secondary agricultural programs, first in Latin America and later in the world. By
1950 the Mexico team had already developed to the point where men and experimental materials could be dispatched to Colombia to set up corn
and wheat projects. As in other projects which followed, the patterns used in Mexico were applied--including the organization of the program
within the national Ministry of Agriculture. In 1954 a Central American Corn Improvement Project was launched to coordinate the provision of
breeding materials and fellowships for study in Mexico. In 1955 and 1956 men from Mexico and Colombia initiated work in Chile and Ecuador
respectively. These programs led to the establishment in 1959 of an Inter-American Food Crop Improvement Program, centered in Mexico and
comprising an International Maize Improvement Project, an Inter-American Potato Improvement Project and an International Wheat
Improvement Project, headed by Norman Borlaug. During the 1940s and 1950s none of the new countries encompassed by these various projects
experienced anything like the impact achieved in Mexico. But there is little doubt that this increasingly complex network of personnel and
institutional contacts was not only stimulating widespread marginal changes but was providing valuable experience and practice in the kind of
international organization which would characterize the Green Revolution push in the 1960s.
367
E. C. Stakman, et al., op. cit., Chapter on India; C. P. Streeter, A Partnership to Improve Food Production in India, Rockefeller Foundation,
1969.
368
D. Brown, op. cit., pp. 4-5. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations did team up in 1952 to expand the Allahabad Agricultural Institute directed
by Arthur T. Mosher. But the focus of the Allahabad Institute was agricultural extension, not agricultural research. Subsequently, the Rockefeller
Foundation also supported the Community Development Program helping to fund the creation of a Rural Research and Action Center near
Lucknow to evaluate the program and to furnish "specialized skills." Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Reports, 1952, 1953 and 1954. Chester
Bowles joined the Foundation board in 1954.
369
W. C. Cobb, op. cit., p. 74.

91
expanded research.370 This was rejected by the Indian government. The Indians did sign an agreement under which
TCA would supply advisors from U.S. land-grant universities. They would help develop and expand Indian
agricultural colleges to provide more educated personnel for the agricultural phases of the community development
movement. The TCA also funded a small cooperative project with the state governments of Punjab and Uttar Pra-
desh to produce U.S. hybrid corn. At about the same time the Foundation began a small project in Uttar Pradesh by
supporting work on tropical and subtropical fruit at the U.P. Horticultural Research Station.371 It also sent two corn
experts from Mexico and Colombia to India to study the corn situation. The 1955 trip also led to the initiation of
Foundation fellowships to Indian agricultural students for study in the U.S. and Britain.372
In formal terms, the turning point in Foundation involvement in India came in 1956 when an agreement
was signed with the Indian government to develop research programs for maize, sorghum, and millet, and to create a
postgraduate school of agricultural research at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). 373 Both programs
brought the Foundation into close cooperation with the U.S. aid mission and U.S. policy in India. Although they
would not begin to pay off in terms of new grain yields and new scientists until the High Yielding Varieties Program
of the sixties, these programs together with the extension systems of the Community Development Program and
IADP made possible the dramatic shift to agriculture which would later occur with the Green Revolution. The
Americans were building a human infrastructure which could lobby for expanded agricultural programs and then
administer them when obtained.
India was not the only focus of Rockefeller Foundation interest in Asia. Myers and Rockefeller had visited
several other countries of Asia, among them the Philippines, where Myers had looked in on the Cornell-Los Baños
project, and Thailand where they visited Harry Love's rice-breeding station. When Bradfield and Chandler were sent
to Asia two years later, their assignment went beyond India. The trustees had already seen the need to become
involved in the "rice politics" of the whole area. With rice the staple food crop throughout Asia, the move had been
almost inevitable. The Foundation wanted to launch a rice research program similar to the Mexico program in wheat
and corn. So Bradfield and Chandler were sent to study the possibilities and size up the attitudes of Asian officials
and agriculturalists.374
As a result of that mission, the Foundation began to support rice research in a number of places. In the U.S.,
it funded expanded operations at the Louisiana State University Crowley Substation (which was run by J. Norman
Efferson, a one-time consultant of Nelson Rockefeller on his private estates in Venezuela). The LSU substation was
the major center for training of participants in rice research. The Foundation also funded an extension of Harry
Love's rice program in Thailand which was scheduled for termination by the MSA in 1956. It supported the rice
research activities of the Agricultural Research Institute in Taiwan and the National Institutes for Agricultural
Research and Genetics in Japan. But above all, it began to invest in the University of the Philippines-Cornell project
at Los Baños.375 As we have seen, Los Baños was already a major third country training center by 1956. Its
importance grew so continuously that by 1959 the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation boards began discussing the
joint creation of a major center for rice research for all of Asia. These discussions culminated in the creation of the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Los Baños project, the largest and best even quicker than the
Mexican in 1962. This new breeding financed of all, gave results effort. Within barely three or four years, IRRI
scientists would produce the miracle rices of the Green Revolution.
By the end of the fifties, agricultural research, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico in the
early forties, had been extended on a smaller scale not only to several Central and South American countries but also
into a number of important countries in Asia. Only Mexico experienced dramatic increases in production by the end
of the decade. But the many programs had helped to obtain a partial reorientation of local governments toward rural
problems. This had been achieved through both the demonstration of results and the incorporation of the privately
funded and run programs within the national governments. These foundation programs either complemented or
extended similar support for agricultural research under the U.S. bilateral aid programs.
Both private and public programs contributed to the training of a new generation of elite agriculturalists
capable of organizing and contributing to technological change and extension. In Mexico, where these programs had
by far the greatest impact, the result was not only increased production but increased inequality between the

370
D. Brown, op. cit., p. 5.
371
Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1955.
372
Taped interview with Richard Bradfield by Steve Weissman.
373
C. P. Streeter, op. cit., pp. 93-94, 39.
374
S. Weissman interview with Bradfield, op. cit.
375
Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report, 1955, 1956, 1959.

92
productive, irrigated wheat regions and poorer dryland corn regions. It also contributed to accentuating the
differences between larger and smaller farmers within the regions most favorably affected. These changes were
partly the result of technology but mainly of the social structure within which it was developed and spread. The
nature of the technology in turn reflected an approach to agricultural development which focused on rapid
production increases. This approach reflected a long history of Foundation experience both in the United States and
abroad. It appears as one aspect of the penetration of precapitalist modes of production in agriculture by American
capitalism. Alternative approaches appeared irrational within the given social context and were explicitly rejected.

Agricultural Economics and the CECA

The programs in agriculture, whose development I have traced so far, were focused primarily on either
agricultural research or agricultural extension within community development schemes. This was true both of the
Point Four bilateral aid and of the private Foundation programs. The emphasis in agricultural research was on
orienting the peasants toward technological solutions to their problems and on the development of new techniques.
Community development, patterned after rural reconstruction, was a somewhat more thoroughgoing effort to
penetrate the villages with agricultural extension, infrastructure development, education, health and sanitation, and
anti-Communist ideology.
In the prior work of the G.E.B. in the South and the rural reconstruction effort in China there were two
other elements also present: (1) some attempt to undercut traditional systems of moneylending and merchant control
of peasants through expanded credit and cooperatives; and (2) an emphasis on farming as a business via the
development of capitalist economic practices and attitudes. The first of these was dealt with partially and
inadequately by the community development programs. The second, a conscious emphasis on farm management and
agricultural economics, was largely absent (as a special aim) throughout the various agricultural programs. This
section traces the agrarian development and institutionalization of the postwar concern with this aspect of the
strategy within the all-important Rockefeller philanthropies.
Within the Rockefeller Foundation the articulation of the need for agricultural economics in the Third
World programs was originally the work of William I. Myers. An ex-professor of farm management, Myers' first
work for the Rockefeller philanthropies, it will be recalled, was the development of agricultural economics in the
U.S. South. When he came onto the Foundation board in 1941 as the only specialist in agriculture, he had agreed
that production-oriented research would be a good beginning for the work in Mexico, but he had grown increasingly
uneasy about the neglect of economics by the Mexico team. After a trip to Mexico in 1951 with John D. Rockefeller
III, Myers wrote to Chester Barnard, Foundation president:

. . . in my opinion, it would be highly desirable to expand our work in Mexico to include research on
economic and social problems of agriculture in addition to those of physical production. Remarkable
achievements have been made by Dr. Harrar and his associates. . . . However, the farm economy of that
country is heavily handicapped by hundreds of thousands of uneconomic farm units that are too small even
to provide a subsistence. . . . Furthermore these small farms cannot make use of improved agronomic
practices because they have no surplus above family needs to sell to finance such improvements. 376

At that time, however, Myers' feeling for the critical importance of socio-economic factors received little
sympathy at the Foundation.
Within the Foundation itself there was a sharp split between the Division of Natural Sciences and the
Division of Social Sciences. Work concerning agriculture was located in the former, and there was no cooperation at
all between specialists in plant sciences and specialists in economics.377 Several of the most important men at the
Foundation, such as chairman John Foster Dulles, president Raymond Fosdick, or trustee John D. Rockefeller III,
had both the experience and the understanding to recognize the dangers Myers was pointing out. But as we have
seen, they were also convinced that the key question was improved food technology and rapid increases in
production. To these disagreements there was probably an added hesitancy brought on by the China Lobby attacks
on the foundation's support for the Institute of Pacific Relations. To venture beyond production, about which
everyone agreed, into overt discussion of more sensitive questions of social and economic structure might risk pro-
voking renewed attacks. Because of this, Foundation work in the area of agricultural economics and sociology, at

376
W. I. Myers to C. Barnard, October 3, 1951, Myers Papers, Box 15, 21/2/723, Cornell University Archives, Ithaca.
377
Interview with Myers, op. cit.

