Town and Country

[Red Flag Waver]

Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.


Why did Marx and Engels want to abolish distinctions between town and country? And how would such a thing be carried out practically?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Why did Marx and Engels want to abolish distinctions between town and country? And how would such a thing be carried out practically?Because of the way capitalism developed these areas and the rise of overpopulated cities to hold workers and underdeveloped countrysides where all the land was divided up and fenced in. I think a communist society would be one where space is used based on "communities" rather than now where the human environment is determined by land prices and values and divided up according to how to use space best for profit. "Town" and "Country" divisions exist because these places have different economic functions for capitalism.

I think this general concept should have a lot of currency today in regards to different sorts of environmental and spacial conditions. In a practical sense today, I think it would be different in different areas. So in India for example, maybe this would entail massive shifting of resources to help build infrastructure. This would allow production and so on to happen around populations rather than requiring populations to migrate to cities around the demands of capital. For urban areas around the world, communities could be restructured so that rather than massive slums or housing sprall for miles and then small central areas of production, production could be more diffuse and communities built in a more intergrated way so that people could have their own housing and access to services and work in convinient ways that don't require driving around or taking busses across the city.

Personally I'd like to see a lot of food production moved to population centers where it could be done in a more industrial setting. This could be done inside large buildings which would require no pesticides and less backbreaking labor (ag work would be more like a factory or warehouse job), they could filter urban water and air in the process - this is possible now, it would require a 10 year investment according to the popular science magazines I read (so aside from state-capitalists in China or something, it would be unlikely since land is still much cheaper). This would allow people to return huge swaths of agricultural land to unmanipulated ecosystems while reducing labor efforts in the long run as well as all the shipping and trucks now required to feed world populations.