Not—so—bon appetit (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing is clear in all the fuss and confusion about salmonella in eggs, listeria in cheese and BSE in beef: the statements of, and advice from, ministers have not been fit for human consumption. There is nothing new in that: at the time when the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl passed over Britain, letting fall its lethal chemicals with the rain onto the sheep of North Wales and Cumberland, the then Minister of Agriculture was self-sacrificially emphatic about how harmless it was. He declared that he was going to spend that week-end “enthusiastically" eating British lamb. So far he has not grown two heads, but evidence has emerged that the meat in those parts was dangerous to eat then and will remain so years after the fall-out.

Although the most recent row became public with Edwina Currie's famous remark about how widespread salmonella is in egg production, that was by no means the beginning of the affair. Currie's reputation for valuing career-sustaining self publicity over facts made her vulnerable to the kind of assault which the farming interests launched on her. When we saw TV pictures of adorably fluffy chicks on their way to being gassed because of her ill-considered words, her fate was sealed.

But anyone with the most cursory acquaintance with what passes for farming and methods of the food industry had known for a long time about the active threats to health which they represented. There has been no shortage of information, available to anyone who wanted it, about the effects on cattle and on the people who eat beef of pumping the poor beasts full of hormones, not to cure them of some disease but to make them more copious producers of milk and beef. Yet another hormone — bovine somatropin — is now under test, although an unusually sensitive National Farmers' Union seems to be opposed to its use, presumably because they are anxious to avoid more bad publicity for their members.

Battery hens — quite apart from the sickening conditions in which they spend their brief, wretched lives — have long been known to be a source of salmonella poisoning, made worse by the fact that they have commonly been fed on the already diseased remains of slaughtered hens. That is why there have been warnings, albeit muted, about the need to cook chickens thoroughly and to avoid re-heating them.

So why didn't the government simply publicise the whole issue, a long time ago? Why didn't they tell us not to touch any intensively reared meat, or eggs from battery hens, or soft cheese? Or, more effective, why didn't they rush through parliament some sort of legislation to outlaw the production methods which cause the illnesses?

We saw the answers to these questions in the Currie affair. Intensive food production was developed because it is more profitable than the old, slower, less certain methods. The big drugs companies have enormous investments tied up in the production of the chemicals which the farmers shove into their animals. If enough people become scared of buying the food, demand for it can collapse to the point at which it becomes unprofitable to produce it. That may save a few lives and prevent a lot of very distressing sickness but it would play havoc with the profits of the farmers and the drug companies and that is not what the government is there for. Governments exist, not to look after the wellbeing of what is called the consumer — workers who spend their wages on the things they need to re-produce their energies — but to protect the profits of the class who own the means of production, which in this case means the farming industry. the food production firms and the drug companies.

That is why the first official reaction to the slightest breath of truth about something like salmonella in eggs is to rush to conceal the facts. If public pressure becomes so fierce that some of the facts must be allowed out they will often be so mangled and restricted as to be unreconcilable with the truth. This stubborn rearguard action can go on for a very long time, while workers endure painful and possibly fatal illnesses because of their ignorance of the facts.

The great food scandal brings us once again up against the reality that capitalism puts profits before people. Currie's big mistake was that, while she so ardently supports this social system, she allowed herself to voice a passing doubt about the effects of this principle. The penalty she paid, was a lot less distressing than what was endured by those who experienced what it meant from the business end of a sick-bed.

Bitter harvest (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Record cereal harvests in Britain and the whole Common Market were forecast at the Royal Show yesterday, foreshadowing a major budgetary headache for Brussels bureaucrats struggling desperately to keep burgeoning and costly surpluses in check.

The record. 171 million metric tons for the EEC harvest, was forecast by Mr Simon Gourlay, president of the National Farmers’ Union.

With a harvest of this size in prospect, he said, by November there would be tremendous pressure on the Brussels Commission to introduce direct measures to rationalise European cereals production at the earliest possible opportunity.

He did not speculate at Stoneleigh on what form this rationalisation might take, but today he is to have talks in Brussels on the NFU's ideas for a set-aside scheme to take excess cereal-growing land out of grain production.

(from the Daily Telegraph, 9 July 1987)

This Capitalist World (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

How to feed the hungry

Something like 90,000 tons of US chemical-warfare agents have now been employed in the Vietnam war. Seven thousand tons have been CS gas, the remainder herbicides. With the latter, crop cultivations sufficient to feed two million people for a year have been destroyed, and 20,000 square kilometres of forest laid waste.

(New Scientist, 22 June 1972).

Abolishing plenty amidst poverty

Up to two million laying hens may have to be slaughtered in an attempt to solve the present surplus of eggs on the British market.

The National Farmers’ Union has put a plan to the Eggs Authority suggesting that a special slaughter subsidy should be paid to poultry farmers who want to cut down on their hens because they are making a loss. There are 60 million egg-laying hens in the national scheme. 

(The Sunday Telegraph, 30 July, 1972).

Who'd be a politician? (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who’d be a politician? To be sure, there is glamour in the job: lots of pressmen to follow you about, your own personal ’bodyguard and (for the zanier ones) photographs with sizzling film stars. But politicians are, of course, men who have to work and, some of them, to worry.

First of all, what are politicians? Cut away all the hand-out material about their alleged brilliance and sincerity and we are left with people who are hard worked administrators of the detailed affairs of capitalist society. Whatever department a minister may have under his control, his twenty-four hour concern must be to protect the interests of the ruling class; all his decisions must conform to society’s capitalist basis. Because that, after all, is what the state apparatus is there for.