93
least in the 1950s, was concentrated outside the Foundation in another institution--the Agricultural Development
Council, set up by John D. Rockefeller III in 1953.378
John D. Rockefeller III not only had the interest and the understanding to put Myers' views into operation
but he also had the financial resources which made it possible for him as an individual to move outside the
Foundation and build new institutions free from old constraints and pressures. Between 1952 and 1956 he founded
three new groups, each to become central in its field, and each concerned primarily with the Third World: the
Population Council, the Agricultural Development Council, and the Asia Society.379
The Population Council, which he set up in 1952, was intended to fund and coordinate work in the then
sensitive area of family planning and population control. The Council, which undoubtedly has been viewed as
complementary to the Agricultural Development Council, was a dramatic new departure from the Foundation's
limited work in this area which stretched back to the thirties. It represented a growing awareness that the widespread
dissemination of death control technology (that the Foundation had pioneered) might lie at the root of long run
social and economic problems as serious as those it was designed to cure. At the time, population was little
recognized, except by a few specialists, as the other side of "rice politics" and the food production approach to Third
World agriculture.380
Rockefeller's decision to set up the Agricultural Development Council a year later was the outcome of a
five-week trip to Asia in the company of William Myers. The story of that trip is illustrative of the kind of "study"
that underlies much of the ruling class support for agricultural development. 381 It is also extremely revealing about
the kind of political factors which are at the heart of the Green Revolution strategy. The trip was organized by the
Rockefellers' Socony-Vacuum Company and included visits to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand,
Burma, India and Pakistan. In each of these countries Rockefeller and Myers talked with U.S. officials, heads of
government, important newspaper and business men, and leading politicians. In short, it was far more than a
dilettante's casual voyage to "look things over." They met with men in the highest circles of power. They discussed
not only agriculture and education, the ostensible objects of their trip, but also the intricacies of local political
struggles, the dangers of rural unrest and Communist revolution, conflicts with local Chinese communities, and
government attitudes toward foreign business. They visited agricultural research stations and universities, but they
also toured the slums of Calcutta and the "resettlement villages" of the British counterguerrilla war in Malaysia.
They lunched with local and U.S. specialists in economics, politics, and agriculture, but they had tea with prime
ministers and dined with kings and royalty. To some, the Rockefeller philanthropies may be just another, rather
small source of development financing or foreign aid. But to the governments and men of influence in Asia,
Rockefeller and Myers symbolized far more. The men they saw and the kinds of reception they received denoted the
power and prestige of the capitalist institution and class they represented.
At several points during their trip Myers and Rockefeller took time out to evaluate and discuss the
possibilities for philanthropic action in the different countries they visited. After their return they sent J. Norman
378
I am talking here about direct Foundation work overseas in these fields. Within the U.S. the vast sums of money the Rockefeller and Ford
Foundation put into area studies were helping to develop American specialists.
379
The oldest of the Rockefeller brothers, John, had followed most closely in his father's footsteps. He took the largest direct responsibility for
the philanthropic tools of empire and left the world of electoral politics and business to the others. Before the war JDR III had served as a junior
secretary to the 1929 conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations. After he joined the board of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1931, his interest
in its activities was particularly drawn to the rural reconstruction work in China. He joined the board of directors of the United China Relief in
1941. He was also president and trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund which was set up in 1940 and which contributed to the UCR and then
to Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals after the war. During the war years he served in several administrative posts in the Department of the Navy
including the Office for Occupied Areas. His work in the "relief and rehabilitation end of military government," he found, had "much in common
with the G.E.B.'s southern program." (JDR III to Albert Mann, November 29, 1943, in G.E.B. Papers, Box 204,140, Rockefeller Foundation
Archives.) After the war he made a survey trip to Asia and in 1947 was one of those receiving the Order of Auspicious Star from Chiang Kai-
Shek in thanks for his help. (Current Biography, June 1953. Others receiving stars and whatnot from Chiang were the senior Rockefeller, Henry
Luce, Thomas W. Lamont, and Paul Hoffman; W. A. Swanberg. op. cit., p. 374.) As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations he took part
in postwar policy discussions, including those of the special Chase-Jessup-Fosdick panel to study Asia policy in 1949. Two years later he joined
Foundation chairman John Foster Dulles as a consultant, first on his peace settlement mission to Japan and later as an advisor to the San
Francisco Treaty Conference. In March of 1952 he became president of the Japan Society, and when Dulles was named Secretary of State in
December, Rockefeller took over as chairman of the board at the Foundation. (Current Biography, Who's Who, New York Times, etc.)
380
S. Weissman, "Why the Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby," Ramparts, May 1970, p. 42.
381
This trip is mentioned in the ADC's early annual reports but its actual nature and details have never been made public. The summary I give
below is based on interviews with Myers and on the diary he kept during the trip which he made available to me. The Asia Society, the third of the
three new groups, was founded by Rockefeller in 1956. Even though its board of trustees sported some of America's leading Asia experts such as
Chester Bowles, until the early sixties its activities were largely limited to receiving visiting Asian dignitaries (in cooperation with the Asia
Foundation and the Institute of International Education), sponsoring forums and exhibits on Asia, publishing Asian authors in English, and
holding "country councils" of members to discuss projects in particular countries. In the sixties, it played a much more important role, taking on
some aspects of the old defunct IPR work in coordinating American Asia specialists. Asia Society, Annual Reports.

