John Crowe Ransom - Agrarian Theorist

Agrarian Theorist

In 1930, Ransom along with 11 other Southern Agrarians published the conservative, Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, which assailed the tide of industrialism that appeared to be sweeping away traditional Southern culture. The Agrarians believed that the Southern tradition, rooted in the pre-Civil War agricultural model, was the answer to the South's economic and cultural problems.

Ransom's contribution to I'll Take My Stand is his essay "Reconstructed but Unregenerate" which starts the book and lays out the Southern Agrarians' basic argument. In various essays influenced by his Agrarian beliefs, Ransom defended the manifesto's assertion that modern industrial capitalism was a dehumanizing force that the South should reject in favor of an agrarian economic model. However, by the late 1930s he began to distance himself from the movement, and in 1945, he publicly criticized it.

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