Cuba-“Confusion”

Cuba appears “confusing”. Contradictory claims, blames, assertions, imaginations, opinions are making a cloud of confusion.

Claims are being made: Cuba has compromised, Cuba has capitulated. Hopes are thrown in the air: Cuba is going to be sold out. Assertions are being made: the Castros are bad brothers, we told; revolution is being betrayed.

Even Barack Obama, the US president, is being blamed and being praised. It seems the Castro brothers and Obama have conspired together either to cease Cuba’s struggle for establishing a prosperous and sustainable socialism or to strengthen the Castro brothers’ “brutal” rule.

A look into a camp in the Empire gives an amazing view as the camp finds Cuban ayatollahs in Havana.

Right-camp in the US is divided over the Cuba question. It’s now busy with argument and counter-argument: Which is hurting the Cuban people most: the embargo the Empire imposed or the lack of the Empire defined democracy? Hot debates, even war of words are flying around as US law makers were heard saying: “I won’t shy away from battle”, and “I’m happy to finish a fight.”

Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, two leading Republicans, in a joint statement denounced Obama’s Cuba-move: “Unfortunately, today’s chapter … is one of America and the values it stands for in retreat and decline. It is about … diminishing America’s influence in the world.” Senator Roy Blunt considered the move as the latest in a string of poor policy decisions by the US president, and greater trade with Cuba would help Castro stay in power. “I don’t think you can effectively do that as long as the Castro brothers are in charge of Cuba”, he said. “By seeking to normalize relations,” Senator Kelly Ayotte said, “the administration is rewarding the very behavior we want to end”. Senator Robert Menendez, a top Democrat, slammed: “President Obama’s actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government”. Senator Ted Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush were also critical of Obama’s Cuba-move.

Most dissatisfied was Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American. He considered the Obama-move as a victory for the Cuban government. His criticism was wider. He criticized Senator Rand Paul as Paul supported Obama’s move. Rand “has no idea what he’s talking about”, said Rubio.

Rand Paul countered: “The 50-year embargo hasn’t worked. If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn’t seem to be working”. He expressed hope: “I think trade might loosen things up and might help to topple the Castros.”

Two religious organizations – the Baptist World Alliance, a 42-million member international alliance of Baptist churches and groups, and the Catholic League, an American civil rights organization – praised the Obama-move. A leader of the Catholic League said: “Economic liberty does not guarantee political liberty, but it does work to undermine the forces of repression,” he said. “More important than markets is the exchange of ideas that this rapprochement will bring.”
Some Cuban exiles, fogey anti-Castro elements, in Miami stand against Obama’s Cuba-plan. Some Cuban-Americans are deeply disappointed with the move. To the elements, Obama’s announcement gives recognition to the illegitimate Castro regime, a dictatorship. Many of these elements took part in attempts to assassinate Castro.

These elements pledged to oppose Obama’s plan. They feel let down by Obama. “When the Bay of Pigs was abandoned, we were sad. And now we feel abandoned again, betrayed by the president”, said the head of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, a group of diehards.

These are the CIA-backed mercenaries pressed into the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to foil Fidel-led revolution. With death of about 100 mercenaries the CIA-organized invasion turned into a disaster. Revolutionary forces captured about a thousand mercenaries trained by the CIA in Nicaragua and Guatemala. “Americans have a habit of betraying friends and then letting them drop. We’ve all faced it, we’re used to it by now”, said a pilot, who participated in three missions to foil the Cuba revolution. It seems these elements engaged in criminal activities have now turned “anti”-imperialist.

There are dozens of anti-Castro organizations, media companies, terror gangs, drug and arms rings, lobbying organizations, aid groups floated and run with tax payers’ millions of dollars. There are the US-run Radio Marti and TV Marti. The business is being run for decades. Their target: Overthrow Castro. The anti-Castro groups include the Cuban American National Foundation, a lobbying group engaged with the job of toppling the Cuban government, and the Cuban Democratic Directorate that runs a Miami-based shortwave radio program targeting the Cuban people, and supports Cuban anti-people forces. These anti-Castro elements keep their hope on the US Congress to push back Obama’s promise to lift the Cuba-embargo.

Obama hopes his new plan gives the US a chance to influence events in Cuba as 50-years’ of non-stop attempts to topple the Castro government haven’t worked. “If we engage, we have the opportunity to influence the course of events at a time when there’s going to be some generational change in that country”, Obama told a CNN interview.
A motive is clearly spelled out: Foil the Cuban people’s revolution.

On the other hand, there is criticism from a part of “left”: Castro has capitulated. All is going to be sold.
Thus confusion is being created. Castro brothers – Fidel and Raul – are everywhere irrespective of controversy, claim and blame. The two individuals, according to “left” adventurist analysis, create and mould society. “Really two powerful” guys! “Left” adventurists consider individuals only and deny contradictions and class forces in society.
In between the two camps, right and adventurist “left”, Raul Castro outlined a future and a hope.

President Raul Castro said in the Cuban National Assembly: Cuba wouldn’t renounce its socialist system despite the normalization of ties with the US. Detente with the US won’t change the system the Cuban people are building up. “We must not expect that in order for relations with the United States to improve, Cuba will abandon the ideas that it has struggled for.”

Raul insisted Cuba would not give up its socialist principles. “In the same way that we have never demanded that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours”, Raul told the National Assembly.

The Cuban leader said: “We always have been willing to engage in respectful dialogue on equal terms to address any issues without a shadow over our independence and without renouncing a single one of our principles.” “We reiterate our willingness for respectful and reciprocal dialogue concerning disagreements”, said Raul. He added: Cuba “accepted dialogue... on any topic about all things here but also in the United States.” It’s an assertion of position.
Another assertion came. It was from Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul.

Mariela asserted: Cuba will defend its socialist principles and will not return to capitalism just because it has agreed a detente with the US. She told: “The people of Cuba don’t want to return to capitalism.” She dispelled any notion that US companies would be free to roll into Cuba.

Other parts of Mariela’s statement are significant also: “We’ve been at this 56 years and ... we love saying that we are a country in revolution, trying to create socialism, and we form part of a single party called the Communist Party.” She added: “Sometimes people say Fidel is hard-headed, that the Cuban leaders are hard-headed, but experience has taught us something important, that we should never give in on our principles.”

Mariela said moves by the US president won’t lead to the downfall of the system in Cuba. “If the US thinks these changes will bring Cuba back to capitalism and return it to being a servile country to hegemonic interests of the most powerful financial groups in the US, they must be dreaming.”

With the cited statements the effort, the path ahead, and the struggle waiting keep no room for imagination. It’s, hasta la victoria siempre.

It’s easier to make sweeping remarks, formulate theories isolated from reality, ask for adventurist actions without bearing any responsibility for results and implications of the actions, have no accountability to people, and have no electorate. Adventurism thus wins a moment of present time.

But adventurism has no place in the life of people, who struggle, sustain, build up, face hardship and make sacrifice. The reality Cuba now faces, and faced for years has to be taken into consideration. Cuba’s reality doesn’t allow adventurism.
The Cuban people face sabotage. It’s part of their daily life, part of a “long and difficult struggle”. The Empire-imposed embargo is in place. There is international financial transaction limits imposed on Cuba. Cuba’s access to credit and international investment is blocked. At the same time, the Cuban people need respite, space for sustainably building up their way of life.

The Cuban people are struggling to properly handle contradictions within their society, in the spheres of agriculture, industry, trade, urban and rural life, political participation, etc., and in between these. The people are reckoning balance of forces within their society, and in the spheres of the continent and the world. They are to take into account the space available for maneuvering.

A straight path would have been nice. But class reality doesn’t always allow the desired straight path. The path moves in a zigzag way. All are to traverse a path repeatedly turning and bending, a compromise. Engels and Lenin discussed the meaning of zigzag path, which doesn’t allow adventurism. “Every zigzag turn in history is a compromise, a compromise between the old, which is no longer strong enough to completely negate the new, and the new, which is not yet strong enough to completely overthrow the old. Marxism does not altogether reject compromise. Marxism considers it necessary to make use of them …” (Lenin, “Against Boycott”)

One can blame the Castro brothers; one can brush off Cuba’s struggle, its journey through a zigzag path. The journey would have been better had the adventurists organized widespread Cuba-solidarity campaign among people in respective societies so that political pressure mounts on to import Cuba’s medical knowledge and medicines, so that political pressure is created to defy the embargo and enter into wider trade relations with Cuba, so that educational exchanges with Cuba are increased. It would have been nice had the adventurists organized boycott of loading fuel into warships, had they organized a ship load of cement or an oil tanker destined for Havana. It would have been nice had they made their people aware of Cuba’s efforts to heal its soil, its urban agriculture efforts, its revolutionary doctors, its achievements in the area of medical science. These would have widened Cuba’s breathing space, the country’s friends-circle, strengthened the society’s struggle, provided moral ground to criticism of the Castro brothers’ “capitulation”, and would have taken away a bit of “confusion”.

