G HIROPEAN ACR CULTURE

ALL OVER Europe significant changes are taking place in the production and distribution of food as big monopolies and largescale capitalist farmers move in to take control.

The housewife, who consistently has to pay out more in the shops and supermarkets to feed the family, might be excused for thinking that the problem of European agriculture is one of scarcity.

This is far from being the case.

Surplus food products are piling up and in some cases peasants and farmers are being pala by their governments to limit production.

In fact there is a growing problem of agricultural overproduction.

At the same time many underpaid families, pensioners and others do not get enougt to eat even in prosperous Europe, while in the rest of the world millions are slowly dying from malnutrition.

What, then, is really going on ?

To start at the point nearest the consumer, the main trend is towards the concentration of a large proportion of retail trade in the hands of a few big chains and the rise of supermarket trading.

Many small shopkeepers are thus going out of business or are being hard pressed . to compete.

Within retail trade there is a big economy in the use of labour power and often extreme exploitation of the shop assistants.

The products which are on sale in the stores are increasingly controlled by a handful of big firms which operate on an international scale.

One after another, in all spheres of the food industry, old - established independent firms are falling under the control of these giants.

EXTENSIVE

PENETRATION General Foods, General Mills, Nabisco and other American combines have already extensively penetrated the European market. Many old, traditional brands conserve their names, but are produced by divisions of the international combines, either American or European, such as Unilever and Nestle.

Bitter struggles are now going on between these giants to take over the remaining independents, many of which are only too willing to sell out because they lack capital to expand and to adapt production to changing tastes.

In the food business, enormous expenditure is devoted to advertising, promoting new products, such as 'convenience foods', , and pushing one brand against another virtually identical one produced by a competitor.

The concentration of capital at the processing and manufacturing level has important effects upon producers.

To a growing extent they have to work to the processors' specifications and accept a contract price laid down in advance.

The peasants and farmers in such cases merely become agents for the big combines and retain only an illusory independence. They cannot market their produce independently and are thus in the hands of the big purchasers.

The changes going on . in distribution and in processing and manufacturing require, therefore, big changes in agriculture itself.

For the past century or more European governments have, in various ways, extended protection and assistance to peasants and farmers fate of the American Indian. for social and political reasons. A large peasantry was seen as a counterweight to the urban proletariat and a sure reserve of support for conservative policies.

ARTIFICIAL

INFLATION The agrarian sector was thus kept artificially inflated and the typical revisionist argument that the laws of capitalist concentration did not apply to agriculture was given some sustenance.

Now, with delayed action, the laws of capitalism are beginning to assert themselves upon European agriculture. At the same time, the European governments are abandoning support for the peasantry and coming out more openly as agents of the big monopolies.

It is now admitted, therefore, that the agrarian sector must contract.

Too much is being produced, surpluses are piling up and, as standards of cultivation and mechanization and chemiTHE capitalist class takes history seriously. Apart from the enormous amounts of money spent in maintaining university departments and serving academics, it never misses a chance to push its view of the past on television.

In recent years we have had the American series of programmes on World War Two and more recently still the BBC's attempt at World War There have been programmes on the Russian Revolution, the inter-war years (called appropriately enough "The Lost Peace'), on the rise of Hitler and fascism, on the Boer War, on the Royal Air Force and many other subjects and periods besides.

Hugely expensive in time, talent, technical and financial resources, such programmes often dig up a lot of revealing film.

Much ingenuity and laboratory skill is lavished on making the old film presentable and great effort is put into laying suitable sound effects and music.

But behind it all often lurks the key figure of the historical advisor.

Six cal aids bring European agriculture closer to American standards, the problem becomes more acute.

The question now is how to turn thousands of peasants and small farmers off the land or to make them available as wage workers on the large farms.

To carry forward such a process has now become a necessity for the capitalists of the main European countries.

It has reached its initial stages in France and has already had important social repercussions.

Germany, Italy, other countries which conserve a large rural population cannot escape.

The general offensive monopoly capitalism against the European peasantry is now being prepared.

It is a strategy for the next two decades which will transform the countryside and bring Continental Europe closer to the English or American model.

A relatively small number of large captialist farms employing machinery and hired labour will take the place of the BOURGEOIS HISTORY With the producers he will play a big part in establishing the line of the programme and his views will always tend to dominate in the commentary put to the film.

He is the 'expert, the 'authority"; he will act as the watchdog of the system in case the programme-maker looks like straying from the well-trodden path.

In the series on the First World War 'The Great War' the nearest we ever came to understanding that great imperialist slaughter was in the odd glimpses of the mass murder and suffering borne by the working-class soldiers of all nations and in the suggestion that the General Staffs on both sides were incompetent, ignorant and insensible to the meaning of their actions.

Why this slaughter had to happen was never explained; it was all seen as some terrible inhuman mistake.

