"Oligopoly in action" was how Kartick Raj, a Human Rights Watch researcher focused on poverty and inequality in Western Europe, responded news that the world's four grain giants were raking in record profits.
Using a term coined by author Naomi Klein, U.K. climate scientist Bill McGuire declared in response to Harvey's article: "Disaster capitalism at its worst."
"As 345 million people suffer from acute food insecurity," McGuire continued, "the four corporations that control virtually all grain trade stuff their pockets with cash, pop the champagne corks, and laugh all the way to the bank."
Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based group Global Justice Now, said that "food monopolies rake in bumper profits as speculation drives up food prices. We have enough food for everyone, but the financial markets dictate more and more people must go hungry to fill the coffers of the super wealthy."
"Workers wages aren't causing our #CostOfLivingCrisis. Profiteering is. Want proof?" UNI Global Union tweeted.
The U.K. group Plan B Earth took aim and stated, "Bonanza for fossil fuel companies, while people can't pay their bills. Soaring stocks for defense companies on the back of war. And while famine stalks East Africa and Afghanistan, food companies make record profits."
Well, this blog has got news for all those commentators. It is not disaster capitalism, it is not a dysfunctional aberration. What's happening is capitalism is operating just as it should and behaving perfectly normal, just as the market profit system intended it to.
And the World Socialist Movement have been pointing this out for years, highlighting the hunger amid capitalist prosperity so we ask why have these informed experts not been listening.
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