A billion human beings suffer from malnutrition. To that we must add the increasing misery of a growing mass of impoverished people, a majority of the world population. In spite of technical progress and unprecedented productive capacity a large number of people are still dying of hunger! How can we explain this paradox?

How ever you look at it, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the present system of social economic organisation - capitalism - is breaking down all over the planet. The longer it goes on the more it poses the real danger of engulfing society in an apocalypse of starvation, war and ecological catastrophe.

The article that we are publishing here has been sent to us by the comrades of the Internasyonalismo group in the Philippines. It shows us the true worth of the crocodile tears shed by the Filipino ruling class, both in power and in opposition, for the suffering of the population as a result of a food crisis which is the result, not of poor harvests but of the capitalist economy's insatiable thirst for profit no matter what the cost. And the cost is paid both in the immediate by the working class and the poverty stricken masses struck by the massive increase in food prices, but also in the long term as the cynical irresponsibility of the capitalist class increasingly ruins the ecological system on which humanity's food production depends.

The article's analysis concentrates on the role of bio-fuel production and the degradation of the rice producing areas by over-farming. One point should be added in our view: the role played by the diversion of speculative capital from the US and European housing markets into the commodities markets - and in particular the futures markets for food. According to Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, while the use of grain for bio-fuels is the major culprit in the rise in food prices, 30% of the rise can be directly attributed to speculation on the commodities markets.