https://twitter.com/lysenko_weed/status/1545160259878232065
Reminder that farmers in western/imperial core countries are rich land owners who owns all the machinery and relies on exploiting migrant labors; also known as kulaks. And the protest itself are mostly driven by environmentally destructive livestock farmers.
Meanwhile the truckers are bourgeois as they owns their means of production (truck) and they're protesting on the behalf of corporate interest fighting against unprofitable Covid measures.
edit: alright, the truck part is a very terrible take and that's on me
Also fuck you if you think service workers are not working class.
The truckers often don't actually own their means of production. Equipment are often owned by large businesses or the bank. This limits the extent of their bourgeois-ness, keeping them in a category with mom and pop shops that don't even own their store. They're bourgeois-aspirational, having some control over production but not ownership, and what they owe to the bank is a form of being exploited by the bourgeoisie. These ones are also reactionaries.
Farmers also often don't own their equipment or land, though they do nearly always rely on the exploitation of an immigrant economic underclass.
Amazon leases the land their warehouses are on and most of their equipment, not sure that means that Bezos is a proletarian.
Yeah duh. The next part of that quote is the fact that farmers gain from exploitation despite sometimes not owning the means of production for "their" business. They are provided much of the control that ownership provides such that they can begin relatively minor amounts of accumulation. In Marxist terms, they are somewhere in the neighborhood of petite bourgeois. The banks that actually own the land and equipment are then of the haute bourgeoisie.
This relationship is very common. "Small business owners" that are all in debt via business loans such that they don't really own their equipment, they rent their space, etc. But they control enterprise and gain directly from exploitation via employing others. The people they owe are all bigger capitalist fish to which they aspire and with whom they align themselves politically.
Its also worth pointing out that its one of the most heavily subsidized industries, so long as they grow and produce what the lobbiests want for their adjacent industries.
Yes, absolutely. And when farmers don't own their land or equipment, those subsidies go to (1) that production and (2) the banks, much less so to the farmer or workers. A very large amount of subsidies in general go to banks, as everything is overleveredged, including personal finance. $1400 in COVID checks? The vast majority went to be servicing debt, i.e. paying the banks. Equivalent to cancelling debtby just having the gov pay the banks directly on your behalf.
Good extra detail, thanks. Its funny how people use this as a talking point "farmers are socialists!" Checkmate rednecks.
lol yeah. What thinking "socialism is when the government does stuff" does to a person.
i should think that the truckers with the freedom to go on months-long protest cruises are the ones who do own they trucks
I bet a lot would, yes. They aren't earning from direct exploitation so they'd need to have a lot saved up to continue making payments and fuck around.
:doubt: Source? Are you suggesting most farmers in the US rent their land rather than own it? I thought "farmer" in the USA was a synonym for agribusiness owner.
sometimes coerced into slavery
Google/the USDA says it's about 50-50 in the US
Yeah I guess it depends on whether we're using the liberal redefinition of what it means to be a farmer, which is, like you said, basically any agricultural outfit, which is now mostly huge businesses. I mean smaller-time folks, people who employ others to work a piece of land and sometimes work it themselves as well.