Joseph, Secretary of Agriculture

by Frank Chodorov

This article is excerpted from One Is a Crowd. Robert LeFevre also gave a lecture on the biblical Joseph: "First Secretary of Agriculture" (available in MP3 in Mises Media).

Long, long before Freud, a fellow named Joseph got himself a reputation as an interpreter of dreams. So, when all the PhD's of Egypt failed him, Pharaoh sent for this wizard and put to him the puzzler that had come out of his subconscious mind one night – something about seven lean kine and seven fat ones.

A biographical note on this Joseph is in order. Even as a lad he had shown himself endowed of special gifts, winning preferment in his father's eyes over a parcel of brothers. This aroused the envy and resentment of the fraternity – who probably considered Joseph a violation of the principle that all men are created equal – and they contrived to restore parity in mediocrity by getting him out of circulation. By devious circumstances he was landed into the service of Potiphar, a bigwig of Egypt, which was a long way from home.

One so clever could not be denied. He rose rapidly to head foremanship of Potiphar's estate. At this point, his career was almost cut short by the perfidy of a woman; that is to say, Potiphar's wife (probably a homely one who was "misunderstood" by her spouse) tried to seduce said Joseph, was repulsed, and, like a scorned female, framed her jilter. Potiphar dumped Joseph into jail.

It was here that Joseph came into his own. Among his fellow inmates were two who were bothered with dream problems. Joseph applied himself to these riddles and untwisted them with uncanny exactitude. This was remembered by one of the prisoners who, on his release, hired out to the Pharaoh household, and, when he heard that his master was deep in subconscious troubles, he recommended the diviner of the dungeon deep.

That is how Joseph came to be called to the palace. Realizing that an unpresentable psychiatrist is without prestige, he slicked himself up, even shaved off the insignia of his tribe, and offered his services to the troubled administration. Quickly he came up with the answer. There was nothing to it. The dream, he said, indicated clearly that Egypt was about to experience the well-known business cycle, sometimes called "boom and bust." How did he know? The knowledge came to him by divine revelation, he said, which was far more reliable than the wisdom of the Harvard school of economics.

At this point, and while Pharaoh was flabbergasted into speechlessness by the positiveness of his prediction, Joseph showed his true mettle. He threw in a plan. True, he said, the seven years' boom was sure to come upon the realm, but the bust was not so inevitable; Jehovah could be cheated out of it by the simple device of laying up a reserve during the years of plenty. To execute that job, Pharaoh would have to dig up a capable secretary of agriculture. The plan and the secretaryship had nothing to do with the riddle he had been called in to unravel, but Joseph tossed it off anyway, and was about to bow himself out.

It occurred to Pharaoh, however, that a mind that had all the answers ought not to languish in Potiphar's jail. So, on the very spot – confirmation by the Senate was quite unnecessary in those days – he appointed the surprised Joseph to be his secretary of agriculture. There being no Constitution to swear by, and no Bible to kiss, 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. No doubt, though the chronicle does not record it, Joseph must have had a big office to work from, with a lot of assistants and secretaries, for mention is made of many overseers.

Henceforth, Joseph had no need to interpret dreams; he was an administrator, with a plan to carry out. Since the economy was completely agricultural, his position made him the real boss of the country, the top commissar. 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."

In due time, as per prophecy, the depression came. It is not certain whether this calamity was caused by overproduction or underconsumption, and at 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. The tale, as we get it, refers to a "famine" but we are not informed whether the shortage was due to drought, pestilence, or other unforeseeable accident – or, perhaps to the constant sapping of the economy by seven years of heavy taxation. From what follows in the story, it is quite possible that the dream planner might have anticipated the consequence of his taxing scheme: the abject subservience of the Egyptian proletariat.

At any rate, hunger was upon the land of Pharaoh. And the people came to the secretary of agriculture and begged him to return the grain he had taken from them. Did he shell out? Of course he did, and at a price. He took their money, and when they had no more money he took their cattle. "And Joseph gave them bread in exchange for their horses, and for their flocks, and for their herds, and for their asses: and he fed them bread in exchange for all."

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Frank Chodorov (1887–1966), one of the great libertarians of the Old Right, was the founder of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists and author of such books as The Income Tax: Root of All Evil. Here he is on "Taxation Is Robbery." And here is Rothbard's obituary of Chodorov.

The Best of Frank Chodorov