Contents of ICConline, May 2008
We are publishing here an article from the Turkish group Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol (EKS), which analyses the different imperialist interests and rivalries underlying the Turkish army's recent incursions into northern Iraq. We consider it important for several reasons: first and foremost, by offering a clear analysis on an internationalist basis, it strikes a blow against both Turkish and Kurdish nationalism, in a region where the propaganda campaigns of all the competing bourgeois factions are doing their utmost to stoke nationalist hatreds so as to use the workers and poor masses as cannon fodder in their own sordid struggles for power and influence; second, it gives a voice to the feelings of indignation and revolt among the workers in Turkey who have been conscripted into this bloody conflict, and gives the lie to the bourgeoisie's claims, in Turkey and elsewhere, about universal popular support for the war.
According to the official statement, 10,000 Turkish troops crossed the border into Northern Iraq on 21st February. Bloody clashes took place within Turkish borders during the invasion. The death toll of the operations which lasted for eight days is controversial: the Turkish Armed Forces claim that 24 of its soldiers died while they killed 237 PKK[1] members while the PKK claims that 9 of its people were dead, and it is claimed both by the PKK and the press connected to the local Northern Iraqi Kurdish authorities that more than a hundred soldiers from the Turkish Armed Forces died and have been hidden in hospital morgues. If one thing is certain, it is that hundreds of workers' children have been forced to slaughter each other in these eight days. This is not the first war conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces in Iraq. During its imperialist war against the PKK, Turkey has entered Iraq 24 times, including invasions with 7,000 troops in 1983, 15,000 in 1992, 35,000 in 1995 and 1997 and 10,000 in 1998. The Turkish army was bombing Iraq already prior to the latest invasion, and had 2,000 soldiers in its bases in Northern Iraq. However, there was a difference between the latest heated conflict and past imperialist invasions conducted by the Turkish state. While in the past Turkish imperialism conducted its operations in Iraq freely, comfortably and without the slightest negative reaction from the Saddam regime and even organized some operations with the open support of the Peshmerga[2] forces, this time Turkish imperialism had created the possibility of a more serious and total war with the local authorities by launching this bloody operation. Mesud Barzani[3] had said "if the Turkish army targets Kurdish civilians or civil structures, we will order a wide and general resistance" and the Kurdish parliament had voted for closing the bases of the Turkish Armed Forces in Northern Iraq which hosted 2,000 soldiers. Had Turkey stayed in Iraq longer, a much more serious war could have started. The only reason behind Turkish imperialisms invasion of Iraq was not attacking the PKK. The claim that this was a war against ‘terror' was nothing but a lie, as none of the ‘operations' that were launched before had any effect in this respect.
Then why did Turkish imperialism enter Iraq this time? The government spokesman Cemil Cicek had declared that the ‘operation' will continue until PKK was destroyed, and the government had said that the target was Kandil mountain[4], that they were to stay there until the time where they won't have to invade Iraq again and that the army was not going to leave until ‘the job was done'. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had to change his address to the nation speech which said "the operation continues with determination" hours before he was to make the speech when he learned that the Turkish Armed Forces had withdrawn early in the morning, indicating clearly that this situation was a surprise for the government. Why did Turkish imperialism immediately return when they were claiming that no one can intervene in their invasion of Iraq?
In order to answer those questions, it is necessary to put Turkey's latest war in Iraq in its place within the conjuncture of world imperialism and examine the function of this war from this perspective. As is well known, relations between the Turkish government and America were quite tense prior to the operation, over America's support of PKK's Iranian wing, PJAK against the Iranian regime and the possibility of the recognition of the Armenian genocide by the US. The war on top of all these issues made relations even worse as America was not happy with the possibility of the only piece of rock (Kurdistan) it has been clinging on to in the Iraqi quagmire falling apart. This was the reason why the US constantly repeated that Turkey should leave Iraq in a very short period of time. Even if the fact that the Turkish army immediately ended the operation a day after the meeting between the authorities representing the American government and the General Buyukanit, chief of staff of the Turkish army is not enough proof to show that the order to end the operation has came from the Americans, the fact that both Turkish and American authorities have been very careful in constantly denying the existance of such a situation is enough to prove its existence. Nevertheless, the Kurdish government in Iraq had accused the Americans about Turkey's invasion, and had claimed that America had allowed this operation, and they were not really mistaken in their grouching.
The principle problem of America in the region is against Russia's close ally, Iran. All the forces involved in this situation, Turkish Armed Forces and the PKK who have been clashing in Iraq, or other forces such as the factions of Barzani or Talabani[5] for whom clashing with each other, or with the Turkish army or the PKK is a possibility, are in the end of day allies of America, at least allies of America against Iran locally and Russia globally, despite the possibly different roles they would play or possibly different distances they would try to conserve in future conflicts, their side at the end of the they seemed set. Thus, as much as the Americans did not want the last ‘stable' piece of Iraqi territory to be ruined, they did not want those forces which were either involved in open war or had serious tensions among each other to focus on destroying each other, or to turn their back on the US because of their internal conflicts. PKK activity in Northern Iraq was creating further tensions between Turkey and the Kurdish autonomous government, whose imperialist interests were already clashing, and was creating the possibility of Turkey and Iran establishing closer relations with each other due to their common fight against the PKK. In the current situation, PKK was for the most part useful to the US inasmuch as it fought against Iran and the US naturally preferred the PKK to focus on Iran rather than Turkey. If we examine the geographical locations of the PKK camps in Northern Iraq, we can see that the Camp Zap taken over by the Turkish Armed Forces was very close to Turkish borders and the city of Hakkari[6] and it was very suitable for crossing the Turkish borders. However Kandil mountains, claimed by the Turkish government to be the main target, are near the Iranian border and Zap is quite distant from Kandil. The fact that the Turkish Armed Forces directly moved towards Zap indicates that the target was never Kandil but, quite the contrary, to push the PKK towards Kandil, in other words towards Iran. In this sense assuming that Turkish imperialism invaded Iraq with America's permission and that not just the end but the whole conduct of war developed according to American wishes would be logical.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to look deeper in world imperialist relations for understanding the contradiction between the governments words and the Turkish Armed Forces' actions. Both the AKP[7] government and the Turkish military bureaucracy are on the same point in regard to working with and orienting towards the "West" rather than other imperialist powers such as Russia, China or Iran, however those two different wings want to have closer relations not with the same but with different "West"s. Those two "West"s are the United States and Europe. Obviously, prior to the invasion, the government and the Turkish Armed Forces seemed to have reached a compromise and made a peace. MHP[8], which is close to the army and state bureaucracy and of course which has always been deeply connected with the United States had saved the AKP from troubling situations at two critical issues: the election of the president[9] and the constitutional matter of the legalization of head scarf in the universities and just afterwards, the army and the government had begun a war, hand in hand. There was, at least, the ground for thinking that there had been some sort of agreement between the army and the state. The government had crushed the opposition in the elections and was doing rather well against the state bureaucracy and was taking bureaucratic institutions one by one. The only fact that could indicate that such alliance had not truly taken place during the war was the conflict between the traditional state institutions and the state institutions in which the government is effective that found a reflection on the press, and the army, unsurprisingly, had stopped commenting on this issue some time ago. The AKP government might have thought during the war that they had reached a compromise with the Army, but in reality there had been no compromise and agreement between the two factions, at least there hasn't been any according to the army. At the end of the war, the army managed to give the first succesful response to the victories AKP had been taking against other factions of the bourgeoisie, and had stroke a truly strong blow against the AKP for the first time. The government was either not informed sufficiently in regards to the operation, or they were misinformed, in any way they thought they were acting together with the Turkish Armed Forces but they were alone in thinking this. AKP appearing as the loyalist supporter of the war was going to decrease their influence amongst Kurds[10] living in Turkey and the declarations they have given before the retreat were going to make them look seriously contradictory, ineffective and weak.
