ABSTRACT

The inefficiencies observable in socialist food-security planning are often cited as evidence for the lack of feasibility of socialism itself. This chapter presents the case of El Salvador, where the distribution of food reflects the distribution of other national resources. In El Salvador the "traditional autocracy" has developed its own momentum and maintained inequality even where the population's poverty is a source of economic and political instability. Cuba, in the words of the 1982 report of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress, guarantees food security to its people through a "highly egalitarian redistribution of income that has eliminated almost all malnutrition, particularly among young children". The disastrous outcome for urban displaced children reflects the extreme downturn of the national economy. The logic-of-the-majority approach permits rapid changes in production patterns and distribution of food and therefore the elimination of hunger.