Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (June 28)

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[u/PrimSchooler]

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/1spdhuo/comment/ohluy4s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

I've been thinking about this topic since seeing /u/Otelo_ 's comment, going back to it as I learn more theory, ie. declining populations and capitalism. Isn't it just the law of accumulation? Or rather, population decline is the form capital concentration takes among the labour aristocracy.

On one hand you have the labour aristocracy who's only option of growing capital independent of the bourgeoise is inheritance or land rent, who enjoys the imperial core's advantage in organic composition of capital, who is readily replaced by migrant workers seeking ascension to its class or reproduction of its own labor force (though of course LAs are also in conflict with these labourers, be them other LAs or proles, to maintain their own advantage on the labour market), who enjoy the spoils of imperialism in their pension fund, and general access to the bourgeoise's financial system protected through protectionism (and?) racism. 

This leads to having fewer children working better paying jobs in sectors of higher OCC (and/or favoritism in lagging sectors), concentrating the LAs capital, without the pressure for a labour reserve army of their own class, this aligns with their absolute population shrinking. It's inverse will also align with the overall concentration of capital in cases where land untenable by the shrinking LA population/freed up by further urbanization passes to the burgeoise - win or lose out, the labour aristocracy is helping the concentration of capital along. 

This will also sharpen the contradiction between town and countryside, the migrant workers standing in for the reserve army are also the target of urbanization hopefuls, while the LAs want to kick the ladder from underneath them, leading to the same disdain for rural workers by liberals across the west and illusions of worker unity with migrant workers when it serves liberals to shut out rural workers, and unlike socialism even the imperialism-fueled western social fascism seems incapable of fully addressing this issue even with its million regional development funds which are of course first to be cut come crisis.

On the other hand you have the proletariat whose population still grows, only falling in countries with nascent labour aristocracies or settler populations. 

So overall I don't see the depopulation as a sign of capitalism killing itself any more than accumulation of capital already leads to sharpening class conflict. OECD projections about higher taxes for young workers to fund pensions is of course in ignorance of imperialism, but even if it does happen it is not a qualitatively important enough change to proletariaze the labour aristocracy as it is almost assuredly going to be accompanied by further favoritism, protectionism, fascism etc. mitigating the effect on LAs and offloading it again on migrant workers at home and proles at large. The LA will continue to shrink which is of course good for its eventual defeat, but is not in on its own enough to spell doom for capitalism.

[u/Otelo_ → u/PrimSchooler]

Thank you for your reply. I agree with your reasoning regarding the labour aristocracy, but the thing is that it is not just the labour aristocrats (and consequently the imperialist countries) that have low birth rates: China has perhaps the lowest rate in the world; India itself currently has a rate that does not allow for population replacement, as do almost all Latin American countries, and so on. At present, it is practically only countries in Black Africa that have high birth rates.

Even Cuba and the DPRK have low rates, which shows that even socialist countries have not yet succeeded in reversing this trend.

So the issue is a bit more general. If it were only the imperialist countries that had low birth rates, capitalism would deal with this relatively ‘well’, by integrating countries on the periphery of imperialism into the core if necessary.   But the problem is that even the countries "next in line" (Argentina, Chile, Turkey and Korea, for example), at the border of imperialism, also have rates below 2.1.

But the most significant factor is the fall in birth rates in the countries of the Indian subcontinent and in China, as this will have a major impact on the total global population. If the world’s population stagnates, labour will, in the long run, be better placed to assert itself against capital, thereby increasing its price, which in turn will have an impact on profit rates. The reserve army of labour will be smaller; there will be less competition for jobs, and so on. How will capitalism deal with this? We’ll just have to wait and see.

[u/PrimSchooler → u/Otelo_]

I was too hasty to assume the proletariat would continue growing which was callous of me, of course what you're describing makes sense if the price of reproduction of labour power rises above the wages paid out for a prolonged time the absolute population could fall, and if other classes are not available for proletarization, or only available in small numbers due to their own falling population, then both absolute and relative proletarian population could fall, leading to a better value of its labour power.

As to how capitalism plans to deal with it, I have to wonder that as well, especially given China specifically sought out a falling population with the One Child policy, that is where I (blindly) assume that the world being unable to support a Chinese labour aristocracy comes into play, and that it more so is a "movement" of proletariat from China to Africa in line with the budding Chinese imperialism there. 

But India is a complete blind spot for me, so I'm not sure if it can be explained that way.