Urban Workers only?

[ComradeMan]

When contemplating the worker's state something always stays at the back of my mind, exactly who are the workers?

I think that Marx and Engels were largely concerned with urban workers in an industrial setting and several anarchist viewpoints go so far as to say that Marx had nothing but contempt for the rural agrarian workers or peasant class. We'll leave aside the lumpenproletariat for now.

The problem is that no society has ever been or will ever be made up of solely urban workers. What about the people who are not de facto urban workers? Philosophical question being, does the left, perhaps inadvertently, alienate the non-urban worker whoever he or she may be?

Another problem, society is not made up of work alone....

Critique?

[Muzk]

whats an urban worker

[MarxSchmarx]

I think that Marx and Engels were largely concerned with urban workers in an industrial setting and several anarchist viewpoints go so far as to say that Marx had nothing but contempt for the rural agrarian workers or peasant class. We'll leave aside the lumpenproletariat for now.

Just on what do you base this view? What Marx was concerned about was the concentration of capital in the hands of a small class and the increasing specialization of labor. This need not have been urban, but at Marx's time was centered in urban areas. Marx predicted this form of production would dominate, and his predictions have been proven true. Consider many agricultural, migrant workers in the developed world that work for corporate farms. They are no less proletarian than those in urban settings.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Unfortunately, comrade, a different view was upheld by the Marxism of the Second International. :(

"We have already seen that the industrial proletariat tends to become the only working-class." (Karl Kautsky)

There is hence the usual tripe about the "disappearance of the proletariat" in the developed countries (i.e., outsourcing of manufacturing jobs), while ignoring the clerical workers (mis-termed "service workers" due to what I'll say next) and the professionalization of intellectual work (nurses, teachers, grunt accountants, etc.).

[black_tambourine]

Marx's contempt was mainly for the world of the small-scale peasant producer and its attendant parochialism: the village community becomes a world unto itself, or more properly an archipelago of petty-bourgeois microcosms united crudely by the force of unreflective local tradition ("family values" and the like). However, Marx did not leave much conceptual room for rural existence outside of this particular mode. His prediction was that since the mechanization of agriculture involved a higher proportion of constant to variable capital than did industry and manufacturing, so much labor would be redistributed from the countryside to the city that rural life would become all but obsolete; hence a tendency on the part of Marx and many of his followers to denigrate the countryside tout court in practice.

Of course, things didn't pan out quite along the lines that Marx predicted, and today we have a substantial rural proletariat (i.e. divorced from the means of production). This brings into question several things that were implied in early Marxian analysis, and ultimately exogenous to the class issue: just how much do urban communication networks, access to mass culture, education levels, and ethnic/cultural heterogeneity factor in to any enhanced class consciousness of urban workers as opposed to rural? One could convincingly argue, I think, that any disparity between town and country in these respects has been diminishing steadily over the last half-century, as has the distinction between town and country itself.

Further, to ignore the proportionally diminishing but still massive number of smallholding peasants in the Third World today is fallacious in the extreme; not only are they also affected by the decreasing gulf between town and country, their oppression at the hands of various landlord substrata that extract confiscatory rent, and of multinational agribusiness firms that control access to key inputs, constitutes an apt homology to the classical capitalist exploitation of the proletarian.

[A.R.Amistad]

I come from rural Indiana, so I see the rural proletariat on a weekend basis. Nowadays, the big factories, such as the new Chevy factory we've got down here now, is of course operated by working class people. Farming is basically dead around here if your a small farmer, so everyone who used to be a small farmer was forced to become industrial workers. (See John Mellencamp's "Rain on the Scarecrow Video" for that) But unlike in the late nineteenth century, they did not move to the city. Instead, the manufacturing industry came to them as the service industry dominated the urban working class. I always get angry when some Marxists chose to ignore the rural proletariat and only focus on the urban. In fact, many Marxists seem to fall for the lie that the rural population can't be led to revolution because they're dumb, racist, backward, etc. (I hope that I am a glaring example that this is false) I think that we leftists need to suck it up and actually go out into the rural areas to spread revolution. Talk to some rural industrial workers, some former or current small farmers. Hell, their are even a few sharecroppers in Indiana still. Go out in the backwoods (and I mean literally back-woods) and talk to the impoverished people who live out there. Don't just limit yourselves to the urban working class.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Like I said above, "the lie" is based on misperceptions held in the era of the Second International. Which is ironic, since the concept of permanent revolution (involving a backward country) was richer amongst German Marxists than what was eventually developed by Trotsky.

