[Victoribus Spolia]

Rural workers still exist though? There aren't huge numbers of them because farms are heavily mechanized these days but they still exist.

It depends on how we define peasant I suppose, my father-ln-law jointly owns 500 acres of family farm land that has been in my wife's line since the American Revolution and it is very mechanized and a very large operation in spite of the fact that the farmers operating this $350,000.00 equipment only end up taking home $20,000.00 a year, including the money they split amongst themselves from the rent they collect on the hand-full of mobile homes they rent out to local truckers who are often times family members. Right next door you would have an amish family or a homesteader such as myself. These several groups are so different and yet would all be classified in the blanket terms of "rural worker" or "farmer," but it seems hard to imagine a clear-cut description of anyone in these "classes."

This is why, in many ways, the peasants and rural peoples seemed to be the chink in the armor of leftist ideology. They are hard to classify and sub-divide. They are naturally communitarian, but also fiercely independent, they are entrepreneurial, but usually quite poor, they often have great potential wealth in land, but very little in terms of disposable income. They empathize with the urban working class, which are often their kinsmen, and these same urban classes often revere these farming communities as symbolic of their people's traditions and roots.

It seems to me, that Thomas Jefferson was quite right over Alexander Hamilton in this regards. The greatest bulwark to a free society are landed free-holders and farmers; whereas, industrialization and an urban working class was a clear threat to such. This is why Jefferson opposed the central banking and tariff-heavy policies of Hamiltonian federalism, he saw such as the root for turmoil and tyranny. I would agree.

Given soviet history, he seems to have been right and the conundrum of the peasant in marxist thought clearly typifies this.

I would tend to agree that the agricultural community is the heart of REAL capitalism, but its the failure of marxists to even understand what real capitalism is that caused them so much strife in understanding the rural peoples which was often the basis for their regime's greatest failures regarding famines, etc. Indeed, this same stupidity is repeated constantly by leftist regimes, one only has to look at Zimbabwe and present-day South Africa to see history repeating itself. Its very hard to run a nation on the premise of disrupting the agricultural community and trying the centrally plan it is akin to herding cats.

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@Potemkin,

Great post, as always, though I think the actual classification of the rural classes is an interesting topic in itself, and that there may be points where I actually agree with @ingliz, nonetheless, I think his point was based on a triviality if attempting to discount mass armament of the general population (working class) in modern nations today by orthodox marxism, as you pointed out.

[SolarCross]

@Victoribus Spolia

Peasant defo:
a member of a European class of persons tilling the soil as small landowners or as laborers

confirmed by etymology:

early 15c., from Anglo-French paisant (mid-14c.), Old French paisent "local inhabitant" (12c., Modern French paysan), earlier paisenc, from pais "country, region" ( from Latin pagus; see pagan) + Frankish suffix -enc "-ing."

Pais is from Late Latin pagensis "(inhabitant) of the district," from Latin pagus "country or rural district" (see pagan). As a style of garment in fashion (such as peasant blouse) from 1953.

So yeah the main thing about being a peasant is being a rural person (not even necessarily a "worker"). Peasants are still peasants after they retire. Land owning is optional. Marxists probably have their own altered definitions but we can't use them because they are always laden their false ideological malfeasance.

You would be a peasant then. I think I might be a "prole" though I live in a deeply rural area I work in the nearest city (really it is only a small town but in the uk we class urban areas as "cities" if they have a cathedral) though I often do rural runs...

Anyway what you are saying about the entrepreneurial spirit of country folk is also true of town and city folk possibly more so. City people of every strata are keen hustlers. The Marxists again have no idea what real people are like, urban or rural, they don't have a clue. Their real political base is idiot middle class kids who go to university and they lose most of those when they grow up.

[Potemkin]

Rural workers still exist though? There aren't huge numbers of them because farms are heavily mechanised these days but they still exist.

They exist, but not really as a class, in Marx's sense of the term. Their numbers are too small, and they are marginal to the British economy. They also tend to have little or no awareness of themselves as a class and nor do they tend to act collectively. As Marx put it, you can keep adding potatoes to a sack, but at the end of the day you just end up with a sack of potatoes. Lol.

[Victoribus Spolia]

So yeah the main thing about being a peasant is being a rural person (not even necessarily a "worker"). Peasants are still peasants after they retire. Land owning is optional. Marxists probably have their own altered definitions but we can't use them because they are always laden their false ideological malfeasance.

You would be a peasant then. I think I might be a "prole" though I live in a deeply rural area I work in the nearest city (really it is only a small town but in the uk we class urban areas as "cities" if they have a cathedral) though I often do rural runs...

