The Food Crisis (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bible-belt America may be rejoicing the Supreme Court decision to restrict abortions of ‘unborn children’, but there has always been a noticeable lack of concern expressed for the living children needlessly dying around the world from hunger-related causes. According to UNICEF 40 million children in 15 countries are food insecure and of those 20 million are severely food insecure.

The media’s propaganda has been blaming the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia for the food shortages.

Is it so? The war in Ukraine is not the root cause of the present food shortages. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many people around the world were already food insecure.

While humanitarian assistance has been rushed to help Ukrainians, the budget to provide foreign aid to others countries is being reduced. The UN and NGOs are now actually cutting the food rations issued to the hungry.

Tens of millions of people across Africa do not receive enough food. Tens of millions are food insecure. Half the population of Somalia, for instance, lack sufficient food. Across the Atlantic, Latin American nations and Brazil also have food-insecure populations in their millions.

International agencies are over-stretched with appeals for funding going unheeded. It means food rations being reduced or eliminated entirely. Three-quarters of all refugees supported by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Eastern Africa are now on half-rations. In West Africa, where hunger has reached a record high in a decade, the WFP has significantly reduced rations for refugees living in the Sahel.

Much of the hunger problem is not due to any Russian blockade of Ukraine’s crops but to the effects of global warming and changes in weather patterns leading to increased drought conditions. Somalia is enduring its fourth season of failing rains. It means no harvests, with livestock dying from lack of grass. Many of the armed conflicts blamed on religion are in fact feuds between herders and farmers competing for pasture and water. News outlets feature the atrocities committed by Russia in Ukraine but the almost daily massacres in Africa never attract similar headlines.

According to a May 2022 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the world enjoys ‘a relatively comfortable supply level’ of cereals. The World Bank noted that global stocks of cereals are at historically high levels and that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started. Ukraine’s 2021/22 harvest yield saw exports up from 41 to over 46 million tonnes.

We are not saying there is no impact from the war but that we should delve deeper into the simplistic superficial explanations offered up by politicians.

So what is causing the global food price inflation? Why are prices sky-high?

Just as it was in the previous food crisis of 2007/8, profiteers have taken advantage of the uncertainty of volatile food supplies to speculate on the world market.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, financial institutions began recommending clients to invest in the rising food prices through commodity-linked ‘exchange traded funds’ (or ETFs). By April, two top agricultural ETFs had attracted net investment of $1.2 billion – compared to just $197 million for the whole of 2021, a 600 percent increase.

The University of Bonn concluded that ‘we cannot rule out the risk that excessive speculation already contributes to food price volatility and amplified spikes’. Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights commented, ‘Speculative activity by powerful institutional investors who are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals are indeed betting on hunger, and exacerbating it.’

The New York Times reported that ‘in April, speculators were responsible for 72 percent of the buying activity on the Paris wheat market, up from 25 percent before the pandemic,’ hoping to make money out of a self-created shortage. The corporations that control the bulk of the world’s commercial grain trade hold large stocks of grain in reserve so to as benefit when the prices go up.

The reality is that the world produces far more food than we eat. Over 33 percent of the food produced globally is used for animal feed as well as for other non-food uses, mainly ‘green’ biofuels. Over 40 percent of the roughly 400 million tons of corn – 160 million tons – goes to ethanol production. And the USA, despite the food crisis, insists that it has no intention of reducing its ethanol production. The Green Alliance thinktank found that the land use associated with the production of ethanol for consumption in the UK in 2021 was 107,300 hectares. If this land instead grew grain, 3.5 million people could be fed each year. The land used for biofuels for the EU, China, USA and elsewhere would be far greater and feed far more people.

The capitalist food system is built on volatile commodity markets and financial speculation. Hunger is systemic to a financial system that turns necessities into commodities to be traded so that it threatens the well-being of people. It is easier to make Russia the culprit for the current food crisis rather than accept that it is capitalism itself that is culpable.

2023 may well be a critical year if the situation is not addressed by states cooperating together, which is a very doubtful prospect. Therefore, we can expect that:

Climate change intensifies. People now suffering from food insecurity will face actual famine. Wars and civil unrest spread. Countries introduce policies to restrict their food exports and governments will fall.

