/edu/ - Education

The peasantry doesn't exist any more, thank Lenin

>>18676
… It does.

I thought Leninism considers the peasantry to be allies against the bourgeoisie?

I mean they still did ally with the landless and poor peasants against the kulaks. Another anon explained in much more depth to me how in 19th century russia the peasantry was not a single economic class but many. also in terms of actually bridging the gap between urban workers,rural peasants and the party tmk thats basically a key foundation of the maoist project looking at some of the USSRs failures and trying to avoid what ur talking abt.

>>18680
Go on…

When it comes to peasants people can point to China as an example of them being revolutionary, but also to Afghanistan as an example of them being reactionary & even being the primary opposition.

Either way like what >>18676 said it doesn't matter because "rural subsistence farmers" barely exist anymore anywhere. Most food production is being done by agribusiness and kulaks.

Only Africa has any peasantry left these days
Sage and sneed

>>18675
Anon whilst the peasantry are often able to be mobilized in to a progressive force i seriously doubt you are from a country with a peasant population.
What was your acually real reason for making this nonsense thread to argue about some things nobody said and advocate for something that you are unable to have any material connection to, i wonder.

>>18682
yeah, nowhere in the West. and that's not a good thing!
>>18684
>i seriously doubt you are from a country with a peasant population.
that depends. I was hoping the other anon was gonna go into which social relationships create peasants and how that has changed (>>1501399).
>some things nobody said
Literally the first response in the thread lol. then you said they exist, but far enough not to matter to us.
>What was your acually real reason for making this nonsense thread
Usually people try harder to hide their ignorance, not you. Just because you don't understand something at first, doesn't make it nonsense.

It is clear to me people here don't even know where their food comes from. lol
>my country doesn't have peasants, I guess they don't matter
where the fuck do you think your food comes from? doesn't come from Tescos you fucking reprehensible liberal.

this place is overrun by westoids and anglos

>>18677
a peasant is not a rural worker. a peasant is a tenant farmer who pays a tithe or rent to a landed aristocrat, while practicing small scale subsistence farming on land they are tied to. There are no peasants in former soviet countries, though there are some in Afghanistan still.

>>18685
this map looks like it's from the 1950s

>Bolsheviks were the party of workers, proletarians
wrong

>Bolsheviks didn't give a fuck about the peasants
wrong

>in fact, peasants were counter-revolutionary and petit-bourgeois
right

now go figure what went wrong with the soviet union

>>18676
that's also why leninism is dead

>>18685
>where the fuck do you think your food comes from?
In the West, it'll mostly be from factory farms, which are not peasant enterprises. Family farms would be the closest approximation, but these cannot be characterized as peasant agricultural ventures. I imagine some imports are the products of peasantry in some sense, but these are only uncommonly or rarely consumed, depending on the commodity.

The peasantry the world over has been obliterated by capitalism, be it through primitive accumulation, land consolidation or 'primitive socialist accumulation', and now they are no longer a dominant class, they do not need to be courted, they lack class conciousness and their class interests are, like most declasse elements, reactionary, feverishly trying to resist the tide of history and their inevitable proletarianisation by any means necessary being swung from left to right as their fancy and local conditions take them. The best thing for the peasantry is for global communism to free them from their class together with the rest of humanity asap.
As for food production, in 2023 it is overwhelmingly the result of rural proletarians working for large capitalist agribusiness. There are also small private farmers/kulaks who are just rural petit bourgeoisie and highly inefficient, producing far less comparatively to the amount of arable land they hold. They are slowly being squeezed as well by the market, but often in the west kept afloat by subsidy. Need to be expropriated asap and their land holdings consolidated.

This thread is great and all, but boleshevism would be even more effective in our time, in actually developed countries, as the are no peasants but only a tiny minority of kulaks, the globalized economy, developed technologies, massive social changes, etc.

>>18689
>In the West, it'll mostly be from factory farms,
you think bananas, oranges, rice, etc. that you find in countries like England and Canada are grown in England and Canada?