The unfortunate fact about this, though, is that capitalism can often be most difficult to administer. It continually thrusts up problems for its ministers to attend to. And when the ministers think they have settled a problem, they often find that capitalism has an ungrateful way of undermining their solution. In foreign affairs, the pressure is particularly strong—we can all think of prominent politicians who have been sent to an early grave by the persistent worry of trying to sort out the tangle of clashing national interests. Similarly, attempts at taming the economic waywardness of property society have virtually killed some ministers and reduced others almost to invalids. Yes, a politician, apart from needing to be cynical and industrious, must also be tough.

One of the acutist and most persistent of capitalism’s problems is the conflict of commercial interests. We do not need to be very observant to appreciate that the goods and services which contribute to our lives today—and even those which are completely essential to our lives—are turned out only to be sold. We know, for example, that nobody is allowed to use a motor car simply because he is a good driver: provided the necessary cash has been paid to the motor car manufacturers, the worlds most incompetent driver can take the wheel. But before the car gets into any driver’s hands, the commercial requirements of capitalism must be satisfied. The car, in fact, must be sold.

Now where the problem comes in is that selling capitalism’s commodities need not be an easy business. There are many motor car manufacturers after the money of our incompetent driver. They all point out the extra-super qualities of their car, prove that it accelerates better, runs faster, travels safer, uses less petrol, than the cars of their competitors. But, for that particular customer there can be only one satisfied car maker. The rest must be disappointed, and try extra hard to catch other sales. This is the competitive race which causes capitalism so much trouble.

The capitalist class regard the selling of commodities as vital because unless they are sold, the profit which the workers have built into them with their every working action can never be realised. The shareholders of the motor car industry would never invest their money in enormous factories, labour and costly machinery if it were only to make a loss. So, unless a profit can come from selling cars, none of them will be turned out. Motor cars, of course, are not peculiar in this. No clothes would be tailored, no houses built, no television sets assembled, if there was no prospect of a profit being realised somewhere along the line. Nobody would cut your hair, or put you up in an hotel, or entertain you. Even food production depends upon profit.

Here we have one of the current worries of British politicians. Barley growers in this country have every prospect of harvesting a record crop this year. Are they pleased about this? Do they look forward eagerly to the harvest festivities? They do not. For the French also have a lot of barley in the offing and so have the farmers in Western Germany. All of them have their eyes on the barley market in Great Britain. Meanwhile, the Russians have already shipped some of their surplus barley over here and, because they are determined to sell the stuff no matter how cheaply, they have knocked the bottom out of the market. (Let nobody assume that a commercial surplus of barley in Europe means that all human needs for it have been fulfilled. China, faced with famine, has been forced to ask Canada and Australia for shipments of it on credit. And she Russia’s ally, too.)

The result of unloading so much barley onto the British market has been to force the price down to less than £16 a ton— and it may fall further yet. Now, if farming was carried on for some other reason than profit-making, we might expect a measure of satisfaction that there is so much barley knocking about. But this is capitalism: we need not be surprised that the British farmer is anything but satisfied. The National Farmers’ Union, in fact, has asked for action under the Customs (Dumping and Subsidies) Act to keep out the foreign barley.

This does not mean that British farmers are always in favour of tariff protection for all British industries. Just like any other industry under capitalism, the farmers are interested in holding onto their own markets and in getting the best price they can for the goods they sell. When they buy goods, their attitude is rather different—they want them as cheap as possible, even if it means that foreign industries must be allowed to export cut price commodities to this country. For example, British farmers would like to see unrestricted entry allowed for fertilisers and farm machinery, and some for feeding stuffs. A couple of years ago, the chairman of the Farmers and Smallholders Association spoke bitterly of what he called “. . . the fertiliser monopoly . . .” making ". . . at least an extra £10 millions by charging the British farmers more than the European price for fertilisers. This racket,” he said, “Could be stopped overnight if the Government would remove the protective duties on imported fertilisers, and the taxpayer would immediately be saved £10 millions in farm subsidies.”

Presumably, the fertiliser firms have different views on the subject. Although they would not like to see the tariff wall which shelters them knocked down, they might perhaps be in favour of cheap barley and other foodstuffs, which might mean fewer wage claims for them to face. Now if you were Minister of Agriculture or President of the Board of Trade, how would you sort that one out?

Whatever you did, you could bet on it that there would soon be another, similar problem clogging your In-tray. For not only the farmers and fertiliser kings are in conflict over issues like tariff' protection. Capitalism, because it moves on its bearings of profit motive, turns up a multitude of opposing interests. It is the politician who must sort them out and must offer his solution to the voters as the sanest, surest method possible. Perhaps, at the previous election, he offered an opposite policy, which he said was also sane and sure. Never mind. The good politician has no difficulty in skating around that one.

And while the politicians are sorting and skating, what of the working class who so affectionately vote them into power time and again? They are the people who suffer, and are exploited as a result of the anomalies of capitalism. However hard the going a politician must endure, it cannot compare with the rough road of working class existence. So—who’d be a worker? There are millions and millions of them, and hardly one of them has any say in the matter.

Ivan

"Agriculture and Community." by J. F. Duncan. (1921)

Book Review from the December 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agriculture and the Community by Joseph F. Duncan (Queensgate, Stirling, Scottish Farm Servants' Union, 1921)

Mr. Duncan is secretary of the Scottish Farm Servants' Union, but his knowledge of agriculture is by no means limited to the Trade Union aspect. He displays quite an extensive grasp of the organisation and technical development of agricultural production. What he lacks, and this is not merely a drawback, but makes the book a positive danger to the landworker who wants to understand his place in the workers' movement, is a conception of the working class point of view on social structure. Mr. Duncan is apparently unaware even that there can be a working class point of view. He speaks for "the Community," his object being to "discuss a policy by which the community will be able to make the industry contribute its proper share to the public welfare."

