[page 12]
MIR June 1985: Nc
antagonism, the Russian Bureaucracy
and US imperialism have leaned on
each other. Both sides look with dread
upon the possibility of the working
class coming to power in any country.
The victory of the workers in Spain,
Greece, France, Britain or the USA
would completely undermine the basis of the Bureaucracy.
On the other hand, the victory of the political revolution and the establishment of a genuine workers' democracy in the USSR would spell the end of capitalism and imperialism internationally.
The unparalleled development of industry, science and technique, particularly in the course of the last few decades, means that for the first time the material conditions for socialism now exist on a world scale.
At the end of the 1970s, in every four years, £l million millions was wasted on arms expenditure throughout the world. Now that figure is £1 million million in less than two years. This sum of money alone could transform the uves of every man, woman and child on the planet if it were used for productive purposes.
On the basis of the planned and harmonious application of the new technique-industrial robots, computers, micro-electronics, satellitethe resources of the whole planet could be utilised to the full to provide a better life for all. Contrary to the pessimistic assertions of the bourgeois, there are ample resources potentially to guarantee a full and happy life for every human being on the planet.
The only thing which stands in the way of the attainment of these things is the outmoded ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange by a privileged handful, and the narrow limitations of the national state which has now become transformed into an absolute fetter on the development of the productive forces:
A World Socialist Federation would usher in a new and qualitively higher phase of human civilization. Mankind would stand a head taller in a world freed from the horrors of war, unemployment, illiteracy and disease.
Additional reading
• MIR Spring 1984, "Andropov After-the crisis of Stalinism" Peter Taaffe.
• Cuba: Analysis of the revolution by Peter Taaffe, 20p.
• The coming world revolution Grant, 30p • Bureaucratism or by R Silverman and
workers'
T Grant,
and
by
by Ted
power 60p.
Sinn Fein blocks
workers' unity-
A reply to Ken Livingston
DURING THE 1970's the Labour leadership in Britain maintained a disastrous policy of bipartizanship with the Tories on the question of Nor thern Ireland.
This meant Labour support for the repressive methods of the state. It meant a Labour administration from 1974-1979 which intensified this repression. Under Secretary of State Roy Mason and his henchman Don Concannon, both MP's who represent mining communities in Britain, draconian methods were practiced and perfected by the state in readiness for later use against the British miners, among others.
Since 1979 a discussion on Northern Ireland has opened up within the British labour movement. The rejection of bipartizanship by the Labour Party conference in 1981 was a huge step forward. How can the Tories who have created four million jobless in Britain be expected to solve the problems of Northern Ireland? Through this discussion Labour now has the opportunity to work out an independent class position on Ireland.
Unfortunately a number of prominent figures on the non-Marxist left of the Labour Party, most notably Ken Livingstone, have abandoned the policy of the right in favour of a no less disastrous policy of their own:
Ken Livingstone has rejected bipar tizanship with the Tories-and instead advocates a policy of bipartizanship with the nationalists of Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA. In this article Peter Hadden explains how Ken Livingstone's stance on N. Ireland in recent years has done a disservice to the cause of socialism in Ireland and thereby to the movement in Britain also.
During the 1981 hunger strike Bobby Sands won a Westminster seat in Fermanagh/South Tyrone. After his death the seat was won by Owen Carron of Sinn Fein. Following this success Sinn Fein went on to contest a number of elections and have managed to win about 40% of the Catholic
11
By Peter Hadden
vote. In the recent local government elections they won 59 seats and 11.8% of the total vote.
Ken Livingstone, and those who until the recent split in its Editorial Board were his co-thinkers around the journal, Labour Herald, were completely mesmerised by Sinn Fein's initial success. Livingstone himself predicted (Labour Herald 4/3/83) that Sinn Fein "is likely to emerge as the main voice of the Catholic minority at the next General election."
Such projections have proved wildly optimistic. Today Sinn Fein leaders are careful not to raise the expectations of their supporters as they did at first. So Danny Morrison has more soberly acknowledged that "it could well be that we will not overtake the SDLP in the foreseeable future". (Magill Sept '84)
All criticism absent
That Sinn Fein's success has been more modest than he (and they first forsaw has 'in no way dulled Livingstone's enthusiasm. He has visited Belfast (26/2/83) at their invitation and was shown Catholic areas. He did not contact or attempt to meet any trade union or Labour organisation while here.
In Britain he has shared platforms with Sinn Fein, (and with the Young Liberals) on the issue of Troops out. More recently he has been a mover behind the decision to invite a 'representative of Republican opinion', in other words a Sinn Fein representative, to address the next London Labour Party Conference.
Labour Herald has carried a number of articles and interviews with Sinn Fein personnel, each one published without comment or criticism. In fact this journal, of which Ken Livingstone has been one of three Co-editors from its foundation in 1981 until May this
[page 13]
MIR June 1985: Norther
year, has acted as a platform for Sinn
in and as an apologist for the IRA.
se entire effect of Livingstone's actroity and of such propaganda, has
ep on the one side, to discredit
abour in the minds of many workers, Cotholis aad Protestant, in Northern reland, and, on the other, to allow Sien Fein a veneer of credibility they do not deserve. Small wonder Adams, Morrison and co. have been grateful for his efforts: "Ken Livingstone's
it here in Feb 83, Gerry Adams go-
to Loudon after the exclusion order was lifted in July '83, all these things the struggle: Moron agill Sept
"84).