Cuba-Question: A Major US Retreat

A major US retreat on Cuba-question is evident in the US president Barack Obama's December 17, 2014 announcement: “In the most significant changes in our policy in more than 50 years, we will end an outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests …”

The “failed”, “outdated approach” has compelled the US to announce taking steps for “changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.” Announcement is not everything required for any change as actual politics is determined by forces far away from announcement, and economy and politics spells out announcement.

It's an announcement of failure in an Empire's power. With the announcement it has been proved empires can't do and undo all the “things” in all the times in all the places as there is another power – people power, the power of people's political awareness, unity, sense of dignity that makes many powers crumble down. It's virtually Cuba's, the Cuban people's victory in their long steadfast struggle for creating a dignified life. 

Raul Castro, the president of Cuba, reiterated this in his reciprocal statement made from Havana on December 17, 2014: “I have reiterated in many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally … without detriment to the national Independence and self-determination of our people.”

Nostalgia was not overpowering the US president as he was briefly referring to the history of futile US policy on Cuba: “I was born in 1961, just over two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, and just a few months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, which tried to overthrow his regime. Over the next several decades, the relationship between our countries played out against the backdrop of the Cold War, and America's steadfast opposition to communism.”

It was his effort to construct logic for making a shift. And, it was conceding a fact: Steadfast opposition. And, with the word “communism” he meant the political-economic system the Cuban people are struggling to build up, which is still far away from communism. It's, to quote Raul, “to build a prosperous and sustainable Socialism.”

The US president admits the US policy was “aimed to isolate the island,” Cuba. And he admits: “[N]o other nation joins us in imposing these sanctions”. It's – “no other nation joins us” – conceding an empire's utter failure. With the mightiest military machine in the world, with an efficient and experienced political and diplomatic machine, with wide economic and financial power, an empire failed to pull along any other nation against an “island”, actually, a nation. So, the US president said: “Today, Cuba is still governed by … the Communist Party that came to power half a century ago.”

It was not only a failure. The Empire was increasingly getting isolated in the world. Voting results over the years in the UN General Assembly on Cuba issue is the example.

The empire's failure comes as there are the Cuban people. Raul says in his statement: “The heroic Cuban people, in the wake of serious dangers, aggressions, adversities and sacrifices has proven to be faithful and will continue to be faithful to our ideals of independence and social justice. Strongly united throughout these 56 years of Revolution, we have kept our unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of our principles since the beginning of our independence wars in 1868.” A people's soul comes to light: Faithful to ideals of independence and social justice, strongly united, unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of principles.

The US president's announcement tells an irrational policy implemented for decades: “[F]or more than 35 years, we've had relations with China, a far larger country also governed by a Communist Party. Nearly two decades ago, we re-established relations with Vietnam, where we fought a war that claimed more Americans than any Cold War confrontation.”

If this is the fact, why the Empire kept on going with its policy on Cuba? The policy was followed for decades. It's not only the Cuban people; people in other lands also had to pay for the policy. The Bangladesh case may be cited. Bangladesh exported jute products to Cuba. The Bangladesh people had to pay a high price: thousands of death in an empire-made famine.

The Cuba policy had its parts spread over the entire hemisphere, and even in Africa. One can recollect organizing the Contra mercenaries, and burning of crop fields, forests, destruction of schools, hospitals, food storages in Nicaragua. One can recollect blood bath by death squads in El Salvador. One can recollect the Grenada invasion. One can recollect incidents engineered in Haiti. One can recollect deaths and interferences in Panama, Peru, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia. Chile and Bolivia are among other examples. In all the cases, peoples in those lands paid with blood. And, all the cases were charged with the Empire's Cuba policy: Wipe out Castro's Cuba and all its vestiges.    

Is the policy failure rational with the intellectual capacity the Empire commands? What's the reason for failure to identify and rectify the policy failure?

It was not a policy failure. It was not also a failure in intellectual capacity as intellectual capacity was dictated by interests. It was part of safeguarding an interest vested in large property and unquestionable privilege. It was property and privilege of individuals tied together spanning countries and companies. They all make elites, dominant classes. Cuba stood as an example of depowering those classes within its border.

The US president said: “Cuba has sent hundreds of health care workers to Africa to fight Ebola, and I believe American and Cuban health care workers should work side by side to stop the spread of this deadly disease.” The position, it seems, has shifted. Once, dirty tricks were played to oppose health workers from Cuba in countries. And, people had to pay for those tricks played by vested quarters tied to the Empire.

President Obama has instructed the US secretary of state John Kerry to review Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. He said: “Terrorism has changed in the last several decades.”

It seems the Empire is standing in front of a mirror to have a clear view of self. It knows best the roots, the collaboration, the fund, the training, the arms, the ideological, propaganda and diplomatic support extended to today's terrorism; but it's not that, to which he was referring, that “has changed in the last several decades.”     

Cuba is fighting terrorism for 50 years. There were bombings, killings of Cuban citizens including children, violations of Cuban air space, air dropping of leaflets provoking people to resort to unlawful acts, bombing of the Cuba Flight 455 over the Caribbean in 1976 that killed 73 passengers including teenage members of the Cuban national fencing team, a series of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997 that killed an Italian businessman and disrupted Cuba's tourist industry. These were organized and carried out by terrorist groups sheltered and patronized across the Cuban frontier. Is there any state that doesn't defend itself against terrorist acts? The US is the burning example.

Important question is the embargo. Raul says: “We have … agreed to renew diplomatic relations. This in no way means that the heart of the matter has been solved. The economic, commercial, and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.”

Obama also raises the embargo issue: “The embargo that's been imposed for decades is now codified in legislation.” He adds: “[W]e should not allow US sanctions to add to the burden of Cuban citizens that we seek to help.” He said: “[I]t does not serve America's interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse.” And, he assures: “I look forward to engaging Congress in an honest and serious debate about lifting the embargo.”

Raul's statement makes specific proposal on the issue: “Though the blockade has been codified into law, the President of the United States has the executive authority to modify its implementation.” Raul moves further: “We propose to the Government of the United States the adoption of mutual steps to improve the bilateral atmosphere and advance towards normalization of relations between our two countries, based on the principles of International Law and the United Nations Charter.” President Raul said in his statement: “Obama's decision deserves the respect and acknowledgement of our people.” A posture is revealed. And, reciprocity is expected. 

A crucial test is in the wings with the changed numbers-power in the US Congress. There are strong opponents to Obama's Cuba move. To Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Obama's move is “another in a long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalizes its people and schemes with our enemies.” Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, and the Florida Republican, now considers Obama as the “worst negotiator” of Rubio's “lifetime.” To anti-Castro hard-liners, “the deal is a betrayal and capitulation to communist tyranny.” The strong tone tells something.

The occasion was historic as Obama spoke with Raul Castro over telephone to finalize Alan Gross's release and the exchange of prisoners, and other related issues.  Raul echoed the positive tone: “As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday [December 16, 2014] with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in the solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations.” The conversation, now part of history, was the first such contact since the Cuban revolution.   

Interests including business in the US are willing to deal with Cuba. This is Obama's one area of support. There's a run for Cuba-oil. Already a few countries have gained better position about the prospective oil. The US can't ignore this.  Discussions on maritime boundaries with Cuba and Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico will be ensued.

Release of the three Cuban prisoners is a major victory for Cuba. Raul's statement reminds: “Fidel promised on June 2001…: ‘They shall return!' Gerardo, Ramon, and Antonio [the rest three of the five Cubans] have arrived … to our homeland.”

Raul's statement carries a significant indication:

“While acknowledging our profound differences, particularly on issues related to national sovereignty, democracy, human rights and foreign policy, I reaffirm our willingness to dialogue on all these issues.

“As we have reiterated, we must learn the art of coexisting with our differences in a civilized manner.”

Now, it's for the US to decide: whether or not to coexist in a civilized manner with Cuba, an example of a positive alternative socio-economic-political system only 90 miles from the US mainland. The fear of the example led the super power to put Cuba on the chessboard of the Cold War that experienced near-hot days with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Cuba exists as an example to the downtrodden people of the world whatever the Empire decides. It's an example of courage with dignity for the ideals of peace and prosperity. It's an example of a geographically small country's struggle to live with honor, which is possible with a politically aware and united people imbued with sense of dignity.

