Review of “Reclaiming the land from the machines” from L’Atelier paysan
Publication date 04/14/2023
€10.20 incl. VAT
240 pages – EAN 9782757899472
L’Atelier paysan is a cooperative that supports the design and peddling of peasant technologies, invented and implemented by the farmers themselves.
We did not expect this “small” farming cooperative to produce such a work, which analyzes the farming world in an in-depth and revolutionary way. This book is of the highest intellectual and political caliber. It deserves to be read in depth.
The problems are addressed through the lens of agricultural machinery, but the authors are always clever enough to broaden the subject to other agricultural “inputs” (seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, etc.). They also provide a broader historical, economic and sociological view of agriculture.
The book’s theses
A significant proportion of the population in rich countries cannot afford to eat properly. Seventy percent of farmers’ incomes come from subsidies, and half of them (80% of livestock farmers) have a negative income before taxes and subsidies. This astonishing picture is that of a system that does not work at all.
Peasant agriculture defense movements have been in place for more than fifty years, but the peasant workshop wonders about a hiatus: AMAPs and farmers’ stores are developing, the market share of products labeled “organic” is increasing; the peasant workshop expends “an insane amount of energy” to train only 700 people per year; Terre de Liens, in 20 years, has been able to acquire and preserve 223 farms and 6400 ha, but the dominant system is not (or very little) shaken by these developments. Pesticide sales grew by 22% between 2009 and 2018; arable land continues to shrink in favor of concrete at a rate of 26 m2 per second; more than 200 farms disappear every week (which Terre de Liens takes 20 years to compensate).
The most interesting small-scale farming practices are not spreading. The agro-industrial complex is itself rushing into these niches with formidable efficiency; it is indeed the practices of competitive agriculture that continue to spread their oil slick.
The conclusion that is obvious for the peasant workshop is that the system must be changed: the capitalist agro-industrial system must be replaced by another system based on greater autonomy for agricultural producers. This autonomy is opposed to the term “food sovereignty” on the one hand, but far from the autarky advocated by others and individualism.
The content
The manifesto (the term used by the authors) is organized into five chapters
- 1 – Industrial agriculture: a mechanical monster that has taken the land away from humans.
- A historical overview of the industrialization of agriculture, guided by the obsession to compress production costs and reduce the number of farmers.
- 2 – The ingredients of a lock-in
- Analysis of the factors that ensure the maintenance of a dominant agricultural model
- 3 – Agricultural machinery: technological lock-in
- Analysis of machinery as one of the weapons of mass destruction of the agricultural world
- 4 – Small-scale farming, a set of indispensable but inoffensive alternatives
- A hypothesis is developed: the existence of a market for alternative products, which are supposed to escape the ills of industrial production, also contributes to the stability of the model in question. The bubbling up of alternatives is not capable of shaking the agro-industrial complex.
- 5 – Against powerlessness: points of support to fight extinction.
- The peasant workshop calls for a thorough repoliticization of the peasant farming movement. The pursuit of alternative practices should be linked to a major effort of popular education and the creation of power relations around three avenues: the setting of minimum entry prices for imported products, the socialization of food (food SS) and the fight for a technological de-escalation.
Without naming them, probably because they are not familiar with them, the Atelier paysan shows a clear interest in many of the theses of social ecology and communalism. These theses that they defend could find theoretical support in these proposals, which in turn would find in their actions a basis and fertile ground for development.
The path and the approach
Following this brief summary, it appears without a shadow of a doubt that in “Reprendre la terre aux machines”, the Atelier Paysan, far from limiting itself to a series of gestures and technical choices, aimed above all to think about these gestures. And it is indeed when thought is stimulated, by the will and by action for a specific horizon, that it becomes fertile to the point of going beyond this first horizon and discovering others beyond it. For as Eduardo Galeano said: “Utopia is on the horizon. I take two steps, it moves two steps away and the horizon moves ten steps away. So what is the point of utopia? That’s what it’s for, it’s for walking”.