What is the Community? Mr. Duncan assumes that his readers know; but he is quite evidently at sea himself. Webster's dictionary says it is a body of people having common interests. Given, therefore, a group of people geographically associated, unless they have interests in common, community is a myth. Have the workers in general, or in agriculture, interests in common with the employers? Mr. Duncan admits they have not. He says (page 40) a policy based on such an idea "would be disastrous to the workers," and (introduction) ''The interest of the community does not coincide with these sectional and class interests" (i.e., of farmers and landowners). On every page are instances of the confusion which arises from Mr. Duncan's failure to realise the necessity of clear thinking.

In one place the community is the taxpayers who object to subsidising farmers, in another those who want cheap food, and again, the "nation" which wants protection from foreign enemies; and, as might be expected, Mr. Duncan's notion of the State is equally out of keeping with the facts. How can some central body represent impartially the conflicting elements which compose the nation? Actually it represents the dominant class against the subject class, and incidentally at any particular time as between divergent capitalist interests it will represent that section which is in the ascendant.

Ownership of land may still carry with it social prestige, but it is no longer an important source of political power. Although a few years ago probably 2,500 people owned half the land of this country, the land owners are losing cohesion and political importance as a class, and the land is looked at with great and increasing longing by the industrial and financial capitalists as a means of lightening their own burden of taxation. Whether they tax it or get rent revenue by nationalising it, the result will be the same for them. Mr. Duncan thinks the tendency is in the direction of State ownership, but that is not of great importance. Besides revenue there is another vital question. It is that of cheap food. The industrial capitalist wants his workers' food prices to be low, not because he wants them to live well, but because he wants them to live cheaply; the reason being that their cost of living is the basic factor of their wages. Most of the workers, like Mr. Duncan, don't realise this, and therefore advocate Free Trade, the Liberal remedy for high prices. From about 1880 onwards there was a great slump in agriculture owing to the importation of cheap corn from such countries as America, where owing to the apparently unlimited supply of virgin soil expensive fertilising and rotation of crops were unnecessary. So long, however, as food was cheap agriculture at home could be neglected. Now however, those virgin soils are rapidly reaching exhaustion, and the same methods of cultivation have to be applied there as here. Prices have therefore, apart from abnormal war conditions, been steadily rising, with the result that since the early years of the century the capitalists have again been getting keenly interested in the agricultural industry. In brief, their idea was that by raising the whole level of agricultural production ultimately to the high standard of technique and efficiency of other branches of production, they could not only add to revenue, and thus decrease taxation, but also ensure a supply of cheap food, sufficient to check the world rise in prices. Mr. Duncan here sets out to show them how it can be done.

During the war when the submarine campaign was at its height, the Government was really panic stricken, and offered guaranteed prices for wheat and oats to encourage production. They have now recovered from their fright and have decontrolled the industry, but their subsidies were not by any means thrown away. The guaranteed prices were accompanied by minimum rates of pay, and although the Agricultural Wages Boards have now been abolished the effect of them has been to induce vast and lasting improvements in methods of cultivation. High wages are always an inducement to the introduction of machinery, and Mr. Duncan remarks that organisation to raise wages has led to the introduction of labour-saving appliances. At present the production per head in agriculture is £90 per annum, as against £200 in some industries, and the result of the raising of productivity will be shown eventually in cheaper food, from which the industrialists will reap their harvest. This, however, is no concern of the workers, as Mr. Duncan would have us believe. To use an old but useful illustration, the price of food no more concerns them than does the price of fodder concern the horse. One would have thought that this lesson would have been brought home to Mr. Duncan from the Anti-corn Law agitation of the early part of last century. The workers were foolish enough to lend their weight to that agitation, but the manufacturers it was who benefited. It is most touching to recollect how generously the manufacturers offered the workers cheap bread—at the expense of the landowners—and how the latter offered them factory legislation—at the expense of the manufacturers; all, of course, for the benefit of the workers! Mr. Duncan so little appreciates this as to wonder why factory legislation was not applied to agriculture until some time later.

Having shown that landowners do not serve any useful function, seeing that they do not to any degree sink capital in improvements or equipment, nor do they supervise or organise, Mr. Duncan wants their dead weight removed so that production can be intensified, free from their incubus. Like the good capitalists who suffer from the exactions of landowners, Mr. Duncan thinks it immoral that the landlord class, which now performs no useful service in production, should continue to receive a share of the spoil which another functionless class, the capitalists, have taken from the workers.

Outlining his case for State ownership of land and large scale farming, he usefully demonstrates the enormous economy in working and avoidance of overlapping that would be possible, but as is usual with advocates of nationalisation, he omits to show what benefits such developments can be to the workers, whose job is economised out of existence. "With more and better machinery the output could be as great from the 1,000 acre farm as from the five (200 acre farms) with fewer men employed." (Page 89.)

He assumes the continuance of production for sale in the competitive world market, and, of course, the continued exploitation of the workers, although he suggests safeguards against too low wages. He says the whole question is: Can we produce corn cheaper than it can be imported from abroad? Sir A. D. Hall is quoted to show how uneconomical is small-holding production as compared with the possibilities of the extended use of machinery on large farms, and it throws an interesting light on political stunts to learn that the demand for these holdings does not come in the main from land workers.

He is very severe on the middlemen, who, he says, "cheated the consumer," and shows how in Derby in October, 1919, the Co-operative Society, with 84 employees, men and women, distributed 17,000 gallons of milk per week, as against 224 retailers who handled only 15,000 gallons.

It is when Mr. Duncan deals with the policy to be adopted by the agricultural workers that he is most confused and confusing, a condition he shares with his English colleagues.

He admits that agricultural wages and prices have no direct relation (page 5), and instances the retailing of milk as a trade in which high prices and sweating prevailed side by side, and that "in good times as in bad they (the farmers) always fight stubbornly against any increase in wages. The workers need expect nothing from farmers except what they are able to force from them" (page 6). Yet, like Mr. R. B. Walker, of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, he assumes that relatively high prices will gurantee high wages : "the price must be such as will secure to the producers a proper standard of living" (page 94). Again, quite inconsistently with the statement made above and contrary to general experience, he lays it down that "steady improvement in the productive power" is essential to "progressive improvement for the wage earners" (page 41), and yet confesses (page 109) that higher wages have not resulted from better farming.

One cannot but be amazed to read on page no 110: "Given a more efficient and a larger scale industry . . . rural society would not be divided horizontally as it is to-day" ; and wonders whether Mr. Duncan really does believe that the more highly developed industries are free from conflict between employer and employed.

Lest it should be thought that muddled thinking is peculiar to Mr. Duncan, it is as well to note that an utter disregard for accuracy and consistency is shared by most of those teachers of the land workers, who justify their opposition to Socialist propaganda on the ground that it is beyond the comprehension of their pupils at present.

If there were any justification that could be pleaded for leaders it would be that they actually do give a lead to their followers ; but can those who have no considered policy themselves provide one for others?

Mr. R. B. Walker, secretary of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, quite correctly condemns "the vicious rubbish . . . that their prospects and conditions have not, and cannot have, any relation to those of urban workers " (Labour Leader, October 13th, 1921); while Mr. H. R. Lovell, assistant secretary, " wanted to make it clear that they were a purely land workers' union. They did not want to be mixed up in any shape or form with the Industrial Unions of the country " (Wages Board Gazette, December 11th, 1920). Incidentally, it is the boast of this Union, which is affiliated to the Trade Union Congress, that it is an industrial Union .

Mr. Lovell continued : "They were therefore running along with the Farmers' Union, so far as they could, to make agriculture one of the first industries of the country—an industry which would give to the people who had their capital invested in it a fair return for ther money and brains." This same Farmers' Union, with in a month of the abolition of the Wages Board, had obtained more than 20 per cent, reduction of wages on the standard prevailing at the end of August.

Mr. Duncan, who sometimes does and sometimes doesn't want co-operation with the employers, refers to other people who do, as "well-meaning persons whose emotions are more easily stirred than their brains." (Page 40.) Mr. Lovell and Mr. Walker support the policy of giving sub sidies to farmers; Mr. Duncan opposes. (Page 40.)

After the workers' minds have been confused by this sort of stuff, is it to be wondered that Socialist propaganda is difficult?

The outstanding defect of Mr. Duncan's book arises from his inability to see the out lines of capitalist social structure and the urgent necessity for a new organisation. He discusses what will be a problem of the new society (i.e., organising agricultural production) in relation to existing social conditions, which renders the discussion largely valueless. As conditions change so does the problem, and with it the solution of the problem. While the system remains and the capitalist class continue in power, industry can only be considered on a profit-making basis.

The present interest of the workers is to resist their exploitation to the full extent of their power, not to trouble about the technical problems which confront their exploiters.

P. J. L.

Preventing Abundance (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are told that hunger and malnutrition exist in the world today because there is not enough food to go around; that there are, in short, more people than can adequately be fed. Socialists emphatically repudiate this. The evidence points to the fact that man has developed the means of production to a level where it is now technically possible to abolish hunger. Technically possible, but not socially possible within the present relations of production. Capitalism is a system of commodity production, of buying and selling, where the profit motive dominates the productive activity of men and women. Market considerations take precedence over human need. The production of wealth takes place only where the owners of the means of life — the capitalist class — hope to sell their products at a profit on the world markets. The market economy bears no relation to the needs of human beings. Human priorities are sacrificed to the priorities of the profit motive.

The present state of the horticultural industry, both in this country and in Europe, is an object lesson in the restrictive nature of the market economy. For the past five or ten years the viability (ability to make a profit) of parts of the industry has been threatened by the “overproduction” of apples and pears. Increased orchard planting since the Second World War in places such as North Italy (with the help of Marshall Aid) and the Rhone valley in France (where low interest government loans were given to repatriates from Algeria) has vastly increased output. Average apple crops amount to 6m. tons and reached 7.2m. tons in 1969/70. In the following season a record pear crop of 3.2m. tons was recorded. Such large crops had not been planned for; markets were unable to absorb the produce and farmers, looking for some way to vent their frustration, dumped apples in the streets. Seventy-five per cent only of the 1967-68 apple crop was consumed in any shape or form. In other words, a quarter was left to rot — it was not worth while even using it as animal fodder or for industrial alcohol.

Aiding Industry
In Britain too investments have been made in orchards in order to stimulate production. It could hardly be otherwise. Each group of capitalists hope to maximise their profits by capturing as large a slice of the market for themselves as possible. In this they have been backed up by both the major parties of capitalism. The Horticulture Act of 1960 provided grants of up to £7.5m. spread over five years, to be paid out under a Horticultural Improvement Scheme aimed at improving efficiency among growers. The grants were increased in 1964 to £24m.; and again by the Agriculture Act 1970, this time to a maximum of £47m.

Of course these sums were not simply largesse. They were expected to benefit the capitalist class as a whole. As Christopher Soames, Minister of Agriculture at the time, pointed out, it was the intention of the government to “bring our horticultural production and marketing to a higher state of competitive efficiency”. He also hoped the industry would then be in a better position to ward off foreign competition so that the promise of possible reductions in tariffs could be used as a bargaining device in future trade negotiations.

  This is a sensible and realistic policy to adopt with regard to the industry in modern times, and is not being done because the industry is in a parlous state. It is being done to make it more competitive.

(Hansard 27 November 1963 cols. 276 & 280)

This has always been the yardstick by which governments measure the usefulness or otherwise of aiding industry. The 1968 Report of the Economic Development Council for Agriculture, Agriculture's Import Saving Role, pointed out that it might be possible for British capitalism to save itself the sum of £220m. a year by the mid-1970s through import substitution. One item suggested for saving was the annual £25m. spent on top fruit. Moreover, “there was scope for expansion of production and import substitution on a significant scale and at comparatively small cost” (Agriculture — Report etc. from the Select Committee 1968-69 H.C. 137 HMSO p.xxviii). However there appeared one small snag — only half the proposed increase in output could be expected to be absorbed by greater demand due to increasing population and income per head. The EDC report skated over the difficulty by hoping that the remainder might be exported.

Potential Abundance
This growing potential for abundance did cause some comment. In his statement to the House of Commons on 27 November 1963 Soames declared that imports at “unrealistically low prices” did arise from surpluses of varying degrees and that

  It is likely that such surpluses will reappear from time to time, so means to prevent them from undermining our market will continue to be necessary . . . We appreciate that measures must be taken to ensure that dumped produce does not undermine the market.

(Hansard 27 November 1963 cols. 277-179)

The Fruit Production Council were of the opinion that

 Apple and pear production is increasing throughout the world and particularly on the Continent of Europe, at an alarming rate.
(Horticulture — Report etc. from the Select Committee on Agriculture’s Sub-Committee 1967-68 H.C.445 HMSO p.292 (emphasis added).

When faced with this kind of "problem” capitalism can react in a number of ways. It can attempt to stimulate demand; it can try to eliminate competition; or it can cut back production and deliberately reduce productive capacity by destroying resources.

Attempts at stimulating demand have met with only limited success. It had been hoped that the Apple and Pear Development Council, established in 1966, would increase sales through an advertising campaign designed to promote British apples and pears. Its efforts were something less than a raving success. Who now remembers their slogan “Finish your meal with an English apple”? They had to report in July 1968 that “despite the efforts of both importing organisations and the UK growers to increase consumption levels there is a danger of supply outstripping demand”. Then, admitting defeat in the face of the inability to plan rationally under capitalism, they went on to say

  The Council must make it quite clear that publicity is no panacea for oversupply . . . The industry can only operate in conditions of reasonable stability. Glut conditions, uneconomic returns and violent swings in supplies are of no use to the home grower . . .  In the Council’s view, the only way to maintain reasonable conditions is by physical means such as a quota system based on quantity ... no amount of marketing skill, publicity or anything else can compete against a glutted market.

(Horticulture Report p. 184-5)

Left to Rot
In 1969 British markets shuddered under a gigantic flow of apples. Prices hit rock bottom for the producers; some were only getting 2d or 3d a pound for best quality produce. Anything other than grade one was being thrown away and farmers were leaving fruit to rot on the trees. Gerald Nabarro complained to the House of Commons that in his own constituency

   250 tons of Lord Lambourn and Laxton’s Fortune were left unpicked at Leighsinton, near Malvern . . . [and that] . . . 1,200 boxes of Melba — a very early variety — were put into store but lay unsold and are now rotting in their boxes, utterly wasted.

(Hansard 13 December 1969 col. 1665)

The gravity with which MPs treated the problem can be gauged from the fact that they found time (about 4½ hours) to have two debates on this in under two weeks. The debates concentrated on the financial implications for capitalism of the advent of this abundance. Not one of the speakers in the debates expressed any emotion remotely approaching joy that human ingenuity had resulted in plenty. Rather the opposite. Most were concerned that growers would suffer financially.

“Naturally, we must see that our growers have a viable position” said Alfred Morris, Labour MP for Wythenshaw, on 10 November (col. 139) assuring his Party’s concern for the continued prosperity of the industry. David Crouch, representing Canterbury, (somewhat nearer to the problem) after a bit of useless jingoistic nonsense to the effect that “The English apple is in my opinion second to none in the world” continued:

  I am not seeking to raise the price for the British housewife at a time of severe increase in the price of foodstuffs. It would be irresponsible to suggest that, but I have a duty to be concerned not only with the price the consumer pays but that the price should be a fair one for the British farmer, a fair and reasonable price to keep the British grower in being.
(Hansard 10 November 1969 col. 126)

But all the demands that the quota be decreased were to no avail. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, Gwyneth Dunwoody, was satisfied that “the decision reached is the best in the widest national interest” (Hansard 3 November 1969 col. 1670).

Resources Destroyed
For this capitalist “problem” the government have found a suitable capitalist “solution”. Productive resources are to be destroyed. This monstrous decision was taken after a total of less than half an hour’s debate in both Houses of Parliament.

Such action had been common policy on the Continent for a number of years and had been suggested as a way out for British growers in 1964. During the detailed debates on the Agriculture and Horticulture Bill of that year MPs representing constituencies where fruit-growing interests were strong had urged that the Improvement Grants be increased from one third to one half of the cost of grubbing up old orchards. They hoped that the increase might encourage farmers with only a few trees to dig them up. This would remove the poorer quality fruit which in glut conditions tended to spoil the market for the big growers. As it was, of the £8m. made available in 1960, only £2½m had been taken up because the scheme benefitted only the contractors who removed the trees and not the farmer who had to borrow the other two thirds of the money needed. Maxwell Hyslop, MP for Tiverton, put it this way:

  The point I was endeavouring to make was that, as productive capacity is demonstrably in excess of what is required, there is considerable merit in giving further incentive to reduce that capacity.
(Official Report Standing Committee “B” Agriculture and Horticulture Bill 30 January 1964 (emphasis added).

In his call for more “effective” action he was only reflecting the view of Liberal MP for Montgomery, Emlyn Hooson, who had stated that “obsolete” orchards should have been grubbed out years ago.

