The Malthusian League. Have they a Remedy for Poverty?. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Non quantitas sed qiialitas” is the motto of the Malthusian League.

“It is questionable whether we shall be able to retain our position among the nations if the decrease in the population continues,” said the Bishop of London.

“It ought to be considered immoral for a wo­man to have less than four children,” said the Bishop of Ripon.

Here we have two sides of a popular question, and we may well ask where any consideration for the working class comes in. As we might expect from a parasite class that only legislates in its own interests, and upholds its supremacy by brute force, the only question considered is the buttressing of the State or the stocking of the labour market.

Say the priests to the ruling class, “it is numbers you want,” while the Malthusian claims that more attention should be paid to the quality of the slaves. Both sides agree that the working class should remain a slave class ; both sides are therefore the enemies of the working class.

The means of life are owned by the master class, but are useless to them without workers to operate them. So long as their profits remain unaffected it matters little to them whether their country is thickly or thinly populated. It is no doubt a question worthy of discussion by the capitalist whether his class interest is best served by a working class sufficiently prolific to overstock every section of the labour market, or a working class that consciously and obligingly regulates its numbers to suit his requirements.

The individual worker may debate within his mind as to the prospects of inflicting his progeny on future generations—whether is is better to give one or two children the best possible equipment under the circumstances, or to breed a round dozen or so and let them take their chance. It may seem best to him to limit his family, and thereby reduce his responsibilities, retain a slight degree of comfort, and escape some of the anxiety incidental to bringing up a family. He may even weigh the chances of a large family being better able to support him in his old age. But all these questions are merely for the individual who, through ignorance, regards the present social system as fixed and unalterable, and who accepts the anarchy and poverty imposed upon the working class as inevitable. They are questions on a par with the questions of drink and gambling, purely individual in character, and having no political bearing whatever.

The limitation of the family has little or no effect on the general conditions of the working class, even when extensively practised. A limited population—other things being equal—involves a limited production, with fewer employed and a capitalist class with less surplus-value to spend in various ways. Capitalism adapts itself to large or small populations. The poverty of the worker was just as deep in the days of Malthus, when the population was only nine millions, as it is to day, when it exceeds forty-five.

Neither by logic nor yet by example can the Malthusians prove that theirs is any remedy for poverty. They quote the black death of 1348, which killed off a large number of workers. “How food was plentiful and wages went up, despite the efforts of Parliament to stop them.” This, however, is a case that has no bearing on modern conditions, because the people had not at that time been driven off the land. The majority of those in the towns were not wage slaves, but members of the guilds, and as such, either owned or expected to own, the tools with which they worked and the product of their labour.

France and Ireland are classic instances of the failure of Malthusian principles, yet with characteristic audacity the Malthusian League claims them as successful examples. The population of Ireland has been reduced by nearly one half in fifty years, but still the tide of emigration goes on at the rate of thirty thousand per annum, because working-class conditions there, as everywhere else, are growing worse.

The claim that “agricultural labourers’ wages seem recently to have fully kept up with prices” falls flat when we read that many of them receive in actual cash from five to eight shillings per week, the average, including allowances, being between twelve and thirteen shillings per week. The towns of Ireland, we know by repute, rival in slums and sweating dens anything in England or on the Continent. The linen industry for example, is notorious for its low wages.

For France it is claimed that real wages have gone up six per cent. in the last ten years. Whether this be true or not—and the league give no authority for their statement—French wages may still compare unfavourably with English or German in actual purchasing power.

Wages in England have risen during the last ten years, according to Government figures, but the rise has not kept pace with the rise in prices, we are told. The same applies to France. If it were not so, how are we to account for the discontent of the French workers, for the numerous strikes and demonstrations against rising prices, and for, what is even more conclusive, the consumption of horse and dog flesh by the poor ?

We are informed by the alarmists of the Malthusian League that “our excess of births over deaths is one thousand per day ; that the population of the United States has increased so that it is now consuming all its own wheat, and that Russia is having a famine of its own. That supply is getting more difficult and our demand and that of other countries, becoming greater, is it any wonder that prices rise?”

The Malthusians are not the only ones that sound alarm in this direction. Malthus himself wrote of the time when every available acre of land would be under cultivation and human beings would scarcely have standing room on the earth. Professor H. N. Dickson, president of the geographical section at the recent science association, says : “We are already making serious inroads upon the resources of the whole earth.” Such an admission, however, only reveals the inability of the ruling class to regulate their exploitation. The earth is being denuded of its wealth-giving properties for the sake of profits—to build up wealth for a parasite class—to protect and pamper that class.

The only useful class in society—the working class—even if its modest requirements were doubled, would not tax the world’s resources in ten years to the extent that capitalist anarchy does in one.

To say, as the Malthusians do, that supply is getting more difficult, is the reverse of the truth. The production, and consequently the supply, of wheat—or in fact of any commodity—is easier to-day than ever it was. Machine invention and new methods have, during the last century, multiplied man’s productiveness by hundreds. With bonanza farms miles in extent, requiring but few workers, and machines that traverse the “fields of waving corn,” performing all the operations short of actual grinding, how can anyone possibly claim that supply is getting more difficult ? Would the Malthusians claim that there are not sufficient able-bodied men to cultivate the soil ? Would they have the courage to assert that all the available land is under cultivation ?

All these alarmist theories are absurd and unscientific. There are no physical difficulties that prevent mankind from satisfying all their needs. What difficulties exist to-day are entirely social in character. They are due to the fact that the land together with all the other means of life are owned by a small class in society, who only allow production to go on for profit.

The Malthusian League support this system. The ruling class, in their eyes, can do no wrong. If there is poverty, according to them it is because of the improvidence of the workers. They ignore the anti-social actions of the capitalists—how they have burned wheat, cotton, and coffee, and allowed other commodities to rot, in order to maintain a maximum price—how manufacturers have closed their mills by common agreement for weeks on end, in order to create an artificial famine.

Trusts and combines, financiers and company promotors, are anti-social in character ; sabotage and ca-canny are practised by market riggers to an extent that would make trade unionists turn green with envy if they were but class-conscious and could realise it.

Capitalists invest their capital where they will obtain the highest dividends. They do not study the needs of the people either of this or future generations. Capital is wealth that is used for exploitation ; and every capitalist being actuated by greed, is utterly regardless of the havoc wrought in his interest, either on the earth itself or on the working class, or, for that matter, in the fortunes of his competitors. The means of life under such a system are not used to the advantage of those who operate them, but in the interest of those who own them. The one fact that emerges, clear and unchallenged, out of the chaos of competing interests that constitutes the mechanism of capitalist exploitation is that man, to-day, can satisfy all his needs, live up to a high standard of comfort, and enjoy more leisure than ever before in history—if it were not for capitalism.

The Malthusian League offer the capitalist restriction of the family as a panacea for labour “unrest,” and show their contempt for the working class in the suggestion that they should be taught to practise it—at least that larger section of the working class whose wages are twenty-five shillings a week and under.

“In Holland,” they say, “the poor have been taught to limit their families by a large, State-recognised society ; the death rate has fallen more rapidly than in any other country in the world, and there seems to be practically no labour unrest.” Holland must be a paradise for the capitalist—the wonder is that they do not flock there with their capital from all parts of the world.

Again we are told by the worshippers of Malthus that there are 960,000 adult men workers who get wages less than twenty shillings per week, and 1,600,000 who get between twenty and twenty-five shillings ; and further, that the only effective remedy for their quite natural discontent, is that they should only have one child. These self-appointed tutors of docility and submission should join hand with housing reformers and advocate more spacious homes for the working class. If the only remedy is limitation of the family, then it is not the capitalists who need separate bedrooms, but the workers. They might, at the same time, advocate the free supply by the State of certain rubber goods, as, by their own showing, those who need them most cannot afford to buy them.

