CHAPTER XXX.
The Question of Population and Socialism.

1.—Fear of Over-Population.

There are people who regard the question of population as one of the most important and urgent of all, because, they claim that we are threatened with over-population, indeed, that it is already at hand. Therefore this question must be specially treated from an international standpoint, for nourishment and distribution of the population have become more and more a matter of international concern. There has been much discussion on the law governing the growth of population since Malthus. In his famous and notorious book, an “Essay on the Principle of Population,” that Karl Marx has described as a “school-boyish, superficial plagiarism on Sir James Stewart, Townsend, Franklin Wallace, etc., declaimed in a priest-like manner and not containing a single original thought,”—Malthus propounds the theory that mankind has the tendency to increase at the ratio of geometrical progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), while food increases only at the ratio of arithmetical progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.). The consequence, he asserts, is that a disproportion arises between the number of human beings and the food supply which must lead to wholesale starvation, and that, therefore, it becomes necessary to impose abstinence upon one’s self in the procreation of children. He, who has not sufficient means to support a family should not marry, as there would not be sufficient room at “nature’s table” for his descendants.

The fear of over-population is a very old one. As we have shown in this book, it existed among the Greeks and Romans and was met with again at the close of the middle ages. Plato and Aristotle, the Romans, the small bourgeois of the middle ages, they all were dominated by this fear. It also occupied Voltaire, who wrote a treatise on this subject at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Other writers followed him, until Malthus finally gave this fear the most poignant expression.

The fear of over-population is always met with at periods when existing social conditions are in a state of decay. The general dissatisfaction that prevails at such times is ascribed to the superabundance of human beings and the lack of food, instead of being ascribed to the manner in which food is obtained and distributed.

Every exploitation of man by man is founded on class rule. The first, and principal means of establishing class rule is to take possession of the soil. Common property at first, it gradually becomes private property. The masses become propertyless and are obliged to earn their share of food by serving the propertied class. Under such circumstances, every addition to the family, or new competitor, becomes a burden. The specter of over-population appears, and spreads terror in the same measure in which the soil becomes monopolized and loses its productivity, either because it is not sufficiently cultivated, or because the best ground is turned into pastures, or because it has been reserved for the pleasures of the hunt of its masters, and thus withdrawn from cultivation for human food. Rome and Italy suffered from the greatest lack of food at the time when the land was owned by about three thousand latifundia proprietors. Hence the cry of fear: the latifundia are destroying Rome! The Italian soil was converted into immense hunting grounds or parks for the pleasure of its noble owners. Sometimes it was also left uncultivated, because its cultivation by slaves was more expensive than to import grain from Sicily and Africa; this state of affairs favored the usury in grain, in which the rich nobility of Rome likewise participated. The nobility profited more by the usury in grain than by cultivating grain in their own country.

Under such conditions the Roman bourgeois, or the pauperized nobleman, preferred to refrain from marriage and the procreation of children. The premiums placed on marriage and the birth of children, to prevent a diminution of the ruling classes, remained ineffectual.

A similar phenomenon occurred at the close of the middle ages, after the nobility and the clergy had, for centuries, by force and by stealth, robbed many peasants of their property and usurped the common land. When the peasants revolted as a result of all the abuses they had suffered, but were beaten down, the robbery of the nobility was continued on a still larger scale, and the reformed princes also practiced it on the property of the church. At that time the number of thieves, beggars and vagabonds increased as never before. Their number was greatest after the reformation. The expropriated rural population poured into the cities; but here, too, the conditions of life had been growing steadily worse, owing to causes that have been set forth in previous chapters, and so “over-population” prevailed everywhere.

The appearance of Malthus coincides with that period of English industry when, as a result of the new inventions by Hargreaves, Arkwright and Watt, tremendous mechanical and technical changes took place. These changes especially affected the cotton and linen industries, and deprived tens of thousands of workingmen of employment, who were engaged in these domestic industries. The concentration of property in land, and the development of industry on a large scale, assumed great dimensions in England at that time. With the rapid increase of wealth on the one hand, there was growing misery of the masses on the other. During such a time the ruling classes, who have good cause to consider the world, as it is, the best of worlds, had to seek a plausible explanation, relieving them of all responsibility, for so contradictory a phenomenon as the pauperization of the masses in the midst of increasing wealth and nourishing industry. Nothing was more convenient than to blame the too rapid increase of the workingmen by their having too many children for this state of affairs, instead of blaming the fact that they were being made superfluous by the process of production, and the further fact that the soil was becoming accumulated in the hands of the landlords. Under such conditions the “school-boyish, superficial plagiarism declaimed in a priest-like manner” which Malthus published, contained an explanation of existing evils that expressed the innermost thoughts and wishes of the ruling classes, and justified them before the world. That explains why it met with so much success on the one hand, and with such bitter opposition on the other. For the English bourgeoisie Malthus had spoken the right word at the right time, and so—altho his book did “not contain a single original thought,” he became a great and famous man, and his name came to stand for the entire doctrine![276]