War Communism !!

War had a big impact on the world’s food. Before the Second World War Britain imported approximately 55 million tonnes, or 3/4 of the country's food by ship each year. In England and Wales arable acreage was about 9 million; whereas 16 million acres were under grass and a further 5 ½ million was “rough grazing” (once reasonable pasture). One acre of permanent grass (for animal fodder) fed 1 or 2 people; one acre sown with wheat fed 20 people; and one acre sown with potatoes fed 40 people.

About one million directly employed in the production of food, and most of those part-time, seasonal workers. Increasingly, those men who worked on farms would need to be called up into the armed forces (50,000 skilled farm workers were absorbed by the armed forces in the first two years), so farmers were to be faced not only with enormous challenges in terms of increased food production targets but also a shortage of experienced labour. The Women’s Land Army were established at the beginning of the Second World War with numbers rising to 80000 by 1944.

War Agricultural Committees were formed immediately on the outbreak of war . They were leading farmers and nurserymen, with a good knowledge of local conditions, who had volunteered, unpaid, to help in the campaign to get full production from the land in their particular county. These Executive Committees, numbering eight to twelve members,Ministry of Agriculture propaganda poster predominantly farmers, were given delegated powers by the Minister under the wartime Defence Regulations. There was usually at least one landowner, one representative from the farm workers and one woman representing the Women’s Land Army. They formed Sub-Committees to cover different aspects of work, and District Committees to ensure that there was at least one Committee member in touch with every farmer, up to say 50 or 60, in his area of 5000 acres. Later, some District Committees embraced a representative from every parish. The role was to tell farmers what was required of them in the way of wheat, potatoes, sugar beet or other priority crops, and to help the farmers to get what they needed in the way of machinery, fertilisers and so on to achieve the targets which were set them. The Sub-Committees covered the following concerns: Cultivations, Labour, Machinery and Land Drainage, Technical Development, Feeding Stuffs, Insects and Pests, Horticulture, Financial and General Purposes, Goods and Services and War Damage. The Committees employed paid officers such as the Executive Officer and assistants in each county and District Officers to keep the show running smoothly in every locality. Technical Officers were also employed to advise farmers about such matters as the lime requirements of their soils, the making of silage, the treatments of soil pests, the care of machinery and the improvement of livestock. Farmers could get expert advice free, which contributed enormously to increase the output that farmers achieved.

The writer Laurie Lee, working for the Ministry of Information, summed this up in Land at War, the official story of British farming 1939 – 1944

“From Whitehall to every farm in the country the C.W.A.E.C.s formed a visible human chain which grew stronger with each year of the war. Here, roughly, is the way it worked. The Government might say to the Minister of Agriculture: ‘We need so much home-grown food next year’. The Minister assured himself that the labour, tractors, equipment, and so on, would be forthcoming, and said to the Chairman of a County Committee: ‘We’ve got to plough two million acres next year. The quota for your county is 40,000’.
The Chairman said to his District Committee Chairman: ‘You’ve been scheduled for 5,000 acres’.
The Committee-man said to his Parish Representative: ‘You’ve got to find 800 acres, then’.
And the Parish Representative, who knew every yard of the valley, went to the farmer at the end of the lane.
‘Bob,’ he said, ‘how about that 17.acre field – for wheat?’
And Farmer Bob said, ‘Aye’’.”

The idea of having County “War Ags” was to make the task of mediating central dictates from national government more palatable by using well-respected local farmers to convey the war needs to farmers who knew them. Even so, when particular farmers failed to co-operate with this more democratic system, Orders were served on them requiring them to plough up their grassland, or to grow given acreages of various crops, to clean out their ditches and drains, or apply adequate quantities of fertilisers. In the worst cases, recalcitrant or incompetent farmers – after first attempting to encourage and help them with advice and expertise – could be removed from their farms, by the dictate of the Minister of Agriculture, and their land farmed by someone else who would use the land to better advantage.

In addition to the supervision of work done by private farmers, the County Committees, known colloquially as “War Ags”, farmed areas of land themselves, particularly those farms and areas of derelict land which no individual was willing to tackle properly. The clearing of derelict land and the drainage of wet lands were two of those difficult jobs on which many land girls were employed, particularly from 1942 onwards, when conscription brought in increased numbers of young women members of the Women’s Land Army. Many of these were employed directly by the “War Ags” and housed, as mobile labour gangs, in hostels located around each county. In addition, summer work camps set up by the “War Ags” accommodated thousands of men and women, industrial and clerical workers from Britain’s towns and cities, who volunteered to do paid work during their summer holidays, to help bring in the harvest.