Neither can they afford to have children, Malthus might have replied. Neither can they struggle against the desires of the flesh : they have not the stamina. As Mr. Lloyd George said of them : “Their wages do not suffice to replace the energy they use up in their daily toil.” In his “White Slaves of England” Robert Sherard says the workers in the “sweated industries”—men and women alike—have but one pleasure, and many of them swear it is the only thing worth living for. This, however, does not apply to the so-called sweated industries alone ; the vast majority of the workers are in the same position.

Imprisoned in a factory hell by day ; relegated to a slum for the night—a life of such days and nights with a dollar pension or the workhouse at the end—such is the worker’s prospect. All his senses fed on filth, on what is ugly incon­gruous, is it any wonder that the worker turns to the merely animal functions within his reach and makes them his pleasures ?

In sheer desperation the lower animals, when deprived of food, try to stave off extinction by excessive breeding. Man, after all, is but animal, and has not lived on a pinnacle of intelligence long enough to shed any of the fundamental instincts common to animal life ; and when social conditions rob him of his means of life and thrust him deep into the morass of poverty and wretchedness, the instinct of the brute comes to the top.

Science supports this explanation. Scientists in support of capitalism may deny it. Not all of them do so, however. The late Professor Huxley, greater in the world of science than a whole regiment of modern time-servers, said of the environment of the working class :

“It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing necessary for the maintenance of the body cannot be maintained, in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the pains of starvation, stunted development, and moral degradation accumulate ; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger rounded by a pauper’s grave.”

“The pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness.” Is it necessary to say more ? Man desires recreation and enjoyment. When he has learned to appreciate intellectual pleasures he will turn less frequently to the merely animal. Under capitalism the workers are denied the time and the means for intellectual recreation, hence their debasement.

Socialism alone, because it will give to the workers the fruits of their labour, can give them the leisure, means, and opportunities for genuine happiness and enjoyment. And even if it could be proved that under Socialism the human race would breed in swarms, still the robbery of the working class by the capitalist class would not be justified.

F. Foan

SPGB Snippets: Poverty in families (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website 

September 9, 2026

A recent study showed that nearly half of parents are struggling financially after having a baby.

In some cases this has even led to them watering down baby formula milk in order to save money. This can be really serious for an infant, as it may result in growth problems and developmental delays. Baby banks supply clothes, nappies and baby wipes to parents, but get few donations of baby milk.

This is what life can be like for some of the poorest workers under capitalism: essential items such as baby formula can barely be afforded. A society that results in this level of poverty needs to be replaced by one where meeting human need is the priority.

Pathfinders: Human factories (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

With cinema takings falling in recent years due to online streaming, Hollywood has resorted to transparent attempts to lure in the lucrative female demographic through ‘girl-boss’ films, which show women in history dramas wielding huge swords and beating up men twice their size, outshining, outsmarting and indeed humiliating them at every turn. This has been widely derided as ‘wokism’, but women are unlikely to be fooled by such patronising efforts to ’empower’ them for the sake of box-office revenue. Unlike media executives spinning fantasies, they know what reality looks like in capitalism, where the pay gap is as wide as ever and domestic violence against women is at epidemic levels.

Late last year a Cornell University study looked at why so few women were found in senior job roles, and suggested that women had two strategies or ‘pathways’, one that gave them status, and the other that gave them power. The study concluded that women achieved status but not power through ‘gender-congruent’ behaviour (ie, being ‘ladylike’ and nice to men), whereas ‘gender-incongruent’ behaviour (ie, being assertive like men, aka ‘pushy’), might achieve power but was less likely to succeed.

Small wonder, perhaps, that writers from Charlotte Perkins Gilman onward have speculated about past or future feminist utopias. Back in October science writer Laura Spinney authored a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Guardian piece entitled ‘Was prehistory a feminist paradise?‘ Predictable answer: no. She discusses the ‘Marxist idea’ that the roots of patriarchy lay in the agricultural revolution, without once mentioning the word ‘property’, and with a hand-wavy vagueness that suggests she’s never read Engels on The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, or possibly even heard of it. That might be why the book does not appear in her ‘Further reading’ section.

One book that does appear, however, is The Patriarchs, by Angela Saini (2023) reviewed last January. This author clearly has read Engels, though initially she seems oddly dismissive. Some property-based communities in India and China, she points out, are known up to comparatively modern times to have been matrilineal (inheritance via the female line) and matrilocal (brides staying at home, husbands relocating). In these communities, women knew each other whereas the men didn’t, giving women the greater collective influence, and girls tended to be taller than in patrilocal groups, suggesting they were better fed. Given these examples, Saini proposes that Engels overstated the crucial importance of the property mechanism in bringing about the ‘world historic defeat of the female sex’. Essentially, she says, it was never that fast or that simple.

It becomes clear, in the second half of the book, that far from dismissing Engels, she is seeking to further develop the implicit consequences of his argument. Property may have provided the mechanism for this historic defeat, she says, but it wasn’t initially decisive. What was decisive was the growth of the ‘state machine’. Power, she argues, relies on a big army, and this in turn depends on population size. To increase the one, you need to increase the other. How to achieve this? Ruthlessly enforce strict gender roles, as either soldier or mother. Use disposable males for farm labour and the military, and turn women into baby factories and stay-at-home textile workers. Ancient wars, Saini says, were as much about grabbing extra women as extra land. Women were the first known slaves in Mesopotamia, and obedience to men was baked into ancient cultures and religious texts, including the Bible and Koran.

There is a contemporary resonance. Population size today may not equate to military might as it once did, but it’s still important to capitalist states. More workers, potentially, equal more productivity and more profits, properly staffed infrastructures, healthy tax-funded governments, thriving towns and small businesses, high house prices and high demand for construction, transport systems, energy use, and so on.

Globally, the opposite is happening. Almost everywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa, birth rates are well below replacement levels and falling. While voters in many countries are hypnotised by the populist fever-dream of the ‘immigration problem’, the better-informed know the truth. Capitalism is facing a demographic crisis. When population falls below a certain critical mass, things start to fall apart. Profits shrink, offices are deserted, whole towns are abandoned. Pension and health costs rise inexorably with the median age, paid from a shrinking tax fund and understaffed via a shrinking workforce. The European Commission predicts that by 2070 there will be barely two working-age people for every one person over 65 (Economist). China is thought to be massaging its official figures to disguise a catastrophic population decline. The reasons for all this are well known, to do with better education and access to contraception, and the rising costs of living, housing and parenthood. And states have begun to fight back.

The USSR in 1920 was the first country in the world to legalise abortion, but Stalin reversed the ruling just sixteen years later, when birth rates started falling. Now pressure is being applied to women in many countries to have more children. The right wing is morphing in sinister and cult-like pro-natalist and Christian trad-wife directions. In 2022 the US Supreme Court reversed the Roe vs Wade ruling, effectively banning abortion in many states. In 2024, US republicans voted against contraception as a federal right. China’s president Xi Jinping ‘told a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing”’.

If Saini’s historical analysis is right, the global outlook for women is not encouraging. Capitalist states need more babies, and never mind what women want. And never mind what men want either. The market system makes everyone suffer. For socialists, there’s really only one way to permanently destroy the forces that make us all into human factories, of one kind or another, for the benefit of the rich. And that’s by joining forces to bring down, not just glass ceilings, but ruling class power.

Paddy Shannon

Blogger's Note:

Laura Spinney replied to this article on the SPGB website.

Under-population? (2025)

Book Review from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire. By Henry Gee, Picador, 2025. 279pp.

This book takes a long view of human history. Going back to the very dawn of hominid existence, it charts the rise of one species of human – our own – among many and looks ahead to where the current slowing down of population growth and the widely expected future decline in population may lead us. Extinction, in fact, is what the author thinks is our likely destination, since smaller populations will find it difficult to summon up sufficient expertise to manage the challenges of an inimical environment and shortage of core resources. The only long-term solution to avoid extinction, he argues – and he doesn’t do it jokingly – is to branch out into space. He insists that, unless we are able to do this, the end for humanity will come within 10,000 years at the most.

