The Common Market Special Survey: 4. Agriculture (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agriculture may not be the most important problem for Britain in its negotiations over the Common Market but it is certainly going to be one of the trickiest.

Nor should it be forgotten that agriculture has been causing a great deal of trouble within the Common Market itself. Only recently, France declared that she would veto any fresh moves on the industrial front until West Germany showed more enthusiasm for removing the barriers on the agricultural side. The motive, of course, was the usual one—France is keen to get a larger slice of the German market for her agricultural exports.

The fact that Denmark, another large exporter of foodstuffs, has also applied for membership of the Community will cause further complications. It will be interesting to see how all these conflicting interests are finally sorted out, if in fact they ever are.

Britain

But there can be no doubt that British agriculture has plenty to worry over. Home farmers are overwhelmingly opposed to Britain going into the Common Market and have done their utmost to prevent it. There is equally no doubt that it is fear for their agriculture that has caused many Commonwealth countries to make such an outcry about Britain’s application to join. But in this modern world of capitalism it is the interests of industry that call the tune and the Macmillan Government has gone on regardless of both farmers and Commonwealth.

British agriculture has good reasons to be wary of the Six. In the first place, in spite of all the efforts during and since the war to step up home production, the U.K. has still to import more than half its food. Most of these imports come from the Commonwealth—meat and dairy produce from New Zealand and Australia, wheat and coarse grains from Australia and Canada, and such things as fruit from all three. Much of this comes in at preferential tariff rates, though this benefit is not so important as it once was.

On the other hand, the Common Market is virtually self-sufficient in foodstuffs. Indeed, certain countries like France and the Netherlands are now actually piling up surpluses. France in particular, as a result of improved methods since the war, is rapidly coming to the point of crisis in the production of some items, for which she is becoming desperate to find markets. Nor is the position going to improve since she has vast capacity to expand. By far the largest country in area (second only to Russia in Europe), and larger still in actually usable agricultural land, it has been estimated that with fully improved methods she could supply the whole of the Six with some products, notably wheat and beef. It is the fear that France may insist on supplying Britain with wheat that is causing Canada particular concern.

Both France and the Netherlands, and Denmark if she also joins, see Britain’s entry into the Common Market as providing a welcome outlet for their agricultural exports. The British farmer takes a much less rosy view of the prospect.

His pessimism is made worse when he considers a further important difference between the way his products are sold compared with the Six. This is strange on the face of it because food prices are generally higher within the Six than they are in this country and this should apparently be to his advantage.

But the reality is not so re-assuring. The reason why food prices are generally lower in Britain is because it has long been the policy of British governments to keep them down artificially. Their method of doing this has been to allow food to come into the country almost free of restriction and let prices find their own level irrespective of the fact that these prices are below those at which the home farmer can produce economically.

This policy if left unchecked would, of course, soon bring most British farmers to bankruptcy. To avoid this, the Government has regularly made up the difference between the farmers general price and the imported price by means of subsidies. This difference is certainly not chicken-feed—it amounts to about £250 million a year, plus many more millions in the way of other payments to assist and improve their farming.

The Six

This procedure is in marked contrast to the system in most countries of the Six, whose governments have been more inclined towards policies of keeping out foreign imports by means of tariffs and quotas. They have been able to do this mainly because they are largely self-sufficient in food and the result has been that though prices are higher they are at the same lime more closely related to the farmers’ actual costs.

In practical terms, of course, the two systems boil down to essentially the same thing. All that happens is that the subsidies needed to help out the British farmer are found from extra taxation so that overall the amount actually received is near enough the same. But it has been an exceedingly useful method for the British capitalist class in keeping food prices stable and thus of helping to keep wages under better control. It was, of course, used to its greatest effect during wartime and in the critical period immediately afterwards.

The Six have already made it clear, however, that they will expect Britain to fall in with their system. It is also pretty obvious that the British Government will not in fact be unduly upset about this since whatever merits the subsidy system has had in the past it has been causing them a lot of headaches recently. They are particularly restive about the financial burden: assistance to be paid out to farmers is even higher than usual this year, enough to make them wonder whether the time hasn’t come to have done with it altogether.

Prices

If therefore Britain does join the Six a rise in food prices seems highly likely. Estimates about this vary from a shilling or two per head per week to something very much more, but the truth is that nobody really knows. One thing is certain, however, and that is that it would provide the Government with a wonderful opportunity to whittle down the effective buying power of wages at a time when the wind of competition within the Common Market was already making the British worker feel chilly.

Agriculture is notoriously a difficult subject to make forecasts about. Governments play about with it and it has always provided a voting lobby sufficiently powerful to make political parties commit themselves to all sorts of peculiar things to win farmers’ support at election times. In addition, until the atomic bomb came along to make the question academic, capitalist governments everywhere have always had some regard for its importance in times of war. The fear of blockade has always been a bogey for them. One can never be certain, then, of what will happen when governments start talking about agriculture and even less certain when a group of their spokesmen get round a conference table to bargain and horsetrade.

A few things can be said, however. It seems fairly certain, for example, that if Britain does go into the Common Market ii will do so at the considerable expense of Commonwealth countries. Present indications are that whilst the Six may how some special consideration for New Zealand, whose economy is almost completely independent upon Britain taking all her meat products and butter, they will have little time for the claims of Australia and Canada who will have to start looking elsewhere for markets for their products. Australia has in fact already begun to do this and is now selling to China and Japan.

Bigger Units

Agricultural interests in France and the Netherlands would gain from this, though Denmark will provide extra competition if she also joins. Italian horticulture will also be given a fillip since the hitherto heavily protected U.K. market seems almost certain to be made more accessible. It is hard to see anything other than a catastrophic effect upon British horticulture, in fact, unless the negotiators bring something remarkable out of the bag. Expensively-heated glasshouses are no match economically for free sunshine and fast transport and can only have their existence in (he mad world of capitalism.

But even more clearly than with industry, the future of European agriculture is going to reflect the inexorable drive of capitalism towards bigger units, mechanisation, and more economic production.

In Italy, 44 per cent. of the population are still dependant upon the land for their living. In France the proportion is 25 per cent. and even in Germany it is 15 per cent. The figure in Britain is 5 per cent.

All these countries are taking deliberate measures to get their peasants off the land and into the towns and factories, though economic forces themselves are probably doing the work more effectively on their behalf. Hundreds of thousands of small farmers are fated to leave their farms in the not far-off future and their land will be merged into larger holdings, revert to its natural state, or be transformed into state forests.

Even in this country the process is still going on. Many small farmers are only able to keep going because of their subsidies from the State. Each year still shows a drop in the number of people getting their living from the land.

The Common Market, therefore, only throws into prominence a process which has been part and parcel of capitalism since its existence. In fact, the Common Market is itself a reflection of this process on the international field. The same impetus which forces firms to amalgamate within a country’s boundaries now forces the countries themselves to look outside their boundaries.

Surplus

But whilst the implications for industry of this process are great, for agriculture they are enormous. That is why all the negotiators at Brussels, whether they belong to Britain, the Six, Denmark, Ireland, or any other country with agricultural interests to protect, are going to talk tough and bargain hard.

And, very much in their minds and hanging darkly over all, is the shadow of surplus. Surplus in a world where half the population live near to starvation and another quarter not very much better.

And that for us is the real dark shadow over all this business of agriculture and the Common Market.

