Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 exptools; site whuxl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!orb
From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Re: Hunger and the Free Market: re to Cramer
Message-ID: <681@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 09:20:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuxl.681
Posted: Tue Jul  9 09:20:54 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 06:47:58 EDT
References: <446@qantel.UUCP> <454@qantel.UUCP> <293@kontron.UUCP> <377@spar.UUCP> <322@kontron.UUCP> <677@whuxl.UUCP> <2616@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany
Lines: 61

> In article <677@whuxl.UUCP> orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) writes:
> >... Go to Third World countries
> >throughout the world and see how many poor people are *starving* while
> >a landed aristocracy controls the vast majority of the land.
> 
> This latest piece of distilled paranoia and class hatred, however,
> represents a new low.  Starvation in today's world occurs not quite
> but almost exclusively because of "democratic" collectivist intervention.
> Ethiopia was a net food exporter before its Communist takeover;  so
> was Russia.  If you're interested in a study of the phenomenon on a 
> global scale, try "A Pattern for Failure" by Sven Rydenfelt.  It is
> somewhat depressing...
> 
> In espousing the very socialistic systems that are responsible for
> the carnage, tim displays his political naivete and ignorance;  in
> pretending at the same time to feel for the victims, he exhibits 
> an utter callous disregard for any human decency whatsoever.
> --JoSH

1)Because a country is a net food exporter doesn't prove anything about
  the well-being of its citizens or the *fact* that the country's own
  native peasant population may be starving while the landed aristocracy
  cultivates cash crops for exports. It has been typical of imperialism
  to redirect production towards exports of raw materials for the
  imperialist while production for the native population's own use suffers.
  Go down to Brazil and tell the starving peasants there clamoring for
  land or *some way* to maintain a living that Brazil's exports mean they
  are less hungry.  Hunger is endemic to Third World countries.
  As a case in point India produced primarily for its own people and
  although suffering from periodic famines, never suffered the widespread
  hunger it did after the British took over and redirected production
  for the people's food to production of cotton to fuel the British
  textile industry.
  It is behooven on you to prove, not that food exports are up or down,
  which is not the issue, but to prove that the people in Capitalistic
  countries are not starving.  You will have a very difficult time
  proving such a thesis.  It is incumbent upon me to demonstrate that
  many people in Capitalistic Third World countries *are* starving.
  That will be very easy to demonstrate.
 
2)I am not attempting to justify collectivization of agriculture.
  I do not think such an approach makes sense.  In my view it is imposing
  an "industrial" model which Marx applied to factory production on
  a necessarily dispersed mode of production and it makes no sense
  except that it more conveniently fits an ideology suited to factories.
  However I *do* think that some government support for agriculture in
  terms of agricultural extension services, aid to agricultural colleges
  and education and most importantly, land reform coupled with price
  supports are essential to alleviate the masses hunger.  Libertarians,
  on the other hand, oppose any government intervention whatsoever
  (as I understand their position) which will leave millions of people
  starving.
 
3)It is not "paranoia" to point out that millions of people are starving.
  Nor is it class hatred to point out that landed aristocracies are a major
  part of the problem.  Many bourgeois and thoroughly Capitalistically
  oriented developmental economists have reached the same conclusion.
  I do not hate the landed aristocracies in the Third World- I simply
  would like to see their control and ownership of the land people need
  to live removed and returned to their starving people- so they can *eat*.
                         tim sevener  whuxl!orb