As for the present and the less far-flung future, Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine and author of the prize-winning A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, has what can be regarded as an enlightened take on many facets of social organisation, in which, as he puts it ‘homo sapiens faces a series of political, social, biological and environmental crises unique in its evolutionary history’. For example, he kills stone dead the myths of current over-population and never-ending population rise and at the same time welcomes migrations of people seeking better lives elsewhere (‘the natural state of humanity’, as he puts it). This is not only for their own well-being but also because of the likely benefits for the places they migrate to, since ‘technological advancement requires a substantial resource base in the form of human brains’ and ‘fewer brains mean technological stagnation’. He celebrates too ‘the reproductive and educational empowerment of women’ that has spread to significant parts of the world. Nor does he fail to point out that the way society has been organised for the past 10,000 years (ie settled agriculture, private property, states, rulers and ruled) constitutes a tiny time period in the 315,000-year history of modern humans, little more than 3 percent in fact. And before that settled agriculture period, humans lived without leaders, states, private property and material inequality.

In addition to his view that ‘humans are running out of genetic resilience’ (ie, there won’t be enough of us), another reason he looks at space migration as a future recourse for humanity is that, in his view, climate change will bring upsets such as flooding, storms and droughts that will become increasingly difficult to deal with and are likely to cause high levels of food insecurity. He points to some food insecurity existing already, but he sees it as having ‘more to do with such human foibles as poor governance, corruption and warfare than crop failure per se’. This is undeniable, since, as multiple indicators show, there already exists enough potential food (and all the other necessaries of life) to satisfy the current population, and probably a far larger one. If it does not seem like that, this is because, as this book glimpses but does not delve into, the world’s money economy (and the rationing and conflict over resources that go with it) denies reasonable access to the means of living to a significant proportion of people. So if, as Gee has it, ‘famine is riding down hard on us, faster than ever’, this is not for lack of food or the means to produce and distribute it. It’s to do with the economic system – capitalism (a word never mentioned in this book) – that currently rules the world and causes so many ‘to starve at the banquet’. Unfortunately, this book’s unspoken assumption is that we are stuck with the form of social organisation that causes this.

For all that, however, it remains a fascinating and immensely readable piece of work, wearing its expert and up-to-date knowledge lightly over a wide range of scientific fields. It is written with verve, brio and no little humour. Particularly fascinating to some will be its depiction of a possible space settlement in the far-flung future where a hollowed asteroid is the habitat of a city or cities transported from the earth’s surface and ways have been found of creating artificial gravity – a project described by the author as ‘not insuperable’ with people by then having come to think of it as ‘entirely natural’. Who knows?

But what about the nearer future, ie, before the time comes when we, according to the author, will have to make a choice between reaching for space or becoming extinct? Well, despite his ultimate pessimism about life on earth, he does have some clear ideas about how he would like to see things pan out in the meantime. He suggests, for example, that the strain on the planet’s biological diversity could be reduced by the use of hydroponic farming, so cutting back on the need for farmland. He also recommends reducing ‘meat on the hoof carnivory’, since ‘by eating plants directly, rather than eating animals that eat plants’, humans would use ‘less of the earth’s natural bounty’ and more people could be fed.

But could they? While it’s true that the system we live under has allowed a far greater proportion of the planet’s population to live more comfortably than at any time in the past 10,000 years, that system is, by its very nature, always going to give priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs. The author perceives quite rightly that homo sapiens has a knack ‘for getting himself out of trouble’, but surely this lies in the more ’united earth’ that Henry Gee says he wishes for rather than in humanity seeking refuge in space. Yet a ‘united earth’ will only be truly possible once we reject the profit system that currently rules humanity and in its place establish a society of common ownership and cooperative organisation with free access for everyone to the ‘earth’s natural bounty’.

Howard Moss

Baby Week. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

The re-shaping of old morals to suit new circumstances. 

The city of London has been en fete for a whole week. Members of the idle master class gathered in large numbers at classic Westminster in order to do honour to the resurrection era of King Baby. Never since the days following the Great Plague has “Mother’s boy” been so sincerely greeted, and fondled, and feted, as during this right royal national reception. Ladies of the highest title and social standing took upon themselves the honourable task of tickling the tootsiess of mere working-class kiddies what time they showered congratulations upon their beaming mothers.

Let it be most distinctly understood that the object of all this chivalrous attention was to do honour to WORKING-CLASS babies. Should you be so indiscreet as to inquire why the “sunbeams” of our particular class should be singled out for this shower of sentiment I should merely suggest that it arises from the fact of these ladies of title having no children of their own, comparatively speaking.

Why have they no children of their own, you ask. Well, sir, my lady has her form to consider, as well as her position in society, in addition to which, childbirth is a rather painful and disagreeable process.

And how comes, you again ask, that, during the progress of the world’s greatest war so many ladies—and gentlemen—are able to find so much time to spare when so many humbler folk are in the trenches or the munition works ? Ah ! to be coloured like a canary or disfigured in an explosion is not fashionable in high society, nor, come to that, is—WORK !

But what is the reason for this celebration of “Baby Week” ? It appears to our masters that the male population of the British Isles is falling to alarmingly proportions, and that the death rate among children of working-class parentage has increased to dangerous limits. The reasons advanced for the high mortality are many and varied. One newspaper ascribes it to “Slums, dirt, disease, drink, ignorance, and virmin.”

The inclusion of drink as a contributary cause is only to be expected, for the bosses’ agents always declare that “drink is the basic cause of poverty.” It is, of course, a deliberate lie. The working man is poverty-stricken before ever he starts to purchase drink. Apart from this, the price of drink has placed it almost beyond the reach of poor people at the very time that infant mortality is reaching its highest point.

In the present period it matters not so much whether your child is born in the legitimate manner or not, so strangely has capitalist society transformed its moral code in order to fall in with supply and demand. This come-down in social morality is all the more notable because it strikes such a staggering blow at the foundation of the Christian Church. A slight idea of what is taking place may be gathered from a perusal of the following extract:

“The time has gone when people turned up their noses at illegitimate children, and now these, as well as legitimate children, are welcome, so long as they are healthy,” said Coroner Graham at an inquest held at Gateshead.”-“News of the World,” 8.7.1917.

This spectacle of the unfortunate girl who dared to give birth to a child out of wedlock now being fawned upon as a desirable member of society by those who never hesitated to ‘down” her would afford an interesting study for a cynical philosopher. Still, in these days when those who should have been the fathers of the future are dying like flies, the upkeep of the children of whatever parentage is of vital consequence to the British capitalists.

At London celebrations of “Baby Week” numerous speakers referred to the imperative duty of every working-class wife bearing children for the benefit of the State. No serious proposal, however, was made as to the State aiding her in feeding the children she bore.

The patrons of “Baby Week” would admit, doubtless, that they regard it as a matter for general regret that Mr. McNiell’s “war baby” prophecy was not more true than it proved to be. Had it been the necessity for a “Baby week” might never have arisen.

Just at the time when people are wailing about the paucity of good, healthy children it behoves us to look back in order to see how carefully babies were looked after in pre-war days. Referring to our London milk supply Lionel W. Lyde, M.A., F.R.G.S., Professor of Economic Geography in University College, London, wrote some few years back the following significant statement :

“For our huge city population the milk supply is miserably deficient. Holland, which is only about about one-tenth the size of the United Kingdom, has about 4,000,000 more cows ; more than a quarter of our milk supply is used for making butter and cheese ; hundreds of gallons go bad every day, because the poor cannot afford the price demanded for it ; and a large proportion of the milk which is sold in poor districts is watered, especially in London and on Sundays.”

When we recall that countless children of working-class parentage have died because pure milk has been beyond their mother’s slender purses, the damnable character of the practice of destroying foodstuffs in order to keep up prices becomes increasingly apparent.

As a concluding comment. I would commend to the reader the appended statement made by A. A. Phillips, M.B.C.M., late Medical Officer of Public Health, Northern Divisions of Scotland, in his book, “What a Young Husband Should Know” :

“The change in social conditions, the modern struggle for life, has brought women everywhere into competition with men. Look at as we may, like it or dislike it as it pleases us, it becomes daily more clear that women are being FORCED into sexlessness by causes which are beyond our or their control.”

