Sandy Sandfort wrote:
No, actually history records a succession of starvations. (Remember that part about Moses interpreting pharaohs dream about 6 fat and 1 skinny kine?)
Sure, but for the most part, they did alright, else we would not be here.
Only modern "factory farms" seem immune that this cycle.
Not so -- only because of corporate welfare.
Also, your argument makes no economic sense. Against whom are these peasants competing? Surely they can eat what they grow no matter how cheaply the "rapacious" factory farmers price their wares.
That's the point I was trying to make -- they aren't being "starved" out. And, as I pointed out previously with the Amish, it isn't that they are not mechanized enough, or not big enough. So why are they losing their land and moving to the city to become wageslaves for some megacorp? In the US, it's been the swindle worked on them by the chem salesmen, the gov't, and the banks -- non of which the Amish have any truck with, so they do okay. In Latin America we see them primarily being kicked off their land by "paramilitarys" usually in the pay of big ranchers and/or megacorp argribiz, and sometimes by the army. Maybe kicked off is too strong -- frightened off by all the rapes and murders and beatings, or, with the army, "relocated" to make them "safe" from the guerillas (and to stop them from feeding the guerillas). Remember -- we participated in this in Viet Nam? Our troops moved the peasants off becuase it was "Viet Cong" territory, into camps where they could be controlled -- and incidently provide cheap labor for some industry or other. Often, when the peasant tries to return to his land, he finds that the local courthouse has been burned and all the records of ownership lost. In Viet Nam, I personally know troops who killed villagers when they returned from relocation camps. Not the first time, not the second time, but the third time -- "Fuck it, we told them not to come back, they musta been Cong". The same thing happens all over Central and South America. Yes, economics is part of the picture, but not in the way you are putting forth. It's not free trade -- it's fascism. Someone else said they need to just grow a different crop, and obviously some are doing that -- coca and marijuana, and opium, and that's a good thing, and many of them at least in some areas are getting together and getting armed, and that's a good thing too. And maybe they'll survive. But anyway, these simplistic little arguements that this is all just a matter of them not being competitive is pure bullshit. By all of those same standards, the Amish are clearly not competitive in the current US agri-climate, but for some strange reason they seem to be doing the best of any farmers in the country and debt free. Where you *do* see peasants going off to the city to make the big bucks is all the Mexican illegals who come across the border to work here. And then you find too that a great many of them work for awhile and then go back home to build a new house, buy a little land, etc. And that's great, that's the way it should be, not run off by paramilitarys to live in some cardboard box jungle in the city and become a wageslave in a sweatshop. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS CyberShamanix Work 920-203-9633 Home 920-233-5820 hseaver@cybershamanix.com http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html