You can have your veggies and eat them too ! (2006)

From Issue 20 of the World Socialist Review

The practice of vegetarianism — or non-practice of animarianism* — is not new to humanity. However, one could argue that it has never been more important. World hunger, inhumane and filthy methods of meat production, and the spread of livestock diseases both new and old are forcing many who would never consider abandoning sinking their teeth into a steaming hunk of flesh to give the idea a second thought. There are many kinds of vegetarians, ranging from impostors to the almost monastic avoiders of any food product of animal origin. This lifestyle is admittedly difficult; from meat-lover’s restaurant menus to relatives who have to cook me something extra (and have my eternal gratitude), to the usually absurdly high-priced products offered in the supermarkets.

I will try to show how vegetarianism in socialism makes sense and pass along some of the general benefits of the lifestyle, without attempting to convert you. There are people and organizations out there that can help you if you have questions or want more details on the nutritional aspects of meat-free lifestyles.

One of the concerns about meatless diets is protein. Actually, a balanced Western diet includes four times the recommended amount of protein for an average healthy adult, so leaving out the meat isn’t going to kill you. In fact, I don’t track where my protein comes from, and I sort of don’t care, because I know that there are sufficient quantities in many plant-based foods, the chief being the soybean. This is exactly where the herbivores get it and they do just fine.

Incidentally, this introduces an area where I think vegetarianism and socialism cross — at the cessation of the waste of matter and energy involved in transforming plants into meat. A good rule of thumb to estimate this waste is the “ten percent pyramid,” with humans on the top and the little greenies on the bottom. Only ten percent of each pound of “eaten” is successfully converted into “eater.” The rest is waste in the form of uneatable or indigestible matter and heat energy lost during chemical conversion. Therefore, it takes about ten pounds of plants to produce one pound of animal, and ten pounds of animal to produce one pound of human or other carnivore.

A Happy and Livable Planet

A little math tells me that if I was a carnivore, it would take 250 x 10 x 10 = 25,000 pounds of vegetable matter to produce a meat-eating version of me, but only 2,500 pounds to produce me as an herbivore. Abandoning meat as a food source can optimally increase the nutritive capacity of agriculture ten times, thus reducing our dependence on it! When socialism rolls around, the elimination of waste and hunger will surely be both primary goals for the creation of a happy and livable planet.

A socialist future like the one I dream about will also have a lot less pain and suffering than the current offering. I’ve done my homework, and without getting into details, I can say that there is a lot of that going on in the meat industries. Plants, in contrast, don’t feel pain. They cannot for the obvious reason that they do not have brains, or any nervous systems at all. And no, the cows and pigs are not going to reproduce out of control if we stop using them for food.

There are environmental impacts as well, the most serious of which is the pollution caused by the wastes of animals grown for food. This has to go somewhere — and usually, untreated livestock waste is dumped into the nearest body of water, unlike human waste, which is in most cases required by law to be treated before release into the environment. The impacts of farm animal waste are significant — I’m not going to quote statistics, so you can research this if you want.

The impact of fertilizer is even greater; however, this problem does not completely go away if meaty diets eventually disappear. Fertilizer will still be necessary to grow crops, but mindful socialists will not be forced by the pressure of the market to produce the most, the biggest, and the best — only that which is needed. They can take care that the effects of the fertilizer they do use are reduced and monitored by careful farming practices, efforts made easier by a cooperative agricultural model and not a competitive one. Meat processing facilities have environmental impacts as well. Since it seems impossible for capitalism to maintain clean and efficient slaughterhouses, those places remain vectors for disease and contamination. Shockumentaries still pop on the tube every once in awhile, reminding us, however ineffectively, how filthy meat processing actually is.

In sum, the benefits of a vegetarian society can go hand in hand with the desires of a socialist society. A widespread vegetarian lifestyle can play a significant role in reducing energy demands, pain and suffering, and the negative effects of agriculture on the environment. The environmental and medical impacts of a meat-centered culture are well documented even if they are generally ignored; and even though the psychological impacts may be harder to measure, they still contribute, in my opinion, to making the world a little more violent than it needs to be.

