Peasants: A distinct class?

[LOLseph Stalin]

This is probably rather basic, but it's something I was thinking about nonetheless. Could peasants be considered proletarian or bourgeoisie, or are they their own distinct class? I'm inclined to say the former since there has been instances of peasants selling their labour while others actually run their own farms and make money(the Kulaks come to mind). From my understanding, Maoists consider them to be a distinct class, although aligned with the proletariat, but I could be wrong here. If correct, I'm curious about the Maoist reasoning there.

[NoXiOuScRaSh]

I can only see it being heavily dependent on whether they are forced to support the capitalist regime in some form I mean If they are self sustaining and don't rely on the the government the live under in any way then they are not Proletarian but generally speaking if you are laboring for a currency that makes you a part of the working class.

[Per Levy]

I'm inclined to say the former since there has been instances of peasants selling their labour while others actually run their own farms and make money(the Kulaks come to mind).

lets be very clear here, a worker who works on a farm is not a peasant but a worker who sells their labour to a farmowner. also peasants mostly dont exist anymore, farmowners arnt peasants.

[LOLseph Stalin]

lets be very clear here, a worker who works on a farm is not a peasant but a worker who sells their labour to a farmowner. also peasants mostly dont exist anymore, farmowners arnt peasants.

They don't really exist in the first world, but in the third world they do. With that said, I think this is a valid thing to discuss.

[Per Levy]

They don't really exist in the first world, but in the third world they do. With that said, I think this is a valid thing to discuss.

peasants dont exist in the "third world" all that much either, most land in most countries isnt owned by small farmers but by big landowners who employ workers to work on the farm land. those workers arnt peasants. and even the small farmowners arnt peasants. and i dont really see landowners, small or big as allies, since they want to keep the land they own and a revolution would threaten that ownership.

[synthesis]

Agree with Per Levy; small farmowners today are petit-bourgeois. Agricultural workers are proletarian. To be a peasant or a serf, you have to be a part of the feudal mode of production, where the aristocracy owns the land that you work on and collects their tributes in exchange for "allowing" you to produce value from that land.

[tallguy]

peasants dont exist in the "third world" all that much either, most land in most countries isnt owned by small farmers but by big landowners who employ workers to work on the farm land. those workers arnt peasants. and even the small farmowners arnt peasants. and i dont really see landowners, small or big as allies, since they want to keep the land they own and a revolution would threaten that ownership.
What is or was a peasant but someone who has no control or ownership of the means of production but who, instead, must rely for their existence on working for those who do? The above is as true for someone who flips burgers in Macdonald's today as it was for a rural labourer many centuries back. Everything else is just details. In other words, there's those that have and there's those who have to work for those that have. The only variable being that some of those that have to work for those that have are at the sharp end of that relationship (proletariat) and and some are at the soft end (bourgeoisie). The one's at the soft end end will, all other things being equal, have a short-sighted, vested interest in maintaining the staus-quo on the basis of clinging onto nurse for fear of something worse. Either way, they are all still peasants when push comes to shove. Just that some of them don't want to admit it.

[Leftsolidarity]

I'd say you don't really find a whole lot of "peasants" in the world today but perhaps I'm ignorant of certain areas. While I hate to just drop quotes/links, I like how Trotsky explains it in The Transitional Program: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#wf


The Alliance of the Workers and Farmers

The brother-in-arms and counterpart of the worker in the country is the agricultural laborer. They are two parts of one and the same class. Their interests are inseparable. The industrial workers’ program of transitional demands, with changes here and there, is likewise the program of the agricultural proletariat.

The peasants (farmers) represent another class: they are the petty bourgeoisie of the village. The petty bourgeoisie is made up of various layers, from the semi-proletarian to the exploiter elements. In accordance with this, the political task of the industrial proletariat is to carry the class struggle into the country. Only thus will he be able to draw a dividing line between his allies and his enemies.

"Peasants" are a distinct class from the industrial proletariat but there are different layers to it and there are conflicting interests within it as a class.

[NoXiOuScRaSh]

"Peasants" are a distinct class from the industrial proletariat but there are different layers to it and there are conflicting interests within it as a class.

I never thought of it like that before I guess the farm owners could be seen as something of a petty bourgeois If you look at it like that sure and yes there are conflicting interests as the workers on the farm would be considered a separate agricultural Proletariat and the owners would be controlling there worker rights in a capitalist form but wouldn't there also be the possibility of say family ownership of the land in that case all of them having an equal share in the profits creating some form of independent communism within the land.(obviously this might well not be in the best interest of the Proletariat at large and could cause problems in the event of A Revolution but they could just as easily fall in line by opening themselves to the greater struggles of the Revolution.

[synthesis]

What is or was a peasant but someone who has no control or ownership of the means of production but who, instead, must rely for their existence on working for those who do? The above is as true for someone who flips burgers in Macdonald's today as it was for a rural labourer many centuries back. Everything else is just details. In other words, there's those that have and there's those who have to work for those that have. The only variable being that some of those that have to work for those that have are at the sharp end of that relationship (proletariat) and and some are at the soft end (bourgeoisie). The one's at the soft end end will, all other things being equal, have a short-sighted, vested interest in maintaining the staus-quo on the basis of clinging onto nurse for fear of something worse. Either way, they are all still peasants when push comes to shove. Just that some of them don't want to admit it.

