Mark Jones wrote:
>
> Lenin's social optimism, btw, was also shared by the Haute Bourgeoisie of
> his day, which believed in population growth, because it wanted big markets
> and it wanted plenty of workers for its factories.
Mark, I find all this confusing. You seem to be trying to draw
Malthusian conclusions from marxian concepts. I'm not sure this can be
done.
The Haute Bourgeoisie or the aristocracy are and always
have been the main force behind Malthusianism. For this is who
Malthus was defending: the idle land-owning rich who are entitled to
their rents so they can consume to keep up effective demand after the
poor have been killed off. Malthus recognition of effective demand was
what endeared him to Keynes.
Only a fool believes that
> surplus population is not a problem *today*.
And in what sense is it a problem? That "they" are putting too much
pressure on the world's food supply or that "they" do not have
sufficient income which will in turn lower their birthrates. M's don't
understand that even from standard dismal science it is economically
rational to have as many children as possible. To an impoverished
family, the marginal costs of childbirth are lower than the gains.
On a per capita basis and in an absolute sense, the rich (and everyone
else) in the OECD countries consume many times more resources than the
poor and working class in the south who consume and pollute relatively
little. The rich then would be the target for kill off. The main reason
it doesn't happen is they have greater military force. Can you imagine
what would have happened if the cops/army had not been performing their
role in Seattle or Washington?
The term surplus population, it
> should hardly be necessary to add in this scholarly list, was deployed by
> Marx, who wrote extensively about the production by capitalism of what Marx
> called 'relative surplus population' or the 'reserve army of labour'.
Yes, but in Marx's view the sp is relative (Capital 1,ch25).
Malthusianism is about absolutes and absolute natural barriers to the
growth of the productive forces.
The relative surplus pop is constantly in flux with capital's need for
valorization. As the organic composition rises and constant capital is
substituted for variable capital, less people can do more work sending
others into the reserve. The process culminates in there being more
worker in the reserve than in the active population at which point wages
(determined by the ratio of active to reserve army of labor) are driven
to zero and the workers overthrow capitalism. Some of this is true and
,obviously, some is false. Further, Marx argued at length that the
creation of a reserve army is a necessary condition for capitalism.
I would add that Marx himself was a lifelong member of the surplus
population and was dependent on capitalist charity for his and his
family's sustenance. Luckily, that capitalist was a communist and the
most learned man of the 19th century.
Marx thought that laws of population are relative to the mode of
production while Malthus(ians) think the law of population is eternal.
Marx had a tendency,inherited from the Mercantilists, to regard
population as part of the forces of production. This is where you get
Mao with his post '58 laissez faire population policy. More people
means greater total production. However, marginal productivity falls
because "too many cooks spoil the stew."
>
>
> Socialism *cannot permit unrestrained population growth* (assuming such a
> tendency emerges in a socialist state).
But why is the population growing as fast as it is in the places that
is? Why would you assume such a tendency and how are you going to
restrain it? Population growth is negative in places, mostly in
NOrthern countries (and it's not because of die-off.) Why is that? Why
do birth rates differ across countries or any other geographical areas?
So far under capitalism, birth and death rates have fallen. The problem
is that death rates fall before birth rates because of the high birth
rate of the past. The large number of child bearing age people is due to
past high birth rates. So it takes 2-3 generations for absolute numbers
to level off assuming there is no jump in the death rate during those
50-150 years.
The experience of China and of India
> are both decisive in this respect. And when Clinton argues that the best way
> to reduce population growth in places like India is by empowering women,
> raising literacy standards, lifting the veil, etc, he is saying no more than
> the present Kerala government does, or than Lenin, Krupskaya, Kollontai etc
> did, or than Mao and Mme Mao did, in their time.
Yes and they are right. Amartya Sen has shown and proven that
Malthusianism is false. It is a problem of distribution and
production.Check out his article in the July 24 issue of
The Nation (Population and Gender Equity--if someone has access to this
article please post it--it is very good) or better yet read his books.
Sen shows that the birth rate has fallen in Kerala and two other Indian
states because of the promotion of literacy, "empowering women" etc. The
birth rate has in fact fallen below rates in some OECD countries.
Malthus was wrong to think that the birth rate increases as the
impoverished gain a higher standard of living. The truth is the exact
inverse. But all Capitalism ,in its very best planned-socdem form, can
do is a declining ratio of poor to rich yet an increase in the absolute
number of poor.
>
> The fact that the population growth which really menaces the global
> environemnt is that which occurs in the USA is true, but is besides the
> point.
It's not the population growth, it's the habits and consumption patterns
of the population(habits formed in some cases because there is no
alternative to survival e.g. slash and burn,) and
the incentive to externalize costs that insult the environment. I doubt
either can be changed under capitalism but it is
plausible.
It may be neo-Malthusian catastrophism to argue that the human
> population is already too large for the planet's carrying-capacity, as some
> ill-informed people like to say, but it is also the recognition of a fact.
These arguments are circular. The population outstrips carrying
capacity because carrying capacity is defined that way. There are
natural limits but what are they? What will the substitution rate for
energy sources be in the future? All it really
means is that scarcity will never be overcome. It is up to us to see how
the scarce goods are produced and distributed. When natural limits are
reached, either everyone will get some
(sustainable socialism) or a minority will get a lot and a majority none
(Malthusian crunch).
>
> In reality, failure to recognise the problem may paradoxically only hasten a
> true demographic catastrophe.
Kerala etc. have recognized the problem and have solved it and the
solution is not because of markets but of planning (not just family
planning).
Mass dieoffs are now common and are occurring
> today in Africa, eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Famine has been common for a long time. The question is why they
occur and the causal patterns in and around famines. Sen has done more
work on this that anyone else.
These events are the
> inevitable consequence of unrestrained economic growth by the capitalist
> metropoles. It is the predatoriness of the metropoles, of IMPERIALISM, and
> its hunger for markets, raw materials and energy, which produces disaster in
> the peripheries, and the phenomena of capital-thinning rather than
> capital-deepening.
But this is a different and incompatible explanation with the standard
n-M one. Are you arguing that these die-offs and the state of Angola
etc. are occurring because of too many people-too little production or
because of cash crop agriculture, the export of food from famine
stricken areas and the *structure* of production and distribution,
imperialism and the warlord mode of production ripping off capital and
resources? One is the cause and one is the effect, which is which? Is
the socio-economic state of Angola causing overpopulation or is
overpopulation causing the socio-economic state of Angola?
>
> If the Ecological Imperative applied (no growth, and no unsustainable human
> activities) then capitalism could not continue, it would cease to exist.
The question is *what* would exist and what is sustainable and how do
you know? Most people are not voluntarily going to go back to feudal
times unless they must in order to avoid death. I wouldn't want too
,though personally, I favor spartanism.
>
> Marx's critique of Malthus is one of the least satisfactory of his great
> critiques of the philosophical thinkers, economists and socialists of the
> Enlightenment (the period 1750-1830).
Why? Because Marx didn't accept absolute natural limits? There is
evidence that he did though he mostly emphasizes that the limits to
capital is capital itself.
>Malthus was a trivialising, pedantic country parson whose
> social theory is merely a thin veil over undisguised misanthropy.
And undisguised defender of rentiers whose sole purpose was to scare the
daylights out of people so they would accept the status quo as
inevitable.
But
> Malthus hit upon a problem which actually has never gone away, and which
> strikes to the heart of the unsustainability of capitalism. For this is the
> first mode of production which both depends upon and makes possible,
> exponential growth rates in production, energy and raw material consumption,
> and population. But the planet is not growing.
Again, this just means that scarcity will never be overcome. If I get
your position, you think that absolute declines in energy sources,
climate change and growing population will force total surplus value or
surplus value per worker down to pre-capitalist levels without
pre-capitalist social relations being optimal. The problem then becomes
how to set up a society with pre-capitalist rates of surplus value and
capitalist sized population. The government will have to be democratic
and participatory to preserve fairness and legitimacy, centrally planned
(though not of the old type where a social class could 'capture' the
planning mechanism and ensure the benefits stream towards themselves)
and perhaps heavy handed to prevent free riders, black markets,
smuggling,profiteering and the fighting that occurs in conditions of
severe scarcity. It's my experience that during calamities and disasters
like forest fires, floods, power outages, snowstorms (we have a great
deal of these in Canada) tends to bring people together in co-operation
rather than a reversion to the law of the jungle.
We are now
> entering (probably did enter a decade or more ago) a period of absolute
> decline of energy inputs. Demographic catastrophes are inevitable in the
> circumstances.
They are not inevitable it depends on what is put in place of petroleum
and on how what is produced is distributed.
The initial capital outlay is massive but these are sunk costs.
Incidentally, it is not coincidental that some of the fast
> and sharpest effects of generalised energy shortages are being felt in the
> USA --- the world's grossest user/abuser of finite energy.
It is also one of the leading developers and users of renewable energy.
The USA of all countries has the capital and brain power to begin the
switch off of fossil fuels. The trend will be hastened as people
substitute out of high oil prices but how long before natural limits are
reached?
Sam Pawlett
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