Land The Case for an Agrarian

Previously unpublished, Land! unites John Crowe Ransom’s poetic sensibilities with his argument for an agrarian economy as an alternative to capitalism.

In Land!, the accomplished poet and scholar John Crowe Ransom, leading member of the Southern Agrarian movement, examines economics at the height of the Great Depression. Long thought to have been burned by its author after he failed to find a publisher, Land! is politically charged with Ransom’s aesthetic beliefs about literature and his agrarian interpretation of economics.

After the publication of the Southern Agrarian movement’s manifesto I’ll Take My Stand in 1930, Ransom, who provided the book’s Statement of Principles in addition to its lead essay, became convinced that the book had not adequately proposed an economic alternative to Northern industrialism, which had nearly obliterated the Southern way of life. Land! was Ransom’s attempt to fill this gap. In it he presents the weaknesses inherent in capitalism and argues convincingly that socialism is not only an inadequate alternative but inimical to American sensibilities. He proposes instead that agrarianism, which could flourish alongside capitalism, would relieve the problems of unemployment in America due to its wealth of land. This insightful, long-lost piece of American literature and history speaks to today’s socioeconomic times.

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) was an American poet and critic whose book The New Criticism (1941) provided the name of the influential mid-twentieth-century school of criticism. He taught English at Vanderbilt University and at Kenyon College, where he founded and edited the literary magazine The Kenyon Review. He published numerous volumes of poetry, including Selected Poems (1945, 1969), which won a National Book Award.

Jason Peters is professor of English at Hillsdale College.