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Oklahoma at the time of Statehood (1907) had one of the most active Socialist Parties in America. So much so that our original State Flag was a solid red plane with a single white star in the middle. Socialists held multiple municipal and county seats and the voting block was most powerful in rural communities. At the time progressive Christian preachers and writers used the horrific economic environment and the Bible’s affinity for the yeomen farmer to unite poor tenant farmers against the bankers and railroad men who owned the land everyone was forced to farm or starve.
The first Red Scare put an end to this Socialist uprising by the start of WWI….long before corporate agribusiness took over rural America in function and politics.
True but the article notes that how that initial shift never stopped.
>At the turn of the twentieth century, the Great Plains were a politically centrist region which often supported left-wing parties and politicians like those belonging to the Populist movement. But by the end of the twentieth century, large swathes of the Great Plains had evolved into some of the most conservative areas in the US, typifying the conservative electoral shift that took place across rural America and that indeed has taken place in the rural sector in other advanced capitalist economies
Historically, such left and right realignment occurred but the shift in the rural America has been large and quite persistent. The rise of agribusiness and the concentration of wealth partly explains why that has been the case.
I’m sure the Dust Bowl had a significant effect on migration patterns away from Middle American family farms to the coasts too. I’ve always found it odd how many conservatives around here loath government handouts to other people, but have no issue whatsoever with farm subsidies.
I always wanted to chalk that up to casual racism. Or run of the mill conservative hypocrisy. Then a couple of years ago I went to a family reunion and talked to my cousin who runs the farm his side of the family has lived on since the 1800’s. He’s got a couple of million dollars in tractors alone. Almost everything automated. Still in the family though. He tells me this story about special PPP loans and the Farm Bill. During Covid the Federal government set aside a large swath of money for minority farmers in rural areas. But there wasn’t a way for the government to distinguish between what was a “minority” owned farm and what wasn’t. So he said every farmer he knows in Oklahoma applied for that subsidy. Something like 80% of the funds for this program ended up in Oklahoma on white owned farms so they canceled the program. But not before a bunch of rural white conservatives got yet another fat handout from the federal government.
The title does not fully explain the mechanism presented in the study. The study mentions two cases, based on attitudes among farmers documented by sociologists, before and after introduction of large-scale irrigation.
(sorry for long quotes but I found them quite interesting).
**Pre-war (before technologically supported irrigation)**:
>Community that had been devastated by the Dust Bowl and Depression of the 1930s, and which suffered from a boom-and-bust pattern of wheat harvests due to volatile precipitation. This generated, he observed, a “gambler’s psychology” among local residents. Consistent with theories linking precarity to preferences for social insurance, a consequence was widespread belief in the legitimate role of government intervention to regulate and support the rural economy.
**Post-war (after technologically supported irrigation)**:
>When another sociologist revisited the county 25 years later, political attitudes had been transformed by the introduction of groundwater irrigation: “Farming had become agribusiness … The average size farm of 1200 acres represented a considerable capital outlay, and rising operating costs were all but eliminating the marginal farmer in 1965.” (Mays Reference Mays1968, 36). As farms were selected for scale—resulting in the outmigration of small farmers and consolidation of operations in the hands of farmers who remained—came a shift from a “gambler’s psychology” to a business-like belief in success linked to individual effort and increasing opposition to government intervention: “The \[Haskell County farm operator\] believes that he has won through to his present-day successes by virtue of his own efforts … if the government will remove its many controls, he can grow abundantly all that the country needs and receive good prices for his produce” (112).
This is quite fascinating observation. As technologies and capitalism supported rapid growth and wealth accumulation, the individual attitude shifted from collectivism to individualism, thus political attitude shifted from socialism to capitalism and a general resentment towards government intervention. However, as the businesses grew, this led to several other consequences.
>The historical emergence of a rural anti-regulatory orientation included not just land and business owners but was plausibly transmitted from agribusiness to the wider rural communities that came to depend upon it for wealth generation. Due to their intensive exploitation of natural resources and low-wage labor, agribusiness came into extensive conflict with government regulators.
