Chandra
Kumar, Upping the Anti
In Stuffed
and Starved you
write about the international system of food production and
distribution. You argue that this system results in starvation and
obesity. Can you elaborate?
These
problems are an inevitable outcome of the way capitalism controls and
distributes food. When you distribute food through a capitalist
market, you’re guaranteed two outcomes: people who have money get
to eat, and people who don’t have money don’t get to eat. The
original imperial idea behind the creation of world food markets was
that they would allow people around the world to eat. But under this
model people who don’t have money go hungry, and it’s no accident
that these people live in the countries where food is grown.
In Stuffed
and Starved,
I look at the concentration of power within capitalism and the food
system, and show that corporations control a great deal of what is
alleged to be the free market in food. On one end of the food system,
this control allows them to underpay people who produce the food. The
worst paid people on earth are farm labourers, closely followed by
small farmers. That’s why in the Global South people who are
undernourished and living on fewer than 1900 calories per day tend to
be farm workers. On the other end of the food system, corporations
have an incentive to produce food that is profitable – that is,
high in fat and salt and sugar and all the things we crave. These
foods are principle sources of the obesity epidemic. But the epidemic
doesn’t affect everyone equally. In the Global North, overweight
people tend to be food insecure. This points to a more general rule.
Poverty, whether in rich countries or poor countries, means you are
less able to control your diet. For the very poor, this means
starvation. For the urban poor – in the Global North and
increasingly in the Global South – this means food that contributes
to obesity and diabetes.
You
claim capitalism is central in creating and reinforcing these
problems, but you distinguish between capitalism and markets. Why are
you in favour of markets?
Markets
are terrific. Markets are as old as human civilization – the idea
is simply that people from different groups get together and exchange
stuff. They’re a venue for interaction, for building trust, and for
reciprocity. Exchange is vital if you’re going to live in a world
that moves beyond village autarky (and there’s nothing precious
about village autarky).
But
markets today are typically held to be synonymous with capitalism. In
the confusing conflation of markets and capitalism, many people blame
markets. However, the problem is not the phenomenon of exchange, but
the way in which goods are produced for the market. Most people like
the idea of free exchange of goods and services, de-centralization,
and of not being told what to do. But this reasonable appreciation of
markets becomes a forced love of capitalism because we are denied the
tools to think of other ways of producing goods for exchange. There
are, however, other ways of organizing production while retaining the
decentralization and absence of coercion that make markets
liberating.
So
you think markets can be combined with something like workers’
control?
They
already are. This isn’t just some leftist pipe-dream. We already
see that the largest industrial cooperatives, such as the wholly
worker-run city of Mondragón, Spain for example, are nonetheless
capable of operating in markets. Without wanting to oversell workers’
control as a panacea – it is possible for there to be coercion
within and between workers’ organizations, after all – the
Mondragón cooperatives at the very least demonstrate the possibility
of large-scale worker-owned organizations. There are, of course,
other civilizations in which markets prevail and capitalism does not,
which remind us that markets and capitalism have been historically
separate, and will be again.
What
would food sovereignty look like? How do you relate progress in this
sphere to broader issues of social transformation?
Food
sovereignty is an idea that comes from the international peasant
movement La Via Campesina. In 1995 at the World Food Summit in Rome,
they tried to articulate a vision different from the neoliberal
conception of food and food politics. Central to La Via Campesina’s
vision was the idea that we need more than food security.
Historically, the definition of food security specifies that there
should be enough healthy food available and that everyone should have
sufficient access to it so that they can lead a healthy life. The
trouble is that this concept hinges on “access.” You can, after
all, be “food secure” in prison where, if you’re lucky, you can
get nutritious food three times a day, and not starve. Therefore,
food security can look like someone shoving food down your throat.
“Food
sovereignty,” by contrast, is the idea that people have control
over their food system. Basically, it’s a demand for democracy in
the food system. And that demand is intricately linked with a range
of other struggles and questions.
Although
“democracy in the food system” sounds vague, it rests on a series
of non-negotiable foundations. Among the most important is the demand
for women’s rights. At the 2008 Via Campesina summit in Maputo,
Mozambique, one popular slogan asserted that food sovereignty is
about “an end to all forms of violence against women.” In other
words, in order to have vibrant food democracy, gender-based
injustices and inequalities need to be challenged from the World
Trade Organization and World Bank down to dynamics in the household.