Wow, major Marxism fail. Ever heard of "modes of production"? Proletarians are the working class of the capitalist mode of production and earn wages; peasants are the working class of the feudal mode of production and pay tribute to the aristocrats who own the land they live on.

And it's not just "those who have" and "those who work for those who have." The petite bourgeoisie is a vital component of all modern class analysis. The degree of ownership of the means of production is crucial to all Marxist political frameworks.

[Leftsolidarity]

I never thought of it like that before I guess the farm owners could be seen as something of a petty bourgeois If you look at it like that sure and yes there are conflicting interests as the workers on the farm would be considered a separate agricultural Proletariat and the owners would be controlling there worker rights in a capitalist form but wouldn't there also be the possibility of say family ownership of the land in that case all of them having an equal share in the profits creating some form of independent communism within the land.(obviously this might well not be in the best interest of the Proletariat at large and could cause problems in the event of A Revolution but they could just as easily fall in line by opening themselves to the greater struggles of the Revolution.

I wouldn't call it "independent communism" but I don't see why a family couldn't own/share a plot between themselves. They'd still be the petty-bourgeoisie of the country but just like the petty-bourgeoisie of the city they can either align themselves with the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. They don't have a line of action themselves but swing to which class is stronger/militant/closer to their economic interests. Later in that work I quoted by Trotsky he talks about it in more depth.

[bropasaran]

Wow, major Marxism fail. Ever heard of "modes of production"? Proletarians are the working class of the capitalist mode of production and earn wages; peasants are the working class of the feudal mode of production and pahy tribute to the aristocrats who own the land they live on.
Actually those are the serfs.


And it's not just "those who have" and "those who work for those who have." The petite bourgeoisie is a vital component of all modern class analysis.
*marxist class analysis. Which is different from the (libertarian) socialist one, which is based on the labor theory of property/ possession, not on Marx' arbitrary, contradictory and erroneus theories of capitalist economy and society.

If they don't exploit (which by extension includes oppression) anyone- peasants are part of the working class, same with artisans, other self-employed people and coop workers. Those who don't exploit anyone are workers (whether or not they own any means of production), those who do are the rulers (whether or not they own any means of production).

[Sea]

At first I read the thread titles a "Parents: A distinct class?".

Well, at least revleft isn't that bad, yet.

[synthesis]

Actually those are the serfs.

Marx used both terms to refer to the working class of the feudal mode of production. I find it simpler to use the term "peasants," since that is the most common and recognized term for the concept, while referring to Trotsky's definition of "peasant" as the "rural petit-bourgeoisie." The crucial distinction is whether or not they own the land.


*marxist class analysis. Which is different from the (libertarian) socialist one, which is based on the labor theory of property/ possession, not on Marx' arbitrary, contradictory and erroneus theories of capitalist economy and society.

If they don't exploit (which by extension includes oppression) anyone- peasants are part of the working class, same with artisans, other self-employed people and coop workers. Those who don't exploit anyone are workers (whether or not they own any means of production), those who do are the rulers (whether or not they own any means of production).

Sounds like liberal bullshit to me, but I guess I'd need to read more about your re-imagining of an entire school of thought. How do you exploit someone without owning the means of production? You seem to display a great deal of terminological confusion here. (Not about the peasant/serf dichotomy, though, which I admit is open for discussion. It just seems pedantic to insist on "serf" as opposed to "peasant," but I suppose there's a larger point to be made.)

[bropasaran]

It just seems pedantic to insist on "serf" as opposed to "peasant,"
Well, a serf is just a type of peasant, unless we want to make a technical term "peasant" and give it a definition to differentiate it from the colloquial term "peasant".


How do you exploit someone without owning the means of production?
Note firstly that even the means of productiom that one owns can be used to exploit people without making them wage-laborers, and that can be done by renting those means of production to then, for example, someone renting tools to someone else. To theoretize a little, there could exist a situation where a capitalist owns a factory which he then rents to a group of workers, who then use the factory in their self-managed firm. There is no wage labor, but the workers are still exploited.

Having that in mind it should start to become clear how one can exploit without owning any means of production, namely, by owning anything else and using it in order to acquire income on the basis of someone else's labor, which one can do by renting it, the most obvious examples are renting of land and housing, but it can be anything that a legal system recognizes as property, e.g. renting money, rights to intellectual property or whatever.

And the third way is by using the mentioned extension of exploitation- oppression, that is- by establishing relations of hierarchy with other people as one's subordinates, which then (without any need of money or property) establishes the possibility for the superior to exploit labor of other, e.g. husband in a patriarchal marriage, who can boss the wife around and have her do this or that, other examples would be a priestly hierarchy of a church, technocracts of a political party, etc, in general- any organization where there are positions of authority over other people.

[synthesis]

Note firstly that even the means of productiom that one owns can be used to exploit people without making them wage-laborers, and that can be done by renting those means of production to then, for example, someone renting tools to someone else. To theoretize a little, there could exist a situation where a capitalist owns a factory which he then rents to a group of workers, who then use the factory in their self-managed firm. There is no wage labor, but the workers are still exploited.

If they are self-managed and there is no wage-labor, then they'd be petit-bourgeois. It doesn't matter if they're renting the property or not.


Having that in mind it should start to become clear how one can exploit without owning any means of production, namely, by owning anything else and using it in order to acquire income on the basis of someone else's labor, which one can do by renting it, the most obvious examples are renting of land and housing, but it can be anything that a legal system recognizes as property, e.g. renting money, rights to intellectual property or whatever.

