Food as a commodity sends a message

As two-thirds of the United States suffers from the largest drought to hit the country in 50 years, food crop prices rocket and speculation is rising on the financial markets.

Corn and soybeans, essential for feeding large swathes of the planet’s population, stand at record highs. Corn has jumped between 30 to 50 per cent and soybeans are up 60% since last December.

For investors in food as commodities, of course, it’s great news. The Fiscal Times, for example, put matters like this:

“Agricultural commodities have handily beaten most other asset classes so far this year as a place where investors have been able not only to generate positive returns but capture gains of 20 percent or more, depending on their ability to buy into the right contract at the right time, and roll that contract over when it approaches expiry".

Thus, big consumers of grain from Egypt and Morocco to South Korea and Taiwan are facing a renewed bout of food inflation as cash rich gamblers on the commodity exchanges drive food inflation far beyond the limits of supply and demand.

In fact, it seems that economic, social and political effects of the sharp rise in agricultural commodity prices have barely begun. And with the increased cost of food, memories of the world’s recent food crises abound.

In 2007-08 rapidly rising food prices triggered riots around the world. In 2011 wheat prices were a major factor in pushing Egypt’s masses onto the road to revolution.

This time around, in Indonesia, the tofu industry has threatened to strike over rising soyabean prices; in Mexico, the cost of corn tortillas is on the rise; and Iran last week witnessed a rare protest over the cost of chicken.

Now, sharply rising food prices are intensifying the already existing impact of austerity measures imposed by governments since 2008.  Austerity measures are of course part of the effort to pass the responsibility for debts accumulated in bailing out the banks onto already beleaguered populations.

The World Bank is one of many agencies of the global capitalist class that are worried. Africa is their last hope of a source of profitable growth for corporations in the deepening global depression.

“Certainly there is a lot of reason to worry’ says Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

“It is a threat … if they (the food prices) keep rising, again we will have social upheaval that will threaten economic growth in Africa”

Another global food price spike will squeeze net food importers in Africa. It will combine with the euro zone crisis in Europe and the continuing slowdown in China’s growth to negatively impact African exporters of oil and other commodities.

But, naturally, the Bank’s first and only concern is to return to profitable growth – the self-vicious circle of profit-fuelled commodity production process that has culminated in the present crisis.

The ways in which abnormal weather conditions like the US drought interact with global warming and climate change is extremely complex. But even Brad Plummer of the mainstream Washington Post is now warning about the effects of climate change on US farmers.

He has concluded that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2012 report on extreme events, which brings together existing investigations, concluded that it was probable that droughts would “become more intense in many parts of the world if the planet keeps heating up — a trend that could disrupt the world’s food supply”.

The use of land and food production to generate profit and for speculation is fundamentally incompatible with feeding the world’s population.  Breaking the vicious circle between the corporate profit system, climate change and the threat of starvation for millions on the planet is most urgent.

A global network of People’s Assemblies can remove break the cycle by seizing control of the land, factories, offices and infrastructure and setting out on a path to sustainable production replacing the chase for profits with the interests of the planet and those who live on it.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Obama - defender of the status quo

As President Obama starts looking towards a second term in the White House, the realisation is growing among would-be supporters that he is just as much a defender of the status quo as his predecessor, George. W. Bush.

In fact, Obama has maintained many of the policies inherited from Bush. Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo remains open and military trials are still in place. Bush’s “war on terror” is carried on by targeted killing of “suspects” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A new military intervention, this time in Libya, was done without Congressional approval in the manner of the previous administration.

Banks continued to be bailed out at the expense of Main Street and tens of thousands of people lost their homes as Washington stood idly by. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, were extended last December while Obama last week agreed to massive public spending cuts that will fall on the poorest.

Now, Obama stands poised to attack the massive federal budget deficit by reductions in welfare programmes that increasing numbers of Americans rely on. In the early months of the Obama presidency, Glenn Greenwald was not one of those who thought that all that was lacking was sound advice and a good strategy.

Greenwald, a constitutional and civil rights lawyer, author and blogger, says: “What evidence is there that Obama has some inner, intense desire for more progressive outcomes? These are the results they're getting because these are the results they want – for reasons that make perfectly rational political sense.”

His economic policies, Greenwald says, have “the added benefit of keeping corporate and banking money on Obama's side (where it overwhelmingly was in 2008)”. Being surrounded by former Goldman Sachs executives like treasury secretary Tim Geithner doesn’t hurt either. These types do not sit around wondering how to increase welfare or get a decent health bill through Congress. Their instincts are entirely the opposite. More in sorrow than anger, Greenwald adds:

When does he [Obama] offer stirring, impassioned defences of the Democrats' vision on anything, or attempt to transform (rather than dutifully follow) how Americans think about anything? It's not that he lacks the ability to do that. Americans responded to him as an inspirational figure and his skills of oratory are as effective as any politician in our lifetime. It's that he evinces no interest in it. He doesn't try because those aren't his goals. It's not that he or the office of the Presidency are powerless to engender other outcomes; it's that he doesn't use the power he has to achieve them because, quite obviously, achieving them is not his priority or even desire. Whether in economic policy, national security, civil liberties, or the permanent consortium of corporate power that runs Washington, Obama, above all else, is content to be (one could even say eager to be) guardian of the status quo. And the forces of the status quo want tax cuts for the rich, serious cuts in government spending that don't benefit them (social programs and progressive regulatory schemes), and entitlement "reform" -- so that's what Obama will do.

Greenwald’s analysis is, as far as it goes, sound. It is limited by his failure in nearly 3,000 words to mention the crisis of capitalism which is driving Obama’s politics. What next? Will the “liberals” in and around the Democratic Party once more campaign for Obama in 2012 on the basis that the Republicans in the White House would be far worse. It was the argument that resonated during last year’s general election in Britain, when it was clear that Labour was much committed to spending cuts as were the Tories.

In practice, there is no essential difference between the two major parties in the United States, just as in Britain little separates the main parties. In Wisconsin, where the state government has implemented savage cuts and taken away trade union rights, the response was sit-ins and the creation of a People’s Assembly. That is the right response, not just to the failed politics of the Democratic Party but to the poverty of capitalist politics in Britain too.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

AV is no miracle cure for broken political system

To listen to the supporters of the Alternative Vote (AV) system, you would think that a “Yes” vote in the May 5 referendum would lead to a miraculous new lease of life for the clapped-out parliamentary democracy we have now.

A letter that came through my door the other day claims that AV will lead to MPs working harder, give voters a stronger voice and tackle “jobs for life” at Westminster. Under AV, voters can rank candidates if they want to. The preferences of bottom candidates are redistributed until someone has 50% of the votes. Following the 2010 election two-thirds of MPs lacked majority support, the highest figure in British political history.

But evidence suggests AV is not exactly a lot “fairer” than the present first-past-the-post (FTTP) system where the candidate with the most votes is declared the winner. The real outcome of AV, planned or otherwise, would be coalition politics on a grand and lasting scale.

In an indirect way, the AV campaign reflects the break-up of the two-party system in the period of corporate-driven globalisation. Where Old Labour, at least sometimes, did not totally identify with big business and finance, its 21^st century version does. The Tories under David Cameron have made themselves a successor to Blair rather than Thatcher.

In 1951, the two main parties polled 96.8% of the total electorate between them. By last year, the figure had slumped to 65.1%. Yet the voting system continues to reward Labour and the Tories, who captured 86% of the seats in the House of Commons last May.

All parties are concerned to win the votes of the so-called “squeezed middle” and their concern is what the money markets and transnational corporations think about their policies. So, for example, the Electoral Reform Society, which backs the “Yes” campaign, says: “It [AV] encourages candidates to chase second- and third-preferences, which lessens the need for negative campaigning (one doesn't want to alienate the supporters of another candidate whose second preferences one wants) and rewards broad-church policies.”

Labour leader Ed Miliband’s message at the launch of the “Yes” campaign was similar, claiming that “AV would encourage us to build bridges, not barriers, between parties so that we can persuade more voters of our case” before adding: “I believe today’s political culture, which only encourages division, profoundly damages belief in politics.

Most Labour MPs are against AV, which is not surprising because their party only needs a three-point lead in votes in order to secure an overall majority under FTTP, whereas the Conservatives need about an 11 point lead. Miliband, like Blair, is a “moderniser”, despite what his MPs might want. As to the “fairness” of AV, that is not at all clear cut, as a report by nef makes clear. The think-tank has developed an index of “voter power”. Its report says: “AV would bring an increase in the average power of UK voters from 0.285 of a vote to 0.352 of a vote, where a score of one is a fair vote.”

Nic Mark, the creator of nef's voter power index, says AV would bring some improvements but would not get rid of the main problems. "Unfortunately, whatever the outcome of the referendum, politicians will still largely ignore voters in safe seats, while they spend most of their time, money and energy on voters in marginal constituencies."

Surely the point is that an unfair voting system reflects a broken political system. Traditional bourgeois politics is more about managing state structures on behalf of corporate and financial interests, than offering real choice. The last government bailed out the banks and the Coalition is cutting the deficit to appease the money markets. Whatever the voting system, this would have been the outcome.

So I can’t get worked up about the AV referendum and will withhold my vote. Democracy cannot end with the Westminster model. My energies, therefore, will be directed to working for completely new forms of democratic government around the concept of People’s Assemblies.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Sarkozy forms crisis cabinet while unions dither

As oil refineries and public transport depots are blocked, petrol stations run dry and young people riot in the Paris suburbs, political tensions are rising in France. The unrest will climax today in demonstrations throughout the country intended to influence Wednesday’s vote in the country’s Senate.

To quell the huge mobilisation of workers, pensioners and young people, President Nicholas Sarkozy has formed a crisis cabinet to ensure the continuity of fuel supplies, with three departments – the interior, economy and environment ministries put in charge of preventing disruption of supplies.

The wave of protests against the Sarkozy government’s attack on pension rights has closed schools across France and seen clashes with riot police on the streets. Workers at France’s 12 refineries are in their eighth day of strike. Protesters are blocking access to many fuel distribution depots round the country.

