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.