American Rural Class

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

I hope this is in the right section. I searched the archives for this but found nothing. My question is for the dialectitians out there: where does the American (and in fact all 'First World') Rural Class fit in? They seem to neither be members of the working class nor of the capitalist class. They are definitely not the same peasantry that existed in most societies where past Marxist revolutions have occurred, yet like the peasantry they seem to occupy a particular societal niche that is hard to pinpoint. I guess thats my question, its pretty open-ended: What's up with the American rural class? Would they support a revolution? Are they doomed to irrelevance? Why are they so politically conservative? etc. ANY comments/debate/argumentation about this general subject would be appreciated as it is a very grey-area in my political thought.

[Severian]

The "rural class"? There are a number of different classes in the countryside, as in the city.

Even farmers are a spectrum of classes, not a single class.

As is true of peasants. Traditionally, Marxists have subdivided the peasantry:
1. Rich peasants, aka kulaks, the rural petty-bourgeoisie, small-scale exploiters. Hire wage-labor or rent out land.
2. Middle peasants - may hire some wage-labor but are also exploited by banks, landlords, etc.
3. Poor peasants - hire little or no wage-labor, may even work as wage-laborers off their own farms, are exploited as debtors or sometimes tenants.

The boundaries of these categories are fuzzy.

"Family farmers" in the U.S. include people meeting all of those descriptions. In some other imperialist countries, including France, farmers are still referred to as peasants sometimes.

Obviously numbers and conditions of life are different. As conditions of life for wage-workers are different now than during the Industrial Revolution.

But the sources of income and forms of exploitation are fundamentally similar.

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

I apologize for using such bad phrasing when referring to "the rural class". As you understood I was referring to rural-dwellers in general and not an economic class. Sorry for the confusion.

[Rockfan]

Do you live on a farm BattleOfTheCowshed? I do, well my perents farm. If you are talking about farmers in the U.S. then I'm no expert as to why there so conservitive but I guess it's just the whole think about being from the south, where most farms in the U.S. seem to be, most people there are quite conservitive from what I know. I live in New Zealand and the guy I milk for is quite conservitive, quite racist and homophobic. The conservitiveness just comes from the fact that if theres a conservitive government in, he makes more money. I guess he was just bourght up to be racist and homophobic.

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Actually I don't live on a farm (although I've always thought it would be kind of cool to do so). Farms in the US are pretty widely dispersed, there are probably more in the Midwest than in the South in fact. I guess you are right about rural individuals often just being brought up in a conservative environment and thus appropriating it. It's rather sad thoug, if only most poor farmers realized their true economic interests lay in the proletariat revolution!

[Scars]

In 'first world' countries there are almost no 'lower' or 'middle' farmers, almost all farmers own their own land and if they are working for someone else they are generally young and in the process of saving money for their own farm. In addition to this things have advanced a lot since the 19th century, which is what most western Communists base their analysis of 'the rural question' on. Because of machinery most farms do not employ many people, in fact most farms are operated by a single family- they employ no one. People who are employed are often employed to carry out specific tasks that are too big or skilled for the farmer to do themselves- shearing gangs, for instance- so the relationship is different.

The fact is, there are very few farmers in the west. New Zealand's economy is based on the rural sector- meat, milk and wool are and always have been the staples of our economy, but for over 100 years around 80% of our population has lived in urban areas. Why? Because there isn't the need for as many farmers or rural workers anymore. You don't need 20 people to harvest wheat, you have a combine harvester.

However, many of these people are in severe debt to the bank. For instance a person I know has just borrowed $1.5 Million (US) in order to buy a dairy farm. Now he'll spend the next 40 odd years paying off the interest and then when he retires he'll sell the farm and hopefully he'll be left debt free. In addition to this farmers can be crippled due to changes in demand, the exchange rate etc.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Have you forgotten immigrant farm workers?

