What is the peasantry?

[Weezer]

In Marxist theory, I thought there were only two classes: proletariat(working class) and bourgeoisie(captialist class). I've been seeing a lot of arguments over the revolutionary potential of the peasantry on RevLeft lately and tell me...

What separates the peasantry from the proletariat? Are there more classes I should be aware about?

[Adil3tr]

the peasant and petite bougous are seperate because they own their means of production. since they can live with minimal input from others, they are less inclined to support communal ownership. they can be pulled to the left or right

[Adil3tr]

they are different from the proletariat because we don't own where we work, we often pay rent, and don't own what we make. we own only our ability to work. agribussiness is making farmers more like proletarians, but they would, often in the west, like to return to their economic isolation.

[Adil3tr]

the simplest way to put it is that peasents can survive on their own, while workers own little to nothing, and so have to work indefinitely to maintain their lives

[Luisrah]

From what I've heard, petit-bourgeois are small business owners that employ either 1 or 2 people or none at all. Most of them want to become big business owners and turn into ''real bourgeois''.

Peasants usually own some land and survive on their own (not isolated of course). They own some land and grow something which they sell to buy other stuff. They actually own the land and the product.
Sometimes they employ 1 or 2 guys too, and at that point I don't know what they are called. I think the employees are called rural workers though.
While the peasants may be the proletariat's biggest ally, sometimes they are individualist. While workers work side by side, peasants work in different pieces of land, and sometimes ''fight'' each other for little bits, for example.
I see that a lot where I live.

[Boboulas]

I would think farmers in industrial countries like america or western europe could be considerd petit-bourgoise and not peasentry. I dont really see what seperates farmers from small buisness owners, unless im missing the point entirely and someone would be kind enough to explain.

I think its different in the 3rd world though, where peasent famers dont own their land and work for a wage.

[Broletariat]

Lets also not forget the lumpen proletariat which is also debated upon fiercely. The lumpen prole tends to live outside of the "system" so to speak, drug dealers, pimps and the like fall in here.

[Blake's Baby]

What Marx said was that 'increasingly the world is divided into two classes'. Not that they're the only classes.

So there are also the aristocracy (increasingly irrelevant because to all intents and purposes they have come to an accommodation with the bourgeoisie); the peasantry, who are small independent producers (but their workers are proletarians); the petit-bourgeoisie (who generally employ some workers but also work themselves); and the lumpenproletariat.

What Marx was getting at was to some extent how modern (ie post-1840s) capitalism was concentrating all this down to two main most important classes. Only the bourgeoisie (as owners of the productive apparatus and expropriators of the social product) and the proletariat (as the producers of the social wealth) have a real stake in capitalism, for or against; the other classes will trail in the wake of who ever seems to be the best bet. Some poor peasants and poor petit-bourgeois will support the proletariat's perspective (ie communism). Others will side with reaction (ie capitalism). Still more will swing between the two.

But the bourgeois perspective ('capitalise everything!') and the proletarian perspective ('world revolution!') are the only real choices. The peasantry, aristocracy, petit-bourgeoisie and Lumpenproletariat are not classes with a particular vision to impose.

[ComradeOm]

What separates the peasantry from the proletariat?The peasant is distinguished from the worker in that he/she owns and works their own land. They may or may not employ labour. A further distinction is generally made between them and 'small farmers' - the latter producing entirely for the market while the peasantry are primarily subsistence farmers who sell only their surplus. Both of these are generally considered petit-bourgeois producers, although often distinct from the urban petit-bourgeoisie. Agricultural workers - those who work on farms as hired labour for a wage - may be considered a separate rural proletariat

These are the main categories and all may be referred to as belonging to the 'peasant' milieu by different people. There's also a lot of grey areas - such as those who own land but also hire out their labour, those who labour under extremely high rent, the Russian mir, etc - so its little wonder that there is much discussion about it