And what could be more relevant than a field practice aimed at reappropriating peasant autonomy in order to face obstacles and persist in understanding them in order to better overcome them? It is by starting from the inside of the peasant issue with the aim of aiming for its autonomy and after 12 years of practice and reflection that they manage to break through the many successive layers that stand in its way. Because it is indeed this perverse whole that has led us step by step to the current impasse of agribusiness, accentuating the ecological disaster, the robotization of activities that leads to lifelong indebtedness of farmers, the decline in the quality of food for the poorest, etc. Thus, without hiding its face, starting from the criticism of the alienating techniques used and worn out day by day by the farmers, the Atelier Paysan logically arrives at pointing upstream from the machinery and the “agro-industrial complex”, “the Machine as it presents itself to us: a transnational technostructure” (Sic) which controls them all. This is what Mumford calls the Megamachine, capitalism and its state bureaucracy capable of turning “political problems into technical problems” to better divert attention and open up other markets, even if it means painting them green. From there to concluding that peasant autonomy and the food autonomy that follows from it will only be effective with the autonomy of society as a whole, the only entity capable of taking the Earth back from the Megamachine, of getting rid of it before it dies, taking us with it into the abyss. Then comes the challenge of winning this battle, which involves a whole strategy, a wide range of possibilities based on this vital element, the land that we share and that carries the whole of humanity, the only one capable of looking after it and taking care of it as a whole. And what could be more relevant and creative for us communalists than to embark on this path, which is always to be taken again, and in this approach that is offered to us, starting from the concrete? Moreover, what baggage and what tools can we bring to this common approach?
We can undoubtedly fully endorse the observation or even the diagnosis of the ongoing catastrophe induced by capitalism, as well as their assertion that, while political, the struggle is also semantic. Hence this preference for ‘autonomy’ over ‘sovereignty’. The first term is more “subversive” because it is linked to democracy, participation, collective reflection and community life, while the second refers to an imaginary world of power, competition and superiority. We also make use of the term “peasant” to distinguish ourselves from “farmers”, who are entrepreneurs, while referring to our allies such as the Confédération Paysanne and the Réseau des Semences Paysannes. We agree with the observation that peasant alternatives, like those of “consum’actors” such as Amaps, are completely inoffensive in the face of the agro-industrial complex, that these approaches are confined to niches tolerated, even created, by the market and agro-industries, without in any way modifying the constrained dynamic of the search for valorization of value. Bookchin had this to say about it over twenty years ago: “In short, these ‘alternative’ enterprises become as inorganic, impersonal, computerized, and cynical as the larger enterprises whose territory they encroach. They become dumping grounds for organic foodstuffs to satisfy the therapeutic needs of an increasingly anonymous and inert public.”
Then, if we dig deep, we may find differences in analysis as to the very nature of the constrained dynamics of capitalism, but that is not the point. Not that these differences should be neglected because without the most exhaustive analysis possible of the Megamachine, we will not be able to develop the most relevant strategies to confront and dismantle it. And, given the current vital urgency to break the deadlock, any misstep, with its negative consequences, will only bring us closer to the abyss. History is full of defeats due to an erroneous assessment of the balance of power and a lack of an adequate strategy, pushing us to bloody carnage such as that of the Paris Commune or the Spanish Revolution. But since then, the deactivation of possible emancipatory dynamics has become commonplace, such as our May 68, Nuits Debout, the Indignados and the municipalists in Spain, etc. These defuses by political sleight of hand are not the result of chance but of a lack of consistency, of practical and cultural know-how, and therefore of medium- and long-term preparation. If we want to avoid both of these pitfalls, we will have to resort to a fundamental element that seems to us to be somewhat omitted in this book: history. Our history, that of the people that can only be understood in a global context and in a geographical approach that also seems to be absent. Yet, “He who commands the past commands the future; he who commands the present commands the past.” Today, we could say that George Orwell was right in his novel 1984: “The whole of history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and written on again as often as necessary. It would never have been possible to prove the existence of a forgery.”
It is no coincidence that the Zapatistas define their struggle “as a rebellion for history and against oblivion”. Indeed, in this neoliberal world of the “perpetual present”, “The time of production, commodity time, is an infinite accumulation of equivalent intervals”.