To justify his support Livingstone
i to present Sinn Fein as something
fare do not even claim it to be.
apir image in Britain a little
e sets about embellishing
fat tinge: "Most people
tion of the IRA and Sinn
aminantly Nationalist
antow much of this was true in the post I do not know, but over the last four years a new leaderabip of Sinp Fein has broken out of the simple Nationalist mould." (Labour Herald: 4/3/83).
It would come as news to the pre-
* Sos Fain badership that they are
* pradominantly Nationalist
di, Lation! But no matter. Their al- Ita the GLC has even greater praise tor them. "Sign Fein is also developing a full programme of social and economic reform akin to the Labour Party." (Labour Herald 4/3/83.)
It would be difficult to depart further from reality than these attementa. Sinn Fein is not a socialist orgenisation. Nor will it evolve in that direction. True, some of its recent propaganda is embroidered with radical sounding phrases, references to demperatic socialism etc. But so also
was the material produced by Sinn
Fein and the IRA in the early 1970's, when it was wader the leadership of right wing Nationalists and sectarians
Ruati O'Bradaigh.
of Sinn Fein whether led
tor Gerry Adams is Na-
Socialism. It's election
fal has been nationalist in con-
and crudely sectarian in appeal.
na Carron defended his Fer-
and South Tyrone seat in
parial which did not men-
i and with the slogan
Ms Nationalist Seat'. Danny
son in Mid Ulster stressed that
Dance al Sinn Fein support,
-Uister will bo returned to the Na-
int ponple."
the urben areas class issues have
taken up but always in a purely
arian manner. Take for example
Ireland
Healey, Owen and Roy Mason, NI Secretary of State in the last Labour government. Under
Mason, a South Yorkshire MP, draconian measures were practised by the state in readiness
for later use against the British miners, amongst others.
Gerry Adams' 1983 election manifesto-Under UNEMPLOY- MENT it begin "Nationalist unemployment figures in West Belfast... "; Under HOUSING "The worst housing figures in Western Europe, particularly so in case of nationalist areas... " Under EDUCA- TION; 'There is no provision for nationalist aspiration or culture... Under REPRESSION ". ...the nationalist population have not only had to suffer..."; Under DISCRIMINA• TION "discrimination in favour of Protestants"
Of the low wages, bad housing (equally as bad in the protestant Shankill areas of this constituency as in the Falls) of the education cuts, school closures, of all the problems which affect protestant workers, not a word. Of socialism, in this particular leaflet, not a mention either.
Radical phrases
Sinn Fein's vote is in part a traditional nationalist vote which previously went to the right wing Irish Independence Party (IIP). They also have won the support of an important section of the Catholic working class, especially the youth. To these people Sinn Fein is an anti-establishment, anti-Tory party. Many vote for it because it is the only body which has taken up the issue of repression. In this sense part of this vote is a distorted class vote which has gone to Sinn Fein because of the absence of any alternative.
Does this not confirm Livingstone's argument that this is a potentially socialist party? On the contrary! Sinn Fein represents a dead end for these youth. Even if they were to emerge as
12
the major force among the Catholic community it would matter not one jot. So long as the working class vote along sectarian lines the Tories and the bigots will come out on top. The real victors in the May 1985 Council elections were not Sinn Fein but the Unionists. The Official Unionists won 190 seats and Paisleys Democratic Unionist Party, 142.
Against this the combined total of the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Fein seats was 160. Sectarianism means permanent Unionist rule. Only on a class basis can the stranglehold of the local Tories and bigots be ended.
Sinn Fein's success reinforces rather than weakens Unionism. It has also reinforced the SDLP by driving behind it a solid anti-Sinn Fein, anti-IRA vote. It can offer no way out to those who support it.
In any case the Sinn Fein leaders do not claim that electoral success can ever bring victory. Following the local government election results AN Phoblach (23/5/85) on its front page states: "Tragically and unfortunately it is landmines and ambushes and the sustaining of an armed struggle-the cutting edge-which will eventually in. flict upon British thinking the conclusion that they have to withdraw."
In applauding the strategy of Sinn Fein, Livingstone is also applauding and legitimising the campaign of the Provisional IRA. In his articles in Labour Herald criticism of the Provo's methods is absent. Rather Livingstone, weighing up the campaign, states: "The IRA know they cannot win a military victory over the British army. But equally they know they cannot be defeated" Does he then conclude that the campaign should be end-
[page 14]
Ken Livingstone with Gerry Adams and Joe Austin, Belfast Sinn Fein, during their visit ed? No! He goes on "there is no doubt there could be an immediate ceasefire if the government were prepared to commit itself to a complete withdrawal from Ireland within two years" Labour Herald 4/3/83. In other words, until such a guarantee is given the campaign is justified. In the early 1970s the Provisionals gained a mass support among the Catholic youth. Mass unemployment, discrimination, together with events such as the introduction of internment and the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, and above all the silence of the Labour Movement on these questions, drove these youth en masse towards Then there were vast illusions among the youth in the ability of the Provo's methods of individual terrorism to quickly succeed. The bomb and the bullet seemed a quick and effective way of hitting back. So the Provo's paper An Phoblach/Republican could confidently headlines such as "English withdrawal any week now" 24/9/74.
Fitteen years of military activity have largely worn out these illusions. There is no longer any talk of a quick victory but of a long war of attrition. Danny Morrison talks of a campaign wearing down the will of the British to remain in Ireland. The IRA he states will "be successful in inflicting a political defeat, not a military defeat on the British army, but a political defeat on the British government" Magill Sept '84. The time scale he projects is not 'any week now' but 'five to ten years".
