Die Neue Zeit
15th May 2011, 00:53
Strictly speaking the peasantry is a petty bourgeois class, since its members possess the means of production themselves, and is distinct from the rural proletariat who work the land but own or rent none.
As with all petty bourgeois classes, the immediate goal of the peasant is to secure their own claims on their land - and in every revolution in the 20th century, land reform was a burning question. But the peasantry can be won to the proletarian revolution through this very question - as occurred in the Russian Revolution with the slogan of land redistribution, which became fact.
Politically the peasantry has never been able to consistently be a revolutionary class; despite feeling quite a strong fervor when they are poor and hungry, they are physically separated in a way that makes effective coordination virtually impossible. They can be dragged in on one side or another, as history has shown, but if they're not getting something out of it they can sit on their hands. A good example of this happened after the pro-government forces prevailed during the Spanish civil war.
Physically the peasantry is a demographic minority in the world, and is no longer the decisive factor it once was. The truth is that the peasantry has been shedding members, who come to the massive cities of the third world and sit at the lowest levels of society, eking out a slum existence because small farming is not competitive with globalized agribusiness. In many countries with large farming populations, the peasantry has been overtaken by the agricultural proletariat, who have a much different class trajectory than traditional peasants. But understanding peasant questions is very crucial when trying to study 20th century revolutions.
Whether or not the rural petit-bourgeoisie in developing countries has been shedding its own numbers, much of it has been replaced by a certain petit-bourgeois demographic that, while urban in nature, shares many characteristics with the old peasantry.
This would not have been made possible without micro finance. In the cities, there are those petit-bourgeois elements under the heavy modern debt peonage (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20709.htm) of higher-interest loans of a secured and unsecured nature, and moreover have been financed / leveraged outside the traditional channels (big banks). Such debt peonage evokes the feudal debt peonage of the peasantry and also the condition of small tenant farmers (not to mention earlier periods where certain strong leaders outside clueless slave riots and revolts re. self-governance were the only ones who addressed debt relief). The indebted urban business risk is akin to the risk borne by sharecroppers, to say nothing of the role of interested but scarce vulture capitalists (oops, I meant "venture capitalists"). Moreover, most if not all of these petit-bourgeois elements either don't hire labour for profit or resort to under-the-table but irregular labour transactions.
When considering this, there are still many proletarian demographic minorities and the stigma of "Special Interests" tagged to them.
As with all petty bourgeois classes, the immediate goal of the peasant is to secure their own claims on their land - and in every revolution in the 20th century, land reform was a burning question. But the peasantry can be won to the proletarian revolution through this very question - as occurred in the Russian Revolution with the slogan of land redistribution, which became fact.
Politically the peasantry has never been able to consistently be a revolutionary class; despite feeling quite a strong fervor when they are poor and hungry, they are physically separated in a way that makes effective coordination virtually impossible. They can be dragged in on one side or another, as history has shown, but if they're not getting something out of it they can sit on their hands. A good example of this happened after the pro-government forces prevailed during the Spanish civil war.
Physically the peasantry is a demographic minority in the world, and is no longer the decisive factor it once was. The truth is that the peasantry has been shedding members, who come to the massive cities of the third world and sit at the lowest levels of society, eking out a slum existence because small farming is not competitive with globalized agribusiness. In many countries with large farming populations, the peasantry has been overtaken by the agricultural proletariat, who have a much different class trajectory than traditional peasants. But understanding peasant questions is very crucial when trying to study 20th century revolutions.
Whether or not the rural petit-bourgeoisie in developing countries has been shedding its own numbers, much of it has been replaced by a certain petit-bourgeois demographic that, while urban in nature, shares many characteristics with the old peasantry.
This would not have been made possible without micro finance. In the cities, there are those petit-bourgeois elements under the heavy modern debt peonage (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20709.htm) of higher-interest loans of a secured and unsecured nature, and moreover have been financed / leveraged outside the traditional channels (big banks). Such debt peonage evokes the feudal debt peonage of the peasantry and also the condition of small tenant farmers (not to mention earlier periods where certain strong leaders outside clueless slave riots and revolts re. self-governance were the only ones who addressed debt relief). The indebted urban business risk is akin to the risk borne by sharecroppers, to say nothing of the role of interested but scarce vulture capitalists (oops, I meant "venture capitalists"). Moreover, most if not all of these petit-bourgeois elements either don't hire labour for profit or resort to under-the-table but irregular labour transactions.
When considering this, there are still many proletarian demographic minorities and the stigma of "Special Interests" tagged to them.