I would have thought that the Left, historically being the side for the working class, it would be natural they would be on that side. — unimportant

I’ll just respond in a rather arcane and non-topical fashion to this particular point, without addressing the main question. Some of the most influential socialists have of course been Marxists, and Marxists are traditionally hostile to farmers and peasants, seeing them not as proletarians but as petit bourgeois, and as standing in the way of capitalist development, i.e., the only route to communism. For Marxists, only the proletariat is revolutionary—everyone else being presumed at least non- and often counter-revolutionary.

And even though Leninism rejected the idea that capitalist development must be seen through to completion before communism is possible, the Bolsheviks only spoke with approval of the peasants because they needed their support; they later abused and exploited them.

So, farmers worldwide have never forgiven socialists for the Bolshevik ban of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1922, the only powerful political party in Russia rooted in the peasantry.

(That last sentence is a joke, though it has a kernel of truth, namely that there is no necessary affinity between farmers and the Left and that farmers are not necessarily wrong to distrust the Left)

It could just be that farmers vote for policies that suit them.

I imagine more conservative values suit rural life and tradition in the face of an increasingly difficult area of production?

Are farmers 'working class'? It is a pretty specialised job that requires numerous skills as far as I know. It is not exactly just manual labour, you have people having to manage complex system that can fail if the weather turns.

I would be surprised to find any farmers leaning hard to the left. They are living a long held tradition that has shaped the British countryside. It woudl be more peculiar to find them looking to change things up.

I think the conservatives pander to the working man with the short term gains like diesel price capping, and from what I have been told, greater subsidies for farmers, and things like that but long term I would say not. — unimportant

My intuition is this:
Farming, like heavy production, is such a fundamental process. They are not created in one day or one year and are calculated for a long time. It's painstaking, slow work that doesn't like swings and change. For this category, a dynamically changing world is a challenge.

I will share my experience. Once, I was in a state in which everything can change in one day. I had the opportunity to organize the cultivation of hops. But I gave up on the idea because the horizon was opening up for a decade to come. The lack of solid soil under my feet due to my uncertainty about politics - became the reason that I did not make a choice in favor of farming

I would have thought that the Left, historically being the side for the working class, it would be natural they would be on that side. — unimportant

There was a book I looked at once - didn't read it - called "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" by Thomas Frank. It was very much about the rightward drift in the rural heartland of the US. And that was published in 2004, but seems to me still pretty current. If anything it's become even more pronounced. You can find some details of the book onWikipedia.

More recent titles on similar themes:

"The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker" by Katherine J. Cramer (2016): This is a highly influential ethnographic study that directly examines the concept of "rural consciousness" – how rural residents perceive themselves as distinct from and often disrespected by urban dwellers, and how this shapes their political views. It provides a deeper, on-the-ground understanding of the resentment Frank alluded to.

"White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy" by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman (2024): A very recent and provocative book that directly addresses the disproportionate political power of white rural voters and argues that their grievances, combined with a susceptibility to conspiracy theories and anti-democratic sentiments, pose a significant risk to American democracy.

"The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America" by Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea (2024): This book offers a comprehensive analysis based on extensive survey data of rural voters. It delves into their sense of place, economic anxieties, and perceived belittlement, arguing that these factors are more central to their voting behavior than often assumed.

"Building a Resilient Twenty-First-Century Economy for Rural America" by Don E. Albrecht (2020): Focuses more on the economic realities of rural decline, examining specific communities affected by the loss of traditional industries (manufacturing, mining, agriculture) and how these economic shifts impact political choices.

"Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Rural Culture War" by Joe Bageant (2007): A raw and personal account from a journalist returning to his rural roots, exploring the cultural and economic frustrations that fuel conservative populism.

I'm not sure about Britain specifically, but left/right seem like outdated terms these days - warped and abused to score quick points with easily-misled, tribalist voters.

The majority of politicans and political parties aren't left or right - they're corrupt to a point of having no principles whatsoever. The small minority that isn't corrupt is usually dysfunctional in some other way.

The problem, as far as my own frame of reference goes, is that government hasn't just grown corrupt, but also hugely out of proportion and completely useless. So people are being overtaxed and otherwise controlled by a powerful, overbearing nanny state, which in turn does nothing for them.