Nationally, some 6 ½ million new acres were ploughed up between 1939 and 1944. Harvests of wheat, barley and potatoes increased by over 100%; milking cows increased by 300,000; other cattle by 400,000. This was at the expense of fewer sheep, pigs and poultry but enabled the country to completely reverse its reliance on foreign food. In terms of calories, the net output had been quadrupled by 1943-44. By the end of the war, food imports had been reduced from 22 million to 11 million tons and Britain was producing well over 60% of its food. This was despite losing nearly 100,000 skilled male farm workers, who went off to fight, and thanks to the 117,000 women who replaced them. From 815,000 allotments in 1939 the number rose to 1,400,000 by 1943. allotments were estimated to contribute some 1.3 million tonnes of food produce.

Consumer goods of all kinds became scarce and shortages were inevitable. To ensure an equitable distribution of basic essentials, rationing was imposed through a ‘points’ system and prices were controlled. Ration books and clothing coupons were issued to all, with adjustments to meet special needs, like pregnant women, young children and vegetarians. By and large the public supported rationing as ensuring fair shares for all, and though a black market developed it never seriously threatened the system. It is generally accepted that food rationing improved the nation’s health through the imposition of a balanced diet with essential vitamins. Meat, butter and sugar were rationed from early 1940, other foodstuffs, including tea, were added later, and entitlement varied at different times during the war. Bread, potatoes, coffee, vegetables, fruit and fish were never rationed, though choice and availability of the last three were often limited. Clothing was rationed, and fuel was subject to restrictions from early in the war. Meals eaten away from home, whether in expensive West End restaurants were ‘off ration’. The conspicuous ability of the rich to enjoy almost pre-war levels of gastronomy at top hotels led to such resentment from Londoners at large that the government prevented restaurants charging more than 5/- a meal from 1942. This curbed the most ostentatious examples, though it did not completely solve the problem. British Restaurants supplied an almost universal experience of eating away from me. Here a three course meal cost only 9d. Standards varied, but the best were greatly appreciated and had a large regular clientele. British Restaurants were run by local authorities, who set them up in a variety of different premises such as schools and church halls. They evolved from the LCC’s Londoners’ Meals Service which originated in September 1940 as a temporary, emergency system for feeding those who had been bombed out. By mid-1941 the LCC was operating two hundred of these restaurants. British Restaurants were open to all, but mainly served office and industrial workers.

Outline of Socialist Planning

When describing the new society we are working for, socialists frequently encounter the question of "how will it work?".

The question of how far it will be possible to localise production and decision-making will remain a matter for debate both before and after the socialist revolution. When we propose different scales of social co-operation such as local, regional and world scales, this is not a question of there being a hierarchy with power located at any central point. What we anticipate is both an integrated and flexible system of democratic organisation which could be adapted for action to solve any problem in any of these scales. This simply takes into account that some problems and the action to solve them arise from local issues and this also extends to the regional and world spheres.

When we come to the question of how production solely for use will operate in socialism we begin with the fact that a world-wide structure of useful production already exists and therefore we already have a working model in front of us. The task is to identify the useful mechanisms which co-ordinate production and distribution now as distinct from the value factors of buying and selling in the markets, which under capitalism constrain useful production. In socialism, these useful mechanisms will operate on their own, freely and directly for need. In addition, our proposals for practical socialism should include the ways in which useful institutions and decision-making bodies could also be adapted from “the existing state of things”.

During the early days of socialism it is likely that the organisation of world co-operation would need to take place through a world council. Because the things we need now are produced and distributed through a world structure of production, and because its present capitalist nature has brought about immense problems, action to solve them would be required on a world scale, For example, it would be a priority to set up an ecologically benign world energy system as soon as possible. Similarly, the countless millions of people suffering from hunger and desperate poverty would need a considerable increase in food production. For this work the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN would at last he able to use its expertise and knowledge of world conditions to help with solving the problems of malnutrition. Again, to begin with, people in socialism would face a huge task in providing every person with secure and comfortable housing. This would call upon the efforts of communities throughout the world, especially in those regions where means of production were well developed. Such world projects could be co-ordinated through appropriate departments of a world council.