Stan Hampson

Cheaper food—less wages (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the firm of Harry Ferguson, Ltd., of Coventry, producers of the Ferguson Tractor, comes a booklet containing an alleged solution to the rising cost of living. By reducing the cost of food and thereby preventing demands for higher wages, the farmer, so he is assured, can prevent the “vicious, mounting spiral of inflation.” But let Harry Ferguson, Ltd., speak for themselves:

A paragraph headed : “Industry’s Prime Cost’’ proceeds:

“The prime cost of all industry is the cost of maintaining human beings. Human beings cannot he maintained unless they are paid enough to ensure that they get sufficient food to keep them fit to do their jobs; and they must also have, at the very least, a reasonable margin left over to enjoy other things.

“If, therefore, food prices can be stabilised, wages can be stabilised too.”

The writer delicately refrains from carrying his argument to the next logical step—that if food prices can be reduced, wages can be reduced too.

This booklet has not, as you may guess, been produced for the purpose of introducing the employees of Harry Ferguson, Ltd., to Marx’s theory of Value. It has as its object the sale of tractors and carries the popular two fold appeal to the potential customer—the assurance that “costs” will be cut, backed by the patriotic appeal to assist the “National effort.”

Nevertheless, although the composer of this stirring appeal may never have read a line of Marx, no Marxist could quarrel with his analysis of the prime cost of industry. (The additional margin to “enjoy other things” is a novel, if somewhat vague touch and should merit close attention if some economist can be persuaded to come forward with the formula by means of which this margin is calculated!)

How often have the workers refused to accent this analysis from the Socialist platform? Will they accept it now, from the pen of their masters’ hirelings?

Let the worker consider carefully the implications. The farmer is urged to buy agricultural implements to enable the worker to enjoy a more substantial or varied diet. but, in reality, to facilitate a general reduction in wages. Nor is this stupid and vicious economy confined to the land. Everywhere that so-called “labour-saving” machinery is installed, whether in mills, mines or factories, whether in warehouses, offices or hotels, the object is never to save labour hut always to save wages.

This is inevitable under capitalism. The capitalist class is forever striving to reduce wages, whether by direct action in the workshops where labour-saving machinery enables production to be maintained or increased with fewer workers, or indirectly where the cheaper production of the necessities of life enables a reduction to be made in the basic wage.

The solution? A social system wherein the use of machinery on the farm as in every other sphere of production, has as its two-fold object the genuine saving of labour (with its accompanying increase of leisure and energy to enjoy that leisure) and the production of articles solely, simply and sensibly for—need. In a word—Socialism.

H.J.G.

Blogger's Note:

There's a strong chance that 'H.J.G.' was Howard J. Grew. My reasoning is twofold: Howard was a member of the Birmingham Branch of the SPGB, and the article refers to a firm in the West Midlands; and, secondly, he joined the Party in 1947, so his membership and this article overlap.

Howard's obituary appeared in  the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Canadian notes. (1930)

From the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent from Winnipeg, Canada, commenting on the situation there, says that everybody is talking wheat ! wheat ! The Canadian Wheat Pool was to save the farmers, but the bankers are forcing them to sell their wheat at a very low price, with the result that the pool is being broken and wheat is being “bootlegged” at market prices. The merchants cannot collect the farmers’ bills, so have to cart away wheat to satisfy the debts.

Unemployment is rife in Canada, and the Reform Parties, I.L.P. and Communist, are vying with each other in their reform programmes. The old Socialist Party of Canada is dead, and its leading members, such as Harrington, Lefeaux and Pritchard, now support the I.L.P. candidates. Efforts are being made in Alberta to revive the S.P. of C., but it is not very promising at present. In Manitoba the One Big Union holds meetings, but as the Union contains all varieties of opinion, the need for Socialist educational work is great. Amongst the thousands of members the One Big Union contains, there are no subscribers of the Socialist Standard, our correspondent informs us. In an area where this journal had a good circulation, the few readers today indicates how little interest there is in real Socialist work. There is no paper in the U.S.A. and Canada to compare with the educational value of the Socialist Standard, and we urge our friends there to make it widely known.

C.

Sting in the Tail: A Sordid Tale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Sordid Tale

The history of British Labour governments is littered with sordid episodes. One of these was told on ITV's "A Marriage of Inconvenience" on 15 August.

In 1949 Ruth Williams, a white Briton, married Seretse Khama, a tribal chief In the British "Protectorate" of Bechuanaland. The neighbouring South African government, which had just imposed Apartheid, was outraged and demanded that the Labour government refuse to recognise Khama as legitimate chief.

Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, was determined that Britain must have its own atom bomb but the American government wouldn't provide the necessary know-how.

But America was short of uranium which South Africa had in plenty, so the Labour government made a deal with South Africa to betray Khama in return for uranium which it would then swop for American atom secrets.

Khama was summoned to London to be subjected to threats, attempted bribery and finally banishment from Bechuanaland.

So the government that claimed to oppose Apartheid actually assisted it, while the cynicism and treachery they displayed would have shamed the hardest-hearted Tory.

The re-telling of this episode is a reminder that Labour governments will stop at nothing in their efforts on behalf of British capitalism.

Trotsky's "Marxism"

The 50th anniversary of Trotsky’s murder had his followers lavishing the usual praise on their hero.

In a letter to The Guardian (23 August), David Widgery of the Socialist Workers Party claimed, among other things, that Trotsky had applied Marxist analysis to 20th century events.

We deny this: What Trotsky applied was the bombastic crystal-gazing which had him writing in 1935, for example, that ". . . England is heading for a revolutionary explosion" only months before the Tories won their biggest ever majority.

According to Trotsky the sit-down strikes by French workers in 1936 "revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system", that capitalism in 1938 was in its "death agony", etc., etc.

History has proved Trotsky's analyses to be nonsense and his legacy to the working class has been to confuse thousands of them down the years.

Ryzhkov's "Marxism"

In the struggle for power inside the Communist Party of the USSR there appears to be a conflict between those who would immediately go over to a Western-style market economy and those who would have that change enacted more gradually.

Amongst the gradualists is the present Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. But to illustrate the hypocrisy and deceit of the ruling élite  in the USSR his more gradual approach does not apply to his own personal ownership.

In the youth daily Komsomolskaya Pravada, it has been reported that Ryzhkov has bought his state dacha with one-and-a-half hectares of forest for the ludicrous sum of 47,000 roubles (officially £47,000 but in reality about one tenth that amount judging by the foreign tourist rate.)

With the thought of yet another coal strike in the offing perhaps Mr. Ryzhkov plans to have a good supply of firewood on hand this winter. Another example of "socialist" planning?

Off the Rails

During the enquiry into the Clapham rail disaster, which led to 35 deaths, the Westminster coroner Paul Knapman made a telling point about the cause of the disaster, when questioning the technician who carried out the faulty signalling work.

During questioning of Mr. Hemingway, Mr. Knapman said that he believed that there were four "core reasons" for the disaster — a lack of instruction; a lack of supervision; a lack of testing along the guidelines set out in circular SL-53; and "the general reckless haste, pressure, pressure, pressure" of the re-signalling work

The Independent 11 September

That the pressure was indeed intense is backed up by the information that Hemingway had had only one day off in 13 weeks, that he had no formal training and that the acting testing officer who had to check Hemingway's work had no formal training either.

The "core reason" for the Clapham disaster is of course capitalism. In a sane society based on production for use there would be no need to scrimp on safety measures.

Reformist "Progress"

The Gulf crisis has meant a big set-back for environmentalists in the USA.

Until now their pressure (aided by the low cost of imported oil) has enabled them to block further oil exploration, notably in Alaska and off the Californian coast.