The General Law Of Rebellion In Bangladesh

Point of Departure: Only with lies and conspiracy, an integral part of bourgeois politics, instead of bravery and courage, it was possible for Clive, the conspirator from Great Britain, to overwhelm the Battle of Plassey, actually, “a brief artillery duel” as Boris Kagarlitsky writes in From Empires to Imperialism, the state and the rise of bourgeois civilisation (tr. Renfrey Clarke, Routledge, 2014) on June 23, 1957. Following the course, Clive, writes Macaulay in his Essays on Lord Clive, “subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain.” The colonial captains began to make a number of politically motivated claims. Baangaalees were made the first and foremost victim of the claims that were proved by subsequent developments as lies.

“[I]t was from Bengal,” writes Alfred Comyn Lyall, “not from Madras or Bombay, that the English power first struck inland into the heart of the country and discovered the right road to supremacy in India: To advance into Bengal was to penetrate India by its soft and unprotected side. From Cape Comorin northward along the east coast there is not a single harbour for large ships; nor are the river estuaries accessible to them. (History of India, From the Close of the Seventeenth Century to the Present Time, vol. 8, ed. A V Williams Jackson, 1907)

Lyall, a British civil servant, historian and poet, makes “wise” observations on the people of Bengal while describing the land from military point of view: “[A]t the head of the Bay of Bengal [there is] a low-lying deltaic region, pierced by navigable channels which discharge through several mouths the waters of great rivers issuing from the interior. … On this section, and upon no other of the Indian seaboard, the rivers are wide waterways offering fair harbourage and the means of penetrating many miles inland; while around and beyond stretches the rich alluvial plain of Bengal, inhabited by a very industrious and unwarlike [emphasis added] people, who produce much and can live on very little.” (ibid.) The people in this land are, the “brave” lords claimed, “unwarlike”.

Imperial observation on the people of Bengal continues with the same tone. “For Macaulay, the ultimate justification for the behavior of Clive and Hastings – and thus for the British imperialization of India – is quite simple: Indians, because of the baseness of their own social character and moral standards, deserved and needed to be imperialized. This need was especially great for the Bengalis, whose territories the East India Company first came to dominate. By their racial nature, Macaulay believes, the Bengalis are a people who almost begged to be conquered and ruled; their weakness created a power vacuum into which the bold East India Company adventurers rushed.” (Patrick Brantlinger, Darkness, British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914, Cornell University Press, 1990)

Macaulay, a faithful mind to imperial interest, says: “Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly … singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke.” (“Lord Clive (January 1840)” in Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive, ed. William Henry Hudson, George G Harrap & Company, London, 1910)

Macaulay is obedient to his imperial duty: Condemn the conquered land and its people. So he writes:  “The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapour bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breed. Courage, independence, veracity are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavourable. His mind bears a singular to his body. It is weak even to helplessness for purposes of manly resistance” (Macaulay, “Warren Hastings” in Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings, ed. Mrs. Margaret J Frick, The Macmillan Company, London, 1900; also quoted in Sir John Strachey, India, Its Administration and Progress, ref: Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘manly Englishmen' and The ‘Effeminate Bengali' in the late nineteenth century, Manchester University Press, 1995)

In History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan, Orme made another “accurate” observation about the people of this land: All natives are of “effeminacy of character”, but that the Bengalis were “still of weaker frame and more enervated character”. (Ormey, cited in John Rosselli, “The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal”, Past and Present, 86, February 1980; ref.: Mrinalini Sinha, op. cit.)

Bishop Heber conveys similar evaluation. In the 1820s, the Bishop noted that Bengalis were regarded as “the greatest cowards in India”. He added: The “term Bengali [was] used to express anything which was roughish and cowardly”. (Heber, quoted in Ketaki Kushari Dyson, A Various Universe: A Study of the Journals and Memoirs of the British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1978, ref.: Mrinalini Sinha, op. cit.)

Masters, the colonial and neo-colonial robbers, made the “scientific” observations. For centuries, the people of this land were depicted as “unwarlike people”, “a people who almost begged to be conquered and ruled”, “seldom enlists as a soldier”, “thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke”, “physical organization … is feeble even to effeminacy”, “his limbs delicate”, “he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy breed”, “weak even to helplessness for purposes of manly resistance”, “the greatest cowards in India”, “cowardly”. A list with similar observations on the Bengal people is long with more “scientific” observations.  

So the “wise” masters found the formula for ruling the people of this land: “As Clive wrote later to the Company, describing the state of affairs that he found on his return in 1765, ‘In a country where money is plenty, where fear is the principle of government, and where your arms are ever victorious …'”

All rulers in this land followed the formula: “Fear is the principle of government” as “arms are ever victorious” here, the land of “cowards”.

A history was formed: Consistently depicted as coward, born to be ruled, ever-loyal, hungry for yoke, etc. the Bangladesh people heroically stood up to bravely break the shackle of slavery, and courageously challenged a state as they defied the ideology the state imposed on them. They also defied the state. The people took up arms, organized their armed struggle, waged a war for getting liberated. It was in 1971. The people composed a history.

The world imperialism opposed the people's War for Liberation, and the opposition was of geopolitical significance. The masters stood as fools with their observations on the Bangladesh people. Imperialism failed to dictate the course of the war the “unwarlike” Bangladesh people waged for their liberation.

How was the history made by the “effeminate Bengali” people? Is it possible? Were the imperialist scholars wrong? There were other peoples/nations/nationalities in the state of Pakistan – Balooch, Pathan, Sindhi – not considered “coward”, “unwarlike” by the masters. Those peoples were also experiencing suppression by the same state, and were trying to organize their political movements on issues of language, autonomy, etc. So, the questions, and similar questions emerge as one looks back to the bright days of 1971, the days the War for Liberation was waged by the Bangladesh people, “the greatest coward” (!?) in this subcontinent.  

As the General Law of Rebellion (GLR), people don't allow fear to be the principle of government, and don't allow rulers' arms to be ever victorious. Rulers may inflict fear, as the GLR tells, temporarily, depending on historical and the prevailing socio-economic-political conditions, among a part of people. Similarly, according to the GLR, rulers' arms can turn victorious temporarily, and the length of the rulers' victory depends on the historical and the prevailing socio-economic-political conditions.       

A change was going on in mass-psyche in pre-independence Bangladesh as classes in antagonistic positions were in constant conflict with their interests that had political manifestations. An ideological – political, cultural, etc. – shift was active among the people. Ideas, feudal and capitalist, colonial and neo-colonial, and even imperial, and ideas, progressive, radical, with seeds and dreams for a complete change in production relations were in constant contradiction. It was a long struggle spanning years.

Political struggle within legislative chamber of the Pakistan state was carried on. The issues for the political struggle included electorate and universal franchise, governor general's and governors' powers, amalgamation of western wing provinces into one, state language, food problem, parity between the eastern and western wings of the state, preventive detention, abolition ofzamindari system without compensation, budget, capital city, fundamental rights, salary of governors, equality between all citizens irrespective of belief, etc., imposition of martial law, central government's power limiting within the areas of currency, defense and foreign affairs, rights to expression and rights of press.

The struggle was also carried on outside the legislative house. A significant part of that struggle was extra-constitutional that made historic turning points although sometimes those appeared “faded away” to some wise scholars. A part of press was voicing the people.

“‘Law,' from slave patrols and courts to statutes and appellate decisions, was a tool of empire.” (91 N.C. L. REV. 1817, THE NAT TURNER TRIALS, ALFRED L. BROPHY; Brophy cites Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860, 1977, Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580–1865, 2010, and others). Referring other studies Brophy also identifies law as “a vehicle of control”. The Bangladesh people experienced Pakistan law as the tool of the state and as a hostile existence that gradually got exposed.

“‘Law' functioned to bring order” (ibid., Brophy cites Daniel Lord, “On the Extra-Professional Influence of the Pulpit and the Bar: An Oration Delivered at New Haven, Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society”, of Yale College, July 30, 1851, in Daniel Lord, On the Extra-Professional Influence, S S Chatterton, New York, 1851). The Bangladesh people perceived the laws of the Pakistan state as a brazen bull as those were used against them.

The people were gaining political and organizational experience as they were organizing and waging their economic and political struggles. Their social being determined their consciousness. This was also a part of the GLR. It was a period of transformation, transition also, in politics, and in mass-psyche.