Naturally the blame never laid at the door of capitalist system itself.

Buffalo's Gone' traces the life and stru у 600,000 Indians remain, confined to st of America's poor. Stripped of all their | ides among the young. The film is directed o, who has taken a particular interest in present peasant patchwork if this strategy is successful.

Of course, these intentions are not proclaimed from the housetops, nor is it certain that the politicians responsible for agrarian policy are conscious of where the steps they are taking are really leading.

APPEAR

TO HELP Some of the policies, indeed, are put forward in such a way that they seem to be helping the peasantry, while what they are really doing is to assist the big farmers at the expense of the small peasants and tenants.

An example which illustrates this, as well as the problem of over-production as a whole, comes from France, where, in accordance with Common Market policy, peasants are being paid to kill off their milch cows.

At a £100 a piece for ten animals this puts the peasant in possession of a respectable sum of money.

But, as Michel Bosquet puts umAn ON THE BOX At the moment work is getting under way for another major historical series ın the BBC. This time it will be about the rise and fall of the British Empire.

The programmes will not be ready for showing until late 1970 or early 1971, but a large staff with all facilities is already hard at it.

The BBC is producing this series in association with the American Time-Life empire and the budget involved for 12 shows is rumoured to be in the region of £250,000.

So another major possibility to spread some real understanding of that period in British capitalism's past, when it did its plundering and pillaging quite openly and frankly, looks like being used to create quite the reverse effect.

Unless the producers concerned take a staunch stand against the view which sees all one-time colonial peoples as basically ignorant and incapable of self-government, we shall once again be treated to more flagrant and skilfully presented lies under the guise of historical objectivity.

A great opportunity which we can be sure the capitalist class will not wish to let slip.

How much of the real truth emerges in the programmes will depend firstly on the producers concerned and finally on the attitude of the bureaucratic censors who attempt to decide what we should know.

LAST WEEK (November 11) saw another exercise by one of the producers of the BBC's Great War series, Tony Essex (now with Yorkshire Television).

This time, as executive producer (in association with writer - producer Michael Deakin), he gave us "The Struggle For China. The Story of the Chinese Revolution 1900-1949.

It bore the familiar stamp: skilfully researched film, expensively produced and a most distinguished actor to read the commentary. it in "Le Nouvel Observateur', when he leads his ten cows to the slaughter-house he signs his own death warrant.

One of his main means of livelihood has now been disposed of.

But the big farmer who keeps more than ten cows is paid a similar sum for each animal on condition that he keeps them, but does not sell their milk.

This is intended to encourage the production of meat, and especially veal, and helps the big farmer to make the necessary conversions.

In other words, such measures favour the big farmers and spell ruin for many peasants.

The large surpluses now piling up are a menace to the future of the peasantry, because the cut back. in production is bound to hit the small units.

In the same way, the Where we heard the regal tones of Sir Michael Redgrave and Sir Ralph Richardson over the film of 1914-1918, we now had the warm intimacy of James Mason for China.

Where no real sense was made of the causes and meaning of the First World War, now no proper understanding could be reached about these 50 years in the history of the Chinese people.

But much did emerge of great value. Nothing new; for a Marxist nothing surprising.

But it proved impossible to tackle this great theme in a liberal way without being forced to acknowledge certain major facts.

The continuing presence of Russian, French, Italian, German, Japanese and British imperialists inside China up to the day they were literally forced out came out clearly.

The 'nauseating thoroughness' with which uprisings like the Boxer rebellion were suppressed by these same imperialist forces was glimpsed.

There was no adequate account of the full role of these powers, however; only Japan was seen as the bestial foreign invader, not Britain.

Yet the record of British capitalism, its army and other agents is equally bloodstained.

Similarly the programme made very clear that the Kuomintang of Sun Yat Sen and later of Chiang Kai-shek was always the party of the nationalist_ bourgeoisie, never of the revolution.

On the other hand the commentary could merely express 'astonishment' that as late as 1927 Moscow ordered a continuance of the united front between the communists and the Kuomintang - even after Chiang, in league with the imperialists, had massacred Chinese communists, workers and peasants in the North, in Shanghai and Changsa.

No mention was made, of course, of the traitorous role played by Stalin and his agents like Lominadze and Neumann, in instigating the holocausts in Canton and elsewhere; no velopment of 'factory-farming' favours those able to invest large sums of money in buildings and equipment and spells doom for the small man.

EVERYBODY

IS HIT Therefore growing monopoly control of processing and distribution hits both the consumer and the small producer.

For the former, despite food surpluses and phoney price cutting, it means a steady increase in prices and often a deterioration in quality and choice.

For the small producer it means a bleak future, a struggle to keep the family property together and ultimate defeat.

In general terms it proves that agriculture is no exception to the general laws of capitalist mention, as Trotsky put it, that it was precisely the defeat of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-1927, conditioned by the leadership of the Comintern, which prepared the conditions for the Japanese invasion.

