If the bourgeois economists are followers of Malthus, they are what they must be in accordance with their bourgeois interests. Only they should refrain from transferring their bourgeois prejudices to Socialistic society. John Stuart Mill says: “Communism is that very state of affairs of which one may expect, that it will vehemently oppose this sort of selfish immoderation. Every increase of the population that would diminish the comfortable status of the population or increase its toils, would cause direct and unmistakable inconvenience to each individual member of the association, and this inconvenience could no longer be ascribed to the rapacity of the employers or the unfair privileges of the rich. Under such circumstances, public opinion could not fail to make known its disproval, and if this would not suffice, punishments of one kind or another would be resorted to, in order to suppress this and similar immoderations. The danger of over-population, then, is not advanced by the communistic theory; this theory, on the contrary, tends to counteract this danger in a marked degree.” Professor Adolf Wagner says, in Rau’s “Text-book of Political Economy:” “Least of all could a Socialistic community grant absolute freedom of marriage or freedom in the procreation of children.” The authors both proceed from the opinion that the tendency toward over-population is common to all social systems, but they both grant that Socialism will be better able to maintain an equilibrium between population and nourishment than any other form of society. The latter is true, but the former is not.
There were, indeed, some Socialists who were infected by the ideas of Malthus, and feared that over-population was “an imminent danger.” But these Socialistic Malthusians have disappeared. A better understanding of the nature of bourgeois society has changed their opinion on this subject. The complaints of our agrarians also teach us that we have too much food—viewed from the standpoint of the world market—and that the resulting lowering of prices make the production of food unprofitable.
Our Malthusians imagine,—and the chorus of bourgeois leaders thoughtlessly echo their fears,—that a Socialistic society upholding freedom of choice in love and maintaining an existence worthy of human beings for all its members, would foster rabbit-like propensities. They imagine that people, under such conditions, would indulge in an unbridled satisfaction of their lusts and in unlimited procreation of children. Rather the contrary is likely to be true. So far not the well-to-do classes have had the greatest number of children, but, on the contrary, the poorest classes. Indeed, we may say without exaggeration: the poorer the position of a proletarian stratum is, the more numerous is its blessing of children; occasional exceptions are, of course, conceded. This opinion is confirmed by Virchow, who wrote, in the middle of the last century; “as the English laborer in his deepest degradation, in the utmost emptiness of mind, knows only two sources of enjoyment, intoxication and cohabitation, so the population of Upper Silesia, until recent years, had concentrated all its desires and endeavors upon these two things. The enjoyment of liquor and the satisfaction of the sexual impulse had become the supreme factors of its existence, and so it can be easily explained that the population increased as rapidly in numbers, as it deteriorated physically and morally.”
Karl Marx expresses himself similarly in “Capital.” He says: “Not only the number of births and deaths, but the absolute size of the families also is in reverse ratio to the height of the wages, that is, to the means of subsistence at the disposal of the various categories of laborers. This law of capitalistic society would sound absurd among savages or even among civilized colonists. It reminds one of the enormous reproduction of species of animals that are individually weak and much hunted.” Marx furthermore quotes Laing, who says: “If the whole world lived in comfortable circumstances, the world would soon be depopulated.” So Laing holds the opposite view from Malthus. He maintains that an improved standard of living does not increase the number of births, but diminishes them. Herbert Spencer expresses a similar opinion thus: “always and everywhere perfection of the species and its procreative ability are opposed to one another. From this follows that the further development of man will probably lead to a decrease in procreation.” We see, then, that men, maintaining different standpoints on other subjects, are fully agreed on this one, and we fully concur with their conception.
[4.—Lack of Human Beings and Abundance of Food.]