But the ruling elites with its limited capacity for cooption considered their state as an absolute form of force ever victorious over the Bangladesh people.

However, class struggle was getting intensified, and the state was experiencing defiance by the people. A number of contradictions galvanized class alliances while a few isolated another part, the dominating part, and the dominant ideology was losing ground.

A few classes/segments were taking/gaining lead in the process. So, the questions need answers: What the classes/segments were those? How the task was being carried out? What was its political manifestation? What happened to the forces that claimed working for radical change? What were the factors and forces active in all the camps, behind success and failures? There was/were law(s) governing the changes in the pre-independence Bangladesh. What was/were that/those and how were those working?

Historical circumstances that led to the development need identification as for further development – change in class leadership and re-distribution of property – the question is alive: What's the order of “things”? The questions are alive as a people don't stall down, don't give up hope, don't cease struggle, a part of the General Law of Rebellion. “Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again … till their victory; that is the logic of the people, and they too will never go against this logic”, writes Mao. (“Cast away illusions, prepare for struggle”, August 14, 1949) The way people fight, as Mao tells, is part of the GLR.            

A class/segment takes leadership in war. So, the questions arise: Was it historically, and by class character possible for the class/segment that led the War for Liberation? What was the social and economic basis of the class/segment that led the war? How the class/segment won over the leadership, won over the working class, the peasantry, the mass of people as its allies?

The camp opposing the War for Liberation should also be searched. How the elites, orthodox and semi-orthodox, lost their grip on their subjects as the subjects were defying the elites? Losing grip over politics, and over subjects doesn't happen instantly or within a short period.  

Geopolitical aspect of the war was significant. The time was going through the Cold War, imperialist wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and the non-aligned effort to take a stand against imperialist hegemony. The world imperialism was opposing the Bangladesh people's war. The war was made a part of the Cold War by imperialism. So, the questions come: What was the type of the war? What role geopolitics played in the war? Or, how the war utilized geopolitics in its favor? Was it successful in its tact of utilizing geopolitics?

Other questions requiring answers emerge as one looks back. Which issue should be considered first: the issue of national repression, repression on and deprivation of a people, or the issue of geopolitics?

Questions related to the people, and the classes that joined together in forming the people are there in the historic phase of Bangladesh. Class interests with historical capacity and possibilities interacting/contradicting in the prevailing reality governed the political attitude, alliances and actions of the people. Political forces representing the people, its parts, and political forces interacting with the people to uphold either the people's interest or self-interest had to move within the respective class interests and class alliances. These aspects are part of the General Law of Rebellion.

The questions lead to look at pattern of politics classes/segments were carrying on in the pre-independence Bangladesh, and at interaction between the classes/segments that were getting generated from respective interests. There may appear anomalies in elite politics in the neo-colonial state of Pakistan. Or, the apparent anomalies in elite politics, it may come out, was the limitation imposed historically on the ruling elites, a combination of classes/segments, leading to their failure. The limitation coming from their class/segment condition led them to the failure to perceive, identify and handle the contradictions.

Rebellion: Rebellion is defined in many ways, from narrow to broader perspective.

Citing Professor Richard A. Falk's “Janus Tormented: The International Law of Internal War” (in James N. Rosenau, The International Aspects of Civil Strife, 1964) Anthony Cullen refers rebellion as “a situation … characterized as a short-lived, sporadic threat to the authority of a state.” (“Key developments affecting the scope of internal armed conflict in international humanitarian law”, Military Law Review, vol. 183)

Heather A Wilson and Lothar Kotzsch add their explanations on the issue of rebellion. There are domestic violence, upheaval, armed activities by gangs organized by imperialism, and national liberation movements. International Law and the Use of Force by National Liberation Movements, (Oxford University Press, 1988) and Anthony Cullen's The Concept of Non-International Armed Conflict in in International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010) discuss the issues.

Rebellion, others consider, as “the act of resistance by one or more individuals to lawful authority acting within the limits of its power.” (Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States, ed. Lalor, John J., Maynard, Merrill, and Co., New York) And, rebels are “those who refuse to obey it.” (ibid.) It's claimed that “rebellion quickly becomes insurrection.” (ibid.)

However, it's agreed: “The distinction between them, consequently, exists especially at the beginning, but exact definitions are necessary in political language.” (ibid.)

Then, rebellion is defined as:

“Rebellion is, at bottom or in principle, a refusal of obedience, which manifests itself either by violence and assault, or by passive resistance.” (ibid.)

The definition broadens as it's told:

“When peace officers act outside of their right, or exceed their power, resistance is not rebellion. This principle was written in the Roman law … it was even taught in French law”. (ibid.)

It broadens further as it says: “These are the least serious cases of rebellion. They … constitute petty rebellion. Rebellion, in its greatest development, goes much farther than contesting the acts of a police officer; it calls in question the very government whose orders he executes; it raises against the government the same objections, of incompetency, or of exceeding its powers, which we have just supposed in the case of public officers.” (ibid.) Government is part of a state. The Bangladesh people questioned the Pakistan state, and rose against it as the state was incompetent, exceeded its powers, denied people's rights, endangered people's life, liberty and peace, threatened the way of life the people were aspiring for, and, even resorted to genocide to keep on its unlawful acts unimpeded. The rebellion thus turned just.

Rebellion may, as the definition tells, show itself “without violence, and be entirely passive. Thus, breaches of certain legal obligations are, in our opinion, acts of rebellion.” (ibid.) The Bangladesh people resorted to both – passive, non-violent, peaceful and, forceful – of the methods for resolving the contradictions the people were encountering. These form parts of the GLR in Bangladesh.

Rebellion is, Bouvier's Law Dictionary says, “[t]he taking up arms traitorously against the government and in another, and perhaps a more correct sense, rebellion signifies the forcible opposition and resistance to the laws and process lawfully issued.” (1856 Edition)

To authority/government/state, revolting against their unfair economy and politics, against their tyranny, against their unjust acts and actions is traitorous while people consider rebellion as a just, rightful, essential act to redress grievances and unjust circumstance, to safeguard peace and prosperity. To the authority, etc. all laws they impose and processes they initiate are lawful while people consider many laws, etc. unlawfully enacted as those lacked people's consent. The contradiction between views carries elements of the General Law of Rebellion. The people in Bangladesh properly handled the contradiction as relevant political process created rationale and legitimacy for the act of their rebellion.   

Power of all sorts energizes the GLR. With destructive power, authority of all sorts strengthens logic behind the GLR as the authority loses legality and legitimacy to rule. “That whenever any Form of Government”, declares The Declaration of Independence of the US, “becomes destructive … it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” The people in Bangladesh perceived the state of Pakistan turned destructive and, at one stage, the state used carnage as a tool to subjugate.

The world imperialism, as recent documents and, Gary Bass's The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide(Knopf) show, was fully aware of the genocide. Archer Blood, the US consul-general in Dhaka, and his colleagues said in their telegram, known as the Blood Telegram, to Washington DC: “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. . . . Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy.” Kenneth Keating, the US Ambassador to India, likewise called on the Nixon Administration to “promptly, publicly, and prominently deplore this brutality.” (Pankaj Mishra, “Unholy Alliances, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Bangladesh Genocide”, The New Yorker, September 23, 2013) Bass writes in his book on the Bangladesh genocide: “In the dark annals of modern cruelty, it ranks as bloodier than Bosnia and by some accounts in the same rough league as Rwanda.” Bangladesh experienced, as Harold H Saunders writes, a “horrible bloodshed”. (“What Really Happened in Bangladesh, Washington, Islamabad, and the Genocide in East Pakistan”, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2014) There were imperialist collusion and complicity in the carnage, the least known genocide in the world. The simple and plain living Bangladesh people's perception came from the reality of humiliation, exploitation, deprivation, disparity and repression, murder at mass level, and the reality of imperialism. The logic for rebellion found its ground even before a drop of blood was shed.     

Thomas Paine asserts in Common Sense: “Arms as the last resource” when “period of debate is closed”. Paine expects a new horizon as Common Sense declares: “By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for politics is struck – a new method of thinking hath arisen.” The Bangladesh people found the period of debate closed by the Pakistan military junta in the late-March, 1971, and relevant issues were referred to arms. The period was imposed by the state of Pakistan with its treachery, betrayal, brutality, and arson and murder at mass scale, and the Bangladesh people by resorting to armed struggle heroically created a condition to make a forward march towards a new era for politics for a humane, peaceful, prosperous life, and for an equitable control over and distribution of resources. The new era for politics is long with treacherous turnings, costly compromises and backlashes; but, ultimately, it will be a people's era for politics, a part of the War for Liberation. And, the rebellion will revolve to revolution.

