11/29/2025
Probably unpopular opinion:
Assertions such as "nobody wants to do subsistence farming", "it's uniquely gruelling and miserable", and the like are interesting when you compare the sentiment to the explicit embrace of subsistence farming by many revolutionary movements. The narrative has roots in Enclosure, which we should note included numerous violent peasant revolts in response and demands for the right to farm the land.
There's something uniquely "First World" about the framing; a centering of the position as a beneficiary of imperial spoils while obscuring that relationality. Left unsaid is the idea that this position is default. It also centers personal preference over necessity; revolution is necessary whether or not we want it, and tbh I am far more skeptical of someone who WANTS to do revolutionary violence no matter how necessary it might be.
Of more immediate material concern, I think a lot of the misconception comes from inserting individualism onto what has always been a collective and communal endeavor. "Subsistence farming" outside of systems of extraction, which is to say most of how it's been practiced for millenia, is not only a whole lot less work than core residents assume, but also acts as an essential integrated part of more direct democratic systems. The work being spread out and allocated to people who can best perform it helps a whole ton.
The Zapatistas, who in their Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle declared the goal of internationalizing their movement through supporting allied and affiliated organizations, have made the practice of the milpas as part of their education program at La Escualita. Milpas are a system of agroecological practice involving polycrops, mixed annuals and perennials, silviculture, and swidden techniques. A lot about these practices won't translate 100% everywhere (though the Three Sisters combination is generally useful), but the idea that more involvement in collective agriculture projects supports economic democracy and overall horizontal democratic systems is solid. And that's not even touching on the necessity of transitioning to agricultural systems that reduce and eliminate outside inputs, or that of direct relationship to the land being necessary for ecological restoration.
Not everyone is going to be as nerdy as folks like me about it, and not everyone is going to be able to do the same work. It is definitely work. But there's a lot of things wrong with the assertions I described above, not the least of which is the sheer ahistorical disconnect from a recurring thread in both socialist revolutions and traditionally more egalitarian societies.
