Stick with Berry.

• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

In the February issue, Bennett Muraskin objects to The Progressive 's inclusion of Wendell Berry's work, complaining that Berry's model "would require a massive reduction in the world's population." Muraskin would apparently have us continue blindly along the path of growth for its own sake, both in population and industrial output, with the latter achieved, as now, not by meaningful employment of the growing population but by supplanting them with machines.

Berry calls for economic organization that provides meaningful work and social stability, and he decries the movement toward meaningless work-like activity--flipping burgers rather than husbanding livestock--in the U.S. economy.

Muraskin threatens to drop his subscription. Subscribers come and subscribers go, but a Wendell Berry comes around only once or twice a century. Stick with Berry.

Andy Lyke

Whitehouse, Ohio

I trust you will not let the threat of one less subscription deter you from featuring one of this country's greatest living writers, Wendell Berry. His article "Inverting the Economic Order" (September issue), is one of the best I've ever read and should be required reading for all humans. After reading it, I knew that I couldn't afford not to subscribe to The Progressive . The need for more Luddites is outpaced only by technology itself.

Thank...