What exactly is a "factory farm" that you speak of? You can't just use a term and expect it explains what you're saying. Labeling is not the same as explaining.
>>18686
>a peasant is a tenant farmer who pays a tithe or rent to a landed aristocrat,
so being a farmer in capitalism is worse than being a peasant – you're told what to grow, when and how to grow it, paid a wage (on which you pay taxes) to buy food (and pay taxes on what you buy as well), and you have no food of your own. compared to a peasant who was largely left alone when they were paying tithes regularly.

>>18690
>As for food production, in 2023 it is overwhelmingly the result of rural proletarians working for large capitalist agribusiness.
What about commercial fishing? Outside of large corps, most fishing is done peasant-like:
>one land boat owner, who leases the boat a captain/crew
>owner gets his share
>fishermen split the rest

>>18692
>What exactly is a "factory farm" that you speak of? You can't just use a term and expect it explains what you're saying.
Stop acting dumb uygga, seriously, why is this site just assholes trying to outasshole each other nowadays cmon now not like there is an etymological fucking debate around the word factory farm

>>18693
>Stop acting dumb uygga, seriously,
<sees he can't answer the question
<sees he made a dumb mistake
<"should I admit my mistake and see how I can advance this conversation?"
<"no! I'll call the other guy a retard and deflect!"
I asked you, because you said "In the West, it'll mostly be from factory farms". Really, what does that fucking mean? Do they grow pineapples? Do thet grow coconuts? Where does the palm oil come from? Is there one big farm that has cows, chickens, corn, potatoes, or do they specialise? You think all of your food is grown in your own country? Is your country just huge "factory" farms with big chimneys and stuff?
>not like there is an etymological fucking debate around the word factory farm
nobody is trying to start an etymological debate, you mental infant. I am asking you what do you mean when you say "factory farm". That's it. You don't have to look anything up, just write down the thoughts that preceded you typing "factory farms", if there were any.

I would actually bet that most of your (non-meat) food comes from what you wouldn't call "factory farms".

>>18692
>you think bananas, oranges, rice, etc. that you find in countries like England and Canada are grown in England and Canada?
I have no idea about England and Canada, but for the US it will mostly be in factory farms, sometimes in the US, sometimes outside of it yet not under conditions of peasant production. Just because Dole keeps its workers impoverished doesn't make the farms they run in South America any less "factory farms." They're not running quasi-"cottage industries" out of the peasant production there, and companies like this have supported conservative and reactionary forces in those countries to keep things this way. If you don't understand this, you're not going to understand why the United Fruit Company became so notorious.
>What exactly is a "factory farm" that you speak of?
A farm owned by a capitalist firm, which hires laborers to work on its land and facilities. These laborers are not peasants; they neither own the land nor farm, nor do they labor in order to procure the food for their own immediate use. They labor for the market.

The term isn't some sort of novelty I just invented. You can look it up yourself if you're curious.

>>18694
Also, >>18693 isn't me, although he is right. I'm not sure what's preventing you from looking this up.

>How do we get a large part of the army
I haven't got the answers, but I know this is vital.
Shit, Nazis are already doing it in western armies and police.

>>18697
That's because the army tends reactionary and the police is inherently reactionary.

>>18698
Enough of both threw in for the bolsheviks in Russia
Yes yes unique historical conditions, but how can those conditions be juched up today?

>>18694
He is talking about productive forces in the west, not about growing bananas in less developed countries. Picrels are factory farms and I know for a fact your lazy ass knows what it means.
I do not side with him on the thing about factory farms producing most food, since even though most meat in the west is produces that wat, it's still just the meat. Maybe he meant argibusiness since that also includes plant farming and is distinctly capitalist.

>>18692
>What about commercial fishing? Outside of large corps, most fishing is done peasant-like
>Outside of large corps
Here's your mistake, two thirds of commercial fishing vessels in the world are concentrated in the hands of the top 1000 fishing corporations. They account for a vast majority of the world's fishing. And that's ignoring the fact that by now more than half of the world's fish catch comes from fish farms, which has been steadily increasing it's share for the past century and will only continue to do so due to overfishing and it's greater efficiency.
Just like private yeoman farmers, the small fishermen are not peasants but small declasse petit bourgeois elements, inefficient and insignificant and doomed to shrink and be squeezed and proletarianized more and more.

