Malthus to Hitler—or Marx

A Socialist View of Population Theories

The Government is very worried and has appointed a Commission of sixteen members on Population. “Their main task will be to examine the present population trends in Britain, investigate their causes and consider their probable consequences, and recommend measures to influence the future trend of population.” (News Chronicle, March 3rd.)

The newspapers are solemnly featuring splash stories of the number of children various members of the Commission have, like the News Chronicle, which gives the list of members complete with size of family.

Thus the Earl of Cranbrook qualifies with five children, although why the mother of the Heanor quads has not been asked to serve, we can’t think !

After all, she’s only just started, and got four already; while the father of the quads is surely more qualified than Lady Dollan, who is quite mature and only has one child.

There is actually a “Biological” Sub-committee presided over by a professor—to investigate the reason for the poor response to the Government’s population appeals.

The Evening Standard (March 1st), in an editorial, “From Malthus to Hitler,” declares that “population statistics are notoriously the most uncertain and dangerous field of economic study.”

After summarily dismissing the Reverend Malthus, who, in his notorious “Principles of Population,” reached the conclusion that the only solution was continence by the working class, the editor of the Evening Standard goes on to consider the findings of Mr. Berle, of the U.S. State Department.

“He foresees the future of the nations in terms of rising and falling populations.”

Germany will decline from 69 millions to 64. Britain from 46 millions to 42. U.S.A., with 135,000,000, will slowly increase. Brazil has doubled her population, and “has every chance to become a great nation.” “Russia’s population is likely to rise to 222,000,000.”

“The advantage from these calculations,” says our Editor, “lies heavily on the side of the United Nations.” We have an idea that is the main reason they were made.

But even the Evening Standard smells a rat. “We cannot be content, . . . the economists should be set to work until they have produced a set and recognisable theory.”

There is no need to set “economists” (?) to work. One great economist has already said all that need be said on the subject.

The first point is that there is no such thing as a general abstract law of population—”every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone.” (“Capital,” K. Marx. Kerr Edition, Vol. I, p. 693.)

What we are concerned with therefore is the law of population of the capitalist system. This is a rather complicated business, as everyone who has read Marx’s exposition in “Capital” knows. It depends very largely on the organic composition of capital—or, in other words, on the proportion of machinery to human labour. Thus, in highly developed industries, the. proportion of human labour is low, the amount of machinery high.

With every technical improvement this proportion increases, so that—

“The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production.” (“Capital,” Vol. 1. Kerr Edition, p. 692.)

Marx exploded the fallacy that population rises and falls with wages, showing by the example of England from 1849 to 1859 how a rise in agricultural wages, accompanied by a fall in the price of corn (consequent upon the construction of railroads, war, and the exodus of agricultural population to the new factories), placed the farmers in a difficult position.

“What did the farmers do now ? Did they wait until, in consequence of this brilliant remuneration, the agricultural labourers had so increased and multiplied that their wages must fall again, as prescribed by the dogmatic economic brain ? They introduced more machinery, and in a moment the labourers were redundant again in a proportion satisfactory even to the farmers. There was now ‘more capital’ laid out in agriculture than before, and in a more productive form. With this the demand for labour fell, not only relatively, but absolutely.” (“Capital,” p. 700, Vol. I.)

The same applied on a national scale to the United States of America.

The important point to remember, therefore, is that capitalists can always compensate shortage of labour by increasing machinery.

If Mr. Berle had anything, China would be the ruling nation of the earth, with India a close second.

What is important is the degree of development of the constant capital (machinery) to variable (human labour), which is highest in the United States, Britain and Germany.

“Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the setting free of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of the supply of labourers.” (“Capital,” Vol. I., p. 702.)

“But … as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.), adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army, and with it the absolute dependence of the working class on the capitalist class, capital, along with its common place Sancho Panza, rebels against the ‘sacred’ law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.” (“Capital,” Vol. I., p. 703.)

HORATIO

Leave a Reply