Editing SG32NNU-T (section)

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…liquidating the one-sided civilization that privileges the cities and rebuilding a new agrarian culture. Needless to say, this reconstruction cannot be accomplished by the present politicians, whose hands have been corrupted by the pursuit of fame and profit. It can only be accomplished through the awakening and self-directed efforts of the farmers who stand upon the soil itself.

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'''B:''' Speaking of the cities, urban life these days is nothing but a chain drama of deception and vanity, anxiety and frustration. You can hardly find a cheerful calm or warm human feeling anywhere. Marx, I think, once said that “the city is the graveyard of capitalism,”<ref>A direct source in Marx's works for the precise wording “The city is the graveyard of capitalism” does not exist, as Seno’o's tentative attribution suggests. Seno’o may be recalling Marx and Engels's famous declaration in Chapter 1 of ''The Communist Manifesto'' (1848) that the bourgeoisie produces “its own gravediggers” (''Totengräber''), in the context of the development of modern industry and the proletariat. Seno’o effectively gives the Marxist image an agrarian twist, making the industrial city itself the site of capitalism's eventual demise.</ref> and indeed it seems like nothing but a procession of robots. It isn’t a life that an awakened human being could endure forever. As rural consciousness grows, the cities will presumably be limited and reorganized accordingly. But in the new society that emerges from this transformation, what position will the countryside occupy?

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'''A:''' I believe that the society of the future must be a culturally regulated agrarian communal society.

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'''B:''' By an “agrarian communal society,” do you mean a communal society organized around agriculture?

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'''A:''' Exactly.

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'''B:''' Does that mean rejecting machine civilization?

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'''A:''' Quite the opposite. Machines should be put to popular, agrarian use. An agrarian society is not the same thing as primitive communist society. Machines themselves are not the problem. The problem arises when machines are stripped of their popular character and used for the benefit of a particular class, or when everything is mechanized to an extreme. In the future, machines will have to be applied much more extensively to agricultural technology.

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'''B:''' Why does society have to be organized around agriculture?

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'''A:''' Think of stacking building blocks. If the structure is going to remain stable, the bottom has to be broader than the top. It has to be arranged like a pyramid. Reverse it, narrowing the base while broadening the top, and the slightest disturbance will make it collapse. The peace and stability of society work according to exactly the same principle. When the agrarian class becomes too impoverished to support the classes above it, a great upheaval inevitably occurs, forcing society back into a pyramid form.

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So what is the fundamental class of society? Obviously, the workers and farmers—and among them, above all, the farmers. Look around you. Nearly all the necessities of human life—food, clothing, and shelter—depend upon agriculture and forestry. Grain goes without saying. Lumber for buildings, textiles and tatami coverings, tea, coffee, liquor, soy sauce, miso, sugar—all of them originate in the sweat of the farmer. The countryside truly is the lifeline and foundation of human society, its nurturing, maternal presence.

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