[Scars]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 01:24 PM
Have you forgotten immigrant farm workers?
They don't really exist in New Zealand. Very few immigrants go to rural areas in New Zealand. The same goes for Europe, overall.

[rioters bloc]

Originally posted by Scars+Nov 29 2005, 12:38 AM--> (Scars @ Nov 29 2005, 12:38 AM)
[email protected] 28 2005, 01:24 PM
Have you forgotten immigrant farm workers?
They don't really exist in New Zealand. Very few immigrants go to rural areas in New Zealand. The same goes for Europe, overall. [/b]
ditto in aus.

they&#39;re usually shuffled into factories <_<

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Originally posted by Scars+Nov 28 2005, 01:38 PM--> (Scars @ Nov 28 2005, 01:38 PM)
[email protected] 28 2005, 01:24 PM
Have you forgotten immigrant farm workers?
They don&#39;t really exist in New Zealand. Very few immigrants go to rural areas in New Zealand. The same goes for Europe, overall. [/b]
Right, but the topic is about the American situation.

There are a huge number of immigrant farm workers in the US. Your analysis seemed to exclude the existance of them in "the west".

[Scars]

Originally posted by CompaneroDeLibertad+Nov 28 2005, 02:15 PM--> (CompaneroDeLibertad @ Nov 28 2005, 02:15 PM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 01:38 PM

[email protected] 28 2005, 01:24 PM
Have you forgotten immigrant farm workers?
They don&#39;t really exist in New Zealand. Very few immigrants go to rural areas in New Zealand. The same goes for Europe, overall.
Right, but the topic is about the American situation.

There are a huge number of immigrant farm workers in the US. Your analysis seemed to exclude the existance of them in "the west". [/b]
"(and in fact all &#39;First World&#39;) "

The overwhelming majority of immigrants, both legal and illegal, live and work in urban areas because that&#39;s where there are jobs to be found. The one exception would be fruit picking, but fruit picking is seasonal.

Ironically enough, the American rural sector is relatively underdeveloped largely due to massive protectionism on the part of the American government (also incredibly ironic).

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 08:24 AM
The overwhelming majority of immigrants, both legal and illegal, live and work in urban areas because that&#39;s where there are jobs to be found. The one exception would be fruit picking, but fruit picking is seasonal.
Two Million Farmworkers Labor Without Rights. (http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/press_releases/archive2004/art6999.html)

About 70% are foreign-born (http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/agworker/report/major.htm)

It was an oversight that I didn&#39;t discuss farmworkers above. They are an important part of U.S. agriculture...and directly part of our class. Unlike working farmers, who are exploited potential allies of our class.


Ironically enough, the American rural sector is relatively underdeveloped largely due to massive protectionism on the part of the American government (also incredibly ironic).

What? Relative to where? The U.S. is the world&#39;s leading agricultural exporter. If anything, protectionist policies and export subsidies help sustain agricultural production in the U.S.

Most left groups ignore farmers and pay little attention to farmworkers because agriculture is supposedly unimportant in an "industrialized country." But in fact agriculture has tremendous economic importance in the U.S....and is also necessary to, you know, being able to eat.

It&#39;s also sometimes asserted that most agriculture is "corporate farms"...this is simple ignorance. A majority of agricultural production in this country is on "family farms."

But then, most left groups pay little attention to industrial workers either....the one party paying serious attention to the farm question in the U.S., the Socialist Workers Party, began doing so after its "turn to industry". It&#39;s a class question: if you&#39;re part of the working class, you&#39;ll meet some of the many farmers to work off-farm jobs to sustain themselves...and begin thinking about the farm question as well.

If you&#39;re serious about revolution in any country, you can&#39;t ignore agriculture...the worker-farmer alliance is essential if you aim to go on eating after the revolution.

[Scars]

<<What? Relative to where? The U.S. is the world&#39;s leading agricultural exporter. If anything, protectionist policies and export subsidies help sustain agricultural production in the U.S.>>

No, subsidies and protectionism mean that there is no need to adopt more efficent methods of production because your goods will be able to be sold, almost regardless of quality (most American meat is exceedingly poor, for instance). Why spend &#036;5000 buying a new combine harvester when you could go on holiday?

