Food for Thought: Grocery Prices Up

Would you pay money to starve to death? Billions of people do. Some of those people found out what to do about it on Wednesday evening, October 17, at a forum, entitled "The Truth About the Food Panic," that launched the International Food Campaign in Boston.

Sponsored by the National Unemployed and Welfare Rights Organization (NUWRO) and the U.S. Labor Party, the forum was the first in a series leading towards in International Food Conference to be held November 24 (Thanksgiving Weekend) in New York City.

On Monday, October 22, as part of the U.S. campaign, the U.S. Labor Party will hold a demonstration in Boston at which Larry Sherman, USLP candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, will announce the Labor Party's intention to organize to stop capitalist food speculators permanently, and will indict the international bourgeoisie for murder.

Wednesday's forum went behind the headlines about skyrocketing food prices and wild trading in the pits of the grain exchange to highlight the one fact that the banker-capitalists cannot escape: depression conditions force them to keep up their payments on ever-increasing debts. To escape bankruptcy proceedings and the loss of their property titles, they must cut costs at all costs, and the one cost that is within their direct control is the cost of labor.

The money saved from laying off workers, speeding them up to increase production, busting unions in order to pay lower wages, is rushed into any venture that can turn a quick profit, a profit which must pay off corporate debts.

Just as employees work for the capitalists, so too the money squeezed from their wages must be made to "work" in the stock and commodities markets, driving up the price of livestock feed so high, for example, that meat prices go out of sight.

In a clear case of robbing Peter to pay Paul to rob Peter again, workers must use reduced wages to buy increasingly higher-priced food, food whose cost has been raised by speculative use of the very money taken out of the workers' own wages. Adding insult to injury is a mild description of the bourgeoisie's attempt to kill the working class and make it pay for the funeral.

The crime inherent in this process lies not just in the current high food prices, not just in the tractors that go unrepaired for lack of money, not just in the baby chicks killed because grain to feed them is too expensive. The criminal incompetence of the international capitalist class to run the world economy is destroying the productive agricultural infrastructure, guaranteeing the bankruptcy of small and medium size farmers, guaranteeing that the factories are unable to invest in new farm machinery and fertilizer production, guaranteeing the lack of research money for the development of new seed, new agricultural methods.

They are instituting mass starvation and disease on a world-wide scale and forcing the world working class to be a party to its own destruction.

The U.S. Labor Party is organizing housewives, employed and unemployed workers, students, and welfare victims, not to protest this criminal incompetence, but to use their creative powers to take control of production for the entire economy. The Labor Party's emergency food program, presented at the forum, has the twin goals of cutting food costs and expanding food production.

Specifically, the program would cut food costs by 50% immediately by taking the following steps 1) Nationalizing all food distribution, with the government buying food at fixed prices from farmers, eliminating the grain markets. 2) Nationalizing the capitalist farmers. 3) Abolishing existing farm debt, including is a slate in name only, with its members holding different positions on major issues, it is expected to help the conservative voter identify his kind of politicians.

The aftermath of the CCA victory two years ago disillusioned many city liberals, as the coalition fell apart with the alienation of Owens from his four CCA compatriots. The CCA candidates fulfilled their pledge to appoint a new school superintendent but failed to replace City Manager Corcoran.

This year, Saundra Graham, the council's lone radical, has broken her former ties with the CCA to run with five other radicals on the GRO slate. The GRO platform advocates the ouster of Corcoran and greater community control through police civilian review boards and a review process to oversee development.

Yet another procedural issue could influence the fate of Graham's GRO slate. The annual student registration controversy prompted at least preliminary inquiries by the state Attorney General's office this year. Many students have claimed that the city Election Commission has arbitrarily denied them the right to vote here.

Both the CCA and GRO stand to gain votes from student participation and earlier in the campaign they joined forces for a registration drive among students and non-voters.

As for substantive issues, many are of the motherhood and apple pie variety, with only slight differences in phrasing or emphasis distinguishing the supposed conservative from the avowed liberal or radical.

The following is a brief rundown of what the candidates are talking about:

TAXES--Cambridge's real property tax is the third highest in the Boston area, topped only by Boston and Chelsea. Predictably, none of the candidates advocate increased taxes, although their programs for stabilizing the present tax vary. Some favor redistribution of the tax burden within the city (for instance, the Socialist Workers Party would tax businesses while removing taxes on incomes under $15,000 or property valued at less than $30,000) or between the state and city.

Other strategies call for utilization of federal revenue sharing funds, replacement of the property tax with a sales tax, the taxing of presently exempt universities, and reduction of "waste and inefficiency" in the municipal government.

HOUSING--Everyone agrees that the city's housing supply must be upgraded. For whom and how is the question. Conservatives such as Danehy argue that the city has already built more low-income housing than it can absorb, creating a demand for city services that it cannot fulfill. Danehy wants a moratorium on public housing construction.

Others urge the use of Federal subsidy programs to rehabilitate existing structures and construct scatter-site5Cambridge Mayor Barbara Ackermann