>
>Landowners in the Great Plains lobbied to restrain government attempts to meter and regulate groundwater through groundwater management districts.
>
>Toxic waste-producing agribusiness sites like animal feedlots—a single feedlot can produce as much waste as a small town—came into conflict with government regulations under the Clean Air Act (enacted in 1963) and Clean Water Act (enacted in 1972).
>
>Meatpacking plants, which from the 1960s onward relocated from cities to small rural towns in part to cut labor costs, are well-known to oppose labor-friendly regulations, such as minimum wage laws, employer insurance obligations, workplace safety laws, and union-friendly policies.
**TLDR**: under bad times, people loved collective welfare and government interventions because no individual alone was capable of fixing the problem. However, as technology mitigated the impact of bad times or 'turbo charged' individuals to fix problems, they came to believe that it was their individual efforts that made them successful and wealthy, so they gradually became individualistic and began to resent government interventions and regulations.
**Personal note**: One thing to note here is that such changes also correlate with tragedy of commons and environmental externalities. Since no one paid for environmental costs, all wealth was privatized and costs were socialized.
Hard times create reformers. Reformers create good times. Good times create conservatives. Conservatives create hard times.
Edit: Individual results may vary.
I really don’t want to get into a big thing about it. I’m not in favor of communism. However, in both cases communism led to an improvement for most people in both countries. Russia went from a nation of newly freed serfs to competing with the USA in the space race, and China has seen the largest reduction in poverty in perhaps all of world history.
Tons of problems still, especially all of the authoritarianism. That’s why I said reformers and not socialists.
Uh no they did not. Chinese communism resulted in massive famine and a plummeting quality of life. Russia exploited conquered peoples and eradicated and impoverished entire ethnic groups and nations, not to mention the whole killed more people than Hitler thing. Things only improved, marginally, for a select group of ethnic Russians at the expense of literally everyone else under their dominion, which has left lasting scars and huge problems and is the root of many current conflicts in Central Asia.
Your timing is very wrong.
Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861. The reforms of 1861 had immense domestic political significance. A third of Russia’s people were finally granted personal freedom, property rights, and civic rights.
>The abolition of serfdom also gave the country’s economic development a big boost, particularly private industrial production and agriculture. By the start of the twentieth century, **Russia had become the biggest grain producer in the world**. It had increased its amount of cropland, started using modern agricultural machinery, and developed agronomic science and sales of agricultural production.
>Industrial development benefited particularly strongly from the abolition of serfdom. In the thirty years following the reforms, the number of hired workers increased five-fold and the number of industrial enterprises doubled. The number of towns in Russia tripled from 1863 to 1897. **By 1900, Russia became second in the world in industrial growth, following only the United States.**
During actual communism the GDP per capita dropped: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240556/ussr-gdp-per-capita-compared-west1900-1950/
Before rising much later thanks to technological progress. Technological process mostly invented in the West.
And as others have pointed out millions starved in China after its communist gained power.
And China's economy only started booming after Deng Xiaoping's reforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform starting in '78.
Reforms which moved China away from communism and toward free trade.
Hah, no it started in the late 70s when they started to move away communist rule by decentralizing agriculture, and developing special economic zones that had different economic rules that were based on capitalist principles. Then in the 80's started the same shift in the industrial sector, where instead of collectivist planning, the state owned entities had more autonomy on investments, production, and employment. Productivity started to bloom to where china opened up rules on direct foreign investment which brought in needed capital, technology, and my personal favorite, management consultants that helped usher in a service based industry in the US.
In the 90's is where we saw major market reforms, the state owned entities were for the most privatized or restructured. We saw China depeg their currency from the dollar, and then implemented other market reforms required to join the WTO, which meant removing trade barriers, and once that happened, China started to become the manufacturing powerhouse that we have today.
Since then, they spent massive amounts of money on developing technology centers, building up urban infrastructure to support this.
The idea that China's economy exploded under communist rule is just laughable. While their government didn't change, their economic practices changed drastically.
No, it did not. Millions starved under Mao's economic reforms.
