HIAW is back with our tenth episode! In this one we wonder: what are the roots of the poverty of rural life in America?
The American Dream always included self-sufficiency and independence and nothing represented this more than the family farm. This form of petty commodity production used to be a backbone of 'middle class' life in America, but now less than 2% of the population engages in it. Alongside we have seen an opiate epidemic, material deprivation, deaths of despair and more. What can political economy tell us about the rural crisis?
Part 2 of 2.
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Music: Eddy Huntington - USSR Disco Vaporwave
Suggested Readings:
Ellan Meiksins Wood - The Origins of Capitalism: a Longer View
Jainus Banaji - Theory as History
Gred Grandin - The End of the Myth
Ed. - The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe
Charles Post - The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class Structure
G.M. Tamas - Telling the Truth About Class