Stoller:
Everytime one more peasant is expropriated from the land, the spectre increases. . .: Spectre of what? Communism, or fascism? The various militias of the United States often contain ex-farmers who lost it all to the bank and agribusiness. I don't see those people drifting to the left. If anything, they equate agribusiness and the banks, along with the U.S. government, of conspiring to steal the land and place it into the hands of a small, elite group, and they readily call this process...communism.
OBVIOUSLY expropriated peasants and small proprietors may seek either communist or fascist solutions to their problems.
The historic vacillation of this class is WHY socialist revolution must ALWAYS be initiated by the proletariat (who alone has nothing to lose but his / her chains). And the historic treachery of this class is also sufficient to argue in favor of a revolutionary vanguard to keep the proletariat steeled against ideological reaction from the peasants and small proprietors.
Communism requires centralization and rationalization (of the means of production) in order to PLAN production for human needs (instead of the profits for a minority). This---UNLIKE merger capitalism---does NOT mean that the social relations that accompany the mode of production necessarily have to be the same. Indeed, a socialist economy would have VERY different social relations (no profits, no bosses, etc., etc.) from the ones we know know (under the boot of capitalist dictatorship) although centralization and rationalization wiould exist in order to plan production (socialistically).
None.
