What's behind the world food crisis?

World food prices rapidly increased in late 2007 and early 2008, above all the prices of grains such as rice and wheat. As hungry people take to the streets, the press reporteded on food riots in Somalia, Haiti, Mexico, and Egypt, as well as other countries. President Bush is asking Congress for $770 million in food aid, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will hold a conference on world food security in Rome next week.

What is the cause of the current food crisis? Dominique Baillard of Radio France Internationale surveys a number of commonly repeated theories in the May 2008 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique. Economic growth in emerging nations such as China, diversion of corn to ethanol production, and weather problems in Australia and other countries, have all affected the market. As prices of agricultural commodities become more volatile, speculators have entered as well, amplifying price swings.

Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin of The New York Times point to cutbacks in agricultural research as the culprit. In their recounting, "during the food surpluses of recent decades, governments and development agencies lost focus on the importance of helping poor countries improve their agriculture." Yet, while focusing on the real damage done to agricultural research programs, their article mentions in passing the reason for this "lost focus". "Many poor countries, instead of developing their own agriculture, turned to the world market to buy cheap rice and wheat. In 1986, Agriculture Secretary John Block called the idea of developing countires feeding themselves 'an anachronism from a bygone era', saying they should just buy American." Since they leave the matter here, the NYT reader would think that the change to global agriculture was simply a result of market developments.

In "Manufacturing a Food Crisis," an article in the June 2 issue of The Nation, Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South gives the details on why developing countries "turned to the world market" in the 80s and 90s. They were forced to by the rich countries. The IMF and World Bank demanded Mexico "eliminate high tariffs, state regulations and government support institutions, which neoliberal doctrine identified as barriers to economic efficiency", and peasant production of corn was further assaulted in 1994 when NAFTA eliminated agricultural tariffs. "Mexico's status as a net food importer has now been firmly established." Similarly, the Philippines went from a rice exporter to a rice importer as a result of IMF-imposed economic restructuring and its membership in the WTO.

Bello points to resistance such as that of the government of Malawi, which supported peasant agriculture, as well as to peasant movements such as La Via Campesina. Peasants "are now leading the opposition to a capitalist industrial agriculture that would consign them to the dustbin of history .... With environmental crises multiplying, the social dysfunctions of urban-industrial life piling up and industrialized agriculture creating greater food insecurity, the farmers' movement increasingly has relevance not only to peasants but to everyone threatened by the catastrophic consequences of global capital's vision for organizing production, community and life itself."

Too much democracy?

Is democracy triumphant in our age? Do the common people rule in most countries rather than elites? Does the middle class control economic power? In fact, do we have too much democracy -- has it run amok, so that there is no control, no order? So says Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek columnist, in his book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2003).

For Zakaria, the keystone to a just political order is not democracy but freedom. Liberty, "the freedom of the individual from arbitrary authority... freedom of expression, of association, and of worship, and rights of due process", can be destroyed by too much democracy. It must be maintained by a balance of different interest groups.

Are those interest groups economic classes? In his historical section, Zakaria traces the struggle between lords and kings in early modern Europe, and points to the key role of the bourgeoisie in securing liberty in England. Zakaria acknowledges his debt to Marx for pointing out that bourgeois democracy is the favored form of government for capitalism. But when he moves to the modern world, classes disappear from the analysis, except for the "middle class" -- one defined not by its economic interests but only by its income level.

Instead, what mainly ensures democracy is the income of a country. Zakaria quotes Seymour Martin Lipset to say, "the more well-to-do a nation, the greater its chances to sustain democracy." Is a country's per capita income between $6,000 and $9,000 like that of Romania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Malaysia, Turkey, or Tunisia? It's a candidate for democracy. Affluence expands the middle class, whose civil society institutions lead to liberty. Riches must be earned, however, not derived from mineral resources, to qualify - if the government does not have to tax the people for its revenues, it does not need to be accountable to them.

In analyzing the excess of democracy in the US, Zakaria points to the decline in voting percentages, low public trust in institutions, and poll-driven politicians. Even the excessive influence of lobbyists on legislation is blamed on democracy. California's initiative referendum system is the poster child for too much democracy.

In analyzing liberty and democracy, Zakaria pays explicit homage to a main framer of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison. Democratic passions are to be restrained by a system of checks and balances. His interpretation is a traditional one. "The Founding Fathers thought that the liberty with which they were most concerned was menaced by democracy. In their minds liberty was linked not to democracy but to property," as Richard Hofstadter wrote in The American Political Tradition (1948).

What is to be done? According to Zakaria, unaccountable institutions such as the Supreme Court, U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, WTO, and European Union point the way. "Without Brussels we would not have deregulated any of our major industries," as he quotes a German newspaper editor. Above all, authority must be delegated rather than carried out by elected representatives, or nothing will get done.

Zakaria never acknowledges the possibility that the ills he blames on democracy are in fact caused by its opposite - by the utter subversion and manipulation of sham democracy by capital. Preferring to rule through the forms of democracy instead of by force, capital controls the democratic arena by restricting the parameters of debate, by dominating the discourse, and if necessary by eliminating undesirable alternatives, as with the Black Panthers. However, Zakaria's book reflects the concerns of the bourgeoisie that these methods may not always work. Not even acknowledging the possibility that the democratic chaos he bemoans is the struggle of interests and classes over policy, Zakaria hopes to avoid this mess by turning over more decision making to unaccountable institutions. The real reason he fears too much democracy is thus all too apparent - the people might start to pierce the mystifications and try to use the system in their own interests. Oh, horrors: the crackdown that would then ensue might be the death of liberty, as it was with fascism in the 1930's!

But, time to move on. I read today in Tom Friedman that Zakaria has just come out with his next book, and here I am still reviewing his last one. Onwards!