SOME weeks ago, George W. Bush had an epiphany that he was keen to share with the world. “In some of the world’s poorest nations,” he announced, “rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food.” He and his compatriots, it turns out, are deeply concerned about this mysterious phenomenon in foreign lands, and the US president wished to send “a clear message to the world that America will lead the fight against hunger for years to come”.

 

That’s really good to know: a radical foreign policy departure whereby Washington’s primary focus shifts from one abstract noun to another would indeed be welcome even in the dying days of the Bush administration. After all, unlike the war on terror, a global fight against hunger would presumably involve saving lives.

 

“The American people,” Bush continued, “are generous people and compassionate people.” As so many Iraqis and Afghans can, no doubt, attest. And so many others cannot because, at the receiving end of US-style tough love, they turned into collateral damage. Anyhow, an attempted rhetorical flourish served as a reminder that Bush’s tussle with the English language extends beyond abstract nouns: “We believe in the timeless truth,” he solemnly intoned, “to whom much is given, much is expected.”

 

The dubious grammar notwithstanding, his meaning is reasonably clear and begs the question, “How much?” The answer to that is $770 million. Add to that the $200 million pledged in mid-April for emergency food aid, and for a true measure of the Bush administrations generosity, consider this fact: the sum total approximates to the operating costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two days. That’s right: the misadventures in those two countries involve a monthly outlay of $16 billion for the US alone. Imagine how many empty bellies that could fill.

 

At a conservative estimate, according to the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the ultimate bill for the two wars will be $3 trillion. Even resources of that order may not suffice as a means of redressing the poverty that breeds global hunger, but they could go a fair distance towards achieving that goal.

 

But that goal isn’t, of course, on the American menu either as an appetizer or as an afterthought. And, one might reasonably ask, why should one expect to find it there? After all, surely the US cannot be held accountable for mismanaged economies in various parts of the world? That seems to be a fair enough point. However, it would hardly make sense to not take into consideration the role of policies disseminated by the western-dominated World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

 

The so-called structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), for instance, are geared towards privatization and the elimination of subsidies in various spheres, which demonstrably increase the vulnerability of the poor: those who have nothing to sell other than their labour. Furthermore, such policies tend to emphasize a crucial imbalance: whereas Third World countries are persuaded to stop subsidizing farmers, for instance, the European Union (EU) and the US continue to dole out agricultural subsidies. As a consequence, it becomes “cheaper” for developing nations to import western produce. Their own farmers are priced out of the market. A sudden, sharp increase in import prices – as the result of a spike in fuel costs, for instance – can then unleash havoc.

 

The present crisis, that has led to food riots across the globe, is partly a consequence also of the push for biofuels: petroleum substitutes that supposedly contribute towards reducing the greenhouse effect. Notwithstanding its reluctance to accept that fossil fuels are among the primary contributors to global warming, the US has squarely been behind this emphasis. In the US and, more damagingly, elsewhere, large tracts of land that once produced edible crops have been taken over by cash crops intended for the fuel market, notwithstanding enduring doubts about the viability of biofuels as an oil substitute. Alternatives to petroleum are undoubtedly necessary, but experts contend that ethanol is hardly the best solution, given that its contribution to the greenhouse effect isn’t all that far removed from that of petroleum.

 

Yet as long as biofuel crops continue to be more profitable than food crops, they will keep on being cultivated. SAPs and WTO rules are intended to encourage this process: the consequent extreme poverty, hunger and employment are outside their purview. China and India are frequently held up as exemplars of the new world economic order, but what’s invariably ignored is the fact that their so-called growth rates are based on the withdrawal of rights that the international proletariat desperately sought to secure in the 20th century. The growing disparities of wealth in these and other countries are also seldom deemed worthy of mention.

 

Today’s growing hunger is accounted for by the phenomena listed above, as well as other factors such as droughts (which may be a result of global warming) and, at the other extreme, speculation in the financial markets. Oil prices have spiralled upwards in the absence of discernible shortages, and it is perhaps not without  cause that Saudi Arabia has resisted pressure to pump up the volume of its exports.

 

In the existing circumstances, charity of the variety contemplated by United Nations offshoots and the Bush administration is, arguably, the most expedient means of staving off mass starvation. That does not mean, however, that we can afford to ignore the long-term implications of the present crisis, which reinforces the absurdity of market fundamentalism as an acceptable status quo. 

 

The demise a couple of decades ago of the communist bloc – and with it the phenomenon of actually existing socialism – facilitated the impression that capitalism had triumphed against all possible alternatives. That, however, is not the case. Today it is more important than ever to emphasize the fact that although the collapse of economic systems that relied on direction by communist parties was for a variety of reasons inevitable, it should not be taken to mean that capitalism is the only feasible alternative.

 

The present wave of hunger can be ameliorated through solutions based essentially on charity. It is likely, though, that thousands of people will die before the grotesqueness of the existing arrangements is acknowledged. In the longer term, what is required is an alternative not so much to neoconservatism as to capitalism. There is cause to hope that it will be found. As Karl Marx pointed out a long time ago, the philosophy of poverty cannot be allowed to persist. His riposte, in the 19th century, was to point out the poverty of philosophy. As in so many other ways, the ideas of Marx remain worthy of further exploration.

 

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