Karl Marx famously predicted that the transition from capitalism to communism would first occur in an industrialized western european country like england or germany, instead it first occurred in russia which was one of the least industrialized european nations. While the russian revolution would not have been possible without the widespread support of the rural population the revolution in russia was directly a product of the cities.
It wasn’t until after the Second World War that we began seeing more communist nations form, most notably China which probably had the widest support from rural people from any communist country. And the rural centric approach proved to be very successful in other revolutions in the global south like Vietnam and Cuba. But let me say that the age of peasants leading the revolution is over.
In the 21st century the total percentage of rural people has decreased globally, in order to feed 8 billion people a consolidation of farmland is required and anyone with the ability to be a subsistence farmer owns land, or at least has some material advantage over an urban person.
While there are desperate and poor farmers in the global south who would still support communist ideals on land management a United States farmer will never hold those principles without there being some sort of cognitive dissonance between their class and personal beliefs.
Karl Marx’s assessment on where the revolution will happen was wrong, it frankly has less to do with how much a nation is industrialized but more with its relation with global capitalism in general. We are going to see a decline in peasants leading revolutions because there’s no more peasants.
let’s look at india, it has a very high agrarian economy, the majority of Indians work in agriculture, the government is practically ran by the agriculture industry. And despite flirting with communism, it isn’t communist. Generally land owners are pretty reactionary, I would assume this would disqualify any revolution in India from being led by farmers.
What made the revolutions viable previously in rural areas was that life was so shit and working in the city made life easier, that isn’t the case no more, a rural lifestyle is a luxury, it is a treat, the rural diaspora needs to be assimilated into the greater community in urban areas and all agriculture done through collectivized farming. We cannot expect another peasant revolution to happen because they did in the past.
for. real. omg.
like they saw some rich man's 4 million dollar horse farm in central VA and decided that's what's going on everywhere.
That’s stupid. All those rural revolutions were not lead by a landowning class, but a land laboring class.
Why do you think the first thing the Chinese communists did was expropriate the landlords?
Who made up the rural base of the Cuban revolution? Was it farmers with a few acres to their names?
The Chinese land redistribution was broadly in the countryside, they weren’t leading a revolution to get apartment buildings socialized. The Cuban revolution expropriated large rural landowners and gave land to the people who worked it.
I'd like to gently point out that the equivalent of the peseant in the USA is not the landowning farmer, Yeoman or Industrial, but the farm labourer.
Those can absolutely be radicalised.
That said, yes, we need better theory for Urban Revolution, we're stuck in 1968 and honestly the parts added in the 90s were show to be counter-productive by the failure of the Occupy movement.
anyone with the ability to be a subsistence farmer owns land, or at least has some material advantage over an urban person
lol, this is some city boy with no understanding of peasantry making the same debunked arguments Trotsky made
my thoughts exactly, there is more labor put into agriculture than there are owners of farmland by a long shot. in amerika, there are millions of migrant farm workers who are essentially invisible to the general public. but they are essential and paid poverty wages for back-breaking work (a ton non-migrant workers too). they are heavily proletarianized, and they are undoubtedly rural folk with plenty of revolutionary potential. rural areas have huge swathes of impoverished people, in fact, most ppl in rural areas are very poor. crowded living conditions isnt unique to cities, rural areas are also expensive to live in when you are below the poverty line, and by no stretch do most rural folk live in "luxury"
yeah, upwards of 90% of farm owners in amerika and europe are kulaks, but these "owner-operators" arent the only operators. they need their workers to turn a profit, and those workers likely have more revolutionary potential than most other groups. the major road block rn is the division between citizen labor and migrant labor, but as amerika's institutions collapse, so will that division, and a union of farm laborers becomes more feasible
not to wrecker-jacket, but OP is a 2 day old acct and one of their few comments is deadnaming someone
Well no, it's just continuing proof that syndicalism without revolutionary militant characteristics is a dead end. The point is not to redistribute the spoils of production. It is to seize the means of production. Anything else is a compromise that WILL inevitably be crushed. We cannot burn down or abandon industrial society, we must take those tools and machines and use them to create a new world. We also cannot hope for real, lasting, compromise.
I don't think we can make any generalizations about rural populations. It's just too varied both within (i.e. kulaks vs landless laborers) and without (i.e. class character of farming in the US versus Bolivia).
my theory on why that happened is the increased difficulty in monitoring and policing a rural populace. State security and counter revolutionary forces are capable of easily mobilising against an urban uprsising to squash it before it goes anywhere while in a rural area they may struggle to identify and find the revolutionaries
Theyre living conditions are bad but there is nothing even close to a class consciousness there, I dont think ripe for revolution is how I would describe it. Maybe like, fascist takeover, they'll displace their issues onto minorities before they do anything else.
Bullshit, have you ever actually been to WV? Sounds like you're just painting a whole group of people with a ridiculously broad brush in order to have everything fit into your little pet theory
I changed my mind. Youre right, the peoples republic of South Carolina is going to free us.
I live in the South, and have for most of my life. Any attempt to paint this area as 'ripe for revolution' is about as coherent, based on my experience, as claiming stonewall Jackson was ripe for leading the people's vanguard party to form the Socialist Confederacy.
according to @slugbait666 youre painting with too broad a brush just to let everything fit into your little pet theory.
I really would love to be wrong, the South is my home and I'd like to see some kind of movement take hold here. All my experience here, unfortunately, has taught me otherwise.
Can't talk for the deep south but west Virginia still has a really strong union culture from all the miners. Everyone at the blue collar bar I used to hang out at were unequivocally pro union even though they were all maga chuds. Though if you got them talking they pretty much hate everyone in politics and every one who's rich.
I doubt we'll see a vanguard party suddenly spring from there but with education and the right messaging these rust belt states certainly aren't the irredeemable shit wholes some people here seem to think.
Isn't the rank and file membership of the CPC still like 90% rural? We can't put all our hope into :xigma-male: but the BRI is basically bringing the infrastructure improvements of the last 30 years to Africa and Asia.
This is a really bad and thoughtless post. Do some research, maybe talk to some actual humans.
