Ralph Borsodi - Definition

Ralph Borsodi (1886–1977 was born in New York and spent the earliest years of his life in Manhattan. He was an economic theorist and practical experimenter interested in ways of living useful to the modern person or family desiring greater self-direction and self-reliance (especially so during the Depression). Much of his theory related to living in rural surroundings on a modern homestead.

His father was a publisher who had connections in the advertising field, and Ralph worked in this business as a boy. By the age of 22, Borsodi was personally testing the idea of moving "back to the land." He had fully embraced the concept of "voluntary simplicity" (as it would now be called) by 1920.

Dr. Borsodi is chiefly known for his practical experiments in self-sufficient living during the 1920's and 1930s, and for the books he wrote about these experiments. This Ugly Civilization and Flight from the City are his best known works. He established a School of Living in Rockland County, New York during the winter of 1934-35. Before long about 20 families began attending regularly from New York City, spending the weekends at the school. Some commentators claim Borsodi’s books inspired “hundreds of thousands of people” to follow his example during the Great Depression.

Borsodi created a land trust that functioned as an economic, banking, and credit institution. Called the Independence Foundation, Inc., Borsodi intended it as a new and ethical way of making low-cost, cooperatively shared credit available to people who wanted to build homesteads in the community. This institution made it possible to provide people access to land without their having to pay outright for property in the beginning.

Dr. Borsodi spent decades analyzing the ills of modern society and imagining remedies for the problems. His followers felt he usually was working at solving problems at least 20 years before most analysts realized the problem existed. For example, it is said he predicted the inflation of the 1970s some thirty years before it came. One of his interests was in local currencies, and he started an experiment with such a currency in his home area (Exeter, New Hampshire).

Borsodi was an early thinker delving into the problem of modern industrial society plundering non-renewable resources, suggesting that our societies should explore the use of “replaceable” (renewable) resources.