Overpopulation and Communism

[Aussie Trotskyist]

There is evidence that the world is overpopulated. It already cannot sustain its current population living at a Western standard. Nations such as China an India are experiencing overpopulation.

Given the stateless nature of communism, would it prove able to manage the world's population?

I suppose it could be managed by the local 'authorities' (for lack of a better word), or the human population either ends up dying out, or, over millions of years, undergoes evolution into a completely different species.

On another (slightly less practical) topic, when humanity does evolve (as I believe it will) will that render communism obsolete? I can see arguments for and against.

[Tim Cornelis]

In the more affluent countries the fertility rate is between 1-2, which is sustainable. When we have reached global communism, the fertility rate will gravitate towards this number globally.

[Vanguard1917]

There is evidence that the world is overpopulated. It already cannot sustain its current population living at a Western standard. Nations such as China an India are experiencing overpopulation.

All three presuppositions are false. There is no evidence that any of the world's problems are caused by "overpopulation".

Recent thread on the topic: http://www.revleft.com/vb/population-our-greatest-t167358/index.html

[Positivist]

Significant evolutionary changes only occur within a species if a catastrophe greatly alters its environment to the point that entirely new qualities are necessary to survive.

[Blake's Baby]

And indeed an even more recent version of the debate:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/population-control-elephant-t172038/index.html?p=2453137#post2453137

So... there is no evidence that the world is 'overpopulated'. There may be places where living conditions are bad, but these are the result of capitalism, division into national states, etc, not the result of 'too many people'. We produce massively more than we need to sustain the population the Earth currently has, and as it's people that create wealth, then more people means more opportunity for extending the social wealth ie people's life-choices.

The problem is capitalism. Overthrow capitalism and people will be free to organise in a much more sensible fashion. Simple as.

[roy]

the problem isn't that the world's overpopulated, it's that capitalism isn't capable of sustaining it. or more aptly, it isn't supposed to sustain it. when the majority of global wealth is consolidated in relatively few hands, you can expect the majority to have trouble coming up with basic necessities, which is in turn going to make it appear as though there is scarcity at large. like tim cornelis mentioned, if the populace is dragged out of poverty, people are gonna start having less kids, too.

as for communism becoming 'obsolete' due to evolution goes, i dunno about that. we all know evolution is an extremely slow process through which animals adapt to their environment, so i'd suggest that communism would be replaced by another form of society due to social/environmental factors long before evolution somehow renders it 'obsolete'. i don't really understand the idea anyway. i mean, if we did transform into near-perfect beings or whatever, i think we'd create a communistic society. but that's all by-the-by, because we're obviously not going to evolve in such a way.

[Yugo45]

China and India are overpopulated, probaly true, but most European countries are underpopulated and have negative birth rate. So no, I do not believe that overpopulation is a problem, at least not yet.

[jookyle]

Overpopulation isn't a problem. The type of consumption rates/methods that happen under capitalism however, are. This mismanagement(or lack of management) of resources gives the illusion of overpopulation in a capitalist system because the resources are running low in number relative to the consumption rate. But the consumption rate is considered normal because there's nothing wrong capitalism, so the problem is just too many people. :rolleyes:

[Aussie Trotskyist]

Cheers.

Its just something that came up in my head.

[Spastic]

I'm not too sure about the existing 'evidence' for overpopulation.
Significant evolutionary changes only occur within a species if a catastrophe greatly alters its environment to the point that entirely new qualities are necessary to survive. That's not true. Significant evolutionary changes are the result of the accumulation of random nonsense mutations in one's genome over a considerable length of time, which produce an organism that is better adapted to its enviroment. A catastrophe is more likely to cause extinction.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Overpopulation isn't a problem. The type of consumption rates/methods that happen under capitalism however, are. This mismanagement(or lack of management) of resources gives the illusion of overpopulation in a capitalist system because the resources are running low in number relative to the consumption rate. But the consumption rate is considered normal because there's nothing wrong capitalism, so the problem is just too many people. :rolleyes:I'd argue that it's production, not consumption that's the problem. Capitalism can strip-mine California mountains in the 1800s looking for gold with a very small workforce and very small potential market for consumption.

Production for profit doesn't care about anything but short-term profits, state-capitalism disregards environmental concerns for a longer-term development plan. Neither is production for use by the producers - I think socialized production would give people an incentive for sustainability.

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

What's up with the bombardment of the over population threads? Here's another link here. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/population-control-elephant-t172038/index.html?p=2453727#post2453727) I think we can all agree this thread is no longer needed.

[Paul Cockshott]

I dont think people here are taking the issue seriously at all, they are just trying to dismiss it at an ideological level. The statements up to now might as well have come from the Holy Office.
There is no attempt to confront the problems that a socialist economy like China in the 60s faced with a rapidly growing population and the danger of famine that this could imply, and which led to the CPC adopting a policy of sharply restricting families.
There is no attempt to confront the relationship between population growth and capitalist exploitation implied by the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I dont think people here are taking the issue seriously at all, they are just trying to dismiss it at an ideological level.Yes the same way we'd dismiss other ideologically-loaded concepts in science such as genetics determining all modern behaviors or social Darwinism, which population politics has always been in bed with.

Not agreeing with an argument is not the same as dismissing it - in fact I don't want to dismiss this increasingly common concept, I want to argue against it and break people from this position.

Overpopulation in modern society does not exist - overproduction and inequity do though. If people are concerned with how workers could deal with increased demands once capitalism has been overthrown, then maybe that would be an issue, but we have no idea what the specific problems or demands would be so worker's power is a pre-requisite for even beginning to suggest concrete answers to this potential issue.

If the issue is "overpopulation" right now under capitalism, then as others have argued, once you ignore some "common sense" bourgeois notions (that capitalist production is based on consumer desire rather than profitability, being the main one) there is no material scientific basis for overpopulation in capitalism. "Overpopulation" is one of those concepts like "a war on crime" that takes a real social phenomena, ignores the economic and social roots of it, while looking for answers that bolster the same system that causes the "problem" as it is. The problem of crime and violence is a problem of individual behaviors; the problem of depleted resources, wreaked environment, and inequality is because of some individuals consuming too much or having too many babies, not they way production is handled and distributed and for what purposes.

[ComradeOm]

There is no attempt to confront the problems that a socialist economy like China in the 60s faced with a rapidly growing population and the danger of famine that this could implyAre you suggesting that the Chinese famines in the 1950s/1960s were caused by overpopulation? Because that is not the case

[Blake's Baby]

I dont think people here are taking the issue seriously at all, they are just trying to dismiss it at an ideological level...

Because it's an ideological problem. Just like 'what should we do about immigrants/the Jews/Catholics/insert other group of wrong people here?' is an ideological problem. It's the same ideolgical problem. The problem of seeing people as a problem not the solution to the problem. The problem of blaming the victims of capitalism rather than capitalism.

The Earth produces far more 'stuff' than our current population needs. A very small shift of investment (classically, one day's world arms spending which equates to three days of the US's arms budget) could fix water and sewerage for everyone on the planet who doesn't currently have it. In the 1980s, the UN was estimating as a planet we produce 8 times more food than we need to feed everyone then alive. Population has gone up to be sure. Has productivity massively decreased in the last 30 years? No it hasn't.

Ergo, the problem is not 'too many people'.

There are places where the local infrastructure is very bad at coping with the extant population, and in some of these places the population is rapidly increasing. This is not a problem of 'overpopulation' it's a problem of underinvestment. Social wealth has not been invested on making conditions better. Can it be? Yes. Will it be? No.

So it's a political problem - a problem of 'who gets what and why'. A problem that can only be solved in socialism because capitalism is never going to solve it. There's no money in fixing it.

So again we don't have 'overpopulation', we have the wrong sort of social organisation.

I read the other day that the three richest people in the world have a combined wealth greater than that of the poorest 48 countries.

'Overpopulation theory' would say that the population of those 48 countries is a problem. Socialism on the other hand says that the private wealth of those three individuals is a problem.

Do you see how this works?

[Paul Cockshott]

No I am not saying that. I am saying that therewould have been famines in the 70s or 80s without populationcontrol.

Also one precondition of the 50s famine was the very narrow safety margin in food production at the time.

Catholic platitudes gyt
Are you suggesting that the Chinese famines in the 1950s/1960s were caused by overpopulation? Because that is not the case

[Mr. Natural]

All of the posts in this thread have quantitatively addressed a possible population problem, but what of qualitative concerns? Communism is to be the realization of human nature. What spatial human relations must be honored?

I don't have the answers to human spatial relations requirements other than to note that the human species evolved in small groups in which everyone knew each other. Thus I will state that we will always need to belong to small groups within which we are "at home."

The larger society will then need to be rooted in these "home communities." That's the pattern of nonhuman life, and that's the pattern of communism. Life and communism are bottom-up processes.

A lot of comrades seem to be ideologically compelled to state that the Earth can host limitless numbers of people. That is dogma, not life.

My red-green best.

[Paul Cockshott]

Blake if the world produced 8 times more food then needed what happens to the other 7/8 th of it?
Are you sure of your figures!
Can you cite an exact report?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

A minority of the world's population controls a majority of the world's wealth. That alone should be enough to dismiss claims of "overpopulation" as opposed to those of non-egalitarian distribution or mismanagement.

[jookyle]

I'd argue that it's production, not consumption that's the problem. Capitalism can strip-mine California mountains in the 1800s looking for gold with a very small workforce and very small potential market for consumption.

Production for profit doesn't care about anything but short-term profits, state-capitalism disregards environmental concerns for a longer-term development plan. Neither is production for use by the producers - I think socialized production would give people an incentive for sustainability.

Well, I agree but I think the two are linked. I think what we see is either over-production because the consumption for that level of production isn't there and so materials and what not go to complete waste. Or we see over consumption of limited resources which continues because of the profit it brings.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well, I agree but I think the two are linked. I think what we see is either over-production because the consumption for that level of production isn't there and so materials and what not go to complete waste. Or we see over consumption of limited resources which continues because of the profit it brings.Well there is a link, but the determining thing is the production, not consumption process. Overproduction is not caused by lack of consumption or desire for commodities (otherwise we'd never have had the housing bust in a society where tons of people rent have mortgage debts or are just unhoused), but the logic of the profit system. Energy use doesn't necessarily mean petrol, but this is favored because it is more profitable and industry won't switch unless they are forced to or oil simply becomes too expensive to extract and refine. They are fine with rationing any consumer goods when it suits them and they have often done this for war mobilizations. If oil was too expensive and there wasn't enough alternative energy to keep everything going as it is now, I think industry and military would get all the energy they need while it's rationed for public consumption and our schools and streets go dark and our water runs cold.

But there is a connection, I just think it's important to point the finger at production, not consumption because generally in the liberal environmental movement production is ignored and consumption is wholly blamed - an internatization of the concept that capitalist production is designed around consumer wants, not profits.

[Paul Cockshott]

am afraid this is too simple Jimmy, petroleum is cheaper because joule per joule it requires less work to produce. Switching to biofuels is not only more expensive in labour, it is also bringing on world food shortages sooner than otherwise would be the case.
Those of you who think there is no problem with food production cant have been following recent peaks in grain prices.

[Jimmie Higgins]

am afraid this is too simple Jimmy, petroleum is cheaper because joule per joule it requires less work to produce. Switching to biofuels is not only more expensive in labour, it is also bringing on world food shortages sooner than otherwise would be the case.
No, you've missed my point, I'm not making an argument FOR biofuels over petroleum, I'm arguing that production, not ABSTRACT consumption is the common denominator.

We already have shortages of food as it is at the same time that we have the capacity to feed everyone. So people are not lacking food because of CONSUMPTION but because of the way PRODUCTION is done and for what reason: profits.


Those of you who think there is no problem with food production cant have been following recent peaks in grain prices.How is this an issue with the desire for consuming grain? It's about the prices and if grain can be sold at a profitable rate. Demand hasn't decreased because people suddenly have no desire for consuming grain products.

Likewise the food crisis of a couple of years ago was the result of investors moving towards speculation on staple crops after the collapse of other markets.

These are problems with Production, who controls it and for what reasons, not who eats or consumes what as in the liberal "common sense" view of these problems.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Hard data is still being collected, but experts at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago this week said an estimated 30 percent to 50 percent of the food produced in the world goes uneaten.

The average American throws away 33 pounds of food each month -- about $40 worth -- according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which plans to publish a report on food waste in April.

.

[cyu]

What's up with the bombardment of the over population threads? Here's another link here. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/population-control-elephant-t172038/index.html?p=2453727#post2453727) I think we can all agree this thread is no longer needed.

Needs to go under a "tired and boring FAQs" sticky :D

[cyu]

From http://z9.invisionfree.com/NS_Anarchy/index.php?showtopic=36&st=870

Leave it to humans to be this stupid

http://i.imgur.com/bh3TO.jpg

[Paul Cockshott]

Blaming food shortages on capitalism is facile nonsense. Capitalist agriculture tends to be highly productive certainly in terms of labour inputs as compared to peasant agriculture. The historical problems of population for socialist countries relate to the comparison between the rate at which agricultural production can be raised as compared to the rate of population growth. To achieve a good improvement in nutritional standards it has been necessary for socialist countries both to transit from pre-capitalist peasant agriculture and to achieve a rapid demographic transition from the large patriarchal family characteristic of peasant production, to the small families characteristic of an industrial urban society.

Had the USSR not been able to achieve a very rapid demographic transition, had it retained the Asian partriachal family structure that Czarist Russia had, and which India has largely retained the Soviet population by the 1980s would have been over 500 million, predominantly peasants suffering from low nutritional standards.
China too desperately needed to control its rate of population growth and change the form of family structure if the growth of food production was to overtake population growth.

Likewise the food crisis of a couple of years ago was the result of investors moving towards speculation on staple crops after the collapse of other markets.


This is blindfolded conspiracy theorising.

What regulates prices ?
Fundamentally they are driven by the labour required to make things. When, due to climatic events ( failed Australian Harvest, Prairie fires in Russia, drought in Texas ) the amount of grain produced by the previous amount of labour falls, then the labour value of grain rises and this drives market prices up.
Accross the world we are facing increasing climatic stress conditions which are impacting grain harvests and lowering labour productivity in agriculture. This results in higher prices.
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/maize.html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jCQ1FPY3L9TVP5iReSHjV1NFb1uQ?docId=CNG.bfe6c 8bba0f3646d32ac6c2f4ac3e770.1

Beyond immediate food issues, overpopulation is directly contrary to the working class interest as it increases competition for jobs, drives down real wages and increases both the rate of exploitation and the rate of profit.
That is a key reason why the working class interest is served by the spread of birth control techniques and the reduction of family sizes.
The one child family policy in China is going to be a key factor in shifting the class balance of forces there towards the working class in the next couple of decades as it ensures that labour will be in short supply increasing the chances of organisation and solidarity.

[Blake's Baby]

Blake if the world produced 8 times more food then needed what happens to the other 7/8 th of it?

Your verb should be 'happened' not happens, I was refering to the 1980s.

It was mostly used to make aninmal feed which was then fed to animals to make smaller amounts of more expensive food... and some was more obviously wasted - deliberately destroyed in order to keep prices artificially high. Are you not old enough to remember the scandals of the EU butter mountain, milk lake, wine lake, grain mountain... or even the very recent distributions of EU goods in for example Britain and Ireland which were caused by trying to get rid of the massive agricutural overproduction in the EU?

Also, of course, there was massive overconsumption in some countries (notably the USA and parts of Western Europe). Millions of people over the last 30 years have been eating far more than they 'need' to both in volume and in calorific content.


Are you sure of your figures!

Yes, as sure as I can be of something I read 20 years ago.



Can you cite an exact report?

No, it was 20 years ago that I read it and it referred to the situation 25 years ago, but I'm sure it was from the WHO and therefore presumably easy enough to track down. Authored some time between 1987 and 1993 at a guess.

I will try find out what it was. If I find it I will post it or link to it here.

[cyu]

Capitalist agriculture tends to be highly productive certainly in terms of labour inputs as compared to peasant agriculture.

Depends what you define as "capitalism" - if by "capitalism" you mean the use of the latest equipment and fertilizer, I wouldn't call that "capitalist" agriculture at all, but simply modern agriculture.

If I were going to call something "capitalist" agriculture, it would be described in terms of relationships between the people involved and the means of production. Who owns the land? Who owns the equipment? Who claims the right to exclude others?


Blaming food shortages on capitalism is facile nonsense.

