I could see removing smaller buildings and replacing them with more greenery, and maybe building some sort of self sufficient sky scrapers in a wilderness of food forests that used to be monoculture. However, I don’t think it’s practical or necessary to remove existing urban infrastructure and build vastly more across all wilderness. In addition vertical farms and forests can be made in cities, so again not exactly necessary. Obviously we should make sure rural people have everything they need within biking distance, but we don’t need to take it to the absolute extreme.
I think Engels was more referring to building up the rural as opposed to breaking down the urban. And I support him in this. A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, and the contradictions between city and country have caused far too much damage as seen in today’s neoliberalist America. Maintaining this moving forward would be asking for trouble later down the line. We must balance the development to remedy the contradictions
At Engels’ time, rural communities were largely peasants who produced for themselves and sold the excess. This condition is largely shared through family, in which the children inherit from their parents, and it’s still the case for many rural communities nowadays, but not all.
Ending the contradiction between rural and urban populations, as I see it, means decentralizing the production of food from rural areas, and improving the livelihood and conditions of the rural population so that they have similar opportunities to the urban population
Makes sense, of course material conditions have changed a bit since his time.
Yes exactly
Don’t they do that in China already? Could’ve sworn I’ve seen a post here about it. Essentially, agricultural workers live in proper high-rise apartment buildings, with all the urban infrastructure it requires, but work in the fields and whatnot right outside the town border. There’s no suburb layer, and no need for discomfort.
Stalin wrote a chapter about this in Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR.
I know, I listened to the audiobook last year. I was just wondering if the idea should be carried out to its logical conclusion especially in the current technological era and conditions.
