Low state-guaranteed savings demand an excessively low standard of living for workers

Evidence

For complex reasons, however, France still has a relatively healthy social composition, since there exists there a broad base of small and medium-sized farming properties. In other countries, on the other hand, the savers are cut off from the world of production and work. Saving in these countries has too high a social cost, as it is obtained with a level of existence for industrial and especially agricultural workers which is far too low. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1156

Categorization

• QUESTION: Gramsci’s claim that a broad farming-property base yields a ‘relatively healthy social composition’ is contestable and worth probing against agrarian histories elsewhere.