[PEN-L:29420] Re: Mugabe & the war against the peasantry

[Ben Day <day@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Has any one else had a chance to dip into Mike Davis's _Late Victorian
Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World_? I'm about a
hundred pages in so far, and there's probably no more important book for
evaluating the politics of famine today... Basically, it is a history of
the three waves of draught famine to sweep the entire tropical monsoon
belt, as well as much of northern China and northern Africa, in the late
19th century. The central theses of the book, it seems to me, are that in
the first place absolute scarcity was almost never an issue in the
"Victorian" famines (as he refers to them); in fact, he argues, absolute
scarcity was almost never /historically/ a cause of famine, once societies
emerged from hunter/gatherer status. Agricultural societies in areas with
high variability in rainfall are almost always well-adapted to cope with
even multi-year rain deficits. In most of the cases he examines, the
devestation caused by drought was facilitated only by a prior social
destruction of drought prevention institutions - often under colonial
administration or in the process of imposing export crops (like in the
article described below), or both. And additionally, it was very rare that
all regions under one governing body should be simultaneously stricken by
crop failures, and there were almost always sufficient surpluses such that
food-transfers could successfully avert famine. So, following somewhat in
the train of Sen, he does a good job of recasting the portrayal of
"natural" disasters as, in reality, cases of income and market failures, in
addition to the destruction from-above of life-saving precapitalist
institutions designed precisely as safe-guards against natural disaster.

The other side of the book is recounting the "imperialist land rush" that
often followed the Victorian holocausts - starving populations would often
sell off their equipment, livestock, houses, land, everything in last-ditch
efforts to survive, totally debilitating subsequent efforts to revive the
agricultural economy even after the natural droughts had ended. This both
led to a vast redistribution of land holdings and wealth, and often
prompted waves of imperialist expansion across the easy game of devastated
populations. He makes the claim here, also, that the late Victorian drought
famines were one of the most important causes of the emergence of a "Third
World" - that the developmental distance between the first and third worlds
only really pulled away during this period.

My only criticism so far is that, although many of these insightful and
crucial theses are laid out in a brief Preface and "Note on Definitions,"
he launches immediately into a long string of particular coutnries' famine
experiences - perhaps some of the most depressing reading you will ever
encounter: the "Temple wage" imposed as poor relief in India during the
famine, which provided a lower caloric intake than the rations at
Buchenwald; the widespread cannibalism and practice of selling one's
relatives that swept many of the famine-stricken countries in question;
people eating their houses in eastern Shandong (China); etc. There are many
cases where the famine spread to areas not affected by drought, simply
because famine was often a consequence of sky-rocketing food prices, far
more than food shortage in any given area. However, he doesn't really tie
the litany of historical accounts into the provacative theses laid out at
the beginning of the book. It's clear, for example, that the colonial
administration in India was largely responsible for drought becoming
dreadful famine in India, and also in the prevention of aid and
food-transfer efforts; this isn't the case in China, where it seems that
the failure of transportation systems under the Qin Dynasty was a major
cause. It would be useful for some overview of how the particular cases
back up the broader claims, and in what ways they need to be qualified or
stand up well. I still have a couple of hundred pages to go, but a peek at
the last chapter of the book shows that it ends in the minutia of
particular countries' famine histories as well. But I'll try to reserve
this criticism until I've done the book justice.

In any case, there's lots of food for thought here (to make a dreadful,
almost unforgivable pun). Everyone should read it. It believe it was
Socrates who said, "This is important shit!"

-----Ben

At 12:31 PM 8/13/2002 -0700, Devine, James wrote:

> [This is a good article. But if people already are reading the GUARDIAN,
> maybe I should stop posting such messages. Please inform.]
>
> War on the peasantry: Mugabe's crimes pale next to what black small
> farmers endure in the name of development
>
> George Monbiot
>
> Tuesday August 13, 2002
>
> The Guardian [UK]