Food and Imperialism

The latest stage of imperialism, which has globalized neoliberal capitalism, has made it very difficult for people in the South to rebel against imperialism, for if they do so, imperialism can deny them an increasing variety of essential goods for survival for which they have come to depend on world markets -- especially food, much of whose production and distribution it controls.

• "Of the half of humanity that lives in cities (3 billion), some 1 billion, or one-third of city dwellers, live in slums," mainly working in the informal sector (Fred Magdoff, "The World Food Crisis: Sources and Solutions," Monthly Review, May 2008).


• "Roughly 70% of all developing countries are currently net importers of food. Among the least developed countries, this figure is even higher" (Katarina Wahlberg, "Are We Approaching a Global Food Crisis? Between Soaring Food Prices and Food Aid Shortage," World Economy & Development in Brief, 3 March 2008).


• "6 corporations control 85% of the world trade in grain" (Shawn Hattingh, "Liberalizing Food Trade to Death," MRZine, 6 May 2008, citing John Madeley, Hungry for Trade: How the Poor Pay for Free Trade, London: Zed Books, 2000).

Perhaps it's in part because of the radical development of dependency that the most significant attempts to challenge US hegemony in recent years have come from resource nationalists, for those who control strategic commodities -- oil and gas, mainly oil, which is more fungible than gas -- are less vulnerable to international capitalist boycotts, though they are still subject to the capital strike and flight of domestic capitalists.