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The peasantry (Individual is labelled as peasant) are a social class created from the feudal mode of production. While the peasant performs labour on the land the same way a serf does, the peasant owns that land as well. As the peasantry are a creation of feudalism, the peasantry is decaying into either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, as the productive forces advance on the specific countries. Their characteristic is petit bourgeois, however they usually do not have an antagonistic contradiction with the proletariat.
The peasantry are used in many revolutions in underdeveloped nations, the most famous ones being the October Revolution and the Chinese Civil War, as there is often more of a majority of peasants rather than proletarians.
Characteristics of the Peasantry
Petit-Bourgeois
Peasants are petit-bourgeois[1] as they work the land and perform the labour on that land as well. The land constitutes part of the means of production, especially because it is a relic of the feudal era.
Not Truly Revolutionary
The Proletariat are deemed to be the truly revolutionary class, which can overthrow the bourgeoisie.[2] As the peasantry decay into either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, the Communist Manifesto states that they are only fighting their own survival as a class.[3] This does not mean however, the peasantry are useless[4], and revisionist ideologies such as Trotskyism state that the peasantry are indeed useless as they are not truly revolutionary. Some other revisionist ideologies such as "Neo-Marxism" outright state that Karl Marx is wrong in this regard, and that some classes can be revolutionary even if they are decaying.
- ↑ “The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848). The Manifesto of the Communist Party: 'Bourgeois and Proletarians'. - ↑ “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848). The Manifesto of the Communist Party: 'Bourgeois and Proletarians'. - ↑ “[T]he peasant[ry], [They] fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848). The Manifesto of the Communist Party: 'Bourgeois and Proletarians'. - ↑ “Hence the practical conclusion that the toiling masses of the peasantry must be supported in their struggle against bondage and exploitation, in their struggle for deliverance from oppression and poverty. This does not mean, of course, that the proletariat must support every peasant movement. What we have in mind here is support for a movement or struggle of the peasantry which, directly or indirectly, facilitates the emancipation movement of the proletariat, which, in one way or another, brings grist to the mill of the proletarian revolution, and which helps to transform the peasantry into a reserve and ally of the working class.”
Josef Stalin (1924). Foundations of Leninism: 'The Peasant Question'.