Progressives and Small Farming Revolution

Lucien Bianco wrote an important book in 1967 on the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, a clear explication when people were generally writing nonsense extreme one way or another .  He published the book first in French, and Origin of the Chinese Revolution was translated into English a few years later.

The book is well worth a read for anyone interested in contemporary China.  The revolution to which Bianco refers of course is the Communist revolution, led by the communists who harnessed the power of the peasants (small farmers)   This in it self was revolutionary, for the Marxists had a long tradition of denigration of the peasants.

On page 74 Bianco notes that while Mao was working out recruiting peasants Stalin was working on the  “final solution of the Kulaks,”  a group of which Marx called “the class that represents barbarism within civilization...”  They were hated because the resisted the modern utopian ideas. Stalin speaks of “blood drinkers” who resisted forced collectivization.

Bianco tells us “Marxism was in theory as in practice the deadly antagonist of peasantry (small farmers).”

The book has many threads but for me one fascinating story of how Mao, who compared marxism to dog shit, (dog shit come out ahead) managed to violate all Marxist theory by leading a peasant revolution. Page 79

Now, eventually , few suffered in  China less than the peasants, but marxist-led  revolution they did have.  Mao’s contribution was probably to put into effect Trotsky’s permanent revolution, and to exploit whatever contradictions were available on the ground.  Never waste  crisis.

Bianco quotes Mao at length on page 205 on the small farmer.... such disrespect for a group about whom they knew little, and it sure sounds like blaming the victim.  That the people making policy had no concern for the victims of their policies sounds so familiar to me.  That the people making policy were in no position to understand the effects of the policy sounds so familiar.  IN any event, bad policy hurt the policy makers not at all.

So could we have a revolution by farmers in usa?

Peasant revolution cannot happen in usa because small farmers are not 92% of the population.  And as China showed us, any violent revolution goes badly for the participant.

A revolution will occur in American if people return to farming to the degree small farmers are 25% of the population.  The only way of this occurring would be for farm subsidies to be eliminated which precipitate the collectivization which is the policy of the united state government, a subsidiarity of Fasco-USA, Inc.  We could have such a revolution nonviolently, but we’d have to have a market for good food grow to the point where we had 25% of our supply from small farmers.


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