SUPERMARKET chains are perfect representatives of a monopoly capitalist system that extracts profit at every stage of its operations. In the worst traditions of monopoly, they squeeze suppliers and customers alike.
Farmers, for example, routinely complain that they cannot make a profit from supplying milk to the chains at the price these businesses are prepared to offer.
We need not lose much sleep over the problems this imposes on the big monopoly farming businesses — if only because they themselves are mostly part of an interlocking system of capitalist ownership and invariably in an exploitative relationship with other producers.
But smaller farmers have a much harder time, lacking, as they do, the independence that size and wealth confer or the negotiating power that big producers have.
Tesco, the pioneer in profit gouging, took a cool £1 billion in profits this past year. Sales rose 7.2 per cent to £65.7bn.
Tesco complains profits are down, and while customers have noticed price rises in every product, the price hikes in basic goods put enormous pressure on working people, for whom household purchases and food are the most vital component of their budget.
Bosses at the supermarket chain said Tesco itself had come under pressure from rising prices.
“It’s been an incredibly tough year for many of our customers, and we have been determined to do everything we can to help,” said chief executive Ken Murphy in a startling rewriting of the fundamental tenets of capitalism.
For Tesco, the issue is that although footfall in the shops was up, each customer bought less. That is what happens in a capitalist crisis.
The rationalisations that chief executive Murphy offers reveal little about the real workings of the business.
“Our results reflect our continued investment in delivering great value and quality for our customers, whilst at the same time looking after our colleagues.
“This is despite unprecedented levels of inflation in the prices we have paid our suppliers for their products, and the cost of running our own operations.”
No-one denies that negotiating the present profit-driven inflationary spiral requires strong nerves and good market information, but to present Tesco’s operations as driven by concern for its customers rather than the bottom line of providing rising profits to its corporate shareholders invites derision.
It is entirely possible that the present capitalist crisis may make the weaker supermarket chains fail. This is the logic of the capitalist system. Competition begets monopoly that presides over the corporate corpses of failed competitors.
Over the years since its 1960s expansion into supermarkets, Tesco has racked up steadily rising profits and has come to dominate the sector.
It is not only a cornerstone of Britain’s monopoly capitalist retail system but also a global player.
At its board level, it has always been integrated into the ruling class at the corporate and political levels. Recollect that Dame Shirley Porter, daughter of Tesco’s founder, ran Westminster Council with a housing policy — the infamous “home for votes” system — that steadily drove out working-class residents in a quite successful drive to make it safe for the Conservative Party.
When the district auditor caught up with her she was levied a cool £27 million. This ramped up to £42m with interest and costs and she eventually fled to Israel.
This was not paid for by stacking shelves in daddy’s shop, but from the exploitation of workers in every stage of the food production chain and the realisation of profits at the point when working people collect their weekly shop.
This is the moral universe in which these people operate — and to suggest that in the intervening period Tesco’s corporate bosses have been seized by a fit of Christian charity seems unlikely.