You're saying that because the means of production can be rented out, then the relationship to the means of production aren't a good metric for determining class relations? Without even getting into the particulars of that theory, it seems like a pretty trivial distinction. Just keep in mind that you're not the first person to try to reinvent the wheel here.


And the third way is by using the mentioned extension of exploitation- oppression, that is- by establishing relations of hierarchy with other people as one's subordinates, which then (without any need of money or property) establishes the possibility for the superior to exploit labor of other, e.g. husband in a patriarchal marriage, who can boss the wife around and have her do this or that, other examples would be a priestly hierarchy of a church, technocracts of a political party, etc, in general- any organization where there are positions of authority over other people.

There is a lot of Marxist material on the nature of the exploitation of women's labor in marriage, the role of governmental bureaucracy, the hierarchy of the clergy (e.g., the pope is bourgeois and Protestant ministers are generally petit-bourgeois) and the managerial class. It seems like your argument is that because you haven't personally read any analyses of these factors from a Marxist perspective, then Marxism is an inadequate framework for understanding them. I'm not sure how these classifications are any less arbitrary than those you're attempting to challenge.

[bropasaran]

You're saying that because the means of production can be rented out, then the relationship to the means of production aren't a good metric for determining class relations?
I'm saying that exploitation (of labor) happens in different ways, wage-labor is just one.


Without even getting into the particulars of that theory, it seems like a pretty trivial distinction. Just keep in mind that you're not the first person to try to reinvent the wheel here.
Reinvent? What I'm talking about is the original theory of exploitation put forward by the socialist movement. Not considering the precursors to it, socialism had it's theory of exploitation back in 1825, clearly formulated by Thomas Hodgskin, elaborated on additionally by himself and a few other English writers in the 1830s, and fully developed and crystallized by Proudhon in 1840 and 1846. Marx started to dabble in this theory in 1847 and didn't have his theory formulated until the 1860s, and it stayed contradictory (as he himself admitted it to be) until the end of his life, with Engels redefining some details after Marx' death to try and do away with the contradiction, but the theory remains what it is- erroneous.


There is a lot of Marxist material on the nature of the exploitation of women's labor in marriage, the role of governmental bureaucracy, the hierarchy of the clergy (e.g., the pope is bourgeois and Protestant ministers are generally petit-bourgeois) and the managerial class. It seems like your argument is that because you haven't personally read any analyses of these factors from a Marxist perspective
Please, do point me in the direction of those analyses that explain the mentioned things on the basis of wage-labor and ownership of the means of production.

[synthesis]

I'm saying that exploitation (of labor) happens in different ways, wage-labor is just one.

Yes, this doesn't contradict Marxist class analysis and is in fact a central component of it. Proletarians, chattel slaves and peasants - okay, serfs are all exploited in different ways in different modes of production. The former is exploited by wage labor and serfs are exploited by paying for tenancy on land owned by the aristocracy, i.e., the ruling class of the feudal mode of production.


Please, do point me in the direction of those analyses that explain the mentioned things on the basis of wage-labor and ownership of the means of production.

What would you like to see specifically? Name one of those that's particularly eating at you and I'll happily do your work for you. If you're impatient, there is of course always Google.

But why do you ask for analyses "on the basis of wage-labor"? Again, it seems like you're challenging Marxist class analysis based on a highly incomplete understanding of its scope.

[bropasaran]

What would you like to see specifically? Name one of those that's particularly eating at you and I'll happily do your work for you.
E.g. party technocracy. Or whatever, you choose.


But why do you ask for analyses "on the basis of wage-labor"? Again, it seems like you're challenging Marxist class analysis based on a highly incomplete understanding of its scope.
Can you give some refence to Marx' words about that wide scope you're talking about?

[synthesis]

E.g. party technocracy. Or whatever, you choose.

Sure, if it's up to me, I'll pick the most obvious one.


the superior to exploit labor of other, e.g. husband in a patriarchal marriage, who can boss the wife around and have her do this or that,


On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.


Can you give some refence to Marx' words about that wide scope you're talking about?

A reference where Marx shows that class analysis isn't just limited to wage labor? Is that what you're asking me for?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Peasants do exist today, and no they are not all smallholders. Many farm state-owned or community-owned land in places like Central America, parts of Mexico, India and so on.

[Dodo]

In the Marxist sense of simplified production relations, they are a working class, that is a group which creates value.

But peasants are not proleterian. They can be smallholders(capitalist) or tenants of a large-land holders. Common in Africa, East Asia and L.America.
The other option is being a rural proleteriat like in L.America which makes them non-peasant at that stage.

[tallguy]

In the Marxist sense of simplified production relations, they are a working class, that is a group which creates value.

But peasants are not proleterian. They can be smallholders(capitalist) or tenants of a large-land holders. Common in Africa, East Asia and L.America.
The other option is being a rural proleteriat like in L.America which makes them non-peasant at that stage.
If they have to rent the land and if the land can be taken away from them then they are proles. But, then, I consider all people who do not own the means of production but who have to, instead, work either directly or indirectly for those that do as proles. The bourgeoisie are merely proles at the softer end of that relationship who have either been bought off and/or are suffering from false consciousness.

Or, to put it another way, I guess I am arguing that at one extreme are absolute proletariat and at the other extreme are absolute owners and controllers of the means of production. In between those two extremes are varying shades of proletariat depending on how far up the food chain you are and from which direction you are looking.

[robbo203]

peasants dont exist in the "third world" all that much either, most land in most countries isnt owned by small farmers but by big landowners who employ workers to work on the farm land. those workers arnt peasants. and even the small farmowners arnt peasants. and i dont really see landowners, small or big as allies, since they want to keep the land they own and a revolution would threaten that ownership.

Peasant small holders still make up the great majority of the rural population in Third World countries. In Southeast Asia, for example the average farm size is 1.8 ha. with 80% of the farmers depending solely on their own/family labour. It is true that the pattern of land ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated in fewer hands but it is also the true that productivity per hectare is significantly higher in the case of small farms than large farms (productivity per direct agrilutural labourer is a different matter though). This is why you can still have a relatively sizeable peasant population even if the percentage of land owned by smallholders is smallish

[Dodo]

If they have to rent the land and if the land can be taken away from them then they are proles. But, then, I consider all people who do not own the means of production but who have to, instead, work either directly or indirectly for those that do as proles. The bourgeoisie are merely proles at the softer end of that relationship who have either been bought off and/or are suffering from false consciousness.

Or, to put it another way, I guess I am arguing that at one extreme are absolute proletariat and at the other extreme are absolute owners and controllers of the means of production. In between those two extremes are varying shades of proletariat depending on how far up the food chain you are and from which direction you are looking.

I would not disagree here. The tenancy system is pretty disputable as it depends on the existing relations and creates that inbetweenness you mention.
Tenancy under feudal relations for instance would not count for proleteriat.
Today it depends on the instituional framework. It can indeed be considered proleterian if the tenant struggles to get the land seasonally or something.

[Slavic]

I was under the assumption that the only peasants today are subsistence farmers; the other farmers being smallholders (petite-bourgeoisie) and farm hands (proletariat).

[bropasaran]

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain.
Marx has all kinds of confusions and contradictions in his discussion of what capital is (and what exploitation is), with the conclusion (without solving the contradictions) being that capital comes into being only trough use (of means of production) to extract surplus-value, and that surplus-value comes into being only trough alienation of labor, that is- the treatment of labor as a commodity (exploitation being identified as the surplus-labor in which the surplus-value produced), as explaind by Engels in 1877, that theory being described as the "epoch-making achievement of Marx’s work". Marx does seem to imply in '67 that exploitation can be based not only on means of production but also on means of substinence (which can then mean a house or money per se, and thus justify this talk about exploitation of women) but in '77 the term means of substinance is used as meaning labor, so means of substinance for the laborer is the labor for which he gets payed, and means of substinence of the employer is the surplus-labor of the laborer.

The mentioned epoch-making achievment of Marx negates all notions that Marx himself toyed with- of exploitation happening in circulation (which I accept as possible), in the family (which I accept as possible, too), and similar cases.

Note that the contradiction is present in the Manifesto itself, with Marx saying the above quoted sentence, and yet also identifying capital as "that kind of property which exploits wage-labour".

[synthesis]

Marx has all kinds of confusions and contradictions in his discussion of what capital is (and what exploitation is), with the conclusion (without solving the contradictions) being that capital comes into being only trough use (of means of production) to extract surplus-value, and that surplus-value comes into being only trough alienation of labor, that is- the treatment of labor as a commodity (exploitation being identified as the surplus-labor in which the surplus-value produced), as explaind by Engels in 1877, that theory being described as the "epoch-making achievement of Marx’s work". Marx does seem to imply in '67 that exploitation can be based not only on means of production but also on means of substinence (which can then mean a house or money per se, and thus justify this talk about exploitation of women) but in '77 the term means of substinance is used as meaning labor, so means of substinance for the laborer is the labor for which he gets payed, and means of substinence of the employer is the surplus-labor of the laborer.

The mentioned epoch-making achievment of Marx negates all notions that Marx himself toyed with- of exploitation happening in circulation (which I accept as possible), in the family (which I accept as possible, too), and similar cases.

Note that the contradiction is present in the Manifesto itself, with Marx saying the above quoted sentence, and yet also identifying capital as "that kind of property which exploits wage-labour".

Could you give me a tl;dr version of this hypothesis, along with a concise explanation of why you think it's relevant? I can't really tell what your ultimate conclusion is here.

[bropasaran]

Could you give me a tl;dr version of this hypothesis, along with a concise explanation of why you think it's relevant? I can't really tell what your ultimate conclusion is here.
My conclusion here sets itself in the Manifesto itself- where Marx talks about exploitation in the family, and it's basis in capital, yet identifies capital as "that kind of property which exploits wage-labour" which identifies capital with means of production (used for wage-labor) and which is contradictory with the notion that the family is based on capital and that there is exploitation in the family, because the husband and wife are not employer and employee, and there is no wage-labor there.

It's not a hypothesis, it's just reading Marx and not looking at his work in a way that a pious Christian looks at the Bible.

Engels explains in Anti-Duhring:


Whence comes this surplus-value? It cannot come either from the buyer buyin (...)

The solution of this problem was the most epoch-making achievement of Marx’s work. (...)