People then turn to the Leviathan's natural enemy: classical liberalism, which the right pretends to be. (but actually is ran by/beholden to the same type of grifters). If by some miracle actual change threatens to happen, the system resists from within, for example via a deeply partisan bureaucracy.

Corruption is a one-way street that leads to a dead end. We are now at that dead end, where solutions and prospect for change no longer exist. People are led in circles that always end up with them getting shafted, no matter who they vote for.

There's no chance for meaningful change in the current political climate. We're living in pre-revolutionary times.

@unimportant Why are 90% of farmers very right wing?

First off, age is a factor. The percentage of Brits engaged in farming is 1.4% of the total workforce. This translates to around 462,000 people, according to GOV.UK. In the United States, farm and ranch families comprise less than 2% of the U.S. population. As a group farmers tend to be aging (the number of young people becoming farmers is small).

"Farmers" and "farm workers" are not quite the same thing. The "farmer" is in charge; "farm workers" are hired help who come and go as needed. Their politics might be quite different than the farm owner.

Second, per the marxist terminology, farmers are petite bourgeoisie. They own their farm business. The petite bourgeoisie, as a group, tend to be politically and socially conservative. Social / political change may upset business and markets, for instance, as it has in the United States-- per the trade politics of the current CONSERVATIVE president and congress.

As a group, rural people -- small town residents, rural non-farm businessmen, the elderly, etc. tend to be conservative -- at least socially, if not politically. I grew up in this kind of rural, small town environment. I was very happy to leave. There is less change-seeking, change-making, change-tolerance there.

Out-flow is another factor. A lot of people born in small towns and on farms leave when they complete high school, seeking opportunity. They may go to college in a usually large city, or they may work in a large city, and never return as permanent residents. So, those most likely to be change-agents, or quite liberal, or gay, or ambitious, get the hell out of Dodge. That leaves the conservative... residue.

That's a good point, although today, the working class of rural areas, (the closest analog to the peasantry in the electorate?) is also very right wing, whereas they were a favored group vis-á-vis mobilization for many socialists.

I always assumed the original resistance of independent farmers to socialism was that land reform rarely distinguished between large landlords and smaller farms (and that forced collectivization was a disaster, plus the whole kulak designation, or similar schemes in China—both later developments, but foreshadowed early on by some policies). Had land reform been handled better, it might not have shaken out that way. Socialists did have some success in agrarian areas in Russia or the US for instance. That's one of Frank's (mentioned by ) points; leftward agrarian populism was at times quite successful.

I'd say it's partly a positive feedback loop, which Frank recognizes, but is spelled out better by some others (e.g., Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed). Essentially, the social/economic policies of classical liberalism end up eroding the culture, norms, and institutions that conservative liberals want to conserve. It's a self-undermining platform. The situation re one set of goals becomes increasingly dire, even as success is had in the other dimension. Contrast the extreme success of neo-liberal economic policies, versus the lack of any such success in the cultural arena for instance.

It's interesting that a "socially liberal but economically conservative," bloc has thrived within the GOP (the "nu-right"), but there is no parallel "socially conservative but economically liberal," camp in the Democratic Party.

I always assumed the original resistance of independent farmers to socialism was that land reform rarely distinguished between large landlords and smaller farms (and that forced collectivization was a disaster, plus the whole kulak designation, or similar schemes in China—both later developments, but foreshadowed early on by some policies). Had land reform been handled better, it might not have shaken out that way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep.

Some good points here, thanks.

The one I will take up right away is the petite bourgeois which makes sense now y'all mention it and that they don't want to spoil a good thing. Now I read that I do remember on a communism documentary it had a bit explaining that as soon as the socialists got into power - don't recall if it was China or Russia but it matters not - one of the first things they did is take the grain and property away from the farmers and made it communal.

The comments by Jamal about the current farmers still 'remembering' socialist russia seems a little far fetched, lol. Maybe in the countries that happened, sure.

I very much doubt the average farmer in rural UK has any inkling of those things.

It could just be that farmers vote for policies that suit them. — I like sushi

Indeed, Ockam's razor but it will suit them because of the above reasons.

