Does the Western proletariat 'stand alone'?

[More Fire for the People]

In his letter to Lenin Herman Gorter laments:
“The workers in Western Europe stand all alone. Only a very slight portion of the lower middle class will help them. And these are economically insignificant. The workers will have to make the revolution all by themselves. Here is the great difference as compared to Russia.”

This is his conclusion after a long series of proofs that in the context of early twentieth century Western Europe the peasantry cannot be counted as an ally in the struggle against the bourgeoisie.

Does this hold true for communists in the ‘global North’?
Does the neo-colonial proletariat stand alone in its opposition to the bourgeoisie? Or can we count on other forces?

I would say that in the case of considering whether or not the peasantry constitute a revolutionary force in the neo-colonial countries I would first remark they do not exist. In nine out of ten cases those who work and till the land of farms do not own their farms but work as contracted laborers for a wage on land owned by large agribusinesses. I live in one of the most agrarian parts of America and still I rarely see or hear of someone who actually owns their land and sells their agrarian products on the market. Most persons who own land and sell their products are livestock, cattle, and horse raisers while chicken farmers tend to fall in the previously mentioned group of agricultural laborers. And these cattle ranchers count thoroughly in their attitude and outlook on life as card-carrying members of the petty-bourgeoisie or in some cases even the bourgeoisie.

That leaves one other class: the lumpenproletariat. These are your prostitutes, your pimps, swindlers, drug dealers, bootleggers, illegal gamblers, chavs, white trash, thugs, gangstas, mafia members, and so on. I have no clear cut view of these persons. Sometimes I consider them a revolutionary force, probably even more so than the proletariat, but also lacking in the class cohesion of the proletariat. Likewise pimps, mob bosses, and the like all occupy positions of power and represent a bourgeoisie of the black market. So if we exclude these guys, these lumpenbourgeoise, and think of the lumpenproletariat in terms of those that live impoverished lives in the world of illicit trade by selling their labor as street peddlers, prostitutes, smugglers, etc. or remain generally unemployed do they constitute a force of revolution and do they serve as a class ally of the proletariat?

[luxemburg89]

your prostitutes, your pimps, swindlers, drug dealers, bootleggers, illegal gamblers, chavs, white trash, thugs, gangstas, mafia members,

It's an interesting problem where to class them. Chavs, however, in my experience, and I'm not saying this is the case everywhere, have prestine-cleaned clothes and expensive jewellery - in fact the head chav in my area is the son of the richest guy in the city - so in my city then chavs are not members of the proletariat - somewhere else, say london for example, they might be. I mean i don't consider pimps prols by any means - they are, as you say, members of the black market bourgeoisie - but yeah i mean i can only be area-specific. Whatever these people are, they are the by-products of a bourgeois system.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 13, 2007 01:49 pm
Does this hold true for communists in the ‘global North’?
Does the neo-colonial proletariat stand alone in its opposition to the bourgeoisie? Or can we count on other forces?
"Neo-colonial" typically refers to Third World countries, not the advanced capitalist countries. Neocolonialism refers to rule of former colonies through puppet governments - independent in name alone.

On to the substance:

I would say that in the case of considering whether or not the peasantry constitute a revolutionary force in the neo-colonial countries I would first remark they do not exist. In nine out of ten cases those who work and till the land of farms do not own their farms but work as contracted laborers for a wage on land owned by large agribusinesses.

Bullshit! People keep repeating this but it's totally untrue.

Most farms, and even most agricultural production in the U.S., is done on "family farms". Some stats and comments I've posted before:

United States farm and farm-related employment, 2002
Farming:
Farm proprietors 2,188,957
Farm wage and salary workers 885,989
So there are about 2 and a half times more farmers than farmworkers. Consider the implications: most of those farmers cannot have even one permanent employee - they are more exploited than exploiters.

There are probably a small percentage of the farms with employing a large percentage of the wage-workers. But most of the total labor force in agriculture is not wage-workers.
thread where I originally posted this.

[url=http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65638]Another recent thread where I went into this. (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=53689&st=0&#entry1292132422)

Farmers are small in total numbers, it's true. But they're important economically and if you aim to go on eating after the revolution.

Additionally, there are other working and exploited parts of the population who are not wage-workers. Truck owner-operators, for example, who are very important economically, and often exploited even more than wage-workers. Right now the Teamsters are conducting an effort to organize the most immigrant truck owner-operators working out of ports around the U.S.

There are other self-employed types and whatnot if you think about it for a while, people who live by their labor but don't receive their income in the form of a wage. Street peddlers, who for some unexplained reason you put under lumpen, fall into this category.

As for other allies of the working class: students, sometimes. The oppressed nationalities - most of them are heavily proletarian but they can't be considered solely as part of the working class.

All of these are alliances that have to be made - by the working class supporting all the oppressed and exploited.