When you are tired, therefore, of listening to the usual humbug of the master-class agents regarding the size of your family as distinct from their own, you might reasonably examine the Socialist case. Wake up now, for the age of enlightenment is upon you. Think out your position and study the only means whereby you may free yourself from the tyranny and oppression of capitalism. Only when you have done this can you satisfactorily solve the question of the number of children who should be brought into the world. Arm yourself against the menace of modern society, and march in the already singing army whose voice rings out the glad words : “The International unites the human.”

B. B. B.

By The Way. (1915)

The By The Way Column from the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a result of the long and bloody struggle, which has now engaged the world’s attention for something like fifteen months, we find our masters and their agents taking a keen interest in the question of mother and baby. The “Daily Chronicle,” in large headlines, informs us that “Good Motherhood means bigger and stronger Armies of the future.” This is decidedly funny ! What need is there for large armies in the future ? Have we not been repeatedly told in the capitalist Press and on the platform that “this war is to end war.” Verily, verily, I say unto you: Liars need good memories.

Of course, our masters know that so long as their vile system of society lasts—this catch-as-catch-can do-my-neighbour form—so long will the germs of warfare exist, and hence their increased interest in a plentiful supply of healthy infants.

In passing, one must notice the difference that exists in the methods employed by our masters and those of the common or garden working men when meeting to discuss some item of importance. The former, as a preliminary canter, have “a dinner,” whilst the latter get immediately to business, and, if financially strong enough, after might adjourn to the sign of “—…..Old and Mild.”

However, this all important question of cannon fodder for the future was discussed at a dinner at the Lyceum Club, when Mrs. Philip, the chairman, referred to it as “The noble art of mothercraft,” and said, “What we want is a better chance for all children, and not merely those of the poorer classes.”

Dr. Newsholme, of the Local Government Board, gave some interesting figures and facts about this important population question. He pointed out that:

“We might have had many more potential soldiers if the birth-rate of 1914 had been equal to that of 1876. If it had kept up to the former level 50,000 more babies would have come into the world last year than the number recorded. This decrease has been going on for 38 years. We might have had a much larger number of fighting men if small families had not become so fashionable.”—”Daily Chronicle,” 26.10.15.

With the development of schools for mothers, meals, etc., for expectant mothers and sterilised milk depots for young children, our masters are hard put to it in their endeavour to raise and maintain an adequate number of slaves, who shall serve them in the industrial army or as a fighting force in days to come.

* * *

Mr. Will Crooks recently addressed a meeting in the People’s Palace, Mile End Road, with the object of securing recruits. In the course of his remarks he said: “Don’t some of you want to join ? What are you hanging back for ? Are you waiting for a safe job till somebody doesn’t come back for it ? I can imagine what will happen. The employer will ask where you were in 1915-16, and if he finds that you belonged to the ‘Stay-at-Home-Rangers,’ he will say to you, “Good morning; mind the step.’ ”

“It is a people’s war; a war for the people’s rights and liberties.’”

Doubtless it never occurs to the Woolwich gent, that some “hang back”’ to maintain their “rights and liberties” ; but, of course, here the small number of people have no “rights and liberties.” We are fighting on behalf of small nations ! The threat of the employer saying “Good morning” may be a good incentive to “voluntary enlistment” ! Finally we would suggest to our hon. friend that there are other places than Mile End where he might try his prentice hand, for has not that other great recruiting sergeant, Ben Tillett told us over and over again that “95 per cent. of our fighting forces are enlisted from the ranks of the working class.” Here, then, is a new field for the recruiting agent.

* * *

An Oxford undergraduate serving with the Royal Engineers in France gives the following account of a scene behind the British front :

“I went up as far as the entrance to the communication trenches and watched the wounded coming out. It was a sight I shall never forget. About one-fourth of the men coming out were Germans, wounded . . . the wounded and our wounded were straggling out, apparently the greatest friends. It was a fellowship bond of suffering, a brotherhood of pain.

Those who could walk were supporting those who could not. I saw two Germans, wounded, the one in the head, the other in the arm, supporting between them a Scottish soldier with a shrapnel wound in both thighs.”—”Daily Mail,” 13.10.15.

“Apparently the greatest friends. A fellowship bond of suffering.” Yes, possibly, until then they had never realised that they had had no quarrel, perhaps never met before ; but, alas, the trumpet-call had sounded, their masters had fallen out and were going to settle their differences by force of arms and they had been goaded to take sides in the dispute.

* * *

The increased rent campaign of a section of the masters serves a useful purpose in once again emphasizing the unique “oneness” of the nation in this its hour of suffering. In our perusal of the Press we notice that there is complete unanimity in this respect with the international master class. So strong is the pressure in some parts that we find the wives of the men who are fighting “our” battles so filled with righteous wrath and indignation that a deputation, accompanied by thousands of women, waited upon the Glasgow Corporation to protest against increases of rent. We are told that they carried a banner with the inscription :

“Our husbands, sons, and brothers are fighting the Prussians of Germany ; we are fighting the Prussians of Partick.”—”Daily Chronicle”,” 8.10.15.

Such pungent sarcasm as this was not allowed to go unnoticed and we find the matter raised in the House of Commons on the motion for adjournment, when a member stated that “this kind of thing (raising rent) is going to sow industrial discontent and unrest.”

* * *

A few days later in the columns of the same paper we find half-a-column devoted to the case of a woman in Germany, whose husband had been at the front since the beginning of the war, and who had received a letter from her landlord asking for the payment of the balance of her rent within 24 hours, otherwise steps would be taken. She had paid her rent regularly until two months ago, when bad health had overpowered her.

“Vorwaerts then points out to its readers that the woman’s husband has been fighting for more than a year to defend this landlord’s house, a man who is sitting at his ease in Berlin raking in his rents which have not been reduced by one pfennig. The shop-keepers also are charging the woman exorbitant prices for every necessary of life. Thanks to their skill in exploiting the poor and wretched, the woman got behind with her rent. She found it impossible to make both ends meet . . . and thereupon down comes this blood-sucker and threatens to throw her out of house and home. And all the time her husband, who was torn away from his work, is keeping the Watch on the Rhine and endangering his life for the Fatherland.—”Daily Chronicle,” 11.10.15.

We would once again reiterate the Marxian slogan: “Wage Workers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a World to win !

* * *

We have for months past received exhortations to economy from all quarters. Printing machines have been busily engaged turning out handbills and posters by the thousand adjuring us to eat less meat, to waste nothing, and be careful with our bread. Yet it is only about three years since that Lloyd George stated that: “You had got side by side with most extravagant wealth, multitudes of people who cannot consider ‘even a bare subsistence’ as assured to them. What do I mean by bare subsistence ? I don’t mean luxuries. I exclude even comforts. I mean that minimum of food, raiment, shelter, and practically the care which is essential to keep human life in its tenement of clay. The wolves of hunger prowl constantly round millions of doors in the land.”

Do our masters really imagine that the working class can do ought else than practise economy now, as ever, particularly bearing in mind that capitalist statisticians admit a 34 per cent. increase in the cost of living ? However, we have noticed during times past that things are vastly different with our bosses, as instance the following :

THE LORD MAYOR’S MENU

Turtle Clear Turtle

Fillets of Soles, Sauce Tartare

Mousses Lobster Casseroles of Partridge

Barons of Beef Capons Bechamel Smoked Tongues

Game Pies Orange Jellies Creams

Meringues

Maids of Honour Princess Pastry

Charlotte Russe

Ices Dessert

Wines.

“Daily Express,” 10.11.15.

We would suggest that practice is better than precept.

The Scout.