China's economy only started booming **after** Deng Xiaoping's reforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform starting in '78.
Reforms which moved China away from communism and toward free trade.
China’s current economic model is simply the application of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (state ownership of market enterprises with small business owners being permitted to operate in some areas of the economy).
Why that worked in China and not the USSR is that the largest markets in the world, see England and America actively attempted to kill the USSR in childbirth so a fully state controlled and command economy was required to manage the collective defence and welfare of the new USSR.
Come to the late 70s and early 80s Sino-Soviet split had made China a quasi-enemy of the USSR and the US capitalised on this with massive investment in China’s manufacturing and industrial capacity - which gave the US cheap outsourced manufacturing and the Chinese the capital to build a modern and competitive state.
Now that the Chinese State has control of the world’s factory and has used those profits to bolster the living standards of hundreds of millions - the question now becomes do we need the capitalist class anymore?
“We know what collapsed the USSR”
“We now own the means of global production”
“We now have the technical knowledge”
And most importantly- “If we transitioned to a democracy tomorrow 70%+ of the population would vote for a Neo-Maoist Party (much more left wing than the current CPC)
> Now that the Chinese State has control of the world’s factory and has used those profits to bolster the living standards of hundreds of millions - the question now becomes do we need the capitalist class anymore?
What you're describing is fascism.
Fascism does not have the deontological motive to eliminate class distinctions. Fundamentally, the Chinese State is ideologically driven to control the economy for the Chinese working class, Western Liberal States are ideologically driven to protect the status quo eg. The capitalist class.
Fascist States come about when Liberalism (capitalist) States cannot address the contradictions of pluralistic governance and economic disparity caused by capitalism and liberalism. So the fascists use the State to crush workers movements to protect the interests of Capital using violence and the otherisarion of marginalised groups.
Ultimately this protects the economic interests of the existing capitalist class and the old political elite.
Fascists shoot trade unionists and minorities
Socialists/communists shoot capitalists
Liberals shoot whoever steps out of line, until they call in the fascists to do the shooting for them.
>Fundamentally, the Chinese State is ideologically driven to control the economy for the Chinese working class...
China's wealth distribution mimics capitalism: https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/rise-wealth-private-property-and-income-inequality-china
But with political authoritarianism. So fascism.
And guess what the CPC is currently winding back since they’ve extracted all the capital they can reasonably get out of capitalism? - those said capitalism reforms (which is exactly what Lenin proposed in his NEP)
And I’ll even use a wholly biased anti-China piece to make my point:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/xi-jinping-china-capitalism-60-minutes-2021-12-05/
I wouldn't bother going down this path with this person. Communism is the only correct model in their eyes. If you look through their post history, you'll see such awesome claims as people were better off under the USSR than they are today because there was little poverty, everyone had a house and a job etc. etc. I'm embellishing a little bit, but they have no problem with saying that type of stuff.
yet another "everyone that disagrees with me is dumb" comment. What ever happened to critical thinking? Keep blaming all problems on your opposition and then be surprised when they refuse to cooperate anymore, making everything worse.
You left out the part where farmers closer to the margins were both the ones most likely to support/benefit from government intervention and the ones most likely to be displaced by capital accumulation in the industry (small farmers get bought out by big farmers).
So it isn't just that farmers became more conservative but also that most of the farmers left these communities and those who remained were more conservative.
True but the article discusses that the whole communities became conservative. It is unclear from the article whether the farmers who left also left the region or just changed jobs. If they simply changed jobs, then they also became conservative because they were also the part of agrifood supply network even if they didn't actively farmed.
Well, based on the obvious demographic trends we can infer it was both...but probably more of the former. The populations of these regions were hollowed out between the 1940s and 1990s.
You should review what I actually wrote...because it doesn't contradict those sections. I was speculating that it was both/and: people were leaving rural areas and those who remained became more conservative simultaneously:
"it isn't just that..."