Now the strategists who consider the long-term interests of US capitalism insist that America has become too dependent on imported oil and that more domestic oil production is in "the national interest".

The oil companies are using this situation to turn the tables on their enemy. One of their chief spokesmen stated:

The national security aspects in oil have been completely subordinated in recent years to the environmental concerns. Now the emphasis is coming back to the national security aspect. If there is a conflict between the two, it may no longer be resolved in favour of the environmentalists.

The Guardian 25 August

And the environmentalists' other bogey, the nuclear industry, has seized the opportunity to strenghten its case by pointing out that nuclear plants greatly reduce US dependence on oil imports.

On top of this come allegations that environmentalists are a threat to national security! Congressman Dannemeyer of California says:

The environmentalists party . . . is a greater security threat than Saddam Hussein could ever be.

Now that the "communist" menace has gone, maybe the environmentalists will be the next victims to be labelled "un-American". Stranger things have happened.

Down on the Farm

Riot police lobbing tear gas grenades at angry crowds — lorries hi-jacked — roads blocked by burning debris — a scene from Lebanon, South Africa or Palestine?

No. This is rural France as farmers protest at the import of meat and lamb.

Many of them face ruin as the price of lamb has fallen by 17 per cent, calves by 10 per cent and cows by 7 per cent.

Some "experts" blame the French government for cutting subsidies, some the import of cheap produce from Britain, others blame cheap imports from Eastern Europe. None of them apparently blame the real cause — capitalism with its production for profit. 

The spectacle of children starving — while farmers riot about the ruin that faces them as the meat mountain grows — is just another example of how essential it is that we scrap the out-dated system of society that produces everything for sale despite the desperate needs of the world's hungry.

Workers leave the running of society in the hands of "experts" at their peril.

Invasion or Starvation? (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The man in the street is comforted. If ever he had any doubts concerning “his” country’s preparedness for and protection against any possible invasion of this tight little isle, these have been entirely dispelled by Mr. Balfour’s recent speech in the House of Commons. Not only have “we” sufficient battleships, not only are they up-to-date, but in the moment of danger they could be so quickly mobilized at any given spot that there exists no necessity for uneasiness. And so our friend of the short sight, who discerns nothing beyond the tip of his nose, is reassured, and proceeds to his daily avocation briskly, humming—

“We don’t want to fight,

But by Jingo if we do !

We’ve got the ships,

We’ve got the men,

We’ve got the money, too !”

It is true that some of our largest battleships have a nasty habit of ramming each other now and again, that our torpedo boat destroyers sometimes buckle, that in about twelve months three of our expensive submarines have come to grief with much loss of life to our own men, and that our guns sometimes burst, hurling our handy-men into the great unknown. These are mere incidents, or such accidents as will happen in the best regulated navies. Balfour says “all’s well.” Campbell Bannerman congratulates him upon his statement, and the pleased patriot perigrinates, at peace with all the world.

Someone has remarked that the Britisher cannot concentrate upon more than one thing at a time, a failing of which the “statesman,” of both the capitalist and “labour” order, has not been slow to take advantage. Hence it happens that the great “B.P.” rarely concerns itself with the substance, so intent is it in grasping the shadow. In the present connection, John Bull, entirely failing to note the economic development of recent years, still imagines that the enemy against whom it is necessary to guard is a foreign navy or a combination of foreign navies, ever on the watch to swoop down upon these shores. This may have been the position many years ago, when we produced our own foodstuffs, and “every rood maintained its man.” But with the development of manufactures, to the detriment of agriculture, a new foe has arisen. It is not the foreigner with his ships of war that we have to fear and to fight, but that product of capitalism, the financier, of no nation and of every nation, whose operations could at any time not only inflict severe hardships upon the people of this and every other country, but could bring Britain to its knees by withholding its food supplies.

Fifty years ago, during the financial year 1854-5, 20,546,000 quarters (of 480 lbs.) of wheat and wheat flour were consumed here, of which 17,563,000 quarters were home grown and only 2,983,000 were imported. At the time of writing, I am unable to obtain the exact year when we ceased to be self-supporting as far as foodstuffs are concerned, but it certainly must have been long after the commencement of the 19th century. An article which appeared in Blackwood’a Magazine for February, 1903, contained a Declaration signed by 26 of the leading corn merchants of the United Kingdom, in which it was stated that “as late as the Crimean War we were almost self-supporting but we now import four-fifths of our wheat.”

As this article showed, there are some among the capitalist-class who view with alarm our present dependent position, but the proposals they put forward are, as might be expected, totally inadequate. They do not desire the emancipation of the wage-earning class and therefore advocate nothing that would tend in that direction.

In 1898 a Committee was appointed “to inquire and report how far, and in what way, the proposed establishment of national stores of wheat would affect the interests of British Fanners.” It consisted of M.P’s and others, all supposed to possess a practical knowledge of agricultural matters, and the most important of their conclusions was, “It may be concluded, therefore, that for six months after the end of March in any year, the quantity of wheat and flour in the country seldom exceeds six weeks’ supply.” To-day we are more dependent than ever upon other countries, because our population has increased, whilst the home area under cultivation has considerably decreased.

With the recollection of the recent Leiter-Armour manipulation of the world’s wheat supply let us look the facts squarely in the face. Is it possible invasion or probable starvation that we free-born Britishers have to prepare for?

Some of those who gave evidence before the Agricultural Committee seemed to get very near to the truth, but just failed to grip, or to admit, the exact situation. Mr. James Birch thought that “in the event of war we should be practically in the hands of the plunging speculator,” but is war a necessary condition ? Mr. T. B. Home spoke of “the perilous position this country would be placed in for its food supply, should a combination of nations against Great Britain arise,” but substitute determined financiers or plunging speculators for “nations” and the peril is as great and probably the action would be more rapid, the effects more immediate and disastrous. Some of the witnesses admitted that “apart from a forcible interruption of supplies by enemies’ cruisers, there is a possibility that a nation—or a coalition of nations— intending to make war on this country might forestall the supply of wheat by the purchase of futures.” Mr. Proctor could quite imagine that “if Russia to-day were to be at war with us, our own supplies (from Russia) would be stopped, and, through German and other sources, she might buy, in America, practically all the American wheat.” And Mr. Seth Taylor, in reply to a question respecting the engine of offence which be used by those countries unable to compete with us on the seas, answered “they have nothing to do but sit on their stocks.”

Let us put it in another way. Apart from a forcible interruption of supplies by enemies’ cruisers, there is a possibility that a millionaire—or a coalition of millionaires—intending to bring this country to submission, might forestall the supply of wheat by the purchase of “futures.” Not in any way a remote or improbable contingency. According to the article in Blackwood’s, “the chief source of our supply is the United States, but the price of wheat on the American corn market can be raised artificially, and in the event of a European war, in which Great Britain was involved, it is quite possible, indeed probable, that it would be so raised.” And it could also be so raised, as has already been done, without a European war, as the working-class have good cause to remember.

When Mr. Joe Leiter, Lord Curzon’s brother-in-law, attempted the cornering of the world’s wheat supply, the capitalist Press said that he failed, but viewed as a failure, the effect upon the working-class was so disastrous that one can imagine what would have been the result had he succeeded. Not only did the price of wheat, flour and bread rise all over the world, but the inability of the workers in some parts of Southern Europe to obtain bread led to riots, and in Hungary the people, demanding bread, were given the usual capitalist answer—bullets. If, then, the operations of one man in Chicago, or, counting Armour, two men, could produce such world-wide results when those operations were supposed to have failed, it is easy to see that a combination of financiers could dictate their own terms, particularly to a country so dependent upon outside sources for its food supply as is Great Britain.