It was not only the Turkish government who was struck a blow following this war, also the faction of the European Union[11] which strives to be more distant from the US was hit by a wave, albeit quite a small one. We can recall how in 2003, the Turkish government got closer with Europe when the AKP government refused to send soldiers to the locations which the US wanted them to send soldiers in Iraq, which was quite similar to the response of some European states. Also Refah Party[12] , which the AKP is rooted in was supported by Germany against the traditionally pro-American Turkish Armed Forces which was unsurprisingly supported in that conflict by the Americans as well. As for about Turkish's invasion of Iraq, European authorities declared that they "understand the need of Turkey to protect it's population from terrorism" and the bourgeois media in Europe declared the war to be disgraceful for the US. Not only this, but the "Socialist Workers" Party of Spain, currently in power, had declared that in case they win the elections, they were going to support Turkey on the Cyprus question. The fact that Turkey immediately retreated after Americans told them to do so showed the influence of the US in the region again, while disproving some of the things said in the European press about the invasion. In this perspective, it is significant that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan emphasized the relations with Germany right after talking about the war, and said that Germany is number one in Turkey's foreign trade and that relations between Turkey and Germany are beyond classic diplomatic relations. Also the stances of Europe and America during the latest conflict between the bureaucratic bourgeoisie and the AKP government over the law suite against the AKP is significant, in which while the European power were talking about the importance of democracy and freedom and declaring themselves to be against the law suit, American authorities were emphasizing the importance of secularism.
The stance of the leftists in Turkey should be mentioned here. With the end of the cold war and the deepening of the crisis the left is becoming increasingly confused about which nationalists to support and the invasion of Northern Iraq by the Turkish army showed this clearly. The "Workers" Party[13] having decided that Turkey is an oppressed nation has dived straight into social chauvinism, open co-operation with the MHP, and support of the state. The TKP (Turkish Communist Party), with its slogan of ‘Don't let the Americans divide our country' seems to be going in the same direction. All this talk of ‘our country' is hardly surprising from an organization which has organized a ‘Patriotic Front'. Let us be very clear on this question. This is not ‘our country'. Workers do not own this country, just as they don't own any of the other ones. The bourgeoisie are the owners and masters of this country. Workers have no interest at all in joining fronts to protect the property of the rich. As for the rest of the left, the recent invasion of Iraq brought forth mainly liberal whining from the majority of them. They, in a manner that was beneath contempt talked about democracy, and letting the Kurds have their rights while remaining afraid to condemn the state. It is as if they were begging the Turkish state, dripping with the blood of national minorities from its birth in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide to its most recent invasion of Northern Iraq, to be nice to people. Finally of course there were the ‘extremists' who rejected support for the Turkish state and advocated instead support for the PKK. According to them, the cause of socialism is best served by having young Kurdish boys and young Turkish boys kill each other in the mountains. In reality, there is no difference between these ‘left' nationalists, and the ‘left' nationalists who support the Turkish state. Neither of them have anything to offer the working class but more deaths and suffering. Both of them tried to pull the working class into giving up its own interests to fight for the interests of the nation. In the process of this they both worked as an active force in creating divisions within the working class. They both mobilized workers to die for the nation, one on behalf of the Turkish state, and the other on behalf of an idea of ‘Kurdistan', but in reality of the foreign states backing them. The communists bring a different perspective to this. For us, the workers have no country. It is not about choosing which nationalist gangsters to support but about trying to rebuild, however slowly, an independent movement. A movement that ultimately will be able to resist the Turkish states drive towards war.
The twenty fifth adventure of Turkish imperialism in Norther Iraq ended, leaving hundreds of corpses in only eight days. Nevertheless, the war between the PKK and the Turkish Armed Forces continues to force workers to slaughter fellow workers in Turkey. All factions involved, including the military-bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the private bourgeoisie, the PKK leaders and the Kurdish bourgeoisie hope to gain from this imperialist war and are trying to gain the upper hand against their rivals who they can't fight directly. Both the invasion of Iraq and the war continuing in Turkey is a war of the bourgeoisie, and even though Turkey has retreated from Iraq for now, this war continues to drag Turkey and the Middle East in general towards imperialist barbarism. The victims of this bloody and barbaric war are the Kurdish and Turkish workers who are forced to kill each other, die or lose the ones they love despite the fact that they have common interests. The only force than can end this war, just like the only force that can end all imperialist wars in the world, is the working class. Neither pacifism, nor democratic struggle or begging for the bourgeoisie with it's bloody ends to find a solution can end wars. Wars are a part of capitalism and they will end only when workers "turn the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war" as they have done while stopping the First World War. Thus it is necessary to examine the reaction of the working class in regards to this war, especially of the sections of the working class that has been suffering the most: those who are forced to fight and the families of those who die.
The grandfather of the soldier Bayram Guzel, who died in November 2007 said: "They die and die, always the children of the poor fellows. The families of the poor fellows burn. The hands and arms of the poor are short so they hit us in the back and make us carry the carriage. Why aren't the children of the bosses and generals being ‘martyrs'!". The mother of Burak Okay who died in September 2006 said "My son couldn't even kill flies and they made him go to the mountains to kill human beings. My son is no martyr and he died in vain. I do not accept sacrificing my son". The father of Cengiz Evranos who died in the same month said: "I am not saying ‘all for the good of the country'[14]. Politicians: send your children to Darbogaz too". The mother of Sahin Abanoz who died in April 2006 said: "There is a differentiation between the rich and the poor. Is there a single child of a parliamentary deputy [in the battlefield]? Is there a single child of a president? They only lined up and sent the children of the poor, the children of the unfortunate." The children of a soldier who had been among the first victims of the war between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces in 1980 said: "My neighbors look with condemning eyes, because I am not putting up a flag in my balcony. They don't know that the Turkish flag in the house was not bought from a store with money or came as a promotion with a newspaper; they gave it from my father's coffin. How can I hang that flag? And how many square metres of flags, marches of how many people or how many jingoistic speeches can ease my pain? No I have not put up a flag and I will not put up one. Maybe martyrs don't die for millions, but fathers, sons and brothers die for some of us. And they die in such a way that the pain of it never ends. I don't know how others are doing, but if I had another father, I would never ever sacrifice him for this country."
A soldier, whose ‘service' finished in 1998 says in an anonymous interview: "When you look it from Tunceli, the man [officer] gets double the wage he would normally get. Why should they want to declare an end to the ‘state of emergency'[15] Such good money! He does three years service when it officially is two. So he thinks if I die I die but I make good money. In my opinion, the stopping of this war should not be left in the hands of those people (...) All regimes that will cause the war to continue should be broken. Capitalism itself if this is what it takes." Someone who has been a soldier in Van in 1997 explains the soldiers feelings by saying "Everyone had a down on the rich" and than says "If I have to be a soldier again, I will do what I wanted to do but couldn't, I will run away. I will definitely return that green uniform and being under orders (...) I hate who this war is conducted for and who gains from this war." Someone who was a soldier in 1996 in Bingol says in an anonymous interview: "The PKK is dirty against its people from whose shoulders it has risen as much as the Turkish army, state, other forces or the police are dirty (...) One develops an antipathy against both sides (...) The politicians don't want a solution either. The was has created its profits, this slow war that has been going on for 13-14 years created its own institutionalization which could make the war go on for another 14 years. This is a business, it is a business for the PKK as well." Someone who was a soldier in Siirt in 1995 says: "I wanted to know who my enemy was before I went there. Now I finished this questioning. Who is my enemy? The ruling class of course, who else could it be? (...) I clarified myself on who has been continuing and who has been feeding from this war. The officers wanted the war to continue, they were making good money out of it." Someone who has been a soldier in Mardin in 1992 says "I haven't seen any children of the rich over there, they only and always send the children of the poor. Lots rebelled against this in my time, asking why they don't see the children of the rich there, I think those who rebelled were correct."
The bourgeoisie fears this reaction of soldiers who are sent to die or the families who are expected to say ‘all for the good of the country' when their children die, and they try to hide it, condemn it at all costs, and intimidate those who express it. Not only that, sections of the ruling class try to use those reactions, and pull those voicing those reactions to the war to this or that faction of the bourgeoisie. The working class voices raised against the war is not a point raised by daily and generalized class struggle in Turkey yet. The ruling class is trying to silence, hide, sabotage daily working class struggles just like it is trying to do with those voices against the war, and they are also trying to control daily class struggles through the unions and even use and manipulate them for the purposes of this or that faction of the bourgeoisie as well. However, those attempts of the bourgeoisie fail to hide the fact that class struggle is rising in Turkey as it is rising in the whole world nor do they destroy the possibility of the working class getting through all the obstacles the bourgeoisie is trying to plant in its way. Even this possibility is enough to seriously scare the ruling class, as when the children of workers who the leaders of the Turkish Armed Forces or the PKK send to death understand that the enemy is not the proletarians they are forced to face but those who give the orders, and when the working class starts acting and struggling unified independently and internationally, those who will be overthrown is none other than the bourgeoisie.
Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol
[1] PKK, Kurdistan ‘Workers' Party, mainly active in Turkey but also in Iraq and Iran.
[2] In other words the armed forces of the Kurdish part of Iraq.
[3] Mesud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Kurdistan regional autonomous government.
[4] Located near the Iranian border, Kandil is said to be the main base of the PKK.
[5] Celal Talabani, Kurdish politician who is the leader of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the current president of the Iraqi state.
[6] A border city with high PKK activity and an overwhelmingly Kurdish population who have been subjected to the most horrible forms of state repression.
[7] The center-right and Islamic ruling party in Turkey, similar to Christian-Democrats in Europe.
[8] The main Fascist party, also known as Grey Wolves.
[9] A small note on the parliamentary system in Turkey: the president is elected by the parliament rather than the elections and the AKP had been unable to elect a new president when the old one, Ahmet Necdet Sever finished his term due to a legal procedure regarding the number of people who should be in the parliament in the day when the president is elected. Indeed why they pushed for early elections, which they won easily.
[10] AKP had done extremely well among Kurds in the last elections, getting almost as much votes as the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Society Party (DTP) from predominantly Kurdish cities.
[11] It is important that this article highlights the existence of different factions within the European Union bourgeoisie, which is far from united on the attitude to adopt towards Turkey, and in particular towards Turkish entry into the EU (ICC note).
[12] Refah Party (Welfare Party) was an Islamacist Party which lost it's significance following the rise of the AKP.
[13] "Workers" Party, is an ultra-nationalist Turkish Maoist (or possibly "ex" Maoist although they still upheld Mao) and pro-China organization.
[14] ‘All for the good of the country' is a common nationalistic slogan which the state wants to hear from the family of dead soldiers.
[15] There is a constant and officially declared ‘state of emergency' in some predominantly Kurdish cities.
The article that we are publishing below 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.[1]
The world food crisis hit the center stage of media attention only very recently, but it is a phenomenon that has been building steadily for decades. The food riots from Haiti to Bangladesh, from Pakistan to Egypt may have brought forth the issue of the soaring costs of basic commodities to the forefront of the world's attention, but the fact remains that they were all direct result of years of accumulated ravages of capitalism. For a time, national governments like the Arroyo regime tried to ignore the signs of the looming crisis, even when the prices of rice in public markets have soared to a 34-year high in the Philippines. The Philippine president even quipped that there was no such thing as rice shortage because it is "a physical phenomenon where people line up on the streets to buy rice. Do you see lines today?".[2]
The world is in the midst of an unprecedented worldwide food price inflation that has driven prices to their highest levels in decades. The increases affect most kinds of food, particularly the most important staples like corn, rich and wheat. According to UN Food and Agriculture Organization, between March 2007 and March 2008 alone prices of grains increased 88%, oils and fats 106%, and dairy 48%. A World Bank report on the other hand pointed out that in the 36 months ending last February 2008, overall global food prices increased by 83% and it expects most food prices to remain well above 2004 levels until at least 2015.[3]
In Thailand, the most popular grade of rice that sold for $198 a ton five years ago was quoted at a record high of more than $1,000 per ton on April 24, 2008 and it is expected to continue to rise according to traders and exporters due to tight supply.[4] The same phenomenon is repeated all over the world. In the Philippines alone, from the retail price of 60 US cents a kilo a year ago, the price of rice rose up to 72 US cents a kilo today. And in a country where 68 million of its 90 million inhabitants live on or under US$2 a day,[5] this has become a nightmare of horrific proportions.
The world food crisis is the inevitable result of the permanent crisis of capitalism since the late 1960s. Various national economies battled to stay afloat in a world of intense competition and capitalist profiteering in an already saturated world market. As a result, governments adopted economic policies that are geared towards encouraging the growth of industries that will inject more dollars into their respective economy rather than meeting the needs of their people. Combine that with unsustainable use of natural resources and the onslaught of industrial production for profit that is aggravating pollution levels and the emission of green house gases worldwide, humanity is now faced with the accumulated concoction of capitalist recipe for its own destruction.
In the field of agricultural production, the use of nitrogen and the over-aeration of soils to boost capitalist agricultural productions have destroyed the total productivity of the once fertile centers of agricultural production. And while it is true that the application of advanced farming methods at the onset of green revolutions worldwide brought about initial increases in productivity, we have also seen the gradual drops of agricultural production in many parts of the world. According to a report by the London-based Institute of Science in Society:
"In India, grain yield per unit of fertilizer applied decreased by two-thirds during the Green Revolution years. And the same has happened elsewhere.
Between 1970 and 2000, the annual growth of fertilizer use on Asian rice has been 3 to 40 times the growth of rice yields [8]. In Central Luzon, Philippines, rice yield increased 13 percent during the 1980s, but came at the price of a 21 percent increase in fertilizer use. In the Central Plains, yield went up only 6.5 percent, while fertilizer use rose 24 percent and pesticides jumped by 53 percent. In West Java, a 23 percent yield increase was accomplished by 65 and 69 percent increases in fertilizers and pesticides respectively.
However, it is the absolute drop in yields despite high inputs of fertilizer that finally punctured the Green Revolution bubble. By the 1990s, after dramatic increases in the early stages of the Green Revolution, yields began falling. In Central Luzon, Philippines, rice yields rose steadily during the 1970s, peaked in the early 1980s, and have been dropping gradually since. Similar patterns emerged for rice-wheat systems in India and Nepal.
Where yields were not actually declining, the rate of growth has been slowing rapidly or leveling off, as documented in China, North Korea, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
The penchant for profit of a decadent system that is caught up with its own web of contradictions has resulted in the destruction of natural soil fertility to the point of exhaustion. While it is true that the world economy still produces more food than the world needs, a lot of what is produced and distributed through global capitalist trade perishes before it reaches the market and when it does arrive, millions of people just cannot afford to buy it anymore. In the final analysis, the endpoint of this crisis is the pauperization of the working class and the subjugation of the greater portion of humanity into abject poverty and destitution. Capitalism after all is primarily concern about accumulation of surplus value and never the satisfaction of the needs of society.
According to Arturo Yap, the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines, "We don't have a food crisis but, rather, a rice price crisis. All of us are looking for innovative solutions in our countries - how to address not only the issue of supply but also the issue of prices, how to [ensure] that poor families can eat." He said there are 5 five critical reasons behind the current "rice" situation in the Philippines that the government needs to address: First, there is a supply largely affected by an increased demand resulting from rising population; Second, the effects of climate change; Third, the booming demand for bio-fuels; Fourth, continuous conversion of agricultural lands to non-agriculture use; And finally, there is a neglect of irrigation facilities.
At first glance, one may find the so-called causes of the Philippine "rice" crisis as valid on its own. But the fact is behind it all is the undeniable truth that the very framework from which those enumerated causes arose is the ultimate caused of them all - the capitalist framework of production worldwide. First, the supply that is supposed-to-be affected by the increased of demand from rising population is but an excused of the fact that what has been produced by the world capitalist economy is more geared towards the production of surplus value than the satisfying of the needs of humanity. Second, the effect of climate change to agricultural production is by itself also a direct result of the capitalist framework of production. For instance, it is not industrialization itself that is responsible for changes in climate patterns, but "capitalism's overriding quest to maximize profits and its consequent disregard for human and ecological needs, except insofar as they coincide with the goal of wealth accumulation."[7] There is no doubt that there has been an appalling degradation of the environment at the hands of a world capitalist system driven by the relentless quest for profits and economic expansion. But the fact is, all bourgeois states, including the Philippine state that is recognizing the heavy costs of environmental degradation, are the same states that are protecting the profit motives of their respective national capitals and their political puppets to sabotage research and development of more environmentally friendly alternative fuel sources to power industrial production. Third, the so-called adverse effect of the booming demand for bio-fuels to agricultural production is by itself an outcome of all the states' policy, including Arroyo's government, to search for alternative fuels to ease the burden of the their industries' dependence on foreign oil supply. In addition to this, lowering the cost of oil expenses for "social" purposes also increases the capacity of each state for military production and war. It is not as much as environmental concerns that drives the policy of bio-fuels development, but the need of each national capital to insulate itself against the rising prices of crude oil in the world market and even to the extent of "aiding" the war efforts of all bourgeois states. It is interesting to note that as early as the Second World War, bio-fuels have already been used in the war efforts of both the Allied and Axis powers like the United States and Nazi Germany. In the case of the Philippines, logic of redirecting farm produce from the table to the needs of the bio-fuels industry is in consonance to the efforts of the Philippine government to produce more high value cash crops that can help sustain its own quest for additional sources of dollar revenues. Fourth, the continuous conversion of farmlands into subdivisions, golf courses, malls and industrial complex is also a direct result of government policies in agriculture, especially in the Philippines. The decades old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of the Philippine government was both a failure and a disaster. It is not only that CARP is a mystifying and reactionary program of the Filipino bourgeoisie that is supported by some Leftist organizations, but also because it is not an economically viable program. In the age and time where intense capitalist competition in the world market destroys small agricultural producers due to high cost of farming and rising debt, farmers are either forced to abandon their lands or submit themselves to precarious arrangements as contract growers of big corporations, a practice that is prevalent in Mindanao region of the Philippines.[8] As to the perennial problem of the utter neglect of irrigation systems in the Philippines, it is more a question of government mismanagement and corruption, an expression of the decomposition of ideological forms in capitalist decadence, where self-indulgence and the "every man for himself" mentality reigns supreme.
As what can be expected from a bourgeois state confronted with a crisis of great magnitude in stage of capitalist decadence, the Philippine state through the Arroyo regime responded to the crisis in the form of active state intervention - a move that is supported and fiercely advanced by all Leftist formations in the Philippines together with their effort to call for a legislated wage increase. As the pangs of the crisis intensifies, so as the mystifying efforts of the state to contain it. The Left and Right of the capital are one in raising the specter that "only the state" can save the workers and the poorest of the poor from the pangs of hunger and destitution. They completely ignore the fact that the state that they encourage to intervene more is the very organ that imposes the bourgeois dictatorship that is protecting the very source of enslavement and suffering - capitalism. In trying to be more "radical" in form and substance, various leftist currents pressed for the absolute and aggressive control of the state to society.
The Leftists "criticism" that what the state is doing is "not enough" - "raising" budget for agriculture, giving "rice subsidy" to the "poorest of the poor" and the state competing with private traders in buying and selling rice - and that it lacks "political will" clearly show that the former want absolute state control. They even go to up to the point of brandishing their age-old dogma of party dictatorship and totalitarianism - the complete and all encompassing control of the state like the so-called socialist countries that they defended as the "remnants" of the October Revolution.
The Right and Left of the capital are one in advancing programs of mystification that hides the fact that there is no solution to the crisis within the system. The contradiction between the forces and the relations of production is already at its peak. No reformist and temporary interventions by the state can alter the fact that whatever solution it can formulate within the bulwarks of capitalism will only lead to more intense crisis and destruction of the environment. Every effective solution that it can formulate will only mean a much heavier burden to the working class and the toiling masses. Even if the state will exercise absolute control of the economic life of society, the crisis will continue to intensify as a result of the saturation of the world market and inability of the population to absorb the excessive production of commodities within a system that owes its life to competition and profit. History has already proven that state capitalism and totalitarianism are futile reaction of capital faced with permanent and intensifying crisis. The fall of USSR and Eastern Europe in 1990s bears witness to this fact.
The solution of the crisis is not within the dying system but outside of it. It is in the hands of the only revolutionary class bearing the seed of future communist society - the working class. The solution is not within the bulwarks of capitalism, nor is it in the path of reforms and peaceful transformation of capitalism to socialism. The solution is not within absolute control by the state of economic life of society, but in the destruction of capitalism itself along with the bourgeois state that serves as it machinery of domination.
In other words, the solution of the food crisis is destroying the system of production based on market and profit and establishing a system based on the absolute production for human needs. And the first step towards this direction and toward the revolutionary transformation of society is not in the legalistic and reformist approach of various leftist organizations, nor is it in the hands of an absolutist state intervention. It is not through the peaceful and "legalistic" road of "lakbayan" (protest caravans and long marches) popularized by Leftist formations in the Philippines. It is not through the road of trade unionism either. It is in the hands of the working class itself[9] that is confronting the attacks of the capital in its own terrain through its own unitary organs of struggle - the workers' assemblies, the prefiguration of the workers' councils.
Workers of the world, unite! It is only through this path of class unity that will usher in the inevitable culmination of the proletarian movement: the world proletarian revolution.
Internasyonalismo, 7th May 2008
[1] See the Environment News Service for a report in English, or the United Nations site for a report in French.
[2] Gil C. Cabacungan Jr., Arroyo warned on rice crisis, Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 24, 2008.
[3] "The rising trend in international food prices continued, and even accelerated, in 2008. U.S. wheat export prices rose from $375/ton in January to $440/ton in March, and Thai rice export prices increased from $365/ton to $562/ton. This came on top of a 181 percent increase in global wheat prices over the 36 months leading up to February 2008, and a 83 percent increase in overall global food prices over the same period.(...) The observed increase in food prices is not a temporary phenomenon, but likely to persist in the medium term. Food crop prices are expected to remain high in 2008 and 2009 and then begin to decline as supply and demand respond to high prices; however, they are likely to remain well above the 2004 levels through 2015 for most food crops" (Rising Food Prices: Policy Options and World Bank Response, p. 2, our emphasis).
[4] "Bangkok, April 24 - Benchmark Thai rice prices leapt more than 5 percent to a record high above $1,000 a tonne on Thursday, and traders in the world's top exporter warned of further gains if buyers Iran and Indonesia step into the market". (Reuters, Thai Rice Climbs to New Record Above $1,000 a Tonne, 24/04/2008 - posted on Flex News)
[5] National Statistics Office, 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey, Released Date: January 11, 2008.
[6] "Beware the New ‘Doubly Green Revolution'", ISIS Press Release 14/01/08
[7] Como, "Imperialist chaos, ecological disaster: Twin-track to capitalist oblivion", International Review n°129 - 2nd Quarter 2007, p.2
[8] "The Soyapa Farms Growers Association employs 360 contract workers, both adults and children. The association was formed at the initiative of Stanfilco six years ago, when it convinced members to grow bananas. It's not a cooperative-each grower retains ownership of their individual plot, and each has an individual contract to sell their bananas to Dole." (Banana War in the Philippines - Posted on July 8th, 1998 by Melissa Moore at www.foodfirst.org [8]).
[9] "That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves, that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule." (The International Workingmen's Association, General Rules, October 1864, our emphasis).
It is no coincidence that the hunger revolts are erupting now, since the sharp rise in food prices is not a natural disaster but a result of the sharpening of the capitalist crisis.
Since the new world wide financial crisis began, the living conditions for the working class throughout the world have drastically worsened.
Whereas in previous phases of sharpening of the crisis the workers in peripheral countries were hit much harder and faster than the workers of the industrial countries, we can see now that the workers of the industrial centres and the periphery have to suffer simultaneously - even if still at different degrees - from the impact of the crisis.
Whether in the USA, where each month some 200,000 people lose their homes due to the sub-prime crisis, where thousands are losing their jobs and faced with rising food and energy prices, whether in Europe where prices of many staple foods have risen between 30-50%, or in the "emerging countries" such as China or India, where food prices have also been rising sharply, or in the peripheral countries, never since 1929 have so many people been threatened by the effects of the crisis in such a short span of time. But even in 1929 the threat of hunger did not spread so rapidly to the poor masses in capitalist periphery. And yet we are only at the beginning of this descent. Rising oil prices have bloated the production and transport costs, which have been passed on to consumers in food prices, and the the prices of rice, wheat, corn have risen in most countries by 50-100%, in some cases even doubling or trebling in price, with a drastic acceleration during the past few weeks in particular, the consequences for workers, farmers and the masses of unemployed in peripheral countries have been particularly brutal.
Food price inflation and riots The price of wheat and soya doubled between spring 2007 and February 2008. The price of corn (mais) went up by 66%, rice by 75% during the past 10 months. The food-price index - established by FAO increased between March 2007 and March 2008 by 57%. Yet the FAO itself maintains that the price explosion is not due to shrinking crops, because in 2007 world grain production rose by 5%. Still every day 100.000 people die of hunger or die of diseases which are immediate consequences of hunger. Every 5 seconds a child under the age of 10 years dies of starvation. 900 million people are constantly undernourished. In reaction riots and protests have erupted in Egypt, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Cameroon, Morocco Mozambique, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Yemen, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines, Mexico and Peru, Argentine, Honduras, Haiti... |
"Heartbreaking choices" of the ruling class "The UN food agency will need to make "heartbreaking" choices about the destination of its emergency aid unless governments donate more money to help it buy increasingly expensive food, a spokeswoman of World Food Programme (WFP) warned, which aims to feed 73 million in 80 countries this year... If by this summer we don't receive more, we will have to make quite heartbreaking choices - either we reduce the beneficiaries or we reduce the rations... The WFP has appealed to governments for an extra $500m to cope with higher food pricesThe USA have released $200m, Germany €10 m in emergency aid". (The Guardian, 16.4.08) While the IMF predicted that the cost of the present financial crisis would amount up to 1.000.000.000.000 (1.000 milliards) and different governments have already spent hundreds of billions of $ in rescue operations for ailing banks, the Food Aid Organisations run out of money, because the big countries only hand out crumbs.... Surely capitalist institutions prefer to rescue banks than feed more than a billion people, the recent hunger crisis will add at least another 500 million within a few months... |
While price rises of 30-50% of food prices and energy in industrial countries confronting many workers, in particular the unemployed and ‘working poor' with problems of making ends meet, the doubling or so of basic food stuffs in the peripheral countries world poses the danger of starvation. Since more than one billion people live with less than $1 a day, and since many of them have to spend up to 90% of their income on food, such a tremendous rise of food prices is immediately threatens them with starvation.
This catastrophic, life-threatening situation has led to a series of hunger revolts and strikes with demands for higher wages etc. For fear of explosions of protests in Vietnam and India, the governments of these countries - both rice exporters - have suspended the export of rice. Kazakhstan - eighth biggest grain exporter - has threatened to suspend its grain exports. In the Philippines the government has threatened to condemn those who hoard rice to life imprisonment! As a consequence there is a growing shortage of food stuffs, because basic crops start getting hoarded or their export breaks down. Even in the USA major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks. It is only a question of time before a wave of even bigger prices increases reaches the USA, Europe and East Asia.
The fear of starvation has been a nightmare which has accompanied - and spurred on - the ascent of humanity from its beginnings. The root cause of this danger has always been the relative primitiveness of the productive forces of society. The famines which periodically afflicted pre-capitalist societies were the result of an insufficient understanding and mastery of the laws of nature. Ever since society has been divided into classes, the exploited and the poor have been the main victims of this backwardness and the fragility of human existence flowing from it. Today, however, where an additional 100 million human beings are threatened by starvation practically overnight, it becomes increasingly clear that the root cause of hunger today lies in the backwardness, not of science and technology, but of our social organisation. Even the representatives of the official institutions of the ruling order are obliged to admit that the present crisis is "man made". During its ascendant period, capitalism, despite all the misery it caused, believed itself to be capable, in the long run, of liberating humanity from the scourge of famine. This belief was based on the capitalism's ability- indeed its imperious need as a system of competition - constantly to revolutionise the forces of production. In the years that followed World War II, it pointed to the successes of modern agriculture, to the development of the welfare state, to the industrialisation of new regions of the planet, to the raising of life expectancy in many countries, as proofs that, in the end, it would win the "battle against hunger" declared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. In recent times, it has claimed, through the economic development of countries like China or India, to have saved several hundreds of millions from the clutches of starvation. And even now, it would have us believe that soaring prices world wide are the product of economic progress, of the new wealth which has been created in the emerging countries, of the new craving of the masses for hamburgers and yoghurt. But even if this were the case, we would have to ask ourselves about the sense of an economic system which is able to nourish some only at the price of condemning others to death, the losers of the competitive struggle for existence.
But in reality, the exploding hunger in the world today is not even the result of such a despicable "progress". What we see is the spread of starvation in the most backward regions of the world and in the "emerging countries". Across the world, the myth that capitalism could banish the spectre of hunger is being exposed as a wretched lie. What is true is that capitalism has created material and social preconditions for such a victory. In doing so, capitalism itself has become the main obstacle to such a progress. The mass protests against hunger in Asia, Africa and Latin America in the past weeks reveal to the world that the causes of famine are not natural but social.
The politicians and experts of the ruling class have put forward a series of explanations for the present dramatic situation. These include the economic "boom" in parts of Asia, the development of "bio-fuels", ecological disasters and climate change, the ruining of agrarian subsistence economy in many "underdeveloped" countries, a speculative run on foodstuffs, the limitations on agricultural production imposed in order to prop up food prices etc. All of these explanations contain a grain of truth. None of them, taken in isolation, explain anything at all. They are at best symptoms - murderous symptoms - which, taken as a whole, indicate the root causes of the problem. The bourgeoisie will always lie, even to itself, about its crises. But what is striking today is the degree to which governments and experts are themselves incapable of understanding what is going on, or of reacting with any semblance of coherence. The helplessness of the apparently almighty ruling class becomes increasingly clear. What is striking about the different explanations put forward - apart from their cynical and hypocritical character - is that each fraction of the ruling class seeks to draw attention to that aspect which most closely touches its own immediate interests. An example: A summit meeting of G8 politicians called on the "Third World" to react to the hunger revolts by immediately lowering their customs duties on agricultural imports. In other words, the first thought of these fine representatives of capitalist democracy was to profit from the crisis in order to increase their own export chances! Another example: The present "debate" within Europe. The industrial lobby has made an outcry about the agricultural protectionism of the European Union, the ruin of subsistence farming in the "Third World" etc. And why? Feeling threatened by the industrial competition of Asia, it wants to slash the agricultural subsidies paid by the European Union, which it feels it can no longer afford. The farming lobby, for its part, sees in the hunger revolts a proof of the need to increase the subsidies. The European Union has seized the occasion to condemn the extension of agricultural production at the service of "renewable" energy - in Brazil (one of its main rivals in this area).
The partial "explanations" of the bourgeoisie, apart from being the cynical expression of rival particular interests, only go to hide the responsibility of the capitalist system for the present catastrophe. In particular, none of these arguments, and not even all of them taken together, can explain the two main characteristics of the present crisis: its profoundness, and the sudden brutality of its present acceleration.
Whereas in the past hundreds of millions of Chinese only had very little to eat (the famous "iron rice bowl), now there is a bigger consumption of meat, dairy products and wheat. Growing demand for more meat and milk means cattle and poultry feed crops take over agricultural lands, feeding far fewer mouths from the same acreage. This is the main explanation put forward by many fractions of the bourgeoisie. This proletaranisation of a part of the peasant masses, which has radically transformed their way of life, and integrated them into the world market, is assumed by the ruling class to be identical with a great improvement of their condition. But what remains to be explained is how this improvement, this lifting of millions out of the clutches of starvation, itself in turn has led to: its opposite. The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, recently declared that rising prices were destroying all the more recent progress made in the "struggle against poverty".
Bio-fuels. Replacing petrol by wheat, corn, palm oil, etc. has indeed led to dramatic shortages of food staples. Not only is the "pollution" balance sheet of bio-fuels negative (recent research shows that bio-fuels increase air pollution by discharging more harmful particles than normal fuel, not to mention the fact that some bio-fuels need almost as much oil as energy input as the energy they produce), but their global ecological and economic consequences are disastrous for the whole of humanity. Such a change of cultivation of wheat, corn/maize, palm oil etc. for production of energy instead of for food is a typical expression of capitalist blindness and destructiveness. It is driven in part by a futile attempt to cope with rising oil prices, and in part - especially for the United States - by the hope of reducing its dependence on imported oil in order to protect its security interests as an imperialist power. Far from explaining the crisis, the bio-fuel scandal is a symptom - and an active factor" - of its depth.
Export subsidies and protectionism. On the one hand there is agricultural overproduction in some countries and a permanent "export offensive"; at the same time other countries can no longer feed themselves. Competition and protectionism in agriculture have meant that as with any other commodity in the economy more productive farmers in industrial countries must export (often with government subsidies) large parts of their crops to "Third World" countries and ruin the local peasantry - increasing the exodus from the country to the city, swelling international waves of refugees and leading to the abandonment of land formerly used for agriculture. In Africa for example many local farmers have been ruined by European chicken or beef exports. Mexico no longer produces enough food staples to feed its population. The country has to spend more than $10 billion annually on food imports. "Left" propagandists of the ruling class, but also many well meaning but misguided or badly informed people, have called for a return to subsistence farming in the "peripheral" countries, and the abolition of agricultural export subsidies and protection of their own markets by the old capitalist countries. What these arguments fail to take into consideration is that capitalism, from the outset, lives and expands through the integration of subsistence farmers into the world market, meaning their ruin and their -often violent - separation from the land, from their means of production. The recovery of the land for the producers is only possible as part of a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism itself. This will mean nothing less than the overcoming of private property of production for the market and of the antagonism between city and country, the progressive dissolution of the monstrous mega-cities through a world wide and planned return of hundreds of millions of people to the countryside: not the old countryside of rural isolation and backwardness, but a countryside newly invigorated by its integration with the cities and with a world wide human culture.
While the bourgeois media list these above mentioned factors, they try to prevent the unmasking of the deeper root causes. In reality we are witnessing not least the combined, accumulated consequences of the long-term effects of the pollution of the environment and the deeply destructive tendencies of capitalism in agriculture.
Several destructive tendencies have become undeniable.
The massive use of ‘hybrid seeds' poses a direct threat to bio-diversity.[2]
In many areas of the world, the soil is getting more and more polluted or even totally poisoned. In China 10% of the land area is contaminated and 120,000 peasants die each year from cancers caused by soil pollution. One result of the exhaustion of soil through the ruthless drive for productivity is the fact that in the Netherlands, the "agricultural power" house in Europe, foodstuffs have an extremely low nutritional value.
And global warming means with each 1°C increase in temperature, rice, wheat and corn yields could drop 10%. Recent heat waves in Australia have led to a severe crop damage and drought. First findings show that increased temperatures threaten the capacity for survival of many plants or reduce their nutritional value.
Despite of new farm land being won for farming, the world usable agricultural land is shrinking due to leaching, erosion, pollution and exhaustion of the soil.
Thus a new danger is cropping up - which mankind might have imagined was a nightmare of the past. The combined effects of climate-determined drought and floods and its consequences on agriculture, continuous destruction and reduction of usable soil, pollution and over-fishing of the oceans will lead to scarcity of food. Since 1984 world grain production, for example, has failed to keep pace with world population growth. In the space of 20 years it's fallen from 343kgs per person to 303kgs. (Carnegie Department of Global Ecology in Stanford)
The folly of the system means that capitalism is compelled to be an over-producer of almost all goods while at the same time it creates scarcity of food staples by destroying the very basis in nature of the conditions of their growth. The very roots of this absurdity can be found in capitalist production: "Large landed property reduces the agricultural population to an ever decreasing minimum and confronts it with an ever growing industrial population crammed together in large towns; in this way it produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The result of this is a squandering of the soil, which is carried by trade far beyond the bounds of a single country" (Marx, 1981, p. 949; see also Marx, 1977, p. 860) "It is not only world trade but also capitalist production developed on the basis of the town-country division of labour that feeds back into agriculture: Large-scale industry and industrially pursued agriculture have the same effect. If they are originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and ruins labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter does the same to the natural power of the soil, they link up in the later course of development, since the industrial system applied to agriculture also enervates the workers there, while industry and trade for their part provide agriculture with the means for exhausting the soil. (Marx, 1981, p.950) Marx, K. (1981). Capital: Vol. III. New York: Penguin).
Since the collapse of the housing speculation in the USA and other countries (Britain, Spain etc.) many hedge-funds or other investors look for alternative possibilities of placing their money. Agricultural crops have become the latest target of speculation. The cynical calculation of speculation in times of severe crisis: foodstuffs are a "safe bet", since they are the last thing which people can "afford" to do without! Billions of speculative dollars have already been placed in agricultural companies. These colossal speculative sums have certainly speeded up the price hikes in agricultural products, but they are not the actual root cause. We can assume even if the speculation ceased, price rises of agricultural products will continue.
Nevertheless, this insight into the role of speculation (which is a red herring if taken in isolation) gives us a clue about the real interconnections in the contemporary world economy. In reality, there is a direct connection between the "property crisis" and the earthquake taking place in world finance, and the food price explosion. The world recession of 1929, the most brutal in the history of capitalism to date, was accompanied by a dramatic fall in prices. The pauperisation of the working masses at the time was linked to the fact that wages, in the context of mass unemployment, fell even more dramatically than other prices. Today on the contrary, the world wide recession tendencies which are becoming manifest are accompanied by a general surge of inflation. The soaring prices of foodstuffs are the spearhead of this development, intricately linked to the rising cost of energy, transport and so on. The recent churning of hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy by governments in order to prop up the failing bank and finance systems has probably contributed more than any other factor to the recent world wide inflation spiral. It also does this by revealing the mountains of debt upon which the "crisis management" of recent decades has to a large extent been founded, so undermining business "confidence".
The working masses of the world are caught in a two sided iron vice. Whereas on the one hand global unemployment exercises its relentless downward pressure on wages, soaring prices on the other hand eat away the value of the little the proletarians still earn.
The present day sharpening of the world wide and historic crisis of world capitalism turns out to be a many headed hydra. Alongside the monstrous property and finance crisis which continues to smoulder at the heart of capitalism, there has already appeared a second monster in the form of soaring prices and starvation. And who can tell which others may soon follow? For the moment, the ruling class still appears stunned and somewhat helpless. Its day to day reactions reveal the attempt to increase state control over the economy and to coordinate policy internationally, but also the sharpening of competition between the capitalist nations. The soothing words of policy makers are aimed at disguising from the world, and even from themselves, the feeling of progressively losing any control over what is happening to their system. A development which confronts the ruling class with a twofold danger: that of the destabilisation of entire countries or even continents in a spiral of chaos, and the danger, in the longer term, of a revolutionary upheaval that puts capitalismitself into question.
Because of these destructive effects of capitalist mode of production on agriculture and the environment humanity is in fact confronted with a race against time. The more capitalist destruction ravages the world, the more the basis of survival of humanity is threatened. However, the drastic worsening of the economic crisis and the speculative effects on food prices are forcing the masses of workers, unemployed and peasants to react immediately. Their struggle is on the one hand a defensive struggle for being able to survive, but at the same time it poses the necessity to eradicate the root causes of their life-threatening situation.
ICC
[1] This is taken from an interesting article on libcom by Ret Marut. ("A world food crisis; empty rice bowls and fat rats, https://libcom.org/news/a-world-food-crisis-empty-rice-bowls-fat-rats-16042008 [12]).
[2] "This is a commodified seed - engineered so it cannot reproduce itself and can only grow with the aid of chemical fertilisers. So farmers are locked into dependency on the multi-national companies selling them this seed. In indigenous agriculture, a cropping system includes a symbiotic relationship between soil, water, farm animals and plants. Hybrid agriculture replaces this integration at farm level with the integration of inputs such as seeds and chemicals. The indigenous cropping systems are based only on internal organic inputs. Seeds come from the farm, soil fertility comes from the farm, and pest control is built into the crop mixtures. In the hybrid package, yields are intimately tied to the purchased inputs of seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and petroleum, and intensive irrigation.. If farmers become dependent on hybrid seed, this biological diversity and local adaptation will be lost. Such commercialisation of traditional farming techniques often puts tremendous economic pressure on farmers - in India, 10,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past year, mainly due to debt worries...The substitution of chemical fertilisers for organic methods of returning nutrients to the soil, such as composting, crop rotation and manure creates lifeless dusty soils prone to soil erosion. An estimated 24 billion tonnes of soil are eroded from the world's agricultural land each year. Dust levels in the lower atmosphere have tripled in the last 60 years" (Ret Marut, op.cit.).
