{"id":1079,"date":"2019-03-11T16:50:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T16:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=1079"},"modified":"2019-10-21T14:17:31","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T13:17:31","slug":"the-black-hole-of-calcutta","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/the-black-hole-of-calcutta\/","title":{"rendered":"The black hole of Calcutta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
December 1943, U.K.<\/a><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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\n“Thousands of emaciated destitutes still roam the streets in the \nceaseless quest for food, scouring dustbins and devouring rotten remains\n of castaway food and fruit. Rickety children clutching imploringly the \ntattered garments barely covering the bones of their mothers are seen in\n all quarters of the city.” (Quoted in Manchester Guardian Weekly, U.K.,\n October 15, 1943.)\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nFamine has always been a factor to reckon with in the economy of India, \nand has usually meant suffering for large sections of the population. It\n is commonly understood that a famine means a shortage of food owing to \nthe natural failure of crops, but what is not generally recognised is \nthat the character of the famine, and the way in which it affects the \npeople, varies with the type of society in which it occurs. To the \nmiddle of the nineteenth century famines in India were localized in the \narea in which there was a shortage of crop, and meant an appalling lack \nof food in that area and of employment. Even if one had money there was \nno food to be brought, and the general solution was to migrate to areas \nwhere food was available. From about 1850, however, capitalism, under \nthe tutelage of the British, became superimposed on the old Indian \nfeudal economy at an ever quickening rate, with an ever greater \nintensity.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWith the spreading of capitalism the growth of industrialisation, the \ndevelopment of the plantation and factory system, the production of \ngoods for sale came more and more into evidence. Concurrently with this \ndevelopment the means of transport and communication were vastly \nincreased and extended. Hence, in the latter half of the nineteenth \ncentury, it became relatively easy to shift quantities of foodstuffs \ninto famine-stricken areas, and a change in the general character of \nIndian famines took place. They now meant, not so much an appalling lack\n of food as high scarcity prices and lack of employment, and whilst the \ngrowth of the means of communication lessened the danger of local \nfamines, it tended to widen the area where high prices would prevail.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThus the famine, from being a calamity of the natural order, turned into\n a calamity of the social order, aggravating the sufferings inflicted on\n the poorer sections of the population, notably the peasants, the \nlandless day-labourer, and the growing urban working class.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt is true that in the area most affected by the recent famine, Bengal, \nBombay, and Madras, there has been some destruction of crops due to \nnatural causes, but at the same time there have been good crops in other\n provinces. In the reports that have arrived in this country there is a \ngeneral insistence that the catastrophe has not come about because of \nany basic natural shortage, but because such deficits in supply as did \nexist have been taken advantage of by hoarders and speculators. The loss\n of the Burma rice crop, excessive inflation, and general economic \ndislocation (all factors arising out of the war), and natural shortages \nin certain districts, all tended to encourage the farmers and merchants \nto hold on to their stocks in order to get still higher prices and \ngreater profits when they did at last decide to sell.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThis was the position as early as January 15, 1943, when in the \nManchester Guardian Weekly (U.K.) it was reported that “price control \nhas never been rigorously enforced, except against small retailers. The \nimpression is widespread that there are considerable stocks which would \nbe brought out if price control was removed and this would relieve the \nshortage until next harvest.” The same issue of the paper also stated \nthat black markets flourished everywhere.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAfter seven months had elapsed the same paper wrote as follows (August 13, 1943):-\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n“The Government of India’s Food Member did not deny last week the \nallegation that men in authority have obstructed the Government’s \nmeasures to bring relief to the masses. The Food Secretary on Sunday \nadmitted that Sind had made enormous profits through the sale of surplus\n wheat and rice. Lack of foresight, the toleration of profiteers, and \nthe fear of alienating certain favoured sections like the landlords, \nhave created the food crisis.”\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWhilst we learn on the one hand of the fear of alienating certain \nfavoured sections of the property owning class, we learn that there was \nno such fear during the period of alienating those sections of the \npopulation with little or no property. Side by side with the blackest of\n black markets, dealing in the very life-blood of the poverty-stricken \nmasses, there were “long queues of hungry workers waiting all night \noutside Government controlled grain shops in places like Bombay.” \n(Manchester Guardian Weekly, U.K., January 15, 1943.)