The proposals usually put forward are useless, because they all depend upon the continuance of the competitive system.

There is the tariff reformer, who, by a readjustment of fiscal conditions, would induce the growing of the Empire’s food supply within the Empire, but who can never show (I myself have challenged several) how that will prevent the financiers operating. Love laughs at locksmiths and Leiter, Armour, Rockefeller & Co. would laugh at tariff walls if they determined to get control of the food supply of this Empire or of any other part of the world.

The establishment of national granaries would not only not affect them but by creating an extra demand for the twelve month’s supply of wheat which it is proposed to store, would give the “plunging speculator” his opportunity.

Then there is the reformer, sometimes claiming to be a ”Socialist" who advocates small holdings or peasant proprietorship, either because he thinks, with the late Lord Salisbury, that “to increase the number of small holders of the soil is to secure the strongest bulwark against revolutionary change,” or because he honestly believes that to be the best proposal, But apart from the fact that the day of small things is past, that production on a small scale is wasteful, it is well known that the transformation from a tenant to a small proprietor, whilst freeing the cultivator from the domination of the farmer or landlord, drives him into the clutches of the ursurer. What has the tenant farmer of Ireland gained ? Is it better to be the victim of the gombeen man than of the landlord ? And none of the other proposals would be effective. What is wanted and what alone will suffice is a complete revolution. The class-proprietorship of the means of life must be abolished : they must be taken over and controlled by the people, all of whom shall be workers. With the substitution of common for private ownership of land, factories, railways, etc., the power of the capitalist, great and small, of gambling with the people’s food, of appropriating the product of the labourer, whether of the field, the mine or the workshop, will be destroyed and the people freed from their subjection to a class. The matter affects both town and country worker, of every land, of every creed. The men of capital are stronger than the men-of-war and their strength can only be taken from them by the organisation of the working-class into a separate and distinct revolutionary Socialist party, such as The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Jack Kent

Post-capitalist farming (2023)

From the April 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We continue our series on farming under capitalism and in a post-capitalist society of common ownership.

Link to Part 1 

Compared to the capitalist mode of production, a post-capitalist society of common ownership would be able to exercise a significantly greater degree of flexibility and choice when it comes to selecting a particular productive technique or approach to farming. Freed from the imperative of having to seek a profit through the sale of commodities, decisions can be made that would be prudently adapted to the actual physical circumstances that farmers face as opposed to the socially contingent conditions imposed on them by market competition.

Such flexibility might very well take the form of a more eclectic approach to farming, combining the best elements of one farming model with that of another. For instance, while there is a lot to recommend the traditional farming model in terms of its environment-friendly practices there is no reason why this could not be coupled with state-of-the-art modern technology such as genetic engineering, so called ‘smart farming’ and computerised irrigation systems, to boost output – providing, of course, that adequate safeguards can be built in to protect both human health and biological diversity. In that regard, a post-capitalist society would not be forced into taking rash impromptu decisions by sheer commercial pressures.

Those ‘actual physical circumstances’ referred to above that future farming would face would include, of course, the extent to which human labour was available as an agricultural input alongside other inputs. There is a tendency in capitalism, driven by market competition, to increase productivity by reducing unit costs in order for businesses – in this case, farming units – to compete more effectively and capture a larger market share. This results in increasing capital intensity and the shedding of human labour. The large scale, modern, commercial farm with its highly industrialised farming techniques is the consummate expression – or, if you like, culmination of – this tendency. Very few workers are employed on very large farms that are many hundreds or even thousands of hectares in size, using big bulky machines.

This is not a particularly healthy state of affairs – either for farming or for society as a whole. It tends to commit farmers to a set of techniques that are damaging to the environment and not sustainable in the long run. The rate of soil erosion is a clear indication of just how unsustainable such techniques are – particularly deep ploughing with heavy machinery which, over time, destroys the microscopic life in the soil and undermines soil structure as well as stimulating weed growth. Loss of topsoil translates into declining crop yields. That, in turn, tends to make farmers more reliant on synthetic fertilisers with all that this entails for the environment.

There can be no better illustration of the sheer irrationality – not to say, insanity – of a capitalist mindset with respect to farming than that provided by the Amazon forests. The Amazon is the most biologically diverse region in the world. It contains ‘tens of thousands of plant species, including countless medicinal plants, over 2.5 million insect species, 1,300 kinds of birds, 430 mammals, over 3,000 fish species, hundreds of different amphibians and reptiles. Numerous species are discovered every year, and many have yet to even be been seen by us humans’ (Amazon: Abundant rainforests, useless soils – bit.ly/3jDeJUr).

Ironically, this prolific diversity is rooted in a soil that is quite nutrient-poor and infertile. It contains little or no humus unlike the soils of more temperate climates such as the United States. Dead plant material is rapidly decomposed in the hot and humid conditions of the Amazon and nutrients are absorbed back into the plants and trees. These, in turn, provide protection for the soil from the heavy rain and ensure it is not washed away.

The removal of forests to make way for cattle ranching (to provide meat for burgers amongst other things) is nothing short of ecological madness. Once this tree cover is removed it cannot be replaced. The soil is fully exposed to the elements and simply washes way, leaving a more or less barren environment. The removal of tree cover also makes the land drier and more vulnerable to devastating wildfires that, as well as releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, result in even more loss of tree cover and the heightened risk of devastating floods. All this might mean increased profits for farmers in the short term – Brazil is currently the largest exporter of beef in the world and cattle ranching accounts for up to 80 percent of Amazonian deforestation – but in the long run it is simply not sustainable.

Here we have a perfect example of how the pressure of unrelenting capitalist accumulation systemically works against the goal of sustainable development and good farming. Market competition induces economic agents to expand output regardless of the (very obvious) consequences.

It is argued that governments themselves need to generate foreign exchange somehow and Brazil’s opening up of the Amazon to economic exploitation is one way of doing this. But that is precisely the point. This need to ‘earn a living’ or generate government revenues only arises in – or presupposes – a society in which the goods and services take the form of commodities and your access to these commodities is governed by how much money you have. You would not need to generate a ‘revenue stream’ or ‘earn a living’ in a free society in which the market as an institution, and money as a means of market exchange, ceased to exist.

Robin Cox

Next month: more on the possibilities of post-capitalist food production.

Farming under capitalism (2023)

From the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We begin a three-part series on farming as it is under capitalism and how it could be in a post-capitalist, socialist society.

As agriculture globally is already able to produce enough to comfortably feed the entire world then the exhortation to increase the productivity of (mainly small-scale) farmers, particularly in the Global South, through the adoption of modern commercialised methods of farming would, on the face of it, appear redundant. Why would we need to go down that road?

True, the individual farmer might benefit by increasing their output but it does not necessarily follow that farmers in general would. We should avoid committing the fallacy of composition. What is true of the part is not necessarily true of the whole. A different dynamic applies at the macro-level vis-à-vis the micro-level. A single farmer growing more potatoes might benefit from the increased revenue it brings in. However, an increase in output among potato farmers in general to the point where the market for potatoes is glutted only results in generalised economic distress.

In a competitive market economy one economic agent not infrequently tends to gain at the expense of another. Indeed, this principle is enshrined in the very heart of a market-based mindset itself. It is enthusiastically endorsed as an example of the ‘creative destruction’ that the market process thrives upon. Technological innovation and modernisation under capitalism, it is argued, depends upon this. It is only by cutting out the deadwood that the green shoots of economic growth can be encouraged to appear.

