We should not reward farmers with money, but with access to their immediate needs
During the French Revolution, the provinces starved the large towns, and killed the Revolution, and yet the production of grain in France during 1792–3 had not diminished. Evidence shows that it had even increased. But after having taken possession of the land, and after having reaped a harvest from them, the peasants would not part with their grain for paper-money. They withheld their produce, waiting for a rise in the price, or the introduction of gold. The most rigorous measures of the National Convention were without avail, and their executions failed to break up the ring, or force the farmers to sell their corn. For it is a matter of history that the commissaries of the Convention did not hesitate to guillotine those who withheld their grain from the market, and pitilessly executed those who speculated in food. All the same, the corn was not forthcoming, and the townsfolk suffered from famine.
But what was offered to the farmer in exchange for this hard work? Money, scraps of paper decreasing in value every day, promises of payment, which could not be kept. A £40 note would not purchase a pair of boots, and the peasant, very naturally, was not anxious to barter a year’s work for a piece of paper with which he could not even buy a shirt. As long as worthless paper-money is offered to the peasant-producer it will always be the same. The country will withhold its produce, and the towns will suffer from want, even if the recalcitrant peasants are guillotined as before.
We must offer to the farmer in exchange for their work not worthless paper-money, but the goods of which they stand in immediate need. All these things, under present conditions, the farmer is forced to do without, not because thye do not feel the need of them, but because, in their life of struggle and privation, a thousand useful things are beyond their reach; because they simply have no money to buy them. Let the people apply itself to manufacturing all that the peasant needs, instead of useless entertainment for the wealthy.
Let the people send no more inspectors to convey to the farmer orders to take their produce here or there, but let them instead send embassies to them and speak with them in a freindly way, saying to them “Bring us your produce, and take from our stores and shops all the goods you please.” Then provisions would pour in on every side. The farmer would only withhold what they needed for their own use, and would send the rest into the cities, feeling for the first time in the course of history that the people were freinds, and not their exploiters.
We shall be told, perhaps, that this would necessitate a complete transformation of industry. Well, yes, that is true of certain departments; but there are other branches which could be rapidly modified in such a way to support the farmer.
References
- Kropotkin, Peter. (1892). The Conquest of Bread Chapter 5. Food (p. 120).