Hold on...that just brought me to another question. I recall from our discussions about communism/anarchism that they take pains to say that the proletariat are dis-empowered because they lack ownership of land so does that mean if a serf manages to improve their station and gets their own land they immediately become an enemy of the socialist and de facto petite bourgeoisie? :)

t's interesting that a "socially liberal but economically conservative," bloc has thrived within the GOP (the "nu-right"), but there is no parallel "socially conservative but economically liberal," camp in the Democratic — Count Timothy von Icarus

That used to define the majority of democrats in big cities as well as in the South. The civil rights movement stripped away the dixie-crats from the party, and the Democrats’ turn to post-sixties social liberalism pushed the rest of them to Reagan and then Trump.

Farmer's work begins before the rising sun and ends after the last vestiges of sunset. The only security they have comes from their own efforts, while in the big cities, social democrats pound the drums for large unions like the UAW, while looking down on flyover country as they commute from coast to coast. There is a tendency for city dwellers to think the country folk beneath them, with jokes and demeaning comments. Why should it be surprising that farmers move to the party that supports individual efforts and responsibility?

Simply, farmers spend their time away from urban areas. Urban areas are where cultures mix, new ideas circulate, where you are constantly exposed to different peoples, different lifestyles, different faiths. By necessarily to live in an urban area you must have a reasonable tolerance of change.

Moreover, urban landscapes are always changing. Cities can change dramatically in a single generation. Whereas farms change much more slowly.

Cities require a tolerance of difference and change. Not only do they change their inhabitants, but there is a self selection effect. Those that do not tolerate cities avoid them.

Since farms are inhabited by self selected conservatives, they will be culturally conservative. This is a further reinforcement, as cultural conservatives prefer to be around others like them.

All this adds up to a striking effect in the US: step outside any US city, even in a blue state, and you are assaulted by Trump flags, Trump signs, enormous pickup trucks sporting 4 trump flags, etc.

Farming, like heavy production, is such a fundamental process. They are not created in one day or one year and are calculated for a long time. It's painstaking, slow work that doesn't like swings and change. For this category, a dynamically changing world is a challenge. — Astorre

I was going to say something along these lines. There's a Roman story that some Roman was out farming and some foreigners came over the hill to attack. The Roman put on his armor, went out and kicked ass, and was back behind the plow in 16 days. Farmers need stable borders. They aren't looking for adventure. They aren't trying to save the world.

Today I was reading Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848–1849 by Christopher Clark. It describes some of the counter-revolutionary acts of the German farmers and their generally suspicious or contemptuous attitude to the urban liberals and working class radicals. Urban movements demanding employment were looked down upon by the farmers and peasants as ragtag mobs of unemployable layabouts.

It occurred to me that this was because economic and social change was affecting urban workers much more than it was affecting rural inhabitants, but all the farmers could see from their relatively stable social and economic positions were lazy vagabonds. As a result, they began to see their relative stability as under threat from those urban radicals.

And as has often been the case, those urban radicals failed to reach out to the farmers and peasants who might have supported them.

Absolutely. Not just that, when they are reached out to, it tends to be condescending. And condescending to people who work manual labour for decades is probably not a good move.

I don't know but all I know is that rural britain is extremely right wing and I am wondering if it has always been like this or something that precipitated in recent years. I could not speak on any other country. Just my the experience of my own country. — unimportant

Same in the US. See map below.

Aesop's fables (500BC) enshrined that political polarization in the story of the liberal City Mouse and the conservative Country Mouse. Back then, cities were the exception to the rule. But in modern cultures the country mice still seem to view the sybaritic city mice as immoral and living in squalor, crime, & fear. Moreover, the city mice are weak & interdependent, while the country mice are strong & independent. Today, most right-wingers live in or near a city, but feel that they live above it. Today, the difference is more a state of mind, than a place on the map. :cool:


LIBERAL BIDEN CITIES vs CONSERVATIVE TRUMP COUNTRY

A good pragmatic reply.

Today, most right-wingers live in or near a city — Gnomon

Really? My experience would be attune more to Hypericin's that they are in the country for the reasons they mentioned. Where did you get the idea they are in the city? Your image does not prove they live in the city, from what I can see; it is showing states and their denomination, not city.

