If we lived in an agrarian society,

[Riveraxis]

Would the conditions for implementing communism be different?

We advocate proletariat control over the means of production (but really society as a whole) because production is the dominant force in society and the proletariat are the producers, correct? With that understanding it's only rational that the producers should have the most influence.

If this is correct, and we lived in an agrarian society rather than an industrial society, then wouldn't the farmers be the most deserving of this role, since they would be the dominant force in society? Can't deny that production is significantly less important if your chief concern is simply feeding yourselves.

Could that still be considered a communism, at least until this society has matured enough for production to become the dominant factor?

[La Guaneña]

The proletariat should rule society because the it is one of the main products of industrial society, and grows with it, instead of being decimated by the development of the productive forces

The proletariat also has no interest in defending private property, as it holds none. That is why the proletariat is the revolutionary class in capitalism, and is the only class who can lead the revolution that brings socialism.

That is the point where I guess that all marxists and most anarchists agree on, and a very important point indeed.

[Riveraxis]

Yes, absolutely. But in an agrarian society (not an industrial society) isn't that point pretty much mute?
My question was whether or not it would still be considered "communism" if farmers controlled their farms (basically) before production became the dominant factor in society.
It's completely theoretical.

[La Guaneña]

Yes, absolutely. But in an agrarian society (not an industrial society) isn't that point pretty much mute?
My question was whether or not it would still be considered "communism" if farmers controlled their farms (basically) before production became the dominant factor in society.
It's completely theoretical.

Oh, I see. I thought that the question was about agrarian parts of the current world, blame alcohol.

I guess that this depends from the conditions of your agrarian society, being it theoretical. What does the class structure look like?

[Blake's Baby]

Yes, absolutely. But in an agrarian society (not an industrial society) isn't that point pretty much mute?...

Do you mean 'moot' (hypothetical, as in abstract debating points at a meeting of trainee lawyers) or do you mean 'mute' (silent, without a voice)?


...
My question was whether or not it would still be considered "communism" if farmers controlled their farms (basically) before production became the dominant factor in society.
It's completely theoretical.

No, it would be the beginnings of capitalism. Except there's never been a time when 'production' wasn't the 'dominant factor'. Otherwise we'd all have died of starvation.

Farmers owning farms has nothing to do with communism. Agricultural workers expropriating their landlords might have something to do with communism if the agriculatural workers then farmed them collectively.

For historical discussions about collectivist agriculture in traditional societies I'd advise you take a look at the mir (and Marx's letter to Vera Zasulich at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm ), also the village-communes of India.

[Riveraxis]

Yes, I meant "moot".

I'm trying to think of a good example of what that class structure would look like.
Best I can think of is the Amish. I wouldn't say they have anything to do with communism either. Hah. But in Amish communities there isn't much trade with outsiders and no demand for anything "new". So there isn't really much surplus production. I wouldn't say production is the dominant force in their society. Their farms are the centerpiece of their society because, having not modernized, they're still kind of dependent on the agrarian lifestyle. On the other hand, they own family and community farms.
Granted, they're primitivists. That's just an example that works well because they ignore the industrialized world.


take a look at the mir (and Marx's letter to Vera Zasulich at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx.../zasulich1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm) ), also the village-communes of India.
Cool I'll take a look at that. Thanks!

[Mauve Osprey]

I believe communism could still exist, Mao's theories allowed for the peasants to be a revolutionary class. As long as a strong Revolutionary Party existed, it could lead the peasants in People's War and seize state power and develop a socialist state.

"We must have faith, first, that the peasant masses are ready to advance step by step along the road of socialism under the leadership of the Party, and second, that the Party is capable of leading the peasants along this road. These two points are the essence of the matter, the main current" -Mao Tse Tung

[Blake's Baby]

But they still 'produce'. They produce to eat. Every other class society has also produced to eat. It's only capitalism that produces so that people starve. People will still produce in socialist society, because people will still have to eat in socialist society. In an agrarian capitalist society, people will still produce. They'll have to produce more (because it's capitalist, they need to sell surpluses which means they have to produce them) and they'll have to eat as well (ie have basic level of work/production for themselves, something beyond which there is a surplus).

Thinking about a capitalist agrarian society, what strikes me as most likely is that some slightly-more successful farmers would start to dominate others, buy them out or lend them money at a rate of interest and quickly come to dominate the district. Luckily for them, many other people would probably be destitute/in servitude pretty quickly and could work as a rural proletariat for the new gentry ooops democratic entrepreneureal large farmer. So this local boss ooops prominent citizen would pretty soon have the wherewithal to hire and fire, drive people out of business, and collect his own local power-base.

Really doesn't sound like a great situation to me, the more I think of it.

[Riveraxis]

That's why I brought up the Amish, because they don't really do anything like that. Their farms are either used communally or owned by families. They sell their food, which is mostly their only outside trade. But when they trade, trades generally benefit the entire community.

I think Mauve brought up a good point. Behind this scenario was the question of whether or not anyone else could be a revolutionary class. That is, if the proletariat are clearly not the majority/dominant force in society. In industrialized societies I'd agree that they almost always are, but in older forms of society that might not be the case.

[Mauve Osprey]

That's why I brought up the Amish, because they don't really do anything like that. Their farms are either used communally or owned by families. They sell their food, which is mostly their only outside trade. But when they trade, trades generally benefit the entire community.

I think Mauve brought up a good point. Behind this scenario was the question of whether or not anyone else could be a revolutionary class. That is, if the proletariat are clearly not the majority/dominant force in society. In industrialized societies I'd agree that they almost always are, but in older forms of society that might not be the case.

