Re: Optimal Population?

A few words on this debate on population-control. The problem with this
debate is that far too many issues are confused here and that the debate is
far too general to be useful - could the world support 15 billion people in
2050 ? On the basis of the full use of 2050  technology it probably could.

Would that destroy the environment ? On the basis of 2000 technology maybe -
but also on the basis of the 2050-technology ?. Major caution is called for
here: for
we're on the brink of an enormous break-through in genetic engineering of
which the results are totally unclear. They may well equal, if not
overshadow, those of the industrial revolution itself.

Hence let us be careful with predictions for the future on the basis of now
available technology. Let us e.g. not forget the dire predictions of the
late 1960's that we would have run out of oil by 2000. So - the oil is
running out, sure: but it has n't run out yet - in fact, there's now rather
a surplus.

Is there sufficient food for 7 billion people now?  On a global level: yes
there is. The problem is obviously that the food is in the wrong place - the
US and the EU have surplus production which the Third World presently can't
buy. Globally there's therefore no population problem - there IS what
Amartya Sen would call an entitlement problem - the world's poor are simply
not entitled to the same share as the world's rich. And since they are not
entitled by the rich they therefore term the poor `surplus population'. (As
they have
always done - much of the `eugenic debates in 1900 England were about the
fear
that the growing mass of the surplus poor would swarm the rich.)

Albeit - it makes little sense to speak about the world on a  `global
level'. The
world is not `global': the world is divided in states - in the twenty-first
century more so rather than less so. Hence, it makes little sense to
approach population-pressure on a global level.

On the Amazon-issue Jim Blaut is right  - over-population of the poor is
here not the prime cause of the destruction of the rainforest. The worst
period here were the 1980's when whole areas as large as US-states had been
given as concessions to multinational logging-companies and (although the
Brazilian state has meanwhile imposed a ban on the export of tropical wood)
illegal logging is still going on.

The big problem along the Trans Amazon highway on the moment seems to be
wholesale clearing of the rainforest by lighting fires to make place for
cattle reared by big ranchers.

To mention an other part of the Amazon which is habitually forgotten - in
Suriname the state is in big financial difficulties because of accumulated
debts to foreign banks. And, to get some of that money together, the
Wijdenbos-government has been allotting large patches of the Suriname
rainforest to multinational logging-companies.

So, peasant-scatterers are undoubtedly a part of the problem but they are
not the main problem.

And Suriname is actually suffering from under-population rather than
over-population. This is one country were more people are leaving
the country than are being born. No matter what - the destruction of the
Suriname-rainforest is proceeding apace. That's doubly sad since Suriname's
rainforest is actually the most unspoiled part of the Amazon. If Gore was
really  serious about wanting to preserve the variety of species in the
rainforest - why could Suriname not be granted some small debt-relief in
return for protecting its rainforest? (It concerns tiny sums by
US-standards). Destruction of the rainforest in Suriname, Brasil, or,
indeed, Sumatra is absolutely caused by capitalism.

Does over-population and environmental destruction results from capitalism
then? Yes - directly in those case, yes - indirectly in some other cases.
E.g. one reason why families particularly in depressed rural parts of
India - like the state of Bihar - are so large is that the parents simply
need the labor power of children.

For - now, get this - in some parts of Bihar the main income for families is
child-work and families are dependent on remittances of laboring children in
the market towns as they are better paid than fully-grown adults (if these
have any employment at all.) You hence have to `produce' children to obtain
money, or starve - in Bihar choices are indeed as stark as that.

However, while this seems to be an archetypal case of capitalist
exploitation, the problem with ascribing this to `global capitalism' -
except in the most general sense - is that this child-labor is mostly used
in local industry, producing for purely local markets. Capitalism alright -
but very much local `lumpen' capitalism which is partly rapidly being
destroyed by `globalization.

Thus in the state of Tamil Nadu roughly 60.000 children were ten years ago
employed in manual fabrication of matches - these children were often the
only breadwinners for rural families. Yet tens of thousands of children have
now become `unemployed' (since India of course officially never condoned the
existence of this industry, so that children are not really officially
supposed to be employed) This is caused by the introduction of machine-made
matches, made according to Swedish patents. Here global capitalism is
probably diminishing the incentive to have large families. If children lose
their incomes families are likely to have less children, since they simply
can't support any on the starvation-wages they get.

Does over-population and environmental destruction result from capitalism
then?


Yes - in some cases: no: it doesn't in other cases - unless we define the
concept so broadly that it loses any practical meaning.

For example: The most densely populated area in the world nowadays is no
longer Monaco or Hongkong but the Ghaza-strip - if anybody can me tell how
an enclave of a few dozen miles in the middle of Israel with 200.000
inhabitants located on a strip of desert can ever have a viable economy - no
matter what `socialist' or `capitalist' constitution the PLO adopts - please
tell me so.

However - if that weren't bad enough in itself the basic problem in the
Ghaza strip is the catastrophic population-growth of 8-10% - that means the
economy of the Ghaza-strip has to grow an impossible 10% every year just to
stand still. Imagine the intractable environmental problems you're going to
have in addition pressing that many people into an infertile desert.

