Both of my books, "Retreat" (2020) and "The Garden" (2025) had an aspect of left-wing politics to them. However, in sympathy to the research material (as opposed to bringing a forced perspective to bear on it) it wasn't appropriate to explore this in detail in the books. The lens of Eastern philosophy through which I surveyed the terrain, and which that generation favoured, gave a wider and more illuminating perspective on the counterculture than politics would have provided. This short blog-post survey of some carefully-selected books can be viewed as a political supplement to "The Garden."
In "Retreat" left-wing politics were mainly expressed by focus upon the Freudian-Marxism of theorists Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown. In "The Garden", the twentieth-century strand of self-sufficiency represented by Helen and Scott Nearing, and to a lesser degree the ideas of John Seymour, had a background in Socialism.
Centering on Helen and Scott Nearing's work in homesteading in "The Garden", I had not read Scott Nearing's "The Making of a Radical" (1972). In his "political autobiography" he describes his affluent childhood, early years as a economics lecturer at Wharton School (recent alumni include Donald Trump...), being a refugee from academia and then the American Communist Party, his work as an opponent of child labour and conscientious objector, life as a freelancer on North America's informal lecture circuit, and being persistent thorn in the side of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Reading the book in 2026 one can't help but lament Nearing's optimism. Born in 1883, although depressed by the two world wars which he describes as the logical outcome of capitalist colonialism, and then chastened by the McCarty purges, Nearing was evidently cheered by the countercultural opposition to the Vietnam War and the Back-to-the-Land movement. He never witnessed the eighties and the permanence of that decade's ideology.
As much as Nearing remained primarily concerned with politics, I feel there's an evolution in his praxis when it came to his embrace of homesteading. He writes after describing the degradation of food by chemicals and long supply chains, "Under such condition any rational being will adopt and follow a simple regimen: avoid stale, processed, and poisonous food and keep away from supermarkets. To this negative rule he will add a positive life-saving note: for good health and long life, patronize organic farmer's markets - or, better still, raise and consume your own food on an organic, homestead basis." He remarks elsewhere, "a homestead becomes increasingly important for anyone whose post of duty lies inside the narrow confines of western civilization and who wants to live a quiet, simple and harmless, unharassed life."
Researching "The Garden" I came across the evidence that Nearing was something of a hypocrite. Truthfully, as well as many strikingly altruistic acts, he and his wife Helen subsisted on wage labour, inherited capital, insurance policies, and property sales. Writing in the context of "The Garden", which wasn't preoccupied with politics, I was able to refrain from judgement. But "The Making of a Radical" is harder to stomach knowing this. Honestly, it's still hard for me to be critical - and not just because I've been a lifelong beneficiary of capital. I mean, how is ANYONE supposed to retire in Western society without availing themselves of income produced by capital? That's what a pension scheme is...
It is, however, surprising that the radical Nearing doesn't make explicit the connection between the self-sufficiency he practices and the wellspring of Marxist thought which examines the Industrial Revolution. Michael Perelman's astonishing book "The Invention of Capitalism" (2000) makes it its task to flesh out Marx's ideas with regards to the greater population's transition from small-scale farming to urban wage labour. Tellingly Perelman, once a Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico, was also a homesteader.
Perelman's thesis is that by manipulating "Classical" economic ideology (the ghoulish, one-dimensional Adam Smith being the central nemesis here) and by villainous coercion (tactics ranging from depriving access to fishing and hunting, to the brutal theft of common land) the ruling classes herded what were once just "people" practicing a traditional way of life into the cities to create "the working class." In political terms these people had what was once their collective capital taken from them, whereupon they were forced into the activity of "Primitive Accumulation".
Primitive Accumulation is a transparent phenomenon today, one which we are all seemingly oblivious of. Indeed, I remember being confused when Mark Fisher described it to me once at an Ariel Pink gig. Just recently I came across this great explanation by the Trade Union leader Mick Lynch talking to The Telegraph. Primitive Accumulation describes a situation in which a seller has nothing to trade but their own labour. They are therefore prey to capitalists because, essentially, they have no access to communal land by which to self-provision. If we all had our own land, like we once would have done before the idea of property, we would be free to grow our own food, and would not be dependent on anyone. This is how the traditional economies, largely destroyed by the Industrial Revolution, would have been organised. Once upon a time everyone was a farmer - and by being stopped from farming communal land, we became wage slaves.