94
Efferson of Louisiana State University on a follow-up trip to examine in detail the opportunities for setting up a
program in agricultural economics. While Efferson was in the Far East, Myers and Rockefeller were already
sketching out plans for a new Council of Economic and Cultural Affairs (CECA) (the original name of the
Agricultural Development Council) to focus on agricultural economics and thus complement the Foundations' other
agricultural programs. When Efferson reported back that there was a widespread need for farm management and that
assistance in that area would be welcomed by local authorities, JDR III officially incorporated the CECA with
himself president and Myers as one trustee.382
Besides Rockefeller and Myers, the board of trustees was filled by men closely related to capital's
international interests: J. Norman Efferson; Lloyd W. Elliott, vice-president of Standard Oil of New Jersey; Harold
H. Loucks, director of the China Medical Board; Frederick Osborn, the executive vice-president of the Population
Council; Douglas W. Overton, executive director of the Japan Society; and Phillips Talbot, of the American
Universities Field Staff. The CECA finance committee included men such as John J. Scanlon, treasurer of AT&T;
John D. Lockton, treasurer of General Electric; and Charles B. Newton, vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank.383
At the suggestion of Myers, JDR III appointed old China hand John Lossing Buck as director of agricultural
economics to get the CECA program started.384
While Buck was in charge during the first three years the Council's program was "tailored to meet a
specific, well-defined goal--namely the integration of advanced training and research in agricultural economics into
colleges of agriculture in Asia." This was in line with Efferson's advice and warning that the program should first
concentrate on educating agricultural economists and should temporarily stay away from more politically charged
policy issues until a basis of local support was laid.385 The most important instruments in this program of elite
building were fellowships for local professors for advanced training outside their country and the provision of
visiting professors from the United States. During this period the Council contributed to the development of
agricultural economics, often from scratch, in four major universities: the University of the Philippines, Kasetsart
University in Thailand, Lyallpur College in Pakistan, and Hokkaido University in Japan. In the Philippines the aim
was to build on the previous Cornell work, expanding it in the area of farm management. In Thailand, Pakistan, and
Japan the Council's support led directly to the establishment of Departments of Agricultural Economics in each case.
The primary focus on "farm management" in the area of agricultural economics was a continuation of an emphasis
on the individual farmer-businessman and his problems which reached all the way back to Seaman Knapp and his
formula of 5/8's business. Despite Efferson's warnings, there was also some concern for macroeconomic problems of
agricultural development, such as the "availability of rural people for work in industry." The goals of these
approaches were twofold. First, the introduction of capitalist business principles and bourgeois economics to farm
and university, and second, the development of men capable of eventually shaping national policies favorable to
capitalist development in agriculture.
Besides the major emphasis on agricultural economics, the CECA also supported scattered projects in three
other important areas which had been discussed during the Rockefeller and Myers Asia trip: community
development, land problems, and regional cooperation.386 In organizing and carrying out this program, Buck of-ten
382
Information on Efferson trip also from the author's interview with Arthur T. Moser, president of the ADC, and CECA, Annual Report, 1953-
56, p. 6. Early funding came from JDR III and from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. This was later supplemented by the Ford Foundation.
383
Ibid., pp. 2-3.
384
W. C. Cobb, op. cit.
385
Interview with Mosher, op. cit.
386
CECA, Annual Reports, 1953-60; Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., "Human Resources for Southeast Asian Agricultural Development: The A/D/C
Program for Teaching and Research in the Rural Social Sciences," paper presented at the New York meeting of the Southeast Asia Development
Advisory Group of the Asia Society, 1966. The Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs, as its name suggests, also undertook a number of
"cultural" activities until 1963 when these were taken over by the new JDR III Fund. Some of these grants might well be considered as innocuous
subsidies of cross-cultural contact, such as a fellowship to study at the Juilliard School of Music or the reconstruction of a Japanese-style house in
the New York Museum of Modern Art. Many of the subsidies, however, may well be considered a contribution to what Christopher Lasch has
called the Cultural Cold War. Among these was support for a series of international conferences designed to make a non-Communist appeal to
Asian students and intellectuals. These included the World Assembly of Youth (Singapore 1954), International Student Seminars (Japan 1954-
55), and arts conferences organized by the Congrès Pour La Liberté de la Culture (1960-61). Of a different order were the CECA's annual grants
to the American Universities Field Staff of which CECA trustee and India expert Phillips Talbot was the executive director. The AUFS, primarily
funded by the Ford Foundation, was an outgrowth of the Institute of Current World Affairs and was designed to help develop on-the-spot area
specialists "who combine the skills and talents of the scholar, the teacher and the foreign correspondent." The prototype of these scholar-
correspondents was Talbot himself, whose expertise and experience made him an "independent" insider at the State Department's China Policy
roundtable in 1949. He was also a member of CFR study groups on Asia (1952, 1963), an Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and South
Asian Affairs (1961-65), and an Ambassador to Greece (1965-69) where he arrived in plenty of time for the 1967 coup d'etat. Christopher Lasch,
"The Cultural Cold War," Nation, September 11, 1967; CECA, Annual Report, 1953-60; Ford Foundation, Annual Report, 1956, and American
Men of Science.

95
drew on his earlier experience in China and at times on former Chinese students then working at the FAO. Years
later Buck reminisced about the gradual but steady growth of agricultural economics in Asia:

I can't help but thinking that this is an extension of myself in the work I did in Nanking, . . . it's quite
satisfying when one is retired to know that somebody else is carrying on . . . I carried on in China, and now
they are doing it in the Philippines . . . so that they have a good department there now. . . . People say,
"Well, if the Philippines can do it, we can do it!”387

The CECA program was in fact a stimulus to more widespread concern and field research on the "rural
social science" aspects of agricultural development among both the American elite organizations and the Asian
institutions and governments of their creation. In the words of a CECA report on its first field staff conference which
was held in Bandung in the fall of 1959:

When the Council was organized in 1953, very little attention was being given to problems of agricultural
economics by other agencies. Now, five years later, the situation has changed substantially. Many more
Asian colleges give special attention to the subject; ICA is appointing increasing numbers of agricultural
economists; FAO has just appointed a farm management specialist to its Far East office in Bangkok;
ECAFE has established a new program in this field; and the Ford Foundation is doing some work in this
field in India, Burma, Pakistan, and Indonesia.388

When Buck retired in 1957 he was replaced by Arthur T. Mosher who initiated a basic shift in CECA
policy. The former director of Allahabad Agricultural Institute had spent 1953-57 working on an evaluation of U.S.
technical aid to agriculture in Latin America while at the University of Chicago and had then taught at Cornell. He
widened the scope of the CECA program to include more policy-related work in agricultural economics and other
areas of the rural social sciences. To carry out this new orientation he started the CECA's Associate Program. This
involved building up a permanent staff of professional social scientists assigned to field duty where they played a
dual role. They served both as visiting advisor or professor and as foundation officers. This created a series of
mobile, long term regional officers who could more fully integrate Foundation ideas and approaches into the local
academic or government situation.389
The first of these "field associates," who set a pattern for those who followed, was Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
He was dispatched to Singapore in 1958 to coordinate the Council's programs in Malaysia, South Vietnam,
Thailand, and Cambodia. Son of the first black U.S. ambassador, Wharton had joined the CECA in 1957 to conduct
a special study on U.S. graduate training of Asian agricultural economists. He came to the Council after working
first for Nelson Rockefeller's American International Association for Economic and Social Development in Latin
America between 1948 and 1953 and then at the University of Chicago where he aided Mosher on the evaluation of
U.S. technical aid to Latin America.390
Based at the University of Singapore, where he taught only three economics courses in three years,
Wharton spent the better part of his time traveling in his four-country area, making friends, picking out fellowship
prospects, and generally getting the Council's program in order. Of all the countries in Wharton's area none had
come so close to being lost to revolutionary forces as Vietnam. Yet the period from 1954, when the Americans
sabotaged the elections, until 1959, when small-scale guerrilla actions began, was relatively calm. It was probably
Saigon's last chance to deal effectively with the highly exploitative relations of production in the Vietnamese
countryside that underlay much peasant support for revolution. Into this situation came Clifton Wharton,
representing the CECA, ready to help out as much as he could. We now know that the tenure reforms, land
redistribution, and land settlement schemes undertaken by the government at that time were at best ineffectual and
often worsened the peasants' situation.391 Nevertheless, under CECA auspices the Third FAO Farm Management

387
W. C. Cobb, op. cit.
388
CECA Newsletter, No. 5, April 1960, p. 5. In terms of the Rockefeller Foundation's programs, the stimulus of the CECA led at last to the
appointment of an agricultural economist to the team in Mexico and to the addition of an agricultural economist to the IARI in India. In Mexico,
even then according to Myers, the resistance to the work of Donald Freebairn by the agricultural scientists was such that his work "couldn't be
integrated" with theirs. W. C. Cobb, op. cit., p. 49.
389
Interview with Mosher; various annual reports; Arthur T. Mosher, "Programs and Policies of the ADC, 1953-1973," ADC Newsletter, No. 27,
September 1973, p. 3; Wharton, op. cit., pp. 3-4.
390
Information on Wharton's background is from his ADC Curriculum Vitae, various ADC Newsletters, and Michigan State University official
biographical information.

96
Training Center was held near Saigon in late 1958 and was located on one of the government's land settlement
projects.392 Wharton, who visited Vietnam "three or four times a year," followed up with a 1959 grant to the
University of Hue to study village and city agricultural prices. Later the same year he brought a CECA visiting
professor, Robert D. Stevens, to the National College of Agriculture to begin work "developing an agricultural
economics curriculum pertinent to the needs of the country." Stevens was to organize the few available Vietnamese
agriculturalists (who had all been trained at Los Banos) and with Wharton to establish and maintain "sustained
contact with the agricultural economists in the newly established Agricultural Economics and Statistics Service in
the Ministry of Agriculture." After growing civil war in 1959-60 made it impossible for Stevens to carry out field
work and forced him to leave, Wharton continued to maintain close and frequent contact with the Ministry of
Agriculture throughout the early 1960s.393132 Wharton rapidly became, along with Diem's close advisor Wolf
Ladejinsky, one of the most knowledgeable nongovernment American "experts" in the field of Vietnamese
agriculture.
In this way, the CECA developed a two-pronged approach to influencing agricultural development. On the
one hand there was the education of future economists, farm management experts, and policy makers in the
principles of agricultural economics. On the other hand there was the immediate and direct influence exerted by its
Associates within Third World governments. By providing this emphasis on the economics of agriculture, the CECA
efforts complemented other programs in public health, community development, and agricultural research. Once
again education was combined with direct influence to build elites who would try to deal with the peasant masses.

