Peasants, enrich yourselves! A right opposition USSR TL.

[ShortsBelfast]

The idea that factory work is easier or pays better is not historically accurate, there is much research about the degraded conditions of workers in factories.

Peasants and agricultural labourers do have certain advantages over industrial workers in terms of the amount of autonomy involved in their work and in terms of access to sunlight and fresh air. Their food tends to be fresher and they can grow and forage more to supplement their diet.
But any idea that rural peasants had much superior working or living conditions to the urban proletariat owes more to Romantic art than to any actual examination of their actual working conditions and incomes. As G.M. Trevelyan pointed out over a century ago (and Trevelyan was brought up on a landed estate and knew whereof he spoke) rural cottages were just as overcrowded and insanitary as urban slums, it was merely that the visual (and nasal!) impact was not as great because these were more widely distributed across the countryside and not concentrated in relatively small areas within towns and cities. You are aware I take it that the reason that Marx and Engels cannot be taken seriously as social and economic historians is that they falsified data in respect of the living conditions of the working classes (that living conditions were slowly improving) for polemical political purposes?

The UK had already undergone its agricultural revolution long before 1940 so the comparison with collectivisation in the USSR is hardly apt.

The UK underwent arguably as many as four or five agricultural revolutions, prompted by the replacement of the mattock with the pitchfork and grape (early 1600s) the introduction of the Tullian drill (early 1700s), introduction of the Foljambe plough (1730s), four course system and new crops like clover, swedes and turnips (1750s), scientific breeding (1770s) and commercial fertilisers (1830s). Each of these created economic pressures to force rural migration as less labour was required. The enclosures by the landed classes were asocial but economically rational in that they were a response to new technologies and consequent declines in their labour requirements. My comparison was based on the introduction of the latest developments in agricultural and domestic textile production technologies -the tractor and the sewing machine- which between them reduced the demand for the rural workforce once again. My point remaining that agricultural consolidation and the export of labour from the countryside to the towns does not require collectivisation or heroic government effort. It is a natural consequence of economic development 1650-1950.

The migration of peasants from the village to the city was what allowed the newly built factories to actually have a workforce.

Prior to the large scale introduction of contraception, rural migration of surplus population to the towns and cities from the countryside was the natural course of events for over a thousand years. What changed following the Industrial Revolution was that better sanitation and improved medical care meant that the cities and towns no longer acted as population sinks and their populations grew significantly. From the late 1700s on (possibly even the late 1600s or early 1700s in the case of London and Paris) they were expanding rather than merely being replenished. As reliable contraception was not yet readily available in the 1920s/1930s rural USSR and the tractor, sewing machine, milking machine, combine harvester and power harrow were increasing the productivity of the rural workforce (and thereby reducing labour demand in the countryside) the workforce would have been forced to the cities to find work in any event. Just as they were in the USA, the UK, France, Italy. That collectivisation provided a workforce for the factories is a bit like saying that it forced water to run downhill. One could even argue that it significantly reduced the labour pool available to the factories through the deaths in the purges and the collectivisation induced famines.

 

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Peasants and agricultural labourers do have certain advantages over industrial workers in terms of the amount of autonomy involved in their work and in terms of access to sunlight and fresh air. Their food tends to be fresher and they can grow and forage more to supplement their diet.
But any idea that rural peasants had much superior working or living conditions to the urban proletariat owes more to Romantic art than to any actual examination of their actual working conditions and incomes. As G.M. Trevelyan pointed out over a century ago (and Trevelyan was brought up on a landed estate and knew whereof he spoke) rural cottages were just as overcrowded and insanitary as urban slums, it was merely that the visual (and nasal!) impact was not as great because these were more widely distributed across the countryside and not concentrated in relatively small areas within towns and cities.