This is what makes La Via Campesina’s call for food sovereignty a
twenty-first century idea. They’re not demanding a return to some
sort of bucolic peasant past, but are instead insisting on a politics
that we have yet to see.
At
the heart of food sovereignty is the idea that ecological and
political constituencies should intersect, and that democracy entails
many overlapping sovereignties. Designating a state or a single body
to decide things is a recipe for disaster. We need overlapping
sovereignties and jurisdictions in order to have a politics that’s
workable, vibrant, and democratic. In perforating the boundaries
between jurisdictions – sometimes calling on local forces to shape
food sovereignty, sometimes on national or supra-national forces –
food sovereignty is an invitation to re-imagine the very notion of
political constituency along overlapping ecological lines.
Given
the interconnections between the food system and other systems (such
as patriarchy, ecological destruction, and imperialism), is it
possible to seriously confront any one of them without simultaneously
confronting the others? How could these various struggles be tied
together without something like a revolutionary party – though not
necessarily a Leninist “vanguard” party?
My
inner anarchist is very suspicious of the idea of a revolutionary
party because within them power is typically concentrated in the
hands of a few people. I’m suspicious of the idea of a professional
revolutionary. The interesting kinds of social change that I’ve
seen (and which I write about in Stuffed
and Starved),
are driven by very unprofessional revolutionaries, and are
decentralized and autonomous in ways that aren’t really captured by
classical ideas of the party – vanguardist or otherwise. I’m very
open to the idea that there are other forms of the party that might
work, and I’m keen to learn more about those.
We
do need to tackle several things simultaneously. But is the party the
best vehicle to be able to do that? The Brazilian Landless Workers’
Movement (MST) – a movement of landless rural workers that relies
on the concept of multiple fronts – is one of the most interesting
initiatives addressing the food system. It’s not a party. It’s a
movement in which cells of 100 families get together and figure out
not only how to reclaim land but how to manage their affairs
collectively: how to arrange their education, how to demand health
care from the government, how to do many things simultaneously. There
is a division of labour, and there are militants who help to organize
the movement. But those militants are part of the communities in
which they work, and the communities are firmly in the driver’s
seat. Good organizing skills and organizing culture are central to
the kind of social change we need to see. Organizers
have a key role, and I don’t think ‘spontaneous’ organizing
ever happens. Anyone who has been involved in social movements knows
that a ‘spontaneous’ protest takes forever to
organize. That said, I’m not convinced that a single revolutionary
party is the way forward. It’s an approach of which the MST are
wary, and I think their suspicions – founded on many more years of
experience than mine – are worth taking seriously.
You
point to many examples of farmers’ movements and other kinds of
resistance and forms of food production that come from the global
South. Where in the South are the most significant movements
occurring?
The
MST makes Brazil a very exciting place to look for lessons about
social change. They’ve been tremendously important in mobilizing
over a million people to reclaim land and to redefine the most sacred
institution of capitalism, that of private property; they’ve also
moved beyond the twentieth-century vision of industrial agriculture
that was common to both capitalism and state socialism. They are
researching, investigating, and teaching visions of sustainable
agriculture that involve polyculture and agroecology on increasingly
large scales. Those kinds of technological innovations (as well as
social innovations) are important if we are to recognize that there’s
no magic bullet for social transformation. A mere technological fix
is insufficient; you also need profound social change.
Cuba
is also very interesting, not because of the socialist government per
se,
but because of the relationship between farmers and the government.
The people have forced the government to take them seriously. That
has to do with legacies of organizing and with autonomous demands
from people that go beyond what the government claimed it could
provide. In the so-called “Special Period” – the period of
economic crisis in Cuba from the early to mid-’90s, following the
collapse of the Soviet Union – farmers’ groups demanded changes
in land management and the land reform regime and an end to
collectives. This might have looked like a return to capitalism but
it wasn’t. The land markets in Cuba are not capitalist markets;
property management strategies simultaneously account for the
importance of the family unit and the importance of organizing beyond
the family unit. These solutions are worth looking at, and learning
from.
These
South American examples are the most notable, but there are others,
such as the Deccan Development Society in India or farmers’
organizations in Malawi that are doing great research and work on
sustainability.