This solution is as follows: The increase in the value of money that is to be converted into capital cannot take place in the money itself, nor can it originate in the purchase, as here this money does no more than realise the price of the commodity, and this price, inasmuch as we took as our premise an exchange of equivalents, is not different from its value. For the same reason, the increase in value cannot originate in the sale of the commodity. The change must, therefore, take place in the commodity bought; not however in its value, as it is bought and sold at its value, but in its use-value as such, that is, the change of value must originate in the consumption of the commodity. “In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find ... in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power.”

Marx in Capital has confusions about whether exploitation can happen in circulation or not (and thus must capital be means of production or can it also be some means of subsistence) and he seems to hold both notions, or that he doesn't know, and he himself admits that it contradictory to hold both such notions. Here Engels sets the case without any confusion- exploitation happens in production by existence of wage-labor, not in circulation. To support his clearly set position, a few lines under that, Engels quotes Marx from the Capital itself:


creation of capital requires that one essential prerequisite be fulfilled: “For the conversion of his money into capital the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer

Which is in line with the mentioned place in the Manifesto, where they connected capital with wage-labor, but as I said- all that is in contradiction with the notion that there can be exploitation in the family, or any other place except production where there is wage-labor, including circulation.

In is precisely because of this that Kautsky in 1887 and Engels in 1894 (re)interpreted the Capital (not only Vol 1 but also the Volume 3 which he published then) and the terms of commodity and money as non-capitalist ("pre-capitalist") notions, thereby introducing the term of "simple commodity production" instead of "merchant capitalism", replacment that was accepted by all marxist thinkers. This position does have a problem because it clasifies as non-capitalist things that are capitalistic (namely various types of rent).

There are people, such as Michael Heinrich (there's his Introduction in the three volumes of Capital in Libcom.org library) Christopher J. Arthur (his essay Myth of simple commodity production) and others, who are (re)interpreting Marx' Capital literally, rejecting "simple commodity production" and trying to bring back the notion of "merchant capitalism". That seems a pretty popular position today, although I suspect that it's not because of theoretical work of such writters, but because most marxists today simply do look at Marx' work as some kind of Bible, and interpret it literally and unquestioningly; it is most likely that most marxist are totally unaware of the situation that virtually the most prominent Marxist thinkers- Kautsky, Engels, Lenin, Bukharin, Luxemburg, all held the the opposite view. But anyway, this position also has it's problem, it clasifies as capitalistic things that are not capitalist, which Marx himself done in the Vol 1 of Capital by conflating M-C-M' with M-M', which is nonsensical because ther exists the relation which is literally M-M', namely rent of money, that is- usury, and note that this position advocates a return to a literal understanding of Marx' work which he himself called contradictory.

All this has bearing on the view of classes- who's "bourgeois" and who's not, and is therefore also connected to irrationalities that appear with the notion of "petite-bourgeois" with some defining it so as to encompass only (some) employers, some as not encompassing them at all, some as encompassing both employers and non-employers.

The situation is ironic, because all this confusion arose solely because Marx rejected the basis of socialist thought, and the solution is simple- reject marxism.

The basis of socialist thought that I mention is the labor theory of property/ possession, which was explained by the Hodgskin and Proudhon, and none of these mentioned confusions exist there. In production workers can be exploited by alienation of labor (wage-labor in capitalism) or by rent, and in circulation people can be exploited by rent (of anything recognized as property in the legal system where the circulation takes place); and in regards to economic classes that means that if you're exploiting someone you're a capitalist, if you're not- you're a worker. Simple as that.

[synthesis]

words

So basically what you're trying to say is that you don't think there's anything to class analysis besides the ruling class and the working class?

[bropasaran]

So basically what you're trying to say is that you don't think there's anything to class analysis besides the ruling class and the working class?
I'm talking here just about the notion of exploitation in the economic sphere, and the erroneousness of Marxism in addressing it.

Besides that, I think that, as I've suggested earlier, the notion of oppression needs to be connected to the notion of exploitation, and that would then mean a somewhat complex view of societal (class) stratification, including not only class division based on alienation of labor or economical exploitation, but also e.g. in the political sphere viewing any group of people that constitutes a government as separated from the working people and necessarily being a different strata/ class from it. Yes, all that can be encompassed by saying that there's only the ruling and the working classes, of course, having in mind that both have subclasses and subtypes.

[Slavic]

With regards to "On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain."

I think you are taking that statement to directly. The family unit is not a means of production and thus able to exploit. In that statement he is talking about the "foundation" of the present family. The foundation of the family coincides with the foundation of the current social relation, capitalism. Capital is what drives the social relationship.

The family unit (Mother Father Children) is formed by capitalism; the father works as a wage-laborer and the mother raises future wage-laborers. It is exploited because the entire concept behind the capitalist family is the production of more wage-laborers.

EDIT: On second thought, I reread that statement and noticed it said "bourgeois family". I am actually at a lost as to how to interpret the direction in which that statement was directed. Does he mean how does the typical bourgeois family operate?

[Hieremias]

Due to its erosion over the last couple decades I find it is rather hard to talk about the peasantry as a distinct class anymore as at least to me it is evident that in the current global climate many agrarian households especially in the “third world” are merely unable to survive economically on the income farming brings alone, thusly they combine farming with industrialized wage labor (at home or abroad). While, there has been no large-scale collapse of traditional peasant labor as Lenin predicted, I find it suffice to say that “semi-proletarianization” has occurred due to the peasants being forced to provide cheap industrialized labor to the capitalists in order to maintain imaginary control over their farm.