I don't really know where I suggested that rural life wasn't bad for a lot of the poorer farm workers? I simply asserted that factory work in the early industrial revolution was notoriously bad. There are many examples of the untold suffering and immiseration heaped upon factory workers. William Dodd gave an account of his time working in a Cumbrian woolen mill from the age of six as "toiling and sweating day after day for the bare necessities of life while the manufacturers were amassing immense wealth". He was crippled as a boy working 18 hour days during busy periods of the year. I'll steal a quote from EP Thomson about the comparative living conditions, "There were farm labourers at the end of the 18th century who lived with their families in one-roomed hovels, damp and below ground level: such conditions were rarer fifty years later. Despite all that can be said as to the unplanned jerry-building and profiteering that went on in the growing industrial towns, the houses themselves were better than those which many immigrants from the countryside had been accustomed. But as the new industrial towns grew old, so problems of water supply, sanitation, over-crowding, and of the use of homes for the industrial occupations, multiplied, until we arrive at the appalling conditions revealed by the housing and sanitary inquiries of the 1840's." I'm not alluding to an idealised vision of rural life but rather rightly pointing out the equally horrid conditions of factory workers and many workers were compelled into these existences certainly not through any acts of kindness.

My comparison was based on the introduction of the latest developments in agricultural and domestic textile production technologies -the tractor and the sewing machine- which between them reduced the demand for the rural workforce once again. My point remaining that agricultural consolidation and the export of labour from the countryside to the towns does not require collectivisation or heroic government effort. It is a natural consequence of economic development 1650-1950.

Yes, over a period of 300 years, the British rural population faced various upheavals, including sometimes landowners suppressing riots, and slowly trickled into the industrial towns fuelling industry. In Stalinist Russia there was a massive upheaval of 10 million people over a 3 year period. Certainly, collectivisation was not necessary for this process (not sure why you're implying that I suggest otherwise?) but according to many scholars of this period (including Sheila Fitzpatrick, Robert Allen, even the likes of rabid anti-communist Robert Conquest who wrote "The numbers transferred to industry grew beyond expectation [...] The bulk of the new industrial workers could nevertheless only come from the villages. Between 1929 and 1932, 12.5 million new hands entered industry" in his book The Harvest of Sorrow) one of the effects of collectivisation was a significant migration of the peasant population into the urban factory over a short period of time.

One could even argue that it significantly reduced the labour pool available to the factories through the deaths in the purges and the collectivisation induced famines.

Collectivisation, the purges, and even the second world war, had a smaller impact on the population of Russia than the fertility transition that came with greater education, opportunities, and health care available to women. Between the mid 1920's and the 1950's the number of births per women in Russia went from almost seven children to three. Again, Robert Allen is useful, from his book Farm to Factory: fertility transition and low population growth "was due to the education of women, rapid economic development, and increased food availability after agriculture recovered from collectivisation. Indeed, rapid development and slow population growth have been mutually reinforcing. If the USSR had not followed this path — if, for instance, industrialisation and urbanisation had proceeded less rapidly and if schooling had been expanded slowly and provided to men in preference to women — then population growth would have been explosive. At the end of the twentieth century, the population would have approached one billion as in India".

 

[Johnrankins]

I don't really know where I suggested that rural life wasn't bad for a lot of the poorer farm workers? I simply asserted that factory work in the early industrial revolution was notoriously bad. There are many examples of the untold suffering and immiseration heaped upon factory workers. William Dodd gave an account of his time working in a Cumbrian woolen mill from the age of six as "toiling and sweating day after day for the bare necessities of life while the manufacturers were amassing immense wealth". He was crippled as a boy working 18 hour days during busy periods of the year. I'll steal a quote from EP Thomson about the comparative living conditions, "There were farm labourers at the end of the 18th century who lived with their families in one-roomed hovels, damp and below ground level: such conditions were rarer fifty years later. Despite all that can be said as to the unplanned jerry-building and profiteering that went on in the growing industrial towns, the houses themselves were better than those which many immigrants from the countryside had been accustomed. But as the new industrial towns grew old, so problems of water supply, sanitation, over-crowding, and of the use of homes for the industrial occupations, multiplied, until we arrive at the appalling conditions revealed by the housing and sanitary inquiries of the 1840's." I'm not alluding to an idealised vision of rural life but rather rightly pointing out the equally horrid conditions of factory workers and many workers were compelled into these existences certainly not through any acts of kindness.