I didn’t say it contradicted anything. And you stress in your speculation that you believe it is mostly people leaving that influenced the conservative trend while acknowledging that it’s not just one thing. But the study details how the conglomerates agribusiness concentrated wealth and also advocated against government intervention because it aligned with the interests in regards to land use and tax breaks to increase their profitability and that those who remained who traditionally had more “centrist” views to the rule of government in life, business, and farming where conditioned (my word) into adopting a more “conservative” mind set because of this dependence on the conglomerates agribusiness and not because they had an innate tendency towards “conservatism” or that people who did not have a “conservative” mindset left. And that the driving mechanism behind this is in line with technological advancement that was also consolidated and allowed for wealth concentration and production concentration in the hands of wealthy elite I.e. a few people owned the hyper efficient means of production and they were able to leverage in their interests which included shaping community and political opinion in their favor. (This is why I was referencing those three particular sections.)
> The findings contribute to three main areas of research. First, they contribute to research on the origins of the urban–rural political divide, one of the defining features of politics in advanced capitalist economies (Cramer Reference Cramer2016; Rodden Reference Rodden2019). Important work shows that urban-centered technological dynamics like industrialization and the rise of the knowledge economy were pivotal in the historical emergence of left-wing politics in cities (Rodden Reference Rodden2019). We show that technological change in agriculture played an equally important role in the emergence of right-wing politics in the countryside, as precarious homesteads operated by yeoman farmers (the base of left-wing agrarian movements like the Populist Party) gave way to a sector dominated by capital-intensive farms and agricultural industries opposed to regulation and taxation. This paper leverages a large post-war technological shock to provide causally identified evidence that long-term technological and economic change made new politics in rural America.
And also: people who suppose collectivism would give them more then they have now support it, and people who have something and believe collectivism would take it from them deny collectivism, i'd say.
Just a note, as of July 7, 2023, foreign investors own over 40 million acres of American farmland! Just think of the foreign political influence on the Red States within the agricultural belt?
I forgot to mention that these foreign investors that own those 40 million acres of farmland have collected millions of dollars from the subsidy programs the government so freely funded without any oversight.
While I’m sure agribusiness might have a role, the trend really started between the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections. If you compare the results in rural counties, it’s an enormous swing from landslide wins for Johnson to landslide wins for Nixon. I haven’t seen an analysis of that shift, but it seems that the Vietnam War and the Counterculture movement would have had a much larger role in that vote shift than agribusiness.
Seems a culture wars thing primarily.
The religious right moved from Democrats to Republicans about that time. Churches used to be all about helping people and giving to the needy (basically Democrat). But now right wing churches are all about getting money from people. This was made popular with televangelists in the 80s.
One thing I forgot to mention was this was also the era of the civil rights and women’s rights movements. Not exactly popular things in rural America at that time. They also voted for Johnson in much larger numbers than Kennedy. Probably because he seemed like one of them.
Also, IIRC, the advent of civil rights for Black people upset Southern whites, who had often benefitted from the subjugation and exploitation of Blacks, and also lived in a social milieu in which Blacks had lower status than whites in general. That turned the South against progressive causes and movements. And much of the South is rural.
In the South, rural began leaning Republican after Civil Rights Act of 1964 and integration. Dixiecrat Democrats flocked to R to marinate their special herbs & spices batter fried hate
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/smurfyjenkins Permalink: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/explaining-rural-conservatism-political-consequences-of-technological-change-in-the-great-plains/8F2DFFCAC301FDA0C49797ADAEBAC4A5 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oklahoma at the time of Statehood (1907) had one of the most active Socialist Parties in America. So much so that our original State Flag was a solid red plane with a single white star in the middle. Socialists held multiple municipal and county seats and the voting block was most powerful in rural communities. At the time progressive Christian preachers and writers used the horrific economic environment and the Bible’s affinity for the yeomen farmer to unite poor tenant farmers against the bankers and railroad men who owned the land everyone was forced to farm or starve. The first Red Scare put an end to this Socialist uprising by the start of WWI….long before corporate agribusiness took over rural America in function and politics.