Tony Pink

* This is not an actual scientific term, but then neither am I.

Letter: Capitalism’s twofold lie (2001)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism’s twofold lie

Dear Editors,

At the heart of the capitalist economy was, is and always will be deception. Since capitalist production is based on selling for profit, and not to simply satisfy demand, it relies on two such deceptions for each and every exchange of goods or services. In the first place, in order to sell a quantity of products sufficient to overcome the material cost of production, provide for future expansion of production, and to place profit in the pocket of the owner, it is necessary to sell as many products to as many people as possible.

Unfortunately for the owner of said means of production, the product is at no time needed or desired by all the potential customers needed to satisfy this sales requirement. So it falls on the producers to make as many people as possible believe that they need the product, should ignore any other competitor’s offering and purchase the product immediately. Here we encounter the first lie. Since all of the producer’s goals rest in the success of this lie, modern producers enlist the aid of an advertising juggernaut that will stop at nothing to achieve their aim: to make you believe that their client’s product is absolutely vital to your happiness, success or esteem. One cannot doubt the success of advertising in the advancement of the first lie—you need only to look at the people around you, festooned with the latest brand-name styles, falling over each other to be the first in line for the Next Big Thing, and spouting inane jingles and catchphrases designed to securely place the product image in the back of every dollar-spending head.

If it were sufficient to merely dupe you into purchasing the product against your better judgement by convincing you of the overwhelming advantages of your newly-acquired possession, it would be bad enough. However, the producer, in order to maximize his gain, must again deceive you, the poor consumer, as to the value of the product. This second lie is much more subtle than the first. If advertising in modern times could be equated to the repeated bludgeoning of the consumer into submission, pricing would be much more akin to a stab in the back. The producer is placed in a precarious position: charge too little, and you don’t satisfy your profit margin, charge too much and your advertising was all for naught as the customer walks out the door. Enter markups, price discrimination, collusion and so on.

One cannot dispute the success with which capitalism has mastered the twofold lie. Consumers continue to fall for it with every purchase. People would rather pay over $100 dollars to take a family of four to a baseball game instead of buying a weeks worth of groceries. They pay $18 for CDs which cost $1.50 to produce. They pay $35,000 for a four-wheel drive death trap and drive it while talking on their cell phones. No wonder we can’t pick a president! As holidays become more commercialized, advertising becomes more and more obnoxious and pervasive, and life becomes the stuff we do between trends, one must wonder if we will ever wake up and just stop believing the lie!

Tony Pink, 

USA (by email)

Poverty (2007)

The following text is part of a series of leaflets/flyers written by a member of the World Socialist Party of the United States.

Poverty, starvation, and want do not exist because of scarcity, as the central teachings of capitalist economics would lead you to believe.

It has been shown many times over that present agricultural and manufacturing technology can produce enough food and goods for a human population actually larger than the one that exists right now. Stores in western nations are constantly fully stocked, and food is thrown away because it spoils before it is sold. Houses sit empty and cars fill sales lots. However, the fruits of the planet and human labor are only available to those who have the money to buy them. Since the capitalism tends to deny access to far more people than it allows, it is therefore the restriction of access to the means of survival, such as food, water clothing and shelter that creates poverty!

It would be nice if everyone could obtain or produce the things they need to live a comfortable and healthy life from their nearby environment. However, the wide range of planetary conditions prevent it. Due to property law and the money system, the two most important features of capitalism, people living in areas of the world where the essentials of life cannot be produced as needed are forced to buy it from those who can. Most often, if they cannot buy what they need, they go without it. The existence of national borders and other political divisions also provide barriers to the flow of food and goods to where they are needed, further preventing millions from enjoying a healthy living standard both inside and outside these borders.

Unfortunately, the lure of capitalism has always been the supposed ability for any given person to gain wealth beyond the value of their individual labor. We see rags-to-riches stories on television and are constantly updated on the lives and activities of the rich and powerful, many of whom got that way through hard work and sacrifice. What is never glorified, however, is the ability of capitalism to create poverty for billions of people.

Think about it, poor people did not invent capitalism. For every millionaire, dozens must necessarily be doomed to squalor and destitution. So why should anyone expect anything different than the continued existence of poverty when that was exactly what the capitalism is supposed to accomplish?

Strangely, many well-meaning individuals believe they can make governments force capitalism to take care of the poor, or that vast networks of charities can help to eliminate poverty. These folks engage in reform politics or join "humanitarian" organizations, hoping to somehow force the system to work exactly opposite of the way it is designed to work. Attempts to reform the present system (no matter how well intentioned) to eliminate poverty are doomed to fail because the core structure of capitalism creates the problem. Capitalism can never be reformed to work against it's own operating principles!

Our Movement thinks that providing for a world of billions requires a revolutionary change from the way things are done right now. That is why we demand nothing short of the complete replacement of the property and money systems - the "heart and soul" of capitalism. Socialism, a system based on free access and administered by the democratic action of the entire world's population, can accomplish the elimination of poverty, because that is what it is designed to do! Socialism does not exist to create rich or poor people, but to make available a sustainable and healthy standard of living for every human being. Future advances in technology and agriculture should be enjoyed by the entire world, not just a privileged minority. Given that, the ability of socialism to succeed in providing for every human being will lie in creating fair and efficient distribution and accounting methods to ensure that both the resources of the earth and human labor are applied when and where it is needed most.

Tony Pink

A World Without War

Cross-posted from the WSPUS MySpace Page

Anyone who has paid attention in history class probably observed that the major periods in American (and for that matter World) history is divided up mostly by wars. Often the most studied and revered historical figures are those who led their people to victory in times of conflict. Since the dawn of civilization, brought on by the Agricultural Revolution, different groups of humans have waged war against other humans. The methods may have become more deadly and efficient over thousands of years, but the main cause for war has not, and neither have the outcomes - misery, death and destruction.

Why do humans continually wage war on each other, despite the constant efforts of diplomats and the development of ever more frightening weapons capable of killing millions? Typically, the people writing the history books assign the blame to at least one party (typically the loser) in every conflict; it is because of their evil nature, greed or foolishness that innocent people are attacked, and that more often than not, the bad guys are defeated by others who are good and wise and noble. Only when evil is finally eradicated, or super weapons developed that are so devastating no one would ever think to use them, can people finally live in peace. So says the narrative we all learn from a young age.

Actually, the cause of war is never found in the people that actually fight them. Throughout human history, wars have been fought and paid for by the wage earners and the poor, who ironically are the ones who always come out the loser of every conflict, no matter who claims victory. It isn't even correct to blame the people who start the wars, the ruling or owning class, because even they answer to a higher authority which goads them to hurl bodies and bullets at their so-called enemies.

If you really want to understand why wars are fought, simply look at what is actually being fought over - the answer invariably ends up some form of Property. A concept devised when the first cities sprung up around agricultural areas, ownership of property gave birth to the class system we have today, and has been defended by laws and the threat of violence ever since. A few people owned all of the wealth and the rest owned none. This ruling or owning class, once made up of priests, kings and warlords, now consists of politicians, business owners and what's left of the monarchies around the world. In order to preserve their positions of power, wealth and privilege, they must maintain the property system at all costs. Often, this means expansion, into new land, trade routes, resources, or even human minds. When that expansion infringes on the property of other members of the ruling class, wars are inevitable. So it has been for thousands of years!

The property system doesn't just involve armies and wars over other people's land and resources. It has a tremendous impact within any given society. Multiple layers of police and security forces exist to protect the countless laws that define and continue the property system. Often deadly force is used to protect them, placing the value of property above the lives of the people making up a society. But that is a discussion for another time.

Wars can be stopped forever by simply removing the reasons for their existence. A system where property law and violence separates people into two classes can be replaced by one in which all property, wealth, and land is held in common, and where the owning class no longer has the ability to sustain itself. This system is called socialism. True socialism does away with governments and private (as opposed to personal) property, freeing the sum of all the world's wealth to be shared equally by all humans and removing the need to fight over anything. Socialism, and the end of all war, is not utopia or a lunatic's pipe dream, but a real solution to many problems. Are you ready take the first steps to end war? Contact us today!

Tony Pink