It's called having a technology that is more primitive than ours by around two centuries and technology has been improving fast since then. By 21st century standards, the entire planet was poor well into the 20th century.

Yes, over a period of 300 years, the British rural population faced various upheavals, including sometimes landowners suppressing riots, and slowly trickled into the industrial towns fuelling industry. In Stalinist Russia there was a massive upheaval of 10 million people over a 3 year period. Certainly, collectivisation was not necessary for this process (not sure why you're implying that I suggest otherwise?) but according to many scholars of this period (including Sheila Fitzpatrick, Robert Allen, even the likes of rabid anti-communist Robert Conquest who wrote "The numbers transferred to industry grew beyond expectation [...] The bulk of the new industrial workers could nevertheless only come from the villages. Between 1929 and 1932, 12.5 million new hands entered industry" in his book The Harvest of Sorrow) one of the effects of collectivisation was a significant migration of the peasant population into the urban factory over a short period of time.

This is not unprecedented. The US did the same thing in the late 19th century. The Japanese did so in the late 19th to early 20th century and China has done so in the last few decades. None of them used the brutality of Stalin.

Collectivisation, the purges, and even the second world war, had a smaller impact on the population of Russia than the fertility transition that came with greater education, opportunities, and health care available to women. Between the mid 1920's and the 1950's the number of births per women in Russia went from almost seven children to three. Again, Robert Allen is useful, from his book Farm to Factory: fertility transition and low population growth "was due to the education of women, rapid economic development, and increased food availability after agriculture recovered from collectivisation. Indeed, rapid development and slow population growth have been mutually reinforcing. If the USSR had not followed this path — if, for instance, industrialisation and urbanisation had proceeded less rapidly and if schooling had been expanded slowly and provided to men in preference to women — then population growth would have been explosive. At the end of the twentieth century, the population would have approached one billion as in India".

In other words like almost every other country on the planet during the mid to late 20th century.

 

[RMcD94]

You can also look at the Highland clearances for otl example of more forced removal of peasants in the UK.

Also, if rural to urban migration was simply a product of technology and the state was irrelevant one wonders why the state seems to have acted in the USSR and in China and in many other planned economies and following their actions seen massive urbanisation.

Surely the population should already have urbanised themselves if it was merely a product of time.

Though one has to remember that a deliberate part of collectivisation was to deliberately reduce ethnic populations. It's not like the communists were unaware of the impacts, they were pleased they could kill people and urbanise them and possibly improve agriculture

 

[Sam R.]

None of them used the brutality of Stalin.

No they used their own unique local brutalities. Fantasia makes a better movie than a history.

 

[Johnrankins]

No they used their own unique local brutalities. Fantasia makes a better movie than a history.

OK, not the same scale brutalities. Scale MEANS something.

 

[Johnrankins]

You can also look at the Highland clearances for otl example of more forced removal of peasants in the UK.

Also, if rural to urban migration was simply a product of technology and the state was irrelevant one wonders why the state seems to have acted in the USSR and in China and in many other planned economies and following their actions seen massive urbanisation.

Because Marxist governments tend to be run by clueless twits?

 

[Magnum]

OK, not the same scale brutalities. Scale MEANS something.

No, didn't you hear that that one random riot in England is the same as Stalin's "excesses", and anyone who says otherwise is an uneducated imperialist?

 

[Salvador79]

Come on guys, let's take the old cold war battles to the Chat section and leave this Thread to discussing and developing its alternate path of history.

 

[GiantMonkeyMan]

This is not unprecedented. The US did the same thing in the late 19th century. The Japanese did so in the late 19th to early 20th century and China has done so in the last few decades. None of them used the brutality of Stalin.

Look, you seem to be reading into this that I somehow support Stalin and collectivisation: I don't. However, it's an era of history I am interested in and you could say that I've read a little around the subject. It's a tad more complicated than "Stalin bad" (even if, yes, he really was) with lots of economic, social, and demographic effects that have to be considered if you want an accurate picture of what went on. One thing that's interesting is that you seem to attribute to Stalin unprecedented brutality, which is true, but you won't consider the unprecedented effects of that brutality.

In other words like almost every other country on the planet during the mid to late 20th century.