Surely some criticisms of capitalism are nonsense, but just because some are, doesn't mean they all are. If you don't realize who ultimately provides the funding for the economics department at your favorite university, here is a lesson in supply and demand that they don't teach you there - from http://cjyu.wordpress.com/article/demand-is-not-measured-in-units-of-gcybcajus7dp-4/

in theory, the more demand there is for some product or service, a market economy will be encouraged to increase the supply for that product or service.

there is a flaw in the theory above that many pro-capitalists overlook: demand (in a capitalist economy) is not measured in units of people, it is measured in units of money. Thus you can have 99% of the people “demanding” basic necessities of life, but it won’t matter a bucket of spit compared to a rich man with millions of times more money, who is demanding luxury goods. As the gap between rich and poor increases, the market economy will be focused more and more on producing luxury goods for the oppressive minority.

If you want to read something from Citigroup and The Wall Street Journal (hardly left-wing organizations), see http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/

[Q]

Another running topic on this subject (http://www.revleft.com/vb/population-control-elephant-t172038/index.html) where this "overpopulation" myth was debunked.

[seventeethdecember2016]

Historically speaking, whenever there has been an struggle of some sort, society at large has always solved it. In the 19th century, there were similar beliefs that populations in the colonial world were going to decrease while increasing in, what was then, the developed world. How wrong we were!
Advancement of technology, like in the past, is going to be the solution to this dilemma.

Just look at all the issues facing the 19th and 20th century, what with relatively low production and slow transportation. However newer technology, like the railway, changed how people viewed future prospects entirely. This internal struggle caused these massive shifts which lead to the industrial revolution and other advancements.

[homegrown terror]

the world is not overpopulated. if a species of fish overpopulates a river, a certain percentage will swim downstream and find a new environment. if a stagnant pond becomes overpopulated, the fish have nowhere to go. national borders have turned the earth into a series of stagnant ponds, and that is why perceived overpopulation occurs.

[Paul Cockshott]

It was mostly used to make aninmal feed which was then fed to animals to make smaller amounts of more expensive food... and some was more obviously wasted - deliberately destroyed in order to keep prices artificially high. Are you not old enough to remember the scandals of the EU butter mountain, milk lake, wine lake, grain mountain... or even the very recent distributions of EU goods in for example Britain and Ireland which were caused by trying to get rid of the massive agricutural overproduction in the EU?

I believe it does take 8 or more kilos of grain etc as feedstuffs to generate a kilo of diary or meat products, so that scale is not unreasonable.
A general shift to a lower protein vegetarian diet would certainly allow more people to be fed, but you have also to recognise that such a shift would not be popular. It was not for nothing that Khruschev promised Goulash Communism and said 'what is socialism without sausages'. The people wanted to move to a diet with more meat and animal protein and woe betide a socialist government that promised them only a diet of beans.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

This is blindfolded conspiracy theorising.

For fuck's sake. There is no conspiracy. Why? Because those bastards don't even bother trying to hide the shit they do.


What regulates prices ?
Fundamentally they are driven by the labour required to make things. When, due to climatic events ( failed Australian Harvest, Prairie fires in Russia, drought in Texas ) the amount of grain produced by the previous amount of labour falls, then the labour value of grain rises and this drives market prices up.
Accross the world we are facing increasing climatic stress conditions which are impacting grain harvests and lowering labour productivity in agriculture. This results in higher prices.
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/maize.html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jCQ1FPY3L9TVP5iReSHjV1NFb1uQ?docId=CNG.bfe6c 8bba0f3646d32ac6c2f4ac3e770.1

When the EU stops paying farmers to not grow food, among similar practices, then I will be willing to attribute high food prices solely to problems of climate.

Until then, high food prices are primarily the result of financial bullfuckery and short-sighted economic policies.


Beyond immediate food issues, overpopulation is directly contrary to the working class interest as it increases competition for jobs, drives down real wages and increases both the rate of exploitation and the rate of profit.

If there are more people than jobs, then the problem is a shortage of jobs, not an overabundance of people. We can't help but be born.


That is a key reason why the working class interest is served by the spread of birth control techniques and the reduction of family sizes.

Access to birth control and smaller family sizes are indicative of a better quality of life, the improvement of which is by far the best way of getting people to slow down their breeding.

But it seems even those on the revolutionary left are still too fixated on blaming the people involved, hence the authoritarian fantasies of forcing everyone to live a regimented life in a shoebox eating beans.

[Blake's Baby]

I believe it does take 8 or more kilos of grain etc as feedstuffs to generate a kilo of diary or meat products, so that scale is not unreasonable.
A general shift to a lower protein vegetarian diet would certainly allow more people to be fed, but you have also to recognise that such a shift would not be popular. It was not for nothing that Khruschev promised Goulash Communism and said 'what is socialism without sausages'. The people wanted to move to a diet with more meat and animal protein and woe betide a socialist government that promised them only a diet of beans.

Well, on a straight like-for-like basis, the amount of land needed to feed cows to feed 2 people would produce enough soya to feed 63 people; so that's in the order of 30 times more, but I believe the calorific value of grain used as animal feed is about 8 times higher than the value of the meat derived from it.

'Popular'? You seem to see socialism as being imposed from above. If we were concerned about what would be 'popular' we would be nationalists, racists, populists, contestants on the X-Factor, strippers and/or purveyors of cheap booze. People will switch to a largely vegetarian diet because it's necessary. I can't see many people voting to starve because they want to eat a cow that doesn't exist.

[Paul Cockshott]

'Popular'? You seem to see socialism as being imposed from above. If we were concerned about what would be 'popular' we would be nationalists, racists, populists, contestants on the X-Factor, strippers and/or purveyors of cheap booze.

If you have a dictatorship with unlimited power imposing things from above, then yes, perhaps you can forget about what is popular, ie, what the people want. But if you are trying to win popular support for a progressive cause, you have to be very concerned about it.
There has been loose talk here about there being plenty of food, and that it is just capitalism that is to blame for any shortages of food. But the mass of food consumption, meat and dairy consumption included, is by the working population. The implication of saying that there is plenty of food if only we were all vegetarians is that it is a matter of no importance if the mass of the population has to give up eating meat and dairy produce.
What I am saying is that historical experience indicates that forcing people onto such a diet would be very unpopular.
You have to assume that there are strong cultural traditions of eating meat etc, that will not be readily surrendered, and, moreover, that as China and India improve their national income per head, there will be a desire for substantially increased meat consumption there.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There has been loose talk here about there being plenty of food, and that it is just capitalism that is to blame for any shortages of food.

I guess it's loose talk if facts are "loose". Even apolitical scientists and the freaking UN recognize that the world-wide food situation is not one of shortage and scarcity in the absolute sense; they say it's a problem of "distribution" but specifically, it's the capitalist system though they don't take it that far:




http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html
Myth 1

Not Enough Food to Go Around
Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html#), and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

Myth 2

Nature's to Blame for Famine
Reality: It's too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature's vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it—starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn't lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html#) everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.

Myth 3

Too Many People
Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition—when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancy—one indicator of nutrition —11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to that of developed countries. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html#), health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and rapid reductions of population growth rates-China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala-prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must improve before they can choose to have fewer children.

But the mass of food consumption, meat and dairy consumption included, is by the working population. The implication of saying that there is plenty of food if only we were all vegetarians is that it is a matter of no importance if the mass of the population has to give up eating meat and dairy produce.
What I am saying is that historical experience indicates that forcing people onto such a diet would be very unpopular.

You have to assume that there are strong cultural traditions of eating meat etc, that will not be readily surrendered, and, moreover, that as China and India improve their national income per head, there will be a desire for substantially increased meat consumption there.Ok, so hypothetically if a socialist/communist society has been achieved and there are too many people for everyone to eat the specific kinds of food they want, what happens? Well, this is a reason that a democratically managed economy is important (though I doubt it would actually ever reach such a crisis point - but that's speculation). So people would be able to collectively determine some priorities for what society produces and in that case, if there is no way for everyone to eat hamburgers, then people would have to figure out alternatives. People would have all the facts - just because you have democracy, doesn't mean people can just vote to live on Jupiter if that's impossible - and so would have to make decisions based on that reality and what is possible at that moment. Workers would have had to make much tougher collective decisions even before getting to this point (I doubt that a revolution and immediate-post revolutionary period would be all easy answers and choices and unanimous votes) and so I have no doubt that some kind of compromise could be reached.

But again, I doubt it would get to that point unless capitalism brought us to it first, in which case a revolution would have much tougher problems than just choice in diet. After a revolution, I think all of the ways we produce food would be remade - it would be organized by ease of effort and quality and probably sustainability since the point would be to provide for use, not maximize profit.

[Blake's Baby]

If you have a dictatorship with unlimited power imposing things from above, then yes, perhaps you can forget about what is popular, ie, what the people want. But if you are trying to win popular support for a progressive cause, you have to be very concerned about it...

However, if the working class is making its own revolution and creating its own vision of society then you can forget about whether or not you're trying to 'win support' for a 'progressive cause'.

I really won't be down my soviet saying 'now, I can see your point that you like burgers, but don't you think it would be better not to make 1/3 of the planet starve?'. Because if the consumption of burgers by the million in the West comes at the price of millions of deaths down to malnutrition elsewhere, then... I can't see that anyone who says 'I like burgers, so other people should die' really has any point.



... The implication of saying that there is plenty of food if only we were all vegetarians is that it is a matter of no importance if the mass of the population has to give up eating meat and dairy produce.
What I am saying is that historical experience indicates that forcing people onto such a diet would be very unpopular...

Yeah well, I'm rather more thinking that 'starvation is unpopular, therefore people won't want to do it, therefore we will find sensible ways of organising food production'. If the choice is, on the one hand, a reduction in meat-eating and a rise in vegetable protein, and, on the other, 1/3 of the planet being on the verge of starvation, then, how on earth do you think that continuing with a high-meat diet will be more 'popular'? Don't the 'starving millions' get votes in your top-down populist socialist world?



... You have to assume that there are strong cultural traditions of eating meat etc, that will not be readily surrendered, and, moreover, that as China and India improve their national income per head, there will be a desire for substantially increased meat consumption there.

Right. Is it the poor/starving, or vegetarians in particular, who have no input into this new society? Because again, I think people will say 'we need to feed x-numbers of people, how can we do that?' not 'I want to eat burgers, so you can all die'.

[Zulu]

Look, guys, this "food shortage" argument is a complete red herring when the overpopulation is discussed. First of all, there technically cannot be food shortage at all, because humans can cannibalize each other. Then, even as we can imagine a situation when everybody can be fed magically, that's still not communism. Communism is also lots of other things that at the end of the day take energy to produce. And energy is on one hand short (as of this day) and on the other hand the use of it slowly heats up our little nice space station we call the Earth. That's what must be discussed, not the silly food.

[Paul Cockshott]

Blake I am not saying it would be impossible or a bad think to persuade say a Canadian supreme sovier to introduce meatrations and to give the excess animal feed as food aid to africa, I just think it would not be easy to get support/votes for it. Veggies would vote for it, but they are a small minority.

[The Intransigent Faction]

Overpopulation is a myth. Resources and economic development being distributed as unequally and irrationally as they are, we're in no position to be deeming people as excess population.

It's basically Malthusian nonsense.

[Blake's Baby]

Blake I am not saying it would be impossible or a bad think to persuade say a Canadian supreme sovier to introduce meatrations and to give the excess animal feed as food aid to africa, I just think it would not be easy to get support/votes for it. Veggies would vote for it, but they are a small minority.

So...

The Canadian Supreme Soviet (how supreme is it? Is there not a North American Continental Soviet that is more supreme? A World Supreme Soviet that is more supreme than that?) keeps getting formal requests (along with the ... European not-so-Supreme Soviet, the East Asian not-so-Supreme Soviet and the South American Continental Soviet) from the African Continental Soviet, to send excess food either as animal feed or food for human consumption to Africa (as well as news reports about encroaching famine and malnutrition, and direct contacts between proletarian organisations in Africa with their comrades in the other parts of the world)... and they ignore those requests because people in Canada would rather let Africans die than send food to them, because they want to eat lots of burgers?

Man you have a bad view of human beings. Proletarian solidarity is just some long words, is it?

[Paul Cockshott]

Politics will go on, the existing ideologies will not just vanish. You have to win political support for policies against people who will argue for the opposite. Politics grows out of people's material interests, if a policy is being imposed by the Soviet government that opposes their material interests in a very basic way - what food they can consume, this will give rise to opposition. The further away you place the government body that makes the decisions - not Canada but North America, not North America but world wide, the easier it will be for those who oppose food rationing to portray it as an oppressive imposition.

I am not saying that it may not be in the interests of humanity as a whole to do what you suggest, but you should not underestimate the fight that you would have on your hands.

Suppose now you were to try and put an innitiative on the ballot in California banning the consumption of meat and providing a tax of dairy produce the proceeds of which would go to purchasing grain for poor countries. From the standpoint of humanity this is probably an admirable idea, but how much popular support do you think it would get in a vote?

[Blake's Baby]

Politics will go on, the existing ideologies will not just vanish. You have to win political support for policies against people who will argue for the opposite. Politics grows out of people's material interests, if a policy is being imposed by the Soviet government...

OK; stop right there.

The workers' councils in Canada will not accept the decisions of their own higher council bodies, will they not? But they will themselves have taken part in that decision-making process. Why would they refuse to act on decisions that they took part in reaching? Do you think they might 'break away' over the issue of food redistribution and start a civil war with the new World Soviet? Or do you just think they'd go on strike in order to let people in Africa starve?


... that opposes their material interests in a very basic way - what food they can consume, this will give rise to opposition...
Hardly 'basic... material interests', more like fashion. There is no intrinsic necessity to eat burgers from grain-fed cows.


...
The further away you place the government body that makes the decisions - not Canada but North America, not North America but world wide, the easier it will be for those who oppose food rationing to portray it as an oppressive imposition...

I think you underestimate the solidarity that the revolutionary working class will feel. If you look at charity under capitalism you can clearly see that there is a massive generosity on behalf of people even when our system tells us that we should look out for ourselves. And, unlike the capitalist media there will be no hiding of problems in other parts of the world - no censorship designed by local governments to portray the system as being fine, no campaigns by exterior governments or corporations to brush news under the carpet - so anyone in Canada arguing that Africans should starve so Canadians can eat burgers raised on grain from South America, while at the same time anyone in Canada is capable of finding out what the soviets in Africa are requesting and why, is going to look like a giant fucking asshat.


...I am not saying that it may not be in the interests of humanity as a whole to do what you suggest, but you should not underestimate the fight that you would have on your hands.

Suppose now you were to try and put an innitiative on the ballot in California banning the consumption of meat and providing a tax of dairy produce the proceeds of which would go to purchasing grain for poor countries. From the standpoint of humanity this is probably an admirable idea, but how much popular support do you think it would get in a vote?

How much relationship do you think there is between drafting a proposal for the Canadian Parliament and what will happen in a post-revolutionary society?

You might as well say 'suppose you were now to try flying at 800 miles an hour at an altitude of 28,000 feet, do you think it would work?'

No of course it wouldn't. I'd have to procure a jet aeroplane first. Having procured one, however, I suspect the matter would be a lot easier.

[Thirsty Crow]

Hardly 'basic... material interests', more like fashion. There is no intrinsic necessity to eat burgers from grain-fed cows.

Just a brief comment on this.
From personal experience, and yes I'm aware how faulty anecdotal "evidence" is, but I have no reason to assume that I am somehow extraordinary in this, habits such as food we eat comprise a way of life on its own and are definitely important for people. You might be underestimating the force of habit here (I can't count how many times I've tried to reduce my intake of meat, without success). That doesn't mean that I refute the possibility of real material solidarity, or that people will fight tooth and nail to keep eating burgers, but only that this issue is not devoid of its own contention, and possibly conflict of sorts.

[Paul Cockshott]

OK; stop right there.

The workers' councils in Canada will not accept the decisions of their own higher council bodies, will they not? But they will themselves have taken part in that decision-making process. Why would they refuse to act on decisions that they took part in reaching?

Suppose that Canada did have a Soviet system of Government. The system is inherently hierarchical. You would have say a Burlington Soviet, an Oakville Soviet, A Hamilton Soviet etc and these would then send delegates to the Ontario Soviet, which would send delegates to Canadian Soviet. There might be more levels between the city and the provincial level since Ontario is so huge.

Now look at the size of the base units, these are cities of 100,000 people or more. How many of them will be elected members of the local soviet? Perhaps 200? So even at the local level only one in 500 of the people will have taken part in the debate on whether to ration meat. Most people will only have a say the same way they do now by lobbying their local delegate - if they know them personally.
The situation gets even more complex as you go up the chain. The actual decision can only be taken at the Federal level. Like local councils everywhere, the Oakville Soviet will mainly be concerned with debating local issues - conditions in the car factories, local housing and schools. The time it will take to reviewing the agenda for the forthcomming provincial and national soviet meetings will be very limited - they will rely on their delegates to make the decision. Moreover, they have no direct say over any national delegates, they only have a say over the delegates to the province.