I live in one of the most agrarian parts of America and still I rarely see or hear of someone who actually owns their land and sells their agrarian products on the market. Most persons who own land and sell their products are livestock, cattle, and horse raisers while chicken farmers tend to fall in the previously mentioned group of agricultural laborers.

You don't say what area you're in but if all you have in the area is livestock and not crop raising, it probably isn't "one of the most agrarian parts of America."

As for the lumpen who live by preying on others, mostly this means preying on the working class. We're the easiest targets after all.

Lumpen are hated by workers, for good reason, and also they will do anything for money so that's one big reason for them to side with the ruling class when the chips are really down.

The Black Panthers made some effort to orient to lumpen, at least rhetorically, and it didn't work out real well for them.

Also, Gorter was an idiot generally.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Severian
There are probably a small percentage of the farms with employing a large percentage of the wage-workers.

Out of interest Severian, do you have any information relating to the overall output of these larger farms in comparison with the output of the smaller farms?
_ _ _ _ _

Also, I doubt these figures take into account undocumented workers -- any idea how they would affect the balance?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Here:

U.S. Farms: Numbers, Size, and Ownership (http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB12/EIB12c.pdf) (info on output and other numbers)

The means to end food scarcity are long since already here, since Kautsky's time (with the potential added bonus of surplus production for the ethanol BAND-AID solution to carbon emissions from cars).

[Severian]

Originally posted by Amusing [email protected] 13, 2007 09:33 pm
Also, I doubt these figures take into account undocumented workers -- any idea how they would affect the balance?
I'm sure the statistical bureaus do try to count them. That is one source of potential underestimate, but they're not totally ignored.

This government survey estimates that 37% of farmworkers "had no work authorization." (http://www.dol.gov/asp/programs/agworker/report/ch4.htm)

Apparently these government estimates do include seasonal and migrant labor; but the total may be how many people are employed during an average week....so it may be an underestimate relative to the total who are employed at some time of the year.

The USDA says (http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/FarmLabor/)

Hired farmworkers, a small part of U.S. wage and salary workers (less than 1 percent in 1999), make an important contribution to agricultural production, accounting for about 30 percent of all farmworkers. Hired farmworkers help provide labor during critical production periods. Some hired farmworkers migrate from production area to production area during several months of the year, others work locally only during harvesting season, and some work full time for a single employer. Although important to agriculture, hired farmworkers continue to be one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the United States, experiencing low wages, seasonal employment, weak attachment to the labor force, and limited participation in the nonfarm labor market.

That page also asserts: "the number of people employed as hired farmworkers decreased from 878,000 in 2000 to 745,000 in 2001, according to data from the 2001 Current Population Survey (CPS)." One of its links shows hired farmworkers decreasing in absolute numbers but increasing as a percentage of the workforce in agriculture.

Besides hired farmworkers their other category is "family farmworkers" i.e. family farmers working their own farms, not usually described as farmworkers.

Hammer's link says:

Ninety-eight percent of U.S. farms are family farms. The remaining 2
percent are nonfamily farms, which produce 14 percent of total agricultural
output (fig. 3). Two features of family farms stand out. First, small family
farms make up 91 percent of all U.S. farms. Second, large-scale family
farms account for 59 percent of all production.

"Large-scale family farms" probably roughly corresponds to small-time capitalist farming, one might even say....kulaks. People who work their own land, but also exploit wage-workers to a significant degree.

There are a lot of gray areas to labor relations in agriculture. For example, a family might work their own land most of the year....but hire a large number of farmworkers come harvest time. (If it's a fruit or vegetable crop. Grain harvests are mechanized.) This same family may ruthlessly underpay the farmworkers, and break any attempt at unionization...but in turn be severely exploited by the banks, and by the companies that supply them and buy their products.

One way farmworkers' unions have dealt with this kind of situation is to target the processors, like Mount Olive Pickle. The idea is to force them to sign a contract binding all their growers.

Wikipedia says:

In October 1998, FLOC announced a boycott of Mount Olive Pickle Company, the major pickle processor in the state. The union targeted the pickle processor because it correctly believed that growers would not agree to raise wages unless Mount Olive agreed to pay more for cucumbers.
....
The union's five-year boycott of Mount Olive Pickle was ultimately successful. A highlight of the organizing drive was a four-day, 70-mile march from Mount Olive, North Carolina, to Raleigh.[14] In September 2004, FLOC signed a collective bargaining agreement with Mount Olive and the growers. More than 6,000 of the state's 10,000 guest workers joined FLOC, boosting the union's membership to more than 23,000. More than 1,000 growers agreed to form the North Carolina Growers Association to act as the employers' collective bargaining agent. The Association covered a number of cash crops, such as Christmas trees and tobacco, in addition to cucumbers.[2][11][15]

But note that small family farms are 91% of the farms, even if a much smaller part of production. Most probably exploit little or no hired labor. They'll be essential allies in carrying revolution into the countryside and transforming the social relations of agricultural production.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Sorry, but I have a completely opposite opinion on that last part. Did you read the Walden Bello article (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4179) I mentioned in the Kautsky thread? Given what even Lenin said regarding the dangers of small businesses and small farming, I see only farm labourers as countryside allies. Furthermore, that report which I mentioned states average losses for small-family farms, hence further concentration in the countryside.

