Serfs OWNED and TRADED like PROPERTY 😊
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> 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
#AModestUtopia #PeasantUtopia
#Aristocrats have to realize their precarious position because we can exist (nay, thrive) without them, but they are #peasants (like us) without us. We aren’t afraid of #poverty and #suffering. They’ve never known any of that, so it terrifies them. They never stop worrying about us, subconsciously. Hence, the endless #legislation against us, and against our interests (living wage, #health care, #retirement #security). And that’s where police are needed: to protect the the #wealth of a small number of #aristocrats from the rest of the #hungry #world.

Today in Labor History February 23, 1882: B. Traven was born on this date in Poznan, Poland. Traven’s real name was probably Ret Marut. He was active in the Bavarian uprising and the Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919. When the German state quashed the Republic and started arresting and executing activists, he fled to Mexico, where he began writing novels. Traven was a brilliant satirist and wrote novels sympathetic to workers and peasants, including the “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Death Ship,” “The White Rose,” as well as his Jungle Series of novel depicting the plight of Indigenous campesinos in Mexico.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #novel #author #writer #books #fiction #BTraven #uprising #soviet #rebellion #peasants #communism #prison #campesinos #mexico #poland #germany @bookstadon