I agree with the definition on a basic level, though I think we should be careful of betting too much on etymology as words are not entirely static as far as their understood meaning; however, that being said, it does seem odd to group a farm-hand renting a mobile home with a man who owns 1,000 acres and is a land-lord, but who also does much of his own farm-work. This seems to tell me the definition you provided is too broad, but its a small matter.

You are correct though, the classification used by the Soviets is tainted by ideology, but that is part of the reason why their failures are often so pronounced regarding rural and agricultural policy. They have a square peg in a round hole problem regarding farmers.

Anyway what you are saying about the entrepreneurial spirit of country folk is also true of town and city folk possibly more so. City people of every strata are keen hustlers. The Marxists again have no idea what real people are like, urban or rural, they don't have a clue. Their real political base is idiot middle class kids who go to university and they lose most of those when they grow up.

I don't necessarily disagree with this as "merchants" are not usually the same as farmers, farmers wear many hats and entrepreneur endeavors are but a small part of their economic repertoire; however, one thing does seem quite certain; landed peoples tend to be independent and freedom-loving in a manner not seen among urban-dwellers. This is partly due to having a larger tax burden in spite of having lower incomes, but it is also due to the fact that privacy, self-sufficiency, and inheritance (patriarchal-legacy) are staples of their lifestyle on a day-to-day basis.

Jefferson was right, and I believe @Potemkin and I actually discussed this before, that much of the antipathy to socialism and classism in the U.S. comes from its "wide-open-spaces," cheap land, and rural character. The vision of a decentralized agrarian society was the basis for Jefferson's belief in a free society that was decidedly NOT like Europe in its very psychology.

This has held true, to a degree, but the increasing urbanization of the U.S. clearly endangers this, which is why the whole electoral college thing has been a huge debate here.

The founders feared tyranny from the urban masses and their tendencies towards statism contra the impulses of free-holders in rural areas.

The thing is, the very social contract system that Jefferson helped to create was the very death of the decentralized agrarianism that he loved, for all social contracts tend towards statism and welfarism and such are best suited to centralized urban areas.

fate is not without a sense of irony.

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@Potemkin,

Though the sack of potatoes analogy is amusing, the whole rural worker paradigm is actually still pretty significant in the U.S. and was arguably instrumental in the success of a man like Trump.

Would you say the description you used for the British variety still holds true for their American counterparts?

Just curious...

[Potemkin]

Only because they had no opportunity to exercise their capitalistic instincts.

Their "capitalistic instincts"? What, you think capitalism was programmed into their genetic code or something? Lol.

Given that opportunity the poor peasantry were overwhelmingly proto-capitalists, scrambling to exploit the dispossessed.

Stalin thought them incorrigible.

Any sources or quotes for this?

Stalin set out to systematically liquidate the peasantry as a class.

Who do you think was going to work the collective farms then? Pixies? Leprechauns?

[annatar1914]

@Victoribus Spolia ,

Wasn't this an in-house debate amongst commies? Eh, @annatar1914 and @Potemkin?

Yes, but circumstances change, like my taking a sabbatical, lol...

It seems some strains of marxist thought viewed the peasantry as part of the proletariat whereas others viewed them as "proto-proletariats" that needed to first be lifted to that level (this will be an interesting topic in my ancap/feudalism discussion with you annatar, when the times comes)..

I'm viewing myself as more of a National Bolshevist these days, using Marxist Leninist thought to help me understand what happened when theory met reality after the Bolshevik Revolution. They had numerous errors and made many horrendous mistakes, but I see the Revolution in 1917 as a providential event in some respects, certainly eschatological and apocaplyptic in relation to the Church and the World. I'm looking forwards to our other conversation. As far as I'm concerned, a laborer is a laborer, rural or urban, physical labor or mental or even administrative labor. If you make a living entirely as a landlord or from capitalistic investment, you're not a laborer.

And when I admit being a ''Bolshevik'' in my ''National Bolshevism'', it is more in the sense of the connotation of ''Bol'sheva'', Russian word meaning loosely in English; ''Majority''. That is, i'm with the People. A Nationalist Populist first, and a Socialist as an extension of that.

If this is the case, it seems hardly fair @ingliz to make the question of whether orthodox marxism believes in the arming of the working class as a general statement to be true or false solely on a VERY specific internal debate that seems to apply only to places like early 20th century Russia.

For me, Russia is kind of ''ground zero'', the fulcrum which moves the world, in my metahistorical and christian contemplations, so It's a greater concern for me.

For instance, if the arming of the working class is a doctrine of orthodox marxism, and you happen to be correct that the peasantry is to be excluded from the "working class", what bearing would this really have on modern nations like the United States anyway or the subject of the poll? It would still imply mass armament with military grade weapons in a way that would make 2nd amendment extremists and NRA members leap for joy. Which was my point.