A rising tide does not necessarily lift all the boats; some will sink. In this metaphorical vein, we will now turn to consider the make and model of those that remain afloat and assess their comparative durability in the choppy waters of the high seas. In other words, the different farming regimes that make up our global system of agricultural production.

The type of farming some of us would probably be more familiar with is the modern industrialised capitalist agriculture that tends to be found in the more economically advanced parts of the world. This farming model is increasingly, and stereotypically, one dominated by often very large-sized farms, practising monoculture – growing a single cash crop or specialising in rearing one or other kind of livestock – and employing very few workers, the entire production process being highly capital intensive from start to finish. These different features tend to go together. For instance, you cannot effectively operate a large farm with just a mere handful of workers unless you have heavy machinery at your disposal. Similarly, in order to justify the purchase of such machinery you need to have a pretty sizeable farm and a substantial cash flow in the first place. The one thing sort of presupposes – or necessitates – the other.

In terms of output per agricultural worker, large-scale industrial farming is certainly highly productive but as a yardstick with which to measure ‘efficiency’, this can be quite misleading. A single worker operating a giant combine harvester (which might cost half a million US dollars or more) can harvest a field of wheat at a rate that would have taken probably scores of farm labourers a century or two ago to match. However, it is not simply the labour of this single operator that we have to take into account in making comparisons. We have also to take into account the labour involved in producing this highly sophisticated piece of machinery, in mining the ores that will later be fashioned into its component parts, in maintaining and servicing the harvester and ensuring that it is in a state of readiness come harvest time and so on. From that point of view, the great bulk of the workforce implicated in one or other way in what is called the ‘farming industry’ are, strictly speaking, ‘off-farm’ workers employed in factories.

In any case, output per worker is not the only criterion with which to judge ‘productivity’; output per hectare is another and this latter criterion is bound to count for more in a world that is more heavily populated (and where, consequently, land is less abundant). From this point of view large-scale commercial farms do not score as highly as might be imagined. In the Global South especially – though less so in the developed countries – these perform poorly by comparison with more traditional, labour intensive, small-scale farmers adopting what might be called a more organic approach.

In developed countries, too, there is some evidence to favour an organic approach over a conventional chemical-based approach to farming. The problem lies in transitioning from the latter to the former when a loss in yields can be expected in this transitional period. In today’s highly commercialised environment where the emphasis is on short term results, this may be too great a hurdle to surmount; for a struggling farmer it could be just too financially risky. How do you cope with the unavoidable temporary decline in yields, and therefore revenue, and still cover your financial costs?

We tend to associate conventional farming with big industrial farms. Their big size almost calls for a capital-intensive and, along with that, a heavily chemical-based approach to farming. This is precisely what makes it rather difficult for them to switch over to a more organic approach.

The problem for small farmers is that, despite being more productive per hectare and being able to fetch higher prices for their produce by cutting out the middlemen, they can barely survive on such a low overall income whereas the big farmers with so much more land at their disposal can manage to get by with a comparatively much lower return per hectare. In the capitalist market, it is those who survive who will drive out those who cannot. Hence the tendency for agricultural land to become more concentrated in fewer hands.

A recent example was the Sri Lankan government’s (over)hasty decision to ban the importation of agro-chemicals from April 2021. Ostensibly, this decision was made to save $300-$400 million in foreign exchange. But the farming community there had not been sufficiently prepared for the changeover and supplies of organic fertiliser were woefully inadequate. As a consequence the government had to backtrack on that decision later that same year. (‘Lessons from Sri Lanka’s agrochemical ban fiasco’, 25 November 2021, Grain.org – bit.ly/3JKTevI).

This is precisely the kind of problem that will cease to exist in a post-capitalist society. Individual farming units will no longer be faced with the need to ensure their own economic survival in a harsh and unforgiving commercial environment. They will no longer be competing with each other in the market to realise a profit through the sale of their produce. So there will be no penalty or handicap in transitioning to a more organically based form of farming if this was desired. That makes for a much more flexible approach to food production altogether.

Next month: farming in a post-capitalist society.

Robin Cox

Pathfinders: Dust to Dust (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Below that thin layer comprising the delicate organism known as the soil is a planet as lifeless as the moon’, wrote Jacks and Whyte in The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey Of Soil Erosion (1939). Soil erosion was big news in the 1930s, when rapacious farming created a dust bowl that blew ‘black blizzards’ across America from the Great Plains to New Mexico. Since then farming techniques have become less rudimentary, yet what has capitalism really learned about managing the environment? Mainly how to double down on exploiting it, and never mind the downstream consequences.

A new documentary about the future of agriculture entitled ‘The Need to Grow’ starts with the shocking report that there is only 60 years’ worth of farmable soil left on Earth, because it is being turned to flyaway dust by pesticides, herbicides, deforestation and mono-cropping. This 60-year figure hangs over the entire documentary like the shadow of the Apocalypse as a succession of hands-on experts tell us that we need to act now by individually growing what we can, even if it’s only a basil plant in a window box.

What does the viewer take away from all this? From a British point of view, all the yes-we-can positive vibes and skyscraping kale plants are being produced by tanned farmers in sun-drenched Californian plots, and one wonders how upbeat they would be if faced with a small damp yard in the back-to-backs of Lancashire. True, they showcase some pretty clever stacking systems to get the best out of a small space, but most workers probably couldn’t afford the upscale garden-centre prices.

And who are they kidding with this window box stuff anyway? The overwhelming requirement for any sustainable crop is space. Botanist James Wong quotes an estate agent survey saying that the average UK garden is around 3.7 square meters (although this is a dubious figure given what estate agents are wont to call a ‘garden’). With 3.7 m2, a top gardening expert growing the best all-round food crop (potatoes) in ideal conditions could only produce enough calories to last five days. To last a year would require 266m2, which is about the size of an allotment (New Scientist, 15 April).

If the solutions look a tad unrealistic to the average plant-challenged suburbanite, what about the premise, that there’s only 60 years’ worth of planetary soil left? Well, this figure has an interesting history. Back in 2010 a Sydney professor suggested a 60-year deadline based on estimated rates of UK soil erosion, but it was an off-the-cuff speculation about the UK only (Telegraph, 3 February 2010). Then in 2014 a small study looking at back gardens and allotments in Sheffield found that, not very surprisingly, allotment soil was significantly healthier than heavily-worked local farmland. Farmers Weekly reported the lead scientist as saying ‘With a growing population to feed, and the nutrients in our soil in sharp decline, we may soon see an agricultural crisis.’ Fair comment perhaps, but FW printed the story under the banner headline ‘Only 100 harvests left in UK farm soils, scientists warn’. Where was the quote mentioning this 100-year calculation in the body of the story? There wasn’t one (Farmers Weekly, 21 October 2014). In fact the study never made this claim, or anything resembling it. FW seems to have invented it

Other journalists with deadlines ran with the story, doubtless without checking or even reading the original, and pretty soon the 100-year figure found itself being extrapolated to the entire world, as if conditions in Sheffield somehow prevailed from the Amazon to Alaska. Less than two months after the FW story a top official of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation was already trimming the 100-year figure down to a more headline-grabbing 60 years, but without citing a source (Reuters, 5 December 2014). Not to be outdone, and possibly in a bid to grab some personal column inches, UK environment secretary Michael Gove astonished audiences by ratcheting Doomsday down to a mere 30 years, citing the Sheffield study as sole evidence (Guardian, 24 October 2017).