[MarxSchmarx]

Unfortunately, comrade, a different view was upheld by the Marxism of the Second International. :(

"We have already seen that the industrial proletariat tends to become the only working-class." (Karl Kautsky)




(Marx's) prediction was that since the mechanization of agriculture involved a higher proportion of constant to variable capital than did industry and manufacturing, so much labor would be redistributed from the countryside to the city that rural life would become all but obsolete; hence a tendency on the part of Marx and many of his followers to denigrate the countryside tout court in practice.

To a large extent this automation has happened, although the cases where it has not are equally instructive.

These are quite intriguing accidents of geography that the agricultural attention Marx, participants in the 2nd international etc... were almost entirely based on practices in Central/Eastern and Northern Europe. The main crops here were mostly grain and potatoes, which is largely what the population subsisted on as well. For the foreseeable future, this applied to grain in other regions like North America or Asia (rice). These products were well-suited to automation, in contrast to mediterranean crops like grapes or oranges that grew on trees or in ragged landscapes, much less certain tropical crops like bananas.

Moreover, what mechanization has occurred outside these crops has proven increasingly cost prohibitive. Sugar is a good example of a crop which, although mechanically harvestable, is quite different from the grains of the northern climates and requires considerable investment to mechanize that it still remains much, much cheaper to harvest or process manually in much of the world. Many meat products and fisheries also probably fit this description.

Thus while the early focus on mechanization can explain the demise of the predominance of the rural population (esp. in Northern Europe), they simultaneously do not explain the emergence and persistence of a rural proletariat engaged in agriculture out of the earlier peasantry.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Off-topic, but this geographical aspect you raised is interesting, mainly because it raises concerns about the potential "universalizability" of vertical farms, a highly mechanized form of agriculture.

[MarxSchmarx]

Off-topic, but this geographical aspect you raised is interesting, mainly because it raises concerns about the potential "universalizability" of vertical farms, a highly mechanized form of agriculture.


Right, I guess we should stay on topic, but I just quickly google searched this, is this in reference to the farms in high-rise buildings concept? Yeah, it's kind of illuminating how these advocates are trying to encourage the cultivation of different crops that are well suited for this mode of production. I think their "universality", as you note, is unsustainable, and it only works for certain crops. For example, I've seen some plans that include raising fish like Tilapia. That works great for many inland markets (e.g., large swaths of Central Europe, North America, China, and Russia) where sweeter fish are popular, but does not work very well in coastal markets like the Carribean, Japan or Scandinavia where "blue fish" like Mackerel are more popular.

[ellipsis]

Abraham Guillen argued that for many countries in South America, most of the population, most of the means of production, most of the state apparatuses of power and control were concentrated in the large urban centers of these countries; therefor the site of contestation during the revolution must be the city in countries like argentina, uruguay, paraguay, chile and brazil. The model of struggle was not utilized by central american social movements to the same extent; most of the population was rural, the means of production were agrarian, the apparatuses of power in the countryside.

[Raúl Duke]

When contemplating the worker's state something always stays at the back of my mind, exactly who are the workers?

I think that Marx and Engels were largely concerned with urban workers in an industrial setting and several anarchist viewpoints go so far as to say that Marx had nothing but contempt for the rural agrarian workers or peasant class. We'll leave aside the lumpenproletariat for now.

The problem is that no society has ever been or will ever be made up of solely urban workers. What about the people who are not de facto urban workers? Philosophical question being, does the left, perhaps inadvertently, alienate the non-urban worker whoever he or she may be?

Another problem, society is not made up of work alone....

Critique?

He did have contempt for agricultural workers but this was more specifically because they were in his time feudal peasants/serfs/land-renters and his belief that their class position is not equal to that of the proletariat and/or his opinion that rural areas tend to "perpetuate ignorance."

However, today in modern nations there are no peasant-like social class and most farms are owned by large corporations/large growers who hire, for wages, agricultural labor. So now agricultural/rural laborers are in the same class as waged workers (proletariat) so the issue Marx had with agricultural laborers do not apply much anymore in modern countries and his old opinion should not be used as some qualm against agricultural laborers.

No society has been 100% urban (yet, but I doubt it's possible...idk) yet urban populations are growing in the developing world and in developed nations the urban population is the majority. Because of this, in many countries leftists need to focus on the urban working class. In certain nations with rural majorities...well I leave the Maoists to deal with those cases.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't really feel the need to expand on this topic, but I do have some strong thoughts here.

