Hostility to the Peasantry
Marx's hatred of the bourgeoisie is legendary; less well known is his hostility to the peasantry. "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 factions 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." (Manifesto of the Communist Party)
It is important to understand that at the time Marx wrote, peasants made up a large majority of the population of the world, and were still a significant element in even the most industrialized nations. Indeed, in virtually every country to come under Communist control, the peasantry was initially the most numerous social class. Marx's doctrine of class war thus ultimately implied not "total revolution" against a tiny bourgeois minority, but a war against the majority of the population.
|
| ||
|
| |
|
|