Dick Cheney And A “Flawed” Report

Revelations from the US are now near-overwhelming. There are not only exposures of torture techniques to “defend” democracy and peace; but intricacies, and lies and truths of politics in the land are also there. The US Senate report on tortures by CIA has done the job. 

Tales of tortures and brutalities have already been narrated in the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Brutal interrogation techniques followed by the intelligence agency reveal its power. Limit to the power has also been revealed: Tortures could not secure interests. The report concluded: CIA interrogation tactics were ineffective.

What would have been the Empire's reaction to similar reports of tortures carried by a regime considered not-friendly to the Empire? Answer to the question exposes two faces of the Empire. One is a public face while the other is the real face. The real face remains hidden till tormented by contradictions. The real face is the state's face, impersonal and imperial face. Incidents bring it out to public. Commoners get an opportunity to learn.  

Reactions to the report also reveal a lot. Stakes, strengths and weaknesses, and level of moral standing, virtually zero, face public.  

Despite the shivering revelations the former US vice president Dick Cheney considers “it is a terrible report, deeply flawed”. Fox News interviewed him. It was his first televised interview since the report's release.

Cheney's comment questions the process of the report preparation, motive behind, and the politicians preparing the report. Although Cheney had not read the entire classified report or the declassified executive summary, as he said in the interview, he said: “It's a classic example of where politicians get together and throw professionals under the bus.”

The former vice president is confident about his judgment. So he can pass comment on the report before going through that.

His statement tells a part of the state of the state: Reject a group of politicians' legal effort, incoherence between politicians and professionals in a system, claims that a group of politicians press down professionals.

But shall a group of politicians benefit by pressing down professionals? Don't they need service of professionals? When and why does a group of politicians press down professionals? Are not these related to the interests the state upholds? Is there any incoherence developing in the entire system if the former vice president's comment is correct?

Cheney's further comment was more serious: “The notion that the agency was operating on a rogue basis was just a flat out lie.” He said the report is “full of crap”.

Two jobs have been done with the statements: Cheney has defended the agency that was trying to defend the state; simultaneously, he has questioned the integrity of the report, which tried to defend the values the state claims to uphold. The Senate Committee investigators examined more than 6 million pages of CIA records. The 500-page executive summary released is based on the committee's 6,700-page study, which includes 38,000 footnotes.

But the two jobs reveal inner-condition of the state and the dominant interests. Also revealed is a trend within the state mechanism, which is not only a ruling machine, but also are formal and informal relations, understandings, manipulations, deals, ideology, approach, timing, etc. There is a combination of hardware and software.   

Essentially, Cheney has redefined a few concepts. He insisted the enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) were all legally justified and inconsistent with “torture”. However, he conceded that the practice of “rectal rehydration”, practiced by the spy agency as has been mentioned in the report, “was not one of the authorized or approved techniques”.

Thus legal justification, torture have been redefined, and a mind is exposed. This is one of the minds that claimed to uphold life and human dignity on the earth. Similar minds invented lies with WMD in Iraq. Can unapproved and unauthorized techniques involving human life turn legally justified?

Is it possible to identify which of the following methods of interrogation are legally justified and which are not: round-the-clock EIT (on a near 24-hour-per-day basis), 20 days of nonstop EIT, complete isolation for 47 days, interrogation taking “precedence” over medical care, person stuffed in a coffin-like box for 266 hours and an additional 29 hours in an even smaller box, which was 21 inches wide, 2.5 feet deep, and 2.5 feet tall, rectal infusion of “Pureed” humus, pasta, nuts and raisins used as a behavior control, sexual assault, intimidation with a power drill, waterboarding for at least 183 times, waterboarding until detainees turned blue and were on the verge of drowning, standing sleep deprivation, nudity, threatened with harm to detainees' families that included doing harm to the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee and to “cut” a detainee's mother's throat, naked detainees doused with ice water, keeping awake for 138 1/2 hours – almost six days, refusal to access to toilets, left hanging by wrists for extended periods of time, maintain “stress positions” even on broken limbs and although medical personnel had advised against it, and playing Russian roulette with a detainee?

There was obviously consideration. One of the improperly detained individuals was released after the person endured 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation and ice water baths, and “the CIA discovered he was likely not the person he was believed to be.” Two detainees spent 24 hours chained in the standing sleep deprivation position, until the CIA Headquarters “confirmed that the detainees were former CIA sources”, who had previously reached out to the CIA to try to share intelligence. It seems the agency was failing to discriminate friend and foe. Torture often led detainees to give false information, on which the authorities acted on. These are not shows of efficiency.

Humanity prevails everywhere; and all the time, humanity is not lost. Many CIA officials were disturbed by the techniques and torture they witnessed.

Cheney conceded a few of the interrogation technique were unauthorized and unapproved. The governance mechanism appears flawed as a state agency resorts to unauthorized and unapproved technique involving human life, not machine. 

The former US vice president moves further and widens his claims as he rejects the allegation that his boss, president George W. Bush, was kept in the dark. “He was in fact an integral part of the program. He had to approve it before we moved forward with it,” said Cheney. “He knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program.”

Burden of blame or laurel for performance is now also on G W Bush as “He was … an integral part of the program”, “had to approve it”, and “knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program.” It's being put by none other than Dick Cheney. There is a place named history if all docks fail.

One can recall a statement then-the US president Bush made eight years ago. In 2006, Bush adamantly denied that the US used torture against suspected terrorists. Bush said, “I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world: The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it.”

Now, the Senate report reveals that statement was false. The report says Bush's remarks “contained significant inaccurate statements” regarding the effectiveness of the CIA's EIT.

The revelation reveals more of the inside of a ruling system or of a state.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), George W Bush, in his memoir Decision Points, admitted that he authorized waterboarding in cases of a number of detainees.  

Waterboarding, CCR claims, is torture, a crime under domestic and international law. 

The CCR and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in a statement said: “As Attorney General Eric Holder stated during his confirmation hearings, waterboarding is torture.  […] Harold Koh, the State Department Legal Adviser, [… stated] during the US Universal Periodic Review that ‘the Obama administration defines waterboarding as torture as a matter of law' and it is not a ‘policy choice.'”

The statement said: “[N]o circumstance or excuses — including ‘national security' — under domestic and international law that allow for the use of torture.”

A number of issues and questions are revealed. There are questions related to systematic use of torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. There are questions related to a state's acts, democracy's domain, trend in a democracy, hindrances in unveiling acts of torture and politics. There are questions related to power and immunity of a republic's employees, and to rights and safety of human. And, there are questions related to life and dignity. Whatever answers, explanations and legal opinions are found or innovated humanity shall continue its journey seeking justice as humanity can't exist without justice, as humanity prevails over all politics of petty interest.

Inequality: A Glimpse In The Food Market

The world food market with its amazing supermarkets, alluring discounters, magnificent hypermarkets, convenience stores, small food stalls, neutraceuticals that mix nutrients and medicine, monstrous agribusinesses, small-scale farms and cooperatives, whole sellers, retailers, hoarders, black marketers, speculators, big “organic” food business, future markets spreading over the entire world bears all the ills capital produces. The market conceives all the contradictions capitalism is capable of creating. Inequality is a part of it.

Market, it should be mentioned, with all its tentacles stands opposed to democracy. Food market is no exception. “[T]he guiding principles of the market economy and democracy” … “often contradict one another and are more likely to go head-to-head than hand in hand”, says Jacques Attali, a world famous banker and diplomat, in his “The Crash of Western Civilization: The Limits of the Market and Democracy”. (Foreign Policy, Number 107, Summer 1997) Attali writes: “[T]he market economy and democracy … are more likely to undermine than support one another. … The market economy accepts and fosters strong inequalities between economic agents, whereas democracy is based on the equal rights of all citizens. By depriving some people of the ability to meet their basic economic needs, the market economy also leaves them less able to exercise their full political rights.” (ibid.)

However, democracy is an integral part of struggle against inequality. The autocracy of market ruins people’s lives as market is one of the domains of capital, which is always active for maximization of profit. The global food market doesn’t go beyond this.

Consumers, billions in number, are there at the one end of the world food market while the other end touches the environment and ecology, the producers of raw materials, the labor-power that produces commodities for the market. Over the arch, sits political arrangement for safeguarding the interests with its power of legislation and execution. In the entire kingdom, from one end to the other, people pay high prices as deceived producers fallen prey to the power of market, as victims of demolished environment and pilfered ecology, as labor whose labor-power is being appropriated, as poor consumers deceitfully connected to commodities sold in the market, as people’s brains are manipulated with a vast propaganda machine.

Inequality increases in the reality as a class owns the temple, the entire food market, while billions of people languish under the Lord’s Table, the profit. Activities of related capital are an area to find the “game” of inequality that starkly show limitless power and domains, and, at the same time, limits of the interests that dominate the area: it can harm limitlessly, but it can’t deliver wellbeing to the people. It also shows limits imposed on people that hinder their access to better food.

Capital creates opportunities to increase profit. Obesity, as example, is such a case of opportunity. “Drug companies had attempted to capitalise on obesity, but their fingers got burnt. Still, there was a winner: the food industry. By creating diet lines for the larger market of the slightly overweight, not just the clinically obese, it had hit on an apparently limitless pot of gold.” (Jacques Peretti, “Fat profits: how the food industry cashed in on obesity”, The Guardian, August 7, 2013) Ordinary persons can’t access the “pot of gold”.

Big food companies armed with elusive marketing mechanism are selling candies, cereals, chocolate milk, infant formula, yogurts, etc. that reach all corners of the world. “Many unhealthy products are very profitable. … Many firms … [are] continuing to hawk unhealthy products yet also touting elaborate plans to improve nutrition.” (The Economist, “Food companies play an ambivalent part in the fight against flab”, December 15, 2012)

To increase profit, the food market compels consumers to pay more, and consumers are made loyal to brands. And, it’s the commoners that is allured and compelled to consume tasty but unhealthy food. The profit fattens the owning class while the commoners pay, and the inequality-story survives. Products with health claims are being introduced by the power of big money advertisement: chewing gum with vitamins B6 and B12, whole grains and protein filled cereals, etc. (Jeffrey Cohen, “Food Industries’ Healthy Margins”, May 23, 2013, IBIDWorld, Media Center) Ordinary consumers, masses of people, buy, and they pay, and the inequality increases with draining out of their money, with their hurt health.

“Over the past decade sales of packaged foods around the world have jumped by 92%, to $2.2 trillion this year … In Brazil, China and Russia sales are three to four times their level in 2002. … Sales of soft drinks across the world have more than doubled in the past decade, to $532 billion; in India, Brazil and China sales of fizzy drinks have more than quadrupled.” (The Economist, op. cit.)

“These impressive sales figures look set to rise further” with new buying of companies, new products for local markets, competition for domination of the global market, investment in emerging markets, and wider spread into developing markets. “McDonald’s is now in 119 countries. Yum! Brands, owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, derives 60% of its profit from the developing world, and there is plenty of growth potential left. Yum!’s chief executive, David Novak, explains that the company has 58 restaurants for every 1m Americans, compared with just two restaurants for every 1m people in emerging markets.” (ibid.) Sarah Murray, Financial Times contributor and author of Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat informs: “[B]ig retailers such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour have been building more supermarkets around the world.” (“The World’s Biggest Industry”, Forbes, November 15, 2007) Citing FAO Sarah Murray writes: “Between 1980 and 2001, the five largest global supermarket chains (all of them based in Europe or the US) each expanded the number of countries in which they operate by at least 270%”. (ibid.)

A look at the impressive geographic expansion of the market tells its lucrative nature. Ordinary consumers form most of the market, labor provides the surplus value, and people languish in hunger. The face of inequality turns “bright”.

Sales of fast-food are increasing although the food is not helpful for health. Market, claimed as free, is manipulated – deregulated or kept under control or segmented – by mongers of free market as part of competition. Roberto De Vogli, Anne Kouvonen & David Gimeno looked into fast-food sales in 25 high-income countries from 1999 to 2008. Per-capita purchases increased in all these countries during the period. (“The influence of market deregulation on fast food consumption and body mass index: a cross-national time series analysis”, Bull World Health Organ, 2014; 92:99 – 107A)

With connections, the food market is wide as the world, and the market has wide connections – from government to legislative assemblies, from small producers to big hoarders, from media managers to uninformed consumers, and many others – that apparently appear contradictory but, is fully in accordance with the character of capital.

“Global food retail sales are about $4 trillion annually … Most of the leading global retailers are US and European firms …. The top 15 global supermarket companies account for more than 30 percent of world supermarket sales. …Together, the top 50 food manufacturers’ share of global packaged food retail sales account for less than 20 percent.” (US Department of Agriculture, Global Food Industry, last updated: May 31, 2012)

At the end of 2012, the global food market was valued at US$4.2 trillion, of which fresh food and agricultural produce accounted for 52.6% and packaged foods had the rest. During the five-year period leading up to 2012, the food sector expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 3.7% (by value), from US$3.7 trillion. The global market is expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 4.4% between 2012 and 2017, and will reach US$5.3 trillion by the end of this period. (Pegasus Agritech)

In 2013, the US fast food industry generated approximately US$191 billion. More than three and a half million workers were employed with over 232 thousand fast food establishments in the US in 2013. With a brand value of almost US$86 billion, McDonald’s was by far the most valuable fast food brand in the world in 2014. Its closest competitor was Starbucks with US$60 billion. In 2013, McDonald’s was also the largest fast food company in terms of revenue. It was followed by sandwich chain Subway and Yum! Brands. (Statista, “Statistics and facts about the Fast Food Industry”)

A market difficult to grasp

Despite huge data the worldwide food market is difficult to grasp. It’s simply difficult to take an account in monetary term. By using the example of a noodle stall Sarah Murray presented the difficulty in the following way:

“The noodle stall is one of the reasons analysts get jumpy when asked to quantify the size of the global food industry.… Like the peas on your plate, financial figures for food are notoriously hard to capture.” (op. cit.)

In the market, there is any food, packaged food, food made in homes, and food sold in street shops, many of which go beyond account. There is food not sold in shops but the poor scavenge in urban centers/collect in rural areas in their fight against hunger. There is the task of defining processed food, packaged food, etc.

“Euromonitor International”, Sarah Murray writes in the article mentioned above, “reckons the packaged food industry – including everything from pasta and cooking oil to canned and frozen foods – is worth almost $1.6 trillion. Meanwhile, the World Bank puts the food and agriculture sector at 10% of global gross domestic product, which, taking the bank’s 2006 estimate of about $48 trillion, would make the sector worth about $4.8 trillion.”

It’s admitted: “Food … is a confusing commodity, and our noodle seller’s soup illustrates why. His wontons are made from shrimp, part of the global seafood market, which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says is worth more than $400 billion. That’s simple enough. But the shrimp are covered in a wrapper whose primary ingredient is flour, which could be measured as a commodity or in its milled form. And is the dish they are in soup or noodles? Euromonitor says the market for soup is worth $12.9 billion, and the market for noodles, measured separately, worth $27.2 billion. The trouble is, food is a commodity, an ingredient, and a meal, and its value can be measured at every stage along that chain. ‘If you look at it as the output from the farm sector, it’s sold and processed, and sold again,’ says Mark Gehlhar, a senior economist at the US Department of Agriculture. ‘Then you have flour being produced and dough being produced. So you can easily double count.’ Of course, you could also lump our noodle soup seller’s business in with the restaurant trade. Euromonitor puts the global consumer food-service business – everything from cafés and fast-food chains to full-service restaurants – at $1.85 trillion. But with many restaurants operating on a cash basis, even in the US, the true value of this industry is hard to pin down. In fact, a huge amount of food is bought and sold informally. ‘When you talk about the food industry, the first thing people think of is Coca-Cola or Starbucks,’ says Florence Egal, a nutrition specialist at the FAO. ‘But of course, women’s groups in Mexico transforming maize into tortillas and sending them from house to house would also be part of the food industry.’ Despite these difficulties in measuring the absolute size of the food business, nearly everyone agrees: The sector is growing at an astonishing pace.’” (Sarah Murray, op. cit.) Intricacies, manipulations and informal type of market activities in the periphery, and unreliable data there also make the market difficult to comprehend. These have relations and implications that impact consumers. These are factors impacting inequality.

Global Pet Food Market

There is another global food market many of the poor and self-contained middle class are unaware of: the pet food market with billions of dollars. A comparison between the global pet food market and the food market the world poor fall victim to help comprehend the inequality the poor are imposed with.

