The agrarian question in the Russian revolution: from material community to productivism, and back - Loren Goldner
Buried under almost a century of ideology, "the Russian question," the historical meaning of the defeat of the Russian revolution, is the question that will not go away. This essay is an attempt to answer it.
Paternalism and rural protest: the Rebecca riots - Lowri Ann Rees
Submitted by Steven. on Sep 10 2016 17:05
A detailed analysis and account of the Rebecca riots in south-west Wales, 1839-1843, examining the interests of different classes at the time.
The making of an interethnic coalition: urban and rural anarchists in La Paz, Bolivia, 1946–1947
Submitted by wojtek on May 23 2016 02:28
Kevin A. Young's account of the interethnic alliance between urban anarchists and indigenous peasants which facilitated the 1947 upheavals surrounding La Paz, Bolivia.
Contemporary agriculture: climate, capital, and cyborg ecology
Submitted by Out of the Woods on Jul 17 2015 10:38
Climate change will put pressure on world food production. We must disentangle the potential benefits of agricultural science and technology from agribusiness' centralised control of the food chain.
Land grabs in contemporary China
Submitted by Nao on Jan 6 2015 04:40
Translation of article summarizing original research about land grabs in China since the 1990s, concluding that this ongoing expropriation of peasants is more severe and violent than the peak of Britain's enclosures in the early 19th century.
Catalan manifesto for the social history of town and country - Miguel Amorós and Joan Carles Gelabertó
Submitted by Alias Recluse on Dec 27 2014 16:55
A succinct “Manifesto” for the purpose of rectifying public opinion concerning the libertarian history of separatist and independence movements in Northeastern Spain since the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, illuminating the democratic and communal roots of uprisings by peasants and town workers, and casting a different light on nationalism and separatism in the context of the history of the Iberian Peninsula, intended as an antidote to the virulent reactionary separatism that exclusively serves the interests of flag waving local oligarchies eager to sell out their countrymen to international capital and lay waste to the land of their fathers.
Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden Transcripts – James C. Scott
In this book, renowned social scientist James C. Scott offers a penetrating discussion both of the public roles played by the powerful and powerless and the mocking, vengeful tone they display off stage—what he terms their public and hidden transcripts.
Daybreak in dark times: the origins and vicissitudes of the village commune, the municipality, the nobility and the urban oligarchy in Catalonia - Miguel Amorós
Submitted by Alias Recluse on Jun 3 2014 18:30
A brief essay reviewing the social, economic, political and demographic changes that affected the urban centers of Catalonia during the period between the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the consolidation of a united Spanish state in the 1400s, depicting the development and decay of feudalism from the perspective of the struggle of the common people for democratic rights of assembly and self-government against the engrossing tendencies of the competing feudal, royal and nascent bourgeois powers.
Selections from Perspectivas Antidesarrollistas – Miguel Amorós
Six short texts from a book published in 2012 (Anti-developmentalist Perspectives) largely based on talks given in 2009-2010 on the topic of the need for a transition from the economically, environmentally and spiritually unviable city-centered system of globalized capitalism to a new territorial dispersal of human society and productive activities, attaining a higher synthesis of the restoration of the liberating aspects of the city (freedom, public space) and the traditional virtues of the “territory” (local production, self-sufficiency) that can only be brought about by an anti-capitalist revolution.
A brief explanation of the concept of territory and its implications - Miquel Amorós
An explanation of the meaning of “territory”, illustrated in its historical, social, economic and political context from the times of Cleisthenes to today’s pathological “anti-cities” and mutilated rural areas, as the dynamic unity of humanity as transformative agent and nature as abstract totality, and its significance for the “anti-developmentalist critique” that seeks to reunify the these two aspects of the world in a two-pronged struggle to restore the emancipatory nature of the city (the agora, “city air makes one free”) and the salutary aspects of rural life (the commons, etc.), a struggle that goes by the name of “territorial defense”, the pivot of the modern social revolution.
Can comment on articles and discussions