Now, the population of the Ghaza strip has been exploding ever since the
beginning of the intifaddah - And the main reason was many Palestinian women
wanted to have a big family, since every new child is a potential combatant
in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. So - the women argue - they have
to sacrifice themselves by continuous pregnancy for the greater cause ...

So - in this case population has been exploding and causing intractable
environmental and economic problems to further a cause all of us would deem
most noble and most anti-capitalist ...

No - it doesn't in other cases too.  Some Arab states (Iraq, Syria) have
been trying to prevent birth-control by contraceptives since every newly
born child is another potential soldier in the struggle against `Zionism and
US-imperialism'. That's a cause many on this list would sympathize with I
guess - and I'm sorry but it stretches my imagination to define Saddam
Hussein as `a scion of US-capitalism'.

Iran has for the same reason also been encouraging population growth so that
its population has exploded from (I believe) 30 million in 1970 to nearly 70
million today and needless to say the Islamic Republic is nowadays indeed
pondering on how to reconcile contraceptives and Islam since the fertile
territory of the Republic is not more a tenth of its territory. Teheran
again has been growing from - somewhat like 3 million - to (I recall) nearly
20 million in thirty years. With such an explosion of claims on scarce
land - you're going to have social problems. No matter what religion or
property law your state adopts. And environmental problems too: need I
point out that if the present rate of population growth in the Middle East
continues, the fertile crescent will very likely run out of its subterranean

water by 2020? That Iran will likely also run out of water by then ?

Can these problems be solved by socialism?

On a national level in some countries maybe yes - many South American
countries still have plenty of space. The problem there is that
population-pressure is above all pressure of the poor on the scarce land
which is not monopolized by landlords . And in some (East and southern)
African countries there's also still much space left, the problem there is
above all one of
access to land. The big problem in many African countries is lacking or
decrepit infrastructure so that potential settlers have simply no place to
sell the products of their land.

Though I should note that this opening up of land is going to destroy much
of the African wild-life within the next thirty years. More land for people
means less land for elephants, lions, what have you ... So do `western
progressives' want to prevent  Africans from having more children to protect
the lemurs, the elephants or the zebra ? I don't know - I'll better leave
this thorny issue to other very wise and very principled people on this
list.

Albeit - it won't matter what these wise men/women think should be done -
except for a few special protected areas (in the Serengeti etc.) most of
Africa's wildlife will have disappeared in thirty years.

However - if Bangladesh was henceforth to become a people's republic and
would institute land-reforms or nationalize the few foreign industries it
has - would that really solve the problems of 200 million people pressed
together in a fertile area slightly larger than the Benelux - growing at 3%
yearly?

No matter what government it adopts Bangladesh is likely to remain one of
the world's poorest countries under these circumstances. I see no way
whatever government in power in Bangladesh could fail to pursue some policy
of birth control.

The problem here is that the poor in Bangladesh do not principally have many
children because they LIKE to have many children (although that certainly
does play a role since children are the only source of happiness in the
daily gloom of the life of `proletarians' in Bangladesh) but because they
need their labor-power as their old age pension. Hence - there's not going
to be
any successful population control without a system of social security.

As is abundantly proven by the historic evidence elsewhere. For the great
demographic transition (from large to small families) of the 1890's in
Europe almost exactly coincided with the general adaptation of old-age
insurance, general education, pensions for widows and the beginning of
child-benefit by European states. If you want to control population - the
historical experience seems to tell us - introduce social security programs.
Birth control per se is not going to work. Albeit - that is a rather facile
solution to propagate since many governments in the Third World simply do
not have the funds for that and they have to grasp to birth control programs
as the cheaper solution by default.

But - lest it be thought I'm once again uttering the inveterate reactionary
talk Mine accuses me of always uttering, I'm sure a perfectly possible
global socialist constitution coupled with biogenetic research in the
interest of the whole of mankind COULD both solve the world's population and
the world's food problem. For within 20-40 years `we' (mankind) will
probably be able to engineer enough food for 30 billion people if not more.
And with construction on the molecular level we might indeed well get our
food from
replicators in 100 years from now. Indeed - by 2100 the main problem might
well be whether cybernetic neural intelligence is life just like biological
life, for by 2100 we will well be able to entirely mould biological life by
re-scripting its DNA, if you can program life like you program a computer,
the whole distinction between machine and biology will break down.

Get me right here: this is not Science Fiction - it is not an unrealistic
scenario at all.

But the problem on this list is often that people who claim to speak on
behalf of the future - (for that's of course the whole point of Austin e.a,
criticizing present capitalism on behalf of `a sustainable future') are
unable to think beyond ideas from the age of the steam engine. For after all
when Marx died the steam-engine was still the summit of technology. Yet is
it realistic to construct plans for the future on the basis of the
steam-engine?

So, if you want to criticize the present from the vantage point of some
utopia located in the future - as Wayne Austen e.a. think is the `realistic'
approach rather than advocating some feasible solution (I don't but it's
their choice). - Fine, so be it - but then start constructing your utopia
from the best possible foreseeable technology of the future rather than from
the steam engine.


Best wishes

R.J. Barendse