No military victory The reality is that not in ten, twenty or 100 years could the Provos succeed in inflicting either a political or a military defeat on British Imperialism.
The Provo's methods of individual terrorism are entirely counterproductive. The working class is the only force capable of overthrowing capitalism. In Ireland only the working class can resolve the remanents of the national question by overcoming sectarianism, forcing the withdrawal of the troops and reuniting the country.
The key to the entire situation is class unity and the development of the mass struggles of the working class. The Provo's campaign is a handicap to both.
Individual terrorism runs counter to mass action. It allows no role to the mass movement other than to gaze on and spectate. Rather than develop the consciousness of workers of their own power it teaches only helplessness and to Britain, at Livingstone's invitation, in 1983. sows confusion.
Setting out to weaken the state it does the opposite. In Northern Ireland the Provos methods have provided the state with the excuse to step up repression and to equip itself with a plethora of repressive laws. Such is the consequence of this misnamed 'urban guerrillaism' everywhere.
The Provos also deepen and reinforce sectarianism. By dividing and weakening the working class they actually set back the struggle to end imperialist domination.
The responsibility of socialists is to state things as they are. Ken Livingstone is doing no favours to the Catholic youth who look to Sinn Fein and the IRA. Rather than embracing and bolstering the Sinn Fein leaders he would be better trying to win these youth away from the blind alley of nationalism and individual terrorism and His excuse for not doing so is that it is not the business of British socialists to 'tell the Irish what to do' Instead the movement in Britain should offer only 'self determination'. The rest is up to the Irish. This is not internationalism but its opposite. Socialists in one country have not only a right, but a duty, to assist, advise and comment on the class struggle and the struggle against oppression elsewhere. Livbenina 's attempt to bed his ata self behind empty phrases about determination' is not only wrong it is completely dishonest. While saying it is not his role to advocate a position he in effect puts one forward, basically that workers should support Sinn Fein and support the IRA. Word for word his programme and analysis is identical to that of Adams and co. Like Photo: Derek Speirs (IFL) them he rejects the possibilities for socialism and advocates a capitalist Sinn Fein are adamant that there is no room at present for class unity or for socialist objectives. Far from presssocial and economic demands "akin to the Labour Party" Gerry Adams is quite explicit: "We must be mindful of the dangers of ultra-leftism and remember at all times that while our struggle has a major social and economic content, the securing of Irish independence is a pre-requisite for the advance to a socialist republican society", 1983 Ard Fheis address. Owen Carron writing in Labour Herald has stated: "You have to remove the British connection and then you'll get unity in the working class. It won't work the other way round", 2 October, 1981.
A new Lebanon Gerry Adams, again in Labour Herald, asked if Tory cuts would create conditions for class unity, replies: "Unfortunately no....The British presence is the key factor in preventing communities from coming together and sustains sectarianism... in theory there is the basis for unity but in practice, when you are dealing with religious-political philosophy's they will always play the orange card" 17 June, 1983.
Put in plain language what these statements mean is that the class struggle must be postponed. First a capitalist united Ireland. Until then the sectarian division is legitimate. Only when partition is ended can there be the possibility of socialism. As Adams "Sinn Fein would have a puts it:
preference for a democratic socialist
[page 15]
June
society but in a post-withdrawal situation we will be bound by the democratic wishes of the Irish people" Socialism is not something to be fought for-but a mere private 'preference'!
In 1918 De Valera appealed to the labour movement to take a back seat with his insistance that "Labour must wait" • First remove the British presence and then conduct the class struggle. The Labour leadership heeded his call, the struggle for independence fell into the hands of the petty bourgeois nationalists of Sinn Fein and the terrible set-back of partition was the result.
"Labour must wait" is again the position of the Sinn Fein leaders and in effect also of Ken Livingstone. For the moment all parties representing all classes must come together to arrange a settlement. "A future Labour government" , according to Livingstone, "must refuse to be bound by the Unionist veto, announce a planned withdrawal and convene a conference of all Northern and Southern Irish parties to agree the constitutional guarantees that the Northern Protestants will require". Labour Herald, 4 March, 1983.
This is to be effected within two years of a Labour victory. "It's the time you would need to organise the finances necessary • to maintain the welfare state provisions in the North, which the South couldn't fund at this stage". • (Ken Livingstone in an interview with Tariq Ali in June 1983 published in Who's Afraid of Margaret Thatcher, pp 59-60).
All this is the purest fantasy. In the first place the weak Southern capitalist class and their political representatives in Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have no interest in ending partition. When the leaders of these parties make noises about reunification it is in part holiday speechifying and in part an effort to divert attention from the social and economic problems at home.
Not "at this stage" or at any stage could Southern capitalism afford to fund the North. The Northern state is an artificial creation maintained by the huge subvention, now equivalent to 29 per cent of its GDP handed out by the British government.
The Southern economy already faces chronic problems. Unemployment is over 17 per cent. Its foreign debt is equal to 128 per cent of GNP, the worst figure in the OECD area.
With a budget deficit equal to 7½ per cent of GNP the government is attempting to introduce Thatcherite austerity measures, cutting the already low level of state services. Yet the New Ireland Forum report, sup-
SMIR
posedly an argument in favour of reunification, projected that the budget deficit in a united Ireland would rise to 17 per cent of GDP, and this on the assumption that the violence would end!!
