Dear Francis,
High food prices speed up the future in that they create hardship among the wretched of the earth, leading to revolt. But that revolt is by no means necessarily going to be toward an egalitarian, rather than merely populist, end—thus potentially setting the future back. Witness: mass hunger and the election of Sweet Mickey in Haiti. Where speculation-inflated prices least speed-up the future is in America and Europe, because agricultural subsidies there insulate them from the global market.The mild rise in food prices in the West is nothing compared to the devastation unleashed elsewhere. Indeed, the more global prices rise, the better subsidies appear politically to self-interested voters ("Look at how food prices are rising around the world! What will happen to us if we don't continue to subsidize our foods?!"), thus worsening the problem and retarding change in the heart of Capital. You're being inattentive to the geographically uneven nature of capitalist development and have been seduced by a vision of smooth, one-dimensional globalization. Yes, speculation-inflated food prices do speed up the future, but so did Stalinism--to the future of extinction. QED You are a dumb bitch and you need to stop reading Thomas Friedman and start reading Michael Harvey and Giovanni Arrighi.
I know I'm going to hell--all my friends are going to be there!
Raoul Castro
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