- 23 Dec 2016 20:33
#14754005
The Communist Manifest calls for:
It's no secret in political sociology that America, at least, is divided much more along urban-rural lines than by "Blue States" and "Red States." In the wake of Trump's election, there has been no shortage of thinkpieces about the left's neglect of the "white working class." This is misleading, as the white working class people in urban areas did not, by and large, support him, while rural whites, including many petit-bourgeois whites, did. The urban-rural divide is very real, and it seems to only get more severe. Many of the remaining factories are not in big cities, but in rural areas where they provide the only jobs for the majority of people in town. When those factories close, entire towns are devastated. Meanwhile, in China, it seems the government has to deal with a new peasant uprising every week as farmers get left behind while the rest of the country advances economically.
So I guess I'm just curious what people think about applying Marx's concept today. The "combination of agriculture with manufacturing industry" has, to a large extent, already been achieved through agribusiness, but does not seem to have helped the plight of farmers. As for more equitable distribution of the population across the country, I'm not sure how feasible that is or what it's supposed to look like. I do see a need for some sort of blending of the two, but if anything, I would imagine it going in the reverse direction, with more urban forestry, vertical farms, community gardens, and the like, making cities more green and wild more so than filling in the countryside with industry. In any case, it's an issue I rarely see Marxists address these days, yet it seems more pertinent than ever.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
It's no secret in political sociology that America, at least, is divided much more along urban-rural lines than by "Blue States" and "Red States." In the wake of Trump's election, there has been no shortage of thinkpieces about the left's neglect of the "white working class." This is misleading, as the white working class people in urban areas did not, by and large, support him, while rural whites, including many petit-bourgeois whites, did. The urban-rural divide is very real, and it seems to only get more severe. Many of the remaining factories are not in big cities, but in rural areas where they provide the only jobs for the majority of people in town. When those factories close, entire towns are devastated. Meanwhile, in China, it seems the government has to deal with a new peasant uprising every week as farmers get left behind while the rest of the country advances economically.
So I guess I'm just curious what people think about applying Marx's concept today. The "combination of agriculture with manufacturing industry" has, to a large extent, already been achieved through agribusiness, but does not seem to have helped the plight of farmers. As for more equitable distribution of the population across the country, I'm not sure how feasible that is or what it's supposed to look like. I do see a need for some sort of blending of the two, but if anything, I would imagine it going in the reverse direction, with more urban forestry, vertical farms, community gardens, and the like, making cities more green and wild more so than filling in the countryside with industry. In any case, it's an issue I rarely see Marxists address these days, yet it seems more pertinent than ever.
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