>>18700
>Maybe he meant argibusiness since that also includes plant farming and is distinctly capitalist.
True, I'm thinking of industrial agriculture more generally under the term, which is why I mentioned Dole and the United Fruit Company. If the other person just disliked the term being used that way, it can be replaced, but the point remains the same.

>>18675
Why are ruraloids in America so reactionary yet in China, they were progressive?

>>18703
In America you could always kill an Indian and their land was yours immediately, there were no natives to expropriate from in China, so the only option left was to liquidate the landlords

>>18703
In china they were poor, landless tenant farmers, could easily be organised around a program of land reform, land to the tiller. America is a settler society where the landless could be placated by free real estate handed out to everyone, at least until it ran out, at which point you had a vast class of yeoman private farmers who were 'bought into the system' so to speak. Pretty simple.

>>1501660
>>1501661
The lawn calls to them

>>18696
I'm trying to foster discussion by provoking anons into expanding on their opposing views.
>>18695
Yes. But… is that a beneficial thing right now? Is factory farming what the world needs right now?
https://www.futurity.org/farmers-food-value-pay-2633162-2/
https://www.ifad.org/en/web/latest/-/ifad-calls-on-world-leaders-to-commit-to-action-at-food-systems-summit
I am not saying "make a peasant class again" or "promote kulakization of the African continent". I am saying that people who have historically grown and currently grow our food do not necessarily benefit from the same kind of proletarisation urban workers do. One can say "collective farming" but that again doesn't mean anything on its own.

I guess the points I'm spiraling slowly to is:
1) how and where should the food be grown: we build farm cities where people grow food or do we have trains that carry people out to the farms?

2) do we continue with the global system of distribution where you have out of season food in places where they don't grow in the first place?

People don't put thought into why they can buy fresh tomatoes in December in Oslo or Winnipeg. If we're going to have a world socialist system, is it ok to expect people born by birth lottery in fertile places with a good climate to work a little bit harder so everyone could have fresh pineapple all year round?

Or do we grow things ourselves and limit the food varieties and availability? Sorry, no sushi for you, Arizona.

Maybe things need to get really really really shit for everyone, so that people are then happy with the food that can be grown within 100km of them, seasonally. how do people expect to live in a new kind of world, new kind of system, if they can't even imagine it? I guess those South Americans just have to keep picking those bananas so that Klaus can make his protein shakes and get big and strong so he looks tough when pumping his arms to techno and cheering for Bayern Munich.

>>18700
Where do you think the pig feed comes from?

>>18701
>two thirds of commercial fishing vessels in the world are concentrated in the hands of the top 1000 fishing corporations.
Do they own all of these vessels, or do they own the subsidiary companies in the countries that then makes contracts with local fishing companies for their catch? There is a difference. 1000 companies, there's only 192 countries in the world, local fishing companies are competing for contracts.

You say these statistics as if they say anything about what's actually going on. I assume the relationships these local fishing companies have with their workers vary also: some are literal slaves, some are regular workers how we see them, some are underpaid immigrants, and so on. Criticism, get into it. All the cool kids are doing it.

>>18709
None of this is peasantry, it's all proletarian wage labour. Your point about fishermen being peasants, the peasantry still existing, it having any meaningful role in the world today or being the primary food producers is all incoherent nonsense. Take your flair's advice.

>>18675
>peasants were counter-revolutionary and petit-bourgeois
What?

>>18712
It’s so fucking over, everything I have ever believed has been destroyed, we truly live in an animal farm 1969 gulag archipelago

>>18675
>Well, /leftypol/? How do we get a large part of the army and "peasantry" on our side?
youre asking this like its a fucking issue in the 21st century LMAO

>>18710
> Your point about fishermen being peasants,
not what I said.
>the peasantry still existing,
not what I said
>it having any meaningful role in the world today
not what I said
>or being the primary food producers
not what I said
>is all incoherent nonsense.
I agree. All those things I didn't say would be wrong if I had actually said them.

