[lbo-talk] Bengal Famine

[James Heartfield]

I am not sure that the Bengal Famine 1943-5 would be a "proto-typical free market famine", more an imperialist war famine. As Dennis says, the British withdrew disrupted grain supplies in the face of a Japanese invasion. Niall Ferguson in his book War of the World tries to exonerate the British authorities, but fails. This was the result of a 'scorched earth' policy on Britain's part, that was less interested in the lives of Indians than it was in saving the British Empire from defeat at Asiatic hands.

Karl Marx uses the Irish famine to show that capitalists are not interested in increasing output per se, only in increasing that output over and above the labourers consumption fund that falls to them (in this case as rents). He shows that in Ireland the landlords forced peasants to give way to pasture farming because even though the total output (peasants own consumption + rent) was less, the profits were greater than the rents. Hence their continuous pressure on the peasantry, reducing them to potato dependency. But again, this is not so much free market as in the text books, more like capitalism as it really is, wholly dependent on colonialist domination.