[DEBATE] : Re: (Fwd) Tony Hall

[David Hallowes]

Hi Tony 

The tendency of the left to target those 'reformists' closest to its own
positions is one that discomforts me - partly because it smacks of rivalry
(the language of 'isolating' this or that organisation lurks in the
sub-text) as much as principle. Soros et al are often treated much more
generously. In most cases I would prefer debate to denunciation, but it is
not always the case that the difference is in the long term goals - there
are as often real differences on immediate action which derive from
differences of analysis & vision.

I want to pick up the bit on farm subsidies. First, I think there's a
difference between the use of protection as a weapon of the weak and its use
as a weapon of the strong (Arrighi makes the point Hegemony Unravelling). 

Second, subsidies are generally justified as supporting farmers. But their
real use has been to build the power of agri-business - the real
beneficiaries being big corporations rather than farmers. The long term
effect, in my view, is to drive the process of concentration which finally
results in farmers losing their land. So they create a conflict between the
short term interests of farmers who need the subsidy to cover the difference
between production costs (dictated by upstream corporate profits) and farm
gate prices (dictated by downstream profits) and their long term interests. 

Along with this process has been the massive transformation of the
countryside - both depopulating it and destroying ecological functioning.
All in the name of productivity which is itself dependent on subsidies and
the structure of markets brought into being by corporate power (without
subsidies, peasant agriculture is generally more productive - and often more
productive (per hectare) even when industrial agriculture is subsidised -
but not more productive in market terms). The implication is that only those
countries which can afford the subsidy will have a 'competitive' farming
sector. 

In short, I do not agree that Samir Amin provides a better way of
understanding subsidies - much as I admire what little I know of his work.
But it doesn't follow that I think liberalised export oriented agriculture
is the answer. Particularly when this is predicated on investments by
northern corporations empowered by subsidies (perhaps to the point where
they no longer need them) and this goes unmentioned in arguments which
conjure up the image of peasants benefiting from 'market access'.

You ask 'what country has ever escaped poverty by depending on agricultural
exports?' Arguably, one answer is the US in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries (facilitated by genocide). How about this question for the 20th
century: what country not on the cold war frontier escaped poverty? But I am
also uncomfortable with the use of 'country' in these questions since it
conceals who's getting poor or rich within them and keeps the argument on a
country macro level which conceals the operation of production chains.

So finally to David Harvey - whose work I also admire. I do not share Marx's
view 'that imperialism, like capitalism, can prepare the ground for human
emancipation from want and need'. Right now the combination is driving
towards what Saddam might call the mother of all environmental catastrophes
(climate change) which will leave most of those who survive in want and
need. But before we come to that, how much of the poverty we want to escape
was not and is not itself created by the operation of imperialism and
capitalism? I do not share the faith in (capitalist) science and technology.
The technology systems and innovations of industrial agriculture are, to my
mind, intrinsic to the production of power relations - part of the weaponry
- witness current debates on gmos and earlier debates on the green
revolution. Again, this doesn't mean that I want to endorse some
retrospective pre-modern idyll. Or that I think science is all one
(capitalist) thing, or that I think scientific forms of observation and
enquiry are incompatible with alternative organic agric technologies, or
that I think 'pre-modern' farmers were incapable of innovation based on
close observation. 

I would agree that, in so far as modernism is inseparable from capitalism
and imperialism it creates the ground from which we must move willy nilly -
just as feudalism created the ground from which the peasant rebellions moved
- but not that its technology innovations give it a privileged place within
what is made the story of human emancipation. 

David.




-----Original Message-----
From: debate-bounces at lists.kabissa.org
[mailto:debate-bounces at lists.kabissa.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Bond
Sent: 22 February 2006 06:14 AM
To: debate: SA discussion list 
Cc: E&T Hall
Subject: [DEBATE] : (Fwd) Tony Hall

(Our dear comrade Tony asked me to post this, and he sincerely wants 
feedback. I told him that though there's terrific analysis below, the 
punchline is dreadful - probably my supervisor's worst-ever idea - and he 
has a responsibility to show how the balance of forces can be adjusted to 
make anything like a 'global new deal' happen, given the vast and growing 
weight of evidence to the contrary. But let's hope he's back more often on 
the debate list and can make his case... Do feedback to him at the cc line 
address - and here, too.)