IMO it is pointless to define the working class by rigid and narrow parameters. Anybody who is exploited economically is most definitely a worker; those who are waged, in part time work, in casual work, unemployed. You may also add to the more general working class those who are victims of other oppression - ethnic minorities and immigrants, LGBT etc. I would also factor in the petty bourgeoisie in this country (UK), as we have a pretty peculiar phenomenon of 'working class tories', something which is almost exclusive to the petty bourgeoisie strata of society. These people are misguided, certainly. However, they are potentially our biggest allies in this country and, with education, can certainly be brought over to our side, since it is in their economic interests to do so.

I like to allow the working class to be as broad as possible. Of course, there are workers who are distinct in satisfying any parameter of any working class definition - your typical factory worker, larger family, really struggles to make ends meet, not reactionary etc. The Socialist man, in other words. These must be the most active revolutionaries, and the driving force of any Socialist society. However, it is mistaken to narrow the definition of a worker to just this usually minority sub-section of society. The working class as a whole comprises of all those who have reason to want an alternative to Capitalism. This is a logical conclusion, since we know that Capitalism benefits the very few, and degredates the overwhelming majority. Thus, it must be our aim to include as many of the population, even those who currently imbibe the propaganda of the Capitalists, actively, in a Socialist revolution and re-construction of society.

[ComradeMan]

]He did have contempt for agricultural workers but this was more specifically because they were in his time feudal peasants/serfs/land-renters and his belief that their class position is not equal to that of the proletariat and/or his opinion that rural areas tend to "perpetuate ignorance."

Rather bigotted of him wasn't it?

However, today in modern nations there are no peasant-like social class and most farms are owned by large corporations/large growers who hire, for wages, agricultural labor.

Are you 100% sure about that? There are plenty of contadini near where I live who struggle to survive against big agricultural business.
Second point being, surely we can't always just think about "modern" nations, isn't that a bit geo-centric?

No society has been 100% urban (yet, but I doubt it's possible...idk) yet urban populations are growing in the developing world and in developed nations the urban population is the majority.

No society can be 100% urban unless we invent robot farmers. I think too much urbanisation is a bad thing.

Because of this, in many countries leftists need to focus on the urban working class. In certain nations with rural majorities...well I leave the Maoists to deal with those cases.

I see your point about focusing perhaps, but I get the feeling often that they forget entirely that there are other forms of life that exist outside of factories.


VIVA ZAPATA!!!:)

[Raúl Duke]

Are you 100% sure about that? There are plenty of contadini near where I live who struggle to survive against big agricultural business.
Second point being, surely we can't always just think about "modern" nations, isn't that a bit geo-centric?I'm basing it on the U.S. and Puerto Rioc, where there's little to no small farmers in relation to large agribusinesses. I'm not very aware of the conditions in Italy concerning rural labor but I think even their agribusinesses probably still have the majority share (maybe not as large as the U.S. share) of the agriculture industry.

Also, why I focus on modern nations (developed and some developing qualify) in these posts is because we are discussing Marxist theory and Marx himself stated we should look forward to seeing socialist revolution in nations which have sufficiently developed capitalism. Personally I agree but peasant revolutions are not impossible but they tend to not lead to socialism/communism (i.e. example: China, Vietnam, Laos) but just develop into modern capitalism (that doesn't mean it's bad...the Maoists are good at this and are good at improving living standards for these nations. Compare their case with that of Africa or even similar nations in Asia).


No society can be 100% urban unless we invent robot farmers. I think too much urbanisation is a bad thing.

Technocratic leftists disagree but on this issue I'm ambivalent. Either way green areas (natural reserves, forests, etc) will still exist; I hope.

[Robocommie]

In fact, many Marxists seem to fall for the lie that the rural population can't be led to revolution because they're dumb, racist, backward, etc. (I hope that I am a glaring example that this is false)

Well shit, I've lived in both town and country, and I've seen examples of willful ignorance and racism aplenty in both places. It's silly to say it's more in one than another. Who would argue that there's no racism in Queens?

But yeah, I'm from rural Illinois, and if you ask me, a lot of folks around here are actually fairly ripe for socialist ideas, many of them already possess them in fact, they've just been set against what socialism is by the Cold War and by capitalism.

I mean, what kind of field hand believes hard work always brings reward?

[ellipsis]

isn't that a bit geo-centric?

No, geocentric refers to the idea that the earth is the center of the universe. I think you mean ethnocentric.