[synthesis]

I'm talking here just about the notion of exploitation in the economic sphere, and the erroneousness of Marxism in addressing it.

Besides that, I think that, as I've suggested earlier, the notion of oppression needs to be connected to the notion of exploitation, and that would then mean a somewhat complex view of societal (class) stratification, including not only class division based on alienation of labor or economical exploitation, but also e.g. in the political sphere viewing any group of people that constitutes a government as separated from the working people and necessarily being a different strata/ class from it. Yes, all that can be encompassed by saying that there's only the ruling and the working classes, of course, having in mind that both have subclasses and subtypes.

But what about those who are neither "exploited" nor "exploited," or they are "exploiters" but must also produce value themselves? (By this I mean the self-employed and the small business owners and such.) You don't believe that historically they have had class interests of their own?

I'm starting to think your opposition to Marxism is basically just an extended plea on behalf of the petite-bourgeoisie, but I'm not open-and-shut on that.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Agree with Per Levy; small farmowners today are petit-bourgeois. Agricultural workers are proletarian. To be a peasant or a serf, you have to be a part of the feudal mode of production, where the aristocracy owns the land that you work on and collects their tributes in exchange for "allowing" you to produce value from that land.

The word "peasant" can still be used these days, just in a very loose sense. They simply refer to the Third World class demographic of small tenant farmers and sharecroppers (small landowners living day by day on the basis of sharecropping arrangements), the rural petit-bourgeoisie there.

[robbo203]

Marx has all kinds of confusions and contradictions in his discussion of what capital is (and what exploitation is), with the conclusion (without solving the contradictions) being that capital comes into being only trough use (of means of production) to extract surplus-value, and that surplus-value comes into being only trough alienation of labor, that is- the treatment of labor as a commodity (exploitation being identified as the surplus-labor in which the surplus-value produced), as explaind by Engels in 1877, that theory being described as the "epoch-making achievement of Marx’s work". Marx does seem to imply in '67 that exploitation can be based not only on means of production but also on means of substinence (which can then mean a house or money per se, and thus justify this talk about exploitation of women) but in '77 the term means of substinance is used as meaning labor, so means of substinance for the laborer is the labor for which he gets payed, and means of substinence of the employer is the surplus-labor of the laborer.

The mentioned epoch-making achievment of Marx negates all notions that Marx himself toyed with- of exploitation happening in circulation (which I accept as possible), in the family (which I accept as possible, too), and similar cases.

Note that the contradiction is present in the Manifesto itself, with Marx saying the above quoted sentence, and yet also identifying capital as "that kind of property which exploits wage-labour".

Actually, Marx and Engels did refer to something called secondary exploitation arising in circulation i.e. workers being swindlled by the shopkeeper or landlord. Here for example is something by Engels in his work The Housing Question:

The distribution of this surplus value, produced by the working class and taken from it without payment, among the non-working classes proceeds amid extremely edifying squabblings and mutual swindling. In so far as this distribution takes place by means of buying and selling, one of its chief methods is the cheating of the buyer by the seller, and in retail trade, particularly in the big towns, this has become an absolute condition of existence for the sellers. When, however, the worker is cheated by his grocer or his baker, either in regard to the price or the quality of the commodity, this does not happen to him in his specific capacity as a worker. On the contrary, as soon as a certain average level of cheating has become the social rule in any place, it must in the long run be leveled out by a corresponding increase in wages. The worker appears before the small shopkeeper as a buyer, that is, as the owner of money or credit, and hence not at all in his capacity as a worker, that is, as a seller of labour power. The cheating may hit him, and the poorer class as a whole, harder than it hits the richer social classes, but it is not an evil which hits him exclusively or is peculiar to his class. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/ch01.htm)


As for your claim that Marx thought capital "comes into being only trough use (of means of production) to extract surplus-value, and that surplus-value comes into being only trough alienation of labor," well no - this is not quite true. Marx talked of merchant capital long predating the rise of capitalism. As he put it in Capital , the "origin of capital implies money as its starting point, and therefore it implies a derivation from circulation; capital appears as the product of circulation


What makes capitalism capitalism however is the fact that means of production and in particular labour power (variable capital) take the form of capital

[bropasaran]

But what about those who are neither "exploited" nor "exploited," or they are "exploiters" but must also produce value themselves? (By this I mean the self-employed and the small business owners and such.) You don't believe that historically they have had class interests of their own?
Those who don't exploit and are not themselves exploited are workers- because they don't exploit anyone, and they have no reason to have opposite interests from the workers who are exploited, except if they the exploited workers accept an ideology that not only wants to expropriate exploiters, but also workers who are not exploited. Meaning, the non-wage-working workers have interests that are against wage-worker in proportion of wage-workers' acceptance of marxism. Just another reason among many to reject marxism.


I'm starting to think your opposition to Marxism is basically just an extended plea on behalf of the petite-bourgeoisie, but I'm not open-and-shut on that.
Sure, you can invert everything and look at it that way. As I said, socialism with it's clear notions of exploitation and economic stratification of society into classes existed before Marx and his ideas about "bourgeoise", "petite-bourgeoise" and "proletariat".


As for your claim that Marx thought capital "comes into being only trough use (of means of production) to extract surplus-value, and that surplus-value comes into being only trough alienation of labor," well no - this is not quite true. Marx talked of merchant capital long predating the rise of capitalism.
I clearly talked about (re)interpretation of Marx by Kautsky and Engels in message of #29 of this topic, and the problems that both positions have- both the literal words of Marx, and their (re)interpretation by Marxist thinkers.

