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Huh, I always thought the difference between peasant and farmer was a linguistic one. Clearly peasants and farmers can have social stratifications within them. So what about rich peasants and kulaks, weren't they simply rich farmers who in fact sold produce for money? and weren't the "dirt farmers" of the 19th and 20th centuries in this country "peasants" but for our cultural aversion to such terms. Surely James Agee would have gotten socked in the mouth if he had been overheard referring to his subjects as peasants, regardless of the academic merits of the term. As to the guy in the MG, I don't know whether he was a college student or not, I imagined he was a stock broker or some rich petty bourgois of the Philly main line. In any event it wasn't a "straw man" to the extent it is a true anecdote through which I was trying to explore a serious issue not as a tool of a vitriolic ideological or academic contest. For me social knowledge has come as much from personal experiences in society (or "the field" to academics) as it has from book reading and study groups although the two can inform each other. I remember the first days I worked in an actual industrial size factory that worked around the clock-a salmon cannery-in 1983; it was a sensory and mental overload, . . . "means of production" . . . .pretty enlightening, actually. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