ALJO

Putin, power and women (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the media frenzy concerning another spectacular but predictable demise of a British Prime Minister begins to subside there will be those who will try to divine a meaning in all of the populist bluster of the last few years. Like Trump in the USA his attempt to bypass and disregard the political establishment was a resounding failure. The most powerful office of state seems, in the end, to emphasise its weakness when confronted by the real power of the ruling elite. All of the millions who were conned into thinking that voting for populist candidates like Boris Johnson would change anything are forced to the realisation that their votes are meaningless if they attempt to thwart the ruling class and their need for ‘business as usual’. Perhaps Johnson was surprised at just how little power the office of PM brings with it.

A vision of him holed up in a fortified No. 10 defended by the hordes of his northern ‘red wall’ supporters paralleling the Trump militia’s storming of the Capitol building is both comical and disturbing. That the man had no moral compass or political integrity is no surprise to socialists but what we do find unforgivable is his warmongering activities on behalf of NATO in the name of the Ukrainian people. One of his more incoherent statements concerned his assertion that if Putin was a woman he would not have invaded Ukraine. Does he have no memory of the Tory heroine Thatcher glorying in the Falklands War? She may not have instigated the invasion but she loved every moment of it. Indeed many feminists at the time seriously asserted that she was not really a woman at all. So what is the real nature of political power and are female leaders instinctively more benign and less belligerent than their male counterparts?

A friend once insisted that she had no interest in history because it was merely a record of ‘boys’ power games’. Whilst it is true that the nature of the evolution of private property societies and their warrior ethos has promoted patriarchy there have been examples of powerful and belligerent female leaders. From Boudicca and Cleopatra in the ancient world to queens of England including Matilda, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I. There is no record of Queen Victoria objecting to her other title as ‘Empress of India’. Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir, Tansu Ciller and Chandrika Kumaratunga are all female leaders of the modern era who could hardly be called pacifists. Condoleeza Rice in her role of National Security Advisor in the US played a significant role in prosecuting the illegal war in Iraq and the instigation of the use of torture. The characteristics needed to be a successful politician within the capitalist context are the same for both men and women and gender seems to make no significant difference. Like leading men within the mainstream political parties their primary role is to protect the power and wealth of the parasitic elite. If war is needed to do this they will have no hesitation in beating the drum.

Vladimir Putin has become demonised in the West as a maniacal imperialist despot. But the truth is that his actions would be duplicated by many other capitalist leaders if they felt they had been systematically lied to and threatened by a rival and enemy. Putin represents the pride that Russia once felt in its supposed imperial heyday as the ‘Soviet Union’. Promises undertaken by the US not to expand their empire (NATO) any further east have been broken and rightly or wrongly the Russian elite feel they have been betrayed and insulted. They proclaim that Ukraine was the gateway to the invasion of their country by Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler and that they will never allow this to happen again. Meanwhile members of the working class on both sides continue to murder each other in the name of their respective national oligarchs. The idea that this is simply ‘Putin’s War’ rather than an inevitable result of national rivalries and the economic objectives that they serve is just tabloid propaganda.

An unlikely candidate for the role of female peacemaker came in the form of German leader Angela Merkel who, apparently, begged George Bush Jnr. not to continue to pressure Ukraine to join NATO since she plainly foresaw the conflict that this would unleash. The momentum of history has little regard for the illusion of power that leaders try to project. As Merkel’s ‘illustrious’ predecessor Otto von Bismarck once remarked with unusual humility: ‘The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to his coattails as he marches past.’ If we substitute the word ‘progress’ for the reference to God this has an almost Marxian quality to it. Bismarck also knew that a united Germany was inevitable and that his efforts to maintain Prussian hegemony were doomed – it seems that those who are most successful as statesmen/women recognise how limited their power really is.

An analysis of the power of individuals and groups through history leads socialists to believe that leaders are a political anachronism that have no place in the modern world. The global working class must act as a united political force to finally eliminate the mythology of ‘great men and leaders’ and the tribal interests that they represent. Only then can humankind’s true historical destiny be fulfilled.

Wez.

Frontierless World (2022)

Book Review from the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against Borders – The Case for Abolition. By Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke De Noronha. Verso. Paperback £9.99. 2022. 

Where at first glance Against Borders… has a single-issue focus, it becomes a multi-faceted explainer of how ‘migrants’ are seen under the terms of capitalism and how we could interact with our fellow humans in a future, more open world.

The book regularly refers to André Gorz’s concept of ‘Non-Reformist Reforms’ (bit.ly/3z1mXui) but gives socialists something to think about in terms of how borders can be abolished and other related issues solved in a future freed from capitalist constraints.