Rebellion against oblivion means setting history back on track, starting by dislodging it from political economy, which actively lives in us in the form of a continuous and unstoppable vector towards “Progress and development”. It is a question of freeing ourselves from the hold that this political economy has on our bodies and minds, all the more omnipresent because it does not say its name. After more than 300 years of the violent imposition of its social relations and thanks to the increasing colonization of the commons, that of our minds and its “newspeak”, Capitalism will have succeeded in persuading us of their “normality”. However, history, starting with that of our dispossessed peasant ancestors, allows us to radically challenge any linear vision of progress and understand the anthropological rupture that the enclosures, accompanied by the “witch hunt”, signified in England between the 14th and 16th centuries. That is to say, the destruction of our communities, the dispossession of our commons and our most vital means of production, the land, and therefore our direct access to food. An anthropological rupture that the peasants opposed with all their might, but which they were defeated each time by bloody state repression. A State that hastened to legislate this armed robbery on the part of the bourgeoisie that had defeated feudalism and the nobility in England as early as the 16th century with the support of the Reformed Church. A state that has since been responsible, among other things, for managing and maintaining the new social order imposed by force and for concealing its class antagonisms between proletariat and employers, sometimes with the carrot and more often with the (fiery) stick, the one that kills. A proletariat made up of these former peasants, forced since then (oh the irony!) to sell their labor power to survive, while producing the food they now have to buy.
Later, they will become factory workers, as part of the industrial machinery. In addition, it is again the nation-state that seeks to develop the market of its own industries on which it depends economically, in foreign countries considered as vast extractivist plains (including slaves), but also to develop trade and the sale of their goods (sustainable development). This development always takes the form of war, whether open (colonialism, coups d’état, nationalist and civil wars, etc.) or latent (EEC, free market agreements, etc.). Hence the constantly renewed illusion of one of the essential categories of capitalism, the state as an instrument of emancipation or sometimes as a possible partner. This began with the diversion of class struggles from the 17th century by a fringe of the labor movement, specifically Social Democracy, operating from the political economy devised by capitalism, which came little by little to bring the workers’ struggle back into the fold of the parties and then to renounce the idea of getting rid of capitalism in order to better adapt it, with the help of Fordism. Since then, we can situate all political parties on the vector of political economy. Thus, they can be designated by names ranging from the right to the left of capital, going to its extremes by including the citizenists, as a form of management of the state enterprise, as an attempt at collective management of its institutions close to the people.
But in addition to a major understanding of the process that has led us to the current impasse, not only on the part of chameleon capitalism itself but also of its opponents situated and stuck on this vector of political economy, what use can history be to us? Well, already implicitly to situate action outside the most glaring logic of political economy and to glimpse other possibilities. Then, if we accept that a real profession, whatever it may be, is passed on from generation to generation, and what is more, that of peasant, but also the learning of the transmission of revolutionary experience, we should take up and rethink our history in order to learn. Learning from the peasant world before this anthropological rupture of the tearing apart of the commons, as well as from attempts to restore it or at least to get out of capitalism and its devouring logic. In these emancipatory attempts, it is as much a question of identifying the mistakes made as it is of the promising possibilities that have come close to realization throughout the world, as well as of updating and contextualizing them.
Otherwise, without counting on the advantage of maximum shared knowledge, how can we create a movement worthy of the name as stipulated by the Atelier paysan, referring to their book as a manifesto. “This manifesto is intended as a contribution to the emergence of a broad popular movement for peasant and food autonomy.”
Could it be that, lacking this knowledge, the Atelier paysan remains hesitant on certain fundamental questions concerning strategy? Thus, the structural question and the dynamic to be instilled in this movement desired by all is not really addressed, that is, the question of the capacity to bear the conflictuality but also the alternatives that the movements in favor of peasant autonomy and the socialization of food must reaffirm in order to bring about social transformation. The Atelier paysan puts forward proposals that are not unlike our own when they state that “It is a whole system of cooperation that needs to be rebuilt; nothing will change in agriculture without the restoration of local capacities for the production of tools, repair and mutual aid.” And as Bookchin tells us: “Sooner or later, any movement for radical social change must confront the way in which people produce the material goods essential to their lives – their food, their housing and their clothing – and the way in which these means of subsistence are distributed. To display polite reticence about the material sphere of human existence, to neglect it with disdain as ‘materialistic’, is to show oneself largely insensitive to the primary conditions of life itself.”