So in practice the decision will be one made by the All Canada Soviet, without detailed instructions percolating up. So there is no reason to think that the average Canadian worker would be any more involved in this decision than they are in the actual decisions of the current parliament. They might well trust the Soviet Government, because ideology says that the system represents the working class etc.

The delegates to the Supreme Soviet may just assume that anything they decide, even something as drastic as introducing food rationing will be willingly accepted - but if they do, history teaches us that they would be naive fools.





Do you think they might 'break away' over the issue of food redistribution and start a civil war with the new World Soviet? Or do you just think they'd go on strike in order to let people in Africa starve?
Strike and riot is the most likely course, remember Novocherkassk? The issue there was reduced meat consumption and higher grain prices to allow a bigger income to go to collective farm peasantry.



Hardly 'basic... material interests', more like fashion. There is no intrinsic necessity to eat burgers from grain-fed cows.

Culture not just fashion.
Dietary cultures are hard to change by edict. Consider the opposition that any attempt, on the grounds of rationality, to get a muslim population to eat pork, or the general Canadian population to eat the meat of Horses or Dogs. Wars and revolutions have started over less.

I suggest you read Harris :Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture or Braudel: Capitalism and Material Life. Food culture is extraordinarily difficult to change, and one of the things that Harris emphasises is how rare vegetarianism is culturally, and how it has only occured in materially impoverished societies which are on the margins of survival. Why is there a taboo on the eating of beef among Hindus? Because Indian agriculture produced too small a surplus to support cattle as anything other than as a source of milk and muscular effort. If a farmer were to kill his cow he would loose a lasting source of milk, if he killed his ox he would loose the engine that pulled his plough.

These material conditions of production demanded as part of the superstructure an ideology that enforced prohibitions on Beef eating reinforced by very strong ideological sanctions, because the material instinct we have, as a predatory species is to eat meat as often as possible. The ideology had to be strong because it was going against the immediate material interest of the indivdual human being in order to maintain the stability of the mode of material production.

[Blake's Baby]

Menocchio: I'm not argiung that some people won't be resitant to changing their diets. It's still fashion though. If there is no intrinsic reason to eat a thing and not eat another thing, a strong preference for one over the other is a cultural choice that is essentially arbitrary. Don't know what else to call that but 'fashion'.

Cockshot: I agree with several of your points; but I've got no idea what Canadian cultural attitudes are to horse and dog meat, and as we're both it seems in the UK we may as well stick to British examples if it's all the same to you. Getting English people to eat haggis or turnips is hard enough. Dog and horse would be right out. Many people find the concept of black pudding really horrible. Muslims are not likely to start eating pork. I agree. I also agree that strong cultural taboos are likely to have a material basis. As you rightly point out, there are longstanding prescriptions in Hinduism against eating cows, for solid material reasons. I can fairly confidently state that I think 'so people don't die' might be considered a strong reason for a cultural taboo on eating cows.

'they have no direct say over any delegate...' - where do the delegates come from? Someone must have direct say. I don't think it's at all improbable that discussions about the organisation of food would happen at the local level - in fact, the widespread resistance to the idea would presuppose that there is widespread discussion. So all the people of Canada (or maybe Scotland) have a massive debate and none of them are going along with this stupid idea of eating soya, they want cow. So their delegates to the district soviets who vote the delgates to the regional soviets (who all represent a district or how do they get sent to the soviet that votes them up?) who send the delegates (who also represent districts... even Canada's 2 delegates to the World Supreme Soviet represent districts), who send the delegates... etc. All of these people, as soon as they leave their district soviets, immediately change their views about what is to be done about food?

If the whole of Canada, or even a large portion of it (I keep forgetting, we're talking about Britain now aren't we?) if the 3 delegates from former-Britain to the World Supreme Soviet are elected by the British super-Regional Soviet but get there by being delgates of the Bracknell District Soviet, who got elected to the South-East England Regional and then the British super-Regional; and a delgate from the Oban soviet who was elected to the Scottish Regional and British super-Regional; and a delgate from the West Swansea Soviet who was elected to the Wales and Western England Regional and then to the British super-Regional; they are still workers from Swansea, Oban and Bracknell, elected as delegates from their local soviet and revocable by their electorate. How are they so immune to the great stir that is going on around them in which people decide it's better for people in Africa to starve than to limit consumption of meat?

[Sir Comradical]

Overpopulation is a myth. Resources and economic development being distributed as unequally and irrationally as they are, we're in no position to be deeming people as excess population.

It's basically Malthusian nonsense.

I accept the argument that at present, the purchasing power of a handful of wealthy capitalists distorts our investment decisions away from what we'd consider priorities. For example, people in poor countries growing cash crops instead of food. Even if we assume that these distortions can be eliminated through socialist planning, we must still accept that the world is finite and unlimited population growth forever just won't be possible (unless of course we find other planets to colonise). But assuming we've got just this blue dot, overpopulation is a problem and you can't pretend it doesn't exist by yelling Malthusian nonsense!

[Blake's Baby]

... assuming we've got just this blue dot, overpopulation is a problem and you can't pretend it doesn't exist by yelling Malthusian nonsense!

And we accept that, if we continue with capitalist production and distribution and housing and healthcare and transport and urban planning and wealth disparities, the planet will eventually exceed its carrying capacity - in 150 years or whatever, when we have a population of 40 billion or something.

But if we don't continue with capitalist production and distribution and housing and healthcare and transport and urban planning and wealth disparities - you know, if as socialists we take part in a successful revolution and all - then there are good reasons to believe that we can successfully feed tens or maybe hundreds of billions more than capitalism, through sensible agriculture, sensible energy use, sensible spatial planning etc.

Any social theory that starts with 'well, untold millions have to die' is just shit. And any social theory that starts with 'well the poor should learn not to breed' is reactionary shit. Rather reminds me of the excuses of British railway operators complaining about 'the wrong sort of snow' and 'the wrong sort of leaves' on the line causing delays to trains. Apparently, life could be great, but we have the wrong sort of poor. Blaming the poor for problems of capitalism is fucking weak, it really is.

[TrotskistMarx]

Dear friend, I think that there is enough money and food in this world for about 50 billion humans. If you take all the wealth and net profits of the whole world and divided into 7 billion, each of those 7 billions will be rich. I think it is the extreme concentration of money in a few that is the real cause of hunger and extreme poverty in this world. That's why we need dictatorships of the working class in each country of the whole world and then after some years or what ever time it would take to prepare, educated and evolve humans physically, mentally and spritually for the more advanced phase after workers-dictatorship stage, which is a global anarchist-communist system. Without borders, without classes and like I said with all adult humans more rational, more physically and psychologically advanced for the anarcho-communism global system


.


There is evidence that the world is overpopulated. It already cannot sustain its current population living at a Western standard. Nations such as China an India are experiencing overpopulation.

Given the stateless nature of communism, would it prove able to manage the world's population?

I suppose it could be managed by the local 'authorities' (for lack of a better word), or the human population either ends up dying out, or, over millions of years, undergoes evolution into a completely different species.

On another (slightly less practical) topic, when humanity does evolve (as I believe it will) will that render communism obsolete? I can see arguments for and against.

[Blake's Baby]

Dear friend, I think that there is enough money and food in this world for about 50 billion humans. If you take all the wealth and net profits of the whole world and divided into 7 billion, each of those 7 billions will be rich...

Depends on your definition of 'rich'. If we shared out the global GNP, we'd get about $9,000US each (that's $63 trillion shared between 7 billion). A fairly typical family of five would be worth $45,000US.

While that would be a massive increase for the majority of the world's population, it would be a net decrease for some, especially some people in the west who don't have children (because the $9,000US obviously applies to children as well).

[Lynx]

Wealth is related to technology, in the ability to efficiently use resources. I don't think that converts easily into money or prices. If everyone had access to clean drinking water and housing, then according to demand and supply, the price of these services would be reduced.

[Blake's Baby]

Not sure if you're talking to me, and if you are whether you're agreeing or not; but I hope you don't think I'm saying we'll be alright just dividing up capitalism amongst everyone. Just trying to point that (in gross econometric terms) capitalism does produce enough for everyone's material well-being, if not exactly ecstatic comfort.

We need socialism for that.

[Paul Cockshott]

Any social theory that starts with 'well, untold millions have to die' is just shit. And any social theory that starts with 'well the poor should learn not to breed' is reactionary shit. .

So Feminists like Maire Stoppes and Margaret Sanger were just reactionaries for educating poor working class women in birth control techniques.

[Blake's Baby]

Are you a eugenicist?

1 - yes, in which case Marie Stopes is great and her eulogising of Hitler, her racism and her anti-working-class policies are all part of the plan;
2 - no, why the fuck would you think that, are you mental?

You choose.

[Paul Cockshott]

you said that teaching poor people how to have smaller families was reactionary, or what amounts to the same thing - that they should learn how to use birth control is reactionary.
Was the one child family policy in China reactionary?
Would it be in the interest of the working classes in China to abandon it?

[Blake's Baby]

'Teaching poor people how to have smaller families'? Can you hear yourself?

What I said was "


...

Any social theory that starts with 'well, untold millions have to die' is just shit. And any social theory that starts with 'well the poor should learn not to breed' is reactionary shit... Apparently, life could be great, but we have the wrong sort of poor. Blaming the poor for problems of capitalism is fucking weak, it really is."

Yes, it's reactionary to blame the working class for the failures of capitalism. Why do you think it's such a good idea to alibi capitalism by saying we have 'the wrong sort of people'?

You didn't answer my question as to whether you were a Nazi-adoring racist eugenicist, by the way.

[Paul Cockshott]

I am clearly not an admirer of eugenics or of Nazis, but I am definitely an advocate of birth control and of education into sexual health and contraceptive techniques. These are not things that people know about naturally and early feminists encountered huge opposition from the church when they started to teach working class women safe techniques to limit family sizes.

It is not a matter of saying that 'we have the wrong sort of people', but a simple proposition of marxian political economy ( the general law of capitalist accumulation ) that the larger the reserve army of labour, the greater will be the competition between workers, and the greater will be the rate of exploitation. Reducing the rate of growth of the proletarian population is fundamentally in the interests of the working class and is something widely opposed by religious reactionaries.

The one parent family policy in China is something that will ensure a fundamental change in the balance of class forces there in coming years as labour becomes scarce and capital plentiful.

[Blake's Baby]

I am clearly not an admirer of eugenics or of Nazis, but I am definitely an advocate of birth control and of education into sexual health and contraceptive techniques. These are not things that people know about naturally and early feminists encountered huge opposition from the church when they started to teach working class women safe techniques to limit family sizes...

Not at all as clearly as you seem to imagine. You brought Stopes up. She was an anti-working class racist and eugenicist, and admirer of the Nazis. Why do you think she has anything to offer revolutionaries or the working class?


It is not a matter of saying that 'we have the wrong sort of people', but a simple proposition of marxian political economy ( the general law of capitalist accumulation ) that the larger the reserve army of labour, the greater will be the competition between workers, and the greater will be the rate of exploitation. Reducing the rate of growth of the proletarian population is fundamentally in the interests of the working class and is something widely opposed by religious reactionaries...

Oh, golly, we're trying to make capitalism better. Woopee.

No really, we're trying to overthrow capitalism.

I'm not telling you to go and look at religious anti-contraceptive rubbish, am I? See the difference? I bet there are other things religious nutcases believe that I believe too. Such as, breathing is useful. Stabbing yourself in the eye is likely to be painful. So what? Even religious nutcases can be right sometimes.

You however are advocating as sensible the views of an anti-working class racist eugenicist Nazi-admirer.


.The one parent family policy in China is something that will ensure a fundamental change in the balance of class forces there in coming years as labour becomes scarce and capital plentiful.

'Labour' becomes scare.

You mean workers, though, don't you? You know, people. Not labour. Labour is a somewhat abstract concept in political philosophy and economics. People, on the other hand, are concrete self-aware beings. You want people to become scarcer.

Do I support free and abundant contraception, a woman's absolute rights over her reproduction, education in contraception and social change to make pressure (either to abort or carry to term a fetus) a thing of the past? Definitely.

Do I think women 'should' limit their fertility? No. Any more than I think they 'should' increase their fertility. It's not up to me; and unless I'm much mistaken, it's not up to you. Even if you are, against the evidence, female, it's only up to you whether you limit your own fertility. Try telling other people that they should be, and you can 'go fuck yourself' which I'm sure you'll agree would help to solve what you see as a 'problem' but I really don't.

[DasFapital]

its not about food production. Its about the amount of waste that would be produced as well producing enough electricity for the population, which causes the Earth to heat up.

[Kotze]

There's something incoherent in what seems to be the position of the non-authoritarian majority on this forum. That is, on the one hand they apparantly want lots of decisions to be completely up to individuals (think of the drug threads), but they also want a strong social safety net.

I find this entirely understandable. I, too, want for myself a lot of freedom to make a lot of potentially stupid decisions, while I also want other people to pay for my fuckups to the greatest extent possible. I'm doubtful about how popular that is with people outside of this forum.


You [=Paul Cockshott] however are advocating as sensible the views of an anti-working class racist eugenicist Nazi-admirer.I suppose he hasn't read much about them. Both Marie Stoppes and Margaret Sanger espoused pro-eugenics views, it's true, and bringing them up wasn't a good idea. But the claim about the necessity of limiting population growth does not need a pro-eugenic viewpoint. The concept of an equal non-tradeable right to only X amount of offspring per person (pops up time and again among Technocracy nerds) might make you queasy, but eugenics is not the word for it.

Besides the ecological claim for limiting population growth, there's also another claim, already made in this thread, but I haven't seen it addressed. If profit — not the particular profit of a particular person, but profit generally speaking — comes from the direct labour, guess what will happen when the ratio of this direct labour relative to the "stored up" labour in capital changes, and what could bring about such a change.

[Paul Cockshott]

You mean workers, though, don't you? You know, people. Not labour. Labour is a somewhat abstract concept in political philosophy and economics. People, on the other hand, are concrete self-aware beings. You want people to become scarcer.

Yes obviously. I was slightly loose there I should have said labour power is becoming scarce and capital plentiful. Yes it is in the interest of workers for labour power to be scarce relative to capital as that increases the bargaining position of the working class, furthers the formation of solid trades unions and working class organisation.

Where population is growing rapidly, where there is constant competition from the reserve army of labour, the working class is weak.

When the rate of growth of population slows down relative to the stock of capital, the bargaining position of labour relative to capital improves, the rate of exploitation falls and so does the rate of profit.

Where there is rapid population increase, the rate of profit can remain high and capitalism encounters no insuperable contradictions.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There's something incoherent in what seems to be the position of the non-authoritarian majority on this forum. That is, on the one hand they apparantly want lots of decisions to be completely up to individuals (think of the drug threads), but they also want a strong social safety net.No, it's not about a "safty net" it's about reorganizing society so that things are produced for our use and to make our lives better rather than for profits.

In capitalism, behavior needs to be controlled so that society works in ways that benefit our rulers - "fixing problems" often means controlling populations or moving populations or imprisoning or deporting surplus population because our rulers need us to do things that are in the system's interest, but not necessarily our own.

If there's a worker's revolution there would be no need to control personal behavior. Population is more than just a personal issue though, so I don't doubt there would be some kind of policy, especially at first to make sure that the population can get access to things they need and make sure that there is housing etc.

Since food and many other kinds of production run at a surplus or a potential surplus, I doubt that population will be an issue - more like solving distribution and infrastructural inequalities so that people have better access to things will be the "population" issue. But for the sake of argument, say there is an "overpopulation" problem where we can not produce enough for everyone. My first question is why they wouldn't just try and figure out alternative distribution models - for example: if everyone can't have a car, why not increased public transit along public garages in each neighborhood where you can sign up for communal cars? Ok, but say that it's a more basic need like energy or food. Well then people would have to work out and decide on a plan for budgeting and rationing or restricting population growth.

In other words it would be a collective problem that would need to have a collective solution, not individuals fucking up and society in general paying for it. I find that to be a tea-party way of looking at the issue. Why should we have health care just so people can recklessly smoke a pack a day and make ME pay for their hospital care when they get cancer or heart disease!


I find this entirely understandable. I, too, want for myself a lot of freedom to make a lot of potentially stupid decisions, while I also want other people to pay for my fuckups to the greatest extent possible. I'm doubtful about how popular that is with people outside of this forum.Having children, even "too many children" according to some arbitrary definition, is not a "fuckup". If people increasing the population and private consumption, is a fuckup, then what fucking bastards 80 year olds are, maybe we can mandate that as soon as someone stops working, they are euthenized - I mean what a fuck-up living past productive age and making others produce to cover this selfish oversight!


The concept of an equal non-tradeable right to only X amount of offspring per person (pops up time and again among Technocracy nerds) might make you queasy, but eugenics is not the word for it.Benign eugenics?

[Blake's Baby]

There's something incoherent in what seems to be the position of the non-authoritarian majority on this forum. That is, on the one hand they apparantly want lots of decisions to be completely up to individuals (think of the drug threads), but they also want a strong social safety net.

