Concept
Obshchina
Overview
An obshchina (, lit. 'commune'; Russian: община, IPA: [ɐpˈɕːinə]) or mir (, lit. 'world'; Russian: мир, IPA: [mʲir]), also officially termed as a rural community (Russian: сельское общество; Ukrainian: сільське товариство) between the 19th and 20th centuries, was a peasant village community (as opposed to an individual farmstead), or a khutor, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word obshchiy (Russian: общий, literally "common").
The mir was a community consisting of serfs, later emancipated serfs, state peasants and their descendants, settled as a rule in a single village, although sometimes a village included more than one mir and, conversely, several villages were sometimes combined in a single mir. The title of the land was vested in the mir and not in the individual peasant. Members of the mir had the right to the allotment, on some uniform basis, of a holding that each member cultivated separately. A holding could not be sold or bequeathed without the consent of the mir. As a consequence of its collective tenure, the mir had the power to repartition the land from time to time among its constituent households. The mir dealt primarily with the household and not with the individual. The peasant had a right to a holding but not to a particular holding, and he could not dispose of it freely.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Then there were, secondly, the small freeholders, predominating in the Rhine country, where feudalism had succumbed before the mighty strokes of the great French Revolution. Similar independent small freeholders also existed here and there in other provinces, where they had succeeded in buying off the feudal charges formerly due upon their lands. This class, however, was a class of freeholders by name only, their…
Friedrich Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
States what Obshchina is.
For example:-- "The revenue derived from labor is called wages; that derived from stock by the person who manages or employs it is called profit. The revenue which proceeds from land is called rent and belongs altogether to the landlord. The revenue of the farmer is derived partly from his labor and partly from his stock....
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
States what Obshchina is.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is…
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
States what Obshchina is.
Philosophers who discussed Obshchina
Related ideas
- Harvard University Press
- Aleksey Khomyakov
- Russian Revolution
- Socialism
- Alexander Herzen
- Capitalism
- Sobornost
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Communism.