Population and Pauperism. (1907)

From the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to a statistical abstract issued by the Board of Trade, the United Kingdom was in 1905 fifth amongst the nations of the world in point of population, being exceeded by Russia, the United States, Germany, and—strange to say—Japan. “Whereas we had 43,221,000 people in 1905, compared with 39,221,000 in 1895, the corresponding figures relating to Japan are 47,975,000 and 42,271,000 respectively. Many people, including the Bishops, profess to be seriously alarmed at the decrease in our birthrate ; but the curious thing is that those who are most concerned about our birth-rate are doing their best to further reduce the population by promoting schemes for emigration. If such schemes only dealt witb “undesirables,” they would be an unmixed blessing ; but their promoters are only too careful to let it be known that “No wastrels need apply” ; and, as a matter of fact, such would not be accepted on the other side, even if they managed to elude observation on this. What, then, is going on is that the bone and sinew of the country is being sent away, while the weaklings are left behind to swell our workhouse population and crowd the shelters of the Salvation Army.

We have no means of knowing how pauperism is dealt with in the other countries of the world ; but our own poor we have “always with us.” It would appear, from a recent return, that there are at present in London more than 128,000 paupers, or at the rate of 26 per 1,000 of the population, this mass of pauperism being greater than in any year since 1872, except 1904 and 1905. It appears, too, that while out-door pauperisn is decreasing, the rush to the workhouse continues, and that there are now in the London workhouses 78,603 paupers—which is the highest number ever recorded. Many of the workhouses are either overcrowded or full, and the Guardians are at their wits’ end to know how to deal with the overflow. The ratio of paupers differs in a remarkable manner in the different workhouse centres of the Metropolis. Thus in Hampstead it is as low as 8.5 per 1,000, while in the Strand it is as high as 76.4 and in Holborn as 49.4. Again, 15.1 in Fulham compares with 47.5 in Poplar and 47.3 in Bermondsey; while Wandsworth is as low as 17.1 and Camberwell (in the same district) as high as 32.9. In the Western district Paddington comes out at 15.8 and Chelsea at 31.2, or just double; while Kensington at 17.0 compares with St. George’s at 29.3, and with Westminster at 24.8. No doubt there must always be a wide range in districts so differently circumstanced; but the excessive ratios in the Strand and Holborn seem to call for special explanation. Outside London the number of paupers relieved on July 1, 1906, was 731,344, and this, added to the number in London, makes a grand total of 865,794 for the United Kingdom, being at the rate of 25.1 per 1,000 of the population, as compared with 26 in London alone.

Financial News

Do We Need a Bigger Population? (1945)

From the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A revolution in ideas regarding population has taken place since 1798, when Malthus wrote his coldblooded “Essay on Principles of Population.” It had a favourable reception from the ruling class of the day, but the passing of time has shown his ideas to be fallacious, and they have been superseded by ideas which are quite contrary to his conclusions. His doctrine, which declared that there is a universal tendency for population to outrun the means of subsistence, expressed the ignorance of his time.

The only solution Malthus saw to the poverty of his day was to get a decrease in the population and so raise the standard of living among the remainder. He does not seem to have been quite so heartless as some of his contemporaries, who regarded the lower class as a variety of animals requiring even less care than domestic animals. Commenting on one of them, the notorious Count Rumford, who had concocted recipes for cheap soups as a suitable diet for the common people, Malthus writes:

“They (the soups) are excellent inventions for the public institutions and as occasional resources; but if they were once universally adopted by the poor, it would be impossible to prevent the price of labour from being regulated by them . . . perhaps some cold politician might propose to adopt the system with a view of underselling the foreigners in the markets of Europe. … I really cannot conceive anything much more detestable than the idea of knowingly condemning the labourers of this country to the rags and wretched cabins of Ireland, for the purpose of selling a few more broadcloths and calicoes.” (Essay on the Principles of Population, page 232-233.)

So Malthus was not completely unaware of the trend of wages, although he knew nothing of surplus value !

The housing problem was then, as always, acute among the poor, but Malthus saw in it a weapon for keeping down the population.

“One of the most salutary and least pernicious checks to the frequency of early marriages in this is the difficulty of procuring a cottage, and the laudable habits which prompt a labourer rather to defer his marriage some years in the expectation of a vacancy, than to content himself with a wretched mud cabin like those in Ireland.” (Ibid, page 250.)

Portal houses are now to be produced for precisely the opposite reason.

As Socialists profiting by the work of Karl Marx, we realise that workers are short of the means of life, not because production falls short of demand, but because the present anarchy of production is concerned merely with profit-making and not with supplying people’s needs the latter being incidental.

Turning to recent writers on population, we find them arguing in the opposite direction to Malthus. The writers and investigators on the subject—Glass, Carr Saunders of the Eugenic Society, Titmuss, Charles and Ginsberg, to mention just a few—are full of woe and gloomy prognostications. They foresee something like extinction for the Western nations in 200 years time, and for the near future they predict more old people in bathchairs than infants in prams.

They relate it to economics too. D. V. Glass states :

“The population will suffer from a much higher degree of invalidity and the burden of State health insurance will be greater. So, too, will the relative cost of old age benefits. On the other hand, this large section of aged and therefore unemployed people will have to be supported by a relatively much smaller proportion of able-bodied persons. That is, proportionately the amount of taxation per head will rise, while the ability to bear it will fall. Moreover, the position of industry is likely to be more difficult. In the last century the industrial system recovered fairly easily from the depressions through which it passed, and one of the major factors in this case of recovery was undoubtedly the growth of the population. An increase in the numbers of people meant an increase in the demand for the products of industry, and with it the slump period of the trade cycle was shortened. The much reduced rate of the increase of the population of the world since the war has no doubt helped to intensify and prolong the economic crisis, and if population actually falls in the future, the effect of the trade cycle upon economic prosperity is likely to be much more severe.” (“The Struggle for Population,” pages 14-15.)

To a Socialist such fears appear fantastic; to the orthodox economist, however, they are very real : immersed in a vain effort to reform and prevent the worst trends of capitalism, the real solution escapes them. Under Socialism people would not deny themselves the pleasures of children and the play of their normal instincts. Generally speaking, contraception is practised because would-be parents either cannot afford children or wish to do better for the ones they have. The working class, possessing only their power to labour, possessing no resources of wealth on which they can draw in bad times, find the inclination is not strong to procreate merely to create a reserve army of unemployed for the capitalist to draw upon in boom periods and that will languish on the dole during slumps. The worker is not interested in falling populations, but he is well aware that after successful strikes or negotiations for a rise in wages, a usual practice in the times called peace is to turn off many workers and instal bigger and better machines to do their work, and thus reduce the wages bill.

In an effort to stem the falling birth rate (rising temporarily in the present war), the Government of this country are about to institute some form of family allowances. As an inducement to parenthood it does not bear the stamp of originality. Family allowances were first given in France in 1854 but did not become general until 1916, when rising prices were making it increasingly difficult for the parents of children to maintain their standard of living. It was resisted by the trade unions, who claimed that it would reduce real wages. Until 1932, when the Equalisation Fund was set up, the scheme was a voluntary one run on contributions obtained only from employers. We dismiss at once any suggestion that it might be due to their innate generosity or love of little children (for it is not characteristic of employers as a class), and look for a more likely reason. Possibly the following quote fills the bill:

“Among other factors which may have influenced employers is the one given by the Director of the Fund for the Stephanoise Region. He believes that the granting of allowances has effectively withdrawn the family man from the ‘class struggle.’ If this is true, the employers had very strong grounds for extending the system.” (D. V. Glass, “The Struggle for Population,” page 52.)

The Fascist powers, in their rise to domination, in Italy and Germany, made a determined attempt to increase the birth rate. The Nazis made loans free of interest to young couples, cancelling repayments at the birth of each child. Promotion was also given to fathers of families, together with opportunities to obtain the best houses or flats.

The Italian plan, though on the same principle, had different features. A bachelor tax was levied, and financial burdens decreased in large families, by means of tax exemptions. The large family, however, consisted of seven children among State employees and ten children among other workers! In both countries improvements were made in maternity and child welfare.

Methods employed in Russia are akin to the Fascist powers in this as in other matters. A 50 per cent. increase has been made in maternity benefit and endowments given to mothers of six or more children, whilst the mother of ten qualifies for a medal. L. Ginsberg, in a Fabian pamphlet, “Parenthood and Poverty”, thinks, in the Fabian manner, that it is merely an extension of the social services and an attempt to raise the standard of living; we prefer to view them in a more realist manner. The anti-abortion law of 1936 marked the commencement of a new policy regarding population which finds expression in the more recent changes.

A method used by these countries is discouragement of birth control propaganda and sale of appliances. In Italy the latter became illegal, but was avoided in a truly commercial manner by selling certain articles under the heading of preventatives of disease.

Individual capitalists are not concerned with the state of the population in a hundred years’ time; they want their profits now.

Sweden, claimed as one of the most democratic countries, has adopted a saner method. Deciding that wanted children thrive best, birth control information is disseminated, whilst granting allowances and improving maternity and child welfare.

Most Western countries now grant allowances for children. These include Spain, Hungary, Holland and Belgium. So also do Australia and New Zealand. The Baltic countries and Switzerland, Austria and Bulgaria grant them to State employees.

The latter grants seem to indicate the desire of these countries to keep State servants loyal to the government and to induce them to refrain from following their class aspirations. We find Britain only recently tackling her problem. The proposed allowance for each child (after the first) is to be 5s. and not the 8s. suggested by Beveridge.

From Malthus to his modern counterparts, no solution to the so-called population problem along their lines can be effective!. Malthus advised continence among the “lower orders,” the moderns advise the opposite, and neither solves any real problems for the working class.

In a world torn and bleeding by a ruthless and brutal war, it is sheer humbug, cant and hypocrisy to talk of a population problem. Capitalism, which dooms millions to hunger in a world of plenty, wastes the lives of millions in useless toil, and periodically sends millions to their death in futile wars in every part of the globe, will appeal in vain to the working class to solve capitalism’s future population problems. There can be only one answer to such appeals-— a determined purpose to change the basis of society on the part of the workers, and to win a world with natural resources so vast and with productive forces so great that the needs of all can and will be supplied. Intelligent men and women will not then deny themselves the joys that children can give, and no special incentives need be offered to induce unwilling people to procreate. Family allowances and medals are devices of a ruling class endeavouring to solve its particular problems.

Workers should cease looking to family allowances and social services for the solution to their present troubles. Why ask for paltry sums when the world is yours to win ?

W. P.

Pathfinders: Top of the Pop Charts (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the Cop15 delegates were largely copping out at Copenhagen recently, one fairly relevant aspect of the world’s dire whether forecast (that is, whether we survive or not) scarcely rated a mention, which was the question of global population. This oversight was duly noted by the Chinese delegation (China Daily, 10 December) which, possibly anxious to offset western criticism of their tactics at Copenhagen, seized the opportunity to justify the country’s unpopular and repressive One Child Policy as a positive contribution to global emissions reduction. The news report quotes research by postgraduate student Thomas Wire of the London School of Economics: “Each $7 spent on basic family planning would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one ton whereas it would cost $13 for reduced deforestation, $24 to use wind technology, $51 for solar power, $93 for introducing hybrid cars and $131 electric vehicles.” Such research will no doubt bolster China’s already unparalleled enthusiasm for reducing its, and other countries’ populations, either by birth control or firing squad.

There’s no question that population growth is going to pass the carrying capacity of the planet at some point. The world is currently pushing 6.8 billion people and if you go to the website of the Optimum Population Trust at http://www.optimumpopulation.org/ you can watch the ticking counter go up at the rate of two per second. David Attenborough, a patron of this trust along with Jane Goodall, James Lovelock and other notables, takes the same doomsday view (Horizon Special, BBC1, repeated 5 January) as that other famous patron and author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich.

Socialists have often criticised Ehrlich’s view in the past, in particular his claims, written prior to the flowering of the Green Revolution of the 1970s, that population had already outstripped food capability and that hundred of millions would starve to death. But as food yields have gone up, so have populations, and the argument is not going to go away. Global population by 2050 is estimated at between 9.2 and 10.6 billion (http://www.un.org/popin/), with most of the growth occurring in the least developed countries, while in developed countries there is a steady decline in fertility and death rates. Population is likely to be a factor in the resource wars we can expect to see in the next century.

Ehrlich, the Trust, and David Attenborough in the Horizon programme all argue the same simple view, that the population growth rate can be slowed or reversed by just two factors, contraception and education. This view has the benefit of being uncomplicated by questions of culture, politics or religion and thus palatable to the broadest audience, but is it true? Yes, says John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College, London, who argues that conventional wisdom, which says that couples in poorer societies actively plan to have large families to compensate for high child mortality, to provide labour, and to care for parents in their old age, is wrong. According to Prof Guillebaud, half of all  pregnancies worldwide are accidental conceptions rather than insurance policies, and demand for contraception increases when it is available, regardless of a society’s wealth or child survival rates: “The evidence is clear within a wide variety of settings that – despite no prior increase in per capita wealth or child survival or other presumed essentials – demand for contraception increases when it becomes available, accessible, and accompanied by correct information about its appropriateness and safety.” (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/releases/opt.release26Mar09.htm).

One wonders how the professor knows that fifty percent of all children are accidents, but population growth rates do indeed seem to correlate roughly in inverse ratio to the rate of birth control, if one compares figures (see [Dead Link).

However, to imply from this that the issue is simply a practical ‘numbers game’ with no ethical or political dimension is a bit contra-perceptive. The UN estimates that over 200 million women worldwide lack access to effective contraception, but it is not necessarily because it is unobtainable, but because religion opposes it or men refuse to use contraceptives. Globally it is women who take responsibility.  The number one method of contraception worldwide is female sterilisation, IUDs are second, the pill third, and male condom use is number four, and mostly confined to Europe and Japan. Meanwhile, as is well known, the Pope and his ilk have been going around sub-Saharan Africa helpfully telling locals that condoms spread AIDS (TimesOnline, March 17, 2009). Thus at the least there are gender and religious issues to be addressed.

And let’s get population numbers into perspective. It used to be said you could fit the world’s population comfortably onto the Isle of Wight. Well, times have changed, and one enterprising commentator has recalculated this figure to show that, as of October 2007, you would have to add in the Isle of Man, as well as Jersey and Guernsey (http://www.ampneycrucis.f9.co.uk/PARK/Population.htm). As of 2010 you would need to start on the Scottish islands as well. But the basic point remains the same – humans don’t take up that much space by themselves. It’s what they do with the rest of the space that counts.

And that is a political issue, because rich countries demand far more space and resources than poor ones, and rich people far more than poor people even within rich countries. Carbon emission footprints also increase in lock-step with income, not population. Though population growth is clearly not sustainable long-term, it is made a much worse problem because of the disparities in wealth and consumption that capitalism causes.

Paddy Shannon

Pathfinders: The Baby Bust (2022)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The existential crisis of global warming as well as rocketing inequality have made many people start to question the viability of capitalism as never before. But you still hear some dismissing the idea of post-capitalist common ownership with the time-honoured objection that ‘there are too many people.’

There’s sometimes a suspicious whiff of racism or Nazi-style eugenics about this argument, but it’s not hard to see why people might innocently believe it, particularly in the crowded urban environments most people inhabit nowadays, and particularly if they remember China’s infamous one-child policy, and Indira Ghandi’s even more infamous forced sterilisation programme in India. Ever since the 1970s (or indeed Malthus in the 1800s) people have been banging the drum of doom about an impending population catastrophe. It’s been a staple trope of Hollywood movies from Soylent Green (1973) to Avengers Infinity War (2018). And last month, to great fanfare and only 11 years after passing the 7 billion milestone, the world passed the 8 billion mark, with the population still increasing at around 3 people per second, at least according to the population clock at bit.ly/2UKMS7c.

