Chodorov on Joseph
Thomas Allen
Chodorov begins his story about how Joseph ended up in Egypt. Soon after he arrived, Potiphar, an Egyptian bigwig, acquired Joseph. Because of his cleverness, Joseph soon became the chief foreman of Potiphar’s estate. However, Potiphar’s sex-starved wife, whom Chodorov speculates was a homely woman whose husband misunderstood her, attempted to seduce Joseph. He rebuffed her advances. Like a scorned female, she framed her jilter, and her husband sent Joseph to jail.
While in jail, Joseph acquired a reputation as an interpreter of dreams — thus, beating Freud by many centuries. (He began his dream interpreting years earlier at home. His interpretations got him in trouble with his brothers, and they sold him to a caravan going to Egypt.)
Pharaoh began having disturbing dreams. None of his advisors had the psychiatric skills to help him. Then, one of his servants remembered that Joseph had correctly interpreted his dream when he and Joseph were fellow prisoners, and recommended Joseph to Pharaoh.
Joseph cleaned himself up and offered his services to Pharaoh. Pharaoh described his dream, and Joseph replied that the answer was simple. He explained that Egypt was about to experience the well-known business cycle, commonly called the “boom and bust” cycle. “‘The knowledge came to him by divine revelation,’ he said, which was far more reliable than the wisdom of the Harvard school of economics” (p. 105).
Joseph’s positiveness of his prediction astonished Pharaoh. Showing his true statist mantles, Joseph presented Pharaoh with a plan to solve the problem, that is, a plan to cheat Jehovah out of his bust. Joseph’s plan called for laying up a reserve during the years of plenty. To execute the plan, Pharaoh appointed Joseph as Secretary of Agriculture. Since the Senate did not exist in those days, Pharaoh did not have to wait for Senatorial approval, so his appointment was immediate. Having no Bible or Constitution to swear by, “Pharaoh made the appointment stick by putting his own signet ring on Joseph’s hand and a solid gold chain around his neck. For lack of an automobile, an official chariot was assigned to the new dignitary” (p. 106).
No longer did Joseph need to interpret dreams. He was now an administrator who had a plan to execute. Because Egypt’s economy was completely agricultural, Joseph’s position made him the top commissar, the real boss of the economy.
“The first thing he did was to pass laws; without them no plan can work. And the first law on his agenda was, quite naturally, a tax-law. One-fifth of all that these profligate farmers should produce, during the years of plenty, must be taken from them and put under lock and key. It is reported that this 20 percent income tax yielded quite an amount; the grain piled up ‘as sand of the sea,’ and undoubtedly there was a shortage of bins, barns and elevators, for ‘it was without number’” (p. 106).
After seven years of boom, the depression hit. However, whether the depression resulted from overproduction or underconsumption is unknown. (“[A]t that time the learned professors had not yet discovered the sun-spot theory or even the velocity theory of money. The magicians of that day were without benefit of postgraduate courses in economics” [pp. 106-107].)
This depression was called a “famine.” However, what is not told is the cause of the famine. Did a “drought, pestilence or other unforeseeable accident, or, perhaps . . . the constant sapping of the economy by seven years of heavy taxation” (p.107) cause it?
However, the chronicler does suggest that Joseph may “have anticipated the consequence of his taxing scheme: the abject subservience of the Egyptian proletariat” (p. 107). Soon hunger filled Pharaoh’s kingdom. People came to Joseph, the Secretary of Agriculture, and begged him to return the grain that he had taken from them. Instead of giving them the grain, he sold them the grain. (Thus, he was not a proponent of the welfare state.)
When the people ran out of money, they traded their horses, cattle, and other livestock for grain. “Still the hunger was upon the people, which was natural, for their capital was all gone, and without capital there is little production” (p. 107). Joseph had brought state capitalism to Egypt. The only jobs available for the hungry masses were with the state. As the state was the sole employer, the people had to work for what the state condescended to offer. “They offered themselves as ‘servants unto Pharaoh’ in exchange for bread. Then Joseph said unto the people: ‘Behold I have brought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.’ In common parlance that means that he had nationalized the land and the labor of Egypt” (p. 107).
Joseph’s plan was great for Pharaoh and Joseph. However, most likely, “some of the proletariat were perturbed over a moral principle: the right of a man to his property” (p. 107).
Joseph ordered farmers to be moved from one part of Egypt to another. Was the migration the result of a slave revolt? Was it Joseph executing the well-known migratory purge? The chronicler does not explain the cause.
A delegation of Egyptians came to Joseph and told him that they were willing to be Pharaoh’s servants. Thus, “the proletariat had come to terms with collectivism (since that was the only way to get by in this world) and were content with whatever security the Secretary [Joseph] would provide” (p. 108). Nevertheless, Joseph “had to make some concession to private property, perhaps to encourage more taxable production; he restored to some of the Egyptians the land he had taken from them in their adversity, on a rental basis” (p. 108). His rent was one-fifth of the annual production.
Chodorov concludes his story of Joseph:
Though the succeeding monarchs and the succeeding commissars did well under the plan introduced by Joseph, it seems (according to later historians) that it put upon the proletarians a moral blight, so that when conquerors from other lands came to Egypt they met with little resistance; those who had nothing to lose had nothing to fight for. So that even the monarchs had to beg the invaders for administrative jobs. And lots of dust fell on the civilization of Pharaoh (p. 108).(Since statism is a form of idolatry, was Joseph an idolater?)
Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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