"In 2007, the United Nations released a State of the World Population report noting that human life on Earth was quietly passing a tremendous benchmark. In 2008, the proportion of people residing in the countryside was falling - for the first time in history - below 50 per cent. Today, just 42 per cent of humanity lives in the countryside."
"For many city dwellers, the urbanisation of our species is natural and inexorable. Extrapolating from past trends, they imagine a future in which the great majority has abandoned the land, leaving it bucolic, automated and empty. In the process, they predict - with some relief! - the imminent extinction of an ancient character: the peasant. That word is avoided in polite conversation; in many languages, it is used as a term of abuse or contempt."
"Whether Right or Left, Western thinkers have taught that, in order to become modern, societies have to get rid of their peasants. While Adam Smith looked forward to peasants giving way to landowners (for then 'the land ... would be much better improved'), Karl Marx foresaw their replacement by modern socialist management. It has been taken for granted that agriculture will eventually be monopolised by large capital and machinery, and cities will absorb the majority of the human population."
In 2007 the United Nations noted a major demographic shift: in 2008 the rural share of humanity fell below 50 percent for the first time. Today only 42 percent of people live in the countryside. Urban residents often treat urbanization as inevitable and envision empty, automated rural landscapes and the disappearance of peasants. The term 'peasant' is commonly stigmatized as backward. Western thought across the political spectrum assumed peasants must be eliminated for modernization, with Smith and Marx offering different replacement visions. European history shows rural destruction produced large emigration flows beyond urban absorption.
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