The Psychology of Socialism
Book 4: The Conflict Between Economic Necessities and the Aspirations of the
Socialists
Chapter 4: Economic Necessities and the Growth of Populations
Gustave Le Bon
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I. The present development of the population of the various nations and its causes:-Real complexity and apparent simplicity of social problems -The population problem-The advantages and disadvantages of an increasing population, according to the country in which such increase occurs-Psychological errors of the statisticians-The more largely populated nations are more dangerous on account of their industries and their commerce than on account of their cannon-Cause of the decrease in population of certain countries-Why this diminution tends to become general in all countries-The influence of comfort and foresight. 2. The consequences of the increase or decrease of the population in various countries:-The small part played by numbers in history ancient and modern-The sources of a country's strength are agriculture, industry, and commerce, not in the number of its soldiers--The dangers to France of an increased population-Why the excessive population of England and Germany is not inconvenient to those countries-The conditions which make emigration advantageous to a nation-The conditions under which it is harmful-The disasters produced in certain countries by the increase of population-The instance of India-The difficulties which the modern development of economics will presently create in too thickly populated nations-The small population of France will very soon be advantageous to her.
I. THE PRESENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE POPULATION OF THE VARIOUS NATIONS
AND ITS CAUSES.
SOCIAL phenomena are always deceptive; they always appear very simple, and are in reality of an excessive complexity. The remedies for all the ills eve setter seem to be extremely easy of application, but when we seek to apply them we immediately discover that the invisible
(267) necessities which hedge us round very narrowly limit the sphere of our action. The collective life of a people is formed of innumerable particles ; if we touch one of them the action set up is speedily communicated to all the the others. It is only by taking separately, one by one, all the little problems which go to make up the great social problem, that we come to comprehend the formidable complexity of the latter, and to see how chimerical are the remedies which simple-minded people are proposing every day.
We shall find fresh proof of the complexity of social problems if we examine a question which is more than others narrowly connected with the progress of Socialism. I mean the question of the relations which exist between the development of the population and the economic necessities which we see growing up every day.
I have tried in the last chapters to present two fundamental points : the first, that the industrial and economic evolution of the world is assuming a character which is entirely different from that it assumed in bygone centuries; the second, that peoples in possession of certain special aptitudes, which may in the past have been useless enough, must, when these aptitudes become applicable, rise to a high rank.
Now this economic evolution of the world, of which we now perceive but the dawning, has coincided with various circumstances which have in the greater number of the nations provoked a rapid increase of their population.
In the presence of modern economic necessities are we to say that this increase of population presents advantages or inconveniences ? The reply must vary according to the state of the peoples in whom the phenomenon is observed.
When a country possesses a great extent of territory
268) which is sparsely populated, such as Russia, the United States, or England with her colonies, the increase of her population presents evident advantages, or at least for a certain time. Is it the same with countries which are sufficiently populated, possess no colonies, or have no reason to send their inhabitants to those that they have, which are well off in the matter of agriculture, and very badly off in matters of industries and external commerce ? I think not ; on the contrary, it seems to me that such a country will do very wisely in not seeking to increase its population. Given the phase of economic evolution which I have described, such abstention is its only means of avoiding the deepest misery.
Such is not, as we know, the opinion of the statisticians. Having discovered that the population of most of the European countries is progressing very rapidly, while that of France remains stationary, and even tends to decrease, so that the births were 33 per thousand in 1800, 27 in 1840, 25 in 1880, and 20 in 1895, we find them filling the journals with their lamentations, and complaining no less at the meetings of the learned societies. The State --always the State-must, according to them, intervene at once. There are no extravagant measures-such as a tax on all celibates and bounties to the fathers of large families-that they will not propose, to remedy what they regard as a disaster, and what we should-being given the present state of our country-consider as a blessing, and in any case as a necessity resulting from causes beside which all the measures proposed are patently puerile and ineffective.
For the rest, the only inconvenience that the statisticians have been able to discover in this stationary condition of our population is that the Germans having far more children, will very soon have more conscripts, and will then be able to invade France with ease. Even if
(269) we consider the matter only from this restricted point of view, we need not hesitate to say that the danger which is supposed to be hanging over our heads is slight enough. The Germans threaten us far more with their industries and their commerce than with their rifles, and we must not forget that on the day when they shall be sufficiently numerous to make a successful attempt at invasion, they will be threatened in their turn by the 130,000,000 of Russia at their backs, since the statisticians admit by hypothesis that the most numerous peoples must invade the less numerous.
