At 2:16 PM -0400 7/27/02, Michael Pollak wrote: >But you can have an extensively settled countryside and big >cities in the same country. ><snip> >You don't need to >depopulate the countryside in order to produce the goods it needs.
Where do urban and suburban wage workers come from, then, if not from the depopulated countryside? Urbanization and proletarianization have always meant that former peasants and landless agricultural laborers come to cities and become wage workers, etc. The only differences have been whether the processes of urbanization and proletarianization were slow or rapid; whether the processes were organized by capitalist primitive accumulation or socialist state-led modernization; and what proportions of the formerly rural population could be incorporated into the nation's labor force as wage workers, shafted into the informal sector (petty trading, drug dealing, prostitution, etc.), or forced to emigrate to richer nations (often to remit money to support those trapped at home). There has been no exception to this historical pattern. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>