The book is broken down into chapters on race, policing and prisons and counter-terrorism among others but possibly the most thought-provoking is simply entitled ‘Capitalism’. Bradley and De Noronha refer to the ‘myth of race and nation’ and how these and other similar concepts persuade us to perceive a worker from abroad differently from someone who hails from the same locality. There is discussion around how and to what end migrant workers are criminalised and treated by police forces, and the book includes interesting explanations of how ownership of land and ownership of territories differ.

In a 2018 article, author, broadcaster and professor Gary Younge described how when his Barbadian mother came to Britain in 1962 to work as a nurse she was already a British subject – ‘My mother didn’t cross the border to come to Britain – the border crossed her.’ In Against Borders… Bradley and De Noronha include a chapter on race and what it means to be a ‘citizen’ including critique of the ‘hostile environment’ (bit.ly/3ALCqju). Why, for example, do we need to be a ‘citizen’ in order to claim basic human rights from a state and how might campaigns for particular groups of migrants be considered to be defeatist by virtue of their reformist nature, rather than attempting to get to the root of the issue.

Ultimately, the book could be judged as a modern revision of concepts around the position and power (or lack thereof) of the worker, both regarding capital and people’s ability to determine their own lives. The authors explicitly and interestingly leave open some questions about how we may restructure after borders are deemed obsolete. There are two thought-provoking utopian ‘interlude’ sections with imagined futures of people on the move and how this could play out in a post-capitalist world.

If Against Borders… is to be a (figurative) call to arms for a new audience to recognise that a radical change is possible in terms of how a state treats people from other (current) nations and possibilities around the building of a new realm, then the message is a positive one.

‘The abolition of borders requires that we challenge all of the social structures underpinning their permanence’ (p149).

TJ

A Very British Hit Job (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

This June saw a very British hit job. Charles, the heir to the throne, reportedly made comments that indicated that he considered the British government’s policy of off-shoring irregular migrants to Rwanda as ‘appalling’. The Times reported this, indicating that the remarks were made in private. Nonetheless, this led to banner headlines in many papers. Unnamed government ministers were quoted as saying ‘He is in danger of over-reaching himself. He cannot make pronouncements on government policy when he is king. Even in private there is always a chance those remarks will get out and put him in a difficult position’.

Undoubtedly, the government had initiated this policy to get a strong reaction so they could have a storm about taking a strong stance over their handling of irregular migration across the Channel. They probably didn’t expect the flak to come from the prince, much less the Archbishop of Canterbury: they wanted to be able to point to soft liberals who ‘hate their country’ rather than the absolute pillars of the very Establishment itself.

This must have hit home, because, just a week or so later, we saw more banner headlines about Mr Windsor. The Sunday Times led with a splash about him receiving large charitable donations from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former Prime Minister of Qatar. The issue being that the €3 million was received in €1 million cash instalments, personally handed to the aristocrat in Fortnum & Mason carrier bags.

These reports noted that ‘Each payment was deposited into the accounts of the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund (PWCF), a low-profile grant-making entity which bankrolls the prince’s pet projects and his country estate in Scotland. There is no suggestion the payments were illegal.’

So, if the donation was not illegal, was not given personally to Mr Windsor, why did it merit a front page splash? The journalists provided weak gruel with questions of ‘judgement’: it simply looked shady to accept large donations of cash (though, apparently, trustees later said due diligence on accepting the donation was done). Presumably, if the donation had been done by bank transfer, there’d have been no issue.

They also drew in other allegations of courtiers offering cash for honours, which, while shady, were themselves not relevant to the princeling accepting charitable donations.

In his final novel, Numero Zero the Italian scholar of communication and meaning Umberto Eco presented an examination of the fictional establishment of a new newspaper: the issue-zero proofs of concept that are a prelude to releasing a newspaper proper. The idea being that an Italian millionaire wanted to ‘enter the inner sanctum of finance, banking and perhaps also the quality press. His way of getting there is the promise of a new newspaper ready to tell the truth about everything,’ a newspaper that could be stopped, for such rewards.

Eco has the fictional editor of this pseudo-newspaper say: ‘It’s not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news. And if you know how to put four different news items together, then you can offer the reader a fifth.’ The simple act of contextualising a story on the page makes the story. Of course, Charles Windsor consorts with rich people, and gifts and favours are swapped all the time, and his simple unearned privilege is an affront to humanity. But, putting a small example on a front page gives it an appearance of impropriety, even when in fact none exists.

It is also an excellent example of ‘swiftboating’, an act named after the campaign of Swiftboat veterans for truth, a move by Republican Party strategists in the United States to neutralise a natural strength of then Presidential candidate John Kerry. He was a decorated Vietnam war veteran, something that is normally an advantage in elections, however, merely raising a question mark about this turned his greatest strength into a liability.

