https://twitter.com/Kookycommunist/status/1345802950078300162?s=19
Damn I wonder if there's like some correlation between your relationship to capital and how much you benefit from capitalism and how likely you are to be radicalized against it
"Rural republicans" are usually just exurbanite middle class people who want to be able to have dirt bikes and ATVs, or extremely reactionary land-owning farmers.
Then we need to focus on the rural proletariat, which is larger than propertied class and still growing quickly as more farmers, landlords, small business owners, etc. are proletarianized. This class naturally includes latino migrant workers nationwide, african americans of the rural south, chicanos in the southwest, native americans nationwide, etc. but also entails an insane amount of hyperexploited or just straight up unemployed conservative white people.
The kulaks you describe are an extremely vocal minority that continue to shrink, though i do agree that they are quite hopeless in general because of their material interests. An increasing majority of rural whites dont have a stake in the system anymore as far as i can tell: the American dream of a shitton of ATVs and F150s is dead for the vast swathes of people living in meth and opioid stricken regions that were created by Capital flight and deindustrialization.
The material conditions are ripening, and idk of culture war garbage is going to be enough to keep these people content forever. Capitalism has uprooted all productive economic activity from these areas: it has put all the farmland in the hands of monsanto and ConAgra and essentially recreated tentant farming, it has sacraficed small town businesses to walmart and dollar general, it shut down the car plants and coal mines and sent those jobs to disparate regions or even other countries where workers can be exploited even more easily, it has put all of the real estate in the hands of a couple of local wealthy landlords as well as the monopoly banks and property corporations based in the liberal metropoles. The infrastructure is crumbling and the people are not given anywhere near the amount of social services necessary to improves their qualities of life.
Rural people just need to be shown how hard they have been screwed. They must be made aware that the "mexican/chinese who took er jobs" is being screwed over just as hard by the capitalist that sent these jobs away.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I think it’s largely dependent on region from what I’ve seen. Depending on the dominant type of agriculture in an area, there may be more or less actual hired labor in farms. Some places are almost exclusively mechanized farming where it’s only farmer+family required as labor and there’s little wage labor taking place. Also the sort of “rural area as exurb” phenomena is definitely a product of proximity to the nearest large city and good old American sprawl.
Definitely relates to one of my discourse pet peeves of “working class is when you drive a truck.”
You bring up a very good point about many U.S farms being industrialized to such a degree that little hired labor is necessary, a situation i often forget is relevant because I am from one of the larges swathes of Southeast that features heavy exploitation of Latino migrant workers because the type/intensity of agriculture and crop types in the region. In addition, the black belt is very closeby and is known for being essentially the only rural part of the nation populated predominantly by African Americans because it was the historic center of the plantation economy 100s of years, before transitioning to a long period of sharecropping and prison labor slavery.
I bring up these 2 economic/demographic trends of the region i am from because they were the reason i incorrectly extrapolated these trends to the U.S as a whole, even though in reality there are large swathes of the nation dominated by family-scale petty bougiouse crop production. This type of crop production does indeed dominate in the midwestern grain belts and other regions, in contrast to the conditions i mentioned in the South as well as the similar intensive produce production in California's centeal valley that is also dependant on migrant exploitation (as a counterpoint though, the grain belt does have a large amount of rural livestock slaughter facilities and deindustrialized rust belt towns with the accompanying swathes of hyperexploited rural proletarians and a reserve labor army).
So you are correct, there is a signifigant variety of material conditions in rural America that necessitates different policies in differing regions. The good news is that I believe the petty-bougiouse farming class has more to gain from revolution than not: many other socialist projects have shown that the association of these producers into collectives can allow small farmers to form the necessary scale economic cooperation and organization to contend with the large scale agrocorps that prey on them; they stand to benefit from socialist price stabilization; they will benefit from the socialization of the banks and real estate conglomerates that prey on them; they will benefit from state provided low-interest loans and direct material aid for production.