But it’s not rising everywhere. Indeed, it’s not rising almost anywhere. If you look at the 20 largest populations on the clock, India is the only one visibly ticking upwards. China isn’t moving. The USA isn’t moving. Globally, almost all populations outside sub-Saharan Africa are either stable or in decline, with fertility rates generally well below replacement levels. At current rates, China’s population, along with that of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and most European countries, is set to halve by 2100. Japan is ‘super-ageing’, with the oldest median age, 48, in history. Latvia is worried that it’s running out of Latvians (bit.ly/3hPBvr0 ). Instead of a baby boom, the future looks more like a baby bust. In July this year the UN downwardly revised its 2019 projection of 11 billion and rising by 2100 to a peak by 2080 and declining by 2100 (bit.ly/3TMMbUx), while other studies suggest a peak by 2070 (bit.ly/3tVZO9D ). One HSBC economist, following the work of two Canadian demographers, is even predicting a peak in 2040, declining to 4 billion by 2100 (bit.ly/3ApdoG2).

What’s happened to overturn the received wisdom of decades, if not centuries? There are lots of reasons, including more women in the labour market choosing to delay parenthood, high housing costs, high childcare costs, and understandable insecurity about the future. But the two main global drivers of falling birth rates are better female education, which leads to better prospects and more independence for women, and female access to contraceptives. Regardless of income, wherever women gain control of their own fertility, the birth rate declines, giving the lie to that old saw about poor people deliberately breeding children as insurance policies for old age. Where these drivers are not present, as in sub-Saharan Muslim countries where girls do not go to school and men don’t allow them to use contraception and won’t use it themselves, you see dramatic population increases.

Capitalist states regard declining populations not with enthusiasm but with alarm, because low birth rates combined with longer lifespans mean a relative reduction in the young workforce and hence a reduction in profits, combined with an increasing burden of ‘economically inactive’ old people who constitute a considerable cost to profits, via government taxation. Immigration would in theory solve the problem but has been made politically toxic, so many countries have instead adopted what are called ‘pro-natalist’ policies, involving financial and other incentives to have more babies. In France they give the woman a medal. In Iran they give the man a promotion at work, or a zero-interest loan (yhoo.it/3TKfPtA). But such state intervention to increase the birth rate would only yield very long-term results, and is anyway thought to be much harder, and more expensive, than intervention to reduce it, because of the need to incentivise young couples to take on the considerable extra financial cost and loss of personal freedoms. In the UK, the Child Poverty Action Group’s November 2022 estimate of the cost of raising a child to age 18 is £160,000 for couples and £200,000 for lone parents (bit.ly/3E8zbCU).

You might suppose that a smaller population would be better for the planet at least. But many environmentalists now realise that population is not the barrier to sustainable living that many imagine (bit.ly/3g8r1CJ). Rather it’s resource usage that makes the difference. One 2020 study of the global farming system concluded that the present food production system could only sustainably feed 3.4 billion people, but that with certain key changes, particularly in reducing meat consumption and food waste, and being smarter about choices of crops, that could be increased to 10 billion (bit.ly/3gfEbO0 ). Overall, resource use is wealth related, with the carbon emissions of the richest 1 percent being more than double the emissions of the poorest 50 percent (bit.ly/3Of1Tqk).

It might upset an anti-abortionist, but it’s axiomatic to a socialist that the only person with the right to say whether or not a woman has a baby is the woman herself. In a socialist society, money and patriarchal power dynamics would not exist to restrict that woman’s ability to determine her own fertility. If the global population fell as a result, which the evidence suggests could well be the case, what would be the result? Not a crisis of care for the old, because care in socialism would be a matter of communal aid, not taxable profits. The world would simply scale down production to suit what was required. And productive work doesn’t require the labour it used to. As a recent Wired podcast pointed out, ‘we can do more today with fewer workers than at any other time in history’. Might the population rise, perhaps because of zero financial costs and because socialism offers a life worth being born into? Possibly, but even socialism couldn’t socialise the child-bearing process, so the physical costs to women would likely be the limiting factor. In either case, if the need for social debate did arise, it would at least be done in the open, without competing sectional or state interests intervening to weaponise it.

Paddy Shannon

Tomorrow’s World? (2023)

Book Review from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tomorrow’s People: the Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers. By Paul Morland. Picador £9.99.

In September we reviewed Hamish McRae’s The World in 2050, which, inter alia, makes some useful points about likely demographic changes, with ageing populations in many parts of the world but more youthful populations in Africa and India. Here Paul Morland discusses some similar issues, so we will focus on comments which differ from those made by McRae.

Improved education and literacy, particularly of women, have played a major role in reducing fertility rates. An extreme case is Singapore, where on average each woman has just one child. Many countries are becoming more like Denmark, with low fertility, very low infant mortality and long life expectancy. In the US there is a significant correlation between conservatism and high fertility, while in Israel the fertility rate is almost three children per woman. Deaths in childbirth in the US are over three times as high among black women as among white women.

Government policies can often restrict the number of children who are born, but it is much harder to achieve increased fertility rates. In China the one-child policy was relaxed in 2015 to a two-child policy, but the rate now is barely above 1.5 children per mother. It is likely that by 2050 one person in twelve in China will be over 80. The ageing population and correspondingly smaller workforce in Japan may well be behind the low rate of economic growth, and an ageing population in Russia may have contributed to its economic decline.

Migration is one way of maintaining population and reducing the impact of ageing. In Western Europe for instance, immigrants are often younger than ‘locals’, and their fertility rate comes to more or less match that of those already living in the country. Younger people are supposedly more rebellious than their elders and more likely to protest, as they are more impulsive and have fewer responsibilities.

One ongoing change relates to urbanisation, with the proportion of town dwellers in the world having passed one half a few a years ago, and likely to be around two-thirds by 2050. Urban food production can increase, with hydroponics enabling food to be grown indoors, ‘with a regulated environment and perfectly measured inputs, including LED light’. This would mean fewer herbicides and pesticides than conventional agriculture, and less need to transport food over long distances.

As an illustration of the pace of recent changes, Morland records what a taxi-driver in Indonesia said to him: ‘My dad and grandpa spent their lives crouching in the rice paddies. Driving a cab is much better than that, and now my son works in an air-conditioned office’. But what about his female relatives?

All in all, an informative and thought-provoking look at likely and possible futures, albeit without going beyond the current socio-economic system.

Paul Bennett

World population (1984)

From the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . .  if the human population of our planet were to continue to expand at the doubling time of 35 years then within a period no longer than that of recorded history the entire substance of the universe would be converted to human tissue and the diameter of the resulting human mass would be expanding at the speed of light. (Dr Paul Ehrlich, quoted in the Guardian, 18 June 1979)

Many figures and doomsday predictions like the above have been cited to express the urgency of the “problem" of population growth. In response to this the United Nations declared 1974 World Population Year, the key event of which was a conference in Bucharest. Last month, after a period of ten years, the second such conference was held in Mexico City; attended by delegates from over 140 countries, it discussed population in the light of the poverty and widespread hunger of humanity.

The real boost to concern with population growth came in the United States from the President's Commission on Material Policy in 1952. This report considered the question of “whether the US had the raw materials to sustain its civilisation". This was considered likely only "if Third World raw materials remain reliable". The report concluded that the greatest threat to those reliable resources was population growth. From then on population control gained respectability, growing to prominence in aid programmes and the activities of the World Bank, which sees population control as a necessary consideration in its lending activities: “The Bank does not feel it can legitimately allocate funds of its bond holders and contributing states to countries which are bad risks — don’t have population under control”. (Science for People Journal, No. 26)

This concern is not new. In 1798, the Reverend Thomas Malthus wrote his Essay on the Principle of Population at a time when the British population was rapidly increasing. The reason for this, as the Third World Quarterly explains was: "Until the seventeenth century, world population grew, on average, by less than one per cent a century. The extraordinary growth in human population occurred primarily after the Industrial Revolution” (Wasim Zuman, “The World Population Situation”. Third World Quarterly, July 1980).

Malthus took the view that widespread poverty was due to the fact that human population tended to increase more rapidly (by a geometric expansion) than their means of subsistence (arithmetic growth). Thus "to remove the wants of the lower classes of society is an evil so deeply seated that no human ingenuity can reach it". This "law of nature" therefore could justify starvation, slums and all the problems of poverty because “to prevent the recurrence of misery is alas! beyond the power of man". But this relied on a vastly oversimplified model of the relationship between human population and human environment.

The Malthusian view, and that of the quote at the top of this article, are based on very selective trends; they view human population as being solely subject to some constant and incontrovertible natural law. In so doing they fail to take account of the ability of humans to rationally apply themselves to their environment and so control nature.

Malthus was disproved by the first 150 years of industrial capitalism, when the population of England grew threefold and there was an unprecedented growth in the productive forces. In this period the supposed "superior power of population" was checked without producing "misery or vice” on the scale predicted. However these ideas of population control have been revived in recent years, appearing in the 70s in the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth, which claims that “The greatest possible impediment to more equal distribution of the earth's resources is population growth".

Is there then a problem of overpopulation? If so, then the reader should be well aware of it. for the United Kingdom is the ninth most densely populated country in the world and England and Wales is fourth in the demographers' league of overcrowded nations. For that matter, the whole world’s population could be accommodated, packed like passengers in the rush hour, in an area of only 20km by 20km.

If we accept though that overpopulation exists, when the population exceeds the available resources, we must then ask if the concept is a natural law or a relative one which holds in certain situations and not in others. Harry Rothman in his book on pollution and resources Murderous Providence answers this by detailing different situations:

In societies of nomadic shepherds one finds population densities of 40-100 per square mile; nomads with agriculture 200-300; with intensive agriculture 200-500; regions with intensive agriculture 2,000-4,000. In regions of India where irrigation makes multiple cropping possible over 10.000 people per square mile can be kept alive, and finally, in the metropolitan areas of industrial societies densities of over 15,000 per square mile are found.

Rothman concludes that “with the development of more advanced productive forces the capacity of areas to support human populations can be increased” (page 330). This was precisely the criticism that Marx had of Malthus, when he showed how capitalism artificially swelled or shrank the population according to its requirements — in recession the population appears large; in times of boom it appears too small.

As well as varying from time to time, it can be similarly seen that the requirements of capital will seem to vary the population from place to place — the initial rise of capitalism brought with it the first large- scale concentrations of men and women in cities to meet demand for a large number of wage slaves. Indeed, current concern for the problems of poverty in the Third World is largely due to the greater rate of urban population growth compared to rural in countries undergoing very rapid industrialisation. Yves Benot points out that “many of today’s underdeveloped countries could well show up as underpopulated if they were to experience the same developmental process as that experienced by 19th century Europe”. (Qu'est-ce que le developpement?, p. 9.)

The effect of capitalist requirements dictating what is the “natural level" of population at any one time can be seen in the large-scale movement of migrants to the United States, Canada and Australia, into Arab OPEC countries and in the guest workers of Western Europe. David Eversley describes this process: "In a country like Germany a dilemma threatens to arise: in the 60s they had the problem of their foreign workers; when the economic growth rate slowed down, they sent home as many as they could; but if, for instance, there is a new boom in the early 80s they will face this with an ever-shrinking indigenous labour force entry, and the necessity therefore to invite the guest workers back again until the next recession”. (“Zero Population Growth: Problems for the 21st Century”, New Internationalist, June 1977.)

This prompted a German politician to say in 1980 "the nation is dying beneath the blankets". In fact, a German ministerial report earlier this year expressed serious concern over shortages in the labour force, a lack of recruits for the armed forces and high unemployment in the teaching profession (Population Today, February 1984). This would really endanger the interests of the owning class in Germany, or any other country — “by the end of the century the army will be severely below strength" (The Times, December 15. 1983). Similarly in America a recent internal study for the Cabinet Council of Economic Affairs viewed with alarm the decline in the youth population as far as filling the volunteer armed forces goes (Population Today, March 1984).

This shows in exactly whose interests population levels are thought to be too great or too small from time to time, or place to place. Malcolm X (for one) noted this: "Whenever they are speaking of the population explosion, in my opinion they are referring primarily to the people in Asia or in Africa . . ." But he goes on: “. . . in fact in most of the thinking and planning of whites in the West today, it’s easy to see the fear in their minds . . . that the masses of dark people . . . will continue to increase and multiply and grow until they eventually overrun the people of the West" (Malcolm X Speaks, p.46).

This apology for an explanation conveniently ignores the fact that the worldwide capitalist system of society is run in the interests not of the "whites in the West" but in the interests of the minority who own virtually all the land and productive resources on it, regardless of the country or colour of skin of exploiter and exploited.

The Declaration of the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights in 1968 stated that "... couples have a basic human right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children". But rights or no rights, regardless of any "free and responsible decision", there is a real material basis which "for most people in the underdeveloped countries is the stark reality that there is little or no economic security in old age or in case of disease, other than one's own children. not all of whom will survive until adulthood" ("Not Better Lives, Just Fewer People”, Science for People, No.26). This is summed up by a village blacksmith in India: "A rich man invests in his machines. We must invest in our children, it’s that simple" (quoted in The Myth of Population Control, Mahmood Mamdani). Therefore any attempt to reduce fertility by changing people’s awareness of their best interests, without trying to change their material basis, fails because, quite simply, people are unlikely to plan their families if there is no possibility of their being able to plan their whole lives.

Similarly countries like China, (held up by the Mexico City Conference as having ideal birth control measures) have problems with female infanticide because of the desire for sons, which occurs in the strict One Glorious Child scheme. The Scotsman, (25 May 1984) also considers other countries in South East Asia where ". . . children were so little valued that they were being bought and sold in markets". The article quotes Professor Scorer saying that people don’t care about their children "because they don't have any material opportunity to do so".

A few weeks before the World Population Conference, the media discovered that people were starving to death in drought-hit Ethiopia. This is despite the statement by the editor of the Observer to his staff (8 April 1984) that "Hunger is boring" — no doubt the hungry wish it were so. Boring or not though, the BBC did not think twice about perpetuating a few myths by laying the blame for hunger squarely on the 2½  million hungry: "They expected too much from the land which could not provide enough . . .” (roughly quoted from Jan Leeming on the News Report, 22 July 1984). With “overpopulation" mistaken for the cause of the problem of poverty and starvation, any attempt at a solution amounts to little more than trying to do away with the poor rather than the cause of poverty.

What the conference ignored is that the world has the capacity almost immediately to provide enough food, drink, housing and health care for the world’s population many times over — yet one out of every ten babies born today will die within a year, victims of a system that must put the profits of the owning minority before the needs of millions who cannot put money where their hungry mouths and swollen bellies are.

Lester Brown of the World Watch Institute. Washington, disputes this, putting forward a falsely simplistic relationship between population and food production which does not recognise that capitalism requires food to be produced and distributed only when it can be sold. "Throughout most of human existence”, he claims, "there were more fish in the oceans than humans could ever hope to catch or consume. As world population expanded following World War Two. population continued to grow, but the fish catch did not". As well as oceanic fisheries he cites grasslands as a second global life-support system that is under mounting pressure. He sees this as evidence that "human needs have begun to outstrip the productive capacity of many local biological systems". This may well be true, but the world under the capitalist system has effectively become an integrated unit of production of all wealth and has the potential (which cannot be realised under the profit system) to overcome specific problems of failing harvests and famines.

Nevertheless it is still commonly held that attacking the population levels provides some solution to the problems of poverty. Lester Brown, for example, suggests that, short of an abrupt slowdown in world population growth, there will come a time when "the rationing of scarce supplies through rising prices in the world market may leave some people unable to get enough food while others enjoy a surfeit". But there is no maybe about it. People were starving to death in the early 1970s, when food production was at its highest levels in the areas Brown cites — fish in 1970; mutton 1972; cereals 1971. And the last two decades have seen a doubling in the world beef production. Yet every so often we face the sickening sight on television of mass burials of children, and the only slightly less unpleasant sight of Frank Bough or some other talking head appealing for a few pounds for charity in the hope that it will keep this quiet carnage of capitalism off the television screens for at least a few months.

Brian Gardner