There are, however, problems with the theory. Without question, huge population growth and the advance in agricultural technology (diminishing the need for labour) transformed rural life. Was the status quo as it had been arranged even feasible any longer? It's further complicated by the question of the division of labour. As much as, like Masanobu Fukuoka, one can dream that farming is everyone's fitting occupation, the truth is, certainly in terms of how we have evolved in the past 275 years, one can't imagine many people voluntarily to farm for a living.
Something that gets lost in Perelman's entirely cogent analysis is also that farming is often both grinding work, and perilous. Certainly, after many years of practice people undertake it more lightly with learnt skill, but it remains fraught by threats from the weather and nature. So while one can argue that in philosophical terms a self-sufficient farmer is "free" - in reality they might be subject to the worst imaginable bondage...
I've wanted to read E.P.Thompson's legendary book for a while now. Upon doing so I found myself drawing upon my own recent experience working as a maintenance gardener for rich households in Dulwich. I'm embarrassed to admit that the experience of picking up other people's children's toys and cleaning up their dog shit gave me a valuable reminder of how the affluent float upon the labour of the less fortunate. I've led a privileged life and, just as I have seen others come to the same erroneous conclusion, it's easy to assume that people working harder jobs: cleaners, delivery drivers, nurses, cooks, fisheries workers, abattoir employees, enjoy their fair share of perks and are necessarily content with their lot. Not so.
Since August 2023 I have also witnessed my own tiny career as an animator fall apart as a result of titanic currents in the economy. In the epic and engrossing "The Making of the English Working Class" (1963) Thompson describes the cropper's skill in which the surface of cloth was elevated by means of teazles. Cropper's wages were regulated according to the value of the finished cloth and were therefore, not only in a strong bargaining position, they also organised strongly to keep out unskilled workers. Somewhat like digital animators, who undertook what was once considered a highly technical role, Croppers were viewed as an "aristocracy" of workers. I had to laugh at the description of croppers as being "notoriously the least manageable of any persons employed in this important manufacture", because I've seen similar arrogance among animators. And yet, just as AI is fast making inroads into my own profession, the increasing introduction of new technology in the form of the gig-mill threatened the cropper's jobs. An account of 1841 describes how, "The old croppers have turned themselves to any thing they can get to do; some acting as bailiffs, water-carriers, scavengers, or selling oranges, cakes, tapes and laces, gingerbread, blacking..." No doubt their marriages and families also broke apart.
It didn't escape my notice that my own paternal grandmother's family are mentioned in the book "The Crossley Carpet Power Loom, patented in 1851, could weave twelve to fourteen times the speed of hand..."[p315] So turns the wheel of history!
Agriculture isn't dwelled upon in "The Making of the English Working Class". Thompson is mainly concerned with the hideous disenfranchisement and abuse of that section of the population that became "the working class". However, one of the key historical figures in the resistance to capital, the radical William Cobbett (1765-1835) features prominently in the book. A colourful character, apparently in love with the sound of his voice, as a result of his radicalism Cobbett had to take refuge on occasion in France and twice in America. Seemingly experiencing the full range of disgrace and eminence, he was at stages both imprisoned and an MP.
I previously came across "Cottage Economy" (1821), one of the foundational books on self-sufficiency, through both John Seymour, and also via the pioneering American market gardener Eliot Coleman - so I was delighted to make the connection to Cobbett the radical. The book is written by way of emphasising the traditional homesteading techniques which were being fast eroded by the Industrial Revolution. The tone, however, is valuable on its own, and I can see exactly why John Seymour, another lively voice, delighted in Cobbett's writing. Here are few examples:
[Goats on boats] "When sea voyages are so stormy as to kill geese, ducks, fowls, and almost pigs, the goats are well and lively; and when a dog of no kind can keep the deck for a minute, a goat will skip about upon it bold as brass."[Cruelty to Turkeys] "In France they sometimes pick Turkeys alive, to make them tender; of which I shall only say, that the man that can do this, or order it be done, ought to be skinned alive himself."[Preferring smoking and drinking] "A son who prefers a "devil" and a glass of grog to a hunch of bread and a bowl of cold milk, I regard as a pest; and for this pest the father has to thank himself."
Cobbett's other book in this territory "The English Gardener" (1829) is, somewhat disappointingly, dedicated to ornamental horticulture.
I must thank Patrick Jones of Artist as Family for making me aware of this and the Perelman books.
My edition of Kirkpatrick Sale's "Rebels Against the Future"(1996) has a definitively nineties feel. The paper has yellowed in the same way as my cherished copy of David Toop's "Ocean of Sound" (1995) just as the cover is somehow reminiscent of it.