\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nInvestigations conducted by Calcutta University have revealed that 50 \nper cent of the families of destitutes have been broken up, and that 47 \nper cent are landless labourers, 25 per cent small cultivators, 6 per \ncent town beggars, and the remainder unclassified.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nSuch evidence as this throws into bold relief the fact that it is the \npropertyless who suffer and die, whilst the propertied reap excess \nprofits and get all want in the black markets.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe Indian scene, in normal times, is a picture of a vast mass of \nhumanity living in the grip of abysmal poverty. Utter destitution \nresulting in a prolonged death through starvation, or a quicker death \nthrough mal-nutritional diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera and \ntyphoid, is the lot of Indian workers and peasants. What then must be \ntheir lot when the price of the food they require for a bare existence \nsoars far and away above their means? What can they do but wait for \ndeath to claim them, their bony hands held out imploringly for food, on \nthe pavements of the second largest and one of the “most prosperous” \ncities in the British Empire! In other parts of the same empire the \ngranaries of Australia and Canada are full to overflowing with the wheat\n that would bring succour to those in need. The problem, however, \naccording to Mr. Amery (British Secretary for India), speaking in the \nHouse of Commons, October 12, 1943, was “entirely one of shipping, and \nhas to be judged in the light of all the other urgent needs of the \nAllied Nations.” Yet the Allied Nations are producing ships faster than \nthey have ever been produced before in the history of mankind, and the \nUnited States of American (U.S.A.) is able to boast of a production of \n15,000 naval ships of all dimensions in the past three years.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWell might the reader at this point exclaim, “This is madness!”\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nNo, reader, this is not madness\u2014simply another example of the ever \npresent anarchy in CAPITALISM, the economic system of society that holds\n the world enslaved.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAn economic system that is based on the ownership of the means of life \nby the few, and the exclusion of the means of life from the many. Only \nunder capitalism is it possible for conditions to arise where hoarders, \nspeculators, and black marketeers of every nationality can flourish on \nthe one hand, and be the social complement of starvation, unemployment, \nsqualor, disease and poverty on the other.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nOnly with the abolition of this private property basis of society and \nits replacement by the ownership of the means of wealth production and \ndistribution by the whole of humanity, can humanity solve the evils with\n which it is confronted.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThis is the job, the only worth-while job, of the working class. Not \nonly the working class of this country, but of the working class of the \nworld acting in unison. No longer must they acquiesce in the retention \nof a system which condemns great numbers of men and women to exist like a\n seething mass of gentils beneath a rotten, stinking piece of meat. Just\n as the meat is a condition of existence of the gentils, so is \ncapitalism a condition of existence of the working class. It must be \nremoved, and with it will go all class divisions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThis can only be done by a working class conscious of the cause of its \ntroubles, desirous of solving them, and with knowledge of the solution. \nEven in the case of the Indian working class the solution to their \nproblems is the same as ours. It does not lie in the substitution of one\n kind of capitalism for another. It does not lie in the substitution of a\n native Indian master class in place of the British Raj; their fellow \ncountrymen are among their most ruthless exploiters. In common with the \nrest of the workers of the world, their solution lies in the \nestablishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and\n democratic control of the means of life\u2014the establishment of SOCIALISM.\n Along this road alone, however tiresome may be the journey and however \nmany pitfalls may be on the way, lies the emancipation of all mankind \nwithout distinction of race or sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Back to the History Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Back to the World Socialist Movement home page<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
December 1943, U.K. “Thousands of emaciated destitutes still roam the streets in the ceaseless quest for food, scouring dustbins and devouring rotten remains of castaway food and fruit. Rickety children clutching imploringly the tattered garments barely covering the bones of their mothers are seen in all quarters of the city.” (Quoted in Manchester Guardian Weekly,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2652,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1079","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2653,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1079\/revisions\/2653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}