[synthesis]

Those who don't exploit and are not themselves exploited are workers- because they don't exploit anyone, and they have no reason to have opposite interests from the workers who are exploited, except if they the exploited workers accept an ideology that not only wants to expropriate exploiters, but also workers who are not exploited.

OK, this basically justifies, historically, the NSDAP's original base of petit-bourgeois Germans, their primary demographic after the elimination of the NSDAP's left-wing. The German communists wanted to expropriate them as well as the haute bourgeoisie, so by this logic they were justified in turning to an ideology that promised to eradicate those expropriators.

I don't see this ending well, but I'd also have to say that you don't provide a compelling alternative to the Marxist definition of "working class." We think that to be working class is to be exploited. What's your definition.


Meaning, the non-wage-working workers have interests that are against wage-worker in proportion of wage-workers' acceptance of marxism. Just another reason among many to reject marxism.

Yes, if you're petit-bourgeois.

[bropasaran]

OK, this basically justifies, historically, the NSDAPArgumentum ad Hitlerum, really?


so by this logic they were justifiedYes, ideology that says that all hierarchical institutions should be abolished and replaced by libertarian ones justifies nazism, that's really logical.


I don't see this ending well, but I'd also have to say that you don't provide a compelling alternative to the Marxist definition of "working class." We think that to be working class is to be exploited. What's your definition.Not to exploit (or oppress) anyone. Personally, I would conflate the two, by viewing oppression as a type of exploitation and say that the working class are those people who don't exploit anyone (by wage-labor, by rent of anything, or by being in an established hierarchical position over other people), and that those who do exploit someone are the master class, with both classes having their subtypes and subclasses.


Yes, if you're petit-bourgeois.We have two propositions:

One- marxism says that wage-workers are revolutionary and that "petit-bourgeois" are reactionary.

Two- (libertarian) socialism says that workers, wage or not, are revolutionary, and that technocrats are reactionary, even though they work for a wage.

What are the facts?

One- the people of Ukraine and Spain, who were mostly "petit-bourgeois", were the only people ever to abolish capitalists and all other masters over the working people, to effectively abolish class distinction in their midst, establish a model of a classless society, a basis and spark to start the world revolution.

Two- in every instance where the wage-worker fetishising movement gained the upper hand, it established a tyrannical class society where the minority of the wage-workers (technocrats) oppressed and exploited the rest of the wage-workers and the rest of the populace, and they brutally persecuted any movement that strives for the emancipation of the working people, which included destroying and participating in destruction of the above-mentioned only two sparks of the revolution ever to take place.

In light of these facts, only a narrow-minded person who doctrinally clings to marxist dogma prevented by who knows what complexes to question his established views can fail to see that only the libertarian socialist position is the correct one.

[synthesis]

Argumentum ad Hitlerum, really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

You said, in translation, that "the [petite-bourgeoisie] have no reason to have opposite interests from [proletarians] except if [the proletarians] accept an ideology that not only wants to expropriate [the bourgeoisie], but also [the petite-bourgeoisie]." But the petite-bourgeoisie also holds private property, which communism seeks to abolish.

This was literally the exact reason the German middle classes supported the NSDAP's repression of "Bolshevism." Furthermore, the vast majority of the post-Long Knives NSDAP elite was petit-bourgeois in origin. Under your odd logic, "the workers who are not exploited" would have been justified in supporting the NSDAP in order to protect themselves from "expropriation by the workers who are exploited."


Two- in every instance where the wage-worker fetishising movement gained the upper hand, it established a tyrannical class society where the minority of the wage-workers (technocrats) oppressed and exploited the rest of the wage-workers and the rest of the populace, and they brutally persecuted any movement that strives for the emancipation of the working people, which included destroying and participating in destruction of the above-mentioned only two sparks of the revolution ever to take place.

Before I get into your argument that Marxism "fetishizes the proletariat," what is your definition of a "technocrat"? This seems important to establish.


One- the people of Ukraine and Spain, who were mostly "petit-bourgeois", were the only people ever to abolish capitalists and all other masters over the working people, to effectively abolish class distinction in their midst, establish a model of a classless society, a basis and spark to start the world revolution.

You are just... I don't even know where to start here. I'm hoping someone else will tag in on this one.

[bropasaran]

This was literally the exact reason the German middle classes supported the NSDAP's repression of "Bolshevism."
Which is assossiation fallacy.


Under your odd logic, "the workers who are not exploited" would have been justified in supporting the NSDAP in order to protect themselves from "expropriation by the workers who are exploited."Non-sequitur and beyond it. I really can't grasp what are you thinking about in this conversation, and why are saying things that you are, because you're being totally irrational here. Like if I were to say that a person has the interest to protect himself if someone wants to rob him (and implicitly- is right to do so if he has legitimate hold of possessions that are going to be robbed) and you're the type of guy to respond with- aha, you're saying that when someone wants to rob the rich to feed the hungry the rich are justified to capture the robber and torture him in most brutal way possible. Your response was literally on that level packed with illogical assuptions and imputations. It's even worse because, to continue with the comparison allegory- I explicitly said that I'm against torture of any kind.

So, please stop with the reduction ad hitlerum. Not only am I with the entierty of my being against anything looks like nazism, I have explicitly given examples of "petite-bourgoise" organization that I have in mind- the Ukranian and Spanish anarchist revolutions.