What is a peasant?

Food growing and fishing is something that can be industrialised up to a point. Eventually getting more simply means getting more out of the people doing it, or it requires unsustainable exploitation of the Earth. For example, industrial harvesters/combines aren't that good in non-monocultural farming. Yet monocultural farming impoverishes the soil, makes an environment where parasites and diseases thrive (all of those flus, avian flus, pig flus, etc. are a result of the virus having a lot of possible hosts and it just goes from one to another, mutating until it is a form it can be transferred to humans), and other shit that isn't beneficial.

We think progress is getting everyone to live the Western lifestyle. But the Western lifestyle of having sushi, fresh fresh fruits, anywhere you are, any time of year, simply isn't possible for 8 billion people. Unless, we all raise our own fish, grow food in vertical farms.

Food production has to be moved back to the West, along with other production. But why should people be asked to move out to the middle of nowhere?

Do we spread out our cities, limit their size, and have farming cities? Or do we convert buildings or build new ones and make cities sustainable?

Food growing takes a lot of space, and has logistical issues. I just think it'd be cool to talk about it. That's all.

>>18712
🤔

>>18692
>so being a farmer in capitalism is worse than being a peasant – you're told what to grow, when and how to grow it, paid a wage (on which you pay taxes) to buy food (and pay taxes on what you buy as well), and you have no food of your own. compared to a peasant who was largely left alone when they were paying tithes regularly.

depends on what you mean by "farmer." In 1st world countries like the USA, "farmer" means the person who owns the farm land, usually many hectares of land. Usually a corporation, or wealthy individual.

The people actually planting and harvesting the crops are agricultural wage workers. Many of them are undocumented immigrants. Yes, it is often worse than being a peasant in terms of material conditions. Just like being a slave or a serf is worse than being a free peasant.

>>18675
Greetings readers! I am here to disassemble this garbage thread and to recommend an anchor or maybe even deletion of this degenerate bait thread. Let us first address the OP
>>Bolsheviks were the party of workers, proletarians
>>Bolsheviks didn't give a fuck about the peasants
>in fact, peasants were counter-revolutionary and petit-bourgeois
>Meanwhile, the Bolshevik logo has a SICKLE on it. Why do internet MLs refuse to consider the fact that we need people to grow food
This comes from the really stupid and retarded idea that "peasantry" is equivalent to "growing food". I mean, how stupid do you have to be to think that growing food = PEASANT? There are COUNTLESS agricultural corporations that grew food, like it or not, not only today but AT THE TIME of the soviet union too. Let us also address this extremely stupid and retarded post here, I shall quote the number for you to see:

>>18681
>Go on…
The poster here says "go on" as if to proclaim that, the essence of peasantry, is, in fact, to "grow food". Let us all laugh at this fundamental failure of mental capacity on the OP's part, the one who uses the "read a fucking book" flag, yet clearly shows that it is HE who has never studied or understood the essence of what it is to be a peasant. To define peasantry as "those that grow food" is not only ahistorical and reductionist but also betrays a fundamental failure of education. OP is a retard, and must be ASHAMED of the fact that HE is retarded. In Marxist theory, peasants are seen as a distinct social class with specific economic and social relations within the capitalist mode of production. The development of capitalism leads to the proletarianization of peasants, meaning that they become part of the working class as capitalism expands and consolidates its dominance. Industrialization and the concentration of capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie, whether national or cosmopolitan-imperialist collaborator bourgoise, led to the displacement of peasants from their land and their transformation into wage laborers. And yet, none of this has anything to do with "GROWING FOOD". Because growing crops and raising livestock has NOTHING to do with peasanty in essence.

Nowhere in any part of the world do peasants exist day, BECAUSE of the development of the modes of production of just about every country, you cannot say that everyone that grows food or lives rurally is a "peasant". It is absurd and RETARDED. Small-scale farming or any scale whatsoever does not determine class position as "peasant" for a long, long time. Moreover, globalization, industrialization, and changes in agricultural practices have led to the transformation and decline of the meaning of "peasant" in many parts of the world, and yet, ironically, the "READ A FUCKING BOOK" OP didn't get the memo, possibly because HE has not read any book since being forced to do so in middle school.