Property in Land: The Failure to Change the Relations of Production

As I have pointed out above, land reform was persistently absent from the programs undertaken by the
American elite to stem rural unrest and transform the agrarian Third World. From the Asian community
development to Mexican crop improvement, efforts at land reform were either entirely missing or hopelessly
inadequate. The reason for this lack needs to be explained, for there was widespread recognition dating back to the
thirties of its importance in any effort to transform rural society. The need for land reform to undercut agrarian
revolution was recognized in China by reform-minded missionaries, informed international businessmen, foundation
officials, and even field representatives of the U.S. government. The failure to undertake some kind of reform was
not due to a lack of American understanding but to Chiang's unwillingness to undercut the power of his landlord
supporters. The dramatic fall of China to the Chinese revolutionaries convinced all but the most conservative
internationalists that the land question was a key element in rural revolution.394
The particular importance of the China experience was indicated by Phillip Raup, professor of agricultural
economics at the University of Minnesota, who wrote a background history for a major land reform conference in
1951:

It has been a difficult lesson to learn that for most of the world . . . the threat of communism has revolved
around agrarian issues. . . . This lesson was driven home with finality by the fall of China . . . little doubt can
remain that a fundamental reason for China's fall was the repeated failure of the Kuomintang regime to carry
out basic land tenure reform.395

A year later, in a 1952 study group of the elite Council on Foreign Relations on the "Future of
Underdeveloped Countries," land reform was one of the major issues. The CFR group, which was funded by a
special grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, included such notables in the area of Third World strategy as Nelson
Rockefeller, William 0. Douglas, Stacy May, Jonathan Bingham, Harland Cleveland, and Edward Mason. The focus
for its discussions and eventual outcome of the meetings was a study by Eugene Staley from the Stanford Research
Institute. "Land and agrarian issues," he wrote, "are to be ranked among the two or three topmost 'burning issues'
throughout Asia and the Middle East and in some parts of Latin America." 396 China was singled out as the example:

391
Al McCoy, "Land Reform as Counterrevolution," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter-Spring 1971.
392
Wharton, op. cit., p. 14.
393
Ibid., p. 9; and M. Patterson, "Wharton Named President," State News (Michigan State University), October 17, 1969.
394
There were some such as Henry Luce who could never believe that agrarian reform was not a Communist program foisted on an unwilling
peasantry.
395
Phillip Raup, "Issues in the Background of the Conference," in K. Parsons, R. Penn, and P. Raup, eds., Land Tenure (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1963). Raup's article gives a brief outline of the development of postwar consensus in the U.S. government on land reform.

97
 . . . in China, proving ground for so much of Communist policy in underdeveloped areas, Mao was able to
use agrarian discontent to build the peasant mass support on which the Communist Party at length rose to
power. The failure of the nationalist government to take effective measures to meet demands for agrarian
reform, until far too late, was one of the main sources of its weakness in the face of the Communist
political and military attack.397

If land reform was an important element in the failure to stave off Communism in China, then it should be
undertaken elsewhere in Asia where similar conditions and threats prevail:

Rural institution-building which provides a constructive democratic alternative to the Communist formulas
would seem to be essential if the vulnerability of these areas to Communism is to be lessened. 398

Besides this preoccupation with China there was also the conviction that it had been the precapitalist landed
aristocracy which had provided much of the political power and backing to the nationalist regimes in Germany and
Japan. The destruction of the landlord class was seen as necessary to permit the reestablishment of a capitalist ruling
class in these countries which would have a more international, cooperative attitude and less militant nationalism.
This was an essential element in America's plans for rebuilding the capitalist world in such a way as to open all its
economic doors. The operational results of this analysis were directives to the allied occupation forces as early as
1944 to carry out land reforms which would cripple the landlord class in these countries. Of the situation in
Germany, a War Department guide to reform wrote about the landowning Junker class:

This group has formed the kernel of political and social reaction in Germany. . . . Incontrovertible political
considerations will necessitate the dissolution of the Junker holdings.399

In Japan, a similar analysis was put forward. The landlord class had provided much of the military officer
group and it was "upon the landlords that the reactionary parties of Japan always relied for support."400 In order to
restructure the Japanese economic and political structure around a more cooperative zaibatsu class of industrial and
financial capitalists, the landlords had to go. The welfare of the peasants was a means to an end here:

It was, therefore, as much from a recognition of the close relationship between the anti-democratic tradition
of Japan and the rural landlord system as from an interest in the tenant farmers' welfare, that a redistribution
of land ownership became occupation policy.401

This reasoning was supplemented by the argument that land distribution to the peasants in land-poor Japan would
eliminate their support for colonial expansionism based on the hope of new land acquisition.402 Finally, reform was
seen as part of an effort to limit the appeal of Communism to the peasantry during the unstable, postwar occupation
period. This was the reason for the "interest in the tenant farmers' welfare":

There was a possibility that Japan might run to communism in the social unrest immediately after
surrender. The occupation has destroyed one of the fertile sources of communi in Japan by meeting the
farm issue squarely.4031g4

396
Eugene Staley, The Future of Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Harper and Brothers for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1954), p.
251.
397
Ibid., p. 135.
398
Ibid., pp. 255-56. McCoy fails to recognize the strength of this early understanding. (See below, footnote 144.)
399
War Department Pamphlet, 31-170 (July 29, 1944), cited in Raup, op. cit., p. 50.
400
William M. Gilmartin and W. I. Ladejinsky, "The Promise of Agrarian Reform in Japan," Foreign Affairs, January1948, p. 314.
401
Ibid.
402
Mark B. Williamson, "Land Reform in Japan," Journal of Farm Economics, May 1951, p. 169.
403
Y. Kondo, The Land Reform in Japan (Tokyo, 1952), cited in J. L. Buck, "Progress of Land Reform in Asian Countries," in W. Froehlich, ed.,
Land Tenure, Industrialization and Social Stability: Experience and Prospects in Asia (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961), p. 91.
Also see W. I. Ladejinsky, "Land Reforms in Japan: A Comment," in K. Parsons, et al., op. cit., p. 225. "[General MacArthur] understood that
bringing even a semblance of democracy to Japan and cutting the ground from under the feet of the Communists" required helping the peasants.

98
 For those internationalist elements of the American elite who had been supporting land reform for years,
the similarities among Germany, Japan, and China were striking. In each case a powerful landed class had been a
major cause of instability. In one case (China) opposition to reform was insuring Communist victory. In the two
others the landholding class had contributed to militarism and war. 404 The result of these experiences was that U.S.
government policy insisted on land reform wherever it had the power to do so. In Cold War Asia this meant mainly
in Taiwan and less in Korea and the Philippines. What is interesting in view of the very limited implementation is
why land reform could be carried out in a few areas but not in all.
In Taiwan the lesson had already been drawn before the loss of the mainland. During the short-lived
program of the JCRR, some land rent reforms had been initiated in April 1949.405 With the remains of Chiang's
Kuomintang isolated on Taiwan and desirous of shattering the hostility and opposition of Formosan landlords, the
old political obstacles to land reform no longer existed.406 Chiang's power-base was now limited mainly to the army
and U.S. aid. The JCRR program was continued after 1949 in order to try to achieve a greater degree of reform than
that which had been possible on the mainland. After visiting Formosa in September 1949, Wolf Ladejinsky, one of
the architects of land reform in Japan (and later in Vietnam and India), commented on the institution of a new
reform program:

As long as these conditions persisted, it was idle to seek for stability in rural Formosa. What one was likely
to find instead was fertile ground for political extremism and civil dissension. . . . Clearly, the lessons
drawn from the Nationalist defeat in China have not been lost on Governor Chen, and he is therefore
determined to brook no opposition in carrying out the program.407

The Formosa JCRR program was initiated by the same groups of technicians and policy people who had been
groomed in China by Cornell University and the Rockefeller Foundation. Among these, as we saw earlier, were T.
H. Shen, Jimmy Yen, and the members of the National Agricultural Research Bureau (which had been set up by
Harry Love of Cornell).
In 1948, the U.S. also initiated a land reform in occupied Korea. The reform was part of its program to
destroy peasant support for Communist insurgents and was initiated after rural guerrilla uprisings took place in areas
of Japanese settlement.408 This first program was limited to the distribution of some Japanese-held lands. In 1950, in
a situation similar to that being played out in China, a second program was begun on the eve of total civil war. This
time it was aimed at some large Korean landholders.409 The reform program was interrupted by war until 1953,
when it was resumed. Given the American awareness of the importance of land reform and its powerful leverage on

