No one claims famine currently exist in the UK (although malnutrition does and was reckoned in 2009 to affect around 3 million people, particularly elderly people). But capitalism is not confined to these small islands off the European mainland. It's a global phenomenon, and is deeply implicated in the many famines that constantly DO arise in many parts of the world. That England has no famines simply reflects the fact that it is a relatively wealthy first world country that is able to import a significant portion of its food. Many third world countries, for a variety of reasons, have precarious food supplies, which in certain circumstances such as drought or war, may not reach sizeable sections of their populations.
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Prior to the advent of capitalism, populations relied upon local harvests, and when these failed, there wasn't the wherewithal and/or infrastructure to import supplies from other areas. Hence people suffered - barring, of course, the "upper classes", which were able to ruthlessly sequestrate their own supplies. With trade and a concomitant improvement of transport modes and links, the importation of supplies from outside became increasingly possible as an option to mitigate shortfalls.
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Trade involves exchange, and if you don't have what it takes to obtain what it is you want, then, you have to do without. This is what apologists for capitalism signally fail to take into account. They confuse need with `demand'. They confuse the fact that whilst we might all be legally entitled to purchase something, we are NOT equally endowed with the means to proceed with this purchase. This simple truism has devastating implications when it comes to food.
Take Niger, which even now is in the throes of a devastating famine threatening the lives of millions of people. Capitalism has always been marked by extremes in rich and poor. Niger, the second poorest country in the world, is no exception, with markets in some parts of the country still full of produce. Yet a few minutes drive from these is the face of Niger which the world has seen -- starving people under canvas tents with aid workers trying their best to help them. The reason is simple -- poverty. People cannot afford to buy the goods in the market and so they go hungry. This, the bleak reality of Niger's famine, is noticeably absent from almost all of the media reports. There the hunger is seen as a natural disaster, not a man-made one. This is unsurprising, given the role of capitalism has played in this (and other) famines. It cuts to the heart of claims that the capitalist market can solve the problems of the world's poor. Thus Niger is yet another example of the underlying, but ignored, reality of famines in the world. It is not a lack of food (there is more than enough to feed the world). The problem is an economic system which ignores need in favour of money. Food, like any commodity, will go where the money is while the weakest go to the wall. This aspect of the market has been around for as long as capitalism has been. If people's only resource that they legitimately possess, i.e. their labour-power, becomes unsaleable in the market then they have no command over food. Once this happens, the market will make things worse, not better, as supply seeks demand elsewhere.'
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And during the halcyon days of British capitalism, in the 1840s, you had Ireland, a country which at the time was capable of producing enough food for 18 million people, being stricken by the potato famine but nevertheless continuing to export vast quantities of pork, beef, and grain. Likewise, Ethiopia during its great famine of 1984, exported linseed cake, cottonseed cake, and rapeseed meal to European livestock producers. Far from helping the situation, `trade' made matters worse.
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It is incumbent upon advocates of capitalism to explain, why in a world easily capable of feeding every man, woman and child, one billion go hungry, why food gluts' are destroyed amidst starvation, why wars happen, why technology isn't liberated from private ownership to ensure the welfare of all. With the money system, this is precisely the problem. Hence the need to abolish the system itself.
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`SocialistMatters' website
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Prior to the advent of capitalism, populations relied upon local harvests, and when these failed, there wasn't the wherewithal and/or infrastructure to import supplies from other areas. Hence people suffered - barring, of course, the "upper classes", which were able to ruthlessly sequestrate their own supplies. With trade and a concomitant improvement of transport modes and links, the importation of supplies from outside became increasingly possible as an option to mitigate shortfalls.
*
Trade involves exchange, and if you don't have what it takes to obtain what it is you want, then, you have to do without. This is what apologists for capitalism signally fail to take into account. They confuse need with `demand'. They confuse the fact that whilst we might all be legally entitled to purchase something, we are NOT equally endowed with the means to proceed with this purchase. This simple truism has devastating implications when it comes to food.
Take Niger, which even now is in the throes of a devastating famine threatening the lives of millions of people. Capitalism has always been marked by extremes in rich and poor. Niger, the second poorest country in the world, is no exception, with markets in some parts of the country still full of produce. Yet a few minutes drive from these is the face of Niger which the world has seen -- starving people under canvas tents with aid workers trying their best to help them. The reason is simple -- poverty. People cannot afford to buy the goods in the market and so they go hungry. This, the bleak reality of Niger's famine, is noticeably absent from almost all of the media reports. There the hunger is seen as a natural disaster, not a man-made one. This is unsurprising, given the role of capitalism has played in this (and other) famines. It cuts to the heart of claims that the capitalist market can solve the problems of the world's poor. Thus Niger is yet another example of the underlying, but ignored, reality of famines in the world. It is not a lack of food (there is more than enough to feed the world). The problem is an economic system which ignores need in favour of money. Food, like any commodity, will go where the money is while the weakest go to the wall. This aspect of the market has been around for as long as capitalism has been. If people's only resource that they legitimately possess, i.e. their labour-power, becomes unsaleable in the market then they have no command over food. Once this happens, the market will make things worse, not better, as supply seeks demand elsewhere.'
*
And during the halcyon days of British capitalism, in the 1840s, you had Ireland, a country which at the time was capable of producing enough food for 18 million people, being stricken by the potato famine but nevertheless continuing to export vast quantities of pork, beef, and grain. Likewise, Ethiopia during its great famine of 1984, exported linseed cake, cottonseed cake, and rapeseed meal to European livestock producers. Far from helping the situation, `trade' made matters worse.
*
It is incumbent upon advocates of capitalism to explain, why in a world easily capable of feeding every man, woman and child, one billion go hungry, why food gluts' are destroyed amidst starvation, why wars happen, why technology isn't liberated from private ownership to ensure the welfare of all. With the money system, this is precisely the problem. Hence the need to abolish the system itself.
*
`SocialistMatters' website
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