Agrarianism is social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values. It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity of city life.
Classical era
Greece and Rome
In Greece, Hesiod, Aristotle, and Xenophon promoted agrarian ideas. Even more influential were such Roman thinkers as Cato, Cicero, Horace, and Virgil. They all praised the virtues of a life devoted to the tilling of the soil.
China
Agriculturalism (農家/农家; Nongjia) was an early agrarian social and political philosophy in ancient China that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. The philosophy is founded on the notion that human society originates with the development of agriculture, and societies are based upon "people's natural propensity to farm."
The Agriculturalists believed that the ideal government, modeled after the semi-mythical governance of Shennong, is led by a benevolent king, one who works alongside the people in tilling the fields. The Agriculturalist king is not paid by the government through its treasuries; his livelihood is derived from the profits he earns working in the fields, not his leadership. Unlike the Confucians, the Agriculturalists did not believe in the division of labour, arguing instead that the economic policies of a country need to be based upon an egalitarian self sufficiency. The Agriculturalists supported the fixing of prices, in which all similar goods, regardless of differences in quality and demand, are set at exactly the same, unchanging price.
They encouraged farming and agriculture and taught farming and cultivation techniques, as they believed that agricultural development was the key to a stable and prosperous society. The philosopher Mencius once criticised its chief proponent Xu Xing (許行) for advocating that rulers should work in the fields with their subjects. One of Xu's students is quoted as having criticized the duke of Teng in a conversation with Mencius by saying: ‘A worthy ruler feeds himself by ploughing side by side with the people, and rules while cooking his own meals. Now Teng on the contrary possesses granaries and treasuries, so the ruler is supporting himself by oppressing the people’.
18th and 19th centuries
Physiocrats
Physiocracy was a French agrarian philosophy that originated in the 18th century. The movement was particularly dominated by François Quesnay (1694–1774) and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781). The Physiocrats were partially influenced by Chinese agrarianism; leading physiocrats like François Quesnay were avid Confucianists that advocated China's agrarian policies.
18th- and 19th-century Europeans and Americans
Borrowing from the French Physiocrats the idea that all wealth originates with the land, making farming the only truly productive enterprise, agrarianism claims that agriculture is the foundation of all other professions. Philosophically, European agrarianism reflects the ideas of John Locke, who declared in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690) that those who work the land are its rightful owners. His labor theory of value influenced the thinking of Thomas Jefferson, who in turn shaped the way many 19th-century American homesteaders understood ownership of their farms. Jefferson wrote in 1785 in a letter to John Jay that
The political philosopher James Harrington influenced the development of explicit agrarian designs for the colonies of Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. James Edward Oglethorpe, who founded Georgia in 1733, implemented a comprehensive physical, social, and economic development plan organised around the central concept of "agrarian equality." The Oglethorpe Plan allocated land in grants of equal size, prohibited acquisition of additional land through marriage or acquisition, and prohibited slavery for moral reasons as well as to prevent the formation of large plantations like those that existed in neighbouring South Carolina.