Well, no, actually, not like every country. Which is the point.

Come in guys, let's take the old cold war battles to the Chat section and leave this Thread to discussing and developing its alternate path of history.

You're right. I came into the thread to say I found the premise interesting and shouldn't have allowed myself to get dragged into a debate to distract from the work. I shan't post again on the subject until another update. Sorry to @RousseauX !

 

[Scerus]

Great work on the timeline, no Stalin seems to have been underused from what I've seen on this website. I'm excited to see where this will go regarding diplomacy in Europe during the 1930's - perhaps Britain and France show more willingness to reach some sort of defensive arrangement with Moscow to fend off Hitler.

 

[HelloThere]

One question: What happened to the KPD and Thälmann?

OTL in 1928 he shortly lost his position as KPD leader because he had been involved in the "Wittorf Affair", where the KPD member Wittorf had misued party funds for his own purpose. Wittorf was a close friend to Thälmann, so Thälmann lost his position as party leader. Only an intervention by Stalin saved him.

The Wittorf Affair is quite interesting for one reason: The party wing which deposed Thälmann was the "Versöhnler" (reconciliator)-wing. They supported the idea of an alliance with the SPD and were opposed to the "Social Fascism" doctrine.

 

[Johnrankins]

Look, you seem to be reading into this that I somehow support Stalin and collectivisation: I don't. However, it's an era of history I am interested in and you could say that I've read a little around the subject. It's a tad more complicated than "Stalin bad" (even if, yes, he really was) with lots of economic, social, and demographic effects that have to be considered if you want an accurate picture of what went on. One thing that's interesting is that you seem to attribute to Stalin unprecedented brutality, which is true, but you won't consider the unprecedented effects of that brutality.

Except it isn't unprecedented. I gave you at least 5 or 6 other countries that expanded as, if not faster than, Stalinist Russia which you completely ignored. Japan at least twice, Russia itself from between around 1890 or so until WWI. Germany post-WWII, the US at least twice being the late 19th century and WW2, GB in the early to mid 19th century, the Asian Tigers on and off since the 1970s and probably others.

Well, no, actually, not like every country. Which is the point.

Almost every country industrialized at least to some extent and had their birth rate go down in the mid to late 20th century. There are a few exceptions but only a few.

 

[RousseauX]

You're right. I came into the thread to say I found the premise interesting and shouldn't have allowed myself to get dragged into a debate to distract from the work. I shan't post again on the subject until another update. Sorry to @RousseauX !

No worries, the entire point of AH counter factual is not just for entertainment but to allow us to understand actual history better!

I have a lot of Irl stuff going on right now but I'll update when I have the time to do the next writeup

 

[Sam R.]

John, you don’t seem to be familiar with any of these industrializations as moments of politics. You are entirely unfamiliar with the role of the state universally in primary accumulation. Claiming Stalin as a scope or volume difference is only possible by either discounting India for the UK and thus breaking the liberal assumption of the universality of the rights of man, or by claiming an especial disorder in murdering ones own co-nationals, and thus discounting China, and thus on two grounds breaking the liberal universality of rights on two grounds (National difference, Chinese exceptionalism). That can of course be fine: you can be as illiberal as you choose. Similarly with hypocrisy and citing case studies in your favour you don’t know or understand disprove your thesis. It would benefit the community of debate if you did either the Soviet or comparative reading before sticking your oar repeatedly in.

* * *

As far as the heightened levels of debate, it is because this is an active debate in social history over primary accumulation and reaccumulation (privatizations, transfer of government welfare from individuals to corporations.). Whether market actions universally require state aid has a frisson of the wall in Paris, the ditches in Ukraine, the barricades of Budapest and the helicopters of Chile. Until the degenerate research programme whose fallacies are exposed, righteous individuals like me will note that the determinists Marxists and TINA reactionaries are wrong: markets make omlettes and get the state to break eggs.

 

[CalBear]

WAY too much hard core Chat political discussing starting up here.

Shut that down.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

WAY too much hard core Chat political discussing starting up here.

Shut that down.

I second that motion, this is timeline not fan shipping forum