A post-Marxist understanding of the European agricultural economy

In a society led by rising affluence and disparity between the wealthy and the poor, consumption had sky rocketed, and methods of industrial and agricultural production advanced and adjusted to this change through heavy mechanisation and using more efficient and less labour intensive means of production, tenant farming and individual small scale agriculture has become comparatively rare. It is because of this that one can question whether peasant labourers on land as considered as the proletariat by Marx and Engels prior to and during the Industrial Revolution can be seen to likely be dying out and making way for other occupations forming the livelihoods of this class. This, along with growing consumption of more internationally produced and exported foods featuring within the typical diet of the UK's population, has led to individual farm labourers beginning to struggle more, thus most often featuring the country's farmers becoming easier to divide into two extremes: either wealthy feudal tax-dodging landowners, or mechanised employees of global industrial farms. Tenant farmers labouring on land have become fewer and further between. It is because of this that, one may find support for UK agriculture, in spite of its communitarian principles and role within mobilising and engaging in revolt to encourage class struggle on behalf of the rights of the proletariat, to have now become a rather unfortunate right-wing dog whistle and a principle reclaimed by many wealthy landowners to preserve their rights.

It is widely known that much of Marxist discourse discusses the acceleration of industrial advancement, and the aims of the proletariat being to further organise into co-operatives to expand and develop in unity as a force against their expropriation under capitalism, this helping their own revolutionary society. Agriculture, however, in spite of also appearing to be very similar in this regard, perhaps also required other alternative methods of revolution, often featuring unity and inter-reliance between agricultural and industrial workers, due to differences in rural and urban representation of social class being very differently defined. With the population in urban areas being primarily involved in industrial action and employed to sell their labour under large scale industrial enterprises which thrived off relations to capital on a large scale both nationally and internationally, thus creating more clearly identifiable differences and appearances of social classes that can be traced, not just to their economic presence, but to socially defined characteristics of the workers themselves and their methods of organisation and demonstrating class consciousness. These such stark differences in regard to class can be less easily observed in rural agricultural economies. There would have been less scope for unionisation and workplace mobilisation under capitalism, and revolt against the means of oppression the workers have had to endure would have been likely more led by systemic flaws within a failing feudal property system and distaste for private ownership of land, as opposed to individual relations with the means of production, and the poor wages, working hours and conditions that the workers had to endure in industrial employment in urban areas.

However, the lack of effective and successful unionisation amongst agricultural workers and the ways in which cooperatives of workers could thrive in relation to this also proves to in part provide an explanation for the failings in the preservation of the UK's agricultural economy, in that these appeared to have been affected by the hugely bureaucratic top-down approach that many of these organisations are led by. This could also have been in part influenced by the comparatively isolationist approach the UK took on engagement with legislation and organisation devised in regard to working in conjunction with European cooperatives, these being comparatively larger and better developed. It is for these reasons that the political and economic situation of the UK appeared to struggle and was seen as vulnerable and unappealing to work with by other nations.  The huge control and influence that landlords had on this would have thus meant that very hierarchical systems of power and the aims of unionisation being mainly to serve the interests of these individuals, thus defeating the aims and not truly helping bring about greater liberty for the people. This likely was the reason for agriculture being mainly seen as large land owners influential in the class system, or an industry of low paid exploited workers when it took place at a larger scale under capitalism.

It can thus be seen that a society built upon both smaller and larger scale agriculture can prove to act as the ultimate in modernity and the epitome of capitalism, this claim thus further substantiated through its clearly defined role in the furthering of socioeconomic disparity through the increased differentiation of the proletariat that exist in society with more defined intrinsic social classes existing within the ranks of agricultural workers and farming communities. Marx's argument to accept and support the rapidly expanding agricultural economy and encompass all workers within all forms of it as allies and fellow revolutionaries keen to engage with the collectivisation of agriculture and give off a sense of unity in the common aims of mobilising in class struggle against the oppressive system of the time, and that the most modernised and industrially and agriculturally advanced economies would be the most effective in initiating this change through the formation of cooperatives, and thus ultimately transitioning to and undergoing revolutionary change more effectively. However, this logic appears to be somewhat flawed in that industry and agriculture are not necessarily two economic sectors that function closely in conjunction with and mutually exclusive to each other and do not always modernise at the same constant rates especially considering much of industry requires the exploitation and damage to agricultural land and resources, as well as that in many cases during the Industrial Revolution, industry took on as a new form of labour set about to replace agriculture in a rapidly expanding and globalising economy. 

This would thus, in turn prove to be somewhat important in explaining the failings of a system ruled by growth for businesses and gains in capital for the larger industries, and thus leading to greater alienation for less financially valuable urban centres of gravity, as had been observed with the division of Italy. This can be reflected through there being a clearly apparent bias by the Italian government towards supporting development in the northern region of Italy, this also in turn being linked to other knock-on sociopolitical and cultural problems such as racism and hostility by Italians against the people within these regions. This can largely be attributed to the geographical and environmental factors that influenced the success or lack thereof of the agricultural economies for both the respective regions. This can be observed with the Po Valley, a flat expanse of land ideal for, not only agriculture, but building railways, transport networks and roads creating the majority of the regional and intraregional connections that Italy has nationally and with other parts of Europe (also helped by its proximity to the country's main ports and gateways to international trade routes), thus appearing to be very appealing for industrial development as well. This led to the Southern region of Italy being put at a significant disadvantage, and therefore become less able to effectively modernise and evolve socially and economically, in spite of this region being the site of the vast majority of the present day agriculture that takes place within Italy (though for aforementioned reasons this is considered to be somewhat no longer such a great asset to have).

Therefore, upon reflecting on the Marxist critique of modern agriculture and its importance in reflecting on the age of growth, modernity and development that subsequently followed on from the period in which Marx and Engels lived to see change, it is important to note the clearly apparent disparities posed by this level of growth which many would advocate, and thus note the flawed and incomplete logic that this critique works off of, when applying it to the failing and unsustainable foundations of today's global economic landscape that continues to be, in large part, built off of historic reliance on agriculture. Furthermore, more updated critiques and their reasoning should also be recognised considering the considerable decline in tenant farming that had been observed, with capitalism leading to agriculture being heavily mechanised, almost akin to industry, and rarely led by peasants as it would have been, or, on the other extreme, individual private landowners advocating for agricultural reform so as to preserve their own private assets it gives them. It can thus be clearly seen that agricultural professions are now no longer synonymous with work in the centres of major activity and revolutionary intent amongst proletarians as they previously were, but that other methods need to be employed to prevent their alienation from hindering their revolutionary progress, as well as a reversal of the change that has taken place to make advocacy for agricultural workers' rights become a core facet that right wingers refine their ideologies off of.