<<Most left groups ignore farmers and pay little attention to farmworkers because agriculture is supposedly unimportant in an "industrialized country." But in fact agriculture has tremendous economic importance in the U.S....and is also necessary to, you know, being able to eat.>>

Also because, lets just be honest for a minute, most leftists are from urban areas and people from urban areas generally are incredibly ignorant when it comes to anything rural. As Malenkov said "You can&#39;t eat steel".

<<It&#39;s also sometimes asserted that most agriculture is "corporate farms"...this is simple ignorance. A majority of agricultural production in this country is on "family farms.">>

It&#39;s like that in most countries. There are only a handful of corporate owned farms in New Zealand, most of them are Japanese with beef herds.

<<But then, most left groups pay little attention to industrial workers either....the one party paying serious attention to the farm question in the U.S., the Socialist Workers Party, began doing so after its "turn to industry". It&#39;s a class question: if you&#39;re part of the working class, you&#39;ll meet some of the many farmers to work off-farm jobs to sustain themselves...and begin thinking about the farm question as well.>>

But that&#39;s because in the US most leftists are solid middle class.

<<If you&#39;re serious about revolution in any country, you can&#39;t ignore agriculture...the worker-farmer alliance is essential if you aim to go on eating after the revolution.>>

As I have been saying for a very long time. Just because Marx called them parasites doesn&#39;t mean that they are. Marx said plenty of things that were stupid and/or wrong in his time.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 11:36 PM
<<What? Relative to where? The U.S. is the world&#39;s leading agricultural exporter. If anything, protectionist policies and export subsidies help sustain agricultural production in the U.S.>>

No, subsidies and protectionism mean that there is no need to adopt more efficent methods of production because your goods will be able to be sold, almost regardless of quality (most American meat is exceedingly poor, for instance). Why spend &#036;5000 buying a new combine harvester when you could go on holiday?
Again, relative to where? Agricultural productivity per hour of labor is higher in the U.S. than anywhere else. Partly due to to the soil and the size of the farms...partly due to the machinery, chemicals, and seeds used.


Just because Marx called them parasites doesn&#39;t mean that they are.

Where did Marx say that?

[Scars]

<<Again, relative to where? Agricultural productivity per hour of labor is higher in the U.S. than anywhere else. Partly due to to the soil and the size of the farms...partly due to the machinery, chemicals, and seeds used.>>

I&#39;m fairly sure New Zealand has a higher productivity. Plus much agriculture in America is of poor quality. For example, outside the USA marbled meat is known as bad meat. In addition you must question statistics, as a rule of thumb it&#39;s best to doubt any statistics that come out of the USA. They&#39;re notorious for lying and acting illegally (as in, breaking international free trade argeements largely set up by them) when it comes to any sort of primary production.

<<Where did Marx say that?>>

Can&#39;t remember exactly, but he calls peasants parasites. Possible in Das Kapital. It&#39;s one of the standard quotes used by more orthodox types when denouncing Maoists ("Peasants can&#39;t be revolutionary, Marx called them parasites&#33;").

Primary production is vital to any economy and virtually all primary production is carried out in rural areas. Only small scale primary production can be carried out in large urban areas hinterland, mainly because urban dwellers are intolerant of much primary production- for instance mining, which can be quite noisy. If anyone is parasitic it&#39;s those who work in secondard and tertiary production.

