Rural USA

[Psy]

I have a question, why is rural USA so supportive of the establishment?

It is clear the US farmers follows similar logic of peasants, looking to be part of the petit-bourgeoisie where they can actually own their land and during the long boom US farmers for most part achieved this, but now the bourgeoisie is accumulating the means of agriculture production turning American farmers into proletariat.

While industrial workers currently are apathetic, they are usually somewhat skeptic about the capitalist system. Yet farmers that are being drivin off their land looks up to the ruling class.

[More Fire for the People]

There is no civil society in rural America outside faith-base institutions, and even then it is lacking.

[Sam_b]

In the past the US government has given large amounts of subsidies to farmers, notoriously the 100% subsidy on growing cotton which has undercut the profits of many nations in sub-Saharan Africa. I also believe sugar beet is also heavily subsidised.

This might have something to do with it.

[Morpheus]

Farmers make up an insignificant percentage of Americans today. What is called "rural" are really suburbanites who commute elsewhere.

[Apollodorus]

I am with comrade Sam. I have heard legends of the fantastic subsidies American farmers get. We do not get subsidised at all.

[Os Cangaceiros]

This premise is simply untrue. There is a LOT of resentment towards the United States government in many rural and farming communities. Westerners in particular have had a historical dislike for the government, whom they think sold them up the river in a sordid alliance with the railroad industry (which isn't far from the truth, actually). I suppose you could argue that this sort of hate isn't directed at capitalism, but at the state, though. But as far as the "establishment" goes, yeah, people are pissed.

There are a number of books about this, but one that I particularly remember is called Bad Land, by Jonathan Raban. A good part of it concerns rural discontent.

I know where I live in Alaska, which is a rural area, there is a lot of distrust for the establishment. There aren't any farmers up here, though.

[More Fire for the People]

Farmers make up an insignificant percentage of Americans today. What is called "rural" are really suburbanites who commute elsewhere.
Big fucking lol. 'suburban' implies (a) home ownership and (b) 'middle class' income. Perhaps the real word you're looking for is slumburb, because rural towns have all the characteristics of an inner-city ghetto but within a different context.

[The Douche]

There are lots of rural movements opposed to the state, but they oppose it from a (radically) reactionary standpoint. Groups like the Posse Comitatus, Montanna Freemen, the tax resistor movement, and the militia movement. They're answer, as opposed to a revolutionary one, is a paleo-conservative/back to the constitution one.

I wouldn't say its a mass movement but it holds some support within the rural US.

[RadioRaheem84]

the midwest used to have a really motivated democratic socialist/populist working class that would put up huge strikes against big business. Now though rural America is either Suburban Republican territory where the middle class tend to agree with anything a conservative candidate says. The working class consists of paranoid John birch society militia men that favor a reactionary libertarian/paleo-con agenda. Sometimes they can be anti-corporate but its mostly because these corporation are building technology to "spy on us" with the help of the federal government. They tend to believe that big business and big government are creating a "socialist" America.

[chegitz guevara]

Peasants and farmers historically have looked upon the rest of society as a parasite. In contrast to their own lives, they see city live as crime-ridden, corrupt, and filled with immorality. It isn't merely America. During the Cambodian revolution of 1975-1979, the offense most likely to get you killed was having sex outside marriage (this excludes the offense of simply being the wrong person). The Vendee was a counter-revolution against the French Revolution, largely peasant based. The Tambov Revolt against the Bolsheviks is another. Farming is a way of life that creates very conservative values.

[Psy]

Peasants and farmers historically have looked upon the rest of society as a parasite. In contrast to their own lives, they see city live as crime-ridden, corrupt, and filled with immorality. It isn't merely America. During the Cambodian revolution of 1975-1979, the offense most likely to get you killed was having sex outside marriage (this excludes the offense of simply being the wrong person). The Vendee was a counter-revolution against the French Revolution, largely peasant based. The Tambov Revolt against the Bolsheviks is another. Farming is a way of life that creates very conservative values.

Then why during the Ottawa Trek in 1935 when unemployed workers (from work camps) in the west rode on freight trains to demand jobs from Ottawa (other then the work camps), were said unemployed industrial workers fed on the way by farmers? You suggesting if Canada had a revolution in 1935 it would have had the same problem with farmers that Russia had with peasants?

[chegitz guevara]

In the context of a social upheaval led by the working class, other classes and individuals of those classes can be swept in into orbit around the proletarian movement. We saw this in Russia, and to an extent in China, if we can say that the Chinese peasant was oriented towards the Soviet worker. We saw it in Vietnam as well. In the absence of proletarian gravity, the rural farmers and peasantry will continue on their normal trajectory.

[which doctor]

rural usa =/= farmers/peasantry

[More Fire for the People]

rural usa =/= farmers/peasantry
Yeah seriously, wtf. Most are local service workers and working commuters.

[Psy]

Yeah seriously, wtf. Most are local service workers and working commuters.
When I say rural American I'm talking the dinky towns that are so rural that were when railway workers descend on them to do track work, that the railway workers have very little to spend their wages on. There are states in the USA that are mostly farm land so it would be a long commute and the really rural towns doesn't allow for mass consumption due to a limited number of commodites available locally.

[chegitz guevara]

rural usa =/= farmers/peasantry

No, but many of the same social conditions exist for them as the farm owners. They still share the same view of the world, especially as many of those rural workers are ruined farmers. It's a mistake to simply lump rural proletarians in with the urbanized working class based on them both being proletarian.