404
The possibility should not be excluded that the landlord class, like the military in these countries, provided the American ruling class and its
apologists, perhaps unconsciously, with a useful scapegoat on which to hang the responsibility for what was, in many ways, a classic capitalist
war for the redivision of the world. For a view of the origins of World War II in terms of commercial rivalry between two expansionist capitalist
countries--the U.S. and Japan--see W. A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: World Publishing, 1959), and Lloyd
Gardner, Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (New York: Beacon,1971). For a view of the conflict as one over access to raw materials,
see Jonathan Marshall, "Southeast Asia and U.S.-Japan Relations: 1940-41," Pacific Research and World Empire Telegram, March-April 1973.
405
By focusing on the Japanese land reform as the formative experience for a particular set of agrarian reform experts in the U.S. government
(especially Wolf Ladejinsky), Al McCoy, op. cit., misses the importance of the earlier China experience in the formation of elite policy. This also
leads him to read more into the contribution of the U.S. technicians than was often the case. In China, for example, he attributes the key role in
initiating the 1949 land rent reductions to Ladejinsky when in fact the reforms were launched under the JCRR in April, long before what the New
York Times called his one-month "survey" of the situation in October (NYT, November 19, 1949, p. 4, and W. I. Ladejinsky, "Land Reform in
Formosa," Foreign Agriculture, USDA, June 1950). That by 1949-50 the JCRR was well aware of the Japanese experience there can be little
doubt. But the JCRR people and programs had independent roots of their own reaching back to the 1930s. Both this and the timing of the
programs hardly support McCoy's contention that Ladejinsky tested "the lessons of the Japanese land reform in the laboratory of the Chinese
revolution," or that the Chinese reforms were "based on Japanese experience" (McCoy, op. cit., p. 22). He is correct, however, in pointing out that
from 1952 a number of U.S. experts were brought in from Japan and Korea. From this time on, U.S. land reform attitudes were dominated by the
shock of losing China. The success in Japan was seen as a living proof that reform might indeed help in avoiding rural instability elsewhere.
406
On the Formosan opposition to the mainland regime and subsequent bloody purges of that opposition, see: George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed
(Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1965), and Maurice Meiser, "The Development of Formosan Nationalism," in Mark Mancall, ed., Formosa Today
(New York: Praeger, 1964).
407
W. I. Ladejinsky, "Land Reform in Formosa," Foreign Agriculture, USDA, June 1950, pp. 36-37.
408
Jon Halliday, "What Happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean History, 1945-53," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, November 1973, p.
38, fn. 26; pp. 42-43. On the significance of the uprisings as the beginning of Civil War, see Jon Halliday, "The Korean Communist Movement,"
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Fall 1970, p. 104.
409
Yong Sam Cho, "Disguised Unemployment" in Underdeveloped Countries with Special Reference to Korea (Berkeley: University of
California, 1963), pp. 104-06.

99
the South Korean government, an explanation for its slowness to act may lie in a reluctance to further weaken the
extremely narrow base of support for its puppet government by alienating the landlord class. 410
This use of land reform in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan was by far the "softest" aspect of U.S. anti-
Communist policy in these countries. The occupation governments (often under the direction of SCAP) carried out
much more violent purges of leftists in labor movements, in education, and in the state bureaucracy. 411 Compared to
these often bloody purges, agrarian reform appears subtle indeed. It was seen as the only way, short of military
suppression, of dealing with the masses of peasants. In government, labor, and education the much smaller numbers
of individuals involved made political repression feasible. In Japan and Taiwan this political aspect of the rural
strategy seemed to work fairly well in defusing immediate discontent and in setting up the peasant classes for
exploitation by industry. In Korea, however, the reforms seem to have met with less success. 412
Despite the wide consensus about the need for land reform among the members of the U.S. elite concerned
with pacifying the rural Third World, the subsequent attempts to carry out land reform in a number of important
countries have met with only limited success. In the Philippines, after the Bell Mission of 1950, the U.S. demanded
land reform as a precondition for aid to help fight the Hukbalahap guerrillas. Yet the reforms were limited to the
distribution of newly opened land to reformed guerrillas--thus leaving untouched the large rice and sugar plantations
owned by the Filipino elite. In Vietnam, a whole series of reforms were planned by Wolf Ladejinsky and backed by
the American government in the 1950s: land redistribution, tenancy reform, and land development. But in practice
they were either so limited in their application or so badly carried out that the net results were not to undercut
peasant support for revolution but to exacerbate it.413 In India, Ambassador Chester Bowles brought Ladejinsky and
Parsons to study the land situation and make recommendations for reform to the government. Local Gandhians such
as Vinoba Bhave, Praja Socialists such as Asoka Mehta, and Communists all pressured the government for land
reform. The Congress party itself had promised land reform since before independence. But aside from the breakup
of the zamindari estates, little was accomplished in comparison to the vast needs. 414 The only fairly effective land
reforms during the postwar period were mainly attempts which escaped American influence. Eastern Europe, China,
North Vietnam, North Korea, Egypt, Bolivia, Brazil and Guatemala all undertook land re-form programs. Where the
impetus came from socialist governments (e.g., Eastern Europe, China, North Vietnam, North Korea, Brazil, or
Guatemala), the U.S. elite belittled, distorted, and sometimes intervened with military counterrevolution.
The failure of the land reforms supported by the American elite outside of Japan and Taiwan resembled the
pre-1949 efforts in China. In fact, in the Philippines, Vietnam, and India, the history of land reform reads like a
rewrite of the China story. In each case there was local and American pressure (government and/or private) for land
reform as one aspect of a more comprehensive program for developing agriculture and gaining peasant support.
Each time the national government was sufficiently dependent on the support of a small class of wealthy
landowners, it was unwilling to undertake any measure which would seriously jeopardize the interests of that class.
In the Philippines, the reforms began with unused reclaimed land. In Vietnam, reform was also begun with
abandoned lands which were given to the refugees from the North who were seen as potential allies of Diem. In
India, land reform was primarily limited to the distribution of the lands of the "old elite of princes and large absentee
landowners [which] was discredited by its association with the British." But this was done at the price of leaving
untouched the larger and more politically powerful group of "wealthy large landholding farmers who dominated the
villages.415 More than once the programs in these countries also followed the pattern of Chiang's government by
undoing land reforms initiated by agrarian revolutionaries and thus further alienating the peasantry.416 When the
reforms did not threaten these landed interests, or when those interests were in imminent danger of revolutionary
expropriation, action would be taken. Time and again the reform effort would then be abandoned once the
410
Robert B. Morrow and K. H. Sherper, Land Reform in Korea, AID, June 1970, pp. 20, 36.
411
Herbert P. Bix, "Regional Integration: Japan and South Korea in U.S. Asia Policy," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, November 1973, p.
16.
412
Y. S. Cho, op. cit., p. 104, fn. 12.
413
A good overview of the limited land reforms undertaken in the Philippines and Vietnam, their relation to counterinsurgency and their impact
is A. McCoy, op. cit.
414
Chester Bowles, op. cit., pp. 173-94. Charles Bettelheim in L'Inde Independante (Paris: Maspero, 1971), pp. 63-77, discusses how the reforms
eliminating the quasi-feudal zamindari tenure relationships not only did not touch the rich peasants but laid the basis for their emergence as a new
class of capitalist farmers. Also see, Thomas Weisskopf, op. cit., on the position of the Indian landowners in the ruling class power structure.
415
T. Weisskopf, op. cit., p. 72.
416
The first land tenure reforms in Vietnam destroyed the revolutionary reforms and impoverished the peasants; McCoy, op. cit., p. 34. In the
Philippines, American liberation brought the return of the landlords to their previously abandoned lands which had been occupied by the peasants
during the anti-Japanese guerrilla war carried on by the Huks; Bowles, op. cit., pp. 179-80. In India, government action against peasant land
seizures was also common.

100
immediate threat had lessened--just as in 1934, Chiang set aside talk of land reforms in Kiangsi once the Red Army
was driven out.
This decision of the U.S. elite not to force land reform on any of these countries emerged from much debate
about how far the United States could go to achieve what virtually everyone considered advisable. The existence of
this debate is important to note because it makes clear that the question was tactics and not the desirability of land
reform as a strategy. The most forceful arguments for energetic intervention came from those who were convinced
that if the U.S. government had pushed harder and earlier, Chiang would have given in and the consequent land
reforms might have saved China. As so often happens, this strongly interventionist position was held by the more
liberal elements of the internationalist elite. One of the most outspoken was Supreme Court Justice William 0.
Douglas. A long-time friend of Jimmy Yen and ardent crusader for the fostering of a "democratic" peasant
revolution, Douglas often argued that any aid without land reform would do more harm than good. He felt that the
U.S. Point Four program should grant aid only on the condition that basic land reforms were undertaken to break the
back of the landed class and lay the groundwork for a peasant-based program of rural development:

You cannot go into those villages and be there a week without taking sides. You are either for the landlords
or you are for the peasants. Before we go, let us make up our mind whom we are for• and if we cannot
make up our mind, we should not go.417