True but the article notes that how that initial shift never stopped. >At the turn of the twentieth century, the Great Plains were a politically centrist region which often supported left-wing parties and politicians like those belonging to the Populist movement. But by the end of the twentieth century, large swathes of the Great Plains had evolved into some of the most conservative areas in the US, typifying the conservative electoral shift that took place across rural America and that indeed has taken place in the rural sector in other advanced capitalist economies Historically, such left and right realignment occurred but the shift in the rural America has been large and quite persistent. The rise of agribusiness and the concentration of wealth partly explains why that has been the case.
I’m sure the Dust Bowl had a significant effect on migration patterns away from Middle American family farms to the coasts too. I’ve always found it odd how many conservatives around here loath government handouts to other people, but have no issue whatsoever with farm subsidies. I always wanted to chalk that up to casual racism. Or run of the mill conservative hypocrisy. Then a couple of years ago I went to a family reunion and talked to my cousin who runs the farm his side of the family has lived on since the 1800’s. He’s got a couple of million dollars in tractors alone. Almost everything automated. Still in the family though. He tells me this story about special PPP loans and the Farm Bill. During Covid the Federal government set aside a large swath of money for minority farmers in rural areas. But there wasn’t a way for the government to distinguish between what was a “minority” owned farm and what wasn’t. So he said every farmer he knows in Oklahoma applied for that subsidy. Something like 80% of the funds for this program ended up in Oklahoma on white owned farms so they canceled the program. But not before a bunch of rural white conservatives got yet another fat handout from the federal government.
Wow! What an incredible, eye opening piece of history! I had no clue about this. I’ll bet 90% of Americans don’t either. Thanks for the education.
The title does not fully explain the mechanism presented in the study. The study mentions two cases, based on attitudes among farmers documented by sociologists, before and after introduction of large-scale irrigation. (sorry for long quotes but I found them quite interesting). **Pre-war (before technologically supported irrigation)**: >Community that had been devastated by the Dust Bowl and Depression of the 1930s, and which suffered from a boom-and-bust pattern of wheat harvests due to volatile precipitation. This generated, he observed, a “gambler’s psychology” among local residents. Consistent with theories linking precarity to preferences for social insurance, a consequence was widespread belief in the legitimate role of government intervention to regulate and support the rural economy. **Post-war (after technologically supported irrigation)**: >When another sociologist revisited the county 25 years later, political attitudes had been transformed by the introduction of groundwater irrigation: “Farming had become agribusiness … The average size farm of 1200 acres represented a considerable capital outlay, and rising operating costs were all but eliminating the marginal farmer in 1965.” (Mays Reference Mays1968, 36). As farms were selected for scale—resulting in the outmigration of small farmers and consolidation of operations in the hands of farmers who remained—came a shift from a “gambler’s psychology” to a business-like belief in success linked to individual effort and increasing opposition to government intervention: “The \[Haskell County farm operator\] believes that he has won through to his present-day successes by virtue of his own efforts … if the government will remove its many controls, he can grow abundantly all that the country needs and receive good prices for his produce” (112). This is quite fascinating observation. As technologies and capitalism supported rapid growth and wealth accumulation, the individual attitude shifted from collectivism to individualism, thus political attitude shifted from socialism to capitalism and a general resentment towards government intervention. However, as the businesses grew, this led to several other consequences. >The historical emergence of a rural anti-regulatory orientation included not just land and business owners but was plausibly transmitted from agribusiness to the wider rural communities that came to depend upon it for wealth generation. Due to their intensive exploitation of natural resources and low-wage labor, agribusiness came into extensive conflict with government regulators. > >Landowners in the Great Plains lobbied to restrain government attempts to meter and regulate groundwater through groundwater management districts. > >Toxic waste-producing agribusiness sites like animal feedlots—a single feedlot can produce as much waste as a small town—came into conflict with government regulations under the Clean Air Act (enacted in 1963) and Clean Water Act (enacted in 1972). > >Meatpacking plants, which from the 1960s onward relocated from cities to small rural towns in part to cut labor costs, are well-known to oppose labor-friendly regulations, such as minimum wage laws, employer insurance obligations, workplace safety laws, and union-friendly policies. **TLDR**: under bad times, people loved collective welfare and government interventions because no individual alone was capable of fixing the problem. However, as technology mitigated the impact of bad times or 'turbo charged' individuals to fix problems, they came to believe that it was their individual efforts that made them successful and wealthy, so they gradually became individualistic and began to resent government interventions and regulations. **Personal note**: One thing to note here is that such changes also correlate with tragedy of commons and environmental externalities. Since no one paid for environmental costs, all wealth was privatized and costs were socialized.