The Royal Firm uses its charitable work as a shield to protect it from criticism of its undemocratic power and unearned opulence and luxury. By turning charitable collection into a point of concern, and even possible malfeasance by the princeling (especially by reference to his Scottish estate which the charity supports), the media ‘swiftboated’ him.

The message sent was loud and clear: the press could manufacture a story any time they want. And, given how long ago these transactions are supposed to have happened, it also sent the message that they are sitting on an arsenal of stories that they could pull out at any time to trash Windsor in the public imagination – much like the infamous list of ‘handsy’ Tory MPs that was leaked from the Whips’ office in 2017 and contained details of 40 MPs’ sexual and other misconducts, including Chris Pincher – the revelation of whose behaviour was just the trigger for the downfall of Boris Johnson.

We have just witnessed the punishment beating of a Royal, with the clear implication that the mass media can destroy the monarchy if it wished, and that if it hinders the agenda that parts of the press want to have the government follow, it will not hesitate to do so.

If that happens, we would not shed a single tear: indeed, given how some members of the Royal firm whine about the unfairness of press intrusion, we’d heartily encourage them to save themselves the bother, and leave the business, and take the whole stinking operation with them.

Pik Smeet

Is it really okay not to be okay? (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

 . . . Well, the simple answer surely has to be no! But let’s dig a little deeper.

Every now and then a totally pompous and pampered privileged prince pops up in the news to reassure us that all is not as bad as it seems. For example, in a somewhat sickening publicity stunt and attempt to distract and limit the damage to their royal highnarses reputation caused by one of the more wayward members of the family firm, cute and cuddly Prince Willy was recently spotted promoting The Big Issue magazine designed to help the homeless, before heading back to his palatial home gifted to him by his Granny Liz.

Apparently regarded as one of the more popular members of the royal family, who along with his wife Kate, can often be seen and heard muttering those words ‘it’s okay not to be okay’ in an attempt to persuade us that poor mental health issues are something not to be ashamed of. This is certainly the case, however a more pressing matter surely has to be why so many of us are falling into some of the most desperate states of stress, anxiety and extreme levels of depression recorded in recent times?

Whilst some people may be predisposed to such mental illnesses through biologically inherited disorders affecting the brain, there can be little doubt that environmental factors such as poor and sometimes volatile relationships – be they among family, friends or in the work place – are paramount. All manner of life events, alongside the pressure of trying to achieve good educational grades in order to set you up for the job market, can often leave you feeling low and in extreme cases, losing the will to live.

But fear not, our future King Billy is here to tell us that everything’s going to be okay. Just keep taking the pills and you’ll be fine. Somehow, we don’t think so.

The current social system most of us have to endure, called capitalism, has an inherently shambolic way of working which is the root cause of most of the ills we have to suffer during our lifetime. Now more than ever we are witnessing in real time the chaotic nature of the production of food and other life essentials motivated by the greed of the profit-hungry capitalists, the prices of which are also being seriously affected by world events such as the war in Ukraine, the fall-out from the Coronavirus pandemic, the instability caused by changes to European trading rules following Brexshit and the complex relationship between those competing nation states. Gas, electricity and other rising fuel costs all conspire towards the so-called cost of living crisis.

So what can we do about it? We are seeing so much conflict and antagonism promoted by the class division of those who own the means of production but do not produce, and those of us who produce, but do not own the means of production. This can often result in the withdrawal of labour through strike action – about the only tool the working class has at its disposal to combat and redress the balance of power. This in turn often leads to animosity and bad will between members of the working class whose lives are often disrupted by, for example, the recent industrial action taken by rail workers, through having to make alternative arrangements (often at much higher costs) in getting to hospital appointments, or perhaps choosing to sacrifice some annual leave rather than risk losing wages through not being able to get to work at all. Again, all symptomatic of the chaos that is life under capitalism.

So can we really believe the bullshit of the royal prince charming us with his words of comfort that poor mental health is just something that’s natural and happens to everyone at some stage in our lives? Certainly not. Sure, being mentally ill is not something to be ashamed of. However, it is definitely something that could so easily be avoided if we had an altogether different and more sane way of organising ourselves and society. Now more than ever is the time to come together as a class and take control over our own destiny, with production methods held in common ownership by all and the fruits of our labours shared by all, the satisfaction of being part of the common good will undoubtedly lead to a more positive and healthier state of mind for us all. Anything else just won’t be okay.

Paul Edwards