H.D. Thoreau’s “Life in the Woods” and our own society: An essay on the organic farming

Abstract

Henry David Thoreau mentioned the farmer “knows Nature but as a robber.” His viewpoint of agriculture had the same root as Karl Marx who is the author of “The Capital.” K. Marx investigated the movement rule of capitalism as the actual whole system on, while H.D. Thoreau tried to prove the feasibility of changing his own life which was decided by the social system “Capitalism” in order to change the system based on the personal factor of it. We think that Thoreau was not only the pioneer of ecologist but also a kind of the user-innovator who demonstrated the independent life-style from the Capitalistic marketing system. He made some necessaries such as house, furniture, bread, food, crops in his self-support experiment of life.

Now, we have many cases of the user-innovation, which make us understanding the role of the organic farming. We think Thoreau’s “experiment” aimed the protest against the capitalism by the way of reforming his actual life-style. Accordingly, we also think he was the fore-runner of innovating the capitalistic flow system in the mid of 19 century, when the early capitalism was formed dynamically in America, and his thought and practice have been succeeded all over the world.