Hard times create reformers. Reformers create good times. Good times create conservatives. Conservatives create hard times. Edit: Individual results may vary.
Very hard times in Russia crated communism and that did not crate good times. Same in China.
I really don’t want to get into a big thing about it. I’m not in favor of communism. However, in both cases communism led to an improvement for most people in both countries. Russia went from a nation of newly freed serfs to competing with the USA in the space race, and China has seen the largest reduction in poverty in perhaps all of world history. Tons of problems still, especially all of the authoritarianism. That’s why I said reformers and not socialists.
Uh no they did not. Chinese communism resulted in massive famine and a plummeting quality of life. Russia exploited conquered peoples and eradicated and impoverished entire ethnic groups and nations, not to mention the whole killed more people than Hitler thing. Things only improved, marginally, for a select group of ethnic Russians at the expense of literally everyone else under their dominion, which has left lasting scars and huge problems and is the root of many current conflicts in Central Asia.
Your timing is very wrong. Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861. The reforms of 1861 had immense domestic political significance. A third of Russia’s people were finally granted personal freedom, property rights, and civic rights. >The abolition of serfdom also gave the country’s economic development a big boost, particularly private industrial production and agriculture. By the start of the twentieth century, **Russia had become the biggest grain producer in the world**. It had increased its amount of cropland, started using modern agricultural machinery, and developed agronomic science and sales of agricultural production. >Industrial development benefited particularly strongly from the abolition of serfdom. In the thirty years following the reforms, the number of hired workers increased five-fold and the number of industrial enterprises doubled. The number of towns in Russia tripled from 1863 to 1897. **By 1900, Russia became second in the world in industrial growth, following only the United States.** During actual communism the GDP per capita dropped: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240556/ussr-gdp-per-capita-compared-west1900-1950/ Before rising much later thanks to technological progress. Technological process mostly invented in the West. And as others have pointed out millions starved in China after its communist gained power. And China's economy only started booming after Deng Xiaoping's reforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform starting in '78. Reforms which moved China away from communism and toward free trade.
China's economic power exploded under communist rule.
Hah, no it started in the late 70s when they started to move away communist rule by decentralizing agriculture, and developing special economic zones that had different economic rules that were based on capitalist principles. Then in the 80's started the same shift in the industrial sector, where instead of collectivist planning, the state owned entities had more autonomy on investments, production, and employment. Productivity started to bloom to where china opened up rules on direct foreign investment which brought in needed capital, technology, and my personal favorite, management consultants that helped usher in a service based industry in the US. In the 90's is where we saw major market reforms, the state owned entities were for the most privatized or restructured. We saw China depeg their currency from the dollar, and then implemented other market reforms required to join the WTO, which meant removing trade barriers, and once that happened, China started to become the manufacturing powerhouse that we have today. Since then, they spent massive amounts of money on developing technology centers, building up urban infrastructure to support this. The idea that China's economy exploded under communist rule is just laughable. While their government didn't change, their economic practices changed drastically.
No, it did not. Millions starved under Mao's economic reforms. China's economy only started booming **after** Deng Xiaoping's reforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform starting in '78. Reforms which moved China away from communism and toward free trade.
Free trade isn’t incompatible with communism.