Like the report, I expect more farming lands under the control of industrial-farming MNCs (http://www.rtis.com/touchstone/oct2004/21.html) (link) in the future, and while the farm labourers will be allies, the small-farm owners AND kulaks will fall by the wayside.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Hopscotch Anthill+--> (Hopscotch Anthill)In his letter to Lenin Herman Gorter laments:
“The workers in Western Europe stand all alone. Only a very slight portion of the lower middle class will help them. And these are economically insignificant. The workers will have to make the revolution all by themselves. Here is the great difference as compared to Russia.”

This is his conclusion after a long series of proofs that in the context of early twentieth century Western Europe the peasantry cannot be counted as an ally in the struggle against the bourgeoisie. [/b]

Actually, I don't think that Gorter is lamenting this. He is just commenting on the situation.

Gorter is making two points about the peasentry. The first was to do with their relative numbers:
Originally posted by Gorter+--> (Gorter)Russia had an industrial proletariat of some seven or eight millions. The number of poor peasants, however, amounted to about 25 millions. ...Germany counted, before the war, from four to five million poor peasants (up to two hectares). ...And it is practically the same in the case of the four or five million poor peasants in France, and also for Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and two of the Scandinavian countries (3). Everywhere small and medium sized industry prevails. Arid even in Italy there is no absolute certainty; not to mention England, which counts only some one or two hundred thousand peasants.[/b]

To summerise:
[email protected]
These numbers show that in Western Europe there are comparatively few poor peasants; that, therefore, the auxiliary forces, if there were any at all, would be very few in numbers.

The second was to do with their class interests:
Gorter
Neither will they be attracted by the promise that under Communism they will be exempt from rent- paying and mortgage-rent. For with Communism they see the approach of civil war, the loss of markets, and general destruction.

Unless, therefore, there should come a crisis far more terrible than the present one in Germany, a crisis, indeed, far exceeding the horrors of any other crises that ever were before, the poor peasants in Western Europe will side with Capitalism, as long as it has any life heft (4).

It is quite clear that the Proletariat in Western Europe did stand alone. Today this is true of all of the industrial countries where the peasantry has been destroyed as a significant class. The discussion about America shows this:


United States farm and farm-related employment, 2002
Farming:
Farm proprietors 2,188,957
Farm wage and salary workers 885,989

From a population of 300,000,000.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Severian
Also, Gorter was an idiot generally.

Well, that is a bit of a profound analysis. Of course it suits the interests of the Trotskyists to portray the communist left as 'infantile', 'crazy', and cut off from the activity of the working class. One of the problems with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that in Germany, the most important country for the European revolution, at the point of their expulsion from the KPD, the left, which Gorter represented, were actually the majority of the party.

Also in the other country in Western Europe, where the threat of revolution was greatest, Italy, the left also had a majority in the party.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ That's why I even switched and became a one-time Stalinist, given their sectarianism (ironically, it is THEY who are more cut off than the "left-communists"). :)

As for the popularity of "Left Communism" in the advanced countries, that isn't surprising. Authoritarian trends aren't as necessary.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Thanks for doing the legwork there Severian. What you've found, brings me back to an earlier point of yours:


Originally posted by Severian
Farmers are small in total numbers, it's true. But they're important economically and if you aim to go on eating after the revolution.

I get here point here, and your other comments about orientation to other sole traders who provide services that would be necessary post-revolution. Truck owner-operators was your example; and taxi drivers and market traders are the examples that spring to my mind here.

And, essentially, I think you're right. To some extent, these layers of society will have to be won over to any potential revolution. Well, a large section of the layer in question.

But, there is of course a certain downside to this. Namely that these social groups will be less inclined towards a gift economy. Preferring instead to keep in place same form of capitalist trade -- most likely a fairly primitive system of bartering. And that, of course, will contribute to the slowing down of the overall revolutionary process.

Which means that we should search for an alternative, should one exist.

And, in this case, there does seem to be an alternative. The USDA source you posted, points out that "Hired farmworkers [account] for about 30 percent of all farmworkers." That's a large percentage.

Now, if we factor into that people who have only done farm work seasonally, then moved on to other jobs because of the lack of security, and workers who used to be small farm owners but were forced to join the labour market because they couldn't sustain themselves as farm owners, I think we have a lot of potential farmers.

More than that, though, we have a lot of potential farmers who will be, in all probability, less inclined towards bartering.

So I think by orientating ourselves towards these people, and not the small farm owners, we can create a more solid basis on which to build a post-revolutionary society -- and still be able to eat after that revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ For a moment, I thought you were siding with Severian against me.