The Plowboy Interview: Frances Moore Lappe

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PLOWBOY: Many people would be suspicious of such a "planned" society.

LAPPE: Most Americans think of planning as being necessarily totalitarian . . . equating it with the Soviet Politburo handing down production quotas without any input or participation on the part of the producers. But that has little to do with what I advocate. Besides, longterm plans are made daily in our society, only they're fashioned by those who control such institutions as our food-processing and grain-exporting corporations. Our fear of planning makes us blind to the ways our economy is already being manipulated in the interests of those at the top.

The question isn't whether or not we should have planning . . . but what kind it should be and who should be doing it. Planning can be democratic.

PLOWBOY: I'm sure many people would—upon hearing some of your beliefs—conclude that you're a socialist.

LAPPE: Most of us in this country are really quite politically unsophisticated . . . because we're not a very political culture. For the most part, Americans are taught to associate capitalism with democracy and socialism with totalitarianism. Yet in the world today we can see extremely antidemocratic economic structures in both "socialist" and "capitalist" systems, and democratic elements in both, as well.

In the "capitalist" Philippines, for example, there are very few signs of democratic participation . . . but in "socialist" Mozambique, there's the beginning of democratic participation from the village up, even though that country has a oneparty government. What I would most like to see is a genuine democracy, one in which people have political and economic power. If that's how you define socialism, then I guess I'm a socialist.

PLOWBOY: But wouldn't you admit that achieving true democracy here and abroad—especially when, as you say, economic power is getting more and more concentrated—seems almost impossible?

LAPPE: My lifetime is just a tiny wink in the sweep of history, and I believe that what I'm doing is part of along human evolutionary process, so I don't expect to see all the changes I've dreamed of. But humanity is making progress. It's been only in very recent history that we've begun—on a society-wide basis-to demolish myths that kept huge segments of the population in place for centuries and justified the status quo . . . like the social Darwinist myth that claimed rich people are destined to be in a higher class than poor ones . . . or the various myths that have been used to justify slavery . . . or the kind of sexist,myths that said women weren't smart enough even to vote. Of course, many such doctrines-which legitimized the caste system in India and allowed repression of women in the Middle East-have yet to crack, worldwide.

PLOWBOY: If you see an increasing belief in people's abilities and rights along with greater concentration of economic power, you must be expecting some serious collisions between the two opposing forces.

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