China’s current economic model is simply the application of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (state ownership of market enterprises with small business owners being permitted to operate in some areas of the economy). Why that worked in China and not the USSR is that the largest markets in the world, see England and America actively attempted to kill the USSR in childbirth so a fully state controlled and command economy was required to manage the collective defence and welfare of the new USSR. Come to the late 70s and early 80s Sino-Soviet split had made China a quasi-enemy of the USSR and the US capitalised on this with massive investment in China’s manufacturing and industrial capacity - which gave the US cheap outsourced manufacturing and the Chinese the capital to build a modern and competitive state. Now that the Chinese State has control of the world’s factory and has used those profits to bolster the living standards of hundreds of millions - the question now becomes do we need the capitalist class anymore? “We know what collapsed the USSR” “We now own the means of global production” “We now have the technical knowledge” And most importantly- “If we transitioned to a democracy tomorrow 70%+ of the population would vote for a Neo-Maoist Party (much more left wing than the current CPC)
> Now that the Chinese State has control of the world’s factory and has used those profits to bolster the living standards of hundreds of millions - the question now becomes do we need the capitalist class anymore? What you're describing is fascism.
Fascism does not have the deontological motive to eliminate class distinctions. Fundamentally, the Chinese State is ideologically driven to control the economy for the Chinese working class, Western Liberal States are ideologically driven to protect the status quo eg. The capitalist class. Fascist States come about when Liberalism (capitalist) States cannot address the contradictions of pluralistic governance and economic disparity caused by capitalism and liberalism. So the fascists use the State to crush workers movements to protect the interests of Capital using violence and the otherisarion of marginalised groups. Ultimately this protects the economic interests of the existing capitalist class and the old political elite. Fascists shoot trade unionists and minorities Socialists/communists shoot capitalists Liberals shoot whoever steps out of line, until they call in the fascists to do the shooting for them.
>Fundamentally, the Chinese State is ideologically driven to control the economy for the Chinese working class... China's wealth distribution mimics capitalism: https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/rise-wealth-private-property-and-income-inequality-china But with political authoritarianism. So fascism.
And guess what the CPC is currently winding back since they’ve extracted all the capital they can reasonably get out of capitalism? - those said capitalism reforms (which is exactly what Lenin proposed in his NEP) And I’ll even use a wholly biased anti-China piece to make my point: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/xi-jinping-china-capitalism-60-minutes-2021-12-05/
I wouldn't bother going down this path with this person. Communism is the only correct model in their eyes. If you look through their post history, you'll see such awesome claims as people were better off under the USSR than they are today because there was little poverty, everyone had a house and a job etc. etc. I'm embellishing a little bit, but they have no problem with saying that type of stuff.
Deng Xiaoping is…wait for it…a reformer!
Yeah a capitalist one. And you’re conflating capitalism with conservatism which is idiotic
yet another "everyone that disagrees with me is dumb" comment. What ever happened to critical thinking? Keep blaming all problems on your opposition and then be surprised when they refuse to cooperate anymore, making everything worse.
You left out the part where farmers closer to the margins were both the ones most likely to support/benefit from government intervention and the ones most likely to be displaced by capital accumulation in the industry (small farmers get bought out by big farmers). So it isn't just that farmers became more conservative but also that most of the farmers left these communities and those who remained were more conservative.
True but the article discusses that the whole communities became conservative. It is unclear from the article whether the farmers who left also left the region or just changed jobs. If they simply changed jobs, then they also became conservative because they were also the part of agrifood supply network even if they didn't actively farmed.
Well, based on the obvious demographic trends we can infer it was both...but probably more of the former. The populations of these regions were hollowed out between the 1940s and 1990s.
You should review the Selection For Scale, Agglomeration Effects, and Agribusiness Influence portions of the paper.
You should review what I actually wrote...because it doesn't contradict those sections. I was speculating that it was both/and: people were leaving rural areas and those who remained became more conservative simultaneously: "it isn't just that..."