The main problem is most urbanites (i.e. 98% of the Western left) are incredibly ignorant when it comes to anything even vaguely rural.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2005, 10:08 PM
<<Again, relative to where? Agricultural productivity per hour of labor is higher in the U.S. than anywhere else. Partly due to to the soil and the size of the farms...partly due to the machinery, chemicals, and seeds used.>>

I&#39;m fairly sure New Zealand has a higher productivity. Plus much agriculture in America is of poor quality. For example, outside the USA marbled meat is known as bad meat. In addition you must question statistics, as a rule of thumb it&#39;s best to doubt any statistics that come out of the USA. They&#39;re notorious for lying and acting illegally (as in, breaking international free trade argeements largely set up by them) when it comes to any sort of primary production.
Heh. Sounds pretty NZ nationalist.

It&#39;s possible, for all I know, that NZ has higher productivity in its specialties like meat and dairy. Does it still have 10 times as many sheep as people?

But U.S. agriculture is certainly not "underdeveloped" in relation to most of the world.


<<Where did Marx say that?>>

Can&#39;t remember exactly, but he calls peasants parasites.

I can&#39;t find anything in a google search of the online Marx archive. In the absence of a specific cite, I have to doubt he ever said such a thing - certainly it&#39;s contradictory to everything else he ever wrote&#33;

[DisIllusion]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2005, 05:42 PM
Do you live on a farm BattleOfTheCowshed? I do, well my perents farm. If you are talking about farmers in the U.S. then I&#39;m no expert as to why there so conservitive but I guess it&#39;s just the whole think about being from the south, where most farms in the U.S. seem to be, most people there are quite conservitive from what I know. I live in New Zealand and the guy I milk for is quite conservitive, quite racist and homophobic. The conservitiveness just comes from the fact that if theres a conservitive government in, he makes more money. I guess he was just bourght up to be racist and homophobic.
Farmers in the U.S and others who live in the Midwest or the South are typically conservative or Republican mainly for two reasons.

1) The Republican Party has looked out for them in the past, (i.e. Burning surplus crops that could possibly have gone to feed other people in the world, just so that the farmers could keep the price of their crops high)

2) Most farmers are fond of good ol&#39; "American Family Values" which basically means they are fearful or maybe even hate gay people, immigrants (like myself), and all sorts of conservative ideals.

Hope this sort of cleared that up.

[RedJacobin]

here&#39;s a more general question:

anyone know of any essays/pamphlets/books that give a basic class analysis of contemporary US society?

ex: what percentage of the pop is working class, what percentage is middle class, urban v. rural distribution, etc.

[Scars]

<<Heh. Sounds pretty NZ nationalist.>>

No, I&#39;m not a Nationalist. However such instances do illustrate the utter hypocricy of the USA. They epouse pure Capitalism and force free trade and the stripping away of subsities and protectionism (especially regarding agriculture) on the rest of the world via the UN, WTO etc all while doing the exact things that they denounce&#33; In addition to this, New Zealand even managed to win a case at the WTO against the US regarding meat exports to the USA based on laws written by the USA&#33;

As for their statistics, the US are notorious and hated by pretty much all agricultural countries and the US aren&#39;t renown for their honesty in any situation.

<<It&#39;s possible, for all I know, that NZ has higher productivity in its specialties like meat and dairy. Does it still have 10 times as many sheep as people?>>

Now it&#39;s at about 4:1, so there are about 12 million sheep. We could have more, and we use to have more, but there isn&#39;t anyone to sell them to in order for it to be profitable.


Why are rural people conservative and anti-communist? About 3 reasons:

1) Social change generally starts in urban areas and slowly spreads to the rest of the country. This has always been the case, probably because political power is generally concentrated in urban areas.

2) Rural folks are generally very connected to the land- it is THEIR land and they don&#39;t take well to people coming and telling them what they should an dshouldn&#39;t be doing- especially if they are urbanites. Urbanites see peopel in rural areas to be stupid, inbred bumpkins, Farmers see Urbanites are snobbish, materialistic, lazy whiners.

3) Most leftists are incredibly ignorant when it comes to anything rural and thus leftists, of almost any strain, tend to alienate farmers incredibly quickly.