What happened to the axiom ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’? It looks like nobody, including the makers of ‘The Need to Grow’, bothered to put in any spadework on research. Except for James Wong, that is, who spent 8 hours digging through academic publications looking for the 100-year calculation, or indeed any calculation, thereafter consulting a number of soil scientists who told him that no such calculation existed and would be impossible to derive anyway (New Scientist, 8 May 2019).

Why would anyone produce a major documentary narrated by a Hollywood star and not check basic facts? It would surely be too cynical to point to the $20 DVD price or the avalanche of sales spam you get once you’ve signed up to watch the film. More likely they believed the formula: worst threat equals highest motivation. That’s debatable, but it’s also dishonest and counter-productive, because if people think they’ve been misled by bogus facts, they’re quite likely dismiss the problem.

And soil destruction really is a problem regardless of deadline, as Wong and every soil scientist is keen to point out. Few things illustrate the existential stupidity of capitalism like its destruction of the very means to grow food. Ancient societies like the Sumerians wiped themselves out through soil destruction, so it’s not as if we’re unaware of the problem. John Seymour, quoting Jacks and Whyte above, made this clear decades ago: ‘If the soil goes we all go: let there be absolutely no doubt about that. There is no future for our species if we destroy the soil’ (Changing Lifestyles, 1991).

But in capitalism nobody is listening. Individual growers have to decide between protecting their income or protecting the environment, and altruism doesn’t pay the bills. Mono-cropping, pesticides and deforestation do pay the bills, with catastrophic and unsustainable effects on the planet’s soils. The profit system is incapable of altering course or stopping. But the human race can stop it, by taking the planet into common ownership and managing it sustainably. If we don’t, we risk a global tragedy of the commons that could be everybody’s funeral.

Paddy Shannon

Between the Lines: The Workers Who Switched Off Wogan (1989)

The Between the Lines column from the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Workers Who Switched Off Wogan

When, in happier times to come, the history of these rotten years of capitalism are written. special praise will be recorded for those men and women of the working class who pulled the plug on Terry Wogan. An industrial dispute is in progress at the BBC. and the bosses are being made to learn that without the workers to operate their means of mass communication even such unstoppable giants as Nicholas Witchell and ever-smiling Tel will be left talking to themselves.

The workers have called for a 16 per cent pay increase: profit-conscious Beeb-bosses refuse to offer more than 7 per cent—which is less than the current rate of inflation. The Chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey, is paid £679 a week for doing his unelected, part-time job of running the BBC in line with the wishes of the government. The unelected BBC governors—all part-timers, with other incomes—receive £407 a week. In 1987 the top four BBC bosses were paid £225,000: this was increased by 33 per cent, to £340.000, last year This year the 140 top managers at the BBC have been given a £2,000 pay increase. Meanwhile, a clerk in the BBC's Engineering Department starts on £125 a week before tax: researchers in BBC News and Current Affairs start on £208 before tax. Since 1982 the pay of BBC staff has risen even more slowly than teachers, nurses and ambulance drivers.

At a strike meeting in London in June BBC workers were told by workers from the World Service that during the demonstrations in Peking workers there had passed on messages of solidarity to the BBC strikers. These are the people who do the really important work in the broadcasting service. Of course, there is a terrible irony in the fact that when the BBC workers are not out on their one-day strikes they are having to put out programmes attacking the action of other strikers whose problems are the result of the same wages-profit system which puts making money for the idle minority before rewarding hard work. It has been really encouraging to see the power of the unions to blank the BBC screens and force the management to show repeat programmes and abbreviated news reports.

Wogan does homelessness

All good things come to an end. and just as the strikers took off Wogan from our screens. so it came to pass that the strike day was over and the Million-Dollar Smile returned. On 3 July Wogan "did" homelessness. Well, it was a good subject to do. Esther Rantzen had "done" incest and Lenny Henry had "done" starvation in Africa last year.

So, let's "do" the homeless. In half-an-hour, of course. That should crack the problem. This is the way TV “does" social problems. Bring on Tel—my word, he looks sincere tonight, they must be "doing" a Big Subject. Trot on a couple of homeless kids from cardboard city. They look like sad cases. It’s all wrong that they should be homeless. Tel looks compassionate. Then he looks at his watch. Hang on to your hats, lads and lasses, the half hour's nearly over and we ain't “done" the experts.

On trips David Trippier, the Junior Housing Minister. With him is Sheila McKechme of Shelter who explains just how miserable life is for the homeless. She says that there are an official 370,000 homeless people in England and Wales (116,000 homeless families) plus the 100,000 or 150,000 unrecorded kids who sleep rough, beg for a living and are not even counted by the government statistics. She points out that if you are under eighteen and not on a YTS scheme you are not entitled to state income support—but if you're homeless you can't get on to a YTS scheme. The young homeless are compelled to beg.

Trippier waffles on about the importance of housing associations to provide cheap accommodation. (Which is odd, because in the last ten years, while the Thatcher government has placed its hopes in such bodies to build homes, the number of houses built by housing associations has fallen from 40,000 to 25,000 a year). There are 102,000 empty properties in Britain. Nobody has counted the unused bedrooms, but one would not lose too much cash in a bet that our Terry has more than a few in his house.

Enough of such talk; half-an-hour's up and we've "done" the homeless. Switch over to Coronation Street. No homeless people there. Although I for one would rather live in a cardboard box than in Albert Square—better homeless than brainless. I say.

Down on the Farm

The Killing Fields (BBC1, 2 July, 11.05am) was about the dangers facing farm workers. Last year 56 workers were killed on British farms—agriculture is second only to the construction industry for occupational fatalities. These deaths are sometimes caused by personal negligence, but often by cost-cutting refusal by farm employers to bother with safety standards. There are only 160 safety inspectors for the whole of Britain; they cover about 2.000 farms each and do not visit farms more than once every three to nine years. Children of thirteen are legally allowed to drive tractors on farms and this was defended by Richard Epton of the National Farmers Union who pointed out that this kind of work is good training for kids to become efficient farm workers later in life. We were told the sad story of fourteen-year-old Brendan Dixon who was killed on a Norfolk farm where he was a part-time employee.

Another case of profit before safety: money before life. Now, that could be a subject for Wogan to "do" if he finds himself with a spare half-hour to fill—that is, if the BBC strikers haven't filled it in for him.

Steve Coleman

Editorial: Private Ownership in Russian Agriculture (1949)

Editorial from the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communists attack the Labour government’s nationalisation policy on two grounds, that the compensation to former owners is too generous and that the government instead of going in for wholesale nationalisation is leaving most of industry and agriculture to private capitalism. It is therefore interesting to observe to what a large extent agriculture in Russia is in the hands of individual farmers. Farming in Russia is organised in three main groups, the State farms; the farms worked by individual peasant-owners relying on the labour of themselves and their families without hired help; and the collective farms. Some of the latter are on the basis that the whole of the land, buildings, implements and stock are owned by the organisation, and others are merely voluntary associations of individual farmers, each of whom retains ownership of his entire holding; but the great majority of the collective farms are a mixture, part of the farm is owned and worked collectively and part is owned and worked individually by the farmers. On these standard type collective farms the farmers receive produce and monetary income partly from the collective farm and partly from their private holdings. They work part of their time on the collective farm and the rest of the time for themselves. Their income from their private holding is their own but they also receive a share in the collective farm income varying in amount according to the number of labour-days they have worked. The collective farm has to give a certain part of its products to the State, and pay taxes, before the balance is divided up. According to H. A. Freund (“Russia from A to Z,” 1945, p.316), from whom the above details are taken, there is a great difference between the amount of produce and money received by members of the richest collective farms and the amount received on the poorer farms.