Douglas presented these arguments so many times and in so many places that there can be no doubt of his sincerity.
His presentation was no rhetorical tour-de-force for the benefit of left-leaning intellectuals or peasants but was a
very serious proposition considered within the inner circles of internationalist policy makers. Yet Douglas' ar-
guments were rarely followed except in a few isolated cases.
Why not? A direct answer to the Douglas kind of position was given by ICA Deputy Administrator
Jonathan B. Bingham in his 1953 book on Point Four, Shirt-Sleeve Diplomacy. The year before, Bingham had
served with Douglas on the CFR special study group on the future of underdeveloped countries. The two were
undoubtedly old protagonists on this question. In justifying the provision of Point Four aid to countries which
needed land reform yet refused to undertake it, Bingham attacked Douglas directly on the grounds that the United
States simply did not have the power either to buy or to force reform. If it wanted a program at all, the U.S. would
have to accept the local government's decision:

Any serious attempt to follow the Douglas formula would in most cases result in Point Four being kicked
right out of the country. In other words, there would be no reforms, and no program either.418

These recurrent failures to achieve land reforms which would redistribute land and power to poor peasants
indicate more than the limits of U.S. power. They are an indication of the failure of the U.S. interventionists, private
and public, to create the ever-elusive "third force" between the Communists and the anti-reform landowners.
Since the creation of a class of landowning, small farmers--the only possible third force in the countryside--
is predicated on land reform, a national third force would have to come from the non-agricultural sectors. But such
an urban class of industrial businessmen and government bureaucrats would require the healthy and rapid expansion
of a national industrial sector (private- and/or state-owned) in order to provide it with an independent power base
from which to oppose the landed interests. This was exactly what was available in Taiwan and Japan. In Taiwan
there were Chiang, his army, and his business friends--they were outsiders to Formosa and with their American
backers they were far more powerful than the local landowners. In Japan there were the American occupation forces
and a class of industrialists whose zaibatsu represented a power base independent from the rural landowners with
whom they had been allied during the war. In India, Vietnam, and the Philippines (and many other countries not
discussed here), no such group appeared. In each of these countries, decades of colonial and neo-colonial
exploitation had undermined the prerequisite industrial development. With development based on primary-product
exportation and very limited industrialization (often controlled by foreign capital), the landholding class could
maintain sufficient power to block reforms dangerous to its interests. Neither the multiple, elite-building,
agricultural development programs nor the overall progress of agricultural production contributed significantly to
undermining this situation. In fact, the progress which was made was concentrated among those rich landowning
peasants and capitalist farmers who were opposing the social reforms necessary to help the masses of poor peasants.
417
W. O. Douglas, 22. cit., p. 518. Also see, W. O. Douglas, "How to Win the Peace with Point Four," Newsweek, July 7, 1952, and his Strange
Lands and Friendly People (New York: Harpers, 1951).
418
J. Bingham, Shirt-Sleeve Diplomacy (New York: John Day, 1953), pp. 214-15.

101
 To this should be added one final consideration. The American elite wanted to transform the countryside
because it wanted expanded markets and investment opportunities. It felt that "modernization" would permit more
rapid, long run growth in output which was vital to preventing the rural unrest which would threaten that expansion.
It tried to bring about this transformation in ways which precluded violent upheaval. Yet the only way the
transformation could take place was by the destruction of one class and the creation of another--rarely a peaceful
process. When faced with a choice between the upheavals implicit in the kind of change it wanted and immediate
stability which did not threaten current investment, it tended to choose the latter. This tendency was strengthened by
the creation of new agricultural technologies which permitted a rapid growth of output without the turmoil
inevitably associated with the rapid transformation of one mode of production to another. As we saw in the
Introduction, the Green Revolution--the culmination of this long term effort--may now be bringing about the kind of
transformation so long desired by the American ruling class. But it is doing so in a way which escapes their control.
In reaction they are now renewing the kinds of programs which have repeatedly failed either to produce a peaceful
transition or to solve the problems of poverty. It is hard to see how a continuation along these lines can have effects
other than those which we have seen repeated so often.

102
 VI
Conclusion, or Theses on agricultural development and the Green Revolution
I
The Green Revolution is the latest chapter in a long history of efforts to raise productivity in agriculture.
These have not been solely technical efforts of science or economic organization; they have been profoundly
political efforts to transform socio-economic structures.
I have shown that the historical origins of the Green Revolution can be traced back directly, through a
continuing group of specialists and institutions, to the turn-of-the-century development of agricultural extension.
The post-World War II efforts in agricultural development, both private and public, which led to the Green
Revolution were based upon the prewar experience of the Rockefeller foundations in China. That experience, in
turn, drew directly on the work of the General Education Board in the South, which began in 1902. This half-century
of experience was fore-shadowed from the time of the first Morrill Act by the expansion of new agricultural
techniques and the sporadic growth of governmental support for agricultural education and research.
The approaches to raising agricultural productivity, which were developed in these periods, involved many
technological innovations (e.g., new seeds, machinery, or cultivation techniques) and diverse changes in economic
organization (e.g., new sources of rural credit, land reform, or Farm Bureaus). These were fostered partly by the
creation of new institutions (e.g., agricultural colleges, agricultural extension services, or cooperatives) and partly by
changes in government economic policies. Generally, agricultural research was designed to create productivity-
increasing technological changes, while agricultural education was designed to educate farmers, agricultural experts,
and policy makers. During each of the periods considered above, I have also pointed out that the key shifts to
expanded support for agricultural research and education were integral parts of political struggles of the day.
Moreover, those political conflicts were often concerned with the future of the most basic socio-economic structures
of society.
The first Morrill Act, which launched the land-grant college system in the United States, was born as part
of the bargaining by which northern capital gained the support of eastern (i.e., with land grants) and western (i.e.,
with the Homestead Act) farmers in its struggle with the slave South. The Hatch Act, which authorized federally
funded agricultural experiment stations, and the second Morrill Act, which expanded the land-grant colleges, were
passed in response to growing farm unrest. Similarly, the business funded and directed campaigns of the General
Education Board, the railroads, and other agriculture-related industries, which led to the establishment of the federal
extension system, sought to stabilize a still largely hostile southern agriculture and to integrate it more closely with
the northern economy.
We have also seen how both agricultural education and research were brought into play in China, first by
missionaries and then by various groups under the auspices of the Rockefeller foundations, to help American
business deal with the chronic problems of hunger and social instability. These problems were partially created by,
and were often threatening to, the penetration of foreign business into China. These efforts culminated in the
government programs of the Joint Commission for Rural Reconstruction to use agrarian reform to defend Chinese
and foreign capital against the peasant-based Chinese Communist revolution. Finally, in the postwar era, agricultural
development was again used to deal jointly with rural poverty and socialist revolution in many areas of Asia.
Investment in agriculture was political in that it served to bolster local and foreign business and to direct the
transformation of traditional agriculture along lines compatible with private enterprise and away from the socialism
advocated by revolutionaries.

II
Agricultural development has been only one aspect of a broader agrarian strategy of social engineering
designed to transform the rural hinterland and insure social stability.
Because investments in agricultural research and education were undertaken within the context of political
struggles over the future structure of agriculture, different approaches were really different partial strategies for
dealing with both farmers and revolutionaries. I have shown how, over time, these strategies were complemented by
others in related fields (such as health, community development, nonagricultural education, and home economics) to
produce a broader strategy dealing with the transformation of rural society in general. This strategy and its
component parts amounted to nothing less than social engineering—the planned destruction and rebuilding of social
structures.

103
 Prior to the work of the General Education Board, such restructuring was limited to scattered reform
projects such as Hampton Institute or the Freedmen's Bureau. The G.E.B., however, supported Seaman Knapp's
expansion of its southern program beyond agricultural extension into the family via Boys' Clubs, Girls' Clubs, and
home economics. The G.E.B. also financed new approaches to restructuring the whole system of formal education in
the South, especially high schools and colleges. These programs were, in turn, complemented by the productivity-
raising public health work of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission and the investment initiatives of private
business. As I have indicated, some of these programs were consciously coordinated. But, conscious or not, they all
dovetailed to make up a broad pattern of intervention--a strategy for change.
Although it appears that by the 1920s the experience in the South produced a fairly clear conception of how
to engineer social change, the extension of this pattern overseas required considerable adaptation to new constraints
and opportunities. In China, the foundations had to deal with missionaries, Chinese reformers, and local
government. The foundations sometimes coordinated and sometimes incorporated the projects of the missionaries
and Chinese reformers within their own programs. They often worked in concert with, or alongside of, the Chinese
government, but were rarely opposed to it. As in the South, programs were often designed to stimulate eventual
takeover and operation by public authorities. Increasingly faced with the threat of Communist revolution, the rural
programs became more and more geared to winning the peasants and less and less concerned with simply raising
productivity. Rural reconstruction was the final form in which all of the various agrarian strategies were knit
together before defeat in 1949.
In the postwar period the agrarian strategy of raising productivity and pacifying peasants was clearly well
understood and elaborated. Once again, however, various constraints, including the opposition of local elites and
limitations on congressional funding, meant that only parts of the strategy would be applicable in each region or
country. In a very few places most of the elements could be instituted. In most cases, however, efforts would be
limited to one or two programs such as community development, agricultural research, agricultural education, rural
public health, or higher education. These would exhaust either practical possibilities or resources or both. In all
cases, those strategies which could be followed were aimed at stability, growth in output, and the creation of new
social structures.