[Rockfan]

Originally posted by DisIllusion+Dec 2 2005, 03:16 PM--> (DisIllusion @ Dec 2 2005, 03:16 PM)
[email protected] 27 2005, 05:42 PM
Do you live on a farm BattleOfTheCowshed? I do, well my perents farm. If you are talking about farmers in the U.S. then I&#39;m no expert as to why there so conservitive but I guess it&#39;s just the whole think about being from the south, where most farms in the U.S. seem to be, most people there are quite conservitive from what I know. I live in New Zealand and the guy I milk for is quite conservitive, quite racist and homophobic. The conservitiveness just comes from the fact that if theres a conservitive government in, he makes more money. I guess he was just bourght up to be racist and homophobic.
Farmers in the U.S and others who live in the Midwest or the South are typically conservative or Republican mainly for two reasons.

1) The Republican Party has looked out for them in the past, (i.e. Burning surplus crops that could possibly have gone to feed other people in the world, just so that the farmers could keep the price of their crops high)

2) Most farmers are fond of good ol&#39; "American Family Values" which basically means they are fearful or maybe even hate gay people, immigrants (like myself), and all sorts of conservative ideals.

Hope this sort of cleared that up. [/b]
Ok yeah I didn&#39;t know about the first one, thanks.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2005, 09:16 PM
1) The Republican Party has looked out for them in the past, (i.e. Burning surplus crops that could possibly have gone to feed other people in the world, just so that the farmers could keep the price of their crops high)
Actually that began as a New Deal program under FDR. So did price supports and most other forms of farm subsidy. They&#39;ve been supported by both Democratic and Republican politicians...those from farm states, anyway....ever since. There are differences in farm policy, but neither party can be easily identified as more "pro-farmer".

But there&#39;s a more fundamental problem: all kinds of people have been giving all kinds of explanations for why farmers are reactionary....without asking if that&#39;s always the case, or to what extent, or which farmers. It&#39;s like asking "why do you beat your wife?"

Lemme illustrate this with the different organizations seeking to speak for farmers in the U.S.

The Farm Bureau (http://www.fb.org/views/agenda/2005/ag12-2005.html) speaks for the better-off, capitalist farmers. Small-time exploiters. That page I linked hails the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) as a victory for farmers, calls for repeal of the "death tax" (a conservative buzzword for the estate tax on very large inheritances). Elsewhere on the site they call for the repeal of the capital gains tax.

Pretty much what y&#39;all expect, right?

The National Farmers Union (http://www.nfu.org/newsroom_news_release.cfm?id=1371) has more members who are middle or working farmers. On that page: "The House’s passage of nearly &#036;4 billion in cuts to programs that benefit rural America is the wrong move at the wrong time.....Policymakers are placing a disproportionate share of the burden on rural America while proposing tax cuts for the nation&#39;s wealthy.” The NFU also opposes CAFTA, in terms similar to those used by trade-union officials. On a number of issues, a stance directly opposed to the Farm Bureau&#39;s.

The National Family Farm Coalition (http://www.nffc.net/issues/index.html) is also big on opposing CAFTA[/url], again on a similar basis to labor officials...and most leftists, for that matter. I don&#39;t agree on the protectionist stance...but I wanted to point out the similarity to the current situation of the unions....and the direct opposition to the Farm Bureau.

That term "family farm" is pretty vague and a fair number of capitalist farmers probably consider themselves family farmers.

Then there&#39;s the various organizations of Black farmers. (http://bfaa-us.org/index.html) Though small in numbers, their fight against USDA discrimination was considerable political significance, in part because of the chord it&#39;s struck in the Black community. They&#39;ve also set an example for all farmers with their determination and by being closer to a class-struggle approach.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2005, 11:16 PM


1) The Republican Party has looked out for them in the past, (i.e. Burning surplus crops that could possibly have gone to feed other people in the world, just so that the farmers could keep the price of their crops high)


when was this? you do know that it was the "solid south" until the late 60&#39;s right? they voted for the democratic party.