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?

  • QueerCommieOP
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    1 year ago

    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.

    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.

    Homesteading and traditional land practices are coming to an end

    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.

    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.

    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.

    • WithoutFurtherDelay
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      1 year ago

      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

      • QueerCommieOP
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        1 year ago

        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.