Marxism of Labour or Property?

Beginning with an exposition of Marx and Engels on questions of labour as laid out in their various writings about this subject this chapter discusses the problems of, and raises questions about, the free peasantry class, the yeoman farmer or husbandman of Central Asia, Russia and Europe from the perspective of the organization of labour rather than of property which is the more common approach to these issues. It illustrates capitalism and socialism as two ideal types in eternal antagonism or contradiction and suggests a third way of reuniting the problems of labour and property. There is a discussion of the nature of work and ownership I modern industrial production as opposed to the ecological farmer with a household economy.

Farmers and Hoplites: Models of Historical Development

This chapter critiques the grand narrative of Hanson's The Other Greeks and argues that it is wrong in important respects. The chapter presents the social and economic changes in the eighth century that took place with the rise of the independent yeoman farmer and his culture of agrarianism as the driving force behind the political and military history of Greece. From the middle of the eighth century there was a class of elite leisured landowners that did not work the land themselves but supervised the toil of a large lower class of hired laborers and slaves. This era of gentlemen farmers who comprised the top 15–20 percent of society and competed with each other for status lasted for about two centuries. When the yeomen farmers emerged after the mid-sixth century, they joined the leisure class in the hoplite militia.

Food and Social Movements

Social movements exist in three time zones—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is no surprising then that most people prefer to focus on matters of moment, especially when it comes to the food they eat, whose origins and consequences are far less immediate than the pleasures of the here-and-now. In this regard, food reformers are trying to complicate what is already a multifaceted process by which people choose what to eat. Daily food choices are determined in large part by an intricate consideration of taste versus convenience. Activists seek to impose a third, highly moralized and politicized factor to this interaction between taste and convenience: a sense of responsibility. When people experience bouts of intensified worrying, the archetypal stories about how they keep a plate clean are typically dusted off, only to be reissued later on. Eight of these storylines relate to the boycotter, the accountant or frugal parent, the survivalist, the yeoman farmer, the utopian communist, the pleasure artist, and the patriot.

Alfred Maurice Binnie, F. Eng. 6 February 1901—31 December 1986

The Binnie family may be traced back many generations to the Eastern Lowlands of Scotland, early records of the surname being associated in the 13th century with Uphall, West Lothian. The Armorial Bearings granted to a distant ancestor, a ‘horse's head furnished with a wagon proper’, and an ambiguous motto, ‘virtute doloque’ (by courage and policy [or deceit]), recall an incident of history–or myth—of the year 1313 in which a yeoman farmer, William Binny, who supplied hay to Edward II of England's garrison troops of a peel, Linlithgow Castle, adopted the ruse of stalling his wagon on entering the castle so that neither could the drawbridge be raised nor the portcullis lowered. Scottish soldiers emerged from beneath the hay and, with local irregulars, took the castle in the name of Robert the Bruce of Scotland.

Geoffrey Morse Binnie, 13 November 1908 - 5 April 1989

Geoffrey Morse Binnie was born on 13 November 1908, the youngest of three brothers. His father, William James Eames Binnie, and grandfather (Sir) Alexander Richardson Binnie, were both distinguished engineers who came together to found the firm of consulting engineers, Binnie and Partners, in 1902. Geoffrey’s great-grandfather, Alexander (1801-1870), a Bond Street tailor, was also grandfather of Alfred Maurice Binnie, F. R. S. (1901-1987). Geoffrey Binnie’s father and grandfather served as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1939 and 1905 respectively. Partly, no doubt, because of pride in these distinguished immediate forebears, Geoffrey spoke often of his perception of family as a continuum stretching across the generations. He wore a ring with the family crest that was a royal award to a remote ancestor, a Scottish yeoman farmer who captured a key fortress from the English in the Wars of Independence. He made time, in a busy life, to research the fates of some of his kin in the intervening centuries. And he rejoiced at having himself lived to see his own grandchildren embarked upon their chosen careers.