Keeping the Slaves Complacent

Jean Teodoro
Julia Van Der Ryn / Lynne LoPresto
CHC3213/3214
09/01/10
Stuffed and Starved Chapter 4-5

The global food system arose pretty much from slavery, and continued after that with “free market capitalism.” Foreign policies and economics were dominated by the west, such as Britain. The only eastern industrialized force has been Japan. All other current third world countries’ backs have built Western superpowers’ economies.

The third world has been deceived by the first world seduction of freedom. It is all a game between the capitalist and the capitalized. Raj Patel has a good example of this: “The solution to worker dissatisfaction in Europe involved blunting the edge of discontent. It involved adhering to an unwritten social contract, keeping levels of hunger and deprivation within manageable limits by making sure enough quantities of cheap food were available” (87). This summarizes “the game,” and how to keep modern-day slaves, peasant workers and the blue-collar workers somewhat satisfied enough to keep working instead of plotting a revolution. This is a way to keep workers’ minds complacent.

Promises of democracy under free-market capitalism are deceiving: “The slaves mistakenly thought that the words of the American or French Revolutions, which were led in large by the middle classes against the aristocracy, might apply to them, that they too might qualify for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They were not, however, the intended audience for this rhetoric, being too poor, too black and too indispensable to the production of food in Europe” (88). Paralleling this quote to today’s times, the same can be said about the American ideal of “making it if you try” or living a true democracy. It is problematic because if one makes it to the top of a social class, then others step down because our system is shaped like a pyramid. In this post-colonial era where the industrial revolution has just planted its feet, the slaves of the past centuries are still pretty much the slaves of today, simply in another form: credit debt and very weak political power. The elite who have established themselves from centuries past have also evolved into billionaires who will do what it takes to keep things the same. The only way to empower the poor and the modern-day slaves is to educate them so that they may find a way to create an uprising.