It is very probable that by the time the Germans are able to gather together such multitudes as will enable them to invade a nation whose warlike aptitudes history will not allow us to miscalculate, Europe will have recovered from the illusion that the strength of armies depends on their numbers. Experience will by then have proved, conformably with the judicious predictions of the German general, Von der Goltz, that the hordes of half-disciplined men, without real military education, and without any possible power of resistance, of which the armies of to-day are composed, will be quickly destroyed by a small army of veteran professional soldiers, as of old the millions of Xerxes and Darius were annihilated by a handful of Greeks, disciplined and inured to all exercises and all fatigues.
When we examine the causes of this progressive diminution of our population we see that it is partly the consequence, almost universal in all ages, of the increased sense of prudence which is born of comfort. Only those that have possessions think of preserving them, and of assuring resources to their descendants, whose number they intentionally limit.
To this determining cause, the effects of which have been observed at every period, and notably at the apogee
270) of the Roman civilisation, we must add causes that ,are special to the present day, of which the chief ones are the evolution of industry, which, on account of the perfection of machinery, is reducing the number of utilisable workers, and the absence of the colonising spirit, which restricts the extent of our outlets, and would leave us overburdened by a surplus of population.
These data are not particular to France, but are to be observed in countries inhabited by very different races. The United States may assuredly be ranked with the most prosperous of countries, and yet the statisticians, not without stupefaction, have observed in them the same decreasing increase of population as they deplore in France. The present birth-rate for the States is 26 per thousand, hardly higher than ours. In ten counties of the States it is even lower than our own, since it varies from 16 to 22 per thousand. There one can blame neither the obligatory military service, which does not exist; nor the sale of alcohol, which is interdicted ; nor the law, for the testator enjoys the completest liberty ; that is to say, the father has only to restrict the number of his children in order to avoid the too great division of his fortune.
A similar depression of the birth-rate is to be observed in Australia, where it has fallen from 40 per thousand to 20 in the last twenty years. All these facts clearly demonstrate the weakness of the arguments of the statisticians in explaining what they call the danger of our depopulation.
The same decreasing increase of population is to be seen almost everywhere, even in countries where the birthrate has been momentarily highest.
In Germany the birth rate was 42 in 1875, and had fallen to 36 twenty years later. In England it fell from 36 to 29 in the same time. These losses are greater than those of France, since in the latter country the rate has only fallen from 26 to 23 in the same time. The two
(271) nations are thus gradually losing their advance of us, and they will very probably end by losing it altogether.
2. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE INCREASE OR DECREASE OF THE POPULATION IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES.
We see by the preceding that an abatement in the increase of the population is tending to manifest itself in all countries, and that our rivals will not in the future threaten us by the mere fact of their numbers.
Let us suppose, however, that they will not lose their present advantage over us, and consider- whether the increase of their population may prove to be a serious danger for us.
It would certainly appear, to hear the lamentations of the statisticians, whom the Economiste francais justly qualifies as " harebrained," and whose minds, in truth, seem singularly limited, that the superiority of a nation is made by its numbers. Now a rapid bird's-eye view of history will show us, for example, in the persons of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, that numbers played a very small part in ancient times. Must it be repeated that it was with 100,000 well-trained men that the Greeks triumphed over the 3,000,000 of Xerxes, and that the Romans never had more than 400,000 soldiers scattered over an empire which, from the Ocean to the Euphrates, was 3,000 miles long and 1,500 broad ?
And without referring to these remote epochs, can we say that number has played any larger a part in modern times than it did in antiquity ? Nothing authorises us to think so. Without speaking of the Chinese, who do not, despite their 400 millions of men, seem to be very formidable front a military point of view, we know that the English are able to keep 250 millions of Hindoos under the yoke with an army of 65,000 men, and that Holland
(272) rules her 40 millions of Asiatic subjects with a far smaller army. Does Germany consider herself to be seriously threatened because she has at her doors an immense civilised empire with a population three times greater than her own ?
Let us leave these puerile fears aside, then, and remember that what does in reality menace us is not the number of our rivals, but their industrial and commercial capacity and enterprise. The three real sources of national strength are agriculture, industry, and commerce ; not armies.
It is, happily, not to be supposed that all the lamentations of the statisticians have resulted in increasing by a single individual the number of the inhabitants of our country. Let its congratulate ourselves on the complete futility of their discourses. For suppose that an offended Deity wished to heap upon France the most horrible of calamities, of what would He make His choice ? War, plague, or cholera? None of these, for these are but ephemeral ills. He would only have to double the figure of our population. This, given the present economic conditions of the world, arid the needs and psychology of the French people, would be an irremediable disaster. After a brief delay we should witness bloody revolution, hopeless misery, the assured triumph of Socialism, followed by permanent unending wars and no less incessant invasions.
But why has not the excess of population such inconvenience in other countries, such as England and Germany ? Simply, on the one hand, because these countries possess colonies into which their surplus population is poured ; and, on the other hand, because emigration, so completely antipathetic to the French, is "with them regarded as a highly desirable thing, even when it does not constitute an absolute necessity.
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It is the taste for emigration, and the possibility of satisfying it, that allows a nation to increase the figure of its population to any considerable extent. A consequence at first of excessive population, the tendency to emigrate becomes a cause in its turn, and contributes yet more to increase this excess. The celebrated explorer Stanley has presented this point very well in a letter recently published by a journal in reply to a question which had been addressed to him. He called attention to the fact that emigration begins only when the population begins to exceed a certain number to the square mile. Great Britain had 130 inhabitants to the square mile in 18oi ; as soon as this figure rose to 224, which was in 1841, a movement of emigration began which rapidly increased. When the population of Germany attained the same density of 224 to the square mile, she in turn was obliged to look about for colonies.[1] Italy, on account of the extreme sobriety of her inhabitants, was able to wait a little longer, but when finally her population reached the figure of 253 to the square mile, she, too, had to submit to the common law, and seek for outlets. She has succeeded but ill in the attempt (always so difficult to the Latin races), and has expended £8,000,000 in Africa, only to end in humiliating defeat. But on pain of inevitable ruin, towards which she is rapidly marching, she will have to recommence her attempts. The real danger that menaces Italy, and threatens her with approaching revolution and Socialism, is that she is far too densely populated ; with her, as everywhere, misery has been too fruitful.[2]
France, says Stanley, is far less densely populated, and
(274) has no need of emigration, and it is deplorable that she should spend the strength of her young men in Tonkin, Madagascar, and Dahomey--to which places no one ever emigrates, save some very expensive officials; above all when she has Algeria and Tunis at her doors, and yet is unable to populate them. These countries, indeed, have only 25 inhabitants to the square mile, and only a very small proportion of those are French.
Stanley is perfectly right, and has very clearly pointed out the very essence of the problem. His conclusions are analogous to those which were formerly indicated by one of leis compatriots, Malthus. The latter clearly demonstrated that there is a close relation between the population of a country and the means of subsistence, and that, when the equilibrium is deranged, famine, war, and all kinds of pestilence fall upon the overcrowded country, and so set up a mortality which promptly reestablishes the equilibrium.
The English have had occasion to verify the justice of this law. When, after numerous wars, and murderous ones for the vanquished, they had terminated the conquest of the great empire of India, and brought 250 millions of human beings under their laws, they made further struggles between the various sovereigns impossible, and established a profound peace throughout the Peninsula. The results were not long in showing themselves. The population increased in enormous proportions-at the rate of 33 millions in the last twenty years-and very soon was no longer in equilibrium with the means of subsistence. Being unable to reduce itself by means of wars, since these wars are forbidden, it tends to reduce itself, according to the old law of Malthus, by periodic famines, in which many millions of men die of hunger, and by epidemics almost as disastrous. The English, being unable to cope with the laws of Nature, look on
(275) with philosophy at these gigantic hecatombs, each of which destroys as many men as all the wars of Napoleon put together. As it is a question of Orientals, Europe remains indifferent to this spectacle. Yet it does at least merit her attention as a demonstration while waiting for that which Italy will furnish very soon. The statisticians might draw from it this lesson, that they are wrong in preaching the gospel of multiplication to certain nations, and that if their phrases were to have the result they look for, it would be to launch these nations on a path of disasters. The Socialists might learn another lesson from it, that which I enunciated at the beginning of this chapter, that under their apparent simplicity the social problems present a very great complexity, and that the measures by which we essay to remedy apparent ills have often remote consequences which are far more distressing than the ills they were intended to cure.
Can we suppose that with the forthcoming economic evolution which I have described the over-populated nations will in the future derive from their excess of population advantages that they are to-day at a loss to find ? It is, on the contrary, plain to see that this excess will be calamitous to them, and that in the future the happiest lot will be reserved to those countries which are more scantily populated; that is to say, those countries in which the population does not exceed the number of human beings that can be nourished on the produce of the country itself. We saw, in the chapter devoted to the economic struggle between East and West, that the greater number of the countries of Europe, on account of the exaggerated development of their population, are no longer able to nourish their inhabitants, and are reduced to sending to the East for their enormous annual alimentary deficit. This deficit they have hitherto paid for by means of merchandise manufactured expressly for
(276) the Orientals, but as these Orientals have begun to produce the same goods at a twentieth of the European cost of production, the commerce between the East and West is every day tending to decrease.
The nations which live only by their commerce and industry, not by their agriculture, will presently be the most seriously threatened. Those which, like France, are agriculturists, and produce nearly enough for the consumption of their inhabitants, and could, if the worst came to the worst, dispense with external commerce, will be in an infinitely better position, and will suffer far less from the crisis which is more and more threatening Europe, and which the triumph of the Socialists would quickly precipitate.
