alanjjohnstone
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Ahhhh…if wishes were horses, every beggar would ride.Easier said than done.However, we do have quite a lively Twitter account and Facebook account.As you can see, our magazine Socialist Standard has the facility to place comments.Everything is in place…except the visitors an the audience
Indeed there will be forcible dispossession of property-owners by the State. That is the purpose the SPGB engages in the electoral activity as described openly in our D of P.
Quote:That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the w]orkers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.As we also explain on our website
Quote:It would be foolish to expect the capitalist class to voluntarily give up its privileged position in society. Governments exist solely to administer the society as it exists, in the interests of the ruling (capitalist) class, so governments will not end the privilege. Capitalism will continue as long as the working class accepts it. The working class will have to force the capitalist class to give up its position of privilege.However, i don't think you are meaning this situation but have created a hypothetical case in existing socialism where some small-holder, a banana grower, is evicted for the greater good of the community.TBH, i can think of a great number of conflicts of interests that may arise inside a socialist society. I am sure the NIMBYism will persist to an extent even in socialism.But, nevertheless, you expect us to speculate on how differences and disagreements are resolved without resorting to a coercive state.Long ago i was told socialism is the science of generalisation. So it is by making a general observation we get to the answer. It is the actual essence of free access to goods and services that it denies to any one particular group the political leverage with which to dominate or control others. So where will this statist power come from, if it cannot withhold the means of life or restrict access to society's wealth from those it wishes to subjugate or exploit or take advantage of. One of the fundamental preconditions for socialism to work presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. If people cannot change their behaviour and take control and responsibility for their decisions, not only will socialism fail but itself will not succeed then either.Socialism is not a society without laws and rules. I believe the worse punishment ever applied to individuals by a variety of communities is ostracisation – being sent to Coventry. If someone chooses to defy the will of his or her community and place her or his well-being before all others, then sanctions a lot less stringent than violence or force would be applied. Crime and anti-social behaviour won't disappear overnight and communities will come up with various means of applying agreed rules of conduct.None of this means that a new State or class arises. A residents association that takes action against fly-tippers is not the State returning.
Stock excuses?…or legitimate rebuttals.You made a statement and i used figures to challenge the validity. You ask a question and i answer it.But it cleared the way for you to return to your real position on race. Africans have lower IQs… than who? And who cares, for that matter…except for people who seek to obtain some sort of self-justification for their politics of supremacy. In all your travels and your experiences, what do you do when you meet other people…give them one of the many varieties of IQ tests to see if they are worthy of your association and if their views and opinions are to be valued or discarded? I'm not being frivolous …i'm showing the pointlessness of your claims. IQ levels even if you can prove any accuracy in them are an irrelevancy when it comes to interacting with others. It is a non-issue when it comes to political choice and policy. It has no bearing on economics. You might as well judge the world by the height of people. IQ has always been the defence of the ruling elite to legitimise themselves …they were born to rule, the masses are too dumb to be allowed to rule…and the modern elite simply "scientifically" adapt such ideas with the concept of meritocracy since inheritancy has been discredited
Quote:While acknowledging that Africans have significantly lower IQs than Westerners, and that this is a factor in the inability of Africans to cope under capitalism, I think the reason they have difficulty is the imposition of capitalism itself and the Western cultural hegemony that goes with it.The real factor here is that people…all people except the sociopath cannot cope with capitalism, hence the rates of mental illness and expressions of social estrangement. "Africa needs to be returned to the control of Africans" … If you genuinely think they should have control over their own destiny, then it is to abolish capitalism and the globalisation and neo-colonialism that accompanies it. You simply disregard the fact that capitalism is an oppressive and repressive system that conquers to acquire wealthy. It isn't a system that permits fair shares. If you want your grand scheme to be accomplished, drop all the extraneous aspects to your worldview and concentrate on the core – replacing capitalism.To answer your last point, as you can expect from a member of the SPGB, i am in agreement with certain theories – the Materialist Conception of History being one of the main ones. If that is flawed and wrong then so is my understanding of how the world works and evolves. As you are aware it argues economic material circumstances eventually trump cultural conditions, and yes, even race if you want to persist in using that term. The MCH along with the Labour Theory of Value are the twin pillars that support socialist ideas, they are the foundation upon what the socialist idea rests upon. Neither idea depends on race or IQ. Class, however, is the crucial factor and that transcends borders and continents