III
The agrarian strategy is most fundamentally an aspect of the expansion of capital and its impact on
precapitalist social formations.
The rapid development of this process of social engineering, not only in rural, but also in industrial areas,
was one aspect of the development of a new breed of capitalists and charitable institutions--the monopoly capitalists
of the turn of the century (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, etc.) and their large "philanthropic" foundations. Through
these institutions social engineering emerged as a strategy designed to meet the needs of an increasingly socialized
capitalist development. The rise of giant national and even multinational corporations which commanded substantial
percentages of the industrial labor force and its potential for producing surplus value was significant for far more
than the creation of huge private fortunes. The large relative size of these new, strengthened concentrations of
capital meant increased and broadened confrontation with the working class. This growing confrontation, at the end
of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, gave this social capital the reason (as the private
concentration of wealth coupled with growing control over the state gave it the means) to attempt a reshaping of
both the current labor force and the reserve labor army in ways consistent with its reproduction of surplus value.
(Indeed, although I have not dealt with other aspects here, the increasingly social character of capital led to its
broadened concern and increased control over virtually all social phenomena vital to its expanded reproduction.)
Both industrial and agricultural labor had to be educated and trained in new ways more under the control of
capital (and less under the control of trade unions) in order to raise productivity, and hence relative surplus value,
and to undercut the development of working-class solidarity. The vast rural hinterland, which provided raw
materials, food, and labor to industrial capital, had to be reorganized to insure its stability in all of these functions.
We have seen how the effects in the South were tied to this more general movement throughout the nation--the
"Progressive" era--which sought to strengthen and expand capital's control over labor in the face of working-class
resistance. At the same time that capital concentrated on achieving increasing control over the state, so too was it
apparently becoming more "progressive." But as should be clear by now, that progressiveness was no more than a
combination of strategies designed to reinforce capital's control over the labor force. This was typified by the many
cases in which the "progressive" reformers called for the use of repressive force when farmers or workers got out of
hand.

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 In such an era of monopoly capitalism, or more correctly, of social capital, the individual capitalist
becomes increasingly unimportant. He is replaced by the collective capitalist in the same way that the individual
laborer is subsumed to the collective laborer with the growth of cooperation and the production of relative surplus
value. The early period of social capital, characterized by the great robber barons, appears in many ways as a
transition from the previous period, where the individual capitalist held more direct personal control, to the modern
period, where control over capital is increasingly exercised collectively by the capitalist class. This collective control
is implemented both through "private" channels (corporate collusion, policy-making organizations, etc.) and through
the economic and political power of the state.
The large foundations, which coordinated much of the development of social engineering techniques, were
among the earliest such private channels. Even the largest of these were founded with personal wealth, but those
funds were accumulated through corporate structures whose growth and expansion went beyond the control of any
one man. Moreover, as I have indicated, the control over these foundations was exercised by boards of directors
representing the broader interests of capital. Most importantly, the policies set by the boards and the programs
carried out under them went far beyond the business interests of the original founders (though they may often have
coincided with those interests) to support the needs of the capitalist class, i.e., of capital as a whole. Paradoxically, it
is at the moment when private property seems to reach its highest point in giant accumulations of personal wealth,
that the private element pales to insignificance before the social character of its expansion and control.
Through the foundations (as well as other institutions, including the state) social capital financed the search
for, and development of, new strategies for dealing with the multiple technical and political barriers to its expansion.
Where there was conscious coordination, the various programs for agriculture constituted "strategies" in the most
usual sense of the word--intentional plans. Yet, at the same time it is clear that evidence of self-consciousness is not
necessary to demonstrate that the various programs, separately or jointly, were "strategies." Whether faced with a
shortening of the working day or with peasant reluctance to participate in commodity production, capital quite
naturally responds in ways to escape such constraints on surplus accumulation. In the case of the working day, new
organizational forms and productivity increases allow the production of relative surplus value despite the limitation
on absolute surplus value. In the case of peasant resistance, an epoch of private capital may respond primarily with
plantation agriculture, or an epoch of social capital with social engineering. In each case, the continuity of
accumulation demands innovation and development. Whether or not this is consciously understood as a strategy in
class struggle is obviously secondary. Capital has always used diverse social mechanisms for its own ends. What
develops during the rise of social capital is the breadth of those mechanisms and the degree of control. In the
postwar period, by shaping the total direction and limits of the "agricultural development" effort, capital has been
able to effectively use the services of all reform groups, even those whose members may be dedicated uniquely to
"human welfare" and who feel themselves to be above class conflict.
So whatever the consciousness of the participants, the agrarian strategy in all its particular applications has
essentially involved the ways in which an expanding capitalist mode of production has attempted to subordinate and
transform precapitalist modes of production in rural areas. The agrarian strategy was really an evolving set of
strategies designed to reshape precapitalist agriculture in such a way as to: (1) open it economically to capitalist
markets and investments which would tend to transform it into capitalist modes of exchange, production, etc., and
(2) stabilize it politically so that both before and after it takes on the structures characteristic of capital it may be
tranquilly stripped of its surplus products and manpower to whatever degree desired.
It should be noted that these transformations of pre-capitalist modes have taken place in unplanned ways,
e.g., the slow growth of rural wage labor in the late nineteenth-century South, as well as in the planned agrarian
strategies of private and public groups discussed above. The focus here has been on the development of planned
strategies because they led directly to the Green Revolution. Furthermore, it is clearly very difficult, if not
impossible, to determine with any great exactitude either the kind or extent of the impact of any given program.
Those efforts discussed here seem to me to have been of central importance. The importance of this study would
remain, despite future evidence to the contrary, because these efforts were typical of the whole approach to
agricultural development and social change which led to the Green Revolution and their analysis
would thus remain relevant and useful.

IV

105
 The development of agricultural technology which lies at the base of the Green Revolution, and of
agricultural development in general, is not an outgrowth of independent scientific developments but is an integral
part of capital's self-expansion.
When agricultural development is viewed as essentially a result of technological changes, the desire for
more growth or the response to failure is a new appeal to science: to agronomists, biochemists, plant breeders, etc.
One of the most important conclusions to be drawn from this study is that the technological changes, or
modifications in the forces of production, which produced the increases in yields and output called the Green
Revolution are not the prime motive forces in this development of agriculture. The Green Revolution technologies
are rather the outcome of class struggle--component elements in the broader agrarian strategy. Time and again we
have seen that the impetus to the development of agricultural research and new technologies has been the
appearance of threats from workers or peasants to the production or realization of surplus value. This, of course, has
been as true in the United States as in the Third World. Seventy years ago in the U.S., the Populist threat provoked
new research. In more recent years, rising farm-labor costs have provoked research on labor-displacing technologies.
In both China and postwar Asia, the threat of Communist revolution stimulated a "rice politics" which partially
focused on new cereal varieties. At no moment has this been more obvious than the present, when the feverish
search for new dryland varieties can be traced directly to the social conflicts aroused by the unequal regional effects
of first-generation Green Revolution grains.
It might be suggested that while the impetus for financing agricultural research has often come from inter-
or intra-mode class struggle, the shape of the new technologies has been determined by the neutral processes of
science. There is undoubtedly some truth to this since the structure of science does not change according to short-
term political circumstances. Yet, that truth must be sharply limited in two ways. First, the very structure of science,
as one aspect of the forces of production in capitalism, has itself been shaped by the growth of capital. This is true
both in the logical structure of its methods and theories and in the manner of its practice. Second, science does not
exist in abstraction; it exists only in its particular real projects. It is what scientists do, and projects set for scientists
are those of capital. In the case of agricultural research, those projects are almost always well defined by the context
of class struggle. When the foundations and government agencies (or private corporations) undertake to finance
agricultural research in crop development, that research has That system is made up of both capitalist and
precapitalist modes of agricultural production but is united by trade and investment flows dominated by capital.
We have seen that the kind of agricultural development which occurs within the context of capitalist
expansion involves either the growth of capitalist relations or the subordination of precapitalist relations to the needs
of capital. We also know that the class relations associated with capitalist and with many precapitalist modes of
production are antagonistic. For example, in the American South the slave mode of production in agriculture
obviously involved exploitation of slaves by planters. After the Civil War, slavery was replaced by a variety of
production relations including sharecropping, share-tenancy, and convict labor. In each case new exploitative
relations were substituted for old ones. Even the complete transition to capitalism only created a new form of
exploitation.
In all cases throughout the nineteenth century, exploitation was complicated by incorporation into the North
Atlantic capitalist system. This meant that planters, landowners, and supply merchants were all, in turn, relieved of a
part of their surplus by merchant and finance capital. In the twentieth century this pattern continued both at home
and abroad. Sometimes the strength of the local landowning class in precapitalist agriculture, and the threats of rural
upheaval, led capital to reinforce existing precapitalist modes of production and thus sacrifice social transformation
for political stability and higher immediate output. This kind of combination of success and failure occurred many
times--in the South, in China, in Mexico, and in most countries of Asia where land reform failed to be instituted
effectively.
We have also seen how successful development often entailed other kinds of failure. In the South, the
propagation of the foundations' agrarian programs involved acceptance of racism and the relative neglect of black
farmers and laborers. This strengthened the white ruling class and further divided poor white and poor black
farmers. The success in fostering the growth of capitalist farmers and the Farm Bureaus, which represented the
capitalist farmers' interests, also meant the creation of new splits among farmers--largely between rich and poor.
This was similar to the later successes in Mexico and Asia. There, reinforced by the Green Revolution, success also
meant the rapid development of a few modern capitalist farmers while the position of the poor peasants either failed
to improve or declined. The widening gap between large and small capitalist farmers and between capitalist and
precapitalist farmers is hardly a new, second-generation effect. It is a continuation of an old pattern of capitalist
development in agriculture.

