When peasants become migrants: Some unlearned lessons

Examined here is peasant/migrant nexus, or what happens – and ought to happen – to the peasantry as it is increasingly transformed into migrant labour, as reflected in the different paths followed by Marxism and populism. When in the past German capitalists used foreign migrants to displace existing workers, leftists responded by discarding class and socialism in favour of a populist mobilisation based on national/ethnic/peasant essentialisms, facilitating the rise of fascism. A similar pattern is evident currently, many on the left endorsing ‘new’ populist postmodern views of open-door migration as desirable because empowering in terms of identity politics, now as then the ideological domain of the far right. The weakness of a leftist ability to counter this development is underlined by difficulties contained in the way four case studies misinterpret or ignore Marxist definitions of peasant and worker, together with concepts such as the reserve army of labour, and the difference between free and unfree production relations.