Before I get into your argument that Marxism "fetishizes the proletariat," what is your definition of a "technocrat"?What libertarian socialists who accept the tripartite class analysis call "the middle class", "the coordinator class", or "techno-managerial class", it encompasses bureacrats and managers "of human resources"- wage-workers who are not at the bottom of the hierarchy, they are above the people who actually do the work of the organization, but are not the owners/ top rulers.


You are just... I don't even know where to start here.You should start here:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append4.html

and here:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append3.html

[synthesis]

Which is assossiation fallacy.

I believe you meant to say "guilt by association," which might be the connotation but not the intention. It's not a "fallacy" because I don't think you're wrong in saying that the petite-bourgeoisie's interests diverge from the proletariat when the latter seeks to expropriate the former; I just think you should rethink your membership on this forum because you're trying to encourage sympathy with the petite-bourgeoisie, by trying to demolish the proletarian center of socialism.

I'm using the historical example of the basis of the NSDAP's elite in the fearful German petite-bourgeoisie to demonstrate the logical conclusion of your arguments, such as saying that proletarians with state power are more of a "class enemy" than those who possess capital.

I'm also not going to read the entirety of some anonymous FAQ, that doesn't appear to support anything you're saying here except from simply a common differentiation between anarchism and Marxism - which appears to be more historical than theoretical in their case, and vague and unsubstantiated in yours - in order to disprove this hilarious absurdity that Spanish and Ukrainian anarchism were rooted in the petite-bourgeoisie. (Also - now the petite-bourgeoisie exists? What happened to the petite-bourgeoisie simply being a pejorative term for "workers who are not exploited"?)

It would help if you could at least throw a couple statistics or historical non-falsehoods my way.

[Chris]

Overally, I think the peasantry is distinct from the urban proletariat and petty-bourgeoisie, but rather than being one class, it is several. The landless agricultural worker, the debt-ridden small-farmer, the wealthy industrial farmer and the large-scale landlord can't really be compared.

Personally, I am a farmer (small-farmer, with eight hectares, of which half is arable, to my name). In the first world, the ranks of the peasantry is shrinking (hundreds of farms going bankrupt ever day, eighty-nine in the US alone), although we become neither proletarian, lumpenproletarian nor petty-bourgeois. The average small-farmer, being uneducated, takes unskilled labour in the city (in my rural area, most men work in factories in the city) and as such would be proletarian, no? But we also retain ownership of means of production (the land and in some cases machinery), but are unable to use it due to debt or unprofitability.

But what of the class-interests of the peasantry, including the small-farmers? Even counting those who are still 'in business', so to speak, the interests of even the first world peasantry and the proletariat more or less align, at least moreso than the interests of the peasantry and the bourgeoisie. The primary cause of peasants in the first world going bankrupt, is large scale near-monopolized retail, which enforces harsh quotas (and is the only viable customer in the modern age for the majority of peasants), often causing peasants to go bankrupt. The other primary cause is the combined taxation and subsidization practices of the state: in most first world countries, this results in small-farmers being taxed relatively heavily and granted little in terms of subsidies, while large farmers are virtually untaxed by comparison and granted extensive subsidies. This is how control of, and to a lesser degree ownership of, land have become concentrated to an ever-decreasing clique of large-scale landowners in the first world.

Agricultural workers, meanwhile, could either be considered distinct from the proletariat, or one of the segments of the proletariat that is most exploited. However, sometimes agricultural workers are not waged labourers as such (their wages not being set, and determined as a percentage of revenue or profit, or in the third world primarily receive a portion of the produce). Agricultural workers also suffer from the work being seasonal (which is the nature of most agriculture), low-wages being the rule and often-times (in the first and second world) being migrant labour working for a lot cheaper than any domestic workers would.

However, not all agricultural workers (or, per most counts, the majority) are of this extremely exploited and primarily foreign labour pool. A significant portion of agricultural workers are decently educated technicians, working year-round, primarily for larger land-owners. As such, one can consider the gradual concentration of land into fewer hands to be a "urbanization" of the peasantry, in that economic relations becomes more and more similar to urban capitalism, and becomes less and less feudal in nature (quite a few rural areas, even in the first world, retain feudal economic features).

So, I would say the peasantry are several distinct classes (some being virtually identical to the bourgeoisie and proletariat, none really fitting into the lumpenproletariat mold, and some being similar, but distinct to, the petty-bourgeoisie). However, increasingly (especially in the first world) agriculture is becoming more and more similar to urban capitalism in terms of the nature of exploitation, rather than the often feudal-ish remnants that exist even today.

[bropasaran]

I just think you should rethink your membership on this forum because you're trying to encourage sympathy with the petite-bourgeoisie, by trying to demolish the proletarian center of socialism.
Socialism in it's basis is worker control over production, and it thus has as it's center the "petitet-bourgeoisie" at least as much as much the proletariat, being that a workers who own their means of production but don't exploit or oppress anyone are part of the working class, and the wage-workers who are technocracts are part of the ruling class, not the working class.

It is the authoriarians who should rethink their calling themselves revolutionary leftists. What all leftists should do is rethink marxism in itself, being that it is an ideology that confuses the workers with masters (oppressors and exploiters), and accept the libertarian socialist tradition.

As I said, you should start by reading the basic explanations that are on the two links I provided.