Kropotkin's take on Communism

"Those who man the lifeboat do not ask credentails from the crew of a sinking ship; they launch their boat, risk their lives in the raging waves, and sometimes perish, all to save men whom they do not know. And what need to know them? 'They are human beings, and they need our aid - that is enough, that establishes their right - to the rescue!" ~Kropotkin

Kropotkin is an interesting character - he was born a prince of a small province outside of Moscow, but by the end of his life had abandoned it all to fight for social and economic equality. He also did not get along well with other revolutionaries, mostly because he saw them for what they were - thugs taking advantage of the situation to steal power, not to actually help the majority of the people. In his seminal work "The Conquest of Bread", Kropotkin argues that food, and along with it shelter, clothing, and education, are universal rights that the government ought to provide freely to all citizens.

In short, Kropotkin was arguing thatMaslow's hierarchy of needs is something we are socially and morally obligated to provide to all. The quote at the top of the page sums up the argument - in a situation where people are hurt and their lives are in danger, citizens rise up to defend and protect them, yet this same society allows for people to freeze to death every winter and to waste their lives living like animals on the street because we do not provide folks with easy access to medicines for schizophrenia. Kropotkin wondered just what the difference was between the two situations - how can we have a society that will save lives of people in danger only when a disaster strikes, but is fine with letting someone die slowly on the streets?

It's a good point, to be honest. As a society, we allow some pretty horrible things to happen to people in need, only because circumstance has driven them to poverty. And to keep food prices up, the government that is supposed to protect these very people pays farmers to burn grain. How is burning grain when people are starving on the streets the actions of a just and good society, and how does that serve the interests of the people? Those are questions Kropotkin raised, and I think that dealing with those questions would make for a good discussion.

Thats the problem, isn't it? Starving people can barley afford food, but farmers can barley survive if the starving can afford their food, because the filthy rich would still pay the same dirt-cheap amount.

Theres really no simple solution, short of Government giving the Farmers set wages, and charging people based on their income. And that would just create more problems...

I'm baaaaaaack

Kropotkin didnt say anything about how large the lifeboat is, compared to the number of people who need saving.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

That's why we should be busy building more lifeboats and setting them to sail. Instead we have people needing to first get money to by materials for the boats, and when the boats are built the rescuers need to pay rent for them...

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

I think our society (or at least the one I know best, the UK) does look after, say, homeless people quite well - to the extent that it's smart to do so. Charities offer basic housing and food, but they are careful not to make it easy to stay on the streets, which is one of the biggest problems providing aid to vulnerable people has (along with many of them not wanting help, or ready to help themselves).

As many disastrous policies in the developing world can attest, there are dangers with providing support to people even as they starve - taking away their self-respect and ability to stand up for themselves, providing free food that makes it impossible for local food producers to compete and driving them into destitution too, etc. As Joesolo says, it is a tricky problem.

As for burning grain, again you have the problem that if that food were given out for free it would bankrupt the food sellers and wreck the economy. Charities are becoming better at helping people help themselves, but that takes time, and often looks frustratingly like no-one is doing anything to help at all (in comparison to, for example, throwing out bags of food aid).

But that's the problem, isn't it? We live in a world where preserving the economy is more important than preserving human life and dignity. Since when was the economy an angry god that we have to please? It's made by humans, and it is meant to serve humans. Yet we have reached a point where we have forgotten that the entire reason we invented economics was for the betterment of humanity, not to make us cogs and gears in the economic engine!

Farmers don't have to lose their livelihood here - instead of paying farmers to burn their crops, how about let them grow their crops, feed the poor, and have set wages for farmers no matter what the price of grain may be? We give out subsidies all the time, why not give the people growing food subsidies instead? The only people who would truly be hurt are the useless corporate masters who grow fat off of other people's misery, and to hell with them - they are the sort of people who would happily see food burn while others starve, because it gives them power and wealth. Society needs no such parasites.

We can't give subsidies to farmers in foreign countries, Stars. Also, a healthy economy is good for people; it means that folks have jobs and can afford the basic amenities. Helping to promote the economy's health is a better cure over all than just patching up the wound with free food.

Also, subsidies to farmers might be more harmful in the long run, as it encourages them to grow only a few specific crops instead of diversifying their produce.

My God It's Full Of Stars - If the corporate masters suffer, the employees of those corporations suffer all the more. So do all the small traders, the restauraunts, the processing factories and everyone who makes a living from food, because they would all be priced out of the market by super-cheap produce. Foreign importers would also be unable to make a profit, seriously damaging international relations and robbing poor food producers in other countries of their livelihoods. And all that food would probably harm the economies of neighbouring countries when it gets picked up, smuggled out and sold abroad.

