Peasants or workers? - Forum post responding to point on Italy

This interests me, because I am from a country without a peasant class but it's this conservative class of people which binds societies as different as Mediterranean societies, American culture (the "rednecks" would be the peasants), the Middle East and Latin America.

In Britain the working class is fundamentally tied to the British state and to the wider national consciousness; self-sufficiency has never been part of the culture. On the one hand this pleases left-wing people because it allows for "solidarity", "progress", a lack of individualism, and the breaking down of barriers. On the other hand it confounds the left, because it also leaves the working classes prone to "imperialism", aggressive foreign policy, supporting "internal colonialism", etc.

Also, the divisions in Italy are interesting, I've read quite a lot about it. The urbanised north and the rural south are two different countries. You've got the Liga Nord pushing for separation from the south. Many northerners deny that the south is even Italy, they refer to it as Africa, and the people as Arabs. This is similar to the way that economic hierarchies are expressed in racial terms in Latin America. So in Argentina, a poor person is a "negro", in Chile he's an "indio" etc. And these groups are both considered superior to Bolivians and Paraguayans etc. And within Bolivia you have the divisions between the Europeanised lowlands and the indigenous highlands. And within those highlands a hierarchy where the towns despise the villages, the villages despise the hamlets, and each one sees his inferior as darker, less European, and more of a peasant than him. It's the whole colonial process being repeated again and again.

So anyway, that division between the working class and the peasant class is crucial, and it's one which is replayed within the working classes and peasant classes themselves. The richer peasants adopt the "civilised" attitudes of the city people, and the richer working class people come to adopt some of the self-sufficiency and conservatism of the peasant.

It's interesting to see how the people who want to represent these people - the left - relate to this.

On the one hand the working class is richer, whiter, more keen on nationalism and less willing to resist the state, and they can be seen as part of an internal colonialism where they unite with the "elite" of the big cities against the peasants, but on the other hand he peasants are more keen on private owership, more keen on religion, less keen on "solidarity" with other communites, less cosmopolitan, less hungry for a better situation (they will be more moved only to resist when their status is threatened rather than push for change), etc. So Should left-wing people unite with the more "progressive" working class, but at the same time one which is wealthier and whiter and possibly discriminates against the peasantry; or should they take the side of the more conservative, but potentially more anti capitalist expansion, less prone to European or middle class values, peasantry. When they do, it is often quite a volatile union, because these groups, as you say, do not really seek ties with a wider coalition for "change" that the activists envisage - they just want their lands protected. because of the isolated and relatively self-sufficient nature o these small, quite static, communities, this is natural to them in a way it is not to the urbanised working classes.

I get the feeling that these left-wing activists really want the working classes on their side. That is the golden prize. But wen these working classes can be won over to siding with their "social betters" against the periphery, the peasantry, the satellite, the underdeveloped region at home or the "third world" abroad, whatever you want to call it, then the activists will often switch sides to the peasantry as a plan b. But it's not something they are ever really comfortable with. At best they are acting out of pity for these people without sharing their long-term motivations or beliefs; at worst they are acting out of resentment to the classes which shunned them.

Ok that was a huge tangent. But why not? You mentioned the difference between "peasants" and "workers", and it's one I'm interested in myself. The "peasant" attitude you described is something which is fascinating for a Brit, because like you say it's quite alien. We don't know how to react to it. Which side are they on? How do they see themselves? From an urbanised point of view, their motivations seem alien, yet there is something in their anti-government self-sufficiency and aversion to "progressive" ideology which I admire. Call me a "redneck lover" if you must.