I find this entirely understandable. I, too, want for myself a lot of freedom to make a lot of potentially stupid decisions, while I also want other people to pay for my fuckups to the greatest extent possible. I'm doubtful about how popular that is with people outside of this forum...

What then, is the advantage of society? If it's either - live wild and free and never rely on anyone; or rely on people but do what you're told... then fuck your political philosophy and both the horses it rose in on.


...
I suppose he hasn't read much about them. Both Marie Stoppes and Margaret Sanger espoused pro-eugenics views, it's true, and bringing them up wasn't a good idea. But the claim about the necessity of limiting population growth does not need a pro-eugenic viewpoint. The concept of an equal non-tradeable right to only X amount of offspring per person (pops up time and again among Technocracy nerds) might make you queasy, but eugenics is not the word for it...

You're right that the idea of compulsory limiting of fertility doesn't necessarily imply that there is any concept of breeding out undesirable sections of the population.

Which is a bit like arguing that if the Nazis hadn't been racists, it would have been fine for them to kill 12 million people. It's the racism that's bad, not the killing.

So, advocating 'eugenics without eugenics' is a cop out. And given the opinion many of the rest of us have of 'technocracy' - that's it's sociopathy bordering on psycopathy - claiming that technocrats are into it is hardly going to endear it to the rest of us. Many inmates of lunatic asylums believe they have been visited by aliens and angels, but that doesn't mean we have to as well.


...
Besides the ecological claim for limiting population growth, there's also another claim, already made in this thread, but I haven't seen it addressed. If profit — not the particular profit of a particular person, but profit generally speaking — comes from the direct labour, guess what will happen when the ratio of this direct labour relative to the "stored up" labour in capital changes, and what could bring about such a change.

Why are you and Cockshott talking about capitalism? Our task isn't to try make capitalism work better, it's to destroy it. If the amount of labour in one area is insufficient capitalism outsources, it recruits labour from abroad, if necessary it puts kids in factories. It doesn't sit around for twenty years going 'ah, no, when all these kids that haven't been born don't grow up, we're really going to have a labour shortage, what will we do then, tum ti tum?'.

Adults who are bringing up children instead of working (sure that often adults bring up children and do work) limit the labour supply now if you think that's important; adults that don't have children increase the supply of labour now and limit it in 20 years time. I really don't see the latter as particularly useful in increasing the working class's power against capital, except in so far as concentration of the proletariat is what gives the working class its power, not attenuation as you seem to believe.

[Paul Cockshott]

This is an interesting take on history: its is ok to murder people provided you dont do it for racial motivation.


Which is a bit like arguing that if the Nazis hadn't been racists, it would have been fine for them to kill 12 million people. It's the racism that's bad, not the killing.
Bit of an underestimate of the deaths, but since you think that killing millions of people is fine if you are not a racist, then presumably killing 12 million people because they were born on a thursday would be just fine.

I suspect you wrote that without much consideration.


Why are you and Cockshott talking about capitalism? Our task isn't to try make capitalism work better, it's to destroy it. If the amount of labour in one area is insufficient capitalism outsources, it recruits labour from abroad, if necessary it puts kids in factories. It doesn't sit around for twenty years going 'ah, no, when all these kids that haven't been born don't grow up, we're really going to have a labour shortage, what will we do then, tum ti tum?'.

Well I am not just talking about capitalism. I have in previous posts discussed the demographic transitions in the USSR and China. The one child family policy in China was adopted before the shift towards allowing a large capitalist sector in the Chinese economy.

But why are we talking about capitalism?
Because it is the dominant system on the planet, and as historical materialists we have to understand itsl laws of motion, and the effect of population on this motion.

Wiithin capitalism you have to consider the strategic factors which constrain the expansion and accumulation of capital. 'Accumulation is growth of the proletariat', where the proletariat does not grow you have what Marx called overaccumulation of capital. The characteristic features of overaccumulation are:

1. Demand for workers exceeds supply driving up wages

2. The organic composition of capital rises

For both these reasons the rate of profit falls. Japan is the classic case of this.
You worry that if this occured there would be a tendancy for capitalism to revert to child labour - well there is no evidence that his has happened in Japan, and the use of child labour tends to be characteristic of early phases of capitalism when family sizes were large, and children were seen as a potential source of income by their parents. In countries with small families and a technically advanced mode of production it is unlikely to occur again on a significant scale.

[Blake's Baby]

This is an interesting take on history: its is ok to murder people provided you dont do it for racial motivation.


Bit of an underestimate of the deaths, but since you think that killing millions of people is fine if you are not a racist, then presumably killing 12 million people because they were born on a thursday would be just fine.

I suspect you wrote that without much consideration...

I wrote it with more consideration than you read it; it is of course not my view that 'eugenics without eugenics' (forced limitation of fertility without notions of breeding out undesirable strains) is acceptable, it is yours and Kotze's view.

By the same token, you would presumably not mind the Nazis' murder of 12 million people in the death camps, if it had not been done substantially on the basis of racism. Good old Nazis, making the working class stronger by decreasing the supply of labour, eh? You must just love them to bits.

[cyu]

There has been loose talk here about there being plenty of food, and that it is just capitalism that is to blame for any shortages of food. But the mass of food consumption, meat and dairy consumption included, is by the working population.

The day the last child has shined the shoes of a wealthy man, the day the last hooker is forced to sell him or herself to get by, the day the last worker leaves the assembly line for a billionaire's yacht, the day the last construction worker puts in the final bidet in a rich man's mansion, the day the last lobbyist chases after a legislator for his corporate pay master, the day the last lawyer stays up all night trying to figure out which aspects of corporate or constitutional law to use against the competition - the day all those people who currently work for the wealthy are freed up to be able to work for the general population, on that day, come and say that to me again.


Was the one child family policy in China reactionary?

Like any religion, Malthusianism can hold a society's mind captive for decades and even generations. I wouldn't say the one child policy was deliberately oppressive, but rather based on economic stupidity. Like the paragraph above implies, it's not how many people there are, it's what those people are doing. For each person that is a lawyer or bureaucrat, that is one less person that is doing agricultural research or operating agricultural machinery. The more authoritarian a society is, the more likely it will be the victim of bad religion - those without power will be afraid to be heretics to the established beliefs, and the country veers off towards idiocy like the one child policy (or the Great Leap Forward).


Would it be in the interest of the working classes in China to abandon it?

What China needs to abandon is capitalism. From CIA Gini at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality - China is more unequal today than f**king Taiwan. The interest of the working class will be served when workers stop sucking up to the new business tycoons and high ranking officials of China, and start producing things for themselves.

[cyu]

I accept the argument that at present, the purchasing power of a handful of wealthy capitalists distorts our investment decisions away from what we'd consider priorities. For example, people in poor countries growing cash crops instead of food. Even if we assume that these distortions can be eliminated through socialist planning, we must still accept that the world is finite and unlimited population growth forever just won't be possible (unless of course we find other planets to colonise). But assuming we've got just this blue dot, overpopulation is a problem and you can't pretend it doesn't exist by yelling Malthusian nonsense!

Excerpt from http://www.revleft.com/vb/many-people-can-t148400/index.html?p=2415782

One word:

Science

Or to put it another way, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Our ability to support people on earth today would seem like magic to people thousands of years ago.

human advancement, knowledge, and science are near infinite. Before moon colonies, we'll be heading into the oceans http://xkcd.com/1040/large/ and into orbit (note the orbital surface area of the earth is much larger than the ground / sea surface area). But as long as there are large wealth disparities, human knowledge and science will not be focused on supporting the world population. It will be developing Botox and grooming poodles for the wealthy.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/

There is no “average” consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich “and everyone else.” The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for “surprisingly small bites of the national pie.” Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20% may have been responsible for 60% of total spending.

The best way for companies and businesspeople to survive in Plutonomies, Kapur implies, is to disregard the “mass” consumer and focus on the increasingly rich market of the rich.

[Paul Cockshott]

I wrote it with more consideration than you read it; it is of course not my view that 'eugenics without eugenics' (forced limitation of fertility without notions of breeding out undesirable strains) is acceptable, it is yours and Kotze's view.

By the same token, you would presumably not mind the Nazis' murder of 12 million people in the death camps, if it had not been done substantially on the basis of racism. Good old Nazis, making the working class stronger by decreasing the supply of labour, eh? You must just love them to bits.
__________________

Unless one takes a dogmatic catholic stance, contraception or early abortion do not amount to killing people, so the morality of the two is quite different.

[Paul Cockshott]

Like any religion, Malthusianism can hold a society's mind captive for decades and even generations. I wouldn't say the one child policy was deliberately oppressive, but rather based on economic stupidity. Like the paragraph above implies, it's not how many people there are, it's what those people are doing. For each person that is a lawyer or bureaucrat, that is one less person that is doing agricultural research or operating agricultural machinery.

Do you think you are talking about China?

The overwhelming majority of the population in 1978 were working peasants. There was a surplus of labour on the land and food production was not labour constrained, but, given the available technology, was land constrained. Over time, with improvements in agricultural techniques, the yield per hectare was rising, but dietary standards and margins against bad harvests could only be improved to the extent that propulation growth was lower than the rate of improvement in yield per hectare.

The Great Leap forward, the later commune movement, and subsequent township and village enterprises have all depended on the labour surplus in the countryside.

[Kotze]

There's something incoherent in what seems to be the position of the non-authoritarian majority on this forum. That is, on the one hand they apparantly want lots of decisions to be completely up to individuals (think of the drug threads), but they also want a strong social safety net.
No (...) If there's a worker's revolution there would be no need to control personal behavior (...) In other words it would be a collective problem that would need to have a collective solutionThat's a pretty long-winded way of saying yes.
By the same token, you would presumably not mind the Nazis' murder of 12 million people in the death campsSounds like something Neal Horsley would say :closedeyes: Would you guys mind dropping the Nazi this Nazi that stuff?

And would you please address this already: Do you deny that there is a link between the profit rate and how well the working class is doing in the struggle against the capitalists, with the profit rate going down meaning the working class is gaining? Do you deny that there is a link between the profit rate and the ratio of fresh working hours to the stored hours in capital, profit rate going down when the amount of fresh relative to stored goes down?

[Blake's Baby]

Who's Neal Horsley?

What you seem not to realise is that all of the rest us are pro-choice. We all believe it is up to women to control their own fertility, it's not up to you, or Cockshott, or some cabal of technocrats. It's you and Cockshott who believe in compulsion. That's why I don't see any reason to stop the 'Nazi this and Nazi that'.

No-one but you and Cockshott are talking about capitalism, we're talking about communism. Why don't you talk about what the rest of us are talking about, instead of insisting we talk about what you want?

Ah, yes, I forgot, it's because you're a jumped-up techno-dictator who gets to tell the rest of the working class what to do.

[Paul Cockshott]

This is just blatant bourgeois liberalism.
The basis of socialism is serving the people and serving society and putting the interest of society above the interest of the individual family. Socialism involves collective planning of society and collective determination of where society is going. Population numbers are an absolutely key factor in determining where society is going, and as such are a matter of collective choice and responsibility.

[Blake's Baby]

No, they're really not.

They're a matter of collective discussion maybe; but I'm sorry, forced abortions, casting out of vile breeders, and the Junior Anti-Sex League are not part of my vision of communism.

I support a woman's right to chose whether or not she has children. That's a woman's right to chose whether he aborts a fetus or whether she carries it. It's not your place or anyone else's on this board to restrict a woman's control over her own fertility.

That kind of shit gets you restricted to OI. Reconsider your position.

[Jimmie Higgins]

This is like debating people who believes in creationism: the whole premise is wrong and factually incorrect (there is no abstract "overpopulation" in modern society) so when called out on it, they skip to a bunch of minutia and disagreements in evolution theory to "prove" that creationism exists. There is no over-population and this has been shown over and over again in this thread! Secondly, Blake brought up the second major point which is principled defense of control over biological production by individual women themselves. This means being in favor of abortion-rights as well as being opposed to eugenics and population control. Third these population arguments lead straight to the most reactionary politics out there - not only racist eugenics but anti-immigrant politics and Malthusian policies of discouraging aid to starving populations.


The basis of socialism is serving the people and serving society and putting the interest of society above the interest of the individual family.No the point is the self-liberation of the working class, making themselves the rulers of society. Blatant bourgeois liberalism treats people as objects, as things to be made to act in certain ways to make the system run better. Too much pollution - well it's your fault for driving a car; too much poverty, well don't have so many kids. It's minority-ruling-class societies that create a separation between the interests of the induviduals and society as a whole because these two things are not generally the same in capitalism: "society as a whole" means capitalist society, but the individual or individual family 99% of the time means non-ruling class people. The point of socialism would be to inverse this at first and then just eliminate this division altogether.

So induviduals out of their own social interests, which are now the majority and ruling social interests in society (not that there can't or won't be disagreements about how best to fulfill these interests). So if tons of people wanted to have tons of kids, what non-mass power in society is going to decide and then enforce this policy? Whatever it would be, it would not be socialist in nature.

[Paul Cockshott]

Jimmie you say that the claim that there is over population or excessive population growth has been refuted by others on this thread. Well so far nobody has produced any data.
I have been defending the one child family policy as a progressive policy and as a model for what a socialist government in an initially agrarian country should follow.
Let us compare the rates of growth of food supply in total calories for India and China and also compare their rates of population growth. By doing so we can see that the effect of overpopulation in India has been to only a allow a very small improvement in the standard of nutrition, whereas the one child family policy has allowed a rapid improvement in food per capita in China.




28 years 1978 to 2006
China , India
growth of food supply annual rate 1.78%, 1.63%
Growth of population annual rate 0.5%, 1.4%
growth of food per capita 1.28% , 0.23%

Note that the growth of the food supply is about the same in both countries - driven by the rate at which new and higher yielding crop varieties, and other improvements in agricultural technology occur.
But the growth in population is much lower in China than in India.
As a result the average amount of food available per capita has improved substantially in China. From a lower baseline in 1978 of 2100 calories per day it had grown by 2006 to 3000 calories a day.
In India the figure for 1978 was 2200 which rose to 2350 by 2006.

Figures for food production are obtained from the UN food and agriculture statistical database here : http://faostat3.fao.org/home/index.html#VISUALIZE

This indicates that overpopulation is not a figment of anyones imagination. It makes a real difference to how people eat and thus how well they live. Chinese food supply per capita is now above that in Japan.

Of course in India, due to the continuance of Landlordism and Usury in the countryside, the share of the meagre agricultural product that falls to the peasant farmer will be lower than in China which had a thorough anti-landlord revolution in the 40s and 50s, so the per capita figures somewhat overstate the improvement that is likely to have occured to the diets of the peasant population.

Levels of nutrition are one of the key components in extending life expectancy, and China has been able to attain a rapid rate of increase in life expectancy.

Life expectancy at birth for a male in China is now 79.7 years, in India it is only 62.7 years. Chinese life expectancy at Birth for males is now the same as in Japan.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I have been defending the one child family policy as a progressive policy and as a model for what a socialist government in an initially agrarian country should follow.Well this is the first problem right here. Rather than looking at issues of the world as they are, you are trying to justify a political line and make reality fit that political position. A position Marx called "a slander against humanity" in his rebuttals of similar arguments by Malthus.

Not to mention the problematic conception of a "socialist government" which is alienated from and apparently above the population and can make policies without popular approval.


This indicates that overpopulation is not a figment of anyones imagination. It makes a real difference to how people eat and thus how well they live. Chinese food supply per capita is now above that in Japan.This is a non-sequitor argument. You're arguing that there is overpopulation, but your evidence is increased food supplies in China vs. India. You claim that this is somehow the proof of the effect of the one-child policy not all the other changes in production and the economy of these countries during this time. In fact Capitalists often argue that it was more "free market" economic policies which caused this improvement in this same time period.

This is the logical equivalent of George W. Bush saying that the PatriotAct is an effective policy because no one has flown any planes into US buildings in the years it has been in effect.

The more absurd part of your argument that it's the overpopulation issue that was causing people to have less calories is that China's rate of population growth declined, but population still increased over this time - in addition, the birthrate had fallen faster in the two decades before the one-child policy. Going from about 6 children per family to 3. So it wasn't LESS people it was changes in production methods and society.

Globally, the food supply has increased since the 1970s despite growing population numbers:

"According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, world food supplies exceed requirements in all world areas, amounting to a surplus approaching 50% in 1990 in the developed countries, and 17% in the developing regions. "Globally, food supplies have more than doubled in the last 40 years ... between 1962 and 1991, average daily per capita food supplies increased more than 15% ... at a global level, there is probably no obstacle to food production rising to meet demand," according to FAO documents prepared for the 1996 World Food Summit. The FAO also reported that less than a third as many people had less than 2100 calories per person per day in 1990-92 as had been the case in 1969-71."


Of course in India, due to the continuance of Landlordism and Usury in the countryside, the share of the meagre agricultural product that falls to the peasant farmer will be lower than in China which had a thorough anti-landlord revolution in the 40s and 50s, so the per capita figures somewhat overstate the improvement that is likely to have occured to the diets of the peasant population.Yes, modes of production, inequality or lessening of inequality, and so on are the decisive factors.

[Paul Cockshott]

Jimmy the maths is quite simple

Improvement in food per head per year= increase in food produced per year - increase in population per year

What the figures for China and India indicate is that if you want to improve dietary standards significantly in a generation then it is advisable to control human fertility.
You cite figures from FAO showing that significantly less people had under 2100 calories per day in 1992, well the main cause for that was the rapid improvement in nutritional standards in China as a result of the one child policy. In India the FAO figures show the average as just oscillating around the low 2000s per year and barely creeping ahead.

A 15% rise per capita consumption in 30 years world wide is something, but it is far less than was achieved in China in the 30 years after the one child policy was adopted - food per capita rose by around a third there.

If you think the socialist movement in the underdeveloped countries should be content with promising only an improvement in food consumption of level achieved in India then you may have something say, if you want the kind of improvement that the USSR and China achieved, then rapid demographic transition is essential.

You suggest that any attempt by a socialist government to control population indicates that it is doing things against the will of the people. The available opinon poll data indicates that the one child family policy is broadly supported by the Chinese people.

You also have to take into account that we are moving into a period of severe climate change which is reducing the areas available for grain crops, and causing lower yields in key areas. Thus food stress is going to be an increasing factor of the next decades

[Jimmie Higgins]

Jimmy the maths is quite simple

Improvement in food per head per year= increase in food produced per year - increase in population per yearThe maths are dynamic, not arithmetic as Marx argued in his polemics against Malthus.


What the figures for China and India indicate is that if you want to improve dietary standards significantly in a generation then it is advisable to control human fertility.No, change production methods. You undermine your whole example because population growth continued during the one child policy, it was the birth-rate which declined which is much slower in having an impact. So it was changes to production and increases in surpluses, not decreases in population growth.


Population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every 25 years. i.e. it increases at a geometric rate, in contrast, food production cannot possibly be made to increase faster than an arithmetic ratio.And so while the population has grown geometrically, food production has far outpaced this population growth since 1802.


But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working-day, combined with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working-class “supernumerary,” particularly whenever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this “over-population” by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production.

You're not going to win this one comrade - you're not debating me, you're debating Marx who was much more knowledgeable and persuasive than me.

[Paul Cockshott]

Ok Jimmie, I will deal with the objections 1 by 1


The maths are dynamic, not arithmetic as Marx argued in his polemics against Malthus.

The equations I gave were dynamic, I was giving first derivatives with respect to time in the three variables.

Incidentally can you refer me to the polemic of Marx against Malthus that you are using as a source.




No, change production methods.

Both India and China had similar changes in production methods at around 1.7% per year. You have to realise that agriculture is not like semiconductors, you only get modest rates of annual growth per hectare. In his book Farm to Factory on Soviet Industrialisation, Robert Allen shows that both the USA and Russia had similar rates of growth of grain output per hectare again in the region of 1.5%. This rate of growth is constrained by the fact that to develop new plant or animal breeds you need many years growing cycles to select for the breed and to prove their stability.



You undermine your whole example because population growth continued during the one child policy, it was the birth-rate which declined which is much slower in having an impact.
And so while the population has grown geometrically, food production has far outpaced this population growth since 1802.


There was a lower rate of population growth as a result of the one child family, this is clearly shown in the figures - China's rate of population growth was only 0.5% a year against 1.5% a year in India.
The issue for a developing country trying to improve the diet of its population is how fast the populationg grows relative to agricultural output. Of course both of these are - to use 19th century terminolgy - geometric growth, but the issue is the relative sizes of these rates of growth.



So it was changes to production and increases in surpluses, not decreases in population growth.
You can not explain the more rapid improvement in food supply per head in China as opposed to India as a result of China having a more rapid growth of food production, because both India and China had the almost same rates of growth of food production. The thing that the two countries differed in here was the rate of population growth.





You're not going to win this one comrade - you're not debating me, you're debating Marx who was much more knowledgeable and persuasive than me.

As far as I am aware Marx did not write any serious studies of the rates of population growth and food supply, but that may be my limited knowledge, can you refer me to your sources in his writing.

[Jimmie Higgins]

As far as I am aware Marx did not write any serious studies of the rates of population growth and food supply, but that may be my limited knowledge, can you refer me to your sources in his writing.

For Marx, you can check out Capital and he talks about Malthus and overpopulation indirectly when discussing Surplus Labor.

For Engels anti-malthusian writings, see "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy":


Yet, so as to deprive the universal fear of overpopulation of any possible basis, let us once more return to the relationship of productive power to population. Malthus establishes a formula on which he bases his entire system: population is said to increase in a geometrical progression – 1+2+4+8+16+32, etc.; the productive power of the land in an arithmetical progression – 1+2+3+4+5+6. The difference is obvious, is terrifying; but is it correct? Where has it been proved that the productivity of the land increases in an arithmetical progression? The extent of land is limited. All right! The labour-power to be employed on this land-surface increases with population. Even if we assume that the increase in yield due to increase in labour does not always rise in proportion to the labour, there still remains a third element which, admittedly, never means anything to the economist – science – whose progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population. What progress does the agriculture of this century owe to chemistry alone – indeed, to two men alone, Sir Humphry Davy and Justus Liebig! But science increases at least as much as population. The latter increases in proportion to the size of the previous generation, science advances in proportion to the knowledge bequeathed to it by the previous generation, and thus under the most ordinary conditions also in a geometrical progression. And what is impossible to science? But it is absurd to talk of over-population so long as “there is ‘enough waste land in the valley of the Mississippi for the whole population of Europe to be transplanted there” [A. Alison, loc. cit., p. 548. - Ed.]; so long as no more than one-third of the earth can be considered cultivated, and so long as the production of this third itself can be raised sixfold and more by the application of improvements already known.

Here's Lenin arguing against neoMalthusian population control arguments:


This is the radical difference that distinguishes the psychology of the peasant, handicraftsman, intellectual, the petty bourgeois in general, from that of the proletarian. The petty bourgeois sees and feels that he is heading for ruin, that life is becoming more difficult, that the struggle for existence is ever more ruthless, and that his position and that of his family are becoming more and more hopeless. It is an indisputable fact, and the petty bourgeois protests against it.



But how does he protest?


He protests as the representative of a class that is hopelessly perishing, that despairs of its future, that is depressed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jun/29.htm#) and cowardly. There is nothing to be done ... if only there were fewer children to suffer our torments and hard toil, our poverty and our humiliation—such is the cry of the petty bourgeois.



The class-conscious worker is far from holding this point of view. He will not allow his consciousness to be dulled by such cries no matter how sincere and heartfelt they may be. Yes, we workers and the mass of small proprietors lead a life that is filled with unbearable oppression and suffering. Things are harder for our generation than they were for our fathers. But in one respect we are luckier than our fathers. We have begun to learn and are rapidly learning to fight—and to fight not as individuals, as the best of our fathers fought, not for the slogans of bourgeois speechifiers that are alien to us in spirit, but for our slogans, the slogans of our class. We are fighting better than our fathers did. Our children will fight better than we do, and they will be victorious.



The working class is not perishing, it is growing, becoming stronger, gaining courage, consolidating itself, educating itself and becoming steeled in battle. We are pessimists as far as serfdom, capitalism and petty, production are concerned, but we are ardent optimists in what concerns the working-class movement and its aims. We are already laying the foundation of a new edifice and our children will complete its construction.
That is the reason—the only reason—why we are unconditionally the enemies of neomalthusianism, suited only to unfeeling and egotistic petty-bourgeois couples, who whisper in scared voices: “God grant we manage somehow by our selves. So much the better if we have no children.”


It goes without saying that this does not by any means prevent us from demanding the unconditional annulment of all laws against abortions or against the distribution of medical literature on contraceptive measures, etc. Such laws are nothing but the hypocrisy of the ruling classes. These laws do not heal the ulcers of capitalism, they merely turn them into malignant ulcers that are especially painful for the oppressed masses. Freedom for medical propaganda and the protection of the elementary democratic rights of citizens, men and women, are one thing. The social theory of neomalthusianism is quite another. Class-conscious workers will always conduct the most ruthless struggle against attempts to impose that reactionary and cowardly theory on the most progressive and strongest class in modern society, the class that is the best prepared for great changes.

[cyu]

food production was not labour constrained, but, given the available technology, was land constrained.

Still thinking way inside the box eh? You say "given the available technology" - well, guess what? The amount of technological advancement is also labour constrained.

You could go to school and study 4 years of property law, or you could go to school and study 4 years of finance, or you could go to school and study 4 years of agricultural technology.

In capitalist societies, what people do with their time is dictated by those who have the money to pay. In authoritarian societies, what people do with their time is dictated by bureaucrats. Both cases lead to constraints on what labour is doing.


Chinese food supply per capita is now above that in Japan.

What exactly does this mean? Are you talking about food production here? If so, what if I compared Singapore with China or Manhattan with China? The comparisons would be ridiculous, no?


Chinese life expectancy at Birth for males is now the same as in Japan.

Where exactly are you getting your data from? And did you only pick men because it better suits your attempted proof? From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy Japan is ranked first and China is ranked 80th.


If you think the socialist movement in the underdeveloped countries should be content with promising only an improvement in food consumption of level achieved in India

Dude, farmers commit suicide in unnerving numbers in India. That's hardly a sign that they are in charge of their own destinies, but instead a sign of their oppression, overt or otherwise.


The available opinon poll data indicates that the one child family policy is broadly supported by the Chinese people.

That's gotta be one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard - honestly I expected something better coming from a regular on revleft. Do you understand nothing about propaganda? In every society, opinions are dominated by those who control the mass media, whether it's wealthy capitalists or proclamations from the central party.

If you're giving up trying to pretend to be a leftist, you're doing a pretty good job of it =]

[citizen of industry]

Incidentally can you refer me to the polemic of Marx against Malthus that you are using as a source.

From Notebook VI. of Grundrisse:


Malthus's theory, which incidentally not his invention, but whose fame he appropriated through the clerical fanaticism with which he propounded it — actually only through the weight he placed on it — is significant in two respects: (1) because he gives brutal expression to the brutal viewpoint of capital; (2) because he asserted the fact of overpopulation in all forms of society. Proved it he has not, for there is nothing more uncritical than his motley compilations from historians and travelers' descriptions. His conception is altogether false and childish (1) because he regards overpopulation as being of the same kind in all the different historic phases of economic development; does not understand their specific difference, and hence stupidly reduces these very complicated and varying relations to a single relation, two equations, in which the natural reproduction of humanity appears on the one side, and the natural reproduction of edible plants (or means of subsistence) on the other, as two natural series, the former geometric and the latter arithmetic in progression. In this way he transforms the historically distinct relations into an abstract numerical relation, which he has fished purely out of thin air, and which rests neither on natural nor on historical laws. There is allegedly a natural difference between the reproduction of mankind and e.g. grain. This baboon thereby implies that the increase of humanity is a purely natural process, which requires external restraints, checks, to prevent it from proceeding in geometrical progression. This geometrical reproduction is the natural reproduction process of mankind. He would find in history that population proceeds in very different relations, and that overpopulation is likewise a historically determined relation, in no way determined by abstract numbers or by the absolute limit of the productivity of the necessaries of life, but by limits posited rather by specific conditions of production. As well as restricted numerically. How small do the numbers which meant overpopulation for the Athenians appear to us! Secondly, restricted according to character. An overpopulation of free Athenians who become transformed into colonists is significantly different from an overpopulation of workers who become transformed into workhouse inmates. Similarly the begging overpopulation which consumes the surplus produce of a monastery is different from that which forms in a factory. It is Malthus who abstracts from these specific historic laws of the movement of population, which are indeed the history of the nature of humanity, the natural laws, but natural laws of humanity only at a specific historic development, with a development of the forces of production determined by humanity's own process of history. Malthusian man, abstracted from historically determined man, exists only in his brain; hence also the geometric method of reproduction corresponding to this natural Malthusian man. Real history thus appears to him in such a way that the reproduction of his natural humanity is not an abstraction from the historic process of real reproduction, but just the contrary, that real reproduction is an application of the Malthusian theory. Hence the inherent conditions of population as well as of overpopulation at every stage of history appear to him as a series of external checks which have prevented the population from developing in the Malthusian form. The conditions in which mankind historically produces and reproduces itself appear as barriers to the reproduction of the Malthusian natural man, who is a Malthusian creature. On the other hand, the production of the necessaries of life — as it is checked, determined by human action — appears as a check which it posits to itself. The ferns would cover the entire earth. Their reproduction would stop only where space for them ceased. They would obey no arithmetic proportion. It is hard to say where Malthus has discovered that the reproduction of voluntary natural products would stop for intrinsic reasons, without external checks. He transforms the immanent, historically changing limits of the human reproduction process into outer barriers; and the outer barriers to natural reproduction into immanent limits or natural laws of reproduction.
(2) He stupidly relates a specific quantity of people to a specific quantity of necessaries. [31] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/f601-650.htm#31) Ricardo immediately and correctly confronted him with the fact that the quantity of grain available is completely irrelevant to the worker if he has no employment; that it is therefore the means of employment and not of subsistence which put him into the category of surplus population. [32] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/f601-650.htm#32) But this should be conceived more generally, and relates to the social mediation as such, through which the individual gains access to the means of his reproduction and creates them; hence it relates to the conditions of production and his relation to them. There was no barrier to the reproduction of the Athenian slave other than the producible necessaries. And we never hear that there were surplus slaves in antiquity. The call for them increased, rather. There was, however, a surplus population of non-workers (in the immediate sense), who were not too many in relation to the necessaries available, but who had lost the conditions under which they could appropriate them. The invention of surplus labourers, i.e. of propertyless people who work, belongs to the period of capital. The beggars who fastened themselves to the monasteries and helped them eat up their surplus product are in the same class as the feudal retainers, and this shows that the surplus produce could not be eaten up by the small number of its owners. It is only another form of the retainers of old, or of the menial servants of today. The overpopulation e.g. among hunting peoples, which shows itself in the warfare between the tribes, proves not that the earth could not support their small numbers, but rather that the condition of their reproduction required a great amount of territory for few people. Never a relation to a non-existent absolute mass of means of subsistence, but rather relation to the conditions of reproduction, of the production of these means, including likewise the conditions of reproduction of human beings, of the total population, of relative surplus population. This surplus purely relative: in no way related to the means of subsistence as such, but rather to the mode of producing them. Hence also only a surplus at this state of development.

[citizen of industry]

Wiithin capitalism you have to consider the strategic factors which constrain the expansion and accumulation of capital. 'Accumulation is growth of the proletariat', where the proletariat does not grow you have what Marx called overaccumulation of capital. The characteristic features of overaccumulation are:

1. Demand for workers exceeds supply driving up wages

2. The organic composition of capital rises

For both these reasons the rate of profit falls. Japan is the classic case of this.
You worry that if this occured there would be a tendancy for capitalism to revert to child labour - well there is no evidence that his has happened in Japan, and the use of child labour tends to be characteristic of early phases of capitalism when family sizes were large, and children were seen as a potential source of income by their parents. In countries with small families and a technically advanced mode of production it is unlikely to occur again on a significant scale.

Regarding Japan, wages are falling, and the demand for workers does not exceed supply. In Japan the population is undergoing a massive and problematic decline (which manifests itself in an aging population). This is because people are being payed under the value of labor power - they can't afford to reproduce (the average birthrate is 1.32). Manufacture is outsourced and the economy is dependent on export. The labor laws are good and wages are high officially, but half of the population is irregulary employed (temp, dispatch, etc.) which allows employers to skirt the law and pay low wages.

Talking about the relative surplus population, official unemployment is about 5%. But take into account people also only partially employed, as Marx did, that figure is much, much higher.

Incidentally, I'll post a couple quotes I love from Capital on the subject:

there must be the possibility of throwing great masses of men suddenly on the decisive points without injury to the scale of production in other spheres. Overpopulation supplies these masses


in proportion as the productiveness of labour increases, capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than its demand for labourers. The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists

So not only is overpopulation symptomatic of the capitalistic mode of production, but in fact capitalism prospers and is dependent on overpopulation.

[Catma]

So then, is the argument that advances in liberated science will provided unlimited amounts of resources? Because if not, the problem isn't solved.

Eventually the issue becomes that additional population will reduce the resources available to humanity. Whether food, or rare earth elements, or waste heat, or physical space, or something else. There still will be no way to limit the population, no ethical way beyond a naive belief that it will self-limit because it's "sensible" or "common sense". Personally I'm not as optimistic about scientific advances either, and I think it's obvious that they can't provide limitless increases.