I think much of my replies is not just simply the regurgitation of the socialist case but with evidence to back it up, Ike. Why just Africa? I think we can break-down Africa into regions, can't we? There is that saying, Africa is not a country. The problems in Somalia are not identical as the Congo. You also make the same sort of error by not differentiating between all the various and diverse cultures and traditions of the continent. Even our maps misrepresent what that continent is. You seem to reflect much of MightyY position except he does not racify (if that's a word). In his post he doesn't think the working class as a whole are fit for socialism. "…would people in the West find themselves in much the same position they do today, subsidising and aiding populations that would otherwise starve?…"FACT…There is no subsidy. In 2012, poor countries received a total of $1.3-trillion, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3-trillion flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2-trillion more to the rest of the world than they received. Since 1980, these net outflows add up to a staggering total of $16.3 trillion. That’s how much money has been bled out of the global south, including Africa, over the past few decades. Add in the massive corruption, enabled by Western interests, plus the violent coups and conflicts that Western interests facilitated, and there’s only one conclusion: Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones. Africa, the receiver of $30 billion in annual monetary handouts, is not only making nothing from the aid it receives but it actually loses $192 billion to the rest of the world each year. This means, basically, that if you take into account the money coming in through aid, investment and remittances ($134 billion), Africa is left with a $58 billion annual loss. To put this into perspective, the money that Africa loses each year is over one and half times the amount of additional money needed to deliver affordable health care to everyone in the whole world! $35.3 billion annually through the tax evasion and other dodgy financial flows enabled by tax havens. These tax havens are jurisdictionally linked to the G8 and the European Union and account for 70% of global tax haven investment. The UK has 11 tax havens under its jurisdiction! It is time to stop misrepresenting the real nature of the relationship between aid and poverty in Africa. This “aid” is a smokescreen used to hide from public view the fact it is the donors themselves who are perpetuating this cycle of dependence. Africa is essentially not poor, as i said. A combination of inequitable policies, massive disparities in power and criminal activities perpetrated and sustained by wealthy elites both inside and outside the continent are keeping its people in poverty. The UK/EU/US and other wealthy governments are at the heart of this theft. You ask a specific question which if i can paraphrase is…Will particular African communities be permitted to conduct their own affairs in their own manner? That question can be widened to any community in any country and even applies to any individual. Another way of phrasing the question is, Will socialism be a uniform society across the globe using coercion to ensure compliance? Nobody is going to be free to do what they want to do and that applies to one person, a group of people, or a village, city or a region. Some may well seek autarky as a way of life, rather being an integral part of an interconnected and interlinked and interdependent world society – then so be it. If they choose from their free-will to cut themselves off from all others and make no contact or relationship, that will be their choice. However, if they seek (as some 'anarcho'-nationalists do) to exclude particular people or enforce their own rules and laws on others withot consent, yet still, seek the benefits of a socialist cooperative commonwealth, then no, that so-called "liberty" is limited. With freedom comes responsibility. If like coltan, something rare and highly sought after, the local people won't mine it, won't let others mine it and decline any inducement to share it, i can only respond, as i would do now. Let's do without. Nothing is without its substitute, even if less efficient and if no alternative second-best can be acquired, i'd oppose any form of force to take it. I don't imagine such a dilemma. People aren't too different. And most importantly, we have the capacity to care after one another. I simply cannot think that someone from Ghana when given the access and opportunity cannot look after themselves as someone from Glasgow. Of course, we know that such ideas are peddled by the ruling class that workers need someone to look after them, that the working class is incapable of organising society…we need political leaders..we need spiritual saviours…we need dispassionate scientists to do all our thinking…in Manchester and in Mali, the same philanthropic paternalism arises.
Ike, you cannot but expect a little amount of curiosity, that you are an ex-member of the SPGB. As i said, in all your previous contributions to the discussion list on many different threads, you never once mentioned or inferred former membership. In fact, you have never expressed any sympathy for the SPGB case at any level.Over the years we have had ex-members of the BUF, NF and BNP and Conservatives (plus from all the left-wing groups) join the Party but it is their earlier views that changed.You are indeed the first member who i have known to resign and move to the right. It is indeed unusual. You are also the first ex-member i have known to show a reticence to reveal the full details of this membership…when and where and for how long. I can understand the reluctance to reveal your identity but some other information need not be confidential. Was it an online or postal membership application or through a branch?But this does explain why you still feel a desire to visit and engage on this forum, when from your own political standpoint, it is a rather much a waste of your time and energy.