FUCK OP, I wish op a case of a painful and irritating case of the flu, symptoms including a delirious fever and a painful recovery.

>>18719
>The poster here says "go on" as if to proclaim that, the essence of peasantry, is, in fact, to "grow food".
No, you idiot. "Go on…" usually means the other person should continue with whatever they're saying. The > ("meme arrows") mean either quotes or sarcasm, in this case it was sarcasm. you fucking newfag
>I propose blah blah blah
go back to reddit

>>18719
>FUCK OP, I wish op a case of a painful and irritating case of the flu, symptoms including a delirious fever and a painful recovery.
Imagine getting this mad and wishing others harm because of a thread they made…

>>18718
How do we grow food in a way that doesn't damage the Earth or the workers, yet gives everyone enough food to thrive, enough variety to live healthy lives? Apparently vitamins are a scam, so guess we need nutritious food to thrive.

>>18722
I think we should start with tractor sharing

>>18720
>No, you idiot. "Go on…" usually means the other person should continue
And yet, there is NOTHING that must be continued, except the simple fact that people rightfully make fun of YOU for claiming that GROWING FOOD makes one a PEASANT. What is there to continue? You have aleady shown the interwebz that you are the ignoramus maximus. It's merely sad how low the bar has fallen on this subreddit, known as /leftypol/, for that is now the true definition of /leftypol/, seeing as nothing better can pass for a thread nowadays. How low the board has fallen. SAD!

>go back to reddit
I'm already here! OP is the highest quality of "post" that the board can possibly attract (meaning NO quality whatsoever, just ignorance), making it nothing more than another clone of r/communism.

>>18721
It's clear that our understanding of "harm" differs, here, and we can leave it at THAT, for it's not essential for the topic of this dicussion. However, if I were to wish an ignoramus harm, I would have definitely worded my post far more strongly than I have. Alas, I am now beginning to regret that I have, indeed, not wished you harm.

>>18724
>people rightfully make fun of YOU for claiming that GROWING FOOD makes one a PEASANT. What is there to continue?
OK. They are not peasants. Can we move on or are you going to write further essays? I have posed several questions that do not refer to peasants or mention them. Any thoughts on those or are you only able to insult people?

>>18720
>"Go on…" usually means the other person should continue with whatever they're saying.
I said it and I left it alone because the threat warrants no more response than
>peasant is when you grow food

>>18705
>>18704
So if America’s population ever gets to 1 billion people, ruraloids won’t be reactionary?

>>18727
No, all that population wouldn't be in the coutryside, it would be in the cities forming a vast proletariat and reserve army of labour, as it already does. The current level of agricultural technology means the people who own the land don't need peasants anymore, they already hire rural workers, often migrants, or are able to manage their land holdings themselves. You would need to restore pre-20th century conditions and concentrate land ownership further to create the conditions for new landless peasantry that would get radical about killing landlords and land reform.
Otherwise you've already got your non-reactionary ruraloids - migrant farm labourers.

>>18675
>Bolsheviks were the party of workers, proletarians
Among other parties, but sure.
>Bolsheviks didn't give a fuck about the peasants
That's a bit of a reach, considering they sought to end serfdom and succeeded in doing so.
>in fact, peasants were counter-revolutionary and petit-bourgeois
Kulaks, sure, but keep in mind the Russian revolution also had other left wing uprisings against the Tsar, from the free territory and other green movements.

>>18707

1) how and where should the food be grown: we build farm cities where people grow food or do we have trains that carry people out to the farms?
2) do we continue with the global system of distribution where you have out of season food in places where they don't grow in the first place?

I'd say the most important focus is one of self-sufficiency to ensure that one commune/ socialist nation etc is not subservient or reliable on the other. Ideally, we could have both, but the process of creating the city farm will take time, so it may be that we have a train system initially.

We will only know how to find a solution once we get a gist of the problem and act accordingly to the situation at hand.