The checks on population growth now are due to costs of raising children. Communism should eliminate those costs, for the individual, but not for the society. Hopefully the technology will keep pace for a while until we are used to making contentious decisions about cost distribution collectively.

[citizen of industry]

After the Fukushima crisis the first things to go were 3-D vending machines. Neon lighting, train station lighting, advertising budgets, superfluous clothing, excess packaging. In the space of a few short months the media which was pumping that the country couldn't exist without nuclear power was operating on zero nuclear plants. Every night tons of food that isn't purchased gets tossed out, and the productive forces used to create it wasted. There's a hundred different underwear companies competing with each other, going out of business, tying up tons of resources. etc. The amount of energy and resources a consumer uses is trivial to that a company uses. Re-evaluate once the corporation is out of the picture and the focus is on use, not exchange. Obviously, we have to manage our consumption based on our planet. That is impossible under the current system, no?

Lately while corporations get government bailouts and tax breaks, the working class gets higher energy bills. And the neons are back on, advertising and lighting is blinding (but not in our homes, only the office buildings). Sustainable energy like solar, geothermal, wave, etc. isn't pursued because it isn't profitable. The only advances made there is if you invest 20 grand in solar panels you get a tax break. Who has that kind of money?

[electrostal]

Geothermal energy is not feasible for countries other than Iceland and some other places. Wave energy even less so.
There's this thing called energy efficiency and so on.

Today's big cities cannot "run" on solar power, at best it can used in addition to other energy sources.

[Blake's Baby]

Geothermal energy is not feasible for countries other than Iceland and some other places. Wave energy even less so.
There's this thing called energy efficiency and so on.

Today's big cities cannot "run" on solar power, at best it can used in addition to other energy sources.

Well, that's a reasonable enough set of points.

No-one is claiming that either geothermal energy or solar energy or tidal power (or wave farms or other hydroelectric schemes or wind farms or biogas) will allow us to replace environmentally catastrophic power generation; nor, I think, is anyone claiming that 'today's big cities' will continue to consume the same levels of energy as they do currently.

So, by 1-reducing energy usage, while 2-at the same time increasing the proportion of energy generated by renewables and 3- progressively switching from burning coal/gas to burning waste products instead, will go some way to limiting the environmental damage.

Just because not-everything can be done at once, it doesn't mean nothing should be done at all.

[Paul Cockshott]

Still thinking way inside the box eh? You say "given the available technology" - well, guess what? The amount of technological advancement is also labour constrained.

What evidence do you have that either India or China suffered from labour constraints, ie, labour shortages in the last 30 years?





In capitalist societies, what people do with their time is dictated by those who have the money to pay. In authoritarian societies, what people do with their time is dictated by bureaucrats. Both cases lead to constraints on what labour is doing.

Well in all societies with a division of labour what we do with our time is dictated by society, and to that extent what you say is true, but it is not germane to the argument. The key issue is whether China could have increased the growth of food production by another 1% a year, which is what would have had to have been done were its population to have grown as fast as India. Do you have any historical data on the responsiveness of the growth of food production to increased levels of agricultural research that justifies such a claim.




What exactly does this mean? Are you talking about food production here? If so, what if I compared Singapore with China or Manhattan with China? The comparisons would be ridiculous, no?


Where exactly are you getting your data from?

They were all from the UN; either form their demographic database or from the FAO figures for food supply per capita by country.


And did you only pick men because it better suits your attempted proof?

Perhaps I was showing sexist bias there, sorry. But male life expectancy does give a more pessimistic figure for any country.


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy Japan is ranked first and China is ranked 80th.

It looks from the figures you give that I may mistakenly have taken the figure for Hongkong (China) as being the figure for China as a whole, will have to go back to the original source and check.




Quote:
The available opinon poll data indicates that the one child family policy is broadly supported by the Chinese people.


That's gotta be one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard - honestly I expected something better coming from a regular on revleft. Do you understand nothing about propaganda? In every society, opinions are dominated by those who control the mass media, whether it's wealthy capitalists or proclamations from the central party.

If you're giving up trying to pretend to be a leftist, you're doing a pretty good job of it =]

Well the point about opinion poll evidence was cited against people who were saying that the one child policy was an oppressive measure imposed against the will of the people. Those who were making that claim gave no evidence at all other than their own libertarian prejudices. Do you have any independent evidence that the policy is unpopular or oppressive?

[Paul Cockshott]

Regarding Japan, wages are falling, and the demand for workers does not exceed supply. In Japan the population is undergoing a massive and problematic decline (which manifests itself in an aging population). This is because people are being payed under the value of labor power - they can't afford to reproduce (the average birthrate is 1.32).
This is an unconvincing explanation for the low birthrate in Japan. Real wages in Japan are now much higher than they were say in 1932, but the birth rate is much lower. The change is surely due to a shift in the nature of the family and the social position of women rather than to falling wages. Many countries with much lower wages have higher birthrates than Japan.



So not only is overpopulation symptomatic of the capitalistic mode of production, but in fact capitalism prospers and is dependent on overpopulation.

That is true, for capitalism to earn a high rate of profit it needs a growing population. The long term rate of profit is equal to dL/a where dL is the rate of growth of the labour force, and a is the net share of profit that is being accumulated. If dL becomes low, the rate of profit can only be held up by reducing the rate of accumulation a. If dL becomes zero or negative, the long run rate of profit becomes zero or negative.

[citizen of industry]

This is an unconvincing explanation for the low birthrate in Japan. Real wages in Japan are now much higher than they were say in 1932, but the birth rate is much lower. The change is surely due to a shift in the nature of the family and the social position of women rather than to falling wages. Many countries with much lower wages have higher birthrates than Japan.

Wages might be higher, but the cultural level of society is much higher. The country is more developed and people have more needs. The entry of women into the workforce results in a fall of wages across the board. It takes two people to make the same income as one in the past. Housing is more expensive. Since there isn't an expectation to be a housewife, there is a daycare system. But there are long waiting lists for public daycare and they are being privatized. Private is expensive.

Unless you are some kind of executive, it is basically impossible to have more than one child on the average income of two working parents, while maintaining an average quality of life, enough food, daycare, housing, etc.

It's also hard to calculate wages. Are you looking at the salaries of permanent employees?(60% of the workforce) or casual workers (temps and dispatch\contractors-40% and rising) which are much harder to calculate. With the latter, the lack of job security and stability is an impediment to reproduction.

[citizen of industry]

It's the idea of relative impoverishment. Other countries may have lower wages and a higher birthrate, but a lower standard of living. I think this explains the trend in developed countries for lower birthrates. If you have more than one or two children you can't maintain the average standard of living. Japan is an extreme example. The symptom is "aging population." Bourgeious economists focus on this issue, debate the merits of relaxing immigration laws, and ignore the fact that even if they did allow 20million immigrants into the country over the next several decades there wouldn't be jobs for them.

[Paul Cockshott]

I agree that the key is cultural change which means that women are no longer willing to accept being a housewife and living at the same real standard of living as their grandmothers. These changes affect all capitalist countries and are the ultimate limit on the capitalist mode of production. As Marx said, accumulation of capital is growth of the proletariat, when it no longer grows, capital accumulation comes to an end and the system reaches its inner limits. This has happened first in Japan.

[cyu]

What evidence do you have that either India or China suffered from labour constraints, ie, labour shortages in the last 30 years?

The answer is obvious. Just look at economic activity. Any time anybody is employed in serving the rich and powerful, while others are starving or in need of medical care, that right there is an example of labor shortage - at least in terms of not enough labor serving the poor and too much labor serving the rich.


Do you have any historical data on the responsiveness of the growth of food production to increased levels of agricultural research that justifies such a claim.

What kind of evidence do you need? Are you saying agricultural research does not increase food production? Are you saying more people building palaces for the rich wouldn't increase food production if they worked in agricultural fields instead?


Do you have any independent evidence that the policy is unpopular or oppressive?

Opinions are always manipulated by those in power. Would you say Germans naturally like to kill Jews? Even if all media power were decentralized, general public opinion can still be swayed in one direction or another, by the flavor of the month. There is indeed always popular sentiment - there is also a difference between opinions people are willing to say in public, versus opinions they do not dare speak in public.

But if the question is whether we should listen to public opinion at all, if they just come and go like the tides, that should not be the issue. The issue is who gets to control public opinion. If the wealthy have more control than everyone else, if politicians have more control than everyone else, if the military or media figures have more control than everyone else, then that is a problem that needs to be eliminated. As long as those problems exist, then public opinion is useless. After those problems are eliminated, then public opinion has more value.

[Paul Cockshott]

you are talking not about labour shortages but about productive versus unproductive labour. That issue had been solves by the early 50s in China, though obviously not in India so it is irrelevant to the one child policy in China.

[Paul Cockshott]

Agricultural research can improve food production, and China was doing agricultural research, I asked you for evidence that China could reasonably have expected to more than double the rate of growth of food production it actually achieved and you produce nothing but nonsense about peasants building palaces for a class of rich which did not exist in China when the policy was adopted. You can not shift peasants into agricultural research, for that you are limited by the number of PHds in genetics you have.

[cyu]

you are talking about productive versus unproductive labour. That issue had been solves by the early 50s in China, it is irrelevant to the one child policy in China

Are you claiming China already has a near perfect distribution of resources and labor such that it is producing at maximum capacity with respect to the carrying capacity of their economy?


you produce nothing but nonsense about peasants building palaces for a class of rich which did not exist in China when the policy was adopted. You can not shift peasants into agricultural research

If you don't believe that peasants are currently building palaces for the rich and powerful in China, then you know next to nothing about China.

[Paul Cockshott]

the discussion is about overpopulation answer socialism or communism. When the one child family policy was adopted China was still a socialist economy and no resources were being wasted on palaces. Today the economy is predominantly state capitalist and even now its growth rate must be very close to the maximum that could be achieved. About 50percent of output is going into investment, which is an astonishingly high figure. The level of umproductive expenditure is relatively low .

[citizen of industry]

the discussion is about overpopulation answer socialism or communism. When the one child family policy was adopted China was still a socialist economy and no resources were being wasted on palaces. Today the economy is predominantly state capitalist and even now its growth rate must be very close to the maximum that could be achieved. About 50percent of output is going into investment, which is an astonishingly high figure. The level of umproductive expenditure is relatively low .

The are slowing down investment and development this year. That was all big in the news a few months back.

[Paul Cockshott]

the discussion is about overpopulation answer socialism or communism. When the one child family policy was adopted China was still a socialist economy and no resources were being wasted on palaces. Today the economy is predominantly state capitalist and even now its growth rate must be very close to the maximum that could be achieved. About 50percent of output is going into investment, which is an astonishingly high figure. The level of umproductive expenditure is relatively low .

[Zulu]

its not about food production. Its about the amount of waste that would be produced as well producing enough electricity for the population, which causes the Earth to heat up.

^this



its not about food production. Its about the amount of waste that would be produced as well producing enough electricity for the population, which causes the Earth to heat up.

^this



its not about food production. Its about the amount of waste that would be produced as well producing enough electricity for the population, which causes the Earth to heat up.

and ^this again

[Zulu]

What you seem not to realise is that all of the rest us are pro-choice.

Yes, we get you. Once it's built you want to have a choice to screw the communism up. And the concept of "freedom as the awareness of necessity" is totally alien to you.

[Zulu]

Engels anti-malthusian writings

... are in contradiction with his pro-Darwinian writings, as, like it or not, Darwinism is totally built atop of Malthusianism, which served (succesfully) as the working hypothesis for the "Origin of Species".



It's been a commonplace among ecologists that a population always grows till it hits the environmental limits at which point it may experience anything between a modest decline and extinction, depending on the severity of the occurring environmental "check". Obviously, in wildlife food is the most common "check". And it was also an important one in the preindustrial human societies (it is theorised that the Roman Empire collapsed mostly if not purely due to the exhaustion of the North African (Rome's "breadbasket") soil over the course of centuries). It is also pointed out that after the industrial revolution nations one by one began escaping the "malthusian trap", but this notion is erroneous, since not only food but ANY resource can become a "check", beginning with the fossil fuels. On the other hand, the issue of the general environmental degradation, which is often ascribed by the leftists to the predatory nature and wastefulness of capitalism, will go nowhere under communism either, since tackling it will require even more resources (labor, energy...) to be unproductively expended on it.

[citizen of industry]

Why would it require more labor and resources to tackle the problem of wastefulness under capitalism? Eliminating the redundancy of competing enterprises, the wastage of products that are unsold, cutting out the parasitic middleman between production and consumption, eliminating advertising/packaging and other useless things. Constructing infrastructure, etc. based on efficiency, not profitability. How would this require more resources?

[Blake's Baby]

It wouldn't, it's just the Stalinists like telling people what to do and therefore they think they should be able to control us even after the revolution. Not realising that we'll be revolting against them.

[Zulu]

Why would it require more labor and resources to tackle the problem of wastefulness under capitalism? Eliminating the redundancy of competing enterprises, the wastage of products that are unsold, cutting out the parasitic middleman between production and consumption, eliminating advertising/packaging and other useless things. Constructing infrastructure, etc. based on efficiency, not profitability. How would this require more resources?

Even assuming the best of the fantastic scenarios, namely, that all rich people die in one night, and the rest brighten up and choose to have communism rather than fight each other for the privilege of moving in the rich's villas and penthouses, you'll have 6bn+ people to provide a decent standard of living for. That will actually require expansion of production, rather than its contraction. So you won't have any redundant industrial facilities. Those that produce some pointless stuff (packaging, bombs, private cars...) will need to be converted, not closed down (and conversion will require resources and produce some extra waste). The same goes to the infrastructure (transportation, communications, etc.). For all that you will need more power plants (even assuming some savings can be still squeezed from the current grid via rationalization, which is, frankly, not granted), and also many more waste processing and CO2 sequestration facilities and such. It all comes down to increasing the productivity of labor which means rising the energy per capita consumption.

[Blake's Baby]

No, that's totally wrong. Who knows what the numbers are? Not me, but something like 80% of production in capitalism is for non-necessary stuff (military production, banking, advertising, uneccessary transportation, government bureaucracy etc).

So we're just about keeping a planet of 7 billion people alive at 20% of current productive capacity. Turning pointless production into meaningful production will allow us to increase the amount of social wealth that we're generating for each individual, but also there'll be some things - like waste management that are currently necessary but will be reduced; the fact that 80% of what we do is pointless is actually a contributer to having to do the other 20%. There will be less pollution (therfore less necessary clearing up of pollution) less transportation (therfore less necessary investment in transport infrastructure) less overcrowding (therefore less necessary investment in water and sewerage and health-care in those areas).

That's not to say necessarily that those figures will go down; just that, there will be more benefits from them because the overloading of the system at certain points will be lessened.

Then there's the massive amount of people who can free up their labour-time to work for the good of society as a whole. What is the number of people currently unemployed or under-employed worldwide? Dunno. Fucking huge. Those people are currently an economic drain. In the futire, they'll be a social resource. They may even constitiute the majority of global society.

The biggest problem is not whether we can produce enough to feed clothe house and electrify (?) everyone, because we could do that now (were it possible to 'make capitalism work', which it isn't); it's what state the productive forces are going to be in after the civil war. That's the biggy.

The problem is not then that capitalism isn't developed enough, it's that it's developed to the point that it can, technically, provide for humanity's needs but it doesn't and won't.

[Zulu]

state the productive forces are going to be in after the civil war. That's the biggy.

Nice you mention it, but I repeat, let's move this out of the way for the sake of the discussion...


You say "Who knows what the numbers are? Not me...", and then still proceed to claim the numbers that would suit your version of reality, treating them as fact. That's sooooo expectedly logical of a leftcom!

But OK, maybe your numbers are correct, then no doubt we Leninist thugs will have to shove it after the revolution... But suppose (for the sake of the discussion) your numbers are incorrect, and there is indeed no way out of mass poverty, unless you undercut total consumption levels with population control. The population control being an essential part of the picture where capitalism has "developed to the point that it can, technically, provide for humanity's needs". What you gonna do about it?

[Blake's Baby]

Nice you mention it, but I repeat, let's move this out of the way for the sake of the discussion...


You say "Who knows what the numbers are? Not me...", and then still proceed to claim the numbers that would suit your version of reality, treating them as fact. That's sooooo expectedly logical of a leftcom!...

You don't have an argument and instead point at someone and shriek 'deviant! heretic!' - that's soooo the tactics of a failed Stalinist hack.


But OK, maybe your numbers are correct, then no doubt we Leninist thugs will have to shove it after the revolution... But suppose (for the sake of the discussion) your numbers are incorrect, and there is indeed no way out of mass poverty, unless you undercut total consumption levels with population control. The population control being an essential part of the picture where capitalism has "developed to the point that it can, technically, provide for humanity's needs". What you gonna do about it?

