There Is a blind spot in thinking, under capitalism, that affects the most brilliant minds in almost every field, a blind spot having to do with the basics of commodities. Let us illustrate our point by looking at the question of food, of feeding the hungry populations of the world.
Recently, a Nobel Prize was awarded an expert in the science of wheat growing. This scientist, by his research, had so contributed to the knowledge of wheat that it now becomes possible to raise enormous crops of that basic food in areas in which it was hitherto impossible. Wonderful! But there is one serious problem, one flaw in the ointment that isn’t even considered and this, despite the many, many examples in the past of the same problem. Wheat is not produced principally with the idea of feeding hungry people. It is produced for sale on the market with view to profit. No profit, no wheat production. It is as simple as that.
Do you think there is anything untrue about this statement? Then let us remind you of miracle rice, for example. Only a year or so ago a new hybrid rice, several times more prolific than traditional rice, had been developed by the International Rice Research Institute and financed by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. Did this result in the masses of people in rice-consuming areas of the world now being able to get enough to eat? Of course not. What happened was that the vastly increased harvest flooded the rice market and large quantities of that food had to be destroyed because of inadequate storage and marketing facilities. As reported in The Western Socialist of July-August, 1969, a United States aid official in the Philippines remarked: “We never thought about marketing — we were concentrating on production.”
Or take the subject of oranges. We are told by nutrition scientists that the vitamins contained in oranges are vital in maintaining good health. Is there anybody who actually believes that every child in America is able to get all of the oranges they need? The potential for distribution of oranges In the United States — the richest country in the world — is far, far greater than orange production. Yet the orange growers of Florida, according to a recent news story, are searching for new markets for their commodity other than food because they are producing far more of the fruit than the food market can possibly absorb and this spells disaster for their prices. (One remembers those vast mountains of oranges that were plied up In California during the Hungry Thirties, doused with gasoline, and burned, while armed guards stood watch to keep needy people away.)
Whom shall we blame? The orange growers? The wheat growers? The rice growers? Ridiculous! Why should one blame them? Are they their poor millions of brothers’ and sisters' keepers? Or should we blame the Government? But the Government is the executive committee of the ruling class, the capitalist class, regardless of which political party forms the Government. This is capitalism. the market economy, the system of society in which all of the things people need to survive and to make life worth living are produced in order that surplus value may continue to be produced. To blame individual capitalists or the Government makes as little sense as handing out Nobel Awards to scientists who discover methods of producing food in abundance in an economy where food must not be produced in abundance.
The problem will be solved when the majority of us stop supporting political parties that promise to make capitalism operate uncapitalistically. For political parties and governments do not operate capitalism, capitalism operates them. And that is why the World Socialist Party of the United States does not want your support for anything short of an outright abolition of capitalism and the institution of a system based upon production for use by all who inhabit the earth. Examine your blind spot and investigate world socialism!
No comments:
Post a Comment