Half a plate of food - good or bad?

Labour Q&A with Terry Bell

A Fin24 wants Terry Bell to focus on half a plate and communism is his next Labour Wrap.

Reenen van Eeden writes: "Please ask Mr Bell to comment on this in his next Labour Wrap:

1) Is half a plate of food better than none, given our real unemployment rate is 35% +?

2) Give us a history lesson on where in the world communism has worked as a system, as Terry is most certainly a communist.

Terry Bell responds:

Dear Reenen,

In my next Labour Wrap I shall certainly comment on your half a plate of food comment. Because:  if there is enough food available for a full plate for everyone, why should some have only a half — and starve slowly to death — while surplus food is destroyed or thrown away? Let's see what others have to say.

World communism is another of those classic jargon terms that is largely meaningless. Just as is the term "communist" used as a term of abuse.  

In an historical sense, derived from Marx, Engels and others, a communist would be an extreme democrat who acknowledged the inherently equal right to life and liberty of all humanity, analysed society accordingly — and worked to bring about such a change.  

Clearly, that is not what you mean. And while there have been a few, largely small examples of such egalitarian and co-operative communities, there has not yet been any significant transformation of the present, now fundamentally destructive, system.  

Glimpses of possible alternatives can be seen, for example, in the development of the Fasinpat ceramics factory in Argentina. But there are other examples that reveal that co-operative ventures, democratically run and serving the needs of society are possible;  that there is perhaps no need to think the world cannot operate on the same basis.

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