Even if the Southern bourgeois did wish it, capitalist reunifcation would still be impossible. When the British ruling class divided Ireland they did so primarily to cut across the class struggle. By the 1950s and 1960s, especially with the opening up of the Southern economy through the Anglo- Irish Free Trade Agreement, the British bosses would actually have preferred to do away with the border. Today they would like to be able to withdraw their troops and to see the country reunited-on the basis of capitalism and dominated by British and world capital.
However the chickens of imperialism have come home to roost. The very state which they created and maintained, and the million protestants within it, present an insurmountable barrier to capitalist reunification. The ruling class have been forced to recognise that, no matter how much they would wish otherwise, they have no alternative but to retain the troops and hold onto the North.
'Half an
The wishes of the British ruling class have run up against the 'loyalist veto' which Ken Livingstone states must be abolished. This veto is not a scrap of paper or a mere constitutional guarantee. It is the fact that the protestants would fight rather than accept a capitalist united Ireland. Despite the poverty of the North, the Protestants see worse not better in the South. They fear, quite correctly, that in a poverty-stricken united Ireland which on today's figures would have 400,000 out of work, more than the total manufacturing workforce, they would be made the scapegoats and would become a discriminated against minority.
On a capitalist basis and if no alternative means of defence were provided by the labour movement the removal of the troops would mean civil war. So also would capitalist reunification.
Fighting with their backs to the sea the protestants would not be defeated. Civil war would not lead to reunification. Out of the ashes of such a conflict and on the bones of thousands of workers who would be killed would emerge at best a Lebanon, with the cantonisation of the North, and at worst the repartition of the country and the emergence of a small, entirely protestant state in the North East.
14
Nothing would be resolved and the seeds of future conflict would be sown, just as they were in the Middle Last after the formation of the Israeli state in 1948.
This is the reality which has dictated the policy of every British government since 1969. The same reality will confront the next Labour government. No matter what Ken Livingstone now imagines, that government would not be able to impose a capitalist reunification on Ireland. The choice is simple. Either it moves to a socialist solution in Britain and thereby allows the Irish working class to follow suit or else it will be forced to continue with policies basically no different from its predecessors.
It is not possible to get away with half an idea or half an argument. There is a certain logic to a line of thought which must be followed through. Sinn Fein and Ken Livingstone accept that protestants will not be won over to their nationalist viewpoint. Class unity to these people is impossible. No other conclusion is open to them other than that protestant resistance to a united Ireland must be faced up to and smashed. The logic of Ken Livingstone's position, although he will not admit it, is that a civil war is necessary.
At least the Provos do more than Labour Herald and from time to time think their position through to its conclusion: 'There is always, and it is endemic in the situation which exists in Ireland, a threat of direct confrontation with loyalist forces, which is perhaps inevitable in a post or directly pre-withdrawal situation. In that sort of situation we are not simply talking about the UDA and UVF. We are talking about the RUC and UDR" (IRA spokesman Iris, 1981). Or again, "It is very possible that people with this mentality (Protestants) would try to repartition the North as Harold McCusker has already suggested. And they have about 19,000 armed men in the RUC and UDR to help them do it. We don't know how many of the loyalists would take that line, but everyone who opposes Irish selfdetermination with force will have to be met with force." (IRA statement Magill, 1983, our emphasis.)
These statements express the ugly reality of what Ken Livingstone's position really amounts to—a recipe for a sectarian bloodbath in which the workers' movement in Ireland and Britain would be the main loser.
It is totally false to say that the working class cannot be united. The miseries inflicted by a diseased capitalist economy on both catholic and protestant workers are the basis for united struggle.
[page 16]
Northern Ireland is the most poverty-stricken region governed by Westminster. In 1983 GDP per head averaged £4,329 throughout the UK. In the South East it was £5,155. For Northern Ireland, where prices of consumer goods and fuels are highest, the figure was $3,156.
Unemployment is 21 per cent overall and 50 per cent in some areas. The true figure for jobless is almost twice as much as the numbers employed by manufacturing industry.
Ken Livingstone on his return from Belfast reported that he was stunned by the social conditions of the catholic areas of West Belfast. Of conditions in protestant areas he had not a word to say; not surprising since he never visited any.
If he had bothered to look he would have found exactly the same slums in protestant as in catholic working class areas.
Mass unemployment is now feature of many protestant areas, bringing them to a position not much better than the traditional and mainly catholic unemployment blackspots like Derry, Strabane and West Belfast. Coleraine for example now has 34 per cent male unemployment, Ballymena has over 3,000 unemployed. For both protestant and catholic youth capitalism offers nothing except the YTPs and other cheap labour schemes.
Even during the 50 years of Unionist rule, when there was the most blatant discrimination against the catholics, the misery also endured by protestants time after time acted as the yeast of a united class movement. Today in the context of Tory cuts and falling living standards all round, the conditions exist to bring catholic and protestant workers together.
Class unity is not just a nice idea. It is both a necessity and a practical reality. Workers are already unitedin the 250,000 strong trade union movement, in strikes, in demonstrations and in community struggles. Arthur Scargill, when visiting Belfast recently, pointed out that per head of population Northern Ireland workers contributed more money to the miners than any other region. This is just one example of the class solidarity which exists.
Another was provided on 25 April of this year when thousands of school students, Catholic and Protestant, went on strike, marched and demonstrated against YTP conscription. 3,000 marched in Belfast, 2,000 in Derry. During the day not a single sectarian incident was reported.
