Re: [Marxism] Re: Brenner's response (the Bolsheviks and thepeasantry)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Hutton wrote:
>
> I am not sufficiently
> knowledgeable about the economics of the agricultural industry to have a
> program in mind.  But I think such a program would not include armed
> workers detachments roaming the country side in search of grain surpluses.
>
> Perhaps a study of the populists of the late 19th and early 20th century
> would suggest some ideas for such a program.
>
You really don't seem to understand _anything_ about agriculture in the
u.s. today. Part of what you assume about it was true 70 years ago when
I was growing up on a small farm in southwestern michigan. But farmers
now, for the most part, aren't even petty producers or small capitalists
-- they are _big_ capitalists. Walk into a restaurant in Farmer City or
Mahomet or Arthur here in central Illinois and you may see some men in
work clothes wearing baseball caps sitting there having a morning cup of
coffee. Sons of the Soil? Not quite. They're probably worth 10 million
or so!

Some fruits and vegetables still involve a lot of manual labor == but
the farmers aren't doing it. Migrant workers are doing it.

If every farmer in the u.s. dropped dead tomorrow it would hardly cause
a hiccup in the food supply, any more than it would cause a hiccup in
the supply of autos if the top ten managers of GM and Ford dropped dead.

You are talking about a world which simply does not exist any more.

The farmers of today resemble the Plantation owners of the slave south
than they resemble the farmers of the populist movement.

Carrol

P.S. It didn't exist in large sectors of the west 60 years ago:

Deportee by Woody Guthrie

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps.
You are flying them back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again.

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
    You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
    And all they will call you will be deportee.

My father's own father he waded that river,
They stole all the money he made in his life.
My sisters and brothers come working the fruit trees
And rode the truck til they took down and died.

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
    You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
    And all they will call you will be deportee.

Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted.
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to the Mexican border.
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
    You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
    And all they will call you will be deportee.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains,
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river -- we died just the same.

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
    You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
    And all they will call you will be deportee.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon --
A fireball of lightning which shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just . . . deportees.

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
    You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
    And all they will call you will be deportee.

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit --
To fall like dry leaves, to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?

    Goodbye my to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
    You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
    And all they will call you will be deportee.


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