You
worked for a short time at the World Bank, until you quit. Describe
that experience. What is the World Bank’s role in food politics?
I
was a graduate student at Cornell and one of the economics professors
took me on as a research assistant. He recommended I work on a
project at the World Bank reviewing their classified documents to see
how they talk about poverty. I jumped at the opportunity.
Unfortunately, the project ultimately amounted to writing a puff
piece about how the poor love the World Bank.
Within
the World Bank there is a culture of self-justification and an
inability to comprehend that poor people might think for themselves
and might have their own politics. It is an “anti-politics
machine,” as James Ferguson suggests in his book The
Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and
Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho.
Joining the World Bank’s mission makes you feel self-righteous
about believing in the bright shining future you are a part of. And
it prevents people from thinking about political alternatives. I
resigned when the full weight of my research project became clear.
I’ve
written about the World Bank ever since. Sometimes I apologize for
having worked there, but – and I don’t know if this makes it
better or worse – I did learn what it’s like. The World Bank is a
bureaucracy filled with people doing bad things, with “good
intentions.”
In
contrast to your World Bank experience, through your involvement with
the South African movement known as AbM you’ve gleaned a new kind
of politics. Why do you think this movement is important, and what
can activists in countries such as Canada and the United States learn
from it?
The
history of South Africa isn’t a happily-ever-after story of social
struggle. Unfortunately, when the story gets told here, it seems like
an activist fairytale. As if Nelson Mandela coming out of prison was
like the end of The
Lion King, with
everyone singing in close harmony, the sun setting, and the circle of
life beginning again. In fact, for many in South Africa, apartheid is
still alive and well – in modulated form of course, and no one
wishes back the days of white rule. In terms of inequality and human
development indicators, though, South Africa has fallen from its
apartheid levels to somewhere below Palestine.
AbM
is a movement of people who live in shacks. The organization began in
Durban and has since spread to the rest of the country. They’re
struggling not just for state recognition, but for economic and
planning redistribution. AbM’s politics arise partly from
experience with, and memories of, the United Democratic Front (UDF)
and the struggles against apartheid. Also central is the idea that
struggle is its own school – the idea behind the “University of
AbM.” It’s not only that poverty and struggle provide an
education. This idea flags and dignifies the kinds of learning that
poor people have, which are systematically denigrated by universities
and trumped by bourgeois knowledge that has no space – or a very
attenuated space – for poor people. In bourgeois universities poor
people are told to shut up and learn what the bourgeois know. The
University of AbM is an important reminder that there is thinking
going on in the shacks and in the streets, through meetings and
through autonomous organizing.
The
result has been the largest autonomous movement in South Africa
working with basically no resources. When AbM members have been
invited to different parts of the world they’ve discovered that
there’s already a lot going on in places like Canada and the US,
that resonates with what they are doing. Last year some AbM comrades
went to New York, where the “University of the Poor” strongly
resembles AbM’s work and involves similar kinds of activism, and of
engagement and the dignifying of poor people’s knowledge. These
developments counter patronizing views of how workers or middle class
leaders in the North or the South should respond to the demands of
poor people. AbMand the University of AbM demonstrate that poor
people think and lead for themselves and that they’re willing to
school comrades who are ready to come and struggle alongside them.
The slogan “Talk with us, not about us,” which they generated in
struggle, is crucial.
How
has AbM responded to state repression in South Africa?
It’s
an open secret that the African National Congress (ANC) has a
standing order to smash AbM in the Durban settlements where the
movement started. There was a targeted campaign in which armed men
destroyed the houses of movement leaders and people died. Some of the
leaders whose houses had been destroyed found refuge in safe-houses
organized by Amnesty International. When I visited them several
months ago, I was full of anger and a desire for vengeance, but they
were calm. They continue to meet. They explain that what’s
important is that people who are still in the settlements are
realizing that, although the ANC chased out the AbM on the grounds
that they were stopping development, the ANC actually has done
nothing since the ABMwas driven out. No one is managing the HIV-AIDS
drop-in centre, no one is cleaning the land outside the community
centres so now it’s an open toilet, no one is looking after the
children – there used to be a crèche (or daycare centre) and now
it’s all been smashed. So this is an educational moment; this is
also part of the school.