In your many posts over a very long period, this is the first occasion that you claim membership of the Party. It is understandable that some of us are sceptical of this claim.
Quote:I don't need you to tell me anything./quote]Then don't ask for answers to any questions, then, Ike.And the length of the replies i give is to offer you the respect of a full answer and not to score debating points. In fact, as a regular visitor to this discussion ist, you should already be well acquainted with my style of writing and know i give verbose commentsI mentioned more than just the market, though, in that reply i gave you on Africa. I mentioned corruption. In passing, i mentioned that there are historical events unique to Africa that still impacts on today's issues.But when you have seen a hard-working Cambodian eating roasted rat, then you understand that hunger = poverty is not merely an African problem. But there has also been famines in Asia – Bangladesh being one of the later ones. But China under Mao was perhaps the worse. I recall the mis-named Irish Potato Famine. But the last European was the Dutch at the end of WW2. And one of the latest famines is in Yemen with the US/UK permitting a Saudi blockade. Soon, of course, it will be climate change famines. Be like the Dustbowl years in the American mid-west, climate refugees fleeing hunger if not starvation and locals putting up the barriers as California did to the Okies, supposed fellow-Americans but nevertheless, outsiders and therefore foreigners and described as sub-human by many who wished to exclude them…sounds famiiar, eh?Vin, Ike, as he has told us before, is not a racist – he is a racialist.I know, Vin, a distinction without a difference to you and me but for Ike, it is something of import…he isn't some ignorant red-neck racist but being "scientific" in his white-supremacy.A more realistic view of the UBI from those directly involved.https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/jan/12/money-for-nothing-is-finlands-universal-basic-income-trial-too-good-to-be-true
Quote:“It’s not really what people are portraying it as,” said Markus Kanerva, an applied social and behavioural sciences specialist working in the prime minister’s office in Helsinki. “A full-scale universal income trial would need to study different target groups, not just the unemployed. It would have to test different basic income levels, look at local factors. This is really about seeing how a basic unconditional income affects the employment of unemployed people.”Kanerva describes the trial as “an experiment in smoothing out the system”Authorities believe it will shed light on whether unemployed Finns, as experts believe, are put off taking up a job by the fear that a higher marginal tax rate may leave them worse off. Many are also deterred by having to reapply for benefits after every casual or short-term contract. “It’s partly about removing disincentives,” explained Marjukka Turunen, who heads the legal unit at Finland’s social security agency, Kela, which is running the experiment. The benefit system is simply “not suited to modern working patterns”, Turunen said. “We have too many benefits. People don’t understand what they’re entitled to or how they can get it. Even experts don’t understand. For example, it’s very hard to be in the benefit system in Finland if you are self-employed – you have to prove your income time and time and time again.”For UBI purists, the fact that the monthly Finnish payment – roughly equivalent to basic unemployment benefit – is going to a strictly limited group, and is not enough to live on, disqualifies the Finnish scheme.The Finnish experiment’s design and objectives mean it should perhaps not really be seen as a full-blown UBI trial at all, cautioned Kanerva: “People think we’re launching universal basic income. We’re not. We’re just trialling one kind of model, with one income level and one target group.”