106
 There are at least two kinds of failure involved here. On the one hand, there is the failure to institute some
part exploitation and class struggle lead to new strategies, further social transformation, and renewed class conflict.
Nowhere in this process is there reason to expect any prolonged redistribution of wealth or power in favor of the
rural poor. As the experience of Britain, the United States, and (increasingly) Japan has shown, "successful"
development of agriculture has not meant improved standards of living for the bulk of farmers and farm workers. It
has meant their eventual elimination as they have been forced from the land into the cities to replenish the industrial
reserve army. If this historical survey has shown anything, it is that those policies of agrarian "development" which
led to the Green Revolution served the interests of capital and not the interests of the vast bulk of poor farmers. The
policies now being recommended to overcome "second-generation" contradictions are little better than warmed-over
versions of the same agrarian strategies. They, too, are aspects of capitalist development and they, too, will fail to
eliminate rural poverty in the Third World. of the agrarian strategy. This may or may not retard the development of
capitalist structures. The failure to institute land reform, for example, may reinforce precapitalist landed property, or
it may contribute to the rapid emergence of large-scale capitalist farming, depending on other circumstances. On the
other hand, there is the failure to improve or even maintain the material wellbeing of large numbers of rural poor.
This kind of failure may also lead to failure to stem rural unrest associated with poverty and increasing class
antagonisms. What is characteristic of the history of the Green Revolution is the degree to which success in creating
capitalist structures leads to failure to help the poor. This is almost guaranteed by the nature of the agrarian strategy.
Because the cure for poverty and unrest is sought through the development of a more highly productive, more
commercialized, and ultimately more capitalist agriculture, this necessarily implies the spread of wage exploitation
and of uneven development--both on a local and an international scale.
This is why in agriculture, as in other areas, capital not only develops itself in response to class struggle,
but inevitably reproduces similar patterns of class antagonism on a higher level. The same is true when it expands
into precapitalist areas. Its expansion provokes resistance, which stimulates further changes. Whether the transition
to capitalist forms is complete or not, the dialectics of always been carefully spelled out to respond to capital's
needs. In the case of Third World grain improvement, the mandate given to the scientists was to find ways to
increase output as much and as quickly as possible. This led directly to the use of large amounts of sophisticated
inputs to achieve maximum yields. The reason for this particular mandate was the belief that increasing food
supplies would be the best way to deal with social instability in the countryside. The creation of a grain technology
which was costly beyond the resources of poor peasants and was adaptable only to well-irrigated lands was not
planned as such, but it was implicit in the formulation of the research problem.
Far from tempting Marxist analysis down the misleading road of technological or even economic
determinism, the history of the Green Revolution provides ample evidence of the primacy of class struggle in the
development of capitalism and in the transition of precapitalist modes of production and social formations toward
capitalist forms. Technological change can now be seen for what it is--a vital part of capital's response to the
development of class struggle, and hence an integral part of capital itself.

V
Successful agricultural development tied to capitalism necessarily suffers from the various contradictions
inherent in the hierarchical system of "free" world agriculture. That system is made up of both capitalist and
precapitalist modes of agricultural production but is united by trade and investment flows dominated by capital.
We have seen that the kind of agricultural development which occurs within the context of capitalist
expansion involves either the growth of capitalist relations or the subordination of precapitalist relations to the needs
of capital. We also know that the class relations associated with capitalist and with many precapitalist modes of
production are antagonistic. For example, in the American South the slave mode of production in agriculture
obviously involved exploitation of slaves by planters. After the Civil War, slavery was replaced by a variety of
production relations including sharecropping, share-tenancy, and convict labor. In each case new exploitative
relations were substituted for old ones. Even the complete transition to capitalism only created a new form of
exploitation.
In all cases throughout the nineteenth century, exploitation was complicated by incorporation into the North
Atlantic capitalist system. This meant that planters, landowners, and supply merchants were all, in turn, relieved of a
part of their surplus by merchant and finance capital. In the twentieth century this pattern continued both at home
and abroad. Sometimes the strength of the local landowning class in precapitalist agriculture, and the threats of rural
upheaval, led capital to reinforce existing precapitalist modes of production and thus sacrifice social transformation
for political stability and higher immediate output. This kind of combination of success and failure occurred many

107
times--in the South, in China, in Mexico, and in most countries of Asia where land reform failed to be instituted
effectively.
We have also seen how successful development often entailed other kinds of failure. In the South, the
propagation of the foundations' agrarian programs involved acceptance of racism and the relative neglect of black
farmers and laborers. This strengthened the white ruling class and further divided poor white and poor black
farmers. The success in fostering the growth of capitalist farmers and the Farm Bureaus, which represented the
capitalist farmers' interests, also meant the creation of new splits among farmers--largely between rich and poor.
This was similar to the later successes in Mexico and Asia. There, reinforced by the Green Revolution, success also
meant the rapid development of a few modern capitalist farmers while the position of the poor peasants either failed
to improve or declined. The widening gap between large and small capitalist farmers and between capitalist and
precapitalist farmers is hardly a new, second-generation effect. It is a continuation of an old pattern of capitalist
development in agriculture.
There are at least two kinds of failure involved here. On the one hand, there is the failure to institute some
part of the agrarian strategy. This may or may not retard the development of capitalist structures. The failure to
institute land reform, for example, may reinforce precapitalist landed property, or it may contribute to the rapid
emergence of large-scale capitalist farming, depending on other circumstances. On the other hand, there is the
failure to improve or even maintain the material wellbeing of large numbers of rural poor. This kind of failure may
also lead to failure to stem rural unrest associated with poverty and increasing class antagonisms. What is
characteristic of the history of the Green Revolution is the degree to which success in creating capitalist structures
leads to failure to help the poor. This is almost guaranteed by the nature of the agrarian strategy. Because the cure
for poverty and unrest is sought through the development of a more highly productive, more commercialized, and
ultimately more capitalist agriculture, this necessarily implies the spread of wage exploitation and of uneven
development--both on a local and an international scale.
This is why in agriculture, as in other areas, capital not only develops itself in response to class struggle,
but inevitably reproduces similar patterns of class antagonism on a higher level. The same is true when it expands
into precapitalist areas. Its expansion provokes resistance, which stimulates further changes. Whether the transition
to capitalist forms is complete or not, the dialectics of exploitation and class struggle lead to new strategies, further
social transformation, and renewed class conflict. Nowhere in this process is there reason to expect any prolonged
redistribution of wealth or power in favor of the rural poor. As the experience of Britain, the United States, and
(increasingly) Japan has shown, "successful" development of agriculture has not meant improved standards of living
for the bulk of farmers and farm workers. It has meant their eventual elimination as they have been forced from the
land into the cities to replenish the industrial reserve army. If this historical survey has shown anything, it is that
those policies of agrarian "development" which led to the Green Revolution served the interests of capital and not
the interests of the vast bulk of poor farmers. The policies now being recommended to overcome "second-
generation" contradictions are little better than warmed-over versions of the same agrarian strategies. They, too, are
aspects of capitalist development and they, too, will fail to eliminate rural poverty in the Third World.

108