Whereas Marx sought the source of class confrontation in the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, Ando Shoeki found it in those who practice direct cultivation on the one hand, and the idle and gluttonous on the other.
The factory workers, distributors, and buyers and sellers who were, to Marx, "our camp," were not so to Shoeki, who thought that they too belonged to the idle and gluttonous classes, and that if we do not dismantle such a system, we will not be able to realize a true "communistic society" (Natural World).
The Overthrow of the Urbanizing Mechanism Is Essential to a True
Revolution
Verily it was the dominators (feudal lords) and farm operators who were the medium of plunder by which were fed the huge secondary and tertiary industrial population — the city — which loomed behind them. (The scholars, clergy, and officials were subjectively the chief instigators of plunder, but objectively they were merely the medium of plunder.) Shoeki insisted that, before anything else, we must close the portal, we must block the doorway of plunder.
These ideas are quite different from the theories of Marx, who considered the medium of plunder (the bourgeoisie) to be the ultimate enemy while believing that the great hordes of the idle and gluttonous slithering in the shadow of the bourgeoisie were the allies of the revolution. Shoeki was truly the first to insist upon the eradication of the cities.
In Marxist revolution theory, there is a surprising — and actually quite fatal — error in that it does not call for the dismantling of the city, that is, the liquidation of the idle and gluttonous. Without the overthrow of the urbanizing mechanism in human society — a mechanism which cannot but engender the formation of the idle and gluttonous hordes — we cannot achieve true revolution.
So just take a look, please, at where the spreading world socialist revolution is leading (even if it is but a precursor of the communist revolution): power, oppression, progress, expansion, modernization, urbanization, industrialization, militarization, destruction, contamination, prodigality, and corruption.
A Natural World in which All Till the Soil Directly, and There
Are No Groups of Idlers
The "natural world" that Shoeki imagined had no exploitation or oppression whatsoever; its aim was a self-governing commune with common ownership, labor by all, and equality. It was a primitive communist society which could not be realized without, first of all, the overthrow of the bloodsucking ruling class, and then that of the non-tilling idlers (those who contaminate and destroy). It was a society of contraction, regression, austerity, and one in which all practiced direct cultivation.
If one leaves the great hordes of the idle, plundering, and gluttonous just as they are, and then tries to achieve the transition to communistic society (of course, this assumes the abolition of capitalist society), can we really expect the establishment of a utopia in which there are neither the exploiters nor the exploited?