I like the idea of being sustainable, growing your own food, and living naturally. I used to dream about starting a commune or homestead, but now I’m starting to think the idealization of it is petty bourgeois and part of the settler mindset. Starting some farm in the wilderness is very reminiscent of the western frontier, and the homestead act which I am myself a beneficiary of. We don’t need more socialists leaving society, we need more urban farming and an end to monoculture.
What do y’all think about it?
As someone that lives on a commune, homesteading isn’t real. At least in the imperial core of the US. It is nearly impossible to come out ahead homesteading in the US. Feed prices, hay, the back breaking labor of sowing and reaping entire fields just cannot compare with the affordability of the exploited labor of the third world, the factory farms, and the acres of hay fields.
Homesteading is a great way to learn skills and to build character, but it isn’t profitable in the US without several people holding normal jobs on top of the work. You will in all likelihood drown. The reason you see all those white people on YouTube talking about their homesteads and how close it makes them feel to nature is because they got money coming from somewhere else, and as somebody who has met some of these people it’s usually because they’re landlords or incredibly overpaid for a remote job.
Urban farming also has it’s drawbacks but I am less qualified to speak on that. What I will say is that you cannot get rid of rural farming and feed the cities, the land just is not there for it. The community gardens are great and a fantastic starting point, but you’re not even close to making bread for a small household in the community garden plot.
Homesteading and traditional land practices are coming to an end, if we are not already there. Agricultural land use is now all about monocultures that grow a metric fuckton of grain. Maybe there’s some orchards, those are less extractive. But traditional land practices are moving out of the way for tractors and excessive tilling and ploughing. Whenever I leave the farm all I see everywhere is shit land practices, people putting plastic in the ground to separate their beds from the disgusting peasant dirt under it, and invasive plants everywhere that no one bats an eye to, ecosystems out here are dying.
The ecosystems are dying but it simply is not sustainable to even do anything about it. Plus the land all belongs to the bourgeoisie who know the true value of factory farming and monocultures, making it prohibitively expensive for an eco- conscious proletariat. Even then when you do get the land, our sedentary imperial lives do not make our bodies strong for the labor we need to do, unlike the Zapatista comrades who can dig trenches for hours a day everyday. It destroys your body for years before it begins to feel normal. But despite all of this taking care of the land is a hellish feat that has to be done, lest we collect our grains from sand instead.
This reminds me of ‘the biggest little farm’ film, it looks so perfect, but they admit at the beginning they got tons of startup money from investors. Many of us acknowledge the petty-bourgeois nature of homesteading, and still fantasize about it. My brother was recently talking about how is dream life is moving to the river with his friends and living off a high paying easy remote job.
It’s called the “green revolution” and it started a while ago. I wish it weren’t called such, because that’d be a great word for ecosocialism.
Every time I’m out on the road what i see sickens me. Barren fields, corn, apple, or soy monocultures, the only trees being trees of heaven.
Bourgeois “farmers” wreck the land with chemicals and monocultures fucking up the water cycle and carbon cycle, and they know the land will grow fallow, but they can just move on to the next venture they can suck profit out of. Reading ‘cows save the planet’ has made me hate mainstream farming ever more.
Im sure there are, like, 2 farmers that don’t destroy the environment out there, maybe even hundreds, but they can’t fix the environmentally destructive nature of capitalism by themselves
Exactly, that’s part of my criticism of ‘cows save the planet’ (which I keep mentioning because I just finished reading it). The author criticizes capitalism and talks about how large companies and institutions crush more sustainable farming, but she doesn’t really have a solution. Her only hope in the future seems to be more people recognizing her superior method, and using the practices on their personal property. All her positive examples are just petty bourgeois people who happened to pick up a book. She can’t imagine an alternative to capitalism or a way to get there.
hot take: “building character” is a somewhat outdated concept that assumes that people can actually adapt to be happy while doing massive amounts of labor, as opposed to just learning to suffer in silence.
I don’t say this to suggest that the average United States citizen wouldn’t benefit from more physically focused labor, but just as a pedantic point based on my own (tbf entirely baseless oh god I just did a liberalism) views on human psychology
Oh yes, I was using the term facetiously. I do it a lot in-person, did not consider how it looks in text. A more accurate way to express it would be “getting perspective.”
I mean, it is a staple of reactionary and patriarchal “values.”
Interesting points but the one about the westerners not being suited for manual labor is a bit weird lol. Not everyone here sits on their ass all day eating garbage food.
I’m not implying that we’re basement dwellers, but the fact is that even a factory worker in the US (which I once was) lives a sedentary lifestyle compared to countries where agriculture is extracted. If you ever do an accompaniment with a Zapatista family you will see just how built different they are from the hard work they need to do from childhood.
Edit to add more: This is a pattern most US internationals experience when going out to revolutionary projects like those in the YPG/YPJ, Chiapas, and all the other ones. You can take the most built westerner and they will crumble before a comrade the same age who grew up in the harsher conditions. I’ve seen a man in his prime with tree trunks for arms and abs that could break melons ask for constant breaks while the fairly average looking Zapatista comrades could go for the full 12 hours with only 2-3. It’s just what they’re used to.
Maybe. It’s just that my experience as a Westerners, working as a carpenter and in a steel mill for years, makes we wonder how God tier the Zapatistas must be. Doing 8-10 hours a day of manual labor in the West does something to your physique as well.
But maybe you’re right. I’ve never had the chance to meet the Zapatistas.
zapatistas specifically, yeah they’re built different
But for the people of a lot of countries ravaged by imperialism, I wonder somewhat if the idea that they have a higher tolerance or developed a higher tolerance over their lifetimes for grueling labor is a myth, perpetrated by survivorship bias.
Pretty easy to think of people who live in countries that are being economically attacked as industrious, unrealistically strong-willed people, when the more likely case is that everyone who can’t work to that degree, either mentally or physically, just fucking starved to death.
I don’t think people are often able to get used to the suffering, I think anyone who can’t get used to it just gets tossed into the pile of imperialism’s victims.
The sickening thing is that there are people who exist who would realize that and then just argue it’s “natural selection”. Social darwinists should be executed unironically
I highly recommend seeking an accompaniment if you’re ever able to, they’re good people.
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My connection there isn’t available right now but if you ask around there are people that would be happy to get you in-touch I’m sure. I don’t know what their COVID plan is right now though, it’s possible they might not be taking accompaniments still.
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I think on here or Hexbear you’re bound to run into somebody that knows somebody that might say something. If you’re interested in learning about Neozapatismo they have Autonomous Government textbooks you can find easily by searching and there’s a book I particularly liked called Autonomy is In Our Hearts.
True, but we’re far less fit than the masses of any past mode of production.