Sociološki Pregled (Jan 2018)
Communist Manifesto and the peasantry of the 21st century
Abstract
A hundred and seventy years ago in Communist Manifesto K. Marx and F. Engels gave several prognoses regarding the future changes of the social structure. According to one of them, peasantry was sentenced to disappearing, by the laws of capitalism. Since this prediction has been written, in the large part of the world the process of de-agrarization has taken place, together with industrialization of agricultural production. However, peasantry did not disappear; on the contrary, it reappeared in some countries. The explanation of these contradictory processes we find the theory or repeasantization, given by a Dutch sociologist J. D. van der Ploeg. The same social forces that cause depeasantization, like modernization, industrialization and globalization, provoke the resistance of farmers and their struggle for autonomy. This struggle can be recognized in the comeback of the peasant mechanisms in the agricultural production.