In any event, are people really starving in the streets in any country where farmers are making and destroying a surplus? In the UK at least, the homeless experience many problems (drugs, mental health, alcoholism, exposure etc.) but due to the huge amounts of food people throw out, starvation isn't one of them.

I would argue that the economy _is_ desperately important and is the key to human survival in any sizeable group. In what way would you say the economy is taking a greater priority than human life? And again I'd like to say that there's a great danger to people's self respect and motivation when you give them what they need to survive rather than have them work for it,

The dangers of dumping food onto a population are explained in greater detail here. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy, a system that sounds a bit like your suggested solution, is described here. How does it compare?

EDIT: Okay, the CAP doesn't sound much like your suggestion at all, apart from paying farmers subsidies for producing food. Ah well.

edited 11th Mar '12 12:55:13 AM by betaalpha

The economy, is by definition, the method food (and all resources) is distributed in a civilization. So, the whole is generally more important than the specific part, and it's generally okay.

Fight smart, not fair.

My point exactly. The economy is supposed to serve us not the other way around. The economy is broken if it prevents us from helping people.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

@Ace of Spades

"We can't give subsidies to farmers in foreign countries, Stars"

I don't think he was suggesting that.

"Also, subsidies to farmers might be more harmful in the long run, as it encourages them to grow only a few specific crops instead of diversifying their produce"

So why is it worse to subsidise farmers than subsidising anything else?

Also, I'd like to throw in, isn't paying farmers to burn their crops just as much of a government intervention as subsidising them?

edited 11th Mar '12 10:54:19 AM by stripesthezebra

Megacorporations in agricultural has done more to kill crop diversity than the promotion of small-business farming, so let's not try to conflate a problem with subsidies that does not exist. Corporations grow only specific crops of the highest yield and utilised genetic engineering and seed-buying to restrict eco-diversity.

If we were willing to do so, we could have a fully government subsidised farming economy to provide food for cheap prices in the local economy, charge market rate for exports (so as to abide by WTO dumping rules) and put in environmental laws to ensure bio-diversity. Instead, we hand subsidies to corporations to ruin our farmland and price the poor out of food.

As for restaurants and so on being priced out by cheap produce is just silly. The middle class doesn't go to a restaurant because the grocery store is expensive. A restaurant is ALWAYS more expensive than cooking stuff your yourself. You go there because of the service or time convenience or because you want to go out with friends. In fact, if food prices are cheaper, going out to eat would likewise be cheaper. So actually, you're more likely to go out more rather than less.

Generally speaking, we've had issues with price controls in the past because we did it in stupid fashions. The soviets had armies of bureaucrats sitting there manually setting prices. The Chinese eventually had to switch to market socialism to cope with changing society. Free market is a cheap way to set prices, it's not the most optimal way.

For what it's worth, we do subsidize the poor, even to the point of giving them free food.

As for giving everyone free food, etc., we could do that to, if we were willing to pay the price. Theoretically, using taxes to pay farmers to raise their crops and then giving it away for free isnt fundamentally different than allowing citizens to use their paychecks to purchase the same food- you're just transferring the same wealth around.

But this leads to a lot of questions: How much do you pay the farmers? For which foods? At what quality? Who makes these decisions, using what criteria? Are farmers forbidden from producing other crops, and are consumers forbidden from buying any extra? (because if those two provisions are not in place, the government is in competition with private demand, which will drive the price up).

The devil is in the details- if you aren't careful with a system like this, you end up the way we are with healthcare- prices and supply being driven by the wrong kind of incentives.

Of course, even if all those questions could be answered, the end result is that our economy becomes a little less productive, because you aren't paying all farmers the amount they could charge on an open market (if you pay them more, your wasting money, and if you pay them less, you are reducing production).

In the case of health care, we might not mind, if we decide that ensuring that everyone has access to affordable care is more important a social value than ensuring that the maximum value is produced within that market. Make too many markets like that, though, and you end up with a moribund economy.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Doh! Yes, you're right, mostly. If all the food that farmers produced ended up on the market, factories, restaurants etc. that used that food could (and do) sell it cheaper without a lot of disruption. I suspect that's why Western restaurants pile food onto outsize plates nowadays. However, any foods that weren't being subsidized would then be unable to compete, such as foreign imports. Such cheaply produced food would also inevitably get exported and would damage other countries whose homegrown produce wouldn't be able to compete (though you did mention legislating against that). These are both issues that Europe's Common Agricultural Policy (which is all about farmer subsidies) are indeed causing.

As far as I was aware, subsidies apply just as much to small farmers as they do to big ones. It's just that the mega farmers produce exponentially more food due to economies of scale and ruthless automation. Doing something to rein them in would be a good idea, if only it were possible.

edited 11th Mar '12 2:51:54 PM by betaalpha