Peasantry

The class that owns or partially owns the means of production and lives by agricultural labor. The nature of the peasants and the place occupied by them vary greatly in different social systems.

The peasantry appeared in a certain historical stage and experienced a continuous process of development, i.e., slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and socialist society. In different historical stages, the place occupied by the peasantry and the role played by it varies. In slave and capitalist society there are also a few small peasant producers, but they are not the basic class and basic producers of society. In slave society, there were peasant-proprietors and the coloni. Peasant-proprietors were free peasants who engaged in individual work on the basis of small-holding property, while the coloni were tenants who rented small-holdings from big landowners and whose status was somewhere between free peasants and slaves. In feudal society, peasants mainly included serfs, tenants and peasant-proprietors. The peasantry was the basic class in antagonism to the landlord class. Under the rule of feudal system, peasants were bound to the soil and subject to cruel economic exploitation and political oppression by the landlord class. Engels said that in the Middle Ages, it was not the expropriation of the people from, but on the contrary, their appropriation to the land which became the source of feudal oppression. The peasant retained his land but was attached to it as a serf or villein, and made liable to tribute to the lord in labor and in produce. Because of the cruel exploitation and oppression, peasants’ struggle and resistance also took place from time to time. Peasant uprisings and peasant wars constantly waged by peasants against the feudal dynasty were the real driving force of the development of feudal society. In capitalist society, the fundamental classes in developed capitalist countries are the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In the backward countries where the capitalist mode of production has not been fully established, the peasantry still exists and begins to differentiate under the influence of certain social factors.

In feudal society, due to the constraints of the level of the productive forces, the peasants had natural limitations. They were bound to their respective land, separated from each other, lacked contact, had no chance to receive education, harbored a deep-rooted sense of property and it is difficult for him to defend his endangered patch of land. Since they have long been in a state of dissociation and seclusion, it is difficult for them to form a common interest of their class and to maintain it through struggle. Marx pointed out that the small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Engels held that small peasants and petty-bourgeois are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Peasants are the natural ally of the proletariat.

In China, due to undeveloped capitalism, the peasantry has always been the basic class of society. In the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society of China, the peasantry has a large number and suffered from the cruel exploitation and oppression of the landlord class, imperialism and the bureaucratic-bourgeoisie. The peasants of China have lived a slave-like life of poverty and misery under such feudal economic exploitation and feudal political oppression throughout the ages. The peasants were chained to the feudal system and had no personal freedom. The principal contradiction of the feudal society was the contradiction between the peasantry and the landlord class. According to their different economic status, the peasantry in China can be divided into rich peasants, middle peasants (also divided into upper middle peasants, middle peasants and lower middle peasants), farm laborers and poor peasants. Among them, the rich peasants as a rule owned some land, had rather more and better instruments of production and more liquid capital than the average and relied on exploitation for part or even the major part of his income. Many middle peasants owned land and had a fair number of farm implements, derived their income wholly or mainly from their own labor, as a rule did not exploit others, and generally did not sell their labor-power. The farm laborers, however, generally did not own land and instruments of production, made their living wholly or mainly by selling their labor-power and were subjected to exploitation by the landlords and the rich peasants. Poor peasants owned no land or insufficient land, and some but a few odd instruments of production, as a rule had to rent the land they work on and were subjected to exploitation by landlords, usurers, rich peasants and other strata.

During the period of democratic revolution in China, the peasant question was the fundamental question of revolution. Due to the internal differentiation of Chinese peasants since modern times, peasants of different strata played different roles during the period of new-democratic revolution and during socialist revolution and socialist construction. During the period of new-democratic revolution, the rich peasants might become a force in the struggle against imperialism and might remain neutral in the struggle of the Agrarian Revolution against the landlords. In the stage of democratic revolution, the political line of the Communist Party of China in the countryside was to rely on the poor peasants and the farm laborers, unite with the middle peasants, and adopt a policy of abolishing the semi-feudal property in land or adopt a policy not touching against the rich peasant economy. In the phase of socialist revolution, the Communist Party of China pursued the policy of relying on poor peasants and farm laborers, uniting with the middle peasants, restricting and eliminating the rich peasants. The farm laborers, the middle peasants and the poor peasants, being exploited and oppressed, urgently demanded emancipation and revolution, were the biggest motive force of the revolution and the natural and reliable allies of the proletariat. Mao Zedong pointed out that not only can the middle peasants join the anti-imperialist revolution and the Agrarian Revolution, but they can also accept socialism. Therefore, the whole middle peasantry can be a reliable ally of the proletariat and is an important motive force of the revolution. The poor peasants are the semi-proletariat of the countryside, the biggest motive force of the Chinese revolution, the natural and most reliable ally of the proletariat and the main contingent of China’s revolutionary forces. And in the socialist revolution and socialist construction, the poor peasants were the force to rely on in the countryside. In the socialist revolution and socialist construction, the poor peasants are the dependent forces in the countryside. Only under the leadership of the proletariat can the poor and middle peasants realize their emancipation, and only by forming a firm alliance with the poor and middle peasants can the proletariat lead the revolution to victory. Otherwise neither is possible. The term “peasantry” refers mainly to the poor and middle peasants. Only when the broad masses of poor peasants and middle peasants win the victory of the socialist revolution under the leadership of the proletariat can they be completely liberated, and only by forming a firm alliance with the poor and middle peasants can the proletariat lead the revolution to victory.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party of China has abolished the feudal and capitalist system of exploitation as a result of correct and reasonable steps embraced by the vast majority of the people of the whole country. In the socialist society, the peasants, organized by the collective property in the means of production, are the basic force of the cause of socialist construction, and in the process of socialist modernization, the Chinese peasant has become a new type of socialist peasant.