Today, most right-wingers live in or near a city — Gnomon
Really? My experience would be attune more to Hypericin's that they are in the country for the reasons they mentioned. Where did you get the idea they are in the city? Your image does not prove they live in the city, from what I can see; it is showing states and their denomination, not city. — unimportant

I live in a conservative Southern state, so even city-dwellers tend toward the right-wing. But mainly what I meant by that remark was that the country mouse conservatives have traditionally been either farmers, working the soil, of small-towners providing services for farmers. Yet today, in the US, most farming is done by machines --- factory farms --- and most small towns are now suburbs of large cities. So, in my small city, when you see a man wearing cowboy boots & hats, odds are that he drives a pickup truck as a political image statement, not for working the soil or riding horses.

What you don't see on the US map, is that the red states, especially in the West, are mostly unpopulated, and the few citizens live in small cities, like DesMoines, Iowa. Thousands of acres of wheat & corn are grown on "factory farms, and the grub-work laborers are mostly migrant Mexicans. However, in the Eastern Megalopolis*1, it's the opposite : very little non-urban land, but a significant percentage of the population votes Conservative. So, again, Right-Wing is more an indication of social-group than of location or occupation. They may no longer be rural or urban working class, but they identify with them.

Also, for many if not most Conservatives, their political leaning is determined by their religion. In the US, the most popular religions are Protestant, and a significant number are labeled as "Christian Right". Even the sweat-labor Catholic Mexicans tend to vote Conservative, if they vote at all. English religions may be different, so I suspect that British Conservatives may be less motivated by religion than by a reaction to years of Liberal politics, that favored big cities instead of small towns. For them, the ancient libertine City vs puritan Country mouse dichotomy may still apply. :smile:

PS___ My farm-raised father worked in a steel mill, and joined the workers union. But his political leanings were mostly influenced by his conservative protestant religion. So. even though he appreciated the wage & work-condition improvements, he did not like the socialist rhetoric in union hall meetings.



*1. Conservative Elites Prefer Living in Progressive Elite Cities
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/conservative-elites-prefer-living

Your experience in the UK is, of course, going to be different than someone living in the US. Below are two maps (neither of them up to the minute current) that display the correlation between rural / conservative and urban / liberal. 125 years ago, the Prohibition amendment was passed because of the then-disproportionate representation in congress of "dry" rural voters vs. "wet" urban voters. That disproportional arrangement was later corrected through legislation. Bu Wyoming's population of 588,000 still gets the same number of senators as California's 39 million.

Haha, a lot of American terms going over my head - flyover state, country mouse and political terms that are lost on me. :) Doesn't matter though; I get the gist of the posts.

Your experience in the UK is, of course, going to be different than someone living in the US. — BC

That is why I invoked Hypericin's post which I agreed with and assumed, perhaps wrongly but since the replies have been US centric so far thought it a fair bet, they were from the states.

My mother has worked for the council, what we also call the government, on the local level and she told me that ironically, it is the opposite here in that the farmers don't like Labour because they are more city focused in their policies while the Conservatives I suppose must at least give some more scraps to the farmers to make them for them even though in the end the latter are still looking after their old boy's club of each other, but that is true of Labour too I think. I remember that is your point made in my other thread where there is another class above which they look after in either party rather than the people.

Below are two maps (neither of them up to the minute current) that display the correlation between rural / conservative and urban / liberal — BC

Why is Alaska more conservative than the average? I thought it was a very cold, dry territory, far from being farmland, and the towns are necessarily urban to provide power to people. Furthermore, Alaska also has small islets, right? So it can promote the fish economic sector. I don't know. I believe the territory and circumstances of Alaska are different from Arkansas and Utah.

That is a good question, why Alaska is more conservative than average. There are only about 740,000 people there, spread out over an area 3 times the size of Spain. Fishing is big; so are oil and mining, as well as tourism. Probably "rugged individualism" is a factor as it is in many of the conservative states. Picture Clint Eastwood and similar gun slingers in movies.

I live in a "flyover" state. It means a state that elites on the east and west coast aren't interested in, so they fly over rather than it being a destination. Actually, most of the middle of the country is flyover territory, with the exception of Chicago and Texas.

The distribution of liberals and conservatives in the American population is a murky issue. Take the southeastern United States. As a group, they tend to be quite conservative. They tend to be in favor of limiting government and government spending. However, these same states receive and benefit from more federal spending than most liberal Staes, which tend to receive less federal spending.

This fetish about limiting government is long-standing, going back to pre-civil war times, when plantation owners didn't want their own states to have too much power, never mind the federal government.