Hopefully, it will be a combined effort…and i am sure you are able to contribute positively in persuading him, as well, MightyY.But it isn't Ike who should be our main audience, it is the many more folk who aren't so entrenched in their ideology that rather than get out of their hole, keep on digging it deeper. It is people who you and i know, family and friends, neighbours and work colleagues, who have been brought up with many misconceptions about the world around them. Some of which you and i have broken free from but what makes us the exceptions since there is nothing particularly special about us.That is the Big Question for me since i know a lot of people who aren't fools or idiots, who are, in fact, much cleverer than me who accept capitalism, reject socialism, and either see no need for a change in society or see no hope of a change in the system.I offer no magical answer, i await for no miracle to happen. I reached a conclusion that the trajectory of humanity is in a spiral downwards. There is not much i can do to stop it but the little i can do isn't costing too much of my time and energy. I still can enjoy life, the sacrifice is minimal, engaging in trying to end capitalism has brought me into contact with many worthy comrades and broadened my own knowledge more than all the educational institutions could have.In the past, i have questioned the SPGB case – and many members will testify i still challenge aspects of the Party's case but walking away from trying to build socialism is simply not an option for me. When politics and the state of the world come up in conversation as it always does – i say it as i see it. That is all the commitment a socialist is required to make, and a member of the SPGB's only additional responsibility is to ensure an organisation like it continues to exist and doesn't disappear. Ike has the same thinking qualities of a fellow-worker as i possess. For all i know he may well have an honours degree in Philosophy as a postman i knew but academic qualification mean little in relating to other people and understanding events. That well-educated postman was a guilt-ridden Catholic who viewed the world with jaundiced eyes and saw history from a persecuted religious viewpoint. But we can drop mistaken ideas and adopt more accurate ones but it isn't an overnight process, and sometimes baby-steps are necessary at first. Sometimes, we stumble and fall. And one of the purposes for political associations such as the SPGB is there is a helping hand to assist you up to your feet. That is why some emphasise that we are a SOCIAList Party, first and foremost, a party that offers empathy but not sympathy, even to those workers like Ike who have absorbed anti-social beliefs.
Do you know anything about the history of the African continent, Ike? Of the empires and the civilisations that existed there.For instance, did you know that the richest man in all history was Mansa Musa of Mali from the 14th Century. While our billionaires all have fortunes of less than $100 billion, this king had $400 billion to his name. At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities and was very densely populated. Try wiki on those empires and kingdomshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kingdoms_in_pre-colonial_AfricaThere rises and falls is not very different from our own European history or Chinese/Asian history. But you ask why Africa can't take care of itself?It can as it did before. Capitalism or should i say mercantilism and the slave trade then colonialism and post-colonialism happened.The potential of Africa is still staggering in its resources.Our modern technology could not exist without the rare metals found in Africa.It has the capacity to help feed the world. Africa was transformed from a net food exporter into a net food importer in the 1980s – a deliberate policy by the IMF/World Bank and others an not because of population growth, natural calamities, and conflicts. African countries were told that they need not invest in agriculture as imports would be cheaper and were promised that private investment and exports would soon follow cuts in public investment, thus paying for imports. But of course, these organisations omitted to mention that the transnationals would drain the capital from Africa to tax havens. Now, there is attention to Africa's agriculture after the dramatic global food price rises but it is now land-grabber foreign businesses that are buying farmland to use to export food or cash-crops, just as they grabbed the ores and minerals.Certainly, the local elites are also culpable in the continued pillaging and looting of Africa but they couldn't achieve it without the complicity of non-African accessories and collaborators in the financial crimes and corruption. You may care to take a look at or Africa-focussed blog, Ike, and do a search of its diverse postshttps://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/
Came across this article when trawling websites for our bloghttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/
Quote:The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass…. The Dutch are also the world’s top exporter of potatoes and onions and the second largest exporter of vegetables overall in terms of value. More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the Netherlands.See the graphics on the website for more stats.( GMO is not used to produce such impressive output.)
