carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (07/25/85)
In article <> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes: > Starvation in today's world occurs not quite > but almost exclusively because of "democratic" collectivist intervention. I'd like to see the arguments in support of this (to me) astonishing claim. For an alternative point of view to that presented in the Rydenfelt book, you might want to read *Food First*, by F.M. Lappe and J. Collins. The authors argue that the cause of world hunger is inequality in control over food-producing resources, because it leads to the underuse and misuse of those resources. Among the book's main points: I. The cause of hunger is neither scarcity nor overpopulation. II. Rather, it is inequality in control over food-producing resources. The colonial inheritance: 1. The colonizing powers viewed the agricultural systems of the subjugated lands as backward and primitive precisely because they did not produce a marketable surplus that would meet the need of the colonizers to extract wealth (e.g., the Sahel, India, West Africa). 2. In many cases the colonizers directly took over production, usurping the best lands (e.g., Kenya, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Latin America). 3. In other cases the colonizers forced peasant producers to grow cash and export crops (e.g., the Sahel, Indonesia). 4. The colonizers needed an abundant supply of food- desperate laborers to work on their plantations. Colonial administrations therefore devised a variety of tactics to undercut self-provisioning peasant agriculture and thus to make rural populations dependent on plantation wages. Good lands were sometimes even usurped and held idle so that peasants could not use them. (E.g., British Guiana, Indonesia.) 5. Colonialism destroyed the cultural patterns of production and exchange by which traditional societies previously met their needs. Many precolonial social structures, while dominated by exploitative elites, had evolved a system of mutual obligations among the classes that helped to ensure at least a minimal diet for all (e.g., India, Bengal, Africa, Indonesia). Inequalities between nations today: 1. Corporations and financial institutions based in the industrial countries control the profits of Third World commodity exports (e.g., bananas, cocoa, palm oil). 2. These corporations control profits from subsidiaries in the underdeveloped nations. 3. The terms of trade favor the industrial nations. 4. Lack of control of external capital and the debt burden hurt the economies of underdeveloped countries. Inequalities within nations: 1. Inequality in control over land is extreme and increasing (as in the US (California)). 2. In addition to the best land, other resources needed to produce -- water, irrigation equipment, fertilizer, pesticides -- and the credit to secure these resources are increasingly controlled by the few. 3. Because of the inequalities in control over productive assets, income is also increasingly unequal, often masked by per capita measures of growth which hide inequalities (e.g., Philippines, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Brazil). Inequalities based in sexism: 1. There is a direct impact of sexism on the nutrition of women. 2. There is an impact of discrimination against women on the entire family's diet, particularly as economies change, i.e., the commercialization of agriculture undercuts the traditional roles of women. -- Men are increasingly drawn into wage labor and women are forced to supplement the male's wages by unpaid labor. -- Women are generally paid less for their labor. -- Plantation work requires that women travel long distances: the frequent result is that their children's nutrition suffers. -- As machinery gets more complex its use is monopolized by men, because the Western technical experts import their notions of sex roles along with their machinery. Inequalities based on racism: 1. Slavery is the most extreme form of racism and has caused hunger directly and indirectly. 2. The next most extreme form is apartheid. 3. In the US and other countries racism serves to keep nonwhites in low-paying jobs such as migrant field work. How inequality of control over productive resources results in the underuse and misuse of resources: 1. Underuse of resources Large landholders, in control of most of the land, are less productive than the smallholders. When a few land holders control most of the productive assets, much wealth is drained out of agriculture into their private consumption or into urban or foreign investments. Smallholders are unable to produce to their potential. Competition for survival makes cooperation impossible (for improvements such as terracing, dams, and irrigation networks). 2. Misuse of resources (see next section) III. The solution is neither technology, agribusiness, nor official development assistance. Agribusiness exacerbates the conditions that cause hunger. 1. Agribusiness does not and cannot "grow food for the hungry" (e.g., US, Mexico, Philippines, Central America, Colombia, Senegal, Brazil, Iran). 