Obviously (what's the Left problem with GM food?)

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Wed Oct 18 09:57:02 PDT 2000


In message <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010171601320.441-100000 at industrial.egenetics. com>, Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> writes


>Overstated risks in what sense, James? Risk of (mainly US) corporations
>world food supply?

Forgive my ignorance, but hasn't the food supply been organised on capitalist lines for three hundred years now?


>Risk of frustrating land reform and rural development in countries like
>South Africa? Monsanto, on entering the South African scene, knows that
>its GM seeds, which are sold at a 'technology markup', are more expensive
>than non-GM varieties, and to make things worse, Monsanto contracts forbid
>seed re-use (or seed trade between farmers). This is going to aid the
>concentration of farming, make life more difficult for small
>(mostly black) farmers,

More intensive products tend to be more expensive. What should Monsanto do, give their products away? Concentration of farming does indeed pose challenges (which I talk about in my article in RRPE, 'two cheers foragri-business'). But resisting new technologies will make South Africa dependent on more cheaply produced foodstuffs from abroad.


>GM is the acme of industrialisation, indeed - at least industrialisation
>in its form of Fordism, where all initiative is removed from the
>productive process and concentrated in the means of production. It seems,
>James, that your socialist roots are showing - roots in that socialism of
>Trotsky, Lenin and Kautsky where progress could be be measured
>in tons of steel and coal. Rather different, I think from Marx's vision of
>the 'liberation of all the senses'.

But quite close to Marx's call for the liberation of the productive forces from the restraining relations of production. Do I plead guilty to being a socialist, well, yes, I do. And is steel a good thing? Yes, better than iron. Are tons of it better than ounces? Yes.


>A reaction against industry - yes, a reaction against that industry which
>converts Kenyan land into cut flower plantations, which converts Ghanian
>rainforests into European toilet seats.

Why not toilet seats, or flowers?


>James, you never seem to be very
>clear about who this 'middle class' is, but you're very happy to champion
>industry - that same industry which cheers on policies which strip
>countries like South Africa of an education budget, while at the same time
>deploying the products of years of education (in the form of high input
>agriculture) in the country.

I am working on the basis of the distinction between industry and capitalism. Of course if you take the view that capitalism and industry are inseparable, your only recourse is to a low population, low productivity utopia. I myself would prefer not to select that lion's share of the population that would have to be culled to allow such a solution.
>
>But then again, you do excell at being vulgar.

Harsh words, care to back them up?

-- James Heartfield



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list