Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Idiocy of Rural Life

Does this sound like today's greens: "...[capitalism] has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West."

I'm sure you'd stumble over the "idiocy of rural life".  But this is from Mr. Marx, in his "The Communist Manifesto", although he said "The bourgeoisie has...."  It seems "idiocy" is a mistranslation; "isolation" would be better.  See the explanation  here (it's towards the bottom of the page).

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