And what lead does Ken Liv-
ingstone offer to these and many other
examples of workers united in strug-
JOBS EA
NOT
MARCHES & RALLIES
CUTS
WEDNESDAY 2W0 APRIL
Belfast anti-cuts demonstration, 1980 organised by the Northern Irish Committee of the ICTU. What lead does Livingstone offer to Protestant workers participating in such examples of united struggle?
gle? Absolutely none! All his analysis would allow him to say to workers who struggle together is that they are wasting their time, class unity is not possible and the class struggle must wait! In the meantime support Sinn Fein and the IRA! In a nutshell this is what his position reduces itself to. It is not only incorrect, it is thoroughly reactionary in that it directs the class movement backwards.
Socialist re-unification
The only way forward for the working class in NI is through class unity around socialist policies. Already unity exists on the industrial plane. This should be extended into the political field. The trade unions must build a mass party of labour to challenge the Tories and the bigots. The working class are the true political majority in the North. With a political arm of their own and a clear socialist programme they and they alone can break the stranglehold of the existing major parties. In the past the potential for Labour has been shown. The old Northern Ireland Labour Party at its highpoint in 1962 won 26 per cent of the vote and took four Stormont seats. That election was the one time in the history of the state when the Unionist vote fell below 50 per cent, confirming that it is only Labour who can defeat the Unionists because only Labour can take away their protestant working class support.
In the South the right wing labour leaders have buried their heads in coalition with Fine Gael. This policy is an obstacle to the class struggle throughout the country. Coalition must be ended and Labour returned to the independent socialist traditions of its founder, James Connolly.
Fighting socialist Labour Parties North and South would allow the coming together of workers in both parts of Ireland.
Through this united struggle changing society North and
and by South
15
Labour could reunify the country on the only possible basis, a socialist one.
Whether the working class take power and establish socialism first in Britain or Ireland is neither here nor there. In practice the class movement will interact. The socialist transformation either of Britain or Ireland would be a spur to the working class in the other country to follow. A genuine fraternal unity of the people of these islands through a socialist federation of Britain and Ireland would finally resolve the centuries-old conflict created by imperialist conquest in the past.
Socialists must also advocate the withdrawal of the troops, the disbandment of the sectarian RUC and UDR-but not in the way this is done by Ken Livingstone. To say 'we will pull out and let them fight it out among themselves' is not a socialist or internationalist but a chauvinistic position. An alternative means of preventing sectarianism must be put forward: A defence force controlled by the trade union movement which could mobilise workers to take whatever steps necessary to prevent sectarianism.
For 15 years the voice of the bigots has been the only voice heard in Northern Ireland. The result is sectarian deadlock. It is now time for the united voice of the working class to be raised-against state repression, against all sectarian and paramilitary groups, for class unity and socialism. The labour movement in Britain can assist socialists in Northern Ireland, like those in the Labour and Trade Union Group and around the Irish Militant, who are struggling for class unity, by rejecting all forms of bipartizanship and advocating a socialist solution. If Ken Livingstone bas nothing to say on the question other than to continue to embrace nationalism and sectarianism the labour movement in Ireland and Britain
would be better off if he were to say
nothing.
[page 17]
MIR June 1985: Famine:
Famine: "The divine hand of providence"?
By Jim Hensman The article by Jim Hensman explores the scientific possibilities that exist for food production to eliminate famine, and goes on to explain why these possibilities remain unrealised under capitalism. TELEVISION AND press coverage of the famine in Ethiopia has graphically highlighted the desperate situation facing millions in the Third World today. Every year 40 million people-more than one every second-die from hunger or hunger related diseases according to the United Nations figures. And the situation is getting worse. The gap between what is available and what is required is projected to more than double in the next ten years. World food potential Is this inevitable-an unavoidable consequence of population outrunning available resources? Take the case of Africa, the continent worse affected by food shortages A study last year by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis concluded that just a moderate upgrading of agriculture would be sufficient to feed not just the present but future population. Ethiopia is fixed in the minds of the world as a country of shortage and starvation. Yet it was once estimated by an American economist, Mennon Williams, that the Ethiopian Highlands alone could feed the whole of Western Europe besides Ethiopia itself. FAO calculations in fact show that even on the basis of grain yields of half those currently achieved in some Western countries, Africa could support about 10 billion people-more than twice the present population of the whole world. Assessments of the potential of the rest of the world show a similar picture. The US Presidential Science Advisory Council, for example, estimated that the world could support 35 billion people. An even more optimistic forecast was made in a study by the University of Waginingen in the Netherlands. Using detailed soil maps of the world they examined what could happen it food production was plann- Science and Socialism Famines.
THE IRISH potato famine in the 1840s in which over a million people died was ascribed by the Tories to the "divine hand of providence". Although they may be triggered by natural events, famines then and now are very much the result of human intervention. During the Bengal famine of 1942/43 in which 3.5 million Indians starved to death, the price of rice soared 1,000 per cent and grain speculators made 1.5 billion rupees profit. In the Bangladesh famine which followed severe floods in 1974, four million tons of riceenough for four months — was in fact available. In this case, as in the case of the Bengal famine and 1973 Ethiopian famine, food was actually exported while millions starved. In the light of this, the writer Bertold Brecht's assertion; that "famines do not occur, they are organised by the grain trade" does not seem too far-fetched.