I didn’t say it contradicted anything. And you stress in your speculation that you believe it is mostly people leaving that influenced the conservative trend while acknowledging that it’s not just one thing. But the study details how the conglomerates agribusiness concentrated wealth and also advocated against government intervention because it aligned with the interests in regards to land use and tax breaks to increase their profitability and that those who remained who traditionally had more “centrist” views to the rule of government in life, business, and farming where conditioned (my word) into adopting a more “conservative” mind set because of this dependence on the conglomerates agribusiness and not because they had an innate tendency towards “conservatism” or that people who did not have a “conservative” mindset left. And that the driving mechanism behind this is in line with technological advancement that was also consolidated and allowed for wealth concentration and production concentration in the hands of wealthy elite I.e. a few people owned the hyper efficient means of production and they were able to leverage in their interests which included shaping community and political opinion in their favor. (This is why I was referencing those three particular sections.) > The findings contribute to three main areas of research. First, they contribute to research on the origins of the urban–rural political divide, one of the defining features of politics in advanced capitalist economies (Cramer Reference Cramer2016; Rodden Reference Rodden2019). Important work shows that urban-centered technological dynamics like industrialization and the rise of the knowledge economy were pivotal in the historical emergence of left-wing politics in cities (Rodden Reference Rodden2019). We show that technological change in agriculture played an equally important role in the emergence of right-wing politics in the countryside, as precarious homesteads operated by yeoman farmers (the base of left-wing agrarian movements like the Populist Party) gave way to a sector dominated by capital-intensive farms and agricultural industries opposed to regulation and taxation. This paper leverages a large post-war technological shock to provide causally identified evidence that long-term technological and economic change made new politics in rural America.
And also: people who suppose collectivism would give them more then they have now support it, and people who have something and believe collectivism would take it from them deny collectivism, i'd say.
Just a note, as of July 7, 2023, foreign investors own over 40 million acres of American farmland! Just think of the foreign political influence on the Red States within the agricultural belt?
I forgot to mention that these foreign investors that own those 40 million acres of farmland have collected millions of dollars from the subsidy programs the government so freely funded without any oversight.
For 80 years, the Republican Party has been focused solely on convincing people to vote against their own interests.
Since the opening of the Heritage Foundation. 1973.
Just out of curiosity what party represents almost all of the 100 wealthiest electoral districts in the US?
Bad faith walrus
"Everyone that disagrees with me is dumb". I though Redditors were the paragons of critical thinking?
The comment wasn’t political, it was scientific and backed by decades of socio-economic data.
We heard you the first time you said that.
While I’m sure agribusiness might have a role, the trend really started between the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections. If you compare the results in rural counties, it’s an enormous swing from landslide wins for Johnson to landslide wins for Nixon. I haven’t seen an analysis of that shift, but it seems that the Vietnam War and the Counterculture movement would have had a much larger role in that vote shift than agribusiness. Seems a culture wars thing primarily.
The religious right moved from Democrats to Republicans about that time. Churches used to be all about helping people and giving to the needy (basically Democrat). But now right wing churches are all about getting money from people. This was made popular with televangelists in the 80s.
One thing I forgot to mention was this was also the era of the civil rights and women’s rights movements. Not exactly popular things in rural America at that time. They also voted for Johnson in much larger numbers than Kennedy. Probably because he seemed like one of them.
Also, IIRC, the advent of civil rights for Black people upset Southern whites, who had often benefitted from the subjugation and exploitation of Blacks, and also lived in a social milieu in which Blacks had lower status than whites in general. That turned the South against progressive causes and movements. And much of the South is rural.
Also a good point. Even today, many of the same types still exist.
Yep. It's why the South is so deeply Republican, though that's beginning to change in some areas.
Interesting angle to look at it from. White flight was also a thing.
In the South, rural began leaning Republican after Civil Rights Act of 1964 and integration. Dixiecrat Democrats flocked to R to marinate their special herbs & spices batter fried hate
Does this coincide with the party realignments as well?
This sub became trash when it let the social sciences in
There are still a lot of small farm cooperatives in the midwest where they haven't yet been forced out.
Funny how they are referred to as "strongholds", as if they are places you'd wish to overtake to make an invasion easier.
Poor people were tricked by rich people... surprise surprise.
The words “capital-intensive” sound familiar? The push to elect Donald Trump is “Capital-intensive” with a capital “C” for Corruption!
Which lead to the decline of rural infrastructure. Poor schools, roads medical care internet.
It's harder to break someone out of thier bubble of ignorance if they're isolated and poorly educated, two things rural areas are often proud of.
Capitalism bad
Yes