2. Attempts by multinational food processing companies to expand their markets in Third World countries have not benefitted the hungry, and, in many cases, have actually caused nutritional damage. 3. Agribusiness operations tend to perpetuate miserable working and living conditions for their workers. 4. They maintain and tend to exacerbate inequalities in control over resources. 5. They tend to be unconcerned about preserving the agricultural resources they exploit. Food aid, A.I.D., and the World Bank: 1. While food aid in certain emergencies and on a short-term basis can relieve suffering, the overriding impact of US food aid is to exacerbate the conditions that create hunger. 2. The US Agency for International Development stands in the way of real development. 3. Because is it a multilateral lending agency, the World Bank is often thought to be more impartial than an individual government. But operating as a lending agency whose dominant voting members are the major Western powers, especially the US, the Bank's policies reflect the financial and political orientation of its major contributors. IV. The solution lies in the transformation in control over the resources that produce food. Lessons from societies eliminating hunger. The only countries effectively overcoming hunger, according to Lappe and Collins, are those incorporating aspects of "socialism," where people are trying to create an economic system in which all have the opportunity to participate in decisions about the use of resources and in which all are assured of food security. 1. The redistribution of control over food-producing resources can result in greater food production since (a) a more rational use of the land and resources is possible, and (b) human energies are released when people know their labor will benefit them. 2. Where the land is controlled by a few, the profit from production is drained out of agriculture. Democratic participation in deciding how production will be used is the only insurance that it will benefit the producers. The "structures" for democratic participation can be created, however, yet still be controlled by the old elite who remain able to drain wealth out of the peasant sector. 3. Land redistribution alone is not adequate. Peasants must be a motive force behind the land reform, and must organize to protect their ongoing interests. 4. Cooperative work can maximize use of resources. 5. Cooperative work cannot be forced but must move forward as more and more people come to realize its advantages. 6. Building a society where everyone has access to adequate food requires coordinated social planning. 7. Technology can further human only after the control over productive assets has been redistributed and when conscious, participatory planning directs its use. In the view of Lappe and Collins, then, the chief cause of world hunger lies in what I would term the class divisions between the propertied and the nonpropertied. A companion book, *Food First Resource Guide*, by the staff of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, provides extensive annotated documentation for the arguments made in *Food First*. If you would like to do something constructive about hunger (domestic and international), I suggest that you write for information and publications to: Oxfam America P.O. Box 288 Boston MA 02116 You read all the way down to here? Golly. Enjoy your dinner tonight. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (07/26/85)
In article <2919@topaz.ARPA> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes: >>Do you seriously think we're going to believe the answers are in your book >>any more than we believe the answers are in the Bible? Yes we can read >>the book: but you have already. Do us the courtesy of summarizing the >>book's rebuttal to Taylor's argument, rather than insulting us. >There are many issues which cannot be fully understood on the basis >of flip repartee on netnews, and this is one of them. One can >point to this social mechanism, that economic tendency; but to understand >what actually happens when actual Communists take over an actual >country one must consult sources more informed than net.politics. Believe it or not, sir, everyone who is not a libertarian is not a socialist (who we know turn into communists under a full moon). It is not an either-or proposition. >I'm not writing for those who, like you and Tim Sevener, have an open >mouth instead of an open mind; I'm writing primarily for my conscience >to speak out against the collectivism and love of coercion that is the >dogma of the current intellectual elite. If there are people reading who >are interested in understanding why people starve in the real world, >rather than making rhetorical points on the net, do some reading-- >but look for facts and do your own interpretation. Rydenfelt is not >a bad place to start; this book is a set of case histories, not an >"argument". People have starved under all kinds of goverments, sir, but there seems to be this one fascinating parallel; there was not enough to eat. To suggest that collectivistic politics is even the principle cause, is a bit naive. I will put my money on greed and lust for power, myself. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe