anenome's blog: "I BLOW MINDS FOR A LIVING!!"

Oh, and while we are at it, what about this 'starvation' myth???

These myths are indeed false. Thomas Malthus (wrote which is now known as the “Malthusian Theory” or the “Demographic Model”) developed an explanation for hunger in the world. According to Thomas Malthus, there are too many mouths to feed and not enough resources to go around. Malthus believed hunger occurred in cycles. When there is a lack of resources, the result is famine, disease, poverty and war which result in many people dying and in turn there is less of a population and the hunger epidemic levels off until there is another “population explosion” and the cycle repeats itself.

This explanation of hunger in the world is too simple. As a matter of fact, the world produces enough grain alone to provide every human being with 3,500 calories per day and this does not include vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, fish or grass-fed meats.

In reality, people are starving because of the horrid distribution process and the fact that corporate-owned farms (aka. Agri-business), in countries are growing crops for export to make profits rather than to feed their people, and small farmers or “peasants” as well as “subsistence farmers” are losing their land to big business take-overs. Most countries where hunger is rampant are major exporters of agricultural goods.

In Bangladesh, their official annual output of rice alone could provide each person with about one pound of grain per day. Yet the poorest third in Bangladesh eat at most 1,500 calories per day.

In Sub-Saharan Africa exports grew more rapidly than imports. In some of these countries known for famine like: Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Mali, the area of unused good farmland is many times greater than the area actually farmed.

As far as natural disasters are concerned, these only effect the peasant farmers who cannot afford or don’t have the ability to build levies, dams, pipes etc. that bigger corporate owned farmers have.

The “great potato famine” in Ireland between 1845 and 1849 killed over 1 million people. It was blamed on potato blight but Ireland during those years was a net exporter of food and exported their choicest crops to England until their own food gradually deteriorated. Peasants were pushed onto drought-prone lands, areas with bad soil or deprived of land completely until they had nothing to fall back on. Natural events are not the cause...they are the final blow.

The Bangladesh famine was similar. It was not caused by natural disasters. Rich farmers were hoarding rice and not letting any of the poor people see it. When people are denied the resources to grow or retain enough of their own harvests to meet the needs of their family or community and only money gets them the food they need, they go hungry. Peasants or just the common people’s income falls and/or food prices rise.

In Africa’s Sahel, they said famine resulted from droughts, but during those famine years, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) of the United Nations reported all but one Sahalian country produced enough food for its population. Poor farmers suffered because they were in debt to rich farmers and were forced to sell their crops for next to nothing. Which resulted in not having enough food to get through the “hunger season”.

In Ethiopia, drought was blamed for their famine, but studies showed the ’82-’85 drought effected at most 30% of their farmland. Acres of prime farmland were producing cotton and sugarcane, but for export. It was finally said that feudalistic landlordism, hoarding, and governmental indifferences caused the famine and not the drought.

“Give me your tired, your poor, I’ll piss on ‘em…that’s what the statue of bigotry says. Your poor huddled masses. Let’s club ‘em to death and get it over with and just dump ‘em on the boulevard.”

Lou Reed, New York

Global Free Trade is not the best way to insure food production is maximized. The markets respond to profits, not feeding the hungry. The WTO (World Trade Organization) was created by the GATT treaty (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs). Any country that signed the GATT treaty and/or is a member of the WTO can dispute laws in other countries.

Brazil and Venezuela went to the WTO with a complaint because the United States wouldn’t buy their oil because it didn’t meet the US environmental standards. In turn, the WTO had the United States lower the Clean Air Act by not enforcing it so Brazil and Venezuela could sell their oil over the market to the United States.

It’s all CORPORATE CAPITALIST BULLSHIT!

Global Free Trade has had its toll on a number of issues. It is responsible for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and Canada losing their jobs because giant corporations are moving their businesses to places like Mexico and South America where labor is cheap. Even Mexico is starting to feel the effects because corporations are realizing its labor and costs are even cheaper in places like China.

Global Free Trade and the Free Market are also taking their toll on agriculture. It’s the “Agri-business”, the corporate capitalists who are benefiting from free trade. Poor peasant and subsistence farmers cannot afford the machinery, pesticides etc. that are being traded on the market. Forcing small farmers out of work, putting them in debt to rich farmers or just plain being taken over by corporations or governments.

Small farmers cannot afford to buy these chemicals and pesticides in bulk and they don’t need the big machinery that “Agri-businesses” use because their acreage is so small it doesn’t justify buying these things.

Free Trade is making the bigger farms more profitable because they can afford and have the acreage to use this machinery and buy these pesticides etc. in bulk, which, in turn, make them a bigger profit and push the smaller farmers out of business.

It’s the companies that make the pesticides, herbicides and farm machinery that are making the profits and those profits don’t “trickle down” to the small farmers, the poor or the hungry. They stay in the claws of these corporate capitalists.

So, in conclusion, Global Free Trade and the Free Market has had an effect on poverty and hunger…it’s made it worse.

These elite are not necessarily the rich alone. They are made up of what C.W. Mills coined the “Military-Industrial Complex” where there are three different groups of cooperating elite:

The Corporate or Business Elite – Which comprise of rich people with connections to corporations, CEOs, stockholders, people with big salaries. People like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Nike founder Phil Knight.

Next are the Political Elite – President, Congress, Senators, Speaker of the House and Governors (who decide what government does on a more local basis).

Then there are the Military Elite – Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals, and Heads of Services, basically, the “Brass of the Military”.

All of these elite are connected to one another. The corporate elite lobby for the political elites to gain clout, change or make forced government decisions through lobbying and giving large amounts of money to political parties. And the military elite co-operate with corporate and political elite to gain prestige and hopefully be gainfully employed or somehow very well compensated once their term in the military is up. They sometimes act as spokesmen for corporate elite and/or gain seats in government administrations.

These elite have control over the “working class”. The government can make the decisions that effect the working class’ lives and corporations can make the calls that effect the lives of the working class such as set wages, outsource, pink slips etc…And the common person which is what I will refer to as the “working class” from here on, are in no position to take on these corporate capitalists. Sure, in a pluralistic society it is possible to start an organization, but the common person doesn’t have the means to start these organizations (the money or the time) and most of them are kept so uninformed throughout their lives, they wouldn’t believe the truth about our politico-economic system if you told them.

Corporations on the other hand, are able to take and keep control of the common person because they have the means of doing so. They have the money and control over the common persons’ lives. If threatened they can fire or outsource and if they want big changes in tax breaks etc…they can always lobby and threaten the government with outsourcing or whatever it takes to get the changes they want.

Individuals don’t count for much in the political sense and don’t try to organize interest groups to defeat the elite or are just to naïve to the fact that our government is basically an oligarchy on the side of big business. Thus, most of the common people cannot distinguish between those who own the wealth and those who must work for a living. As long as they get their three meals a day, a roof over their heads and a six-pack to drink while watching the corporate evening news, they don’t realize they’re being kept ignorant of what’s really going on in the world.

In the meantime, these corporate capitalist elite say they are “putting their money to work” when in all reality, they are pushing more production out of these uninformed couch potatoes and paying less wages while they kick back and watch their profits soar.

At the same time, between housing costs, medical costs, the cost of food and less wages, the common person is almost worse off than they had been since the great depression.

What do you do about it? Under excomm, or Classical Marxism, the executive committee leads to smash state, which leads to bureaucracy; which leads to hierarchy; which leads to oligarchy, which ultimately makes up fascism. Under excomm, the only way to do away with the power elites was through a bloody revolution to overthrow the government. Classical Marxists believe the state is a tool of class under which the capitalists use to control the people.

Neo-Marxists, however, found the excomm concept flawed. They found that the capitalist class is not inevitable. They believe in a revolution through the ballot box. That you can organize and have working class parties: pass laws and policies to change society towards socialism. The Neo-Marxists believe the state isn’t capitalist, but is dominated by the capitalist class because they have the money and resources to do so. They believe the capitalists win because they are more organized and have more money to spend than the working class. They believe the state is not the executive committee, that it isn’t necessarily a tool of class. They also believe that not everything people do in society is determined by the economy. An example would be the rich as well as the poor can listen to and enjoy opera and classical music. Therefore, they believe there is “Relative Autonomy” of class and culture. That there are correlations between class positions but not necessarily determinations.

Neo-Marxists believe in “False Consciousness”, to be aware of one’s self, and in order to get there, a person must not let the capitalists control the way we see the world.

We cannot allow the ruling class to manipulate the way we see the world. Now, through control with consent, the elites can control you through education, the media etc…without our even knowing it. They purposely keep specific information about the government and history out of our lives just so they can control us…that the barrier to class is lack of consciousness. Which, in today’s day and age, is very true. But this can be changed by the working class by being more aware of what’s going on in the world, and not through news outlets like FOX News….total deception. Do the homework involved; read many different sources, preferably outside the United States or if you must, at least get your news from public radio…self supported and not corporately owned and operated. It’s a good start.