ed and optimised globally. On this basis the study concluded that world grain production could be increased to 25 times its present amount, enough for any conceivable increase in population. Increasing cultivated land How would these increases be brought about? Two means to do this are available-increasing the area of land under cultivation and improving crop yields. Of the earth's land surface, only about 7 per cent is under permanent cultivation at the present time. Although a considerable part of the total land area is unsuitable for growing food, studies indicate that the cultivated area could be trebled. South America, for instance, has only 15 per cent and Africa 20 per cent of its potentially fertile land under cultivation. Irrigation, particularly, can be used io extend agriculture to normally unsuitable locations: 50 years ago, for example, California's Imperial Valley was part of the barren Colorado desert. Today, by means of irrigation, it contains half a million acres of some of the most intensely cultivated land in the world Perhaps most spectacular of all is a project now underway in the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia has more potentially cultivatable land 16
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than the total area of Britain. However, inadequate rainfall has precluded cultivation in much of this territory. Now a mammoth engineering enterprise, equivalent in magnitude to constructing 100 Suez canals, aims to change this. The idea is to divert two rivers, the Ob and the Yenisey which flow into the Arctic Ocean to provide the required water. Although projects like this have to be weighed up carefully in advance, because of possible environmental effects, they show what could be done. In areas such as North Africa and the Middle East where water is not easily accessible a number of possibilities exist. Under consideration for instance has been a water pipeline under the Mediterranean Sea using the waters of the Rhone in France to irrigate North Africa. Even the creation of a lake in the Sahara using water from the sea is thought possible. Also now considered feasible is the towing of iceburgs from the Antartic to places like Namibia and Australia to provide water. Desalination plants currently produce over 2 billion tons of fresh water a day from the sea, and methods utilising solar energy in particular, hold out considerable potential. More in the long term is the possibility of altering the weather itself. Although some methods, for instance to clear fog from airports, have proved effective, larger scale tests have not been conclusive. Nevertheless, for some areas at least, favourable modification of the weather will undoubtedly become a reality. New agricultural techniques have also been developed to take fullest advantage of limited water in arid areas. Methods such as drip irrigation developed in Israel where precise amounts of water are fed directly to a plant's roots, and hydroponic techniques in which plants are grown without any soil at all in special nutrient solutions, have been used to grow fruit and vegetables particularly in the Middle East. Although currently confined to more expensive agricultural products, these techniques indeed show that with the necessary investment even the desert could be made to bloom. Increasing productivity The best prospect for increasing food production lies with intensifying cultivation methods. If we take wheat production for instance, the amount of wheat produced on an acre of land has increased in Western countries to about five times its level in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, levels of five times this current average have already been achieved and theoretically yields over 10 times present Western levels are possible. Of course the increases possible in the Third World starting from a lower level would be proportionately greater. Food produced per person working on the land has also shot up, mainly due to mechanisation. Serfs in feudal times produced enough to feed themselves and perhaps one other person. The average American farmworker today produces enough to feed about 60 people. MIR June 1985: Famine Some of the improvement in crop yields that h occurred has been due to the increased use of fer-: tilisers and better pest control. In addition improvements have taken place through developing new crop strains. Plant breeders have long applied the techniques of selective breeding to breed better plants. Plants with particular characteristics occuring naturally such as high yield, shorter growth period or disease resistance are chosen and cross brad to produce varieties with the desired features. Recent developments have allowed this process to be extended, to allow species of plant that would not normally interbreed to be crossed for example. In the case of genetic engineering techniques the blue print of a p ticular life form at the molecular level can itselt be altered or combined with those from some othet k To take an extreme example of the kind of work taking place, human and carrot cells have been se cessfully combined at a cellular level! Despite rumours that some members of the Tory Cabinet are in fact results of such experiments, this work is still in its early stages but holds out many intrig possibilities. One particular research goni gran a good example.
A major drawback to conventional ways of inci ing food production is the high level of fertil necessary. Some types of food plants, such as pe and beans, have the property of using corte bacteria in the soil to provide them with nitrogen from the air-effectively a free supply of fertiliser. If food crops such as wheat and rice could be given this ability, or as some scientists believe crops created that absorb nitrogen directly from the att a new era in agriculture would certainly be opeter up. Results in related areas of work are encouragic For instance Belgian scientists have developed a tobacco plant that makes its own pesticide. Even # one forecast, that "we're going to make pork chaps grow on trees" may have been a trifle overenthusiastic there is no doubt that real prospecte exist to revolutionise agriculture. Although plant crops provide the but of the world's food needs, meat and fish make up an impor tant component of our diet. Considerable por tied exists to develop these areas as well. The world's catch of sea fish could be increased by 50 per ta to 100 per cent without depleting stocke of f cording to most estimates, for instance by the However, if we consider less conventional tene wider possibilities are opened up. Krill is & kind shrimp found in the South Atlantic. The fishine Krill will have to be done with care because of ita t as a food for whales and other sea creatures. Ne theless the feasible catch of Krill has been estimet as anything from the total of the conventionel her catch to 10 times this amount. Sighufieaut aire le terms of potential fish resources are the possi of aquaculture or fish farming. China, for instente, produces more than twice Britain's total sea fish catch by this means. This on its own on a worldwide 17
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MIR June 1985: Famine
scale, it is estimated, could double fish supplies. Beyond this lie proposals for the farming of sea fish in vast underwater farms—with possibilities difficult to measure.
Livestock and poultry production have seen increases in productivity paralleling that for other food. Improved feed, selective breeding and factory farming techniques have combined to dramatically change this area. A typical high output poultry farm, for instance, can produce 200,000 chickens annually per person employed. Advanced breeding techniques such as cloning and embryo transplanting methods which have received considerable publicity through actual or claimed use with humans, are now in increasing use. An example of the type of development which is becoming increasingly common is the socalled "beefalo" a cross between a cow and a buffalo. Recently giant mice have been bred in laboratories using direct genetic manipulation, and all sorts of
acinating possibilities such as "cows the size of elephants" have been predicted by some scientists. The prospects are really only limited by the imagination!
New food sources
The production of meat can províde an efficient use of resources by allowing land such as grassland too poor for growing crops to still produce food. However, much meat production in the West, which feeds animals on grains like corn or wheat is very inefficient. A cow needs about 10 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat, for example. 90 per cent of grain produced in the US goes to feed livestockenough to feed Africa and South America. If grain was more rationally used to feed humans, even where conventional animal fodder was not available, technology provides a number of alternatives. Food now can be manufactured from the most unlikely of materials. One prominent development over recent years for instance have been so-called single cell proteins. These are micro-organisms which can produce food from sugar-cane waste and oil among other materials. Annually about two million tons of these products for use as animal feed are made by companies like British Petroleum. Now Rank-Hovis- McDougall among others is introducing similar products for human consumption. The meat substitute mycroprotein has even been preferred to real meat by people in recent consumer tests. These and other techniques have been used to produce food out of everything from wood-pulp and chicken feathers to cow manure! The potential in terms of expanding and rationalising food resources is clearly immense.
Why the crisis?
Given the available resources and the exciting prospects for the future, why then the food crisis? Taking the world as a whole, food production is more than adequate to meet nutritional requirements. In fact even within most Third World countries, enough
One person dies every second from hunger or hunger related diseases.
food is produced. Consider Bangladesh, for example, one of the poorest countries in the world. More than half the population eat less than what is considered the minimum survival level of 1,500 calories a day. Yet statistics show that enough food is produced in the country to provide the approximately 2,300 calories sufficient for a healthy diet for every man, woman and child. A World Bank survey taken over 20 years in fact showed that 86 per cent of the world's undernourished lived in countries where food production kept pace with population.
Any number of figures could be used to show that in fact no actual shortage of food exists. But as it was once said: "You can't feed the hungry on statistics". • Where then does the problem lie? The obstacles to a well-fed world are in fact not technical but economic and political. It is not the unavailability of food; but the inability of people to buy it, caused by inequality and economic crisis which is the prime cause of starvation. According to a FAO worldwide survey some years ago, 0.23 per cent of landowners, one in every, 400, control over half the land in the Third World. This land, nearly always the most fertile, is often kept unused or grossly underexploited by these large landowners. Production statistics in Brazil, for instance, show that the smallest farms are on average six times as productive as the very large ones.
Often, as a legacy of colonialism or because of imperialist domination, the best land is used for export crops, to benefit local or foreign capitalists. The socalled Green Revolution while increasing crop yields has ironically made the problem worse. Reports of its effects from South Asia to Central America all show the same pattern. The new grain types that were introduced require more fertiliser and pesticides and have benefited richer farmers—who have the money for the investment required- 18
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disproportionately. These farmers in turn with their profits have bought up land dispossessing many small farmers and creating widespread landlessness. It is millions of these peasants, landless or working in semi-feudal servitude who have no opportunity to improve their conditions who are completely passed by in the onward march of agricultural progress and are subject to scarcity and starvation. The anarchy of production The production of food illustrates, perhaps better than any other issue, the anarchy of capitalism on a global scale. While half the world hasn't enough food, the developed countries spend enormous sums of money effectively destroying or stopping the production of food. Within the BEC this is most apparent in the form of grain and butter mountains and wine and milk lakes. In the US it commonly takes the form of massive payments-in some cases millions of dollars to individual farmers-to stop food being produced. If we add up the cost of this, just for the EEC countries and the US we come to the astronomical total of over $90 billion, according to estimates by the Economist magazine. We can judge the hypocritical concern of the Tories and other. Western governments over Ethiopia by noting that this sum would be sufficent not just to feed the starving there but to fly them all to London or New York and feed them in restaurants for a year! Indeed the over 200,000 square miles of cropland in the US deliberåtely kept idle could have fed the whole of Africa on its own. The $90 billion wasted is the amount the UN estimated some years ago would be necessary to extend the world's agricultural land by 20 per cent.
