Farmers’ Ideological and Political Education under the Background of Rural Revitalization Strategy

Di SHA, Weiguang PAN,2*

1. College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou 311300, China; 2. Research Academy for Rural Revitalization of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou 311300, China

Abstract As a new way to solve the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers in China, the strategy of rural revitalization puts forward new requirements for the ideological and political education of farmers. However, in the present stage, the ideological and political education of Chinese farmers is often compromised in the process of rural traditional culture, and there is also pride and prejudice in the cadres for "agriculture, rural areas and farmers". For the ideological and political education of Chinese farmers, it is necessary to pay more attention to the social orientation of farmers and the value orientation contained in the construction of farmers’ ideological and political construction, and reconstruct the system of Chinese farmers’ ideological and political education based on this orientation and value selection.

Key words Rural revitalization strategy, Farmer, Ideological and political education

1 Introduction

China is a socialist country based on the alliance of workers and farmers, and farmers are the main force of China’s socialist revolution and construction. Whether in the revolutionary period, or in the socialist construction period, farmers have made an indelible contribution to the development of China. Agriculture not only exists as the primary industry in the context of industrial civilization, but also carries the development of human society as a base. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grass and sand are a community of life, stating the importance of agriculture as an ecological existence. As the world oldest form of settlement, the countryside has been stable for thousands of years as a compound social organization of human life, existing in the vastest fields. To sum up, farmers, agriculture and rural areas are the objects that China needs to focus on, but they have been in a weak position in various discourse systems and narrative modes for a long time. The issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers derived from this have become an urgent problem to be solved in China.

The rural revitalization strategy is a major strategic deployment made by the 19CPC National Congress to solve the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. In this process, farmers as the main bearer of rural revitalization, as well as the object of rural revitalization, this duality makes farmers shoulder the important task of self-revitalization and self-development. It is in this process that farmers, as the actual main body of the rural revitalization strategy, have many problems in the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy. For example, some farmers have a poor understanding of national policies, which leads to resistance in the implementation of policies by grass-roots units. If China wants to solve these problems, it is imperative to construct the ideological and political education system of farmers.

2 Rural revitalization strategy for farmer ideological and political education requirements

Constructing the ideological and political education system of farmers is a key link of the rural revitalization strategy. In the general requirements of the rural revitalization strategy, "rural culture" is mentioned. In order to realize the civilization of rural customs, it is necessary to lead by the spirit of ideological and political education, and to deepen the party’s overall leadership to the rural grass-roots level, so as to build a new countryside and cultivate new farmers.

Ideological and political education is a process of re-socialization of farmers, and it is a process of building ideological superstructure to adapt to the new economic foundation after comprehensively improving agricultural production. Under the old agricultural production conditions, many farmers maintained a low standard of living with very low wealth accumulation, and almost no investment in ideological improvement and spiritual construction. In the rural revitalization strategy, "industrial prosperity" is a means for farmers to increase their wealth accumulation, so that farmers’ income can be continuously increased and their living standards can be continuously improved. However, if the material life of farmers is only improved from the industrial level, the old rural ideology will become a huge obstacle to rural revitalization for a long time. At the same time, in the process of rural industrial upgrading, what kind of ideas farmers hold to promote the actual process of industrial upgrading, the results are bound to be different. If we want to keep the synchronization with the national strategy and realize the benign development of agriculture and countryside, we first need to have scientific, revolutionary and socialist ideology to guide us, which is also the necessity of the ideological and political education of farmers.

It must be realized that if the rural revitalization strategy lacks the guidance of relevant ideology and norms, it will inevitably be far away from the established goals. And ideological and political education just can be used as a specification of power, to let farmers the duality of subject and object is compatible with the group, to be able to in the process of self-renewal to realize the unity of purpose and means on the legitimacy, it will be a good way to achieve good results, and finally realizes the comprehensive revitalization of the material and spiritual.

3 Problems and obstacles existing in farmer ideological and political education at this stage

3.1 Ideological and political education for rural traditional culture compromise

Ideological and political education is "embedded" for the present farmer group. It lies in that before carrying out ideological and political construction, farmers have their own ideological logic, which is inseparable from the traditional culture of class homogeneity in rural areas even though there are great differences between regions. Traditional culture here does not refer to some specific forms of traditional culture, such as some rural mystic ceremonies, rural traditional handicrafts, traditional dramas, traditional festivals and other specific content, but refers to the logical ontology established in the traditional symbols. Its essence is agricultural civilization: A logical ontology with blood ties or autocratic centralization as the track of operation. For example, the patriarchal clan system and feudal patriarchal system still exist in the countryside. In the movement of socialist agricultural collectivization, this logical ontology was covered up or temporarily replaced, but when the process of agricultural collectivization went back, it began to appear again.

The purpose of ideological and political education to the farmers is to break the traditional culture, that is, the traditional farmer education form with the rural patriarchal clan and the squires as the ideological monopolists. At present, ideological and political education relies on self-study and self-education of village leaders or villagers, and advocates the combination of ideological and political education and rural traditional culture in order to carry forward rural traditional culture, which ignores the problem, that is, the logical core of traditional culture can not play a positive role. If for the pursuit of stable rural state, so that farmers can not get rid of the shackles of traditional ideology, it even goes against the original intention of letting farmers pursue a better life.

