Rural Depopulation (was Cars and Factory Work)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Louis Proyect wrote:
>Trond's letter raises some interesting questions. Last night I was thinking
>about the whole question of cars in 2 contexts. I have a 78 year old mother
>who I just bought a new car for, a snazzy little Mercury Mystique. Her
>driving is not what it used to be, but there simply is no way for her to
>get around in the rural part of upstate NY she lives in.
>
>There would be a role for cars in postcapitalist society, I'm quite sure.
>In rural areas like she lives in, the only sensible economic approach is
>private automobiles. Since there are so few people living in isolated
>farming communities, this would not present an environmental problem.

I think that another question to be raised is why so few people are now
living in farming communities to begin with. In postcapitalist society,
drastic rural depopulation that has been caused by capitalism, I think,
will have to be remedied. Even in countries such as Japan where land is
relatively scarce and population density very high, many rural areas (which
used to be functioning farming communities) look like ghost towns. Though I
am very partial to urbanity, in places like Japan where megacities (such as
Tokyo and Kobe) are sitting right on top of earthquake-prone fault lines,
some degrees of decentralization and less concentrated residential and
industrial development must be part of a socialist plan.

Yoshie