The
movement now has new offices. The leadership is in hiding but they’re
looking to return, and in the meantime the movement actually
continues to meet and strategize. That was especially important in
2010 because the World Cup was in South Africa and AbM wanted to get
their message out and connect with other movements around the world.
At
a recent talk in Toronto, you said Marx was not an egalitarian. What,
then, do you make of Engels’ well-known comment that “for us,
equality means the abolition of class”? He said this in the context
of criticising people on the left who talked about “equality” and
“rights” in too much of a moralistic tone, without an
understanding of class divisions, class conflict, and class struggle.
The
easy question is “was Marx an egalitarian?” In academic debates,
no one ever says: “Here’s a line where Marx talks about
egalitarianism in the way that Rousseau (for example) talks about
it.” In fact, if you follow the loopier elements of the debate,
“Rousseau” becomes a term of slander because that kind of
egalitarianism is not what Marx is talking about. Of course, it is
tremendously important to look at class and to look at the way
capitalism depends on the fundamental antagonism between the owner of
the means of production and the worker. That is, of course, a very
central way in which inequality flourishes under capitalism – but
it’s not the only way.
It’s
important to see how history is indeed a history of class struggle,
but when it comes to questions about how a more egalitarian society
can happen, anarchist critiques of Marxism are important. How can
transformation happen? I’m interested in anarchist politics
precisely because they’re so practical. Challenging other kinds of
inequality (other than class) is central to the idea of revolutionary
transformation, and should be regarded as an essential part of any
class-based politics. This is one thing that attracts me to La Via
Campesina, where you can see a range of ideologies flourishing under
one umbrella. Some of these ideologies are reactionary, having to do
with middle peasants keeping their land, and some of these ideologies
are inspired by Marx but move beyond Marx. Marx had a very 20th
century (or 19th century) vision of agriculture, society, and the
role of mechanization. In the 21st century, we need to rethink those
ideas in light of what we now know about ecology and the limits of
science under capitalism and industrialization.
So,
I suppose, the answer I want to give is equivocal. On the one hand,
Marx is substantially correct about issues of class and class
struggle under capitalism. But I don’t think this correctness is
exhaustive. We have learned things since Marx’s time with which to
update our ideologies – including the experience of the rise and
fall of the Soviet Union and state socialism. Some anarchist thinking
around equality, particularly the work of Jacques Rancière, is worth
looking at. I’m reading as much as I can and trying to make my mind
up about these questions, which is something we all need to try to
do.
As
you know, the debate between anarchism and Marxism goes back at least
to Bakunin and Marx. One of the key differences between them –
perhaps the key difference –was on the seizing of state power in a
socialist revolution. Do you think Bakunin was right to believe that
socialist democracy could be realized, and be sustained, without any
seizure of state power?
No,
I don’t. In fact, in that skirmish, Bakunin was clearly out-gunned.
At the same time, the state today is not the same thing Marx was
looking at. I think it’s a much more porous and much more dangerous
institution. It very much remains “the executive committee for
managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie,” but in terms of
seizing state power, it’s very important to figure out ways to do
that without getting killed.
To
abjure the possibility of seizing state power doesn’t seem a good
strategy. I’m not convinced by John Holloway’s writings in Change
the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today and
Crack
Capitalism,for
example. But that’s why movements like the MST are very
interesting. The MST has both an ‘entry’ strategy for the state
and an oppositional strategy against the state. This movement can
somehow have its cake and eat it too; they are constantly fighting
against the state for demands and concessions, simultaneously trying
to insert themselves into the state and transform it, and also,
ultimately, trying to become the state. Again, recall that food
sovereignty is an agenda that tries to render more porous and
impermanent the set of Westphalian institutions that we have been
taught to treat as timeless. There are a range of eminently practical
strategies and tactics that make things work. Dialectical relations
with the state that result in complex and vibrant politics are
typically much more practical, and not based on debates about whether
we should take state power. And the results are clearly evident in
the MST’s successes in Brazil. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking
about the MST, and the practical politics of where movements find
themselves and the lessons they’ve learned through these
‘universities of struggle.’ These lessons ought to augment the
theoretical debates that we’ve been reading about for the past
couple hundred years.