And further on: “our project for society, … is a project for the relocation of the economy (”a moral economy”, quoted elsewhere and as designated by Bookchin), a project of communalization …”
Like us communalists, the Peasant Workshop is also in favor of a strategy of alliance between defensive struggles against capitalist delusions themselves and alternatives for autonomy, but it remains to be determined how to coordinate the numerous social initiatives, especially those concerning food issues, through structures that are at least somewhat sustainable outside the vector of political economy and subsidized unions. This is probably why the Confédération paysanne, mentioned several times in the development of the first four chapters – sometimes as an actor in the radicalization of peasant demands, sometimes as an actor in their normalization – is not mentioned in the last part of the book. There would also be something to say about the “solutions” envisaged, such as Food Social Security, because if it does not depart from the perspective envisaged by Bernard Friot, it will remain stuck on the vector of political economy, a prisoner of the workings of the state and therefore doomed to the defusing of political autonomy and all conceivable autonomies. The same goes for the much-needed settlement of one million farmers over the next ten years. Thus the managerial tendency remains on the lookout, but also the tendency to remain a little too focused on the national scale. It is these last hesitations, like temptations caught up in the darkness of the routine of thinking and acting on the capitalist vector, that cast a shadow over this otherwise luminous work.
What can social ecology and communalism bring us?
Social ecology
Let us coordinate all these struggles, but also the alternatives in the hope of creating a movement structured horizontally from the local level. A local level that is not confined but on the contrary open and which, based on personal means and needs, is open to others in communication, mutual aid and empathy so as to rediscover the desire to live together. This fundamental desire, this joy of striving, of deciding, of working side by side to produce, reducing inequalities and eradicating the poison of domination, is what we essentially need. We also need to collectively imagine our social environment in relation to our essential needs and in accordance with our natural environment. Because what is important is this collective creation based on the initiatives of each and every one of us, that of our own culture and our traditions, always enriched by those of others, through the arts of all kinds and celebration. Finally, all these activities that make us human beings and that have been stolen from us and reduced to caricatural and miserable forms of a single binomial: work/consumption, and everyone in their own corner. In the wake of the Atelier paysan, in tune with their vision of technology, there would still be something to say about what has been stolen from us in terms of our relationship with others, with matter and with the living world, but also in terms of the nature of our activities swallowed up by work. This is the case with the trades of blacksmiths, weavers, shoemakers, cabinetmakers, coopers, bakers, potters, etc., also in the feminine form. With the birth of capitalism and the gradual proletarianization of peasants and artisans in factories and fields, passing through criminal battlefields and concentration camp barracks in the cities, work killed our creative activities, those that ensured our everyday materiality and gave meaning to our lives in relation to all the labors of the village community. No one was expendable, from children to the elderly. “To each according to his or her needs and to each according to his or her abilities.” Currently, in addition to exacerbated specialization and an equally exacerbated division of labor, thanks to technological progress, we have reached a point where almost half of the working population is useless to human society. It only serves to reinforce and maintain the established order of economic sectors and feed the normative bureaucracy. Thus, most of them do not have real jobs, but rather jobs à la con (Graeber). This is the logical consequence of the sectorization, segmentation, separation and specialization imposed by the laws of the international market through competitiveness for the minimum search for production costs and that of the valorization of the optimum value. This is the case in agriculture in particular (agriculture-livestock farming, for example) but also in all other sectors of the economy. Workers, themselves reduced to commodities, are thus following suit in these dynamics, developing other sectors to make up for their lack of time, affection and creativity. Thus these employees, who delegate the grooming of their dog, the delivery of their meals or the care of their children, all accelerating with the platform capitalism of Uber and other Deliveroo. As for the social aspect, while it is true that factory workers had regained a part of their lost community, developing a strong solidarity in their common struggles against the employers, with automation and robotization, the latter has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. And even more so, after the pandemic that glued many workers to their screens. Thus, work has become increasingly specialized and social ties have eroded. We no longer live together but in juxtaposed solitude, with an increasingly pronounced disintegration of social ties and the meaning of what we do or no longer do. Two factors for losing faith in life, hence the increase in mass suicides, and the agricultural sector is no longer the only one to hold the prerogative.