Does this imply that gun ownership is viewed as a natural right in marxism in a manner akin to ancaps and libertarians? No, of course not. Such view the natural right as universal and not limited to class for the purposes of revolution; however, in practice, the mass arming of the majority in most nations would nonetheless be a shared, albeit limited, value.

Seems fair, although I'm probably more a populist than a Marxist regarding this.

[ingliz]

Pixies? Leprechauns?

Is spouting NAP Ancap crap a new thing with you?

Liquidating a class is not a synonym for killing people!

[Potemkin]

Is spouting NAP Ancap crap a new thing with you?

Liquidating a class is not a synonym for killing people!

I understand that point, ingliz. My point was that the people working the collective farms would still be rural workers; i.e., peasants. If the peasantry have been liquidated as a class, then there are no longer any peasants. They would, instead, be factory workers or Party officials, or what have you. Who, then, would work the collective farms?

Stalin nowhere claimed to that his policy was to liquidate the peasantry as a class. He talked only about liquidating the kulaks as a class (which may or may not have involved their physical liquidation, depending on circumstances).

[ingliz]

would still be rural workers; i.e., peasants.

I disagree.

we can and must by our own efforts... eliminate the internal contradictions in our country, the contradictions between the proletariat and the peasantry

And he did. After collectivisation, they were wage-workers; i.e., a rural proletariat.

[Potemkin]

I disagree.

After collectivisation, they were wage-workers; i.e., a rural proletariat.

This is what I love about discussions of Marxist theory - it allows so much scope for the splitting of hairs.

[Pants-of-dog]

Back in the real world, it was rural folk with guns that were the spearhead of colonialism. Settlers in the Amwricas would get together with their hunting rifles and drive indigenous communities off their land by shooting them, including women and children.

[One Degree]

Back in the real world, it was rural folk with guns that were the spearhead of colonialism. Settlers in the Amwricas would get together with their hunting rifles and drive indigenous communities off their land by shooting them, including women and children.

The indigenous returned the favor. They just weren’t as organized for success. The good guy bad guy view of history is never accurate. You keep trying to give the impression of natives living in utopia until the evil white man came along. Ain’t true.

[Pants-of-dog]

The indigenous returned the favor. They just weren’t as organized for success. The good guy bad guy view of history is never accurate. You keep trying to give the impression of natives living in utopia until the evil white man came along. Ain’t true.

As far as I can tell, absolutely none of this is true.

Indigenous people never tried to settle lands that were traditionally owned by white people.

Nor did I make any claims about utopia.

This seems like a whataboutism.

[One Degree]

As far as I can tell, absolutely none of this is true.

Indigenous people never tried to settle lands that were traditionally owned by white people.

Nor did I make any claims about utopia.

This seems like a whataboutism.

You throw in ‘traditionally’ to give authenticity to a deception. Ownership of land was not decided by tradition. If you defeated your enemies, you had the right to everything you wanted that was theirs. Natives and settlers both played by these rules. Neither were surprised by the consequences of defeat.

[Pants-of-dog]

You throw in ‘traditionally’ to give authenticity to a deception. Ownership of land was not decided by tradition. If you defeated your enemies, you had the right to everything you wanted that was theirs. Natives and settlers both played by these rules. Neither were surprised by the consequences of defeat.

None of this contradicts anything I said.

You seem to be agreeing that settlers went in with guns and killed innocents in order to take their land.

You are just saying that this sort of genocide is fine and dandy.

[One Degree]

None of this contradicts anything I said.

You seem to be agreeing that settlers went in with guns and killed innocents in order to take their land.

You are just saying that this sort of genocide is fine and dandy.

It doesn’t better if I think it was fine and dandy. What matters is, yes, that is how the world worked if you want to simplify it. There was no UN to arbitrate your disagreement.

[Pants-of-dog]

So you agree with my claim.

[One Degree]

So you agree with my claim.

No, because your claim was a half truth complete with implied moral wrong that was not applicable to the time.

[Victoribus Spolia]

it was rural folk with guns that were the spearhead of colonialism. Settlers in the Amwricas would get together with their hunting rifles and drive indigenous communities off their land by shooting them, including women and children.

Irrelevant and clearly off topic. The question being had was whether or not the working class should be armed and whether rural folks were part of the proletariat.

[ingliz]

@Victoribus Spolia

Arming the masses: Civilian gun ownership in revolutionary Russia.

By the end of 1917 the authorities had restricted the right to carry firearms.

In 1918 the Bolsheviks initiated a large scale confiscation of civilian firearms, outlawing their possession and threatening up to 10 years in prison for concealing a gun.

The only exception was made for hunters who were allowed to possess smoothbore weapons. Gun licenses, however, were strictly regulated and only issued by the NKVD.