Capitalism threatens new developments Biologists often draw food chains, showing how different forms of life are dependent on each other. Nature however could not have conceived of anything as incredible as what world capitalism has constructed. Consider the case of countries like Senegal in Africa which in recent years have cut back food production to produce more export crops such as peanuts. These peanuts are made into groundnut cake which is used as animal feed for EEC cattle. These cattle in turn produce a milk 'surplus'annually greater in weight than the entire EEC population. Some of this milk is converted into dried milk products, a marginal amount of which comes back as food aid to feed the starving people of countries like Senegal. A considerable amount of the dried milk, however, is in fact fed back to the cows in an attempt to destroy it. This of course helps to produce even more milk and an even bigger surplus-and so on! It would be hard to find a better indication of not just the unacceptable but the insane face of capitalism than this bizare merry-go-round. MIR June 1985: Famine ( -Soviet agriculture- SOVIET AGRICULTURE demonstrates the enormous damage that a Stalinist bureaucracy can cause, despite the advantages of a planned economy. The policy of forced collectivisation of the peasantry, instituted in 1929, led to a fall in agricultural production that the country did not recover from 'till the 1950s. But it was not only in food production, but also in scientific developments in agriculture that the regime had a disastrous effect. After the Russian revolution, actively promoted by Lenin, the Soviet Union led the world in plant genetics and the development of new crops. Then in the 1930s for political reasons, the unscientific theories of the now discredited Lysenko were accepted and this work offectively destroyed. Tragically, the pioneer of this research Nikolai Vavilov, the foremost agricultural scientist of his time, was persecuted as a "Trotskyist , sentenced to death as a "British spy"' in a bandit"
trial lasting all of five minutes, and died of starvation in a labour camp. Future editions of the MIR will carry more detailed analysis on the "Lysenkoist movement" and the development of science under Stalinism. It is not only in food production but also in the development and introduction of some of the exciting possibilities described earlier, that private profit holds back society. The food and associated inare dominated by a handful of giant dustries monopolies which influence and control new developments to their own advantage. Thus, for instance, five companies effectively control the grain trade in the West. Through investment and interlocking directorships companies like these are closely linked to every aspect of food production, including the manufacture of fertiliser. Over the last few years, fertiliser manufacturers have moved in a big way to take over the companies that develop and market crop seeds. These companies in turn carry out or can directly influence research and development into new • crop strains. For instance the world's largest seed producer, Pioneer Hi-Bred, funds part of the develop. ment of the new 'Green Revolution' crop varieties being carried out in Mexico. Now con. er the possibilities mentioned earlier of developing plants that could absorb nitrogen from the air and thus minimise the need for chemical fertilisers and dramatically assist Third World agriculture. It doesn't require too much imagination to see that a development of this sort, which could affect the profits of the fertiliser manufacturers and the contro. of the grain monopolies, could easily be jeopardised through the chain of influence these companies command over such research.
The environmental crisis The present system is not only a threat to the development of new food resources. Even existing food supplies are threatened by the environmental 19
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Uncontrolled use of pesticides and chemicals in search of quick profits poses a grave threat to the environment. effects of present food production. In the middle of the Sahara Desert, in the part of Algeria known as the Tassili N'Ajjer, a reinarkable series of prehistoric rock and cave paintings, which show cattle, elephants, giraffes and other animals are evidence of the fertile land that once existed there. Although long-term climatic changes have had their effect, it is the destructive effects of man that have played a major part in the advancing of deserts-which now claim 60 square miles of land every day throughout the world. The desperate situation in Ethiopia and Sudan and the countries of the Sahel to the south of the Sahara show the process taking place. Nomadic herdsmen, sometimes driven from better land by governments expanding export crops or for political or military reasons, overgraze the marginal agricultural lands on the fringes of the desert where they live. With the soil unable to replenish its fertility the vegetation cover is reduced making the area easy prey to the encroachment of the desert sands. This creates even more pressure on the remaining land and the vicious circle is intensified. Can this tragic process by halted? Evidence that it can was vividly demonstrated by special photographs taken by the Landsat space satellite. These detected a fenced-in area of the Sahel with controlled grazing, which had markedly better soil conservation to the surrounding area. A generalisation of such a policy together with the planting of tree barriers and similar measures could reverse the desertification process at an estimated cost of £2 billion a year, compared to the cost of ten times that in lost food production every year, and the incalculable human cost. This neither the weak capitalist governments of the area or the Stalinist bureaucracies of Ethiopia and Somalia have proved capable of doing. For instance, of the aid to the Sahel in recent years only about five per cent has gone to agricultural schemes at all and only one per cent to programmes to halt the desert. Meanwhile Ethiopia with its colossal military expenditure has spent virtually nothing in this area either. Agriculture in the US demonstrates a parallel process at the opposite end of the affluence scale. In the 20 1930s in the US, 150,000 square miles of farmland were turned into the dust bowl of the South West Great Plains through overfarming and the consequent depletion of the soil. Today American farmers, heavily indebted and dependent on permanently maximising production in the short-term have intensified agriculture to the point where the fertility of the soil of over one-third of American cropland is seriously threatened. In addition uncontrolled use of fertilisers has caused catastrophic pollution effects through drainage of chemicals into the water supply and is responsible for half of all water pollution in the country.
A socialist future On a world scale the unplanned use of resources is a serious threat to food supplies in the future. Every year close on one per cent of the world's arable land is lost to food production. In other areas of food production such as fishing, international bodies have been largely impotent in preventing species like the whale being hunted virtually to extinction. As another example the existing variety of wild plant species that form the raw material for new crops is under threat from the wholesale destruction of forests in areas such as Amazonia in South America. The choice between socialism or barbarism is as starkly presented with regard to food as anywhere else.
Despite the lack of workers' democracy in China, the planned economy displays a marked contrast to the rest of Third World agriculture. Before the revolution, millions died every year in the regular famines that swept the country. Now China, the world's largest rice producer by a large margin with a yield per area twice India's, has doubled wheat production in seven years to become the world's largest wheat producer as well. Particularly significant in Chinese agriculture is the careful use of all available resources such as local manure for fertiliser and energy supplies. This resource alone it is estimated, could increase fertiliser supplies in the Third World six to eight fold, but remains largely unutilised. The achievement of China which feeds almost a quarter of the world's population while having only seven per cent of the world's arable land is an indisputable demonstration of the advantages of a planned economy. Some years ago, the AUEW fighting redundancies at the Massey Ferguson tractor plants in this country worked out that it would be more economic to give tractors away free to the Third World rather than make workers redundant-a graphic demonstration of the irrationality of the present world system and the benefits to both developed and underdeveloped countries that could be provided. All the resources exist to satisfy the food needs of present and future world populations. A planned socialist agricultural policy is not only vital to preserve the food resources of the world but would open up the vast protential that science and technology have made available.
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Bolshevis