Quote:African drought? “Water isn’t the fundamental problem. It’s poor soil,” he says. “The absence of nutrients can be offset by cultivating plants that act in symbiosis with certain bacteria to produce their own fertilizer.” The soaring cost of grain to feed animals? “Feed them grasshoppers instead,” he says. One hectare of land yields one metric ton of soy protein, a common livestock feed, a year. The same amount of land can produce 150 tons of insect protein.Quote:“Look at the island of Bali!” For at least a thousand years, its farmers have raised ducks and fish within the same flooded paddies where rice is cultivated. It’s an entirely self-contained food system, irrigated by intricate canal systems along mountain terraces sculpted by human hands. “There’s your model of sustainability,”Bali's population density – 673.1 p/km²
Another follow up media articlehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/12/it-is-better-to-go-to-jail-the-african-migrants-being-forced-from-israel
Quote:“I see these men, women and children every single day. I have interviewed dozens of them in depth and heard their stories – about the rapes of their mothers, sisters and daughters, the murders of their family members and friends, the hopelessness and fear. If these people don’t qualify as refugees, then who does?”So, your problem really isn't about that there is a over-population problem, MightyY, if i rea between the linesCan i assume that you do accept the argument that many more billions can live on the planet in relative prosperity if and that is a huge big IF, the social system of organising production and distribution was very different?Am i right in thinking, MightyY, you simply don't believe socialism is possible. That the socialist cooperative commonwealth is no longer an option to choose? That you don't believe workers can acquire the class-consciousness, the mass unerstanding, to overthrow capitalism and then bring about a rational society? That people are incapable of administering and running the world other than in the manner it is now done based on your own experience of the world as it is and reinforced by your experience of the SPGB making decisions and carrying them out.That is an entirely different question and position to hold from one that asserts that growing population numbers is an existential threat to humanity.And of course, my reply didn't involve addressing it. Before i and others endeavour to try, i wonder if you could confirm these assumptions and elaborate on your concerns in more detail, to initiate a proper discussion , MightyY
It is very much like the rest of the problems created by capitalism, MightyY. There is a solution if socialism is established but not if capitalism endures. If capitalism is not overthrown, humanity is most likely doomed. So if you think socialism is unachievable you will be pessimistic about over-population and many other ills than inflict the planet, climate change, inevitable nuclear war. Even if population growth ended today, worsening rates of starvation, the growth of slums, and ecosystem collapse would continue more or less unabated. A central concept of capitalism is the idea that there isn’t enough to go around. There isn’t enough food, there aren’t enough jobs, there isn’t enough houses, or schools or hospitals. “There isn’t enough…” really means “It isn’t profitable…” I just blogged today that China alone has already built new cities that can house 3.5 billion people, double its existing population and which are now presently ghost cities awaiting the compulsory relocation of many rural and slum dwellershttp://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/chinas-war-on-poverty-could-hurt-the-poor-mostBut you would argue, i think, that it is unsustainable and there are no resources to support the urbanisation. This is the physical footprint Ike tries to imply to present his case against immigration. If you followed the other thread on Marxist Animalism, you will see references to the food production system and how changes are possible to increase output to many times required to meet the needs of future population projections. We don't have rational food production under capitalism, do we, and we are not likely to have it while capitalism persists, will we?But let us keep to population numbers.So the year 2100 is when global population reaches an estimated 12 billion. We can already feed 9 billion with our current inefficient methods. “Does population growth explain food shortages?” and many will instinctively answer “Yes”.Why is the prognosis so doom-laden. Well, let us first remember is the important fact that the majority of scientists are not socialists and their understanding of an alternative way of running the world is no better informed than any other person's. They may be experts in their specialised fields but like the majority of people they lack the knowledge of social evolution held by Marxist materialists. Like so many others, their view is blinkered by the “what-is” and not the “what-could-be”. Production for use is not a concept many professionals are acquainted with when they build their models.It seems common sense that more people in the world must mean more resource use, therefore fewer resources to go around for everyone. It is a logic that has led to some highly unsavoury arguments and policy decisions, such as Ike's racist views. By arguing that population growth is the main cause of mass starvation and environmental ruin, we play into the hands of ruling class who wish to blame the victims. One such consequence is that helping the poor not only hurts them, but also threatens to drag the well-fed down to their subsistence level. Under this hypothesis, no sharing is permitted, as it will only generalise starvation to the entire population because there is only so much to go around. So do as Ike and Trump say. Build the Wall and the fences. Keep the outsiders out and kick the newcomers out. But that sounds crass so some resort to a more sophisticated justification – the carrying capacity of the planet. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits. There is no environmental reason for people to go hungry now or in the future. There is no need to use any more land to sustain humanity — increasing land productivity using existing technologies can boost global supplies and even leave more land for nature — a goal that is both more popular and more possible than ever. The only limits to creating a planet that future generations will be proud of are our imaginations and our social system. Societal collapses due to populations reaching “environmental limits” are not the norm. Existing technologies could sustain current and anticipated human populations while increasingly sparing land for nature. Human well-being and improved stewardship of the biosphere are limited primarily by the type of social system and its technologies, not by population or environment. We have indeed spoken of socialism in terms of abundance and our green critics claim that human wants are "infinite" interprets this as meaning that socialism will be a society of ever-increasing personal consumption, of people coming to consume more and more food, to take more and more holidays, and to acquire more and more material goods. If humans wants were "infinite" then this would be the result of a society based on free access and geared to meeting human needs, but human wants are socially-determined and limited. Humans can only consume so much food, for instance, and only seek to accumulate more and more material goods in a society of economic insecurity like capitalism. In a society, such as socialism would be, where people could be sure that what they required to satisfy their needs would always be available then we would soon settle down to only taking what we needed and no more. This is all we meant by talking of socialism as a "society of abundance": that enough food, clothing and other material goods can be produced to allow every man, woman and child in society to satisfy their likely material needs. It was not a reference to some orgy of consumption, but simply to the fact that it is technically possible to produce more than enough to satisfy everyone's material needs, thanks, we might add, to technology and mass production. Meeting everybody's likely material needs will indeed involve in many cases an increase in what people consume. This will certainly be the case for the millions and millions of people in the so-called Developing World who are suffering from horrendous problems of starvation, disease and housing. So, yes, socialism will involve increases in personal consumption for three-quarters or more of the world's population. Impossible, say many Green environmentalists, this would exceed the Earth's carrying capacity and make environmental destruction even worse. Not necessarily so, we reply. They confuse consumption per head with what individuals actually consume. To arrive at a figure for consumption per head, what the statisticians do is to take total electricity or whatever and then divide it by the total population. But this doesn't give a figure for what people consume as, in addition to personal it includes what industry, the government and the military consume. It a grossly misleading to equate consumption per head with personal consumption since it ignores the fact that consumption per head can be reduced without reducing personal consumption and that this is, in fact, compatible with an increase in personal consumption. This in effect is what Socialists propose: to eliminate the waste of capitalism, not just of arms and armies but of all the overhead costs involved in buying and selling. It has been estimated that, at the very least, half of the workforce are engaged in such socially-useless, non-productive activity. In a socialist society all this waste will be eliminated, so drastically reducing consumption per head. This will allow room for the personal consumption of those who need it to be increased to a decent level. Diverting resources to do this and ensuring that every human on the planet does have a decent standard of living will be the primary, initial aim of socialism will put up consumption per head again, but to nowhere near the level now obtaining under capitalism. The amount of so-called ‘arable land’ on the planet is according to Wikipedia about 14 million km2. If we only use this amount of arable land, we would have about 20 times the land we need to feed all of us on the planet. If we include permanent pastures, which amount to about 33 million km2 and is used for livestock, and grow vegetables there instead, we end up with more than 60-100 times of what we actually need. That is if we only eat veggies. But of course, we don’t need all that land, so there would be plenty of room for some grass-fed beef or chicken with happy free-ranging animals that can be managed holistically. Our planet does possess limits. However, the total number of people that can be supported by Earth’s resources cannot be predicted merely by knowing the total amount of matter or surface area on Earth. So indeed those analogies of everybody in the world can stand on the Isle of Wight is irrelevant. Every time we get into a conversation with someone, and we hear “well, everyone knows the earth is over-populated” we can start by clearing up the misconception by showing it is directly contrary to the facts. Globally, women today have half as many babies as their mothers did, mostly out of choice. They are doing it for their own good, the good of their families, and, if it helps the planet too, then so much the better. Nothing the Catholic priests say can stop it. Women are doing this because, for the first time in history, they can. Better healthcare and sanitation mean that most babies now live to grow up. It is no longer necessary to have five or six children to ensure the next generation—so they don’t. Lower infant death rates mean families don’t need to have as many children in order to guarantee that some will survive. At the same time improvements in quality of life make it less necessary to have many children working to support their families. Greater access to contraception gives families more control over fertility. Today the reality is that the world is experiencing falling birth rates and rising life expectancy. Countries with a fertility rate (FR) below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) now number more than 80 worldwide — and counting. Greece with an FR of 1.34; Italy has an FR of 1.4. The United Kingdom’s overall FR has risen to 1.98 due to Muslim baby-booming, but indigenous Britons’ FR is lower. The same demographic reality is evident in most of Asia, with China (1.7), Japan (1.4), Hong Kong (1.2), Singapore (1.3), and South Korea (1.2) being prime examples. And many developing nations are on the same trajectory, with Uruguay (1.9) and Brazil (1.
