Marx and Engels judged the peasantry incapable of independent political action

Evidence

Marx saw the peasantry as a “vast mass” consisting of functional clones: simple cultivators, proximate but without significant intercourse; lacking in all but the most rudimentary political organization or consciousness. Engels, too, was impressed by the “great space” that peasants occupied, and ascribed to them a tradition of submissiveness and loyalty to particular masters. Neither suggested that the peasantry was capable of independent political action. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1104

Part of the reason for the judgments made by Marx or Engels of the peasantry had to do with the conditions of work that circumscribed peasant production and the social relations that fixed the peasants into prescribed links of exchange. Marx saw the peasantry as a “vast mass” consisting of functional clones: simple cultivators, proximate but without significant intercourse; lacking in all but the most rudimentary political organization or consciousness. Engels, too, was impressed by the “great space” that peasants occupied, and ascribed to them a tradition of submissiveness and loyalty to particular masters. Neither suggested that the peasantry was capable of independent political action. And if we compared the descriptions found in Marx and Engels of peasant life with those of Du Bois concerning the slaves and poor whites, we would discover striking and important similarities. Of the slave workers, Du Bois commented: [B]efore the war, the slave was curiously isolated; this was the policy, and the effective policy of the slave system, which made the plantation the center of a black group with a network of white folk around and about, who kept the slaves from contact with each other. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1104

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1104