Socialist Project: You have written a number of books on Marxist theory and
political economy: why a book on food?

Rob Albritton: When I retired from York University’s Political Science
Department after teaching political theory and political economy
for 36 years, I had more time to do research and writing. Previously most of my work was very theoretical, and I decided it was
time to direct my attention to something more down to earth. I
had many influences directing my attention toward food, not the
least of which was my wife’s career teaching food and nutrition
at Ryerson University in Toronto. Now that I was retired, I could
devote most of my waking hours to researching and writing this
book on the food system – a topic that turned out to be far more
extensive than my initial expectations. Indeed, the more I researched the topic, the more I discovered the numerous interconnections among our ecological crises, our social and physical
health crises, our economic crisis and our global food system.

The focus on the impact that capitalism has on food and agriculture is a particularly rich source if we want to make connections
between the struggles for socialism and the struggles for ecological sustainability. I hope my book can contribute to a growing
wake-up call that will bring about a refocus of human intelligence and material wealth toward reshaping the food system and
the capitalist economy that it is embedded in.

SP: There are various and recently published books and articles
offering critiques of the corporate control of the food system.
What can readers expect to find in your book that is lacking in
other critiques?

RA: After 40 years of studying capitalism, I believe that no single
work makes more headway in grasping its inner logic and inner
dynamic than Marx’s Capital. It was this work more than any
other that guided me in my central aim, which was to understand
how capitalism has shaped our food system. It follows that the
first difference between this book and others written on the topic
of food is that I am not aware of any other food book that explicitly bases its theoretical framework (many do not have theoretical frameworks) on Marx’s Capital. Second, no other food book
has as broad a scope as this one. Third, no other food book has as
much factual information. Fourth and finally, the above three
points are combined in a way that makes this book the most radical critique of the capitalist food system yet written. This is because it seeks out connections between the food crisis and the
other crises of advanced capitalism, and it illustrates that capital’s
indifference to use-value is particularly destructive when capitalism subsumes and commodifies the food system.

SP: What were some of the most interesting and/or surprising
discoveries you made while researching and writing this book?

RA: I was shocked by many things. I’ll mention a few. First, I
was impressed by the immense power of the sugar industry. Sugar
is one of the cheapest, the most addictive, and most profitable of
food inputs. As a result more and more of it goes into much of
our processed foods, even though it is the prime suspect in the
current global diabetes epidemic. Efforts to place constraints on
its use have mostly failed, despite a fledgling international “dump
soft drinks” campaign led by The Center for Science in the Pub-
lic Interest. Second, while I knew in a general way that the global
distribution of food leaves many people struggling with hunger
and malnutrition, I was not aware that globally nearly half the
population makes $2 or less a day, and that approximately one
billion people are mentally impaired due to malnutrition. Finally,
our food system spreads toxins in the environment; has played
the major role in deforestation, the running down of water supplies, and the degradation of land; is a huge contributor to global
warming; and is rapidly depleting the remaining reserves of fos-
sil fuels. In short, it not only undermines human health, but also
is leading us toward ecological disaster.

SP: What are some of the major themes that you address? What
are some of the major failures associated with an agricultural/
food system controlled by capital’s ‘deep structures’?

RA: The title could be misleading without an understanding of
the reference to Marie Antoinette’s “Let Them Eat Cake.” In my
interpretation “junk food” epitomizes capitalist food in this phase
of history, and junk food is high in sugars, fats, and salts, while
being low in other nutrients. My book does not focus narrowly
on junk food, but on a food system whose cutting edge has been
junk food and whose largest corporations tend to be centered in
the U.S., expanding outward to the rest of the world. The main
themes of the book are the food system’s failure to advance hu-
man health, environmental health, or social justice; and the con-
nections between the food crisis and the myriad of other crises
characteristic of late capitalism.

Rational behaviour under
capitalism requires that capitalists continually shift production
from goods and services that are
unprofitable (and will, in due
course plunge them into bankruptcy) to goods and services that
are profitable. Since competition
forces them to maximize short-term profits, it is this quantitative
focus and not the quality of use-values that becomes the overriding goal. For example, if a capitalist learns that by adding more
sugar to baby food, profits will
increase both because sugar is a
very cheap input and because
babies will eat more baby food
and later adults will eat more
sugar, then a rational capitalist
would do this, despite many studies that show a craving for sugar
that borders on addiction can be
established very early in children
through a diet of sugar dense
foods. The capitalist cannot afford to be concerned with the
lifetime of obesity and connected
illnesses that such a diet might
generate. In short, in order to be
rational, a capitalist needs to focus on profits (quantity) and not
the quality of life of humans (or
use-values) unless that quality
can be easily converted into profits. Similarly, if the market for
palm oil is profitable, and the
easiest way to expand its production is to cut down the remaining
rainforests of South East Asia, then a rational capitalist would
not hesitate to do this. Finally, if capitalist farmers profit from
paying low wages to undocumented field workers, then any capitalist farmer who does not do this is likely to lose out to the competition. Unfortunately these and many other destructive trends
are all too current.

SP: How does the crisis in the food system relate to the broader
economic and ecological crises of the current phase of neoliberal
capitalism? How will its impacts be felt and distributed globally?

RA: The food crisis feeds the other crises which in turn feed it.
The American food system is so dependent upon fossil fuels that
it has been estimated that all known fossil fuel reserves would be
exhausted in seven years were the whole world to adopt the U.S.
system. Indeed, at approximately one-third of the total, the food
system contributes more to global warming than any other sector
of the economy. At the same time global warming will reduce
crop yields due to extreme weather and higher temperatures. Further, to mention only two of the many causes of pollution: the
massive petro-chemical inputs of agriculture coupled with the
pollution of bodies of
fresh water by confined
animal feeding operations (CAFOs) make the
capitalist food system a
major contributor to the
toxification of the environment, which is now
reaching alarming levels.