No mention either of the position of Trotsky and the Left Opposition on the Chinése Revolution.

No-it was merely 'astonishing', a sort of mystery. But Chiang's fear and hatred of communism was recognized as it was by American capital during the Second World War and after.

This was another crucial aspect of the history which was glossed over.

It was suggested that after being of necessity in alliance with the Chinese Red Army in the fight against Japan, America somehow realized that the future did not lie with Chiang.

That recognition was forced on them; it was only reluctantly accepted and then only temporarily.

In the spring of 1946, after the Red Army had carried the worst of the war in the most appalling conditions, America had Chiang and the Nationalist army equipped and ready for the final showdown with communism. resulting from past government action to preserve the peasantry from the full rigours of the market.

It underlines the anarchy of the capitalist market which the rise of big monopolies only intensifies.

The scandals of the 1930s, about which there was so much fuss, when corn was burnt in locomotives and oranges dumped in the sea, is being repeated today on an even larger scale.

Scientists are searching for industrially profitable ways of turning 'surplus' food " into industrial products.

Powdered milk, for example, is being developed as part of a new surface for motorways.

Other foods are being denatured or destroyed in Europe as well as in the USA to keep up the profits of the big combines.

Already for some years in France, and to some extent in other countries, the peasantry and the small shopkeepers 22-00 At this point, of course, the Soviet government also recognized Chiang as the legal ruler of China and extended no real aid to the comrades in the people's liberation army.

Four million Kuomintang troops faced one million communist troops.

Yet three years later Peking had fallen, the Chinese People's Republic was proclaimed and the imperialist Chiang was driven out to Taiwan.

War had this time too turned out to be the mother of revolution (Trotsky).

None of this happened by accident or because America 'realized' it was backing the wrong siáe.

It could back no other side; the people of China had overthrown centuries of imperialist rule, exploitation and murder. American capital has never ceased in its attempts to restore that oppression.

But despite all its heroism and endurance, bravery and courage, the Chinese leadership under Mao Tse-tung has never broken from Stalinism. The best the programme could make of this was in its last sentence of commentary. most violent and desperate ways, against the fate which they sense is in store for them.

Mostly they hope to conserve what they have and arrest the progress of mono poly advance by putting pressure on bourgeois governments.

Such methods can be of no avail.

Not only an irresistible process, but the whole fate of European capitalism is at work.

The elimination of a large part of the peasantry-two out of three according to some estimates for France--is now a necessity imposed by the competitive pressures of the world market.

INEVITABLE

SUBJECTION The reduction in the number of small shopkeepers and their further subjection to the needs of the big producers and wholesalers is equally inevitable.

As part of the middle class, specifically of the bourgeoisie, the reaction of these sections may well be to turn to the extreme right, to fascism.

Events in France during the May-June days, when numbers of peasants, seeing the working class taking the initiative, gave their support to the movement, indicate that they can also be a reserve of support for the socialist revolution, given the correct policy and leadership.

The readiness of the peasantry to fight is an indication of lack of confidence in capitalist solutions.

In an often confused way, they begin to understand that a political change is required.

European Marxists therefore need to play close attention to the changes which are taking Pect, in the countryside as a result of capitalism's crisis.

It is necessary to return to and study the writings of Engels and Lenin on the subject and to learn from the mistakes and betrayals of the past.

Referring to the proclamation of the People's Republic it said :

"The 30-year struggle tor China was over and the true Chinese Revolution was about to begin.' A revealing, liberal and intelligent programme. But in the end it served its shareholders well.

ANOTHER set shareholders were put out of their agony last week.

After its total and public re-orientation towards profit rather than programmes -and the resignation of most of its best production staff, London Weekend Television announced its first-year trading figures (up to July 27).

There was a pre-tax profit of €259,000.

Trading profits altogether were £4.3 million.

Of this £3.57 million was absorbed by the Exchequer levy on advertising revenue and another £500,000 by costs involved in the move to the new Thameside studios.

Turnover was £12.4 million — about £400,000 above the figure expected.

The chairman of LWT, Tory Aidan Crawley, said profits were below original hopes. He said costs were rising and pleaded for a reduction in the advertising levy.

Workers at LWT can therefore look forward to big cutbacks and eventual redundancies; viewers can relax in the certainty that the choice has been made-profit every time.

A FINAL NOTE. A '24 Hours' team performed a small service for the working class last week. On the November 12 programme they showed film of the strike at BSR East Kilbride.

The opening shot was a zoom in to a window in the management offices. Behind the curtain was a management man filming all the pickets outside.

He then coolly admitted that the film was for the Special Branch, to enable the law to identify any 'outside agitators'.

The item also showed how management had hired scab labour to prevent giving union recognition.

By giving even this coverage it reminded us of how little of the truth we usually see on

FOUR November