Gordon Haskell Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 49, 5 December 1949, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Ever since the war, defenders of the capitalist economic setup in America have been saying that government and business have found new ways and means to prevent the country from plunging into another 1929 depression.
If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, these defenders of the faith can pat themselves on the back. Five years after the war, no 1929 depression has yet hit us. The pudding tastes fairly good – to date.
But even the most eager-beaver pro-capitalists are getting a little worried. And one source of their worries is the state of the government’s farm-support program.
The government has, indeed, found a way to prevent any depression oh the farms. It’s very simple. Just buy up at a good price everything the farmer can produce. As long as you can keep it up, there will be no depression on the farms. But some are wondering whether this program won’t work like the program of the farmer who decided to break his horse of the expensive habit of eating. You’ll remember that he cut the horse’s rations down each day, and he was just on the verge of success when the darned critter up and died on him.
We’re wondering whether the government’s program won’t go along fine till one day there just isn’t enough space to store the stuff the government is piling up, or the government – even our multi-billion-dollar government – just can’t foot the bill.
On August 31 of this year the government had over two and a half billion dollars invested in “surplus” farm commodities. (“Surplus” is put in quotes because I’m sure very few readers of Labor Action have any surplus of vegetables, fruits, tobacco or clothes in their homes.)
Of that amount, $1,042,000,000 had been paid to farmers as price-support loans on such products as corn, wheat, tobacco, cotton and various grains. The other $1,638,000,000 had been spent to buy up farm products ranging from butter to apples to grapes and potatoes, and we don’t know what else.
Right now the government owns about one hundred million pounds of butter which it has bought this year. (We wonder v/hat happened to the butter bought last year ...) Last week the government announced its first sale from the hoard, about 33,000 pounds of Grades B and C butter.
A hundred million pounds of butter is quite a bit of butter, any way you spread it. And if storing that butter is the sure way to prevent a farm depression that the pro-capitalist experts have been talking about, it is bound to work just as long as it is applied to ALL parts of the capitalist system.
If people stop buying cars, the government would have to buy them and store them. The same with radios and washing machines, shoes and everything else.
And let’s not discriminate against anyone. If the retailer can’t sell his goods and make a profit, the government should send shoppers around to buy up his goods. And if you can’t find a job, the government should give you a job at wage-support levels just as it buys goods at price-support levels.
It’s a wonderful system, and like every simple system, there isn’t a flaw in it. Just like that farmer and his horse. Guaranteed to work until the system dies – or blows up in the First Atomic War.
Gordon Haskell Archive | Trotskyist Writers’ Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 23 February 2023