Finally, given the petroleum dependency of the
food system, the price of
food will go up with the
price of petroleum, and
the use of food crop land
for ethanol production
will only push food prices
yet higher. Declining
yields due to global
warming and extreme
weather will also increase
food prices. Without
action now these price increases will soon be
disastrous for the 40 percent of global population
that lives on $2 or less
a day.

SP: Your reply addresses
how capitalism creates
hunger. Can you explain
how it at the same time
produces obesity?

RA: The producers of
junk food that profit from
the ease with which people become quasi-addicted to sugar, fat,
and salt provide consumers with lots of calories but few nutrients. Hooked on junk food and lacking the income to afford more
nutritious food, people consume too many calories and not enough
nutrients. This is a recipe for obesity, a weakened immune system, and ultimately illness and death. A report published by the
American Medical Association claims that if current practices
continue, one-third of American children born in the year 2000
will get diabetes. Even more serious than what some have called
the “pandemic of obesity,” is the hunger and malnutrition suffered by over a billion people in the world. It has been estimated
that during each half hour an average of 360 children under the
age of five die of starvation or hunger-related illnesses.

SP: Perhaps the most challenging part of your book for readers
not familiar with Marx’s Capital or the Unoist approach that informs your theoretical work concerns the two chapters in Part II
of your book where you provide an outline of ‘capitalism in the
abstract and general’ and ‘consumerism’ as a phase of capitalism. Can you elaborate briefly on why this kind of theoretical
work is necessary in order to understand the global and local
failures of the agriculture/food system?

RA: The more abstract level of analysis clarifies the basic features of fully developed capitalism: showing how it subsumes
social relations while deepening and expanding itself. Capital’s
abstract dynamic is present in history to the extent that capitalism
is. At the same time capital is constrained and/or supported by
historically specific structures and agencies that shape it and are
shaped by it. The abstract level of analysis brings out the reasons
why even when capitalism is functioning at its competitive best,
its management of a fully capitalist agricultural/food system is
likely to manifest significant contradictions and irrationalities.
My mid-range level of analysis illustrates the form that these irrationalities take in the phase of consumerism after World War II.

Finally, these two higher levels of analysis help us to understand
the evolving food system over the past twenty years or so. One
can easily list large numbers of alarming facts about current tendencies associated with the capitalist food system, but theory helps
us to weigh the importance of the facts, to understand their interconnections, and hence to understand the most important forces
shaping and being shaped by the food system. The better we un-
derstand how the current system operates, the more effective our
strategies of transformation.

SP: You describe the current phase of capitalism in terms of a
‘capitalist command economy.’ Can you briefly explain what this
means and how it frames the issues you raise in the concluding
chapter of your book on ‘the fight for democracy, social justice,
health and sustainability’?

RA: The food industry always emphasizes the enormous choice
it offers the modern consumer, but this is an illusion. First of all
because most people in the world are too poor to buy any but the
cheapest of foods. Second, those that have the money are confronted with a huge array of processed foods that are largely re-arrangements of soy, corn, fat, sugar, and salt. If you are allergic
to GM soy, you will have to avoid the majority of processed foods
since so many of them contain soy and soy by-products, and there
is no labelling requirement for GMOs. Third, food indoctrination
is so widespread and powerful that most food choices are already
heavily conditioned by the toxic food environment and its powerful marketing techniques. Fourth, nearly all foods in the typical
supermarket are the products of a few huge corporations (for
example, Nestlé and Kraft).

During the “cold war,” western economists often sharply
contrasted “totalitarian command economies,” characteristic of
the communist bloc, with “free market economies,” characteristic of the capitalist bloc. Today, the world capitalist economy ought
to be labelled a “corporate command economy,” because large
corporations run by small elites have way too much unaccountable power to command the future of humanity. Markets are now
largely planning instruments utilized by corporations for creating both supply and demand. Large profits are made even when
much larger social costs (externalities not included in market
prices) will need to be paid by taxpayers and future generations.

While in reality most markets have never worked as pictured by
the ideal of optimality that many economists have presupposed,
now this ideal is so deeply ingrained that it can still be used to
justify “free markets” when in reality we more and more see the
corporate use of markets as planning mechanisms to maximize
their short-term profits while creating huge long-range costs to
society. These social costs can be viewed as debts that future generations will have to pay whether they are economic debts, ecological debts, or health debts.

We need to turn this around, and we need to do it fast. This
will require clearing our minds of the free market myth, so that
we can begin to consciously use markets as democratic planning
mechanisms to advance human and environmental well-being.

Besides democratizing markets, we also need to democratize corporations and governments. Democratizing corporations means
making their decision making transparent so that they can be held
accountable by the public. The first step in democratizing governments is to find ways of preventing them being held for ran-
som by giant corporations.

In the current circumstances, it is particularly important to
democratize the labour market. There will always be unmet social needs, and therefore, there should always be jobs to meet
those needs. Existing labour markets are extremely ineffective
ways of mobilizing human energies to meet human needs. Computer technology could be utilized to find new ways of prioritizing social needs and of mobilizing the human intelligence and
material wealth to meet them. Anyone who wants to work and is
able to work should never be unemployed unless it is to gain
skills needed to meet particular needs, and such education should
be subsidized.

Finally, and this will perhaps be the most difficult, we need
to find ways to redistribute wealth globally in order to advance
the equality that is necessary for democracy to be effective, and
for freedom to have any meaning. Democratizing markets, corporations, and governments is, in my opinion, not a “middle way”
that compromises its soul to neoliberalism, it is the best way forward that I can think of – a way that offers a just and humane way
out of the myriad of crises that confront us.