  I ask the Minister, why not a 100 per cent grant for grubbing out orchards. This would be of great benefit to the country.

(Hansard 12 December 1963 col. 632)

What distinguishes these grants from the Farm Capital Grant (Variation) Scheme of last year is that they did not preclude replanting. As such they might have something to recommend them in that a greater output may be achieved from heavier cropping varieties developed since the orchard was planted, often up to fifty years ago. The 1971 Scheme however specifically provides that if the grant is paid the grower must undertake not to replant his orchard for at least five years. When asked to elaborate on the precise meaning of the words “restricting planting” in this latest Order, Earl Ferrers explained:

  The aim is to encourage something of a crash programme of grubbing. It is no part of the purpose of these schemes for orchards which are grubbed up with their assistance to be replanted with new apple and pear trees.

(Lords Hansard 3 August 1971 col. 1088)

In addition the grant was to be at the full rate of standard grubbing costs. Again it was seen to be in the interests of capitalism as a whole that these grants should be made as the orchards, said Junior Minister Anthony Stodart,

  are a source of quite considerable weakness to the rest of the industry. We cannot afford a weakness of this kind.

(Hansard 30 July 1971 col. 1024) (emphasis added)

Profit the Aim

These grants, it is hoped, will steady the market enough to encourage further investment in the industry and thus make it more profitable. For that is really the whole object of the exercise. The primary function of farmers is not the growing of food that will satisfy a basic human need; their main aim in business is the accumulation of profit. In a memorandum to the House of Commons Select Committee’s Sub-committee on Horticulture, the National Farmers’ Union reminded them that:

  When all is said and done, what counts is whether at the end of the day the producer has sufficient profit to reward his employees and himself . . . and to provide as good a return on the capital he has invested as he would have received had it been invested elsewhere. Generally speaking a new attitude requires to be engendered on horticultural prices which would acknowledge that the grower is entitled to a fair return.

(Horticulture Report p.161)

In hot pursuit of this “fair return” growers had, with the aid of government grants amounting to £140,000, cleared 10,000 acres (about ten per cent) of British orchards. It then became clear that this was not enough; the clearance of another 5,000 acres would be necessary. But even this did not satisfy the present Minister of Agriculture, James Prior, who is reported to have said “I want to see an expanded grubbing-up programme for apples whether we are in the Common Market or outside . . . I must tell you outright to look very carefully at your investment” (The Times 8 January 1971). This will entail the grubbing-up of old but pretty orchards, and their replacement by vast plantations of uniform varieties of fruit. Already one contractor alone has bulldozed over 700 acres in Kent, and this year another 875 farmers have taken up grants worth £300,000 to destroy 6,150 acres of apples and pears. Before the grant scheme runs out in March of next year Prior hopes to have persuaded growers to clear a further 9,000 acres.

How successful all this will be in restoring scarcity to its dominant place in the capitalist way of life remains doubtful. It has been reliably reported (Sunday Times 8 July 1971) that mini-trees have been planted at a density of 50,000 to the acre compared to the normal 120 to the acre. These would give an output, not of the normal 8 tons to the acre, but a massive 100 tons of apples per acre every two years. It may not be long before we see the whole sad spectacle repeating itself. Capitalism cannot bring together the plenty and the poor so that the former eliminates the latter.

Gwynn Thomas

Danger: capitalism at work (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Conservatives were the first government to act on the issue although the dangers had been known for 15 to 20 years" declared Francis Maude, Minister of Consumer Affairs, in the House of Commons on 13 January. He was referring to the government's intention to bring in legislation to ban inflammable foam furniture from the beginning of March 1989. In trying to score a point off his Labour critics the Minister avoided having to answer the real question: if the dangers had been known for 15 to 20 years, why wasn't anything done before?

The short answer is: because we are living in a capitalist society where furniture, like everything else, is not produced for use but for sale on a market with a view to profit. If satisfying the need for it was the sole reason furniture was produced, then the problem of having to ban the use of inflammable foam or any other dangerous material in its manufacture just wouldn't arise. Only furniture that was comfortable, solid and safe would be produced. But under capitalism the main reason furniture is produced is not to satisfy needs but to make a profit. Of course what is produced has to have some minimum use, otherwise it would not sell, but safety is a secondary consideration especially if catering for it will increase the cost of production.

Profit is the goal of production under capitalism. It is why production is undertaken and is what every firm, whether private or state-owned, must seek to obtain. Profits are created in the process of production in the form of surplus value and represent the unpaid labour of the producers, the value of what they produce over and above what they are paid as wages. Profits, however, are realised — converted into money (the form in which they really are profits) only on the market when the products in which they are embodied are sold.

All firms are therefore engaged in a competitive struggle to sell their products, precisely in order to realise the profits that are embodied in them. To succeed in this struggle they must be competitive in the sense that their production costs must be low enough to allow them to sell their wares at the going price and at the same time make enough profits to be able to invest in more up-to-date cost-reducing equipment. Competition can oblige all firms to run fast just to stay still. To remain in the race for profits, firms must stay competitive and to stay competitive they must continually increase productivity; to increase productivity they must make profits and accumulate them as capital invested in new. more productive equipment.

The furniture industry is no exception to this rule but. as an industry producing overwhelmingly for sale to wage and salary earners, it has an interest in keeping its prices low, not just through increased productivity but also through keeping the quality low too. The consumption of wage and salary earners is limited by the size of their wage packet or their salary cheque, so they are under constant financial pressure to go for the lowest-priced furniture on sale. This means that when there are two pieces of furniture on offer it will be the one with the lowest absolute price rather than the one with the lowest price-quality ratio that will tend to sell the best. In other words, the furniture industry is one of those industries that can make more profits by selling a large amount of low quality, low-priced goods than by selling a small amount of higher quality, higher-priced goods.