Sale's book does in part cover agriculture. There are passages describing the wretched lives of agricultural field workers, the effects of enclosure, and mentions of farm labourer's protests against threshing machines which inspired a "silent, embittered, vengeful campaign of poaching, burning, and rural terror." However, the still shocking story of Luddism is the book's central concern. As much as I regard their actions, smashing up mechanical looms, as futile, one has to admire the Luddites' stubborn attitude in the face of technological disenfranchisement.
The forces martialled against the Luddites are terrifying: "Soon after the tumult of John Wesley's funeral, ten troops of the Royal Horse Guards Blue and two regiments of the Berkshire regular militia, a total of some eight or nine hundred cavalry under the command of a General Dyott and a thousand infantrymen, were called to Nottingham - the greatest force, as Home Secretary Richard Ryder told the House of Commons the next year, that had ever been used in England's history to respond to a domestic "disturbance." To this force was added a rotating team of thirty-six special constables to patrol the streets at night, various troops of local reserve militia, a further regiment of five hundred or so regular troops in late December, and two police magistrates sent up from London to coordinate policy with Nottingham town officials." Crikey.
Writing in the nineties Kirkpatrick Sale winds up his book with a chapter on the Neo-Luddites which is leveled at the disruption caused by modern computer technology. A recent book by Brian Merchant "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" (2023) brings the argument forward to AI. It's safe to say that the importance of the example of the Luddites is set to run and run. I hesitate to even type it into a platform owned Google, but surely data centres will inevitably attract this kind of malicious vandalism?
The plots of land which are so critical to the story told in "The Garden" are small fields, geographically peripheral, and sometimes derelict. Few were much greater than three acres in size. Restrictively zoned as agricultural land, unused patches of wasteland, or part of the commons, they were usually not valuable real estate. Sometimes the land was owned by the growers and farmers: John Seymour's scruffy corner of Wales, Eliot Coleman's unpromising Maine shoreline, Fukuoka's family farm, Bill Wheeler's vegetable patch at Ahimsa Ranch, or David Holmgren's tiny homestead at Melliodora. However, just as often growers and farmers rented or borrowed land: Thoreau's bean field amid the commons, Peter Caddy's dunes at the Findhorn caravan park, Alan Chadwick's hillside on university grounds, John Jeavons' degraded section of an industrial estate, or Hilde Maingay's original New Alchemy plot. The ownership of some other farms is more of a grey area, for instance Patrick Holden speaks openly about his sizeable mortgage with the Anthroposophical Triodos bank for the much larger Bwlchwernen Fawr - effectively that financial institution owns it...
Very little was made of this state of affairs by either the people I interviewed or in the profusion of literature I read. More than any other interviewee the subject was raised by Black farmer Karen Washington. She had started off in the eighties repurposing abandoned lots in the Bronx and growing food in those guerilla gardens. Her recent work has been with the Black Farmer Fund attempting to secure land for growers and farmers. However, she told me that she wants to encourage her people to be allowed to be stewards or caretakers of land. She casts doubt over the importance of agricultural property ownership "Because you don't live long enough to own anything."
Paradoxically, in almost every case in the book, using the alchemy of "The Law of Return" (building a topsoil with organic matter), the growers and farmers I covered turned what was, in agricultural terms, worthless land into something very valuable.
This important access to land is a red hot political ticket. But, certainly in what I have read, surprisingly the issue of property ownership rarely transects with that of farming and growing at small scale. There is the tireless work of Simon Fairlie who in my surmise, at least historically, if not recently, was more concerned with land ownership than the practicalities of farming. However, books like Nick Hayes' "The Book of Trespass" (2020) or Guy Shrubsole's "Who owns England?" (2019) are concerned with the primal injustice of Enclosure and in political terms with the Right to Roam and its emphasis on hiking and camping.
It doesn't seem like much political energy is focused upon a Neo-Peasant revolution like John Seymour (or more recently Chris Smaje) envision, with massive estates being broken down and the landscape re-partitioned into a patchwork of small organic farms. Certainly, if you follow the logic of Marx through Michael Perelman and his exposition of how the theft of common land caused the inability of people to self-provision, thereby driving them into the state of Primitive Accumulation, then this ought to be the true axis of agitation. I can only conjecture that the combination of people's complete alienation from the question of their food and where it comes from, the relatively tiny minority interest in food production, and the current effectiveness of technological solutions to farm at scale without the need for labour, all drive the question into obscurity. It's unlikely anything short of the devastating collapse of society will change that any time soon.