Editorial: Capitalism and the food shortage (1946)

Editorial from the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE Governments of the world are worried about the food problem. Mr. Herbert Lehman, Director- General of U.N.R.R. A., declares that: “More men, women and children in Europe and the Far East are hungry this winter than at any time in modern history." He calls it “the greatest critical emergency which has faced the United Nations since the end of the war.” The defenders of capitalism do not admit that the existence of the problem and the inhuman and bungling way in which it is being handled are evidences of the inherent defects of that social system, but that is what they are. It is not true that the shortage exists only as a bye-product of war, for in pre-war years, when there were great surpluses of wheat and other products there were, alongside of them, millions of undernourished workers and peasants too poor to buy the food they needed. War is itself an inevitable outcome of capitalist trade rivalries and has, too, a result that is welcome from the capitalist standpoint, of removing for a time the huge unsaleable surpluses of raw materials and foodstuffs. One of the reasons why war propaganda like that of the Nazis was listened to by the workers was that it was linked up with promises that territorial expansion would provide more food. Presumably with this in mind, Mr. Clinton Anderson, Secretary of Agriculture in the United States, demanded, in a broadcast in October, 1945, that: “hunger must be eliminated as a primary cause of war,” and “ the United Nations must not permit the pangs of hunger to bring about the basic fears and greeds which result in war.” —The Times, 15 Oct., 1945.

He went on to say that “two-thirds of the world’s population was undernourished, yet science and technology had advanced to such a point that the earth’s agricultural resources could fill the need of all.”

In a Socialist world, if a general or local shortage of food existed all the resources of the world would at once be available to move foodstuffs to the area where they were needed, or to increase total production if that was necessary. If, as a temporary measure, consumption of food generally had to be reduced to help a locality where shortage existed, there would be no obstacles in the shape of private ownership and the profit motive.

In the world as it exists to-day not even the realisation that starvation or semi-starvation threatens millions of people can prevent capitalism from functioning in its normal way. People in Europe need dried eggs, while in America, according to the Daily Express (8 Feb., 1946), there is “a glut of eggs” and “poultry farmers are facing ruin as a result." In the same country farm output could have been increased, but because farmers consider the price offered for their grains is too low “ they prefer to feed them to their stock rather than to sell" (The Times, 9 Feb.), and they have deliberately kept output below what it could have been (Daily Telegraph, 9 Feb.). American farmers had not forgotten the ruin that faced them before the war because they had produced too much, not too much for the needs of the population, but more than they could sell at a profit. The Times (9 Feb.; says that with the ending of the war the “fears of agricultural surpluses which haunted the United States between the wars were revived. In spite of the golden prosperity brought by the war years, the farmers recollection of the deep agricultural depression of the twenties and thirties is as active a political force as the ghost of the hungry forties was for a long time in the political history of this country. But the fear of being under an avalanche of farm surpluses, attended by a catastrophic collapse of prices, has proved to have been a misreading of the portents, and the miscalculation has been aggravated by the determination of farmers to hoard grain as a protest against the price levels imposed by Washington.”

At the same time that millions are undernourished—in U.S.A., as well as in other countries—because they cannot afford to buy more, there is not a country in the world in which the rich cannot buy the best food; either openly or in the black market, in unrestricted amounts. In every country labour and resources that could be used to supply the needs of the ill-fed and ill-clothed masses of the population are being used, often with the deliberate encouragement of the Governments, on production of luxury articles for the wealthy or goods for the export drive, or armaments. Hundreds of millions of pounds being spent by the leading Powers on perfecting the bomb or building up peace-time armies, navies and air forces. In Britain, simultaneously with the declaration about the need for more food, we read of booming exports of British cars and other products. The Evening News (9 Feb.), under the heading “British Car Exports Booming,” reported that the Nuffield organisation alone will have sent abroad 20,000 cars by the end of June, when its production will have grown to 1,000 cars a week.

Britain is short of food and because we live under capitalism low-paid agricultural labourers are so anxious to escape to the relatively better paid work in industry that the Labour Government—while refusing to carry out the Labour Party’s own oft- repeated demand that land workers should have wages not less than those in industry—uses the war-time emergency powers to tie agricultural workers to their jobs.

Capitalism is indeed a mad and sorry system, which has long outlived its usefulness