It is clear that in this situation, arising out of the competitive nature of capitalism combined with the restricted incomes it imposes on wage-earners, if no controls exist then furniture manufacturers will use the cheapest material in the manufacture of their goods even if this material is dangerous to the user. This is not contested by people in the trade; indeed, it is taken for granted, as can be seen from recent comments by them in the press.

A safer foam material has been available for some time but has not been used in all furniture because it is more expensive than the dangerous foam. The marketing manager of Dunlopillo, a firm that can produce the safer type of foam, was quoted as saying: . . .

  the [furniture] manufacturers are in a cut-throat business. They won't ask for more expensive foam unless they have to (Independent, 6 January 1988).

A similar view was expressed the next day by the merchandising director of Harris Queenway, the furniture retailers:

  We are in a commercial world. I still have my doubts whether the public will buy the safer furniture. They seem more affected by price and comfort (Independent, 7 January 1988).

After March 1989, if the government's legislation goes through, only the safer furniture will be available in shops. Before supporters of capitalism cite this as an example of how conditions under capitalism can be improved by reforms, they ought to reflect on the fact that, on the minister's own admission, nearly 20 years went by between the discovery of the danger and the banning of the incriminated material. In the intervening period hundreds of people have died unnecessarily, including the 12 over Christmas — without whose deaths ministers would have gone on giving for even more years the same reason for doing nothing as that given by one of their predecessors in 1980: "Alternative fillings would lead to soaring costs in the production of furniture”.

Even if some legislation to protect people's safety and health is eventually enacted, the long delay in reaching this stage is in itself proof of the inherently anti-social nature of capitalism in which it is normal that profits should come before safety. What has happened in the case of dangerous foam in furniture is the general rule every time that some issue concerning people's health or safety arises under capitalism. Two members of the Green Alliance environmental lobby group give us another recent example:

  In 1976. the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended changes in our air pollution regulations. Six years later, the Government agreed to consider these recommendations. After a further four years it published a consultation paper. Shortly after the election, however, it announced that there was no parliamentary time for legislation (Independent, 13 January 1988).

Legislation will no doubt eventually be passed, perhaps in time for a minister to declare "our party was the first to act on this issue although the measure to protect people's health had been recommended for 15 to 20 years".

Its exactly the same story with regard to water pollution. In 1975 the EEC Commission proposed a Common Market framework directive "on the quality of water intended for human consumption". Five years later, in 1980, the EEC Council of Ministers adopted the directive, giving Member-States two years (to 1982) to incorporate it into their national legislation and a further three years (to 1985) for the higher standards to be applied. The directive, however, also allowed for exceptions and for a longer time-limit for compliance if justified. The higher standards, which in any event represent only the minimum that scientists consider should be done to reduce the danger to health, have still not been applied in Britain. The British government has in fact invoked one of the exception clauses to request a delay in implementation until 1989.

Among the substances whose presence in water is to be controlled are nitrates. These chemical substances have been linked to stomach cancer and to the “blue baby" syndrome. They get into drinking water through some of the artificial fertilisers farmers spread on their land to increase yields — to be able to stay in the race for profits — being leached off by rain into water supplies. The problem is particularly acute in East Anglia. The National Farmers' Union are demanding compensation for the "loss of competitivity" that will result if restrictions are imposed on their use of nitrate fertilisers.

That water supplies have been polluted by artificial fertilisers has been known for many years but nothing much has been done about it until now because, as the NFU rightly points out, to do so would have reduced the competitive power of farming firms which, like all other firms, are in business to make profits rather than to supply useful things. This is a classic example of the environment being polluted as a consequence of the competitive struggle for profits.

Another dangerous farming practice has been the use of anabolic steroids to fatten up cattle for sale. These stay in the meat and are still there when it is eaten by humans, and so get passed on to us. As a result of a scandal a few years ago, a ban on the use of these hormones for this purpose was adopted and came into force in Common Market countries on 1 January 1988. Once again complaints about loss of profits have been made, revealing why they were employed in the first place. Michael Leathes, secretary-general of Fedesa, described by the Times (24 December 1987) as "an animal health association funded by the European animal drug manufacturers", stated:

  The ban will result in the loss of about 10 per cent extra bulk in an animal that a farmer would expect from using previously legitimate implant steroids — that effectively kills his profit.

Some of those involved in the administration of capitalism are very well aware of the limitations that the operation of its economic laws impose on what can be done to reduce the danger to health and to the environment resulting from current farming practices. Consider the following statement by James Kerr, Head of the Farm and Countryside Service to the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture:

  While it is right and proper that environmental considerations should be given much more attention than in the past, it must be not be forgotten that farmers are in the business of producing food and unless they can do this efficiently they will not be able to compete in the marketplace and will go out of business. Such a situation is clearly not in the interests of either farming or conservation. Farmers must therefore continue to take advantage of new developments in technology to remain viable (Europe in Northern Ireland No 38. December 1987).

It is not that all new cost-reducing techniques are necessarily more anti-ecological than the techniques they replace but simply that the effect on people's health and on the environment is not the deciding factor in their adoption, as it would be if the aim of production was to provide for needs rather than to make profits.

It is true that in the end capitalism is forced to take some account of these considerations but only after the damage has been done — after some source of water has been polluted. after people have died or had their health damaged — and then only to the extent that the damage done raises production costs, either directly or through reducing the productive efficiency of wage-earners, to a level where it becomes less costly to take steps to reduce pollution than not to do so.

Too little, too late is neither a rational nor a satisfactory approach to protecting the environment and people's health and safety but it is the very most that the rigid economic laws of capitalism will ever permit.

Adam Buick

Limiting food supply (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like their American counterparts a few years ago, European farmers too are going to be paid not to grow food. This was one of the decisions of the summit of Common Market Heads of Government in Brussels last February.

