It is estimated that the awesome number of 460 million of our fellow human beings are suffering from severe malnutrition. What is worse, this estimate is based on the peak level of per capita food supplies before the situation began to deteriorate so seriously in 1972; since then the number of severely malnourished people must have greatly increased. (Report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, 1974.)
So the horrifying story continues. In space men link up, with machinery costing more than those 460 millions could ever dream of, whilst on earth hunger and famine spread inexorably. In a world of space link-ups is there any scientific reason why there should be starvation? The answer is a resounding “No!”
Dr. Magnus Pyke (Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science) in an address published in New Scientist (10th July 1975) points out that scientific ability has more than kept pace with population expansion. “For the world as a whole,” he says “the production of food has — the figures show — outstripped the increase in population numbers.” It is estimated that whilst the world’s population over the next ten years can be anticipated to grow at the rate of 2.1 per cent, per year, the world’s food production will increase by 2.7 per cent, per year. And according to Dr. Pyke there is enough food around to feed the human race: “. . . food is available to prevent hunger world wide.”
So what’s the problem? Dr. Pyke argues that it is not know-how that is the difficulty:
The thesis I am propounding is that while the knowledge and power over events which science can provide can make great things possible, there are certain human problems in the solution of which science is incompetent.
Unfortunately Dr. Pyke does not tell us what are those “human problems”. Instead he gives us an idea as concrete as hot ice-cream. He says the starvation problem is basically the result of
. . . fundamental incapacity to deal with the relations between man and man, with human miscalculation and misfortune, and with Acts of God such as the failure of the monsoon two years running . . .
He has hopelessly contradicted himself. Having talked about “human problems” the solving of which are necessary, he is now talking about miscalculation, misfortune, and (spare us!) “Acts of God.” About
as scientific as dry rain. He ends up calling for the extension of the equivalent of the British Welfare State throughout the world.
As a scientific analysis of the ability of man to produce food, Dr. Pyke’s address clearly shows man’s capacity to produce an abundance of food. As an explanation of hunger alongside surpluses of food he takes the listener nowhere.
Two things are clear. One, there is the ability to produce a surplus of food; two, millions of people are starving (not just in “underdeveloped" countries either).
The reason for this conundrum is the economic system that man now uses. Instead of food production aiming to feed the people of the world, it is directed at one thing only, profit and accumulation of wealth for the owners. Although the scientists like Dr. Pyke often appear not to see this, the politicians who are elected to run capitalism can, when they choose to. For instance, Mrs. Judith Hart MP, former Minister of Overseas (Under) Development said that British farmers wanted to help towards solving the problems of shortage of food. But on what terms:
Our agricultural industry does not mind very much what it produces, as long as it gets a fair return.(The Times, 21st July 1975)
And there is the difficulty in a nutshell. Producers don’t care what they make or how they make it. So long as it sells at a profit, capitalism will make it. The starving millions can’t “buy” food because they can’t fulfil that essential condition. So the capitalists invest in other things which bring a “fair” (i.e. profitable) return. Such as armaments for the governments of the starving.
The solution to the appalling problem lies in our hands now. But it demands, not as Dr. Pyke in childish simplicity suggests “a world welfare state” (isn’t the British one bad enough?), but a world working class, consciously determined to establish Socialism.
Ronnie Warrington
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