The whole question of population might be disposed of by saying, that for a long time to come this fear of over-population is absurd, for we are confronted with an abundance of food that increases each year, so that we would be more justified in worrying over how to apply this wealth, than in worrying over whether it will suffice. The producers of food would even welcome a more rapid increase of consumers. But our Malthusians are indefatigable in raising objections, and so we must meet these objections, lest they assert that they cannot be answered. They claim that the danger of over-production in a not distant future lies in the “decrease of the productivity of the soil.” Our cultivated soil, they claim, is becoming “weary of yields,” an increase in crops could no longer be expected, and since fresh soil that still might be cultivated is becoming rarer, the danger of a scarcity of food, if the population continues to increase, is imminent. In the chapters on agriculture we have, so we believe, already proved irrefutably of what enormous progress mankind is still capable in the matter of obtaining new masses of nourishment, judging even by the present state of agricultural science. Nevertheless we will add some further illustrations. A very capable large land-owner and an economist of recognized worth, who, therefore, far surpassed Malthus in both respects, as early as 1850, at a time when agricultural chemistry was in its beginnings,—expressed the following: “The productivity of raw products, especially of food, will in future not lag behind the productivity in manufacture and transportation. In our days agricultural chemistry is just beginning to open up vistas to agriculture that may lead to some errors, but that will ultimately place the production of food into the power of society, just as society has the power to-day of furnishing any desired quantity of cloth, provided that there is a sufficient supply of work.”[279]
Justus v. Liebig, the founder of agricultural chemistry, holds the opinion that “if there is sufficient human labor power and sufficient manure, the soil is inexhaustible and continually yields the richest crops.”
The “law of decrease of the productivity of the soil” is a notion of Malthus that could be accepted at a time when agriculture was very undeveloped, but it has long since been refuted by science and experience. The yield of a field is in direct ratio to the amount of human labor power (including science and technic) expended on it, and to the amount of proper fertilizers applied to it. If the small peasantry of France have been able to more than quadruple the yields of their soil during the last 90 years, while the population has not even doubled, what results may be expected from a Socialistic society! Our Malthusians overlook, furthermore, that under present day conditions not only our own soil must be taken into consideration, but the soil of the entire earth, including countries whose fertility is twenty and thirty times as great as that of our fields of the same size. The earth is largely occupied by man, but with the exception of a very small fraction, it is nowhere cultivated and utilized as it might be. Not only Great Britain could produce far more food than it is producing at present, but also France, Germany and Austria, and the other European countries might do so to a still greater extent. In little Wurtemberg alone, with its 879,970 hectares of grain soil, by application of the steam plough, the average crop might be increased from 6,140,000 cwts. to 9,000,000 cwt. European Russia, measured by the present standard of the population of Germany, might feed a population of 475 million instead of its present 100 million. At present European Russia has about 19.4 inhabitants to the square kilometer; Saxony has over 300. The objection that Russia has vast stretches of land that cannot be rendered more fertile owing to their climate, is true. But it is equally true that other stretches of land in the southern part of Russia have a climate and a fertility that Germany cannot come up to. Moreover, the greater density of the population, and the increased cultivation of the soil, will cause changes in the climate that cannot be estimated to-day. Wherever men aggregate in masses climatic changes result. We do not pay sufficient attention to these phenomena. Moreover, we cannot observe them to their full extent, because we have no occasion to do so and because, as matters are at present, it is impossible to undertake experiments on a large scale. Thus Sweden and Norway, who are both sparsely populated, with their immense forests and inexhaustible wealth of metals, their numerous streams and their sea-coasts, might become a rich source of nourishment to a dense population. Under existing conditions it is impossible to obtain the proper means and appliances to disclose the wealth of these countries, and so even a part of the sparse population emigrates.
What has been said of the north, applies to a still greater extent to the south of Europe, to Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Danubian Provinces, Hungary, Turkey, etc. A delightful climate, a soil so rich and fertile as it can hardly be found in the best regions of the United States, will some day provide an abundance of food for unnumbered masses of the population. The rotten social and political conditions of these countries cause hundreds of thousands of persons to leave Europe and cross the ocean instead of remaining in their native lands or settling down in much nearer and more conveniently located places. As soon as rational social and political institutions have been established, fresh millions of people will be needed to place those wide and fertile countries on a higher level of civilization.