A loss of meaning that we can turn against capital to generate a social and political movement that destroys the Megamachine, but also creates, is consistent, and brings meaning and hope, not only in its utopian perspective but also through our concrete activities leading us there. Because it is a question of strengthening the embryo of society that we are building, but also the capacity and the joy of creating in each and every one of us. As the Atelier paysan (Farmers’ Workshop) so aptly puts it: “There will be no new peasantry in the 21st century without a return to craftsmanship.” Nor will there be the beginnings of a communalist movement and thus a new social project without striving to ensure that “no one is deprived of the possibility of choosing what they eat in full knowledge of the facts.” Adorno said: “the only tenderness lies in the most brutal of demands: that no one should ever go hungry again”. But there can be no significant movement either if it is not driven by a strong breath of self-education, of the promotion of a culture of dialogue capable of dissolving our “egos”. Devastating egos that inhabit many people in social groups and are born of the social-Darwinian values of competition, sexism, racism and anti-Semitism in all its variations that we have each internalized. Having become unconscious, these values act as real enemy moles without our knowledge, as shown by social psychoanalysis such as that of Erich Fromm, among others. The other essential element in this convergence, the binding agent as it were, will be, in addition to the complicity of working together, the common horizon capable of giving it meaning: that of emerging from deadly capitalism, but with the achievements of the past to inspire us and, at the same time, avoid its pitfalls. This is the essence of social ecology, both analysis and a horizon of emancipation without forgetting social integration, starting from the local in its natural environment. His communalist proposal represents the political tool to achieve this.
Commun alism, as a strategy and political proposal
Bookchin’s fundamental idea is the end of the professionalization of a discredited political power, at the service of Capital and disconnected from citizens. Hence his rejection of parties, which he considered as simple machines to conquer power. Also, democracy cannot be representative: power is not delegated, except within a very precise perimeter, under the condition of revocability, with an imperative mandate. This is a “molecular movement deeply rooted in every community and every neighborhood”. Beyond the municipality, the latter interacts with other municipalities through a federation and then a confederation of municipalities, from which delegates are elected who can be dismissed at any time, always on the basis of a binding mandate. They do not have a “carte blanche” that would allow them to act as they please. These delegates only remain for a limited period and are accountable. This avoids professional specialization and the circumvention of the will of the people. We recognize the Zapatista approach and, below, the same goal of a good life that will determine our harmonious relationship with the rest of the natural environment.
“The good life, materially supported by ‘goods’ that are messengers of the ‘good’, is an end in itself: the foundation of a new personality and a new way of life; a continuous learning of association, virtue and decency; a force of resistance to the social, moral and psychological corruption exerted by the market and its unbridled selfishness” … “ … it can only emerge from practice and experience, rather than precepts and examples from the past. But its architects can find some inspiration from many supposedly primitive communities in which the distribution of tools and resources was based on the principle of usufruct and not on private property,” Bookchin tells us.
This imaginary, which is clearly reflected in Zapatista practices and aims, is essential to nourish our hopes and give meaning to our emancipatory words. Focusing on this objective will give us the energy, first to recognize ourselves and then to organize ourselves, to forge links in the synergy between our struggles and our alternatives, in diversity but also in a combined search for a way out of capitalism. But how can we achieve this?
For a communalist strategy here and now
“Know the enemy and, most importantly, know yourself, and you will be unbeatable.” Sun Tzu – The Art of War
The current challenge is daunting at a time when techno-science and digital technology are confusing, blinding and controlling us to the point where we are accepting the fatalism of destruction programmed by the very dynamics of this system. A jolt to the conscience is vital to finally decide to prepare to win this war. We must understand from the outset that no movement with revolutionary pretensions can be born or develop by turning its back on its past. An African proverb says, “If you don’t know where to go, look behind you.” This humility gives us a measure of what we can learn from the revolution in Spain, from the development of this libertarian movement and its unparalleled momentum, nourished by a dialectic between three inseparable elements: practice, theory and dream. An entire strategy developed not by well-known intellectuals but by a collective intelligence developed emotionally in the heat of the moment, in collective struggles and alternative achievements, in close collaboration for a common goal: libertarian communism.
