A landed stratum’s survival depends on keeping peasants impoverished

Evidence

The members of this stratum are accustomed to direct command over nuclei of men, however tiny, and to commanding “politically”, not “economically”. In other words, their art of command implies no aptitude for ordering “things”, for ordering “men and things” into an organic whole, as occurs in industrial production—since this stratum has no economic functions in the modern sense of the word. It has an income, because legally it is the owner of a part of the national soil, and its function consists in opposing “politically” the attempts of the peasant farmer to ameliorate his existence—since any improvement in the relative position of the peasant would be catastrophic for its social position. The chronic poverty and prolonged labour of the peasant, with the degradation these bring, are a primordial necessity for it. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 839