(The following article has been translated from the October 25 issue of the Belgian revolutionary socialist weekly La Gauche.]
A decision made by the Common
Market Commission on September 15 became effective in mid-October. Every small peasant in the six Common Market countries is to receive a payment of 10,000 Belgian francs [US$200] for each cow, provided he slaughters his entire herd.
Payment of 10,000 francs per cow is also provided for rich peasants who have more than ten milk cows giving at least 2,000 kilos [4,410 lbs.] of milk per year on the sole condition that these peasants completely stop putting milk on the market. In this case there is no immediate obligation to slaughter their cows. The rich peasants need only convert their farms from dairy farms into farms producing livestock for the slaughterho uses.
This operation is intended to reduce the number of cows in the six countries of the Common Market by 250,- 000 head and will cost the tidy sum of $50 million (2,500,000,000 Belgian francs).
The reason cited by the Common Market authorities to justify this massive slaughter of European cows is overproduction of milk and butter. It is well known that the cold storage depots in West Europe are filled to overflowing with a mass of unsold butter -more than- a half million tons, or more than two kilos [about four and a half pounds] of butter per inhabitant of the Common Market area! - and that this unsaleable mass is accumulating at a rate of more than 100,000 tons per year.
Is there really abundance in West Europe in the physical sense of the term? Is the consumption of milk and butter less than that needed to absorb the supply, that is, lower than the current production of dairy products regardless of their price? Some say it is, but it has never been proved.
The fact is that "pockets of poverty" exist in West Europe (think of the underpaid workers in Belgium and Germany, regions of southern Italy, etc.) where the consumption of dairy products would mount significantly if the price of these products were cut.
It is true that such a drop in the price of dairy products would condemn a mass of small farmers to ruin •.. if there were no subsidies. But in fact the present prices are already subsidized. The whole question, then, comes down to this: in what form should this subsidy be paid - in the form of artificially high prices (which artificially restrict consumption) or in the form of direct subsidies to the farmers accompanied by a radical lowering of prices?
Direct subsidies would manifestly be more rational. But, out of opposition to "statism," it is preferred to hang on to a system with a "capitalist" appearance (a system of "profitable prices"), a procedure that is nonsensical from the economic point of view and that leads to a scandalous restriction of consumption and production. A "scandalous restriction of production," let it be said, because, after all, as they keep reminding us, the peoples of the underdeveloped countries are hungry and the threat of famine will remain for decades to come. The threatened famine is primarily a protein famine, a lack of animal proteins above all.
And at the very same time as appeals are made in the name of pity and charity to relieve hunger in the "third world," an underproduction of animal products is being systematically organized that can only intensify this hunger.
The 250,000 cows to be slaughtered produce a total of 250,000 to 600,000 tons of milk a year. This would make several hundred thousand tons of rendered butter and/or powdered milk that could be distributed to the children, women, and those ailing from undernourishment in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In fact, this operation (including the building of plants to produce the powdered milk) would probably not cost any more than the $50 million that is now to be spent on slaughtering these cows.
The Common Market Commission no doubt perceived how inhuman its decision appeared. Simultaneously with its vote to slaughter the 250,00r cows, it decided to donate 120,000 tons of powdered skim milk to the under developed countries.
But this gesture to placate the commission's conscience (and reduce the existing stocks of surplus milk) does not offset the plan it adopted to "clear" the milk market. These 120,000 tons are taken from existing stocks, while the proposed slaughter of 250,000 cows affects current and future production.
The culmination of the criminal absurdity into which capitalism has brought the international economy is the fact that West European cattle are often fed with products exported by the under developed countries.
The export of these products (for example, peanut-oil cakes) removes proteins from the consumption of "third world" inhabitants that have been the basis of their diet for centuries.
The powdered milk they are sent in exchange has less protein as a whole than the oil cakes (the "protein balance" of the third world in its trade with Europe and North America shows a large deficit). Moreover, a good part of the population that formerly mixed peanut oil or the nuts themselves into its daily diet does not have the means to buy this powdered milk.
But the beauties of the market economy are such that the export of oil cakes is "profitable" for the third world ... just as slaughtering cows is "profitable" for the imperialist countries.
This is how capitalism succeeds in accomplishing the feat of simultaneously organizing overproduction and famine. This is nothing new for Marxists. It is new only for all those who believe in the virtues and merits of "organized capitalism."