, illustrating the point. Then there’s Mexico: While its women bore almost seven children each in the 1960s, the FR rate is declining fast and stands at 2.3 today. Overall, the world’s 1950 to 1955 FR of 4.95 has declined by more than half and now stands at 2.36. Professional demographers tell us this will continue and that perhaps as early as 2050 and no later than 2100, the Earth’s population will begin declining. The “graying” that has plagued Japan and Europe will envelop the planet. The world population is getting much older: by 2050 the number of people over the age of 65 will triple from 531 million to 1.5 billion. In fact, perhaps the real issue of the world population is not those being born, it is those not dying. There is a growing life expectancy gap where the affluent may expect to live to 120 or more while the poor won't see 60. In most developed countries actual fertility is lower than desired. We should allow immigration from overpopulated countries to keep the ratio of working age to elderly dependents constant. Unfortunately most immigration policies severely limit the migration of unskilled people. If better survival rates for babies and longer lives for the elderly contribute to “over-population”, what is the eugenic social engineers policy going to be infanticide and euthanasia? Let people die of epidemics and war? The exception to the drop in population rate trend at the moment appears to be Africa, a continent with a rich potential. Ethiopia is among nine African countries whose rate of population growth is declining. Others are Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda. Ethiopia has seen a massive cut in its fertility rate, from an average of seven children per woman in the 1990s to 4.6 currently. Experts say reducing poverty rates also leads to a decline in fertility. "It's not the population growth that is the problem – it's the extreme poverty that is the underlying reason," says Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. "If you continue to have extreme poverty areas where women give birth to six children and the population doubles in one generation, then you'll have problems." A case in point is Niger, the country with the highest fertility rate in the world – 7.6. It is also one of the poorest On the question of resource, its availability or lack of it, and therefore its ability or inability to support the African population – another component of Africa’s ‘over-population’ fallacy – well over 50 per cent of Uganda’s arable land, some of the richest in Africa, remains uncultivated. Were Uganda to expand its current food production significantly, not only would it be completely self-sufficient, but it would be able to feed all the countries contiguous to its territory without difficulty. Just about a quarter of the potential arable land of Africa is being cultivated presently. Even here, an increasingly high proportion of the cultivated area is assigned to so-called cash-crops (cocoa, coffee, tea, groundnut, sisal, cut flowers, etc.) for export. As for the remaining 75 per cent of Africa’s uncultivated land, this represents 66 per cent of the entire world’s potential. This vast acreage of rich farmlands with capacity to optimally support the food needs of generations of African peoples indefinitely. In addition, the famous fish industry in Senegal, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana for instance, Botswana’s rich cattle farms, West Africa’s yam and plantain belts extending from southern Cameroon to the Casamance province of Senegal, the continent’s rich rice production fields, etc. The current economic situation demonstrates that if the acreage devoted to cultivation is expanded and expressly targeted to address Africa’s own internal consumption needs rather than land use directed to the calamitous waste of cash-crop production for export there need be no food shortages. It is an inexcusable tragedy that any African child, woman, or man could go without food in the light of the staggering endowment of resources in Africa. Africa constitutes a spacious, rich and arable landmass that can support its population, which is still one of the world’s least densely populated and distributed, into the indefinite future. It is clear that the factors which have contributed to determining the very poor quality of life of Africa’s population presently possess is to do with the non-use, partial-use, or the misuse of the continent’s resources year in, year out thanks to foreign capitalists and the native overseers – the national government and its indigenous domestic capitalists. When we look at the world around us we cannot fail to notice the extent to which nature is being ravaged in the name of short-term economic gain. It is all too clear that the prevailing economic system of capitalist competition is quite incapable of seriously taking into account the long-term considerations of a healthy planet. On a global basis the alteration in the natural balance is taking place on a massive and unprecedented scale. One of the gravest criticisms that can be leveled against the capitalist system is that the application of the profit motive have been disastrous to the land. Throughout virtually the entire world, land is not used to produce the crop best adapted to it on a permanent basis but to produce as much cash as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as quickly as possible – the same system exalted by the industrial manufacturer. Almost everywhere, the land is being impoverished; its fertility flushed down the world's rivers or blown away by its winds or simply buried under an expanding carpet of concrete. A socialist world would obviously want to halt and reverse the long-term decline in soil fertility by improving the humus content of the soil. Not only would this make for the more efficient absorption of chemical fertilisers but would help contain further topsoil loss as a result of erosion. Whilst this would involve more labour intensive work which would require a larger agricultural workforce it