As regards the land and stock owned individually by the farmers Freund states that it varies in amount and kind according to the district and the type of farming. The farmer has his own house, and an allotment which ranges up to 2½ acres. In some districts he may also own privately one cow, two calves, one sow with sucklings, up to 10 sheep and goats, 20 beehives and an unlimited number of fowls and rabbits. In more developed stock-breeding districts he may have two or three cows, also calves, two or three sows, up to 25 sheep, also fowls, rabbits and beehives. In districts where stock-breeding is the all-embracing branch of industry he may have 8 to 10 cows, up to 150 sheep or goats, up to 10 horses and 8 camels, with unlimited poultry.

Some further information has been given by Mr. Andrew Rothstein, who is Lecturer on Soviet Institutions at the School of Slavonic Studies and a defender of the Russian system. Recently he has written to the Times correcting correspondents who have inaccurately quoted figures relating to Russian agriculture. In a letter on 19th May, 1949, he made the point that at April, 1949, the 30 million head of cattle that are "the personal property of collective farmers, workmen, employees, and individual peasants" considerably exceed the herds of cattle on the collective part of the collective farms. In addition to the 30 million cattle these private holdings include 26½ million sheep and goats and over 7 million pigs, but these private holdings of sheep, goats and pigs appear to be considerably less than the collective holdings. The overall picture would therefore appear to be that rather more than half of the total stock is owned by the State farms and the collective part of the collective farms, and rather less than half is owned privately.

As a footnote to the above we learn from the Moscow correspondent of Reuters (Manchester Guardian, 27/5/49) that the authorities have been criticising the collective farms because they have been sending lean cattle as the compulsory quota they have to deliver to the State. As the quota requires a certain weight the farmers have been making up the weight in the form of a large number of lean cattle instead of a smaller number of fat cattle, and thus depleting the collective herds.

The collective farm system bears an obvious resemblance to the serfdom that existed in Europe before the rise of capitalism and experience of that system suggests that the individual farmers are likely to be more interested in their private farms than in the collective part.

Pamphlets for sale. (1927)

From the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been fortunate in securing quantities of seven pamphlets published by the Socialist Party of Canada, and are offering them for sale at the rates set out below. There is, of course, no need to make special mention of the standard works of Marx and Engels. The pamphlet on the causes of modern war contains much useful information with copious references, and consists of articles which appeared serially in the Western Clarion (now defunct). “Slave of the Farm” describes and explains the hard and losing fight waged by the Canadian farmer against the organised financial and industrial Capitalists. It is a corrective to the fanciful tales of the Empire boosters and emigration touts.

“Causes of Belief in God,” by Lafargue, has not been published in this country in pamphlet form, and will be new to most English readers. It is written with Lafargue’s accustomed brilliance.

The Socialist Party of Canada has now ceased to exist, and the pamphlets will not be reprinted in the present editions.

Those we have obtained represent the bulk of the remaining supply. They are excellently produced, of convenient size, and well worth the price asked. All but two (“Slave of the Farm” and “Economic Causes of War”) are in the uniform and attractive series known as the “Whitehead Library.” As the stock will soon be exhausted, you are urged to make early application.

“Wage-Labour and Capital” (Marx), – pages, 4d.

“Communist Manifesto” (Marx and Engels), 59 pages, 4d.

“Slave of the Farm” (A. Budden), 63 pages, 6d.

“Economic Causes of War” (P. T. Leckie), 132 pages, 6d.

“Causes of Belief in God” (Lafargue), 48 pages, 6d.

“Socialism—Utopian and Scientific” (Engels), 95 pages, 6d.

“Value, Price and Profit” (Marx), 78 pages, 6d.

Note.—Postage extra : ½d. per copy.

Blogger's Note:

The Socialist Party of Canada referred to in the notice was the Party which dissolved in 1925. The Socialist Party of Canada, which is affiliated to the World Socialist Movement, was founded in 1931. There is an overlap between the two organisations because the original Socialist Party of Canada had a significant impossibilist membership within it, and there was an overlap of members between both organisations.

Ye Who Reap Shall Also Sow (1941)

From the August 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The problem of supplying the population of this country with food has become an extremely important one, because of the exigencies of war-time industrial production. Available shipping space is limited and has to be shared between armament materials and normal imports. To-day armaments receive priority. Imports of raw materials for manufacture and re-export take second place. As reported in the Daily Herald, March 6th, 1940 : “We are not free to concentrate all our strength in making munitions, because we must devote some part of our industrial resources, an increasing part, to the making of goods which will pay for the material out of which these munitions can in turn be made.” Consequently the amount of shipping space available for imports of food is considerably restricted compared with pre-war days.

Prior to the war enormous quantities, by far the greater part in fact, of Britain’s foodstuffs were imported : meat from the Argentine and New Zealand, wheat from the U.S.A. and Canada, butter from New Zealand, bacon and eggs from Denmark, tea from India, sugar from various countries, and so on.

By what process has this country arrived at a condition wherein so much of its foodstuff has to be imported ?

From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century Britain was transformed from a predominantly feudal agricultural country to the capitalist industrial power we know to-day.

With the growth of capitalism, and its inescapable need to make profit, there came the drive to find markets abroad for its products. Hence the growth of the British Empire and the colonisation of virgin lands abroad. In these lands which capitalism colonised it established itself as the economic mode of production.

The capitalists of Britain did not export goods to the Colonies and other lands for philanthropic reasons. The goods were produced to be sold at a profit, and, in order to obtain the money to pay for these goods, the buyers in other countries themselves had to produce and export commodities.

What happened in the “new,” countries? Was not wheat produced in North America, wool, meat and butter in the Antipodes? Did not the “Roast Beef of Old England” proceed to come from South America? Of course!

In the colonial and foreign countries it proved cheaper to produce certain commodities owing to the fact that not only was cheap labour power available, but the quantity of labour required to produce a commodity was less, owing to natural conditions, e.g., the great fertility and advantageous climate of the American wheatlands and the natural rich grassland and wide ranges of Argentina. Competition followed later between the individual capitalists in each respective country, causing improvements in the technical mode of production and thereby further lowering the values of the commodities.

With the development of Britain as a manufacturing country and the rise of various other countries as producers of agricultural goods, British agriculture entered its decline. It could not compete with the imports of cheap foreign produce.

Urging British workers to “Buy British and buy the best” could not stop the decline. Members of the working class, always forced to work for wages which suffice to buy little more than the bare necessities of life, could not do other than purchase them in the cheapest market, hoping to eke out the contents of their meagre wage packets, so that a small portion might be left to enjoy what to them were luxuries.

Sufficient has been said to demonstrate that the decline of agriculture in Britain followed and a necessary complement to the rise of British capitalist industry. Now let us consider the situation, during the present war and the hopes and fears of the farming community.

In its endeavours to provide an adequate supply of food, the Government, working through the various County War Agricultural Committees, has ordered the ploughing and cultivation of millions of acres of land which has lain idle for many years because under normal peace-time conditions it was not profitable to work it. The farmers may well ask if this is the dawn of a new day for agriculture, a sign of better times ahead. Agricultural wage-labourers may wonder if their jobs are going to be more secure and more remunerative than they have ever known. These are the questions that arise in view of the feverish activity displayed in the countryside.

An answer is provided in the following extracts from a book on economics entitled “Elements of Economics,” by S. Evelyn Thomas, B.Com. (Land.), (1932): —

“During the Napoleonic wars the shortage of foreign supplies of corn and the duties on imported corn forced up prices in this country, and led cultivators to resort to inferior land.”

“The return of peace in 1815, however, was followed by a decline in prices, and, in spite of the protection of the Corn Laws, agriculture suffered from acute depression.”

“The period of depression continued until the fifties and sixties, when the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War caused a reduction in the world’s supply of foodstuffs, thus forcing up prices and benefiting the British farmer, in particular, as imports into this country naturally declined.”

“The period of peace which followed in the seventies was accompanied by a recurrence of depressed conditions in British agriculture. Extensive wheat supplies from the prairies of the United States and of Canada were opened up owing to the improvements in transport and the building of railways. Such imports of corn led to lower prices, and lower prices forced out of cultivation the inferior areas.”

“The depressed conditions continued until the ‘Great War, during which British agriculture enjoyed a short period of great prosperity.”

“The close of the war and the inflow of foreign produce was followed by the usual conditions of depression.” (Italics ours.)

Capitalism has a persistent habit of holding out hopes to those who suffer at its hands. A typical statement——”Every effort to restore agricultural prosperity is being made by the central and local authorities and by other interested parties”—follows on the above quotations.

This statement is intoned like the promises by “our leaders” to-day of social security after the present war. Is there not a parallel between the periodic war-time prosperity and post-war depressions of agriculture and the war-time prosperity of industry and post-war conditions ?

Consider these quotations : —

“He (Mr. R. S. Hudson, Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department, now Minister of Agriculture) was announcing a plan for the complete reorganisation of British industry, so that a tremendous drive to capture world markets can be made.”—(Daily Herald, March 6th, 1940. Italics ours.)

“With European markets closed to them and faced with shipping difficulties, colonial producers have large stocks on their hands. Good progress has been made with plans to find alternative markets and to make arrangements for large scale storage.”— (Daily Telegraph, October l0th, 1940. Italics ours.)

“Planning for a New Britain: Agriculture: — Price control, marketing and general improvement of the agricultural industry will be framed. Trade : —Systems of control will be devised for exports and imports to allow the fullest possible expansion of world trade.”—(Daily Telegraph, January 7th, 1941. Italics ours.)

Observe the obvious contradictions contained in these statements and envisage the position of the capitalist class if and when it attempts to fulfil its plans.

Socialists are not concerned with maintaining the prosperity of capitalist agriculture. We realise that if there is prosperity from the ruling class viewpoint the workers do not necessarily enjoy a higher standard of living whilst such prosperity lasts. Despite all the wishful thinking and fanciful plans oi those who are interested, British agriculture is doomed to a post-war depression.

In “The Conditions of Economic Progress,” Mr. Colin Clark (of the Bureau of Industry, Brisbane) says: “No science has passed its apprenticeship until it is able to describe with confidence and accuracy the future consequences which will follow from present causes.”

Scientific Socialism has passed its apprenticeship. Our investigation of the agricultural problem in this country prompts us to state with confidence that capitalist agriculture holds no hope for the agricultural worker.

A. V. S.

Agriculture and the workers. (1927)

Book Review from the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Agriculture,” by H. B. Pointing and Emile Burns. Labour Research Department, 162, Buckingham Palace Road. Price 6d. 64 pages.

This booklet in the L.R.D. Labour and Capital series, is a really valuable contribution to the discussion of the so-called agricultural problem from the workers’ viewpoint. It is noteworthy because the writers have seen that the agricultural industry in this country is a Capitalist industry, existing in and dominated by the Capitalist system in general. This ought to be obvious to every observer, but one could read the bulk of the book and pamphlet literature on the subject, including that written by professed Socialists, without ever discovering that essential fact. One has only to consider the numerous back-to-the-land schemes which hover round the labour movement to realise the harm done by the persistence of the belief that agriculture is in a marked way different from other Capitalist industries. Almost every day we hear of some Labour “thinker” suggesting that the unemployment problem can be solved by promoting the growth of more food in this country instead of importing it, and thus increasing the number of workers employed on the land. Why does no one ever suggest putting the unemployed into the mines or the engineering shops? Why do we hear perpetual moans because some less fertile land is going out of cultivation. Yet no one ever protests because inefficient mines cease to be worked. At bottom, it is due, as we have stated, not to any fundamental difference between the economic laws governing agriculture and mining—there is no difference.

The confusion arises from the habit of sentimentalising about mother earth instead of applying the Marxian analysis and the test of working-class interests. This booklet should be a useful corrective to these old bad habits of thought.

It analyses agricultural production and the distribution of profits, with ample and up-to-date figures from the 1921 population census and the 1925 Agricultural Census (published in March, 1927).

Chapter II., dealing with productivity, shows that between 1871 and 1901, although the number of persons engaged in agriculture declined by 30 per cent., production fell at most 10 per cent., and probably not at all. In other words, the output per worker has been and is increasing. On page 14 it is bluntly stated that before the war the productivity of world agriculture “was rising less rapidly than that of world trade.” The phrasing is bad, but presumably it is intended to mean that agricultural productivity was falling behind industrial productivity. If so, it is a statement which calls for evidence. Its importance lies in the backing it gives for the Neo-Malthusian fallacy that food supplies are declining relatively to population. If it were true, we would expect to find agricultural prices rising in relation to industrial prices, and as was clearly demonstrated by Sir W. Beveridge in his address to the British Association in 1923 and in his subsequent controversy with Mr. Keynes, this is not the fact.

Chapter IV. deals with wages, and Chapter V. with trade unions in agriculture.

Chapter VI. on “The Future of Agriculture” effectively disposes of the smallholdings myth. A table on page 54 shows how much greater is the output per man on large farms than on small. It is gratifying to know that although all three parties favour small-holdings they are not holding their own.

There is one somewhat serious criticism of the book, but it probably touches the L.R.D. rather than the writers. The agricultural programmes of the three parties are given, but the fact is not honestly faced that not one of the three proposes any fundamental change in the position of the working-class employed in agriculture. The workers are exploited because, being propertyless, they must seek employment as wage-earners. The Labour Party urges Nationalisation of the land, and a “living wage” (whatever that may be), but it does not propose the common ownership of the means of production, either industrial or agricultural. As the writers themselves point out (page 52),

“Security of tenure for the farmer, compensation for improvements, reduced taxation, co-operative marketing, stability of prices, cheap State credit, and all the other medicines offered to the capitalist groups in agriculture—all of these are advantages for one or other of the capitalist groups, but may mean little to the workers. . . In fact, these proposed measures, if successfully applied, would strengthen the position of the farmers, and give them greater advantages in their struggle against the workers.”

They go on to show that Nationalisation will not improve and may actually worsen the position of the land-workers, but they avoid applying to the Labour Party programme the condemnation it deserves. This happens, no doubt, because the L.R.D. dare not risk offending its non-Socialist Labour Party supporters. The L.R.D.’s discretion in this matter is understandable, but the usefulness of their publications is greatly diminished by the subordination of independent criticism to the propaganda needs of the Labour Party or the Co-operative Society, or any other propagandist body.

However, we can confidently urge every student of Socialism to get this booklet if he wants (as he should) to understand the structure and tendencies of British agriculture.

The authoritative statistics alone are worth the price. There is a bad misprint on the last line of page 52—”farmer” should obviously read “former.”

Edgar Hardcastle