I do not know how rapidly the "capitalist law of population" would set in.
Demographic data about fertility reflects hundreds of thousands of personal
decisions about how people about themselves and their life, expressed
statistically in the act of conception.
The year after the fall of the Berlin wall, the birth rate in east Germany
halved. This an absolutely massive shift.
Although the massive fall in Russian population figures is partly due to
much poorer health care and higher mortality, it also reflects a fall in
the birth rate as massive, when you consider the difference is still there
after 10 years.
I am not disagreeing with Nestor's reference to a capitalist law of
population, but it exists at a high level of abstraction. It would be
helpful to spell out the movements by which the actual population might
fluctuate around this and how the Soviet Union and East Germany, if you
accept they were socialist states, or quasi socialist, moved to be
vulnerable to the laws of capitalist reproduction.
I would tend to see the birth rates certainly afer one year, and still
after ten years as expressions of considerable psycho-social pressure
rather than as pure workings of an economic law.
Long term however it is clear that this data alongside the massive jump in
US population, just announced, is consistent with a view that capital is
intensifying its centralisation in the USA, and relatively flowing out of
the former USSR.
Recent data on the Russian population - source The Observer - UK):-
>Russians are dying out faster than at any time since the Second World War,
>according to statistics released this month. The population has shrunk by
>3.3 million since the Soviet Union's collapse to about 145 million - an
>unprecedented decline for an industrialised nation in peacetime.
>
>Overall life expectancy in Russia fell by about three years over the last
>decade to 65.9 years,
>
>
>Women are now expected to bear 1.17 children, down from 1.89 in 1990.
[i.e over 40% drop and far below the natural replacement rate]
Chris Burford
London
At 15:10 30/12/00 -0500, Charles wrote:
>Yes , that.
>
>Besides that, I admit I didn't have the nerve to ask could the Soviet
>ecological ( deep ecological) consciousness ( unconsciousness) be such
>that the Russians are nobly reducing their populations as all will have to
>if Mark and the deep ecologists are correct about dieoff necessity.
>
>Sorry. I didn't mean to be mysterious. In other words, this is a
>hypothesis where I don't have evidence for the whole puzzle yet.
>
> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/29/00 08:22PM >>>
>En relaci�n a [CrashList] Russian population drop/ crash necess,
>el 29 Dec 00, a las 15:54, Charles Brown dijo:
>
> > Is there an ecological aspect of the Russian population drop ?
>
>Yes. Its name is "capitalist law of population", which might run more or less
>along "no social formation can hold more population than the basic laws of
>existence of its central mode of production can support".
>
>There were simply too many Russians for a capitalist economy, this is under
>strict adjustment after 1989.
>
>This law refracts into myriads of different "methods". Some of them involve
>decreasing environmental quality, thus "ecology".
>N�stor Miguel Gorojovsky
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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