3.2 Pride and prejudice on agriculture, rural areas and farmer

The arrogance and prejudice of "agriculture, countryside and farmers" always exist in the existing symbol system. In the pursuit of high-speed urbanization and capitalization of the form of development, urban and rural contradictions have not changed, but become more and more intense. Textbook arrogance is on full display in the decision-making process. Some even think that the backwardness of farmers’ thought is one of the reasons why it is difficult to promote the ideological and political education of farmers. On the contrary, the backwardness of farmer thought cannot be regarded as a cause, but should be regarded as a result. The process of changing rural ideology has been interrupted, the industrial mode of common development of various industries in rural areas has been broken, and the level of economic development in rural areas lags behind seriously under the joint action of these conditions. Backward thinking will only become the inevitable cause of this development mode. In the process of promoting the ideological and political education of farmers, many cadres do not understand the countryside, do not understand the farmers, in the process of carrying out ideological and political education and still have discrimination against farmers, ideological and political education work to promote the natural effect is not good. It must be realized that farmers’ production should not be limited to agriculture, but the sideline and industrial production in the localization are destroyed, and the siphon effect of the city makes more farmers enter the city as cheap labor force, and their ideology is complicated. If we only think about the countryside arrogantly from the urban point of view and carry out ideological and political education to the farmers, it will only cause more problems for the farmers in the ideological field.

4 Recommendations of constructing the farmer ideological and political education system

4.1 Breaking the old rural traditional culture closed loop

It is not desirable to rely on rural traditional culture for ideological and political education, in the process of ideological and political education and rural traditional culture can achieve a more advanced state of integration, the premise is to smash the inherent logic of rural traditional culture. In the vast countryside, the old traditional culture appears mostly in the form of a closed loop, that is, it is consistent with itself while giving it the legitimacy that is taken for granted. But this legitimacy is based on past economies and is lacking outside the closed loop.

In order to break this closed loop of culture, ideological and political education must assume itself as an embedded attitude to carry out a process of assimilation. In the ideological and political education, there must be the content of deconstructing the traditional culture in rural areas so that farmers can get rid of the traditional shackles imposed on them. In carrying out ideological and political education, we should take root in the new economic form brought by "industrial prosperity" and break away from the old cultural context, so that ideological and political education can form a new educational environment in the scope of education for farmers, and create a new spiritual and cultural atmosphere in rural areas. The local government should first begin to break away from the influence of clan system and feudal patriarchal system in the local area, weaken the role of "gentry" groups in the local area, and grass-roots Party organizations firmly control the ideological leadership in the countryside. Secondly, we should popularize the Internet in rural areas and farmers’ families, and do a good job in Internet popularization education, so that farmers can learn to get information online. This should go hand in hand with efforts to clean up corrupt practices on the Internet. Through big data operation, advanced political ideas are pushed to the vast number of farmers, so that they can be integrated into a new ideological environment.

4.2 Developing ideological and political education on the spot

Local development refers to the construction of ideological and political education system in rural areas to realize the localization of ideological and political education. We will develop ideological and political education at the county and town levels. Educational resources will be delegated to counties and towns, and teachers will be given preferential treatment at the prefectural and municipal levels, so as to ensure that farmers can receive ideological and political education in a variety of ways and in a more convenient manner, and to let the county and town level ideological and political education units in the area of continuous circuit. Reasonable arrangement of collective study time, ensure that farmers do not get out of production, do not hinder the busy farming, reduce the resistance of farmers. In short, the ideological and political education must be convenient for farmers, and gradually condensed into a new complex of rural education guided by Marxism, with counties, towns and surrounding countryside as the front-line.

4.3 Building rural research team to control rural conditions

The purpose of building rural research team is to break the urban standard and textbook thought of urban scholars and urban decision makers. If the ideological and political education policies formulated by urban scholars and policy makers are castles in the air, instead of combining with the rural reality and the current situation of farmers, the educational personnel trained in this way must be those who do not understand the countryside, and the educational system constructed can only be the rural ideological and political education system in the city.

In China, the atmosphere of rural research is very good, and the number of research teams is on the whole increasing year by year. The state has also introduced various policies to encourage young scholars to conduct field research in rural areas. However, as the main body of the research team, university groups do not have sufficient theoretical literacy and practical experience, and as scholars, they can obtain limited information. In addition, more scholars who study rural issues tend to carry out literature research rather than field research, which makes rural research failing to connect with rural reality largely. In contrast, the research level of specific policy makers in local rural policies is worse. Many of them are seriously divorced from reality, and the research is in a formality, overworked and indifferent to the real situation of farmers.

This requires that China must build a core team for rural survey, dock with the university and local decision makers, train high level and professional research team countryside, scattered in the regional rural field, conduct a professional or even several times the systematic research, rural dynamic real-time feedback, long-term controls the rural situation. Only in this way, in the construction process of rural ideological and political education system, can we ensure that the direction is not biased, and can successfully dock with the rural reality.

4.4 Flattening ideological and political education

The flat ideological and political education aims to eliminate the bloated ideological and political education system and the distortion of the central government spirit caused by too many levels. The ideological and political education system should be independent of the administrative levels and become an independent system directly led by the central government. It is necessary to reduce the middle level and realize the distribution of the organization and the core of the team. The distribution of institutions refers to the localization of ideological and political education institutions, skipping intermediate links and directly contacting farmers. The core of the group refers to the centralized training of educational personnel, reducing the constraint of the middle leadership and administrative agencies on the education system, and taking ideological and political education as the channel of direct dialogue between the CPC and the vast number of farmers.

4.5 Paying attention to the education of urban farmers

Farmers in cities are often in a marginalized political position. Although they are not low in attention and attention, the actual policies given to them are few and have little effect. The ideological and political education should cover the rural migrant workers in urban areas at the same time. Communities and enterprises should actively to undertake the statistical work of urban farmers and entrust the ideological and political education to the grass-roots party committees. Ideological and political education should not distinguish between the young and the old, and should be fully spread among urban farmers. In addition, the ideology of urban farmers is more complex, so before the ideological and political education of urban farmers, we should also carry out general research and special research, so that the party’s policies can be effectively accepted.