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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Hunger and the Free Market (socialist countries)
Message-ID: <101@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 4-Aug-85 20:25:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.101
Posted: Sun Aug  4 20:25:56 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 5-Aug-85 08:11:37 EDT
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard )
Organization: U. Chicago, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lines: 64

nrh@inmet suggests

> "Endless Enemies, The Making of an Unfriendly World" by Jonathan Kwitny

I second Nat's recommendation.  Kwitny, BTW, points out that Cuba has
less poverty, illiteracy, bloodshed, and disease than almost anywhere
else in Latin America, and a standard of living roughly on a par with
Mexico's and Argentina's.  Now Nicaragua faces the same terrible
fate, from which the contras are endeavoring to save it.

A word about world hunger:  The world production of foodstuffs is,
right now, sufficient to provide every human being (as well as pets)
not merely with an adequate but even an abundant diet.  The
*potential* food production of the earth, with existing technologies
alone, is far greater.  Yet some 800 million people (most of whom grow
food for a living) are chronically hungry if not actually starving.
This is nothing new.  Throughout the Irish potato blights (which were
due to the lack of genetic diversity of the potatoes) of the 1840's,
Ireland produced enough food to keep its population stuffed and still
be a net food exporter, yet millions of Irish were hungry.  The
British govt. said laissez-faire, the magic of the marketplace will
provide the solution.  It did:  over a million Irish starved to
death, and the famine was over.  The Brits were not lacking in
compassion, however:  they sent troops to "preserve order."  (See
Cecil Woodham-Smith, *The Great Hunger:  Ireland 1845-49*.)

> I AM curious about carnes' outline -- what evidence do Lappe and
> Collins give for the following?
>
>>  Lessons from societies eliminating hunger.  The only countries
>>  effectively overcoming hunger, according to Lappe and Collins, are
>>  those incorporating aspects of "socialism," where people are trying
>>  to create an economic system in which all have the opportunity to
>>  participate in decisions about the use of resources and in which all
>>  are assured of food security.
>
> Which countries did they use as examples for THIS little gem of 
> wisdom?  Over what time span?

The most important examples they discuss are China and Cuba.  China
suffered almost annual famines before the revolution; its population
has approximately doubled since then, yet hunger has been essentially
eliminated.  *Food First* also discusses Vietnam, Tanzania,
Mozambique, East Germany, and other countries.  I would add
Nicaragua, whose revolution has occurred since L&C wrote.  None of
these countries is held up as an ideal, and no one is claiming that
socialism (whatever that is) is some simple formula that
automatically reduces hunger wherever applied.  Rather, if one is led
to agree with the authors that the chief cause of world hunger is the
gross inequalities that exist in control over food-producing
resources, then the cure for world hunger is to redistribute that
control so that it is more equalized, and that is (part of) the
program of the "socialist" countries -- not that they are equally
successful in doing so.

As examples of the other kind, one might list the US, the
Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh, South Africa, Zaire, Mexico, El
Salvador, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, and many others.  Most Americans
think of Venezuela, if they think of it at all, as an oil-rich nation
located just off the coast of Aruba.  Yet despite one of the highest
per capita GNP's in the Third World, the majority of Venezuelans are
malnourished.

R. Carnes