should be borne in mind that one of the greatest productive advantages of socialism over capitalism is that it would release a tremendous amount of labour for socially productive work. Concentrating on population confuses symptoms with causes while simultaneously validating apologists for the system. Population growth arguments fit in with the ideological needs of the system rather than challenging them and is the primary reason that they receive so much publicity. It is completely acceptable to capitalism to place the blame for hunger and ecological crises on the number of people rather than on capitalism. Anyway, MightY that is an adapted and abridged version of a reply offered to a prospective member who shared similar misgivings as yourself. And apologies for the lengthy reply….but appreciate, it could have been a lot longer. The simple fact is that being apologists for over-population advocates makes us allies with the racists like Ike and the various Greens that accept capitalism. After clearing up the mess inherited from capitalism, then both consumption and production can be expected to level off and something approaching a "steady-state economy" reached. In a society geared to meeting human needs, once those needs are being met there is no need to go on producing more. Population levels will stabilise too. This is a reasonable assumption, and is already beginning to happen, even under capitalism, in the developed parts of the world. Population growth is a feature of the poorer parts of the world, suggesting a link between it and poverty and the insecurity that goes with it (the more children you have the more chance there is of someone to care for you in your old age). If you reject socialism all that is left is to envisage either compulsory sterilisation programmes, the revival of eugenics or letting starvation, disease take their course. Socialists emphatically reject such an anti-human approach. If that's what an "Earth-centred ethics" teaches then we want nothing to do with it. We'll stick to our human-centred approach, which embraces the view that the balanced functioning of the biosphere is something that humans should try to achieve since, as part of the biosphere, it is in our interest that it should function properly. There is in fact no antagonism between the interest of humanity and the interest of the biosphere. This system must go. The Myth of Carrying Capacity Many believe that we are undermining the very life support systems that sustain us. Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences. Disaster looms as humans exceed the earth’s natural carrying capacity. Clearly, this could not be sustainable. Many have learned the classic mathematics of population growth — that populations must have their limits and must ultimately reach a balance with their environments, it’s physics, after all, there is only one earth! "Carrying capacity" refers to the number of individuals who can be supported in a given area, within natural resource limits, and without degrading the natural, social, cultural, and economic environment for present and future generations. The carrying capacity for any given area is not fixed. Carrying capacity is not a fixed number. Estimates put Earth's carrying capacity at anywhere between 2 billion and even 40 billion people. It varies with a wide range of factors, most of them fitting under the umbrella of "lifestyle." If humans were still in the hunter-gatherer mode, Earth would have reached its capacity at about 100 million people. With humans producing food and living in high-rise buildings, that number increases significantly . A good way to understand the flexibility of Earth's carrying capacity is to look at the difference between the projected capacities of 2 billion and 40 billion. Essentially, we're working with the same level of resources with both of those numbers. So how can the estimates swing so widely? Because people in different parts of the world are consuming different amounts of those resources. Basically, if everyone on Earth lived like a middle-class American, consuming roughly 3.3 times the subsistence level of food and about 250 times the subsistence level of clean water, the Earth could only support about 2 billion people. On the other hand, if everyone on the planet consumed only what he or she needed, 40 billion would be a feasible number. As it is, the people living in developed countries are consuming so much that the other approximate 75 percent of the population is left with barely what they need to get by. Ultimately, the idea is this: If everyone on Earth can manage to do more with less, we'll be back on track to Earth's indefinite carrying capacity. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain populations well beyond the capabilities of unaltered “natural” ecosystems. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history. Charles Maurice and Charles W. Smithson at Texas A&M University studied the history of natural resources over 10,000 years. They found that temporary scarcities in natural resources are the norm. They also found that same temporary scarcity always led to an improved substitute. The Greeks' transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age 3,000 years ago was forced by a shortage of tin. The rise of coal followed timber shortages in 16th-century Britain.The shortage of whale oil in 1850 led directly to the first oil well in 1859. The lesson? Human ingenuity has always been successful in overcoming crises that once seemed inevitable. That is why i have an optimistic hope for socialism… ALB, since you raised earlier Bookchin's attitude to towards identity and lifestyle politics, wasn't "classism" one of Bookchin's criticism of the Left by overly identifying sections of the working class as something to aspire towards rather than abolish?Listen Marxist's Myth of the Proletariat seemed to want to address this. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1969/listen-marxist.htm#h3But as usual, Debs is in the ball with a very quotable quote to adopt.