Yes, you bring up a good point. It will be necessary for the Proletariat to unite themselves with the Peasants and all of the other classes who are exploited by the capitalist system. The revolution will be made by both peasants, proletariat, and others exploited under the capitalism, this is necessary for a socialist revolution to occur. The more Euro-Centric forms of Marxism will try to say that only the proletariat in industrialized countries are capable of bringing about socialism, however history has showed us that this is simply not true. Peasants are just as capable as Proletarians of bringing about socialism. Socialism was still able to develop in the USSR under Lenin and Stalin, and under Mao in China, where Mao pointed out that the Proletariat are not the only class who can bring about a succesful socialist revolution.

[Blake's Baby]

That's why I brought up the Amish, because they don't really do anything like that. Their farms are either used communally or owned by families. They sell their food, which is mostly their only outside trade. But when they trade, trades generally benefit the entire community...

Because they're prevented by their moral code. 'Love not the world, nor the things of the world. If a man loves the things of the world, love of the Father is not in him.' 1 John 2:15.

They own their land. They don't fleece each other. They could, theoretically, become entrepreneurs and try to drive others out, but they don't. It's them stopping them, not any external force.



...
I think Mauve brought up a good point. Behind this scenario was the question of whether or not anyone else could be a revolutionary class. That is, if the proletariat are clearly not the majority/dominant force in society. In industrialized societies I'd agree that they almost always are, but in older forms of society that might not be the case.

The proletariat embodies socialism. Why? Because it produces the vast majority of the social wealth, collectively, which is then expropriated. Social production, individual gain (by the capitalists). So it is in the interests of the proletariat to re-arrange society. The working class has both the power (ultimately it controls production) and the motive (its work primarily benefits others through private expropriation).

The peasantry embodies...? What? Marx didn't consider it a revolutionary class because it doesn't embody new relations of production. The peasant owns his land and either works it himself or has some (paid) helpers; he takes his production to market to sell it. His interests are in regulated markets (ie law and order) and a depressed rural workforce that he can hire for next-to-nothing when the time comes for harvest or whatever other time of year there may be a demand for labour. The class interest of the peasantry is in the most reactionary forms of capitalism.

[Krymz]

I want to be a peasant, in part because it's the only kind of work I ENJOY doing (creating and maintaining life!), but also because I don't want to just be a worker under a boss, doing his projects and his ideas and so on. So I have a more "hopeful" view of the peasant as a revolutionary actor.


The peasant owns his land and either works it himself or has some (paid) helpers; he takes his production to market to sell it.

But that is simply because of capitalist relationship. There is no reason those helpers can't be "comrades" (in the sense of no common property).


His interests are in regulated markets (ie law and order) and a depressed rural workforce that he can hire for next-to-nothing when the time comes for harvest or whatever other time of year there may be a demand for labour.

Is interest is in preserving and making the land better (i.e. more abundant, cleaner, more alive, etc), and distributing the wealth. What you quoted is how they operate in capitalism. They started as "survivors" with barely any excess to distribute, to being capitalist enterprises that have to compete on the world market against each other, and even other industries that are taking all the prime growing land (i.e. the whole Montréal region had the most fertile land, and we covered it with chicken houses (apartments), parking lots and shopping centers. We transformed the relation to the earth from a living entity we depend upon, to a disposable cash cow. We fucked up the land and nature, and we are on the front line of either fixing it or making it worst. We have our reactionary elements just like in the proletariat. Some will hold on the lies that the best method of distribution and calculation of resources lies in capitalism, because they don't know any better.


The class interest of the peasantry is in the most reactionary forms of capitalism.

I say the class interest is the same as the peasantry, or at least pretty close. Some of us want to have common ownership or the abolition of private property, some of us just want to go to Florida in the winter.

We want to be able to do common sense agriculture, because the market is just fucking with everything we do, from "jobs" to the very way we even "have" to cultivate.

[Ritzy Cat]

I'd imagine we'd see the uprising of some Maoist groups. To be honest though, to achieve communist in Marx's terms in the Manifesto, we would need a highly industrialized advanced nation. If the peasant class was class-conscious ans was being directly or indirectly affected by the intervention of the bourgeoisie, then they can very likely be revolutionary.

Regardless, most of the agricultural stuff has been replaced by machines. Nobody would have jobs to be pissed out about if we were a, "agragian" society (I'm thinking of America at this point)

[ckaihatsu]

Most people immediately think 'self-sufficiency' when they think of an agrarian-only society -- it's the idealist dream of 'dropping-out' of regular society in favor of providing one's own necessities with a land-subsistence way of life for oneself and one's family.

If this prolonged libertarian squirm happened -- for whatever unknown mysterious reason -- to be *right in front* of us, what we'd most likely see would be an *eternal stagnation* because, after some time of settling-in and neighborly inter-farm trading, no one would have any interest in doing any more for the sake of social material development ('innovation') -- everyone would always be satisfied by what they produce for themselves in any given workweek, according to the premise of this hypothetical scenario.

In the real-world, of course, there was / would-be the dynamism of primitive-accumulation, such as we saw with Western European imperial explorations in the 1500s, etc.

But in the classic agrarian dream, everyone would just have their own patch of acreage, would be content with kith and kin, would get along fine with neighbors and outsiders, and would live happily ever after -- no need for any large-scale implementations, or revolution.

[reb]

Capitalism was the solution to the agrarian problem historically, and communism is the solution to capitalism.