I don't even understand what you're asking here.

We have about 7 billion people on the planet, correct? And the world economy is worth something like $56 trillion US, correct?

OK; how much of that $56 trillion goes into unproductive 'production'? A vast amount, as yet unquantified, but even military expenditure worldwide is a couple of trillion - just military expenditure. How much is put into unnecessary bureaucracy? Unquantified, but billions or even trillions of dollars. Advertising? Unquantified - but also billions or trillions. Banking and finance? Unquantified, but trillions. Unnecessary transportation (eg 'commuting' to unnecessary jobs)? Unquantified, billions at least. And there are loads of economic activities that only make sense under capitalism that we could add in here. So we know that $2.4 trillion + an unquantified amount + an unquantified amount + an unqantified amount + an unquantified amount + an unquantifiable number of other unquantified amounts = 'a lot' of so-called production is actually unproductive, yes?

Right; given that we have 'a lot' (exact numbers to be decided when we finally do an audit, but we all agree I think it's into tens of trillions, whether that's 20 trillion or 40 trillion it doesn't actually matter that much) of unproductive economic activity, we can all agree I think that that productive capacity will be used for social goods, not social ills, once we're living in socialism, yes? So we know that humanity as a whole and on average will be 'richer' under socialism because more of social production will be benefitting society as a whole.

Now, at the moment, under capitalism, an individual living in North America uses (on average) about 12 times as much resources (power, fossil fuels etc) as an individual in East Africa.

So if 300 million Americans, for example, were living at the level of consumption of East Africa, then we could provide additional resources for (300x12)-300 - which obviously means 300x11 - million (ie, 3.3 billion) more East Africans. 300 million Americans are 'preventing' (they're not really preventing, it's the system of production and distribution that's preventing) the resources necessary for an increase of 3.3 billion people at East African levels of resource use. So, the problem is not 'population', it's resource allocation.

Now, maybe the level of resource use of an East African isn't what we're going for. No reason why it should be. But the massive amount of liberated potential from freeing production from unproductive ends must mean that 'living standards' (for want of a better term) can rise massively, with no necessity to limit population.

'What if there's no way to avoid mass poverty without cutting population?' you say. But then, what you're doing is saying 'if you assume that my argument is correct, how are you gonna argue against it?'. But your argument isn't correct, so I see no reason to assume it is.

[Jimmie Higgins]

... are in contradiction with his pro-Darwinian writings, as, like it or not, Darwinism is totally built atop of Malthusianism, which served (succesfully) as the working hypothesis for the "Origin of Species".

1. So in order to be a consistent Marxist, one must also be a Hegelian since this was more or less Marx's philosophical starting point? No.

2. Neo-Darwinists reject whole swaths of Darwin's writings and a large chunk of them also reject Malthusian arguments and yet they are still supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution in essence. I don't see that as contradictory, so how would it be a contradiction for Marx to do the same?

3. What Darwin took from Malthusian population arguments was the idea that if offspring are born into a situation of scarcity, they will need to compete leading the the better adapted to survive to reproduce. He may have accepted Malthusian Human population arguments, but this doesn't mean that to accept evolutionary theory is to also accept Malthusian Human Population arguments.

4. What Marx saw in Darwin's ideas was a materialist explanation for species and a description of a world full of struggle and constant change - not human population theory.


It's been a commonplace among ecologists that a population always grows till it hits the environmental limits at which point it may experience anything between a modest decline and extinction, depending on the severity of the occurring environmental "check". Obviously, in wildlife food is the most common "check". There's some truth to population limits when it comes to animals but not with humans. Humans can change their means and methods of production and their relationship to their environment. Animals either have to find a new hustle quickly (move to new environments) or, if they can't of find better resources or locations, they can only adapt to the changed conditions through evolutionary adaptations.


And it was also an important one in the preindustrial human societies (it is theorised that the Roman Empire collapsed mostly if not purely due to the exhaustion of the North African (Rome's "breadbasket") soil over the course of centuries). There are population limits within a mode of production. A feudal society can only be so dense (which is not very dense at all) in order to support that kind of individual and spread out production. Capitalism produces much much more for less labor effort because of changed methods and this is why after capitalism we see the return of cities that just wouldn't have been able to exist in feudalism.


It is also pointed out that after the industrial revolution nations one by one began escaping the "malthusian trap", but this notion is erroneous, since not only food but ANY resource can become a "check", beginning with the fossil fuels. Well this backs up my argument, it's production, not population. Except in industrial cities, it's hardly ever the case of true food shortages that cause starvation but economic crisis.


On the other hand, the issue of the general environmental degradation, which is often ascribed by the leftists to the predatory nature and wastefulness of capitalism, will go nowhere under communism either, since tackling it will require even more resources (labor, energy...) to be unproductively expended on it.No. We can feed everyone as it is right now - if society was organized differently. Second, use-based mass production will be much more efficient than what we have now because people will want to labor less (i.e. not want to produce things with planned-obsolescence or things that are disposable or poor quality and so on) and there would be no incentive for short-term rapid exploitation in order to then move on once the resources are depleted. People would want stability in production, not the ravenous chaos that drives profit-based production where companies will just clear-cut and leave working class ghost towns once they've sucked all the resources they could out of the area.

There will probably still be issues - especially since capitalism will keep destroying the world and we don't know when a revolution might happen - if at all before it's too late. But population in the abstract is not the cause or even main driver for these issues.

[Zulu]

So in order to be a consistent Marxist, one must also be a Hegelian since this was more or less Marx's philosophical starting point? No.
Right. Because Marx, as a philosopher, completely revised and reworked Hegel's dialectics. But as to the Darwin's theory, he and Engels took it "as is", if only because they were not qualified as scientists to criticize it. However, they arbitrarily excluded its Malthusian basis from their abridgement of Darwinism for socialists, and I see here traces of the ethical approach to humanities (aka utopianism), which they said they rejected, but which was still quite popular among other socialists, due to which Malthus had gotten quite a bad reputation way before Darwin had a chance to make his discoveries. So, had they even realize what their own discoveries in the field of political economy meant in the context of the Malthusian (Darwinian) principle, Marx&Engels would probably have found not very much of understanding among those preoccupied with such things as social justice, etc., after telling them "Hey, Malthus was right, now let's move on to the economy..." Basically, the same situation that is taking place here in miniature with me trying to explain Ecology-101 to you guys. Perhaps at that time it worked for the better, but I seriously think these days it's essential to take science for real.





Neo-Darwinists reject whole swaths of Darwin's writings

The main point of contention around Darwin's original work has centered around the question of the "leaps of nature", which is a completely different matter, peripheral to the principle of the natural selection based on the scarcity of resources.





and a large chunk of them also reject Malthusian arguments and yet they are still supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution in essence.

Pictures Links, please.

Actually Darwin himself formulated the main addon to Malthus' principle. Namely, that not only a population expands till it hits the cap, but also the cap itself may suddenly drop down, often as a result of the population's interaction with the environment. And in "The Descent of Man" Darwin even made the story a whole lot more hardcore by pointing out the role of infanticide.





What Marx saw in Darwin's ideas was a materialist explanation for species and a description of a world full of struggle and constant change - not human population theory.
And why did he need that materialist depiction of the ever present struggle in nature in the first place? Correct, he wanted his political economy and philosophy to be rooted in the empirical natural science, because otherwise it would have been just another abstract and inconsequential idealistic "system", like those that by the time he was born had already gotten way too plentiful in numbers. However, Darwin's theory came in when Marx's views had already solidified in the main, and that Malthusian thingy did not fit with them very well (or so he thought), so he chose to ignore it as a nuisance. Which, I repeat, probably worked for the best at the time. But still it was a fallacy, and perpetuated into the 20th century's communist doctrines without being amended or even accounted for, it contributed to miscalculation in at least one attempt of actual socialist construction (in the PRC).





There's some truth to population limits when it comes to animals but not with humans.
Humans are animals.





Humans can change their means and methods of production and their relationship to their environment. Animals ... can only adapt to the changed conditions through evolutionary adaptations.
There are population limits within a mode of production.
Well, guess what, from the point of view of biology, the "methods of production" are nothing but adaptations. Of course, there are basic instincts that are encoded in the genes (not very favorable to the communist mode of production, by the way), but then there are socially replicated behavioral patterns, which often (especially with the humans) result in changes in the environment. The appearance of surplus product, for instance, was one such great change in the environment, resulting from the humans' interaction with it.





A feudal society can only be so dense (which is not very dense at all) in order to support that kind of individual and spread out production. Capitalism produces much much more for less labor effort because of changed methods and this is why after capitalism we see the return of cities that just wouldn't have been able to exist in feudalism.

Well this backs up my argument, it's production, not population.

No, it backs up my argument, because obviously a communist society also can only be "so dense".

Look, I don't say "let's go out and do some forced abortions for fun!" Without a socialist revolution it won't make any difference anyway. And maybe the exact circumstances of the future socialist construction will be such that the Malthusian dynamics won't be a problem. But the way you guys just wave it off is truly facepalmworthy.



You don't have an argument and instead point at someone and shriek 'deviant! heretic!' - that's soooo the tactics of a failed Stalinist hack.

Actually, I do have an argument and that is "you fail at logic forever". That makes you a deviant and a heretic. And your seeing only the conclusion but not the argument proves the argument, ironically.





So if 300 million Americans, for example, were living at the level of consumption of East Africa,

But we're not aiming at making everybody live like in East Africa, remember? And not even half as bad as that. We're aiming at the level of energy consumption like that in Spain or Poland or some such... And that's what? Some three times lower than in the US? That'd leave you with only two parts "for spare" from the US, and much less other "spare parts" from around the world. Moreover, you can't just magically reallocate the energy from the rich countries to the poor, you'll have to built power plants and other infrastructure in the poor countries themselves. And you can't magically convert an iPhone factory in Shanghai or a bomb factory Cleavland into a power plant in Mogadishu. You will have to build a power plant in Mogadishu from the ground up. That's what I am talking about.





But your argument isn't correct, so I see no reason to assume it is.

The reason is "for the sake of the argument". So I repeat the question: what will you do, if after the revolution you register a failure to boost up the worldwide living standards, and at the same time a continued population growth and/or environmental degradation?

[Per Levy]

But we're not aiming at making everybody live like in East Africa, remember? And not even half as bad as that. We're aiming at the level of energy consumption like that in Spain or Poland or some such... And that's what? Some three times lower than in the US? That'd leave you with only two parts "for spare" from the US, and much less other "spare parts" from around the world. Moreover, you can't just magically reallocate the energy from the rich countries to the poor, you'll have to built power plants and other infrastructure in the poor countries themselves. And you can't magically convert an iPhone factory in Shanghai or a bomb factory Cleavland into a power plant in Mogadishu. You will have to build a power plant in Mogadishu from the ground up. That's what I am talking about.

just in the next sentence of blake's post: Now, maybe the level of resource use of an East African isn't what we're going for. No reason why it should be. But the massive amount of liberated potential from freeing production from unproductive ends must mean that 'living standards' (for want of a better term) can rise massively, with no necessity to limit population.

[Jimmie Higgins]

But as to the Darwin's theory, he and Engels took it "as is", if only because they were not qualified as scientists to criticize it. However, they arbitrarily excluded its Malthusian basis from their abridgement of Darwinism for socialistsNo, not arbitrary - they explicitly opposed it and called it a "slander on humanity" or something like that.

While Malthus argued that population grows geometrically, food can only be increased arithmetically. Marx and Engels opposed this formulation and argued that in humans, the relations of production changed the equation and so the populations of European capitalist cities verses the ability of feudal communities to support population are completely different. In feudalism MORE people were devoted to producing food and yet there were shortages and famines due to crop failures and the like. In capitalism, however, LESS people are direct food producers and yet the population is much higher and our food-shortages aren't due to an absolute lack of food, but inequality and contradictions within the system and relations of production.


So, had they even realize what their own discoveries in the field of political economy meant in the context of the Malthusian (Darwinian) principle, Marx&Engels would probably have found not very much of understanding among those preoccupied with such things as social justice, etc., after telling them "Hey, Malthus was right, now let's move on to the economy..." But it wasn't that they OVERLOOKED these ideas they wrote AGAINST these ideas.


Basically, the same situation that is taking place here in miniature with me trying to explain Ecology-101 to you guys. Perhaps at that time it worked for the better, but I seriously think these days it's essential to take science for real.Malthusian human population theories are pseudo-science! They don't hold up! Malthus said there were TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE EARLY 1800s and populations have grown quite a bit since then, but what do even UN scientists say today... that WE HAVE ENOUGH FOOD, and starvation is due to what bourgeois scientists call "problems of distribution". Of course as radicals, we realize that it's not that the capitalists can't figure out "good distribution", it's the way the whole system works that prevents it.

Just because some Biology teacher once told you Malthus was right, doesn't mean it's true. Growing sections of environmental scientists are adopting Malthusian ideas right now (whereas the early 60s ecology movement was heavy in anti-capitalist critique if not outright anarchist thought) and it has led to increasing calls from "greens" for anti-immigration policies. It also leads to moralistic liberal crap like "carbon footprint" ideas which again blame consumption, not production for the excesses of capitalism. They guy who invented the concept of a "carbon footprint" by the way is on the Board of Advisers for the Carrying Capacity Network http://www.carryingcapacity.org/ (http://www.carryingcapacity.org/) which along with articles about how "cultural marxism" is destroying the environment is dedicated to stopping immigration to the US. Why a supposed environmental website and lobbyist organization would care about Mexican immigrants having Mexican flags while living in the US..:rolleyes:

Malthusian population theories are a useful tool for capitalism and this is why they have survived so long... from blaming Irish for a famine brought on by British imperialism, to blaming 3rd world starvation on the starving themselves in the post WWII era, to blaming anything but capitalist production for the problems of capitalist societies. At best these ideas lead to liberal moralist consumerist ideas, but mostly they lead to the most reactionary conclusions about immigration, the poor, and so on.


The main point of contention around Darwin's original work has centered around the question of the "leaps of nature", which is a completely different matter, peripheral to the principle of the natural selection based on the scarcity of resources.No, my point was that in science you can agree with the framework of something but disagree with the specific formulations if there are alternative explanations which back up the hypothesis. Or you can agree with observations and data within a framework while having a different formulation and conclusions based on additional information leading to a rejection of that framework.

So neo-Darwinists reject a lot of Darwin's original work, but agree with the overall dynamics and process he described. Marx might have accepted evolution but he rejected the idea that population in humans was the main factor in modern starvation and poverty as malthus argued.


Humans are animals.Humans are animals who are unique among animals in that they can change their relationships to the environment. Now think of a band of hunter-gatherers could they have sustained themselves at the same population levels as settled agricultural societies? No! They had to be nomadic, they had to follow food. Ag societies created their own food and created a surplus for the first time and then the ability for some to do other tasks beyond just gathering and hunting for their daily/weekly food. The "capacity" of a band society and an ag. society are much different - and slave societies and feudal societies and capitalism are different still.

In fact the whole notion of an "natural" cap on populations negates the idea of the development of class society and therefore of Marxism altogether.


Well, guess what, from the point of view of biology, the "methods of production" are nothing but adaptations.:rolleyes: Apples and oranges. Humans have "changed their relationship to production" many times over and much more quickly than humans have evolved biologically. This arguement is a-scientific.


Of course, there are basic instincts that are encoded in the genes (not very favorable to the communist mode of production, by the way),More pseudo-science. There is no agricultural gene, no serfdom gene, no industry gene, no capitalist or socialist genes.


Look, I don't say "let's go out and do some forced abortions for fun!" Without a socialist revolution it won't make any difference anyway. And maybe the exact circumstances of the future socialist construction will be such that the Malthusian dynamics won't be a problem. But the way you guys just wave it off is truly facepalmworthy.Yes there is a point at which the current modes of production wouldn't be able to support a level of population but it hasn't been reached (and it isn't absolute as Malthus argued). It is much more likely that environmental destruction could "lower the cap" as you said -- but there is no current risk of OVERPOPULATION being the problem and population doesn't currently cause starvation or shortages... these are problems with the system.


Actually, I do have an argument and that is "you fail at logic forever". That makes you a deviant and a heretic.Burn me at the stake grand inquisitor.


The reason is "for the sake of the argument". So I repeat the question: what will you do, if after the revolution you register a failure to boost up the worldwide living standards, and at the same time a continued population growth and/or environmental degradation?Currently this is a non-issue. The calories produced today, if more evenly distributed would make the entire world obese. Add to that greater productive power, the reduction of needless production, new technological possibilities (many which are possible right now, just not profitable) and there's no reason that population would be an issue into the short-term future after that.

