Show threadbsmall2May 13, 2025

> Some people got facts and claims
Some people got pride and shame
Some people got the plots and schemes
Some people got no aim it seems
#BobMarley's #SurvivalSong

> The deserted village has probably almost always been—and certainly is again today—a feature of the countryside: it represents a site of no survivors.. the new conditions, including those brought about by.. agricultural techniques, entailed new threats: the large-scale commercialisation and colonialisation of agriculture.. emigration to the cities
#PeasantTrilogy #PigEarth

@bsmall2

bsmall2May 13, 2025
> I tell you what, some people got everything
Some people got nothing
Some people got hopes and dreams
Some people got ways and means
> Some people put the best outside
Some people keep the best inside
Some people can't stand up strong
Some people won't wait for long
> A good man is never honoured (survivors)
> In his own country (Black survival)
> Nothing change..
#BobMarleySurvival is my #PeasantSurvivors soundtrack after watching #NoOtherLand and thinking on #IntoTheirLabours, #PigEarth..
Show threadbsmall2May 13, 2025
🧵 A woman in the movie did her laundry in a two-step washing machine: the kind used by farmers in Japan. A friend in Toroku, Takachiho was telling me how it is better for clothes with dirt from the fields. That detail has me going back to John Berger's introduction to his #PeasantTrilogy books like #PigEarth while singing #BobMarleySurvival and remembering the recent Farmer's rebellion in Japan:
https://viacampesina.org/en/2025/03/japan-peasant-movements-and-consumer-groups-plan-tractor-rally-on-march-30-to-highlight-the-agrarian-crisis/
> Some people got facts and claims
> Some people got pride and shame
> Some people got the plots and schemes
#百姓の道 #PeasantSurvivors
Japan: Peasant Movements and Consumer Groups Plan Tractor Rally on March 30 to Highlight the Agrarian Crisis

The “Reiwa Peasant Uprising Tractor March” will take place on March 30 (Sunday) at Aoyama Park South District Multi-Purpose Plaza in Minato Ward, Tokyo.

La Via Campesina - EN
Show threadbsmall2May 13, 2025

🧵
> The word survivor has two meanings. It denotes somebody who has survived an ordeal. And it also denotes a person who has continued to live when others disappeared or perished. It is in this second sense that I am using the word in relation to the peasantry. Peasants were those who remained working, as distinct from the many who died young, emigrated or became paupers.

#PeasantSurvivor #PigEarth #IntoTheirLabours
@bsmall2

bsmall2May 12, 2025
> Until recently, the peasant economy was.. an economy within an economy. This is what.. enabled it to survive global transformations of the larger economy—feudal, capitalist, even socialist. With these transformations the peasant’s mode of struggle for survival.. altered but the decisive changes were wrought in the methods used for extracting a surplus from him: compulsory labour services, tithes, rents, taxes, sharecropping, interests on loans, production norms..
#JohnBerger #PigEarth
bsmall2May 12, 2025

> The man who wrote with most understanding about lived peasant economics was the Russian agronomist Chayanov. Anyone who wishes to understand the peasant should, among other things, go back to Chayanov.

#Chayanov on #PeasantEconomics mentioned by #JohnBerger in the intro to books in the #PeasantTrilogy starting with #PigEarth

Show threadbs2Oct 30, 2023

> Old Man Grayson, that stubborn old coot, refuses to use those new-fangled machines in his mill. “It just ain’t natch’rl.” “He’s a horse drawn man until his dying day.”

#LangdonWinner on #RodStewart and #CountryComforts which I think is a song on the album #GasolineAlley which I imagine is before #BlondesHaveMoreFun ? #OldManGrayson may have seen the end of their Country Comforts by spending on machines, like a #JohnBerger #PigEarth character saw a free tractor.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/gasoline-alley-188009/

Gasoline Alley

Check out our album review of Artist's Gasoline Alley on Rolling Stone.com.

Rolling Stone
bs2Jun 6, 2023

> ... this peasant tradition..[is] often heretical and subversive. “Don’t run away from anything,” says the Russian peasant proverb, “but don’t do anything.”.... the peasantry everywhere can be defined as a class of survivors. For a century and a half now the tenacious ability of peasants to survive has confounded administrators and theorists...

1979!!! #JohnBerger in the Introduction to #PigEarth and the other two books in the #PeasantTrilogy #Peasants #Survivors #PeasantTradition

Show threadbs2Sep 15, 2022
I just got some pages about Choe Je-u and Donghak, and the #Donghak #PeasantRevolution. Tonight I'll try a deeper reading of the pages, but a video title "Humans Treated Like Heaven Again" and a few other eye-catching phrases are what reminded me of the #JohnBerger quotes above. The Introduction in his #PeasantTrilogy, starting with #PigEarth, come to mind a lot. Practical advice in there too: when the armed guys rush towards you don't run but don't do anything.
#ChoeJeU in #Korea
bs2Sep 15, 2022
> The peasant imagines an unhandicapped life, a life in which he is not first forced to produce a surplus before feeding himself and his family, as a primal state of being which existed before the advent of #injustice. Food is man’s first need. Peasants work on the land to produce food to feed themselves. Yet they are forced to feed others first, often at the price of going hungry themselves.. they who can feed themselves are instead being forced to feed others..
#JohnBerger #PigEarth #Peasants