The global pet food market was worth US$58.6 billion in 2011. It’s expected to reach the value of US$74.8 billion in 2017. It’s expected that North America will remain the largest regional segment for the pet food industry in terms of revenue generation, accounting for around 40% of the total revenue. The North America pet food market valued at US$21.7 billion in 2011 was followed by the Europe market. (Transparency Market Research, “Pet Food Market – Global Industry Size, Market Share, Trends, Analysis and Forecast, 2011 – 2017”, April 15, 2013)

It’s, in one sense, indecent, unjust and crude to make a comparison between pet food market and human food market as human is not equivalent to pet. But the global capital compels to resort to such a comparison as capital compares everything in market, and as capital has degraded human existence below all characteristics of humane, and, as, in real terms, human has been made a commodity sold in the global labor market. To the rich, human is less valuable than the pet of the rich. The rich love their pets, but there’s is only brutality the rich keep accumulated for the poor. An enquiry at some peripheral society will find the level of brutality: the amount of money a peripheral rich, a lumpen rich in a peripheral society, spends daily for a pair of pet’s food is much higher than 5 poor living in peripheral slums or villages, slums or villages in the periphery of the world system. Sometimes, the amount of money allotted for a pair of pets reaches to Taka 500-700 daily. Even, the poor are not aware of this “love” as a lot of information essential to them doesn’t reach them.

Poor doesn’t own drone

Inequality in food and health doesn’t come to sight with its full “bloom” if food market is not divided into the food market of the poor and the food market of the rich. There are two food markets: one for the poor with rotten or near-rotten, toxic or semi-toxic, engineered or adulterated “food”, and another catering to the hunger of the rich. Sources of commodities sold in the two markets, color, tastes and prices of the commodities, purchasing capacity of the consumers in the two markets, labor-power spent for producing the two types of commodities, sales trend, environment footprint made for producing the two types of commodities for the two markets are different. The account is difficult to get hold of. However, inquiry in societies gives the picture that can make the poor aware of inequality.

Even the two food markets in advanced capitalist societies and in the poor southern hemisphere are different. In the poor periphery of the world system, the food inequality-picture with two markets turns vulgar and appears a cartoon as one encounters food-luxury and food-wastages enjoyed by the nouveaux-riches of poor societies. Making food wastages are part of the luxury the rich enjoy as it shows their opulence and power. They are not embarrassed, not shy, not with any guilty feeling for their dirty luxury. They are confident with their control of mass-psyche, with their manipulation power with information, and manipulation of awareness at the level of ordinary mass of consumers, with their capacity of scaling down of mass hatred to improper and unjust luxury of the rich, with the ideologies marketed that ignore or blur the question of inequality, that doesn’t vigorously and consistently raise the issue of inequality, that doesn’t question source of inequality.

A barbaric character of the inequality surfaces if one compares the market of luxury commodities the rich consume and the market of the food the poor are to survive on. Prices of villas, ranches, yachts, perfumes and diamonds the world rich class owns is now a known fact. Even the rich don’t feel ashamed with their scandalous properties. Now, the rich use drone for getting delivery of champagne. The poor can’t get hold of a drone for getting delivery of food essential for their survival, not even they can imagine or dream it. The time in the life of the poor seems immobile and ever-hungry. Isn’t this a part of inequality? Isn’t inequality bright as daylight?

So, only weighing food consumed and only looking at quality of food being consumed will not provide a full reality of food inequality. It should be related and compared with other parts of economy, with the way and amount/quantity the rich consume, indulge with, waste, destroy and pilfer. The comparison leads the inequality issue to the issue of deprivation of the masses of the poor.

Inequality in the food market turns cruel if a comparison is made between the amount/quantity the poor, the toilers produce and the amount/quantity they are handed over, the labor-power appropriated from them and the food thrown out to them. A look into profit and monopoly superprofit in the food industry helps understand the amount the toilers produce as profit is a converted form of surplus value. “[I]n its assumed capacity of offspring of the aggregate advanced capital,” Marx writes, “surplus-value takes the converted form of profit.” (Capital, vol. III) And, monopoly superprofit grows out of monopolies concentrating money capital, minerals and natural resources, means of transportation/communication, discoveries and inventions, marketing, decisive quantity of the means of production. “[M]onopoly”, writes Lenin, “yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world.” (“Imperialism and the split in socialism”)

Today’s world food market is controlled by monopolies making superprofits, and, the monopolies, borrowing from Lenin’s above mentioned essay, “‘ride on the backs’ of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in other countries.” The food market thus bears the contradictions: superprofits/monopolies versus billions of people, monopolies versus countries ravaged by monopolies, monopolies versus local producers.

A butchers’ market

The food market is used as a weapon of war against societies trying to live with honor, trying to get out of the chain of the world capitalist system. Even, energy market is manipulated to manipulate the global food market. These turn the food market a butchers’ market. Imposed economic sanction/embargo/blockade by the world imperialism is the example; Cuba, Iraq under Saddam-rule are the examples. Dumping of food commodities including sugar is the example. These steps not only increase inequality, but also bring deaths, even “award” deaths of children although the children have no role in geopolitics. A glimpse doesn’t miss this “beauty” of the food market, a creation of imperialism, although mainstream prefers not to consider it while discussing inequality.

Inequality: Capitalism’s Inefficiency With Food

Robbing better food is enough to deprive a people of its life and intellect. The arrangement of inequality that capitalism imposes deprives the majority, the members of “low-status households”. They are not allowed, the arrangement is so made, to afford better food.

With this arrangement, capitalism, on the one hand, is depriving humanity of food and health, and, on the other, is increasing its profit. More than one aspect is there in the business of food and health inequality capitalism engages with.

Aspect 1: Capitalism increases its profit by marketing “attractive” food, which is harmful for health. Capital finds there are cheaper foods that are not helpful to the health of labor, but helpful to profit. Reports on marketing expenditures and profit from food and health industries support the assertion. “[T]here is strong marketing from certain food companies which encourage less nutritious food.” (The Guardian, Guardian Professional, “Public health dialogue on policy: food and inequality”, February 20, 2013)

Aspect 2: Capital compels labor to resort to cheaper food as labor’s first priority is payment of, already cited studies have found, rent, interest, utilities, etc. By marketing cheaper food capital ensures payment of interest, etc. by labor. By paying interest, rent, etc. labor gives away a part of money it was paid as necessary for reproduction of capital. “Why are people eating less healthily? Large portions of the country can’t afford to eat well. Income is not rising fast enough to keep up with other costs (e.g. rent, electric bills, etc). There is less time available to prepare food. Time constraints force people to go for ready meals.” (ibid.) Capital, thus, doesn’t turn a loser immediately.

Aspect 3: Capitalism can resort to food harmful for labor as there is a large reserve army of labor. Disease, disability and death are asked by capital to prefer the poor. Capital can hire one worker at cheaper rate if its one fat worker can’t move its muscles and brain with speed, if its one worker falls sick. It’s a show of capital’s brutal face. Capitalist crisis booms the business of increasing the reserve army of labor and exploiting the situation. With wide health inequalities the poor are more likely to develop serious illnesses, they increasingly encounter psychological problems, and die earlier than the rich. Suicide rate among the poor also increases as they face crisis. Reports from advanced capitalist countries present evidences.

Aspect 4: The capitalist food inequality and health crisis sends some money to the health industry. A portion of the poor has to resort, within capacity, and sometimes, reaching the last limit of capacity like selling away whatever the poor have, to the “mercifully” costly health industry: costly medicine, prescription made with manipulated/bribed hands, costly, and in a number of societies, more medical tests are conducted than required, costly hospital fees. It’s the poor that pay with their unfortunate life.
Capital thus, the aspects mentioned above show, weakens labor but doesn’t weaken itself immediately. But, there is an opposite aspect that shows in the long-term capital gets hurt.

Aspect 5: Labor’s consumption of food is essential for capital. “[T]he individual consumption of the working-class is,” Marx writes, “therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. … The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital.” (Capital, vol. I) Capitalism, thus, hurts its interest by hurting health of people as the system requires labor able to drive its machine. But the food it provides doesn’t help body to drive the system’s machines.

Moreover, there are sickness related to workplace that harm the working people, not the property-owning class as the property owners don’t have to stay daily in harmful working condition through a long period of time. In the US, there are estimates that “50,000 people die and another 400,000 are sickened each year because of illnesses contracted in the workplace.” (The US Department of Labor, (Work in Progress), the official blog of the US Department of Labor, “The Journey to Safety Excellence Starts With You”, Deborah Hersman, October 27, 2014)] Can an economy ignore the cited figure even if the following figure is ignored: In the US, “in recent years, nearly 11 workers died on the job each day, and 5 million were injured annually.” (ibid.) “Food” related death in societies/countries in the periphery mainly is unaccounted. Data on deaths from hunger are available. It’s impossible even to imagine hunger related death from the propertied class. Hunger related death puts its “loving” touch only on the poor. Isn’t it an evidence of inequality?