Protestant religion has fueled both liberals and conservatives. It depends on the brand of protestant. The Puritans who established themselves in New England in the 17th century believed that the state (government) could be used as a vehicle to perfect society. This became an article of faith among yankees -- aka, New Englanders. As the population of the US grew, and people moved westward, the yankees mostly settled new states in the north and midwest -- Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, etc. They held onto their belief in the utility of an active government -- a hallmark of liberal politics. Hence, the states of the North, New England, and Midwest are generally liberal and end up on the high end of social indexes--health, education, infrastructure, welfare programs, and so on.

The South was established by a different brand of Englishman than the North was. Their brand of religion was more likely to be evangelical or Anglican-establishment oriented, and activism by the government tended to be viewed as unhealthy and interfering. The South (running from the SE coast to west of Texas) has thus had hostility toward the Federal government and has maintained low taxation and weak state governments. As a result, they have tended to end up on the low end of social indexes--health, education, infrastructure, welfare programs, and so on.

Farmers tend to be conservatives in liberal states, which is ironic since farmers are usually the beneficiaries of government farm subsidy programs. A liberal state like Minnesota can have consistently conservative congressional districts, like the SE Minnesota district I grew up in.

Swimming pools of ink have been expended trying to explain how this all works on the individual/city/county/state/national level. If it seems confusing, welcome to the club.

I live in rural Norfolk and used to work as a polling clerk during elections. I remember seeing the older farmers ( there are not many young farmers) coming to vote who were all the same. They were staunchly conservative, anti immigration and weirdly pro Brexit.

So the trend in these parts is simple to understand. They were mostly coming into farming during the Thatcher years and enjoyed the prosperity it brought. This included the increase in land values, which have now become inflated. And they have witnessed the increase in immigration in the local towns, of mainly Polish people, which many of the more old fashioned and older people dislike.

There is a trend of people of the ages from about 60-80 who felt the prosperity of Thatcher and bought into the Thatcher ideology. Of careful financial management and the entrepreneurial spirit. This aligned well with what farmers do. They have to manage large budgets carefully, often with a small return on investments and run a successful small business.

These ideologies were hammered home through the predominantly right wing press. Along with similar campaigns spreading anti socialist ideology. Farmers were often not educated at University, or exposed to liberal, or socially progressive movements. Where the credibility of left wing policy could become understood. So they were more likely to be swayed by the Tory propaganda. Which probably explains the numbers of farmers who were pro Brexit (about 55%), something which was not in their interests. Because farming was propped up by CAP. They European Common Agriculture Policy, which subsidised farmers, quite heavily. To think, that they thought that a Conservative government would replace that with something as generous. Wonders never cease.

For the purposes of the OP, conservative means Socially conservative.

Farmers get the benefit of socialism even if they vote against socialism, so they reap the rewards of socialism for themselves and deny it to everyone else.

(And I'm using the word socialism here loosely as, benefitting from money gained from taxes - US farmers are heavily government-subsidized)

So it's a win-win for them - all the benefit for themselves and no one else. Very cool farmers.

Farmers are right wing because they have traditional religious values, they don't trust the intellectual elite, they are generally self sufficient, and they don't sympathize with policies that excuse what they see as inappropriate conduct (which they view as city life generally).

I don't think any of this makes sense under a Marxist lens in the US. US politics hasn't been shaped by Marxist tensions except to the extent the ideology has been suppressed and rightfully villainized. It's not that Marxist views have been anti-farmer. It's that Marxist views are considerd anti-American.

My response better answers the question of why farmers aren't Democrats. Many of the responses here are to why they're not socialists. There is no meaningful socialist movement in the US, farmer or not.

To the extent there s a socialist movement in the US, it explains why Trump won.

There is no meaningful socialist movement in the US, — Hanover

To the extent there s a socialist movement in the US, it explains why Trump won. — Hanover

:chin:

I think there is an even simpler explanation available. It is that agricultural work is inherently conservative. It relies on stability, predictable patterns and yields, and only incremental improvements. The farmer has a tried and true method of sustaining life, and he will not jeopardize that method with newfangled progressive ideas. He has a strong and realistic sense of what is possible given the tangible constraints of nature that he is so familiar with. He is not going to shoot for the moon and thereby risk losing what has taken so long to carefully develop. In general he is less ideational and more concrete, whereas progressives are the opposite.