Although centralised world-wide planning of production and distribution has become more and more possible with the evolution of communication systems and the information-handling capabilities of computers, it has, at the same time, become less and less necessary or desirable.There are bound to be democratic decisions taken about certain aspects of production and distribution from time to time, at local, regional, continental and even global level. But, for the great mass of adjustments and controls, ordinary channels of supply arid demand (real demand) will provide the most flexible and responsive basic system for regulating socialist society's production and distribution. The almost infinitely complex network of manufacturers, growers, distributors and suppliers will, however, need well-organised communication and co-operation amongst themselves, as well as ready access to a richness of information about research, designs, methods, output, capacity, local preferences, etc. etc., which is simply impossible in capitalism. The computerised stock control systems now in use in many major stores that are linked to the computerised warehousing already permit the constant monitoring of consumption of goods to be carried on, future demand to be predicted within quite fine limits and automatic, and almost instantaneous, re-ordering to be carried out. In the post-capitalist world it is this greatly enhanced information and logistics network which will replace and supersede the market and the price mechanism. The immense volume of information about the daily facts and figures of all production, distribution and services which is in the possession of the working class and which is today barely used will be accorded its true value in socialist society as the data for conscious communal control of the means of life by every member of society. "Democratic control" will be far more than a matter of voting . It will be the continual exercise of informed individual power in the co-operative processes of sustaining and enhancing social life.

Looking at local forms of organisation, individual units of production in capitalism (factories,workshops, offices etc) already have IT systems for calculating the resources that are required in production, as well as stock control systems for managing the supplies of resources. Aside from the parts of that are concerned with monetary accounting, these systems could be of use to the socialist society inheriting them. In any case, monetary accounting does not help with the input-output calculations that are really needed in the planning of production. These calculations can be made in terms of quantities whether it be kilograms, litres, watts or other units of measurement. They often are, even within capitalism. Indeed, in 1973 an economist Wassily Leontief was awarded a Nobel prize for formulating a methodology for input-output analysis that could use such quantitative measurements.

Crucial to the question of democracy is not just the ability to make decisions about what to do but also the powers of action to carry out those decisions. But with the abolition of the market system, communities in socialism will not only be able to make free and democratic decisions about what needs to be done they will also be free to use their resources to achieve those aims.Problems are not solved with money resources. They are solved by people using their labour, skills and the necessary materials and there is in fact an abundance of these material resources. But it will take the relations of common ownership to release them for the needs of communities and this will also mean that communities will be free to decide democratically how best to use those resources.

The corporate authorities or managerial systems which now dictate how production units such as factories or services should be run will be replaced. Small units could be run by regular meetings of all the workers. In the cases of large organisations these could be run by elected committees accountable to the people working in them. In this way, democratic practice would apply not just to the important policy decisions that would steer the main direction of development, it would extend to the day-to-day activities of the work place. Organisation like the trade unions , with their research departments, are well placed to conduct discussions with socialists on how production and the work place could be democratically organised. With common ownership, control of production by boards of directors and their corporate managers would immediately cease. The exploitative operations of the multi-nationals would be brought to an end. This would leave workers with the job of carrying on with the useful parts of production and services and for this they would need to be democratically organised. At this point control of all units engaged in production and distribution, services such as schools and hospitals, and useful parts of the civil service and local administration etc., would switch to management committees or councils elected by the workers running them. Unlike boards of directors and their corporate managers, works committees would not be responding to the economic signals of the market. They will be responding directly to the needs of the community. In this way, the links connecting production units and services in socialism will be far more extensive than the buying and selling that connects capitalist units with their suppliers and market outlets. One immediate difference would be that access to information throughout the world structure of production would be unlimited. There will be no industrial secrecy, copyright or patent protection. Discussion about design, materials or technique will be universally open and the results of research will be universally available. As well as having access to world information systems, production units will operate in line with social policy decisions about priorities of action. This would indicate the ways in which particular industrial and manufacturing units would need to adapt or possibly expand their operations. This would require some units to take on more staff and this again could be administered by elected management committees .

No doubt ,as we have said earlier,the most urgent task will be to stop people dying of hunger but the supply of decent housing will require a vastly greater allocation of labour than any necessary increase in food production. This means that a great surge of required materials and equipment will flow through the units producing building supplies. A structure of housing production that is generally adjusted to the market for housing under capitalism, which is what people in socialism would inherit, will in no way be able to cope with a demand for housing based on need. So, within the wider context of a democratically decided housing policy, in which questions of planning and the environment would have been taken into account, the job of implementing housing decisions would eventually pass to the committees or works councils throughout the construction industry.

What we would see in these arrangements is not just the replacement of corporate management with democratic control, we would also see the liberation of the community’s powers of organisation and production from the shackles of the profit motive.