I believe these people can be reached because their economic interests ultimately conflict with the path capitalism has paved for American society. Our enemies till the very end though will be the "true kulaks" whose economic interests are dependant on the hyperexploitation of migrant workers and other rural proletarians. In addition to them, the various swathes of exurban labor aristocrat/non-farmer petty bougiouse F150 collectors that you mention do generally have material interest in contradiction to the construction of socialism, as well as being among the most entrenched in the reactionary culture war garbage, though i will have to hold out and see how the ongoing process of proletarianization affects them.
And spot fucking on: "working class is when you drive a truck" is the exact sentiment i was trying to caution against in my 1st comment. In conclusion, your analysis is very good and i agree.
As some one who lives in Appalachia you're part right. There is extremely strong hate for all politicians and the system that keeps them in power. They know there is not a single person in Washington that gives a wet shit about them, allot of people around here have gone from "drain the swamp" to "kill all politicians." However most of them have no clear idea of what comes after that and mentioning socialism/communism tends to lead to a fairly reactionary response. You have to be pretty tight with someone before you can move beyond "government bad"
You gotta make sure they make the link between politicians being shitty and politicians loving capitalists, otherwise they're just gonna become lolbertarians
Also: highlight how the private sector fucks you over as much as, if not more than, any government policy.
"That damn government is robbing me blind in taxes!"
"Oh yeah? How much did you pay in rent last year?"
mentioning socialism/communism tends to lead to a fairly reactionary response
This is why it's so important to de-stigmatize these terms, even if in doing so you're associating socialism with positive stuff that isn't technically socialism. When a politician says some nice social safety net in a well-liked capitalist country is "socialism," we shouldn't respond with pedantic leftist theory, we should run with it, and only start talking theory to those who soften a bit from "better dead than red."
What next?
Well what if the ordinary people took over and formed a government of our own. One where we hold the political power. A sort of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Honestly we just need to get them to read the communist manifesto.
make such a difference.
Unless Marx talks about hunting and fishing a lot more then I remember that's gonna be a pretty tough sell.
Marx talks about capitalist alienation.
It's written to radicalize people.
from my anecdotal experience having lived around both, this usually isn't true
idk ive lived around rural hicks on the west coast most my life and once i tell them socialists are down with guns they begin asking lots of good questions. these are working class hicks, all the petit booj are scum of the earth and are a large part of why rural areas suck so hard because they make up a sizable chunk of a very loud segment of the population
rural hicks on the west coast
Hey that's me! I really wonder if I'm near any of you sometimes even though I live in kinda a middle of nowhere place
Trillbillies made a joke that everyone in Appalachia is either a socialist or a chud once, and they've regretted it ever since, lol.
Yeah, we aren’t going to gain anyone from Appalachia or otherwise until they get a taste of material support from the dems first, which is super unlikely. Look at the fucking $2000 checks and see why no one will believe an organizer saying Medicare for all is achievable
Yeah I don't think we're ever getting Twitter user Brooklyn Dad.
From personal experience in Appalachia and rural pacific northwest, there are some so invested in culture war you probably can't get thru and will be the most vocally reactionary but as others have said if you can thread the needle with engaging them in material issues whilst avoiding culture war buzzwords that will put them into reactionary town you can get some good conversations. Guns is a good one, framing mutual aid systems in a way that avoids "socialism or communism" you can have some good conversations. That being said I've had some really awful experiences too.
Anecdotal as it is the best conversations I’ve had about labor rights was was when I lived in Arkansas, which further cleanse the lib out of me. I’d say there’s definitely a potential for socialist community organizing in the rural parts of the US. Even if it’s DSA to start, it’s something.
I live in a rural area, all I can say is during the primaries I met maybe 1 Biden supporter, every one else was Trump or Sanders, and a good chunk were on the fence between the two
ok so off topic & not to be straight but this guy's kinda hot