It is the sixth day of weekday protests and work stoppages called by national labour union confederations since June, but the unrest has intensified since last week when unions at railways and refineries began open-ended industrial action, joined now by truck drivers and delivery workers. Since September 7, pension protest numbers have involved a staggering 15 million people, according to official sources.

A majority of French people -- 71 percent in one poll -- back protests against the plan to raise the minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67 respectively, a measure the government says is the only way to stem a ballooning pension deficit.

France is one of a very few countries remaining where pensions arrangements are almost universally provided by the state. Payments to pensioners are taken out of current tax receipts. Trade unions have fought long and hard to protect the right to a decent income after a lifetime of work.

It is no accident that the French Senate is voting on the same day that the UK coalition government finally gives the details of its unprecedented assault on the public sector. These two events, and many similar are choreographed by the return to recession which marks the end of the phoney recovery. Capitalist society has entered into a period of contraction and nothing can be allowed to stand in its way.

But as the French state steps up its operations, leaders of France’s main trade unions have no plan beyond pressurising a government that is determined to see through cuts in pension provision.

All the union chiefs know that Sarkozy will not give in and are feverishly even now considering their exit strategy even as the fuel shortage worsens and protests spread to the volatile suburbs, the banlieues. As the right-wing daily, Le Figaro, notes, the union confederations are divided over their strategy facing a government which will not give in to their demands. The strategy of the Confederation General de Travail (CGT) faces pressure to call a general strike, something which it has signally failed to do so far. The mass defence of jobs, services, benefits and rights is leading directly to a confrontation with the state, something that they and the other union bureaucrats are desperate to avoid.

Workers and students should join forces with local communities to form People’s Assemblies that can move beyond protest and challenge the French state. The French ruling class and union bureaucrats are haunted by the spectre of the 1968 General Strike, when the possibility of people’s power arose but the opportunity wasted.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Breaking out of the circle

“We are alarmed to be informed that, despite earlier agreements with the Police and Birmingham City Council, West Midlands Police are attempting to stop the trade union demonstration against public service cuts from marching past the Conservative Party conference at the International Convention Centre on Sunday 3rd October... "

So begins a petition to West Midlands Police appealing to them to restore the rights of trade unionists and others to demonstrate outside the Tory party conference in October. It is not even a protest for the right to protest, it is simply a polite "ask" of the police to restore that which they had no right to remove in the first place.

There is a kind of circular logic to the whole "rights" question. Because really what are rights? Do we have a birthright to these rights and if so, then logic would seem to suggest that they cannot be removed no matter what arguments the police "in the interests of public order etc" and the state authorities make. If that route is taken, then that should be the end of the matter - our rights are inalienable.

But the dismayed tone of this letter suggests that the signatories to the document, who include Labour MPs and trade unionists and left-wing film director Ken Loach, do not viscerally believe in that idea. These members and supporters of the Right to Work campaign, good people though they undoubtedly are, are taking an underwhelming approach to this very serious issue.

There are in fact two issues here. First: what can people who are aiming to demonstrate against this government's austerity measures hope to achieve? The senior partner in the coalition is not going to return to Westminster convinced of the error of its ways - the protests will make no difference whatever in that regard. Second: what will they do if the 'right to protest' is not magnanimously restored, meekly acquiesce? Hopefully not. It would actually be uncharacteristic of them, going on past form, because back in February this year members stormed the Conservative Party Spring Conference in Brighton. Unquestionably a militant action!

They have also given support to workers in dispute, including building solidarity with the BA cabin crews and Royal Mail workers, for instance. Now however the ground seems to be shifting for some reason. Perhaps it's because they wish to appeal to a wider section of the population who might be frightened off by 'militancy' or 'direct action'? Probably not a worry the campaigners need entertain, given the level of dissatisfaction and anger out there. So, given that they have planned to protest, that is, they have decided that 'doing something', even if that something achieves not much at all, is better than 'doing nothing' they really ought to follow through and not be derailed by some sort of liberal respect for the forces of law and order, when quite obviously those very forces are intent on simply protecting 'our rulers' from any uncomfortable experiences.

Given that the supporters include the likes of Ed Balls and Diane Abbott, perhaps it's not too surprising that the Right to Work campaign is leaning towards respectability, at least in its public face. Having Labour Party leader hopefuls on board amounts to a kind of co-option, or at least the danger of it, they might after all be the government again one day!

Whatever the outcome of the Right to Work's little dispute with the police and however they resolve it if the answer is No, there will be protesters from various other groups outside the ICC on 3rd. October. Members of the IWW for example are planning to march along with a militant workers bloc and things may get lively!

This brings us back in suitably circular fashion to the basic question of what constitutes 'rights' and how far can we go in the exercise of them. Just applying peaceful pressure perhaps? http://www.abouthumanrights.co.uk/human-rights-your-rights-protest.html Or are there other courses of action such as working for People’s Assemblies, that we claim, assert and utilise, come what may?

Fiona Harrington
A World to Win