Do peasants really need to collectivize during a revolution?

My thoughts,

Not all land is created equal. Without collectivisation, this may throw a wrench in the solidarity machine. The peasants with shit land who work twice as hard as their river-bottom neighbours (presumably receiving roughly the same stuff from the cities) would have every business wondering "what-the-fuck?" when everything else on the planet is collectivized and burdens eased across the board for everyone but their family.

I agree a lot with what ultraviolet wrote. I think the collectivization of the land will be a gradual process as more and more peasants come to accept it. In bozemananarchy's case, the peasants with the shit land will probably be more likely to come to that acceptance.

Isn't large-scale agricultural production much more efficient?

Yeah, but so are soul-destroying uber-factories. I'm not sure we'll be keeping those afterwards.

Not that I'm advocating peasants with '1 hectare and 2 cows' or whatever. I still think it's possible to have (relatively) large-scale agricultural production, which is both relatively rewarding 'work' and not an ecological disaster, which is also going to be able to feed the world's population.

No shit, Captain Planet. Factories and slave plantations were exactly what I meant.

They are there in my plan for communism along with volcano parks and human sacrifice.

Devrim

Ultraviolet, Do you mind if I ask which country you live in? Do you know any peasants personally? I think the peasant question is important, but it doesn't apply in the West today.

Devrim

@ Devrim

First-Worldism

@ slothjabber and jura

Obviously there is a lot we can do to improve agricultural practices.

Are you saying I am a 'First-worldist', and if you are what exactly soes it mean?

Devrim

I made it up. When you wrote, "I think the peasant question is important, but it doesn't apply in the West today."; it sounds like your saying such questions aren't important for our consideration since we (i.e. the west) don't have a peasant population.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qPF9zOaqUA

No, that's not how I meant it to come across. Until last year actually I lived in a country with a socially significant peasantry. On a world scale I think it is an important question. I think the answer to it though must be based on the material conditions in particular regions, not upon making prescriptions. Measure that need to be taken in a period of transition in order to feed people may not be in conjunction with long term goals. Various circumstances will have a role to play in this, such as the relative size of the peasantry to the working class, the level of involvement of the peasantry I the revolution, the importance of peasant production compared to 'industrial' farming etc.

Devrim

one of the main problems of dealing with the "peasant question" is, that the agrarian structures even of one country, e.g. of Germany or of Spain are pretty different on a regional scale (size of holdings, cultural and political traditions, the question of individualism/collective structures and especially the way of passing down the holding to children do create a large variety of "peasantries" with different demands ... numerically, a genuine peasantry (distinguished from commercial farm holders/investors and the land-owning gentry on one side and from rural wage slaves on the other side) is numerically a weak force in most parts of Western Europe but they still do add an important and sometimes decisive 1-3% to the votes of conservative parties in several countries where they are generally well-integrated into a ruling bloc of social forces led by the bourgeoisie (with strong left-wing minorities e.g. in France, parts of Spain or around some sites of atomic power stations/nuclear dumps) ... but there are some important points to bear in mind, 1) that at least in Greece the peasantry is numerically growing due to the crisis with people going "back to the land"; 2) you have a movement of land occupations in Andalucia (trying to create cooperative and collective structures), 3) especially in Southern Europe, there are many people with access to some land where they produce vegetables, fruits, etc. for themselves and for their extended families and neighbours which is an important means of survival for many people in the crisis, they rarely sell larger parts of their crops; 4) there are also still many worker-peasants e.g. in southern parts of Germany or Switzerland who work a few acres (e.g. Wine which is than processed by a co-op) but are mainly depending on wage-labour

Oh yeah, btw, captain UNDERPANTS was way better!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJPYqAwzixw