The Changing Times and Role of Peasant Identity

In 1967, a famous French sociologist named Henri Mendras wrote a book titled The End of the Peasantry. At that time, France was at the end of a period of rapid urbanization, the agricultural labor force was shrinking, and large numbers of young and middle-aged people were leaving for the cities, so the "peasants," as opposed to urban citizens, gradually dwindled and disappeared. Within a single generation, France witnessed the transformation of a thousand-year-old civilization: the agricultural laborers who provided food for society shrank to only one third of their former number in 30 years, and from 1946 to 1975, France's agricultural labor force fell from 32.6% to 9.5%. At the same time, rural society achieved astonishing development, and both those who moved to the cities and those who stayed in the countryside to keep farming no longer seemed to be "peasants" in the traditional sense. The end of the traditional "peasant" naturally brought about the birth of a new type of "peasant."

Today, France is already the EU's leading agricultural power, not only the EU's largest exporter of crops but also its largest exporter of meat. French farmers must have agricultural knowledge, and only those with qualifications can farm. The French countryside is clean and beautiful, and farmers live in comfort and leisure. France currently has about 300,000 farmers, accounting for 0.5% of the total population. Their per capita arable land reaches 50 hectares, so in this sense most of them are farm owners, and their income is no lower than that of ordinary company employees in the cities. They not only enjoy labor insurance but can also take a certain amount of vacation time each year. For every sale of grain, cattle, sheep and so on, farmers can receive a certain amount of agricultural subsidies upon presenting vouchers, and they can also recover part of the value-added tax when purchasing agricultural supplies. The French government's support for agricultural development is reflected not only in agricultural subsidy policies and a "zero agricultural tax policy" but also in social security. By paying old-age social insurance as well as residence tax and land tax, farmers can obtain the same social security as urban residents. They can see a doctor for free, and upon reaching retirement age they can also receive a pension.

In the UK, since large numbers of serfs evolved into yeoman farmers from the late Middle Ages onward, the structure of the yeomanry as a whole has also undergone profound changes, gradually dividing to produce wealthy farmers and hired laborers. As the scale of production gradually expanded, the farmers who became wealthy were no longer peasants in the traditional sense. They lived in affluence and engaged in capitalist-style agricultural operations, and many even hired some laborers. Their status even drew ever closer to that of the gentry, knights and other classes, and the boundaries became increasingly blurred, while their economic and political status kept rising. Today, the UK's agricultural labor force accounts for only 1.4% of the national labor force. Farm owners live a leisurely and affluent life relying on subsidies from the EU and the UK government, and enjoy every kind of citizen welfare benefit that the UK has to offer. In North America and some developed countries in Asia, the main form of agricultural production organization is still the family farm, and agriculture remains a traditional industry that is highly valued and protected. Compared with other industries such as manufacturing and services, the taxes farmers pay are noticeably lower. In addition to tax preferences, there are also agricultural subsidies and insurance subsidies, and "farmers" and urban residents and citizens no longer differ in status. Looking across the countries of the world, especially those in Europe, North America and Asia that evolved from traditional agricultural countries into modern industrialized countries, all of them underwent changes in peasant identity during their industrialization and modernization. The transformation of the peasant class, or rather identity, was mostly carried out through two channels. The first was the path of exploiting peasants in the early Industrial Revolution, prompting peasants to go bankrupt or become unemployed in large numbers through industrialization and mechanization, pushing surplus rural labor to move to the cities, and promoting the formation of a professionalized farmer class through industrialization-driven large-scale and mechanized agriculture. The second was the development path of protecting farmers in the form of welfare farmers in the later stage of the Industrial Revolution. Through legislation to protect agriculture and farmers, using strong economic strength to subsidize agriculture and farmers, promoting education and training for agricultural workers and farmers, raising their quality, and giving rise to modern agriculture and a new type of farmer.

To this day, whether in China or in the West, whether in academia or across all sectors of society, whether rural sociologists, anthropologists or economists, all face enormous difficulty and confusion when discussing what exactly a "peasant" is. Few nouns are as hard to define as "peasant." Since the 1960s, Western academia has seen a debate arise over the definition of "peasant." By the mid-1970s, a German scholar even complained that the debate over how to define "peasant" had dragged on so long that quite a few people thought continuing such discussion was a sheer waste of time and energy. Now it appears that this discussion will continue. In contemporary developed countries, "farmer" is already entirely an occupational concept, referring to people who operate farms and engage in agriculture. This concept stands alongside other occupations, and like other employed people, they all have the same civil rights; there is only a difference of occupation, with no difference or boundary of identity or rank. Today, China's "peasant" is still only an identity that one has no room or right to choose after birth. Since the reform and opening up, and especially in the past dozen or so years, the identity nature of the "peasant" has changed enormously, but bringing about a thorough change will still be a relatively long process. To achieve a truly equal transformation from identity-based peasant to occupational farmer, resident and citizen is not merely a natural choice of economic and social development; it also requires the protection and facilitation of political and legal institutions. To advance the path of new industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics, to promote deep integration of informatization and industrialization, positive interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and mutual coordination between urbanization and agricultural modernization, to promote the synchronized development of industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization, and to achieve comprehensive and harmonious social and economic development, it is necessary to realize the transformation and transition of the "peasant" from identity to occupation, to realize the transition from the urban-rural "dual" structure to a "unified" one, and to complete the true transformation of the "peasant" in terms of identity.