Q. What is the attitude of Marxists to small farmers and business people?

A. From a long historical point of view, the development of large scale farming is obviously progressive. It allows for a greater productivity of labour and thus means that the bulk of the population can be provided with its food needs by a tiny minority of the population. In the USA, only about 2-3% of the working population works on the land. That liberates the overwhelming majority of the population for other productive activity.

Thus, under Socialism we would have a situation where mechanization and large scale farming would be the norm throughout the world. Obviously we would oppose the widespread use of toxic pesticides, and damaging chemical fertilizers, etc., which is a consequence of the profit motive driven capitalist system.

So what do we say to small farmers? In fact, what do we say to all small business people, small shopkeepers, etc.? From a historical point of view these elements are condemned to disappear under capitalism due to the relentless competition of the big farmers, the big supermarkets, etc.

But they still exist in this society and it is our duty to develop a program that would win them to the revolutionary party. Trotsky takes this up in the Transitional Program, and also in other writings. These layers are potential allies of the proletariat and can be won on the basis of a clear program. That means we demand cheap credits for the small farmers and small businessmen. Under capitalism these layers are crushed by the big monopolies and banks. They have to pay big levels of interest on their loans that they take out to develop their business, but end up unable to pay or being limited by the huge amount of their income which is eaten up by the interest. We explain to them that we demand cheap credits to purchase machinery, but also cheap fertilizers, cheap seeds, etc., but that leads us to demand to take over the banks, take over the big monopolies that control the production of fertilizers, seed, etc. In this way we can show the small farmers (and small shopkeepers) that they should unite with the workers against the big capitalists and thus remove them from the influence of the capitalists.

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