Another important element to take from our Spanish elders, in the here and now action of a constituted movement, is not to wait for the explosion of a revolution to make it happen. It is a question of immediately setting up flexible but solid institutions as the embryo of the world to come. In other words, a parallel society with its own institutions in tension with those of the State and which is already at work. It is this historical fact that informs the essential political proposal of Murray Bookchin’s communalism, which will determine the very essence of the communalist strategy: “The tension between the confederations and the state must remain clear and uncompromising… libertarian municipalism is formed in a struggle against the state, it is strengthened, and even defined by this opposition.” And this until we achieve a balance of power that is favorable to us.
In our current geopolitical context, the political and social question is inextricably linked to that of ecology. It asserts itself on the margins, through practices, in restricted territories, in municipalities and wherever human groups seek to regain control of their lives (housing, small-scale farming, health, energy production and production of essential goods, artistic life, etc.). No alternative project will really succeed without the development of a movement that brings together both the struggles against all domination and for dignity, and the concrete alternatives consciously seeking to move away from capitalism. The need is therefore to increase exchanges between these spaces, to create bonds of solidarity, to anchor them in and between municipalities, regions and internationally. With this communalist culture and practice, the many ongoing experiments in social pedagogy, alternative education, popular education, shared housing and spaces, self-managed production, collective farms, anti-patriarchal and feminist struggles, the fight against digital technology, and active solidarity with migrants and ZADs (occupied zones for the defense of the land) can help enrich this political dynamic, which, starting from the local level, must federate within a territory and confederate beyond it.
Three recent events provide us with fundamental elements for developing a concrete and relevant strategy. The first to consider is undoubtedly the pandemic, which has made a large number of people directly aware of our dependence on large retailers subject to the global market for our food and the healthcare system. This blatant demonstration of our lack of food autonomy has enabled many people to see more clearly. Closer to home and still on the same theme, the Land Rebellions have shown us the way, the determination of a movement to denounce the grabbing of water by the agro-industry, to mobilize forces to achieve victories. Closer to home, the mobilization of farmers throughout Europe denounces the acceleration of the globalization of the agricultural market via free trade agreements, in this case the “Mercosur”, which sacrifices small farmers and prevents us from achieving food autonomy. We have reached the point where the process that began with the enclosures is coming to an end, namely the disappearance of our farmers, both in the North and in the South, converting the land into an energy-consuming and polluting world/factory. This growing awareness that we find ourselves at the mercy of this increasingly fragile food resource machinery shows us the way to find ourselves together, both those fighting and those creating alternatives.
Based on these social movements, we no longer want to delegate our political power but to seize it directly within our popular and decision-making assemblies. And as proposed by the Atelier paysan à la in order to “Take back the land from the machines”: “These struggles, as well as our actions on the ground, must also enable us to experiment and then impose new forms of institutions as the old ones are removed.” This is where the whole process comes in, which must involve all the urban and rural collectives fighting against domination and capitalism in order to create and anchor our own communal self-institutions in tension with that of the State. The world of tomorrow is being built today. It is in these assemblies, in the complicity of reflection and of doing together with a view to a new world, with empathy helping, that we will be able to determine together our real needs in food, thinking of the most deprived and in close collaboration and participation with small farmers, with the aim of repopulating the countryside emptied of its inhabitants. This is a joint creation of the political1 as a strong link within our diversities and inserted in the natural environment. But also a conscious and voluntary move towards a definitive exit from capitalism and towards a social ecology. Currently, and in view of these vital mobilizations that concern everyone, it is advisable to align our strategy with this path of regaining food autonomy, an indispensable ally of political autonomy.
What forces do we have at our disposal? Not potentially but effectively? We have to admit that the balance of power is far from being in our favor due to a lack of support for our proposals but above all due to a lack of organization. And that is where the problem lies, and it is this lack that our strategy must first and foremost address. So if we manage to set this process in motion, we will have taken the first step, which is undoubtedly the most difficult. It is up to all of us to develop this collective intelligence, in constant and determined dialogue to create this unifying, emancipatory movement that brings hope, locally, regionally and beyond. This is what social ecology can contribute, very briefly, to the desire of the Peasant Workshop to regain peasant and food autonomy, but also political autonomy, the two being inseparable.
We recently created the Association l’Adventice and the Workshop for Social Ecology and Communalism. So let’s invite each other between Workshops….
Notes
Text co-written by Dominique, a sympathizer of communalism, and Floréal of the ESC Workshop.
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