There is claim: “People are an employer’s most important asset.” (ibid.) Moreover, none disagrees: Better food contributes to national economy.

But a large portion of population in countries can’t afford better food, and they suffer with ill health. These harm economy, which is not helpful to capital. Capitalism is carrying on its curse in the area of food and health although it requires healthy subjects to ensure running of its machine of profit. Capital requires health “to encourage workers to stay in the labor force and boost their skills, and to make them more attractive for companies to hire.” Measures to “stay in the workforce”, “boost skills” and making labor “attractive” to companies are required for reproduction of capital. But, it’s failing in its goal, which is an inefficiency of the system. Thus, it can be said by copying Marx, the depriver is deprived.

The entire capitalist food and health inequality business with contradictory aspects shows the system’s inefficiency in (1) allocation of resources; (2) use of labor; (3) balancing economic activity; (4) ensuring self-interest; (5) proper handling of contradictions within the system. It, thus, nullifies its logic for its existence although its proponents stand for it.

And, the inefficiency/failure is being found in the advanced, matured capitalist economies, which are overflowing with resources, and are equipped with knowledge and experience of management. Moreover, these countries have the so-called free press, an essential tool, as at least one renowned economist claimed, for fighting out hunger. Now, there is, once again being found, famine of thought in mainstream.

A single approach doesn’t lead to the entire story

A single approach of looking only at “who gets what food” limits and narrows down the inequality question in the area of food and health. The approach doesn’t present the full scene of inequality in the area as these are connected to distribution/allocation, market, profit, class interests that show ownership and control over food and health. The monster-like inequality-reality gets a better appearance with a look into market and profit.

Market is created for food and health industries. The grammar behind the market is loud: profit with people’s struggle for a good health. The struggle is waged everyday, in every sphere of life, at household, community, production place and market place levels, while accessing food and health related areas, and accessing other social and political facilities/arrangements/institutions related to food and health. The issue is not only limited with food, drug, and health care facilities. It, rather, is connected to related commodities with their connections, international trade regimes, politics and legislation in countries. In all the areas, related class interests define the related issues and people’s lives. These bear signs of inequality.

Worldwide power: In the present global system, societies/countries tied to the system can’t stay free from the curse of food and health inequality simply because of the system’s worldwide power.

The power is exerted with full force, with finance and trade, in markets and future markets of related commodities that includes raw materials produced in forests, mines, farms, and machines, and that are transported. In the markets, “all the necessary factors”, to quote Marx, “of the labour-process” are present. There are, again quoting Marx, “its objective factors, the means of production, as well as its subjective factor, labour-power.” (Capital, vol. I) So the factors can’t be ignored while looking into the issue.

Political actions: Legislations, political acts, in countries are framed to ensure the related interests, which are ultimately dominant class interests. Political programs that manifest economic interests of dominant strata of society are there. The political programs ensure maximization of profiteering with food and health. These get manifested in food and health inequality only in the life of commoners, people.

Neo-liberalism/austerity: Imposition of neo-liberal measures, and austerity measures increase food and health inequality and increases power and profit of capital. Countries that were/are being imposed with neo-liberal/austerity measures provide ample evidence. Europe, a continent rich with resources plundered from colonies and with appropriated surplus value, is a burning example. The banking/public debt crisis in Europe compelled all Europeans to pay. “However … it is Europe’s poorest that are bearing the greatest costs, in an echo of the structural adjustment programmes imposed on countries in Latin America, South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s.” (Oxfam, A True Cautionary Tale, the true cost of austerity and inequality in Europe, briefing paper, September 2013) The cost is ultimately paid by cutting down food and health.

A few facts, cited below, from the rich continent help comprehend the reality.

The European Commission approved €4.5 trillion in aid to the financial sector (equivalent to 36.7 per cent of EU GDP) during 2008-2011. (EC, “Tackling the financial crisis – Banks”, 2012) In 2010, countries including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain imposed austerity measures on the people. The measures included deep and wide spending cuts, regressive taxes that “entrench inequality – from the loss of decent public services to the erosion of social security and the weakening of collective bargaining through deregulation of the labour market. These measures … are having a severe impact upon European societies …. As the richest in many European countries affected by austerity have seen their share of income rise, the very poorest have seen their income share fall.” (ibid.)

Referring to “Introduction: Crisis, policy responses and widening inequalities in the EU” by J Leschke and M Jespen (International Labour Review, 151, 2012) the briefing paper cited total public spending cuts in countries in 2010-2014: 40 per cent of GDP in Ireland, approximately 20 per cent in the Baltic States, 12 per cent in Spain, and 11.5 per cent in the UK. The immediate affects of the cuts include loss of millions of public sector jobs. In the UK, 1.1 million public sector jobs are planned to be cut during the period 2010-2018. There are public sector wage cuts/frozen in Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, the UK. Countries have made social security budget cuts. In 2011 budgets, Greece, Latvia, Portugal, Romania made decreases of over five per cent. In 2010, health-spending recorded its first drop in decades. Ireland and Greece made more than six per cent cut. “In Lisbon, about 20 per cent of clients of pharmacies, mainly women, unemployed and elderly people, did not complete their whole prescriptions due to rising costs.” (ibid.) Countries privatized health care institutions. “[T]he gains are not being equitably distributed, as the poorest continue to suffer, while the richest remain comparatively unaffected.” (ibid.)

The rich continent found the bitter fact from Lorna, a 33 years old citizen: “It’s such a struggle. The wages don’t go up but yet all the prices for food, fares, they all do. By the time I’ve paid out all of my gas and electric, child-minding fees, shopping, fares to work, I’m maybe, if I’m lucky, left with about 10 pounds. Sometimes I will go without a dinner, or anything to eat that day, so that there’s money there for other stuff.” (N Cooper & S Dumbleton Walking The Breadline: The Scandal Of Food Poverty In 21st Century Britain, Church Action on Poverty & Oxfam, 2013, in Oxfam, September 2013, op. cit.) State of people comprising millions of Lorna is not confusing after the statement Lorna made.

No evidence from any country showing the rich die or suffer from lack of food and health care can be found. But Lorna in millions are there in countries irrespective of rich and poor to provide evidence of food and health inequality in the world system. “The long-term social cost of the economic crisis has been underestimated. More people are being evicted from their homes. More people are trapped in over indebtedness, as they face increased living costs with reduced income. Child poverty is growing and young people are being deprived from the possibility to imagine a future.” (European Anti-Poverty Network, August 2013)

A reality with contradictions: A reality with contradictions emerges: “[W]hen taxes and social security payments are taken into account, the richest have seen their share of total income grow, whilst the poorest have seen theirs fall. Other stark indications of continuing prosperity for the richest include the growth of Europe’s luxury goods market.” (Bain and Company, Bain projects global luxury goods market will grow overall by 10% in 2012, though major structural shifts in market emerge, 2012, in Oxfam, September 2013, op. cit.) Food and health care for the poor are not available in the luxury goods market for the rich, a contradiction with limits of the market.

Environment-ecology: With the destruction of environment and ecology that goes with seemingly mindless, but actually only with profit motive the poor people’s access to food decreases, even, at times, it completely gets out of their reach. The global capital’s transfer of environment-hostile technology to the poor part of the world negatively impact people’s food and health that increases inequality in the area.

Energy thirst: Similarly, capital’s endless energy thirst decreases people’s access to food, negatively impacts their income, and thus increases food and health-inequality.

Famine: Famines, capitalist system-made, increase inequality in food and health care. The Bangladesh 1974 famine, made as part of imperialist intervention, and countries in Africa are evidences. The rich don’t starve during famines, and iterate deprivation of the poor.

Imperialism: Imperialist intervention and war, multinational corporations fomenting civil disturbance, sectarian strife and civil war not only increase food and health inequality; a large part of population, often an entire population, is denied minimum food and health. Sometimes, the denial is total. Agriculture, industries, trade, infrastructure, institutions, market places are demolished, minimum conditions for carrying on production are destroyed, a large part of population is dislodged, it is displaced internally or turns refugees crossing national border. Vietnam, and countries in west Asia and Africa are stark examples.

Inequality in the area of food and health are with connections related capital and commodities make that turn the issue into political and class question, are part of the over all deprivation capital makes, and, thus, the issue is part of political struggle, and is an area for waging and intensifying class struggle.