Engels held dispersed peasantries cannot revolt independently but need the towns’ impulse.
Evidence
Barraclough, op. cit., p. 414. Though Barraclough finds some of Engels’s remarks on the ultimate failure of the middle classes to prosecute a democratic revolution a bit rash, he does endorse (apparently) observations like the following written by Engels: “[I]t is quite as evident, and equally borne out by the history of all modern countries, that the agricultural population, in consequences of its dispersion over a great space, and of the difficulty of bringing about an agreement among any considerable portion of it, never can attempt a successful independent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the towns.” Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, op. cit., p. 131.
— Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1648
Categorization
XREF: connects to: Wilderness ethics cannot transfer to subsistence peasant communities whose land is under assault. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 781; Marx and Engels judged the peasantry incapable of independent political action — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1104; A peasant class that self-produces its consumption cannot form collective political action (+1 more)
yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Wilderness ethics cannot transfer to subsistence peasant communities whose land is under assault. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 781; Marx and Engels judged the peasantry incapable of independent political action — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1104; A peasant class that self-produces its consumption cannot form collective political action (+1 more)