Known as "set aside", this scheme is no doubt destined to become as notorious as the comparable US Soil Bank scheme which President Kennedy once frankly admitted to be one of "planned underproduction". Under it, farmers who take at least 20 per cent of their land out of cultivation will be paid an annual subsidy of between £170 and £1,020 an acre, financed partly by their government and partly by the EEC. The full text of the decision, which we record for a no doubt incredulous posterity, reads as follows:

 Withdrawal of land (set-aside): The European Council agrees to accept a mechanism for limiting supply by withdrawing agricultural land from production. This will complement the other stabilisers; application will be compulsory for the Member States, but optional for producers. Regional exceptions to compulsory application will be possible.
  In order to qualify, a producer must set aside at least 20 per cent of his arable land for at least five years. A producer who sets aside at least 30 per cent will, in addition to the premium, be exempted from the co-responsibility levy for 20t of cereals marketed by him.
 The minimum premium will be 100 ECU/ha and the maximum 600 ECU/ha; the Community contribution will be 50 per cent for the first 200 ECU, 25 per cent for the following 200 to 400 ECU and 15 per cent for 400 to 600 ECU.
  If the arable land is used for fallow grazing or converted to certain types of protein plant production, the premium will be approximately 50 per cent of the amount granted for complete set-aside.
  The Community contribution will be financed 50 per cent from the EAGGF Guarantee Section and 50 per cent from the EAGGF Guidance Section

It is estimated that at least two million acres of land will be taken out of production under the scheme, which will be introduced on 1 July.

Such a scheme had first been officially proposed when Britain held the presidency of the EEC in the second half of 1986 when it was put to a conference of Common Market agricultural ministers in September of that year by the then Minister of Agriculture, Michael Jopling. The scheme was also anticipated in a consultative document issued by the present Minister of Agriculture, John MacGregor. last December in which he floated the idea of paying cereal producers between £60 and £80 an acre to take their land out of production. Predictably, the National Farmers' Union said it wasn't enough. They wanted to be paid more not to grow food, thus confirming that farms are places where the main aim is to make money not produce food. They ought to be happier about the EEC scheme.

Basically what the EEC has decided is that, instead of paying farmers to grow food which cannot be sold, they will pay them not to grow the food in the first place. The aim is to save money on storage costs. In capitalist logic, where food like everything else is produced to be sold on a market at a profit, this makes some sort of sense. There is no point in producing food that can't be sold, despite the fact that it might be needed, as there is no profit in this. In terms of the logic of human interest, however, it is quite indefensible. As we were reminded, only a few weeks before the EEC Heads of Government made their decision, by (other) clowns wearing red noses, there is a crying need for food in certain parts of the world such as Ethiopia and Mozambique where people are literally dying of starvation.

Giving the food away to those who need it is too simple for capitalism, as it would upset the operation of the sacred market mechanism on which the system is based and which everyone including the Labour Party is now saying is the best way of distributing goods and services. In fact the market mechanism is a quite irrational way of distributing food, as the example of EEC food production shows. The capacity to produce the food to feed the starving is there but cannot be activated because the starving, not having any money, do not constitute a market. Until now the unsaleable food has been allowed to go rotten in storage. From now on farmers will be paid to cut back on the capacity to produce food. Both are equally irrational ways of solving the problem of poverty amid plenty but they are the only ones possible under capitalism.

Solving the problem in the obvious way of free access to food won't be possible till socialism has been established. Indeed, this will probably be one of the first things that socialist society will have to do. Once socialism has been established, food everywhere will be produced not to make money but to satisfy the need for it. Capitalism with its food mountains in one part of the world while people are starving in another part will remain solely as a memory of humanity's barbaric past.

Adam Buick

Nothing to worry about, claim farmers (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

By now most of us have got used to various organisations declaring designated days, weeks or even years that are devoted to highlighting some problem or other. Events such as No-Smoking Day. TUC Health and Safety Week and UN Year of Peace.

However, this year a problem is not being brought to our attention. In fact quite the opposite. This year the National Farmers Union are trying to convince us all that a problem does not exist. This is "British Food and Farming Year" and down here in Wiltshire they are celebrating in style. Every month there are two or three events, not to mention all the coverage in the local media. All this is going to cost the NFU a lot of money but they regard this as required "to fund a major advertising and public relations campaign to ensure that the message reaches the widest possible audience and creates a massive impact". At a time when more people are questioning the effects of capitalism on the food we eat and on the environment we live in, the NFU are hoping to convince us that ". . . a sea of fiddles, hand-outs, corruption, environmental destruction and food poisoning" simply does not exist.

Of course for the NFU some problems are real. Like how to keep the profits coming in at a time when food prices should be tending to fall due to "over-production" This problem is to be countered by paying farmers to take land out of production, by having quotas for the amount of food produced, and by simply destroying food or storing it in huge quantities. According to NFU President, Simon Gourlay: "It infuriates me that there is still talk about excessive profits. In most sectors the return on working capital would give an industrialist nightmares". Meanwhile millions of people starve to death every year or suffer preventable disease as a result of malnutrition.

The wage slaves working on the farms won’t be celebrating, as Ivan Monckton explains in the April edition of The Landworker:

  We have nothing to celebrate. We are still at the bottom of the wages heap, still having to cope with a far lower level of services. still living in many cases in the poorest housing, still suffering from an appalling health and safety record and still treated as mere chattels by those who would have us all believe that the thing closest to their hearts is not their wallets but the preservation of the countryside and its rural communities.

By its very nature capitalism is incapable of solving these problems. The answer is really quite simple. The land should belong to all and food be produced to eat and not for sale with a view to profit. Now that will be something worth celebrating.

Mike Tavener