Never have so many countries been hit by workers' struggles at the same time. This is testimony to the strength and militancy of the working class on an international scale. Faced with the black-out of the bourgeois media, here are just a few examples, only going back to the beginning of 2008. This article should be read in conjunction with ‘Workers' struggles multiply all over the world' in World Revolution 314.
Belgium: in March, strikes at Ford in Genk, in the post at Mortsel against temporary contracts; public transport strike in Bruxelles and wildcat strikes at BP petrochemicals and in the logistical enterprise Ceva against lay-offs.
Greece: three 24 general strikes since the beginning of the year against the ‘reform' of pensions by a conservative government re-elected in September 2007 on the promise that it wouldn't touch pensions. In fact it is now proposing a 30-40% cut in pensions, raising of the retirement age past 65 for men and 60 for women, cancelling of retirement dates already in place. The strikes were also against the ‘reform' of social security (fusion of funds, reduction in the number of security funds and abolition of help given to low-paid workers). These strikes paralysed the main economic activities of the country: transport, banks, post, telecom, railways, etc. On the last one, 19 March, millions of people joined demonstrations.
Ireland: strike by 40,000 nurses for over 15 days at the beginning of April, demanding a 10% increase and a reduction of the working week to 35 hours. Struggle by Aer Lingus pilots in response to new working conditions following the opening of a new terminal in Belfast. Wildcat strike, against the advise of the unions, by 25 bus drivers in Limerick calling for a new wage contract.
Italy: in the Naples region, the Fiat factory at Pomigliano came out on strike on 10 April in protest against the ‘externalisation' of 316 jobs (a practise which the workers fear will become the norm).
Russia: the bauxite mines were occupied by 3000 workers for over a week. They were calling for a 50% increase in their wages and the re-establishment of social benefits that had been suppressed recently. This movement had a lot of sympathy throughout the country and the support of the local population. The management granted a 20% wage increase and a part of the social benefits.
Switzerland: in Bellinzone (Tessin) a month-long strike by 430 mechanics against the suppression of 126 jobs at CFF Cargo. After a demonstration in Berne in which other workers took part, the restructuring plan was abandoned on 9 April.
Turkey: the war in Iraqi Kurdistan did not prevent the outbreak of a massive strike among the 43,000 workers in the shipyards of Tuzla on the Marmara sea. Following a demonstration on 28 February, which was met by police repression, several thousand workers went on strike for two days and held a ‘sit-in' at the shipyard. This was attacked by the police who beat up workers and carried out 75 arrests. "Our lives have less value than their dogs" the workers shouted in anger, demonstrating their intention to fight for their dignity. The workers only went back to work after the arrested strikers had been released and after they had obtained some promises from the management regarding their demands (improvements in hygiene and safety, guarantees on social payments, limitation of the working day to 7 and a half hours...). On May Day there were violent clashes between the police and demonstrating workers in Istanbul.
Algeria: three days of ‘illegal' strikes in the civil service on 13 April (1.5 million wage earners) for a wage increase and a rejection of the new wage structure. Strike by 207 cement workers at Hammam Dalaa in the M'sila region, with a platform of 17 demands about their working conditions.
Cameroon: several strikes between November 2007 and March 2008 against the inhuman working conditions in the palm oil plantations run by Socapalm, linked to a Belgian company and the French Bolloré family.
Swaziland: at the end of March, threat by 16,000 textile workers to come out on strike to obtain better wages and bonuses in this former South African ‘bantustan'
Tunisia: On 6 and 7 April, after the general strike and explosion of anger of January 2008, which was brutally repressed (over 300 deaths), a new wave of repression and arrests in the mining zone of the Gafsa basin, directed at workers struggling against redundancies; on 10 March, strike at the telemarketing firm Teleperformance which employs 4000 workers.
Canada: wildcat strike at the pork processing plant Olymel in the Vallée Jonction. Less than a year after the unions accepted a 30% cut in wages and a 7 year freeze in exchange for guarantees about job security, a spontaneous walk-out by 320 workers in one workshop following disciplinary action against a worker who arrived late for work. The management got the unions to call for a return to work and an end to slow-downs in production; soon after, 70% of the workers decided in a general assembly to stage an indefinite unofficial strike from 20 April.
USA: the screen writers' strike is well-known, but there has also been a militant strike by 5000 MTV workers [15] ; in Detroit and Buffalo, on 26 February, strike by 3650 UAW workers at Axle and Manufacturing Holding (supplying parts to General Motors and Chrysler) against a reduction in wages and benefits; work stoppages against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq by dockers on the west coast on 1st of May.
Mexico: 11 January, strike at the country's biggest copper mine in Cananea (in the province of Sonora in the north) for higher wages and improvements in safety and health. This strike was declared illegal and was violently attacked by the police and special forces (20-40 wounded, a number of arrests). The courts finally recognise the legality of the strike; on 21 January there was a new strike involving 270,000 miners.
Venezuela: massive strike by the steel workers [16] (steel is the country's second largest industry) in the Guyana province. The workers encounter harsh repression at the hands of the state controlled by that ‘champion of 21st century socialism', Chavez.
China: 17 January, revolt by workers employed by Maersk in the port of Machong. In the single region that comprises Canton, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which contains 100,000 firms and employs 10 million workers, there has been at least one strike a day involving 1000 workers since the beginning of the year!
Emirates: after making some concessions in the wake of the massive revolt by the building workers in Dubai [17] , an ‘exemplary' repression was meted out: six month prison sentences and expulsion of 45 workers for ‘inciting strikes'. But the struggle has had its impact: 1300 building workers in the neighbouring Emirate of Bahrain, suffering the same atrocious working conditions, came out on strike for a week at the beginning of April. They quickly won a wage increase because the threat of contagion in the region was so great. There are over 13 million foreign workers in the six Gulf Emirates.
Israel: wildcat strike by baggage handlers employed by El Al in march; strike by stock exchange employees in Tel Aviv for wage increases and against extra hours and casual contracts, causing considerable instability on the county's financial markets.
ICConline, May 2008.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/InvasionIraq.PNG
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/turkey
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/59/iraq
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/enternasyonalist-komunist-sol
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/turkish-invasion-iraq
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/kurdistan
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/Dealing%20with%20the%20rice%20crisis%20in%20the%20Philippines.jpg
[8] http://www.foodfirst.org
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/philippines
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/internasyonalismo
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/food-crisis
[12] https://libcom.org/news/a-world-food-crisis-empty-rice-bowls-fat-rats-16042008
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/262/environment
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/food-riots
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalismusa/200801/2355/resurgence-class-struggle-us
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2008/apr/steel-struggles
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/dec/dubai-struggles
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle