BREAD AND RADICAL CHANGE:

...the Wall Street Journal for Nov...

...Contrary to popular belief, the global giants have a tendency to displace more workers than they create jobs for, hence swelling the ranks of the unemployed and exercising a negative influence on income distribution...

...Numerous other studies of agricultural production in poor countries point to the same unequal distribution of the benefits of increased productivity...

...For example, in By Bread Alone, Brown notes that ". . . for the sizable segment of mankind that spends 80 percent of its income on food, a doubling in the price of wheat or rice cannot possibly be offset by increased expenditures...

...Of course all of this escapes Brown precisely because he is content to analyze merely the outward manifestations of this distorted interdependence rather than the core of the whole problem...

...it seems, however, to be ending up not in Latin American stomachs but in fran-chised restaurant hamburgers in the United States...

...Clearly, if the ability to eat is a function of one's income, trends in income distribution in poor countries offer no grounds for optimism...

...190) Unfortunately for the people of the underdeveloped world, they do not live in countries that resemble China and therefore, Brown has only orthodox Malthusian proposals to offer them, coupled with his hopes for some redistribution and modest increases in agricultural productivity...

...hence his general categories are likely to become increasingly anachronistic...

...To be sure, population growth also contributes to the unemployment problems of poor countries, but more often the case is that high fertility rates only exacerbate underlying trends...

...by 1970, their incomes were one-twentieth of persons living in the advanced countries...

...That Brown does not realize this I am sure of, but it is completely consistent with his propensity to analyze the outward manifestations of a social system and to ignore its essence...

...The poverty of their societies, in turn, manifests itself most visibly in low agricultural productivity, chronically deficient foreign exchange reserves (reserves of other countries' currencies which a country may use to import goods from other countries), and the massive wastage of human resources which I have just mentioned-often an underdeveloped country's greatest economic resource-can contribute nothing to a country's growth if they lie idle...

...His heavy reliance upon and indiscriminate use of that term converts it from what it basically is, an antagonistic relationship between rich and poor countries, into some kind of a relationship which is (or can be) essentially harmonious...

...Because to some extent the poor countries realize this, they are beginning to take protectionist measures to safeguard the raw materials with which they supply the industrial countries...

...It is despair, grief and pain...

...Put differently, in the words of economist David Snow, "demand" means "can afford...

...The great majority of the people in the underdeveloped (or Third) world attempt to survive on subsistence incomes, their diets are grossly inadequate, decent health care and education are virtually non-existent because these people are simply too poor to avail themselves of the benefits of modern science and technology...

...Global economic activity, consumption of resources, and production of wasteful commodities have all been increasing at exponential rates...

...To Brown, however, this phenomenon of interdependence can also be a warning signal, if properly heeded...

...12, 1974 emphasizes this point with remarkable clarity: ". . . the U.S...

...Annually, these flows far outweigh any direct aid or development assistance which flows from the rich countries and multilateral agencies to the poor...

...delegation to the World Food Conference in Rome has proposed a resolution to restrict the non-agricultural use of fertilizer...

...Fortunately, Lester Brown and his assistant, Erik Eckholm, have more integrity than that, and consequently my criticism of their efforts will rest on more substantive grounds...

...177) Presumably, this "systematic simplification" will lead to an overall stabilization of rates of economic growth in the advanced countries and to a more equitable international distribution of resources...

...As far as I can tell, Brown offeis the underdeveloped countries no such solutions...

...A 75 percent increase in meat production in Nicaragua was accompanied by only a three percent increase in average consumption...

...In a passage worth quoting at length...

...The Catholic Church, among others, has called on its members to fast twice per week in order that more food might be sent to the needy abroad...

...One basic problem with Lester Brown's analytical approach to the current world crisis and hence with his prescriptions for reversing what he believes to be disastrous trends is his whole notion of interdependence...

...unfortunately any beginning student in economics knows that it is not...

...From 1925 to 1970, the percentage of the Latin American work force employed in the manufacturing sector actually decreased...

...Lester R. Brown is a Senior Fellow at such an organization-the Overseas Development Council...

...This is particularly true when he discusses the productivity gains in agriculture which many poor countries made in the 1960s...

...Actually this should come as little or no surprise...

...In addition, such phenomena as inflation, energy and various commodity shortages, droughts and natural disasters inevitably take a greater toll on the poor countries than on the affluent...

...And because of the nature of global interdependence, the cumulative effects would be like ripples on a pond -and the effects would naturally be more traumatic in the poor countries...

...Many are simply untouched by meaningful economic activity...

...In no way should this statement be interpreted as supportive of the oppressive regimes which rule the great majority of OPEC countries...

...Japan, which imports roughly 99 percent of her energy needs, announced cutbacks in fertilizer production and reduced her exports because the energy crisis sent prices skyrocketing and produced shortages at home...

...He simply cannot afford to pay for the irrigation, the pesticide, the fertilizer-or perhaps even the land itself on which his title may be vulnerable and his tenancy uncertain...

...As MIT's Paul Rosenstein-Rodan has pointed out, at the beginning of this century, the per capita income of persons in the underdeveloped countries was one-half the per capita income of people in the advanced countries...

...Eugene Black, of Chase Manhattan and the World Bank...

...Hence farmers in poor countries suffered both from inflated prices-and absolute shortages, thus condemning many to bankruptcy, deeper indebtedness, or starvation...

...dwindling food reserves, population growth in poor countries, environmental deterioration and resource scarcity...

...With regard to the "rich" countries, I will proceed on the assumption that Brown is aware that "rich, overfed, and affluent" are hardly accurate descriptions of large segments of the populations of the so-called rich countries, and that what he really means when he talks about the "rich" countries are the powerful and affluent persons and organizations in these countries who make their needs into public policy...

...According to a Council report, the organization is attempting to "increase American understanding of the problems faced by developing countries and the importance of the countries to the United States...

...a 40 percent increase in Guatemala by a 6 percent decrease in average consumption...

...For a country with limited economic and natural resources, China has been remarkably successful in achieving ambitious goals in mass literacy, nutrition and public health...

...increase the incredibly low-level of agricultural and industrial productivity with the introduction of modern equipment and knowledge, and even deliver some measure of relief to desperate and starving people...

...In a revealing passage in By Bread Alone, he tells us that "Perhaps the best example of how an array of economic and social policies can be used to slow population growth is the comprehensive effort now under way to satisfy what is determined were the basic social needs of the Chinese people...

...Ambassador to Chile and a participant in ITT's plans to induce "economic collapse" in that country...

...Poverty is the grief of parents watching helplessly as their three-year-old child dies of a routine childhood disease because, like half of mankind, they do not have access to any medical care...

...This is precisely what I have tried to show: That someone who deals only with the outward manifestations of a social system is likely to be a poor and hopelessly inadequate advocate of real social change.essly inadequate advocate of real social change...

...Though he often pays lip-service to the fact that this is a dynamic and not a static world, his analysis is for the most part static, and almost thoroughly devoid of historical content...

...was in the midst of returning cropland, idle for years under government subsidy programs, to cultivation and thus exported less of her supply of fertilizer...

...At the same time, a nationwide network of family-planning clinics has been established offering a full range of free contraceptive services- not only condoms, but also the pill, the IUD, and sterilization...

...In his 1972 address to the Bank's Board of Governors, McNamara noted that "The miracle of the Green Revolution may have arrived, but for the most part the poor farmer has not been able to participate in it...

...Mexico, Pakistan, Turkey and Sri Lanka were other countries which registered impressive productivity gains...

...for that we need policies attuned not to the next world but to the harsh but inescapable economics of this one...

...Some will object that I have over-exaggerated the unworkability and logical flaws of Lester Brown's and Erik Eckholm's scenario for change...

...It is this lack of understanding of the nature of what we are dealing with which allows Brown to sincerely call for a "major increase in the general flow of resources from the rich countries to poor...

...with the usual result being that the underdeveloped countries, however wretched and miserable they might be, are advised that they should never lose faith in the ability of capitalist development to remedy their problems...

...If either of these things are lacking (in our case, at least the first is lacking), then the transfer of ownership will not take place, "Need" in and of itself does nothing whatsoever to create "demand" unless it is backed up with purchasing power...

...Some stagnant economies may begin to grow, per capita incomes may rise, and, a few dictators may be overthrown...

...Among the array of big names which occupy the Council's Board are Robert O. Anderson, chairman of Atlantic-Richfield...

...Free abortion services are readily available in rural as well as urban areas . . . Government-supported efforts to secure equal rights for women in a sphere of economic and political activity are designed to provide means of self-fulfillment other than childbearing...

...Namely, like those of so many humanists, Brown's brand of humanism has little or no structural foundation and because of this, he often misleads himself into thinking that his quixotic world is the real one...

...In Brown's mind, this must seem highly contradictory, because he reminds us many times that population control can take place effectively only within the context of general economic and social betterment for the people who have the greatest need for population control-the poorest people in the underdeveloped countries...

...Like Mill, Brown envisions the evolution of some sort of "stationary state" in which economic growth in the advanced countries gradually ebbs and the accumulation of wealth (capital) is drastically reduced...

...All is not without hope, however, for Brown gives us an indication as to where he really believes hope lies in the future for the poor countries...

...And because many of these countries which we are discussing lack even the basic social infra-structures to undertake a social project such as population control, it is doubtful that population control will be successful even on its own limited and self-contradictory terms...

...All of this, however, does not necessarily imply that progressive social change will occur in these countries, or at least what I believe is meant by the term...

...However, economic theory would suggest that under conditions of advanced capitalism, this looks more like a formula for permanent depression than a policy for stabilization, which Brown believes it to be...

...Poverty is the longing of a young boy playing outside a village school but unable to enter because his parents lack the few dollars needed to buy textbooks...

...He has become a well-respected figure in the field of "development" studies and his books are always timely, full of relevant statistical information and passionately argued...

...It is for this reason that he envisions some sort of new international cooperation on what he sees as...

...100) For such inhuman living conditions in the underdeveloped world to exist side-by-side with the "growing affluence" of the industrialized world, especially given the high level of technological development and the state of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century, Brown realizes is not simply a matter of one or two popular crises which fill the daily newspapers (the world hunger crisis, the population crisis, etc...

...These were made primarily by the introduction of new higher-yielding varieties of seeds, the in-- troduction of more capital intensive technology and expanding the total acreage under cultivation...

...but the convergence of all of these crises at their common starting and finishing points...

...My guess is that once inflation and recession of the current magnitude have taken their course, there will be quite a lot less "affluence" in the rich countries than there has been heretofore...

...However, because the interdependent relationship between the advanced countries is vastly different from that between the advanced and the underdeveloped countries, it does not seem to be an essential part of the discussion here...

...It is the despair of a father of seven who must join the swelling ranks of the unemployed with no prospect of unemployment compensation...

...Lester Brown has no idea how the underdeveloped world developed into such a state...

...A case in point is his call for the affluent consumers in the advanced world to consume less than they have heretofore and that they should also strive for less wasteful and more ecological modes of consumption...

...Thus the Latin American country contributed over four-fifths of every investment dollar to these very profitable enterprises, yet only one-fifth of every dollar of profit remained in the particular country...

...His two most recent books, In the Human Interest and By Bread Alone (with Erik Eckholm), are particularly important because they express views which are widely shared and bear heavily upon the debate surrounding the 1974 world conferences on food and population...

...This criticism I will elaborate upon presently, but first I must introduce another important train of Brown's thought into his model...

...But if the reader expects this, he or she will be disappointed...

...Thus total wheat output in India grew from 11 million tons in 196S to 27 million tons in 1972...

...62) The price of wheat and rice, he notes, tripled between 1972 and 1974...

...This is not to speak of the growing inequality between the "rich" and the poor countries...

...The International Labor Office estimated that at least one-quarter of the labor force in the underdeveloped countries was unemployed or underemployed in 1970 and that this would rise to 30 percent in 1980...

...The nationwide availability of birth control services is reinforced by an intensive educational program designed to instill an awareness of the relationship between China's future population growth and both individual and national well-being...

...While growth rates in the advanced countries (capitalist and non-capitalist alike) have begun to level off or decline, many regions of the underdeveloped world have stubbornly resisted various population control measures...

...he simply assumes it...

...These capital flows take the form of low prices paid for valuable raw materials, dividends, global corporations' repatriation of huge profits on investment, servicing of old debts, management fees and so on...

...multinational corporations...

...Clearly, if such a tendency were to manifest itself in raw materials other than energy, and Brown believes that this is a distinct possibility, then the consequences for the world's poor would be beyond statistical measurement...

...Thus, because it is so devoid of structural analysis, Lester Brown's model of change is left with no other viable alternative but population control...

...If you restrict non-agricultural uses of fertilizer for example, you reduce demand and therefore price...

...Of course, all of Brown's analysis is uncluttered by this talk of "classes" and "exploitation" because he simply does not include them in any systematic way in his mode) of the contemporary world...

...mass poverty...

...I do not doubt for a moment that some governments in the underdeveloped world may be successful in their attempts to curb rampant population growth...

...Much of this growing income disparity comes about, not as Brown would have us believe, as a result of population growth, but because of the penetration of underdeveloped economies by multinational corporations...

...Though class analysis-which is, at least in part, the same thing as "distribution"-should be central to any model of political economy, Brown barely acknowledges that classes exist in the rich countries and inadequately analyzes the matter in poor countries...

...But nevertheless, benefits for particular countries resulting from the "Green Revolution" in agriculture were not so dramatic as to convince World Bank President Robert McNamara that they provide any long-term solution for the World's poor...

...Again, it is clear that the immediate problem lies in the maldistribution of income...

...At the same time, the U.S...

...This represents an enormous cash drain from the underdeveloped countries...

...As in the case of lower fertilizer production, depression in the advanced countries does not "help feed the hungry...

...The reader might expect (and indeed has a right to demand) that since it is clear that poverty is the essential problem and cause of deprivation in the underdeveloped world, Brown would give us some sort of indication as to why he believes that the underdeveloped world developed, as it did, into poverty and the developed world into affluence...

...It can only drive a subsistence diet below the survival level...

...Brown knows that this kind of a situation will not continue forever in the present form...

...The latter proposal is, of course, less feasible, since the President Thieus and General Pinochets of the world are no more concerned with the welfare of their own workers than is the president of IBM...

...Experience has shown that what one usually finds in such studies amounts to the academic equivalent of prostitution: the scholar performs in a manner which the Board members would approve of...

...Clearly to call for reduced consumption in the advanced countries and hope that somehow the goods will find their way to the poor countries, is to avoid, rather than confront the critical issues of the world food crisis...

...We are certainly not suggesting that the countries of the underdeveloped world withdraw from the world economy, but that they vehemently insist that they participate as equals rather than as exploited...

...Lower fertilizer production does not help feed the hungry...

...In the Human Interest, p. 99) Elsewhere in the same book Brown describes in greater detail what this means for the latter world: "Unfortunately, poverty is not an economic abstraction...

...What the Journal is saying, in essence, is precisely what I have maintained...

...Theoretically this will be of some temporary benefit to the farmer in Bangladesh, for he can buy more fertilizer with the same money, if he has any money and anyone can get the fertilizer to him...

...Let us examine this more closely...

...This should, he undoubtedly believes, be accompanied by a massive transfer of wealth to the underdeveloped countries...

...To be sure, there is "interdependence" other than that between the rich and the poor countries...

...Michael MOFFITT is a research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington...

...mankind's most pressing problems...

...Imperialism, in other words, is the cause of poverty, not a result of poverty...

...But we have seen that precisely the problem in the underdeveloped countries, at least in the short run, is the lack of real purchasing power, both for the countries as a whole and for the vast majority of the people who live in those countries...

...Often valuable resources which might otherwise be used to improve the welfare of many people are squandered on the construction of huge military establishments...

...It follows that proposed solutions which attack only the symptoms of this complex historical phenomenon will be no more successful in treating the essence of poverty than Brown's analysis has been in revealing why the poor countries are poor in the first place...

...In objective terms, this means that there are more mouths to feed from limited supplies of food, more unemployed workers competing for limited job opportunities, and hence driving low wage rates even lower, and thus even greater numbers are added to the "marginal" population consisting of beggars, prostitutes and hucksters in the overcrowded urban areas...

...For a number of reasons, he believes that unless some sort of program which will promote progressive change is soon embarked upon, that which he calls this system of "interdependent" nations will collapse and lead to innumerable crises of catastrophic proportions...

...Edward M. Korry, former U.S...

...As far as the poor countries are concerned, Brown shows little knowledge of class and social stratification and its implications for the distribution of the fruits of production in these countries...

...To cite but one example, from 1965 to 1968, global corporations operating in the mining, petroleum, and smelting industries in Latin America, 83 percent of all investment funds were generated in the underdeveloped country itself, yet 79 percent of all profits generated by this investment were repatriated out of the country...

...and David Rockefeller himself...

...Things would certainly be much simpler if this transfer of resources from the rich countries to the poor were plausible...

...It is a human condition...

...In sixteen of the countries, the difference between the lowest 40 percent and the upper 5 percent ranged between sixteen and twenty-nine times greater...

...In reality, what he more properly might ask for is that the poor countries first terminate the flow of massive amounts of capital which move annually from their respective countries to the rich countries...

...Let us begin with a brief description of Lester Brown's view of the world and the contemporary crisis in which it finds itself: "In reality, our world today is largely illiterate...

...At the same time that affluence and higher consumption levels in the advanced countries gobble up the lion's share of increased wealth and productivity, unequal distribution of income and population growth threaten even the mini-scule gains which the poor countries have registered...

...These resources appear to be scarce relative to increasing demand and hence more valuable (and more expensive) to those whose economies depend upon the large-scale importation of raw materials...

...But in all but the shortest run, the lower price is going to mean that less fertilizer will be produced in the world...

...Rapid population growth is an example...

...one overfed and overweight, one hungry and malnourished...

...Within this general context of poverty, of course, other factors have a much more dramatic impact than they do under other conditions...

...Yet I believe it can be shown that, despite his obvious concern for the people of the underdeveloped countries, Brown falls far short of offering the people of the underdeveloped world any substantial break with their dismal past and real hope for the future...

...Clearly, what we need to do is inquire into the origins and continuing development of this poverty and under-development...

...The reader should take the statement at face value as regards economic relations between the rich countries and the poor...

...The notion is that the bag of fertilizer you don't use on your lawn will somehow show up on a rice paddy in Bangladesh...

...BREAD AND RADICAL CHANGE MICHAEL MOFFITT In the Human Interest LESTER BROWN W. W. Norton & Co., $6.95 By Bread Alone LESTER BROWN WITH ERIK ECKHOLM Praeger, $8.95 One would be justifiably skeptical about the scientific content of a socio-economic study which was at least in part sponsored by a "non-profit organization" whose Board of Directors included a number of prominent owners, managers and operatives of giant U.S...

...In other words, they might begin by refusing to sell their natural resources to global corporations at bargain rates and stop offering their work forces to these corporations at wage rates and working conditions which prevailed in the nineteenth century United States...

...I probably have...

...one affluent and consumption-oriented, one poverty stricken and subsistence-oriented...

...In Brown's words, in In The Human Interest, "Combined with appropriate national and international policies in the trade, monetary and aid areas, the systematic simplification of life styles in the more affluent countries would free resources which could then be used to help the less developed countries solve their basic economic and social problems...

...As for Brown's other proposed solutions to the world food crisis, they also bring to the forefront the greatest deficiencies of his analysis...

...McNamara notes that one study of income distribution in 39 developing countries found that in eight countries, the per capita income of the richest 5 percent of the population is more than 30 limes greater than that of the poorest 40 percent of the population...

...For example, Japan and the United States are both large exporters of nitrogenous fertilizers which are made from natural gas...

...For the most part, his proposals are not original and all too often rely upon moral pleas to summon forth from national leaders such intangible qualities as "leadership...

...How the former might be accomplished has been demonstrated with sheer brilliance by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and is being attempted by unions of other poor countries which produce sizable quantities of critical raw materials...

...Franchised hamburger stands offer a much more attractive long-term market for farmers in the poor countries than do the masses of people in these countries-simply because they do not have sufficient income to create consistent demand for these products...

...Brown is not a Rostow, in other words...

...In other words, any proposed solutions to the world hunger crisis and the world population crisis are of necessity solutions to the world "developmsnt" crisis, or they are no solutions at all...

...and a 92 percent increase in Costa Rica by a 26 percent decline in per capita consumption...

...This is what we mean by the "essence" of a social system-what makes the wheels of a social system turn-as opposed to what the end products (e.g., poverty and deprivation) of this cumulative social process are...

...Edward S. Mason and Raymond Ver-non of Harvard, two leading ideologists of global capitalism...

...Without sufficient raw materials, economic growth would certainly decline...

...And I would suggest that Brown keep a very close watch on the development of the current economic crisis...

...Relations between the advanced and underdeveloped countries have assumed a variety of forms during the past five or six centuries, but the substance of the relationship has always remained the same: the poor countries have made indispensable contributions to the accumulation of wealth (capital) in the developed countries while their own societies have proceeded to sink deeper into relative poverty and underdevelop-ment...

...But neither has much to do with feeding Bangladesh...

...The higher the price, the greater the incentive provided to those who produce such necessities as fertilizer to produce more and ship it to Bangladesh, or if the demand is great enough, to set up a plant in Bangladesh to produce it...

...And the Journal concludes that "It would be comforting to believe that eating less here would provide more for the hungry abroad, but instead it will mean lower prices and lower production . . . Doing penance with a brown lawn may for all we know save your soul and eating less is likely to save your heart...

...To give but one example, a recent study cited in Global Reach by Richard Barnet and Ronald Muller of 257 manufacturing corporations in Latin America "shows that global corporations use almost half the number of employees per ten thousand dollars of sales as do local companies...

...Should these resources prove to be exhaustible, as a number of projections seem to suggest, then the corresponding effect would be a combination of increased competition for limited supplies and cutbacks in production...

...In his Brookings Institution study of nutrition and development, Alan Berg noted that "More meat is being raised in Central America than ever before...

...This, I assert, has been the driving force of relations between Brown's "rich" and "poor" countries since the dawn of Western colonialism and there is no reason to believe that, given the absence of basic structural (i.e., systemic) changes in both the underdeveloped and the advanced countries, things will be any different in the near future...

...Why such proposals are as impractical and divorced from the realities of international economics and politics as his analysis itself is the matter to which I now turn...

...Though his proposals are basically those of a Malthusian, ideologically, Brown's views are probably closer to those of a John Stuart Mill...

...While in the rural sectors, many poor farmers must attempt to feed growing families with tracts of land and equipment that barely provide subsistence, let alone a surplus to sell on the open market...

...Brown is by no means alone in this...

...In addition, what wealth is generated by economic activity in these societies is often concentrated in the hands of a few who live like Rockefellers or foreign corporations who repatriate a large share of their earnings to foreign countries...

...that the consumption of food, fertilizer, or anything else, is a function of one's income and the existence of an economic mechanism (the market, in this case) which will transfer ownership from producer to consumer...