[Zulu]

just in the next sentence of blake's post: Now, maybe the level of resource use of an East African isn't what we're going for. No reason why it should be. But the massive amount of liberated potential from freeing production from unproductive ends must mean that 'living standards' (for want of a better term) can rise massively, with no necessity to limit population.
And I've already addressed that. You can't "liberate" X gigawatts of power produced and consumed in Europe or North America and ship it over to Africa or South America.

It's actually quite a capitalist way of thinking: let's liquidate our assets here and maneuver with our capital and invest in something there, no matter the waste and destitution that gets left behind. But, as a socialist planner you'll have to look at what exactly are the material assets that you plan to move around, because in the material world, as opposed to the world of abstract figures on the bank accounts we're all so accustomed to, many things are either unmovable, or moving them around, to put it simply, makes the juice not worth the squeeze.

As a matter of fact, moving (and pushing) people around is almost always more efficient than delivering stuff to them, 'cause it takes too many delivery boys. Remember collectivization? Well, that was actually child's play, compared to what, for example, Trotsky at some point suggested to rise the productivity of labor in Soviet Russia, namely, a total mobilization of the population into "labor armies"...





But it wasn't that they OVERLOOKED these ideas they wrote AGAINST these ideas.
And wrote unconvincingly to any scientist that would read those few passages. Perhaps August Bebel summarized it best of all in the last chapter of the "Women & Socialism". I say "best of all" mostly because it's the ideal example of the Marxists' (and all socialists') missing the whole point about the Malthusian principle. Namely that it's NOT ABOUT FOOD, but about the means of SUBSISTENCE IN GENERAL. And this "Nah, we can feed everyone" stuff is parroted over and over again, with only maybe a third of these debates getting into the equally fallacious, but at least somewhat more sophisticated "demographic transition" swamp.





Malthusian human population theories are pseudo-science! They don't hold up! Malthus said there were TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE EARLY 1800s and populations have grown quite a bit since then, but what do even UN scientists say today

Malthus said there were too many people FOR THE LEVEL THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE WERE AT IN 1800. And that there will always be too many people for the level the means of sustenance are at AT ANY PARTICULAR TIME. And look, it's 2012, and people are starving somewhere... Oh yeah, Malthus never saw it coming! Such is the non-predictive un-power of the pseudo-science!

BTW, the idea of the ultimate population crash is older than Malthus and must be accredited to Thomas Hobbes, who clearly expounded it for the first time. However, neither he, nor Malthus gave any guesstimate about the possible time frame for it - they just said it's likely how the mankind was going to end.

You blame the system of capitalism.. Great, the system of capitalism is part of the means of sustenance, which are currently not enough. But it's NOT ABOUT FOOD actually, it's ABOUT ANY RESOURCE: oil, ore, water, air, land, labor power... Has it ever occurred to you that in communism the labor power might become too scarce a resource, if people get too lazy and stop participating in the socially necessary labor? Because that's how the primitive communism was lost: somebody got too lazy and decided that he could live off the surplus product generated by others...

In any case, the communist man of the future is not one who is just properly fed, clothed and sheltered - that's only the basic minimum. He also must have enough education and resources at his disposal to lead what can be called a "meaningful life". And something tells me that it will be taking quite a bit of material resources to supply him with that. Therefore, in a communist society, even if you have everybody fed, clothed and sheltered, the Malthusian principle is still applicable, as long as the resources for leading a "meaningful life" remain scarce.





Just because some Biology teacher once told you Malthus was right

Come on, I've read quite a lot on this subject, and way more than some biology teacher could ever tell me. And the references to the "Malthusian model" are all over the place.





Malthusian population theories are a useful tool for capitalism and this is why they have survived so long...
Maybe that's why capitalism survived the 20th century? It relied on more accurate and up-to-date science that its adversaries? It's quite telling, BTW, that Trofim Lysenko's debacles in the USSR were deeply rooted in the rejection of the Malthusian "slander on humanity" by the Marxist classics.

There is no conspiracy by the scientists to prop up capitalism via upholding the Malthusian principle. They come to their own conclusions that conform with it independently.




Humans have "changed their relationship to production" many times over and much more quickly than humans have evolved biologically. This arguement is a-scientific.
You really have to update yourself on the current status of some areas of science... In short, an adaptation doesn't need to be fixed in the genes. Like I've said, behavioral patterns that replicate across generations (and are subject to the natural selection process) can work just as well. Relations of production and the "superstructure" in the human society are a collection of just such behavioral patterns - incredibly complex, of course, compared to other species' behavioral patterns, so that's where the rag-tag biologist battalions waver, and the Marxist-Leninist cavalry must ride in to save the day, explaining how it all works.





There is no agricultural gene, no serfdom gene, no industry gene, no capitalist or socialist genes.
Yeah, but there are ones for greed, envy, jealousy, sloth, etc. Basically, all that's comprised in the term "selfishness". As Edward Wilson puts it, "the genetic fitness of a human being depends on how well it can individually use the society".





environmental destruction could "lower the cap"
Oh thank the so called God, you realize at least this.





Currently this is a non-issue.
Do you even comprehend what I'm trying to get out of you? OK, I'll ask for the third time:

WHAT decision will you take, IF population control becomes your very last option on the table? If all else fails? If it's that, or counterrevolution, restoration of capitalism, etc.?

Of course, you're not obliged to reply to a stranger on the Internet, but I really wonder, if you are able to give a clear cut answer to such question even for yourself.


.

[Blake's Baby]

And I've already addressed that. You can't "liberate" X gigawatts of power produced and consumed in Europe or North America and ship it over to Africa or South America...

No is saying that you or anyone else should or could.

What can be done is avoiding shipping in vast quantites of raw materials derived from, and consumer goods manufactured in, other places.




WHAT decision will you take, IF population control becomes your very last option on the table? If all else fails? If it's that, or counterrevolution, restoration of capitalism, etc.?

Of course, you're not obliged to reply to a stranger on the Internet, but I really wonder, if you are able to give a clear cut answer to such question even for yourself.

What decision will YOU take, if the Invisible Unicorn Army suddenly materialises in your ass? Eh? What will you do then, Mr High And Mighty I Know Everything? Haven't got an answer, have you? No-one expects the Invisble Unicorn Army.

Really. 'It is unscientific to suppose a meaningless case'. So if you can tell us how to deal with a suddenly-materialising invisible unicorn army in your ass, then we can tell you about how we'd deal with 'population control being the only option on the table'.

[Jimmie Higgins]

But if it's invisible, how could you tell?!:mad:

[Zulu]

What decision will YOU take, if the Invisible Unicorn Army suddenly materialises in your ass?

I'll run a standard shit disposal ass wiping procedure.

So, what about that population control?

[Blake's Baby]

But you fail to grasp the size of the problem. The Invisible Unicorn Army is the size of Germany. Normal ass-wiping won't cut it. What will you do then? Don't bother to answer that, I really don't care.

You obviously believe that after the revolution, you're going to get to be Stalin and tell everyone else what to do. Good luck with that. No, not really.

We don't think any of us are going to, or should, get to be Stalin, so what we'll be doing is, stopping you getting to be Stalin.

Communism is not about some guy shouting at everyone else. Communism is about the working class reorganising society for the benefit of humanity. It's no more up to me or Jimmie to pull solutions out of our asses, or your ass, or anyone else's ass, than it is for you to have people shot for not having solutions in their ass.

I refuse to play your stupid game. I even refuse to play my stupid game. Man, RevLeft's a tedious waste of time sometimes.

[Jimmie Higgins]

So, what about that population control?

Don't need it, plenty of food right now, we just have to expropriate it from the expropriators.

If, after liberation is achieved population keeps just growing and people are not able to meet their needs, then there are any number of options available to decide what to do. Persoanlly I think that limiting reproduction would not be even initially be on the table because limiting reproduction is a specific limit placed on 1/2+ of the population. But we can not possibly know what options there may be or what other factors might be involved so maybe people would decide to create a limit on their own human reproduction. But frankly, as someone who doesn't give much stock to technological predictions, I find it much more likely that humans will be able to upload our brains and consciousness to a digital form before we reach the limits of human population - barring some kind of huge natural or ecological disaster before then.

Seriously, your hypothetical example is the revolutionist equivalent of "if there was only 3 women left on earth and one was 80 years old another was already married and the third is Sally, would you go out with Sally?

Anyway there are also a number of assumptions in your hypothetical situation. One is that constant increases in population rates is not a given because even now as population numbers grow, the rate of population growth is declining world-wide, so who knows what kind of birth pattens would exist after socialism (without having to worry about needing kids to possibly take care of you in your old age or to work on the farm or whatnot who knows if it would even be normal for people to have a kid - and then, why multiple, why not just one? In fact even under capitalist conditions, it's well known that increased economic stability tends to slow population rates. Family sizes in Western Europe have declined under industrialization and this is the same in many other countries as well. This is part of the reason why even after capitalism has established itself so fully it tends to convert small family farms into large capitalist ones causing agricultural small-producers to become proletarian - or why the US and now Europe are so keen on importing labor from the 3rd world (despite their anti-immigrant propaganda which is really just about creating reserve labor that has less rights as well as dividing the working class). Population growth then, in a period of declining birth-rates in the West has then been partially due to longer-life and immigration... should these be limited as well?

There is also the issue that this hypothetical decision is being made over the heads (and wishes) of the population. Since it's the fault of people for "having too many kids" then it seems that most people wouldn't want to limit births. But if there is a socialist society with worker's democracy, how would votes on this issue work? If all men and 10% of women voted directly or for reps to limit birth rates, would that mean a socialist society would decide the reproduction of 40% of women? Conversley, if the vast majority supported limiting population how would there be a population problem in the first place?

[Zulu]

humans will be able to upload our brains and consciousness to a digital form

I want to un-read this.
:crying:

[Yuppie Grinder]

I'm for the eventual colonization of space.

[Paul Cockshott]

No, that's totally wrong. Who knows what the numbers are? Not me, but something like 80% of production in capitalism is for non-necessary stuff (military production, banking, advertising, uneccessary transportation, government bureaucracy etc).
Can you show me how you calculated this, or are you guessing?

[Blake's Baby]

Read on, I explain my working out in the next post.

It's obvious that the number is is a guess; one based on estimates of military budget plus size of banking sector plus size of advertising budget plus size of non-essential governmental expenditure plus size of cleaning up after capitalism's mistakes plus unnecessary travel plus unnecessary comercial competition plus... any other factors that seem to be irrelevant to actually fulfilling human needs.

Feel free to come up with another percentage if you like as an estimate of 'how much of capitalism doesn't need to be done'.

[Grenzer]

China was still a socialist economy

China at any point in history has abolished commodity production and established a moneyless economy? That's news to me. If socialism is capitalism, then it seems like little more than a pernicious, misleading propaganda phrase. "Our capitalism is better than their capitalism; it's socialism!"

[Book O'Dead]

China at any point in history has abolished commodity production and established a moneyless economy? That's news to me. If socialism is capitalism, then it seems like little more than a pernicious, misleading propaganda phrase. "Our capitalism is better than their capitalism; it's socialism!"

Oh, shit! Selma, break out the Heinekens!

[cyu]

When the one child family policy was adopted China was still a socialist economy and no resources were being wasted on palaces.

Are you sure you're not a pro-capitalist "libertarian"? What does "socialism" mean to you and how closely does your definition of "socialism" match the definition used by pro-capitalists in their propanda?

If your definition of "socialism" is government control of the economy, guess what, that's the same definition used by pro-capitalists. If that's the definition you claim to use, why not just come out of the pro-capitalist closet right now?

There are many ways that time, resources, and labor can be allocated to produce various things in an economy. In a capitalist economy, the wealthy have more power than everyone else to determine how that allocation is done. In an authoritarian society, the top-down chain of command has more power than everyone else to determine how resources are allocated. In neither case are the general population served - instead the economy merely serves those in power, whether it is those with economic power or those with political / military power.

If you want examples of places where economies come closest to serving the general population, I would point you at Scandinavia, where (compared to the rest of the world) they have less of both economic dictatorship ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality ) and less political dictatorship ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index ) ...turns out this combination happens to be correlated to everything from life expectancy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy ), to infant survival ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate ), to broadband penetration ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_penetration ).

Now I'm not going to claim that any of the currently top ranked countries are the ideal visions of socialism that I'd like to see, but I would say you're smoking heroin if you think China at the time had a better distribution of economic and political power.

[Zulu]

Are you sure you're not a pro-capitalist "libertarian"?

Buddy, the only libertarian pro-capitalist here are you. It is a well known fact that anarchy is just libertarianism for punks (just like libertarianism is anarchy for the rich people... isn't there some mighty dialectics to it?)

Your fascination with Scandinavia only proves that. By the definition of the "Communist Manifesto" (look it up), the socialism there is bourgeois and conservative in nature... And it's run by the capitalists and for the ultimate benefit of the capitalists. There are, of course, certain historical premises for lower income inequality in Scandinavia, but the fact is that the workers there are simply bribed - their loyalty and complacence is bought through higher wages. Marx observed this sort of thing in England in his days already. And these days you can't really talk of some separate economy in some separate "places", be it Scandinavia or whatever. We've got a single one world system of imperialism, of which the "general population" in the First World is a collective beneficiary - broadband penetration and all that. We'll see how it goes though, as the crisis of the imperialist system develops further and the capitalists are getting more avid.

As to the "top-down chain of command having more power than everyone else to determine how resources are allocated", that is the only way out of capitalism. Sure there are some serious undercurrents that need to be accounted for in any future attempt of real socialist construction, but there is no other way.

[Paul Cockshott]

Read on, I explain my working out in the next post.

It's obvious that the number is is a guess; one based on estimates of military budget plus size of banking sector plus size of advertising budget plus size of non-essential governmental expenditure plus size of cleaning up after capitalism's mistakes plus unnecessary travel plus unnecessary comercial competition plus... any other factors that seem to be irrelevant to actually fulfilling human needs.

Feel free to come up with another percentage if you like as an estimate of 'how much of capitalism doesn't need to be done'.
I suspect you are overestimating by a factor of about 2 the level of unnecessary expenditure of labour. I have figures for the UK that estimate the level of unproductive expenditure here:
http://glasgow.academia.edu/paulcockshott/Papers/1115261/Testing_Marx_some_new_results_from_UK_data

[Paul Cockshott]

China at any point in history has abolished commodity production and established a moneyless economy? That's news to me. If socialism is capitalism, then it seems like little more than a pernicious, misleading propaganda phrase. "Our capitalism is better than their capitalism; it's socialism!"


The general socialist movement has not advocated the abolition of money as a goal of socialism. The orthodox position of Kautsky, and Lenin, let alone those to the right of them was that money would be retained under socialism but not under communism.
Within the greater part of the Chinese economy in the late 70s, the commune sector, commodity production had been abolished and replaces with a labour points system. In this sense the Chinese commune system was the only historical instance of the communist movement actually going towards the abolition of commodity production.

[cyu]

It is a well known fact that anarchy is just libertarianism for punks

Certainly there are some suburban kids that are tired of their parents bossing them around and decide to draw circle-A's on their clothes, but do you really think Chomsky is a pro-capitalist? Or how about Lucy and Albert Parsons? You do realize that there's a workers' commemoration each year of what resulted in Albert's murder, don't you?


Your fascination with Scandinavia only proves that.

I bring up Scandinavia not because I believe they have the ideal system, but because statistically they have some of the best measurements in the world. I do try to explain it by claiming it is because they have a wider distribution of both economic and political power than anyone else, however, you do make a good point about national imperialism - if Shell's treatment of the Ogoni people leads to "trickle down wealth" in Shell's country of origin, then it is not a valid argument that their country of origin has a legitimate system. In fact, it would be a good argument for vigilante justice being meted out against their executives.


As to the "top-down chain of command having more power than everyone else to determine how resources are allocated", that is the only way out of capitalism.

Doesn't work - you think it's different from capitalism, but really they are just different words for the same thing. In one, the rich have all the power and make decisions that only benefit themselves. In the other, the politicians have all the power and make decisions and only benefit themselves. If you believe you can conjure up benevolent dictators, it's certainly possible, but no more likely than being able to conjure up benevolent CEOs. You'll get anecdotal successes, but success will not be systemic.

[rti]

At some human population growth will stop whenever we like it or not.

Assuming we still gonna be on earth in the next 780 year and have population growth rate of 1.3% there would exactly one square person per meter !!!

Moving forward after 1400 of such a growth mass of all humans would be equal to mass of earth ( meaning earth gone and transformed into humans )

With 1% growth of would take only about 14 thousand years for number of man to be equal to the estimated number of atoms of the know universe.

You see how fast you reach ridiculous numbers when you apply exponential growth , and also yo can imagine we will be having problem much sooner.

Mathematical implications of such a strategy should be teached in every high school unfortunately its not the case otherwise a lot of people would see capitalism is based on fallacy of unrestrained exponential growth.