>>18716
>Food production has to be moved back to the West, along with other production. But why should people be asked to move out to the middle of nowhere?
Bit of a question but what would you define as the "west"? Because here in Australia as well as places like America, there is a strong agricultural component to eachothers respected economy- arguably to a point where we could theoretically become self-sufficient.

>Do we spread out our cities, limit their size, and have farming cities? Or do we convert buildings or build new ones and make cities sustainable?
These are all good suggestions imho, but as i said, that will depend on what we're working with- and wether or not we can invoke some form of self-sufficiency.

>Food growing takes a lot of space, and has logistical issues. I just think it'd be cool to talk about it. That's all.
Cyber-Syn for food production/ logistics is certainly interesting. But of course, national logistics is one thing, international distribution and muncipal management is another.

>>18692
farmer under capitalism is largely petit bourgeois anon

>>18675
The worst mistake that many Western Marxists make is insisting that their comrades must be ideologically pure. Mao won the revolution with peasants as the revolutionary base. The vast majority, if not all of these people, were entirely illiterate so there's very little chance that these people were principled Marxists or understood dialectical and historical materialism. Most of these peasants were reactionary and superstitious.

Revolutions will not be won by an army of educated middle class bookworms.

As far as I know the Bolsheviks specifically rallied the poor and landless segments of the peasantry against the Kulak class. A rough American equivalent would be rallying undocumented Latin American migrant farm workers against agribusiness monopolies and white land owning ranchers.

>>18708
That's what I'm fucking talking about man, why I said agribusiness would be a better word. Why does a motherfucker really have to come here just to act this idiotic.

>>18677
Not in EUrope

>>18688
>>Bolsheviks were the party of workers, proletarians
>wrong


Enlighten us then, who they represented

>>18716
>food production has to be moved back to the West
lol. lmao. You imbecile, the west have an extremely vast agrobusiness with which they do a ton of exportation, they're the ones doing the basic feeding of vast populations, poorer country have mostly cash crops like coffee, cacao, bananas, spices… which makes them very dependent on west food export and very vulnerable to market fluctuation.

>>18708
bruh every time someone shows u part of the food industry that capitalists ur only response
>but what abt X commodity?
ur mad and ur bad

>>18731
someone had to say it lol

>>18738
Yes, they export food to areas where farmers have been forced out of the market by cheap food imported from elsewhere. You think they're sending EU-produced, non-GMO, "organic" food that is twice the price of "normal" food? No, I don't think so. Agribusiness has farms in places like Ukraine and Brazil, and that food is sent as "aid".

The "aid" is twofold: a. it keeps Africa and other poor countries dependent on the West. They use this leverage to bully them into infavourable contracts or to sell of national assets; b. it provides an "in" for the glowie agencies through companies and NGOs like "USAID"

The farmers who are left are substinence farmers, who make enough for themselves and maybe the village or whatever, but nowhere near enough to export to other places. Plus, refrigeration, transport, distribution, all these things need to be taken care of.

"Aid" is not aid at all. What would really help is farm machinery, diesel generators, power plants, roads, tools. But no, they send them boxes of chips and rice.

Thinking about it, food production should be decentralised and communities should be self-sustaining. All lawns and flowerbeds should be growing fruits and herbs. Fucking apple trees all over the place.

Why aren't roofs of buildings greenhouses? Missed opportunity.

>>18736
The professional managerial class duh

>>18742
kys

>>18675
The Bolsheviks were nerds and fags, and needed to be removed by Chad Stalin and his true working class Stalin and his inner circle

>>18736
the urban petit-bourgeoisie and some of the peasantry

How do we purge the left of this notion that class is some kind of essence embodied within people rather than a social relation they are trapped within? Bolsheviks didn't hate peasants or proletarians, they wanted to move on beyond peasantry to a more developed form of production relations. They were opposed to peasantry and proletarianization i.e. the structure, the institution of these class structures. They wanted to free the peasants and proles (the people) from these oppressive class positions, put instead in a classes position of simply a worker, common to everyone in society.