What in Britain is higher food prices, and poorer households having less to spend on non-essentials, in much of the world is outright famine - not because of adversities of nature, but because the poor now cannot afford to buy enough food at the higher prices. At the same time rich governments stuff billions into bankers' pockets to keep them afloat.

In Russia, the Marxist movement which later grew to be able to lead the victorious workers' revolution in 1917 first developed beyond tiny discussion groups by its response to the great famine of 1891. George Plekhanov, the theoretical pioneer of the movement, formulated "the tasks of socialists in the famine" in a famous article.

In Solidarity 3/58 [1], we published major extracts from that article, with a commentary.