Fake Wheat Glut (1969)

From the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Major wheat exporting nations”, reported the April 4 Scotsman from Washington, "today opened talks here to try to solve a a crisis caused by a glut of wheat on the world market and plummeting prices”.

Surely the real crisis is that there are millions of human beings in the world who are chronically underfed, so how can there be talk of a glut of a basic food like wheat? The truth is that there is no glut when human needs are used as the measure, but this means that profits are threatened because more wheat than can be sold has been grown. It is a revealing comment on capitalism’s priorities that this is the crisis and not the fact of mass hunger.

A sanely organised community, based on the common ownership of the world’s resources, would grow wheat for use and not for sale on a market with a view to profit. Prices and profits would not enter into it and the absurd situation of starving people amidst an alleged food glut just could not arise.