Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Happy 25 millionth! People are precious – and not the problem.

By Barry York - posted Wednesday, 15 August 2018


Among the guests was Tim Flannery, whom I had known very briefly at Melbourne's La Trobe University in the mid-1970s. Tim told me, with characteristic earnestness and enthusiasm, that Australia's optimum population was seven million. By optimum, I think he meant what 'the natural environment' could 'sustain', without being changed for the worse.

I politely told him that he needed to consider what kind of society Australia was when the population was seven million, which was in 1947. With a population of approximately 17 million, as it was in the early 1990s when we talked, Australian society was a much better place, especially for women, than it was in 1947.

I also pointed out to him that Canberra, where I had settled, was now a very lush green place with tree-covered hills and a rapidly growing population of almost 250,000, yet in the early 1900s, when the population was barely a thousand, the landscape had been mostly denuded of trees.

Advertisement

What kind of times are these, when/To talk about trees is almost a crime/Because it implies /silence about so many/horrors? Brecht, To those who follow in our wake, 1939

Reactionaries adhere to an essentially Malthusian view that says resource development and food supply cannot possibly keep up with population growth. Malthus wrote that, 'The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation'. (An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798, Chapter VII) This has been proven wrong – thanks to human ingenuity, democratic politics, science and technology. While population has increased to 7 billion, world hunger has declined greatly over the past few decades, as this data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation shows.

The Greens and some trade union bosses also tow an anti-population-growth line. The Greens want only 'sustainable' population growth, which logically must mean no population growth as more people will always strain existing infrastructure and require more physical space (which involves destruction of some 'natural environment'). The union bosses warn against competition from foreign workers who, they say, will undercut local wages and conditions. Yet this happens when such workers are only allowed to work in Australia on restrictive temporary visae rather than on the same basis as everyone else.

The left has never fallen for such views. When it comes to 'foreign workers', we understand that there's no such thing: the working class is a class not a nationality.

Marx appropriately said of Malthus' population theory, which blamed the poor for their poverty, that he was 'a shameless sycophant of the ruling classes'.

Utter baseness is a distinctive trait of Malthus - a baseness which can only he indulged in by a parson who sees human suffering as the punishment for sin and who, in any ease, needs a "vale of tears on earth", but who, at the same time, in view of the living he draws and aided by the dogma of predestination, finds it altogether advantageous to "sweeten" their sojourn in the vale of tears for the ruling classes'. Marx, Chapter 9, Theories of surplus value, 1861-63

Advertisement

A final note: this year marks the 50th anniversary of Paul Ehrlich's bizarre book, 'The population bomb'. I read it back then and it made me quite worried about the future.

In 1970, in a magazine wrongly titled 'The Progressive', he argued that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the "Great Die-Off." Fifty years ago, this was extremist stuff, more on the periphery (although 'newsworthy'). Now it is thoroughly mainstream: a reflection of ongoing and deepening crisis.

In the 50 years since the first edition of his 'Bomb', the opposite has happened on most measures, from longer life expectancy through to greater education opportunities and women's rights, better health and greater prosperity across the globe (with a few exceptions). Check out this excellent article from The Guardian for more evidence of just how wrong Ehrlich was and is.

And in that time, world population has doubled from 3.8 billion to more than 7 billion.

Lenin's words, from 'Capitalism and Workers' Immigration' are still relevant:

Capitalism has given rise to a special form of migration of nations. The rapidly developing industrial countries, introducing machinery on a large scale and ousting the backward countries from the world market, raise wages at home above the average rate and thus attract workers from the backward countries.

Hundreds of thousands of workers thus wander hundreds and thousands of versts. [A verst is a Russian measurement equal to about 1.1 kilometres]. Advanced capitalism drags them forcibly into its orbit, tears them out of the backwoods in which they live, makes them participants in the world-historical movement and brings them face to face with the powerful, united, international class of factory owners.

There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations…

The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited. All the gang of those who rule us/Hope our quarrels never stop/Helping them to split and fool us/So they can remain on top. Brecht Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries'. enlightening them that the problem is not development, but ownership.– Lenin, 'Capitalism and Workers' Immigration' 1913

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. All

This piece was first published on C21st Left.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

21 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Barry York is an historian and writer who blogs at C21st Left. He rejects the current pseudo-left and regards himself as a leftist influenced by Marxism.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Barry York

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 21 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy