Hid to Famine

Scan page 6

A family of Tuareg nomads, victims of drought in Central Niger The last article showed the fallacy of the "world food crisis how enough food could be produced if it were not for the fetters imposed by capitalist relations of production. The inflationary crisis intensifies shortage and price rises a hundredfold. Poor coun tries with balance of payments problems have suffered drought and world demand for grain has increased.

Prices have risen, doubling between 1970 and 1973 as speculators looking for a profitable way out of declining industrial investment, have cashed in through advanced buying of future production of basic food commodities. In an attempt to contain comestic inflation the US has stopped grain and fertiliser exports - a hammer blow at the economies of underdeveloped countries. Domestic prices TOSC even faster In Britain as the Tories took the cost of agricultural support from import levies instead of the Treasury, and negotiated entry into the Common Market.

This working out of the inflationary crisis of capitalism in the world economy, while it threatens cuts in the living standards of workers in the West, brings starvation and unemployment in those countries capitalism has kept economical! underdeveloped and thus intensifies the political crisis for imperialism throughout the world.

This is seen clearly if we examine the agrarian problem in thi underdeveloped countries. A revolution in agricultural technique is needed to enable these countries to support even the rural population, let alone the large industrial workforce necessary to raise the overall technical level and productivity. Yet this change in methods can only come about when the exploitation of the peasantry by the landowners and by monopolist suppliers and contractors has been eliminated through social revolution.

Production on the land is shackled by the exploiting role of western capitalism which not only plunders resources, looking simply for a return on its investment, the "imperial tribute, but which also perpetuates imperialist subjugation by supporting corrupt bourgeois nationalist governments and puppet rulers.

The working of the Green Revolution' in India provides a good example of the contradictions. After the two-year drought from 1965-67 the USA persuaded the Indian government to use the high-yield variety (HYV) Mexican dwarf wheat which can double grain yield. The increase of 3.8m tons of wheat over the pre-drought 10.7m tons was dramatic for the few Northern states which used these varieties. but the rest of India was unchanged because only these few states had sufficient irrigation. Likewise the use of HYV rice is restricted to a few areas on the last coast with large river deltas.

These varieties are critically dependant on adequate irrigation, drai nage, large amounts of fertiliser (up to 4 times as much as for traditional plants) anu pesticides, and on farm machinery to prepare and reap the multiple harvests possible in one year.

These 'inputs cost 1125 Rupees per hectare In 1971, when the national per capita income was only 600 Rupees. Who can afford it? In a typical HYV rice area, 61% farmers own less than half a hectare 38% own between ½ and 2 hectares, and the last 1% own most of the land (up to 1,000 hectares each).

small farmer has to borrow money for these inputs' but the banks and co-ops only lend to big by R. Roberts rich farmers with and as security: the smallholders are forced therefore to resort to private lenders charging 100-200% interest. The loan can obviously never be paid back and the smallholdings are sold at a pittance to the moneylenders, the peasants becoming landless labourers.

The tenant and sharecroppers in the poor population face massive rent increases from landowners using the HYV varieties - up to 70% of their crops is taken. Like the peasants. it they can't raise loans they are thrown off the land.

The big landowners, with cheaper capital borrowed from the banks. see their profit soaring and buy land that the poor are forced off while the rich from the towns join in the land bonanza.

The switch to HYV grain by capitalist farmers for its high profit also means that pulses, the main source of protein which is already in very short supply, are abandoned Protein deficiency. which stunts the mental growth of children and in creases susceptibility to disease. is rapidly increasing.

If this were not enough, fertilise: is so short that twenty times the present consumption is needed even for traditional varieties of grain. Such vast quantities are not available to India on the world market even if the national economy could pay for it - which it can't, with the increased price of oll and other imports. The world shortage of chemical fertiliser which has tripled prices has come from monopolies like the group of mines in Saskatchewan, Canada supplying most of the world's potash. They have kept production down deliberately to force prices up. By similar tactics Morroco, which supplies two-thirds of the world's market for phosphates, has forced prices up 600% since 1972.

So while foreign manufacturers dump toxic insecticides (which are banned as dangerous in their home countries) on the Indian market, the US can use as much fertiliser as that used throughout the whole of India just on lawns and golf courses EXPLOITERS Were can be no end to tamine i no solution to the world food crisis while capitalist and semi(cudal relations of production channel surplus into the hands of a mall class of exploiters, while millions of peasants and landless labourers living at the brink of starvation cannot even afford to buy grain sent over in "aid shipments The picture is often presented by capitalism's apologists, of famine being caused by natural disasters like flooding or drought. One TV documentary (criticised in the previous article blamed a long term change in word weather narrowing the monsoos zone and causing drought, and the 'Ecologist blamed 'bad weather for the first fall in in world food production since the Second World War in 1972. Climatic changes and natural hazards have always been with us. But this is only one side of the problem.

The floods in Bangladesh in the autumn of 1974 caused widespread starvation among millions of retugees only because of the feudal gricultural relations which, as in India, mean that peasants live so close to subsistence levels that when any land is flooded, they are lost. Facing a situation where they pay half the crop to a landlord as rent. and have to borrow at 100-200% rates of interest when their half of the crop runs out, where when they sell grain to raise cash to repay loans the price manipulated by the monopolists is low, and may have doubled when they are forced to buy sced later in the year, the small farmer has no margin to survive.

One of the drought areas worst hit was the Sahel region of Northern Africa. which is vulnerable to long dry periods. Its nomadic tribesmen accumulated livestock and stored grain in readiness. The Frenc colonial administration however went hungrily after increased profit by doing away with these provisions - they increased herds which over grazed the land and introduced cash-crops, especially ground-nuts for export which impoverished the soil.

This matie the region dependant on the fluctuating prices of the international commodity markets for cash ci is well as causing er- osion and devegetation of the land.

when five years drought culminated in famine in 1974, the rush to plunder profit had destroyed the possibility of survival, and thousands perished.

Similarly the plunder of the world's forests for paper and wood in the interest of profit for the boss paper co needs, the fordi needs population has turned once productive areas, especially in Africa, into wastelands and deserts.

It is not that the so-called "Third World" is under-developed it has deliberately been forced back into under-'evelopment. Poor countries moly depending on one or two prima products for export face the s. market where Western cap But is the only buyer, and can fix the price Prices of commodities like sugar and coffee have been held down by international agreements between producers and consun er nations. The latter can keep the producer nations at heel by threatening to break the agreement and buy elsewhere. This happened when Brazil started exporting their own brand of processed coffee, achieving 14% of the American market in 1967 till the US State Department threatened to pull ont of the International Coffee ARreement. Brazil had to make her processed coffee uncompetitively priced, and the US had protected the vast profits of its coffee processing industry by aborting nromising industry in Brazil.

Development in the Indian textile industry is prevented by import quotas and tarifts applied especially by Britain to protect the home industry. So underdeveloped countries are prevented trom diversifying their exports and thus advancing their technical level and living standards.

The probiems are intensitied by the slump in demand due to the growing recession. Only sugar. out of the four major commodities on the London Commodity EXchange, and only tin out of the metals on the London Metal Exchange, ended 1974 at prices above those of 1973. This rapid price erosion has caused producer countries to form associations, to cut exports and defend their price. Agreements were proposed in Latin America for bauxite, copper, silver, iron ore, coffee and bananas.

American imperialism declared cconomic war on such attempts in the Trade Act, passed in January. This refuses trade. preferences and tariff advantages to producer countries which are members of commodity associations, while granting them to manufacturers from the rest of the world Imperialism is determined not to allow under-developed countries room to breathe.

The self defence of imperialism at the expense of the economic ruin of the ex-colonial world is seen clearly in the field of "aid".

"Aid' has never been a gift to poorer countries but always means of tightening the grip of imperialism, in any case, the increase in landless and unemployed has meant that in most famines there has been no local shortage of food, but the victims have had nothing to buy it with.

Aid goes to countries offering the best commercial opportunities. Most is 'tied aid tied to purchases of goods often uncompetitive in price or quantity that would find no buyer on the world market, and otten not needed anyway. Much aid is in the form of loans the enormous rates of interest on which increase third world debt and new aid is just used to pa them back STRATEGIC The returns on such "aid' are greater than the aid itself in one year the Latin American subsidiaries of US corporations sent back 425m profit to the US more than double the amount the whole region received in new investment and foreign aid put together. Aid is used to keep reactionary ruling elites in power and prevent local social reform and and covers huge sums spent political or strategic purposes. Even food aid is used this way. United States Public Law 480 states that the policy of congress is to make maximum efficient use of surplus agricultural commodities in furtherance of the Foruign Policy of the United States"

An official of the Department of Agriculture who. wrote the first draft of the law has explained: *I could-see the possibility of the American government controlling a couple of dozen countries through these free-food shipments. We could control them because the food gave us power over the cities because everyone would know we would not unload the wheat if the government went overboard to the Communist left.

Now since 1973 the Us has suspended export sales of fertiliser and decided that the 75% drop in 8S food-aid over the 10 years Por the workers and peasants of the under-developed countries there is no solution in secking increased "aid" or merely increased commodity prices. The central question 15 to end their exploitation by world imperialism and by national capitalism and iandlordism. Thus the masses now come into the struggle against the moneylenders. the landlords and the monopolists as a part of the world development the class struggle. As Trotsky's Transitional Programme states:

"Colonial and semi-colonial countres are backward coun tries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countres: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democacy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism. Democratic slosans, roblems al dene socianst problems the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another.

(p. 41. emphasis added)

LINKED This position has been vividly borne out in the struggles in Indo China and indeed the Chinese revolution itself. Again, as Trotsky continues:

"In this sense the present programme (the Transitional Programme) is completely applicable to colonial and semi-colonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics. The centrai task of the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian revolution, i.e. liquidation of feudal heritages, and overona in dependence, i.e. the overthrow the imperialist yoke. Both tasks are, closely linked with each other.

The key question for Trotskyists is to understand how these struggles must flow over into transitional and socialist demands through the conscious intervention of revolutionaries in conflict with the Stalinist theory of rigidly distinct separate 'stages.

At the same time the demand for the nationalisation of the land and collectivisation of agriculture must be put forward, in such a way as Trotsky says that "from its very basis it should exclude the possibility of expropriation of small farmers and their compulsory collectivisation. The farmer wil remain owner of his plot of land as long as he himself believes it pis estates must be, Thus the estates must be expropriated and collectivised, while leaving the small holders to take their own decision to go over to socialist planned production. To assist this however the banks must be nationalised and merged into a single national institution under the management workers committees, which can then provide favourable ters of credit for the small farmers as well as financing the large collectives. The nationalisation of the banks does not therefore mean the nationalisation of small deposits but the best guarantee that those deposits can be of value to their owners.

CONTROL

At each point the struggles of small farmers must be VOUCHILE towards the demands which estabthe strongest links with the working class in opposition tc. monopoly capitalism. Again Trotsky wrote:

• the banks, the trusts them every s deb the farmer every side. Only the

Scan page 7

The First SOCIALIST PRESS. Thursday May Ist, 1975