Rural Conditions and Class Composition
The development of conditions in America’s rural regions are often difficult to reconcile with revolutionary theory and practice. The development of conditions in the hinterlands of the United States are frequently overlooked, despite the importance these places might play in a revolutionary situation. The strategies of Che Guevara and the Chinese Communist Party were primarily based upon the building of base areas in the countryside. While the former failed due to lack of popular support in rural base areas and the latter succeeded, the conclusion that rural regions are essential to the revolution remains a theme between the two.
The development of conditions in rural regions are incredibly ripe to build class solidarity. Many small towns have local monopolies run by single corporations. For instance, some towns only have a single grocery store (a Dollar General or Family Dollar, typically) and either one or two major employers. In Kirksville, Missouri, this was Walmart and the Kraft meat-packing plant, while in Milan, Missouri, the Smithfield plant was most economically important. Small businesses that do exist are short-lived. Meanwhile, thrift stores and missionary organizations provide the cheapest means of purchasing essential clothing and books. Shipping and other communications infrastructure are incredibly limited. There are two internet providers in Kirksville, one in Milan and Macon, Missouri. There are government sponsored monopolies on utilities, as in other places.
Most people buy their groceries through Walmart or Casey’s. Convenience stores are the most accessible to those who have no transportation in Kirksville. Public transit exists in the form of cab or bus fares, but the poorest residents cannot afford either of these. The poorest residents theoretically have access to food banks, and are usually disabled or service, or industrial workers. The difficulty with the food banks are that the oppressed have no means of driving there or getting public transportation. There is a single cab service in Kirksville, but the industrial workers, disabled, and homeless do not have access to this without aid from community organizations. Most charitable organizations have religious affiliations, such as the Salvation Army or Baptist Mission, and these organizations are reactionary. They might scorn non-binary or non-heterosexual individuals because of this. Some of them express reactionary political positions with regards to gender, sexuality, and family planning. This means that premarital pregnancy rates and rates of venereal disease are high, and single-parent households are frequent. There are few people who qualify for health insurance through employers in these areas. Either they are self-employed, employed part-time, or employed by a small business.
Rates of doctors to persons are as high as 1700 to one in some rural regions, less than the national average of countries such as Ethiopia and other imperialized regions. Quality measures of healthcare have also reflected such trends. Rate of single-family housing is low. The majority of people in rural regions live with people who are non-family members, particularly in Kirksville, Missouri, but also in smaller towns such as Novinger, Missouri, Macon, Milan, and Edina. Food banks in these areas experienced sharp increases in demand as people struggled during the pandemic, and will likely continue to do so. Food prices have increased significantly. The meat-packing and other industries were forced to shut down multiple times, meaning that many of the employees experienced gaps in income. Most small businesses failed or struggled, excluding those that sold essential goods, including low-cost clothing.
The class makeup of the rural United States is primarily divided into two groups: industrial and post-industrial proletariats. There are very few freeholders left in the agricultural regions, where large agribusinesses have bought farms and now lease them to the farmers. While this is the case, Adair County, where Kirksville is located, has a rate of home ownership of roughly 60%. Rates in the city of Kirksville are at roughly 45%. Even so, foreclosures and forfeiture of “owned” homes are also common. I spoke with one family who experienced this firsthand, and were evicted from their home, and I helped them move out and pay bills. These people were both queer individuals, and this did not aid their situation; one was socially transitioning, living with his husband.
The ethnic backgrounds of people in the region are mixed, but primarily white. There is a significant minority of colonized people, primarily recent immigrants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These people struggle with colonial oppression in the form of a language barrier (many speak French or Lingala) or outright discrimination and threats. There have been several efforts to intimidate the Congolese and the other colonized minorities: Asian and Latinx people. These have mostly taken the form of either people wandering the streets at night with confederate flags (reported in north Kirksville, 2017–18), flyers posted on utilities poles (reported in downtown, 2019), or flyers posted on campus of the local university, Truman State (reported south Kirksville, 2018). There is a white supremacist who has issued death threats to local Jews and runs a white supremacist website; a group of locals have taken down his address in order to protect those threatened.
Employers often take advantage of local colonized immigrant populations to prevent unionization. They often place people in the work line based on their inability to communicate with one another, leading to dangerous work conditions. The meat-packing industry that established itself in much of northern Missouri has high rates of injury amid 12 hour workdays. The typical schedule is 5 or 6 12-hour days, a total of a 60 or 72 hour work-week. One worker in this industry reported chronic pains for which he self-medicated with marijuana, and subsequently lost his job. He also suffered from epilepsy, and frequently avoided going to the doctor or emergency room due to the high expense.
There are two universities in Kirksville, but they operate in a strange perversion of the colonial relation between the community outsiders and permanent city residents. The residents of Kirksville resent the economic privilege of the students, who are on average 75% white and have household incomes of over $100,000. The average household income in Kirksville is roughly $29,000. Landlords increase rents due to the high student population, who often seek off-campus housing, leading to higher rents throughout the city of Kirksville. Exploiting the division between the city’s permanent population and the students living there, the landlords foster discord between the two, posing a barrier to tenant organizing.
With regards to the local government, nobody much cares for the city council. The majority the city councilors are landlords, meaning that they are invested in economically disadvantaging tenants. This meant that the proposed homeless shelter that was to be opened in 2020 was barred by the city administration. The attempts of “Progressive” elements to run for city council resulted in one person being elected in 2019, but no policy changes whatsoever — this is unsurprising. Areas such as Kirksville are rife with opportunity for communists wishing to organize them. The main barrier is the level of political consciousness of the masses in the region. Most of the most marginalized groups have low levels of political consciousness, and the raising of this political consciousness has been a difficult process. While many people take part in “legitimate elections” in rural areas, the majority do not put any faith whatsoever in the national government that never seems to listen to their problems. Most people either dislike or are indifferent to either “legitimate political party.”
The growing illegitimacy of the American regime poses a great opportunity in rural areas, where there is great discontent and social instability. The goal of communists in these regions should be to bolster the masses’ political consciousness and properly direct it into class conflict against the oppressors. In rural regions this is primarily a conflict between employer-employee and landlord-tenant. The organization of these areas are of vital strategic interest to revolutionaries.
