This is clearly a distortion. Certainly there were aristocratic elements who fought off poor poachers in their hunting forests, applauded Malthus, and supported "corn protectionism" against the urban bourgeoisie. Big deal.
But very quickly the radical left went to trying to overcome the split between the countryside and the urban system (see the platform at the end of the _Communist Manifesto_, a throwaway to the utopian socialists). Such motives drove later progressive planner types like Lewis Mumford, etc.
Of course one could argue that the successful outcome of all these "Garden City" movements (see Ebenezer Howard) was the modern suburb...... Barkley Rosser On Thu, 14 May 1998 22:47:10 +0100 Jim heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <Pine.GSO.3.96.980514150548.28614A-100000 at CHUMA.CAS.usf.edu>,
> "Frances Bolton (PHI)" <fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu> writes
> >Mr. Heartfield,
> >Are you saying that environmentalism and reactionary politics are
> >necessarily connected? If so, I'd like to see you make that argument.
> >Yours,
> >Frances Bolton
> >
> Well first off I would say that it is more accurate to say that
> reactionary politics tend to the environmental. Let me be clear. When I
> say reactionary, that's what I mean: the politics of reaction first
> reared their head in response to the Enlightenment, and to the
> democratic revolutions of 1776-1815.
>
> The politics of reaction has always had a powerful component of
> hostility to science and technology, and to the growth of urban areas.
> Hemming in the growth of the cities was the goal of early proponents of
> nature reserves and green belts. the countryside has in Europe, and I
> think in America, traditionally been a reservoir of support for the
> right, as the cities have of the left. Holding back urban spread was for
> many years a reactionary goal. You can see it in the politics of the
> prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, for whom 'small-town America' was
> under threat from the immigrant-fed cities. The motif of 'pollution' to
> describe urban squalor was originally an upper class prejudice, seeing
> the growth of the working class in metaphorical terms as a dangerous
> 'miasma' that would spread disease.
>
> Similarly the left has for a long time been associated with economic and
> technological progress. It was the left's utopianism (I mean that in a
> positive sense) that led it to champion modernist architecture,
> scientific enquiry, planned cities and new technologies.
>
> It really is only very recently in historical terms that the left has
> become interested in coservation, holding back technology, challenging
> scientific rationality, low growth and so on.
>
> There are of course two explanations for this new trend in left wing
> thinking towards environmentalism.
>
> One. The left has wised up to the problem, no longer succumbing to knee-
> jerk rejection of environmentalist fears.
>
> Two. That the influence of environmentalist thinking is a reflection of
> its own loss of confidence in the struggle to shape the future, leading
> the left for the first time to reject the idea of progress.
>
> I tend to think that the latter is a better explanation.
> --
> Jim heartfield
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu