Letter: Food rescue (2023)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food rescue

In a world gone mad where tons of good, fresh food is sent to rubbish tips instead of being given to hungry people, it is refreshing to find organisations who are dedicated to trying to put a stop to this unnecessary waste and channel food to where it is needed. We, as socialists, should be applauding their efforts. We already know that in a socialist society there would be no such thing as food poverty. There is enough of everything to go around. We live in a world of abundance. Of course food should be made available to everyone, free of charge, but how difficult is it to do this under the constraints of capitalism? It is very easy to say that we should not support charity organisations but many thousands of people would die of starvation while we are waiting for worldwide socialism.

One group of dedicated volunteers, including qualified chefs, have taken this idea a step further. In New Zealand we have a couple of restaurants, one in Wellington and one in Auckland, called ‘Everybody Eats’ where anyone can go along and have a free meal. I have been along to the Wellington one a couple of times to enjoy their excellent fare. This is no soup kitchen. The restaurant is warm and cosy with flowers on the tables and a delicious 3-course meal is served. How can they do this in a capitalist society? Money has to come into it somewhere, surely? They have to pay rent for the building and electricity bills for the kitchen. They also have to buy cleaning products and disinfectants, tin foil, etc to meet Health and Safety regulations. The qualified chef and the manager need to be paid enough to meet their own living expenses, but everyone else works as volunteers. The volunteers work part-time so they are at liberty to take on paid work elsewhere. They open 4 evenings a week and need to prepare up to 180 meals each evening. Diners can make a voluntary donation. This is called a ‘koha’ in New Zealand. Those who can’t afford to pay anything eat for free and still enjoy the same delicious meal.

I contacted the manager, Jack, to find out how it all works. He invited me along to a meeting with the G.M. who was down from Auckland and over a cuppa and piece of cake I was able to ask questions about how they operate. All the food is sourced from supermarkets or from a food rescue service called Kaibosh. The chef then plans the meal from what is available on the day. There is only one meal planned, so everyone gets the same thing. They do, however, cater for special dietary needs. Diners just tell the waiter or waitress if they require vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free food and it will be provided. People don’t need to be presented with a menu with 40 choices on it. We should all eat what is plentiful and seasonal. This, of course, cuts down on wastage and it also means that all the food is ready to be served as soon as the doors are open at 6pm. There is no alcohol and no bring-your-own. That’s the only rule. They don’t even waste time with tea and coffee. There are jugs of water and glasses on each table. Diners are in and out of there in about 20 minutes, which is just as well because there is always a queue waiting to be admitted. It is comforting to see so many people, rich and poor, sitting down together, all enjoying the same wonderful food. High-wage earners are happy to pay what they would normally pay in any other restaurant, whereas those who can’t pay eat free of charge.

Maybe this wonderful restaurant is giving us a glimpse of what all restaurants would be like in a wageless socialist society. Would we still need restaurants in a socialist world? Well yes, I think so. Even though food and everything else would be free of charge, it is still a real treat to go out and enjoy a meal that has been prepared by someone else. Of course, there would be no koha and no problems of having to pay rent or electricity bills etc. There is a similar organisation in England called the Long Table, and maybe other countries are offering the same for their low-wage earners and unemployed.

I left our friends at Everybody Eats with some Socialist Standards to read in the hopes that they will see how easy it would be to feed everyone once we have got rid of this evil capitalist regime which creates poverty and wastage in a world of abundance. Maybe they will join us in our struggle for a better world for all.

Moggie Grayson, 

Wellington, New Zealand

Letter: A pretty kettle of fish (2023)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

This letter of complaint written by a very disgruntled electric kettle customer was sent to a consumer affairs television programme.

Dear Editors,

Four years ago I bought a Russell Hobbs electric kettle. I chose this one because this is a popular brand and I thought that it would be reliable and give me years of good service. It came with a 2-year guarantee, so now that it is 4 years old the company that manufactured it is not under any obligation to replace it for me.

The fault is quite trivial. It still boils the water but it has developed a leak. I looked inside the kettle and saw that there is a small nut that needs to be tightened, but it is behind the element so I can’t get at it to fix it. I took it to the registered appliance agent who told me that it cannot be fixed because the element cannot be removed. He advised me to throw it away and buy a new one. The kettle is made of stainless steel, a durable material which should last forever. If I bought a stainless steel cooking pot and boiled water in that, it would last forever, but of course, we all want a kettle because it uses less electricity to heat the water than having to put a pan on the cooker. I remember when electric kettles and electric jugs were made with parts that could be replaced, for example, elements could be replaced when they wore out.

My issue is not just, in this instance, with Russell Hobbs, but with the capitalist system which forces manufacturers of all appliances to make their goods so that they have a very short lifespan and have to be replaced every few years.

What a terrible waste of the Earth’s resources!

Shall we continue to fill up our rubbish tips with appliances that have been designed to break down after just a few years?

In a capitalist society manufacturers have to be seen to be making a profit. The only way they can do this is to make sure that we have to keep on buying their goods and replacing them on a regular basis. And to hell with using up all the Earth’s valuable resources and filling the rubbish tips with stuff that is non-biodegradable!

Until humankind changes the current exploitative system, of both workers and consumers, with one where goods are produced for use, not profit, I think that it should be illegal to manufacture anything that cannot be repaired.

Yours Faithfully,

Moggie Grayson

Reply:

We have dealt comprehensively over the years with the deliberate act on the part of manufacturers to ensure that their particular commodities are made not to usefully last for a long time but to wear out in a relatively short space of time. Why are things not built or made to last? Because longevity is the enemy of profit – which is the raison d’être of capitalism.

‘In 1960 Vance Packard (certainly no socialist) wrote a book called The Waste Makers which caused a minor disturbance at its publication because it dealt with what he termed “planned obsolescence”. Packard showed how firms made shoddy goods, designed to wear out quickly so there would be a market for new ones. He wrote of radios, car parts and television sets which their designers and manufacturers knew could easily be made to last longer. There have even been instances of workers being fired because they took the time to do an excellent job, and so were not profitable’ (‘Waste and want — the insane logic of capitalism.’ World Socialist, April 1984).

Add computers, mobile phones, white goods, microwaves and electric kettles to the items that Vance Packard described.

‘There is no technical reason why solid and reliable electric and electronic appliances with easily changeable and compatible parts and able to incorporate innovations could not be produced. Industrial designers would surely love to do this but under capitalism it is the marketing department that calls the shots, as what is being produced are not simply products to be used, but commodities to be sold on a market with a view to profit’ (‘Organised Waste’, Socialist Standard, May 2011).

An update on Packard’s The Waste Makers was published in 2006: Made to break. Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade (reviewed in the Socialist Standard, October 2009). Slade wrote:

‘Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete. We do that for the soundest reason: to make money’ (p. 153).

Think of the regular introduction into the market of smartphones. Older models work just as well but are eventually made unusable because the operating system becomes unable to support newer applications and support for the older models is discontinued. The same can be said of computers.

The reviewer made the point that the workers, who design and produce these items – and run capitalism on behalf of the elite class – are perfectly capable of making better quality goods and that:

‘This provoked a conflict with engineers, who knew they could make solid products that could last for years, but in the end their reluctance was overcome (they, too, are in the end only hired employees who have to do their employer’s bidding). It is also enormously wasteful as still useable products, and the material resources that went into making them, are simply thrown away’.

The solution to the problem of built-in obsolescence (and to many others) is straightforward. It’s the removal of the cost-saving, corner-cutting, ‘must keep profits as high as possible’ pressures which, by the economic laws of capitalism, all producers are subject too.

The only way to stop it? The replacement of capitalism by socialism where quality will extend to all areas of life. Why, with production directly for use, would we want to turn out stuff made not to last?

Dave Coggan

Same the Whole World Over (2018)

From the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

I just have to share this.  I’m sure the situation is the same in every country suffering under capitalism.

I am a pensioner and, because I had a major back injury some years ago, I am eligible for a few extra dollars on top of my pension as a disability allowance.  This, of course, is means tested.  I have to supply the government with receipts for gardening, electricity bills, doctor’s bills, prescription receipts, etc.  The extra few dollars they throw my way enables me to pay someone to mow my lawn.  Okay, that sounds fair enough.  This hasn’t been updated for several years so I was not surprised when the Department of Work and Income wrote to me asking me to supply receipts for my expenses over the past year.  What did surprise me was that there were no contact details on their letter, other than an 0800 number.  There was no physical address, no P.O. Box number, no telephone number. 

I have had past experience of using an 0800 number for this Government Department and I don’t ever want to do so again.  What happens is, you end up holding on to the telephone for up to an hour listening to pre-recorded music (their choice of which is rank!) and when the call is eventually answered I found myself talking to some clown in a call centre in a different city, 300 kilometers away, who was unable to help with my enquiry.

Okay, so I photocopied all my receipts for them and then got on the Internet to try to find out where to post them.  The letter they sent me had been posted in a small town in the South Island, but no address was given.  I live in the capital city.  Don’t they have an office in the capital city?  Right, well, the Internet provided me with a post box number for their office in the small country town in the south island, so I posted the receipts there.

Having done that I thought the next step would be to write a letter to the cabinet minister and complain about the lack of contact details on their letterhead.  The Department of Work and Income is a Government Department, so you would expect that there should be a Minister of Work and Income, right?  Wrong!  She hides under the title of Minister for Social Development!  Okay, so the Internet should provide me with the name of the Minister for Social Development, right?  Wrong!  The name they provide is that of the previous Minister who lost her job 5 months previously when the government changed from National to Labour in the last elections.  It seems that it takes them an awfully long time to update their website!  (They have updated it now!)  Okay, sit tight and wait for a reply.  Ha-bloody-ha!

Eventually I got another letter from Work & Income, but from a different writer than on the previous correspondence.  I was expecting to hear that my disability allowance would be increased by a few dollars since my expenses had increased considerably.  But, No!  The letter informed me that my allowance would stay the same and that if I wished to question this I should contact the writer at the address given on the back of the letter.  I turned the letter over and it was completely blank!  Surprise, surprise!  They must have written it in invisible ink!

My next step was to make an appointment to see my MP.  Well, not exactly the man himself as he is a busy man, but his secretary who runs his office in town.  Hooray, at last, a helpful human being.  I went along to see her taking all the correspondence with me.  I asked whether my MP could do something about making Work and Income more accessible to the public.  After all, being a Labour MP, he should now have a bit more clout than he did with the previous government.  She explained that there was little he could do and went on to say that the reason we have so many beggars on the streets now is because the government is trying to make it impossible for people to apply for any kind of benefit.  Most people get sick and tired of trying to get government assistance that they just give up trying.

I asked her where the Wellington branch of Work and Income is now situated because it had moved from the building it was in a few years ago.  She said that they still have a branch in the city, and actually told me what street it was on, but advised me not to go there because they have two security guards on the door and no one can get in unless they have an appointment. Of course, it is impossible to get an appointment because they don’t advertise their phone number.  Of course, all the money they save from not paying benefits is spent on employing more paper-shufflers and security guards.

Isn’t Capitalism wonderful!

Moggie Grayson 

(World Socialist Party, NZ)