The "Peasantry"

[Tristana]

I'm confused as to exactly what the word "Peasantry" means. In certain contexts, I've seen it used synonymously with "pauper" or "poor person(s)". However, when Marx comments on the peasantry in his writings, it seems like he's using the term as describing an entirely distinct group of people with specific social interests.

What exactly does Marx mean when he talks about the "peasantry", how does it relate to his wider argument against capitalist social relations, and is this group of people relevant in today's analysis of the world?

[Aurora]

The peasantry are a class of smallholding farmers, the peasantry was the largest class in feudal society, the class which produced the agricultural products and exchanged them in the towns for handicrafts if they didn't do the handicraft themselves in their home. Peasants often didn't own the land they worked and rented it from landlords and paid for the use of other necessary land like forests.

In capitalism the peasant differs from the proletarian in that he still owns the tools of his labour this means the peasantry is part of the petite-bourgeoisie, but as capitalism develops it more and more undercuts peasant production and pushes the peasant from his land this first happened as enclosure of the land and today mostly happens through debt, for this reason the peasantry is a dying class and the peasant a future proletarian.

The peasantry as a class is stratified and at different times the labeling of peasants has been different, generally speaking i would say there are three strata of peasants, the small peasants(sometimes called semi-proletarians) who engage in subsistence farming and supplement their income by selling labour part-time, the middle peasants who work their land but don't sell their labour or hire labour and the big peasants(kulaks) who hire the labour of others.

The peasantry doesn't have any relevance in advanced countries where they have already been thrown into the ranks of the proletariat and the small plots of land grouped together into giant modern farms owned by capitalists and worked by proletarians.
In underdeveloped countries the peasantry and small holding still play a large role, in India for example over 50% of the workforce is engaged in agriculture and the average size of land plots is less than two hectares.

In such a situation it is necessary for the communist party to win the support of a large section of the peasantry, historically this was done through appealing to the small and middle peasants by supporting land reform particularly the turning over of the landed estates and kulak land to the peasants with the ultimate aim of getting the peasants organized in collectives on a voluntary basis and the development of large state farms.