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Saturday, March 21, 2026
Paul Ehrlich’s "population bomb" theories: the Marxist refutation
These two articles from The Militant provide a consistent Marxist critique of Paul Ehrlich's "population bomb" theories, framing them not as scientific inevitabilities but as ideological tools used by the capitalist class to shift blame for social crises away from the profit system.
Based on the articles, here is a summary of the core arguments used to refute Ehrlich's Malthusianism:
1. Productivity vs. Distribution
The Marxist perspective argues that hunger and resource scarcity are not caused by an absolute lack of food or space, but by the social relations of production. As noted in the Brian Williams article, Frederick Engels pointed out as early as 1844 that capitalism creates "poverty amidst plenty." The problem is not that there are too many babies, but that food is produced for profit rather than human need, leading to artificial scarcity and waste.
2. The "Food Explosion" vs. the "Population Explosion"
The articles highlight that Ehrlich's predictions of mass starvation in the 1970s and 80s failed because he ignored the "food explosion." Scientific and industrial advances—the application of labor and technology to land—have allowed food production to grow far faster than population. The articles argue that human labor is a source of wealth and innovation, not just a "mouth to feed."
3. Malthusianism as a Political Weapon
The Marxist critique views Ehrlich's "hysteria" as a way to justify:
* State Control and Coercion: The articles link population control theories to the history of forced sterilizations (noting that 33 U.S. states had eugenics boards) and the targeting of women in the semicolonial world (such as Puerto Rico).
* Austerity and Rationing: By claiming the planet has reached "carrying capacity," liberal pundits and "experts" provide a pretext for rationing healthcare, nutrition, and resources for the elderly and the working class.
4. Human Beings as the Solution, Not the Problem
While Ehrlich views humans as "cancerous" or a burden on nature, these articles emphasize the socialist view that human beings are the most precious form of capital. They argue that under a planned economy—one run by the working class—society could effectively combine labor power and science to provide for 8 billion or 10 billion people without destroying the environment.
5. Legacy of Joseph Hansen
The articles reference Joseph Hansen's 1960 pamphlet, Too Many Babies?, which was written specifically to combat the early waves of this hysteria. Hansen's work serves as the foundational Marxist text for The Militant, asserting that "overpopulation" is a myth designed to mask the failures of the capitalist system.
In short, these refutations characterize Ehrlich's work as Neo-Malthusianism: a pessimistic, anti-working-class ideology that seeks to "check" the population rather than overthrow the capitalist system that fails to support it.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
You have to learn what fascism is in order to fight it and win – The Militant
[F]ascism is not a way of organizing capitalism. Instead, it is a radical petty-bourgeois movement in the streets — the most horrible, malignant such movement in history. Banal, mediocre, figures — but ones adept at radical demagogy, nationalism, phrase-mongering, and organization — rise to leadership in these movements. Thugs rise among the cadres. The fascists ape much of the language of currents in the workers movement. “Nazi” was short for National Socialist German Workers Party.These movements never begin with broad ruling-class support. At first, the rulers in their majority alternately scorn and fear this rowdy “rabble”; only handfuls of capitalists back them at the outset. But as the bourgeoisie become convinced they confront an irresolvable social crisis, and as the working class puts up an increasingly serious challenge to capitalist rule itself, growing layers of the exploiters start supporting, or tolerating, the fascists in order to try to smash the workers and their organizations. That is the job the fascists are finally enlisted to do by the bourgeoisie when the threat to capitalist rule reaches a certain threshold.The fascists’ stock of “ideas,” encrusted with historical mystification, are borrowed from the sewers of the bourgeoisie’s own views, values, and attitudes. The things the capitalist rulers say privately among themselves, the subtle and not-so-subtle bigotry they promote, are taken up as the banners of a radical mass movement. The demagogues use these banners to mobilize and channel the energies of radicalized layers of the frightened, resentful, and ruined middle classes in bourgeois society.The fascists initially rail against “high finance” and the bankers, lacing their nationalist demagogy with anticapitalist rhetoric. When they come to power with support from weighty sectors of finance capital, however, the anticapitalist rhetoric slacks off quickly. That is what happened in Italy under Benito Mussolini in the early 1920s after il duce also became premier. That is what happened in Germany under Adolf Hitler a decade later after the führer also became chancellor. Once these new regimes set about reviving industry, building roads, and preparing for war, radical diatribes against capital went into rapid decline.SWP leader Joseph Hansen wrote quite a bit about the experience of the working class with fascist movements in this century. He pointed out that when a fascist movement conquers, its character rapidly changes. The new government demobilizes many of the most radical sectors on which the movement rose to power, bloodily suppressing some of its own cadres if need be, and begins functioning basically as a military-police dictatorship. In mid-1934, a year after he was appointed chancellor, for example, Hitler disbanded the Storm Troopers — the “Brownshirts” — that he had mobilized for more than a decade as the party’s radical, street-fighting squads against the workers movement. He summarily executed their chief, Ernst Röhm, and murdered dozens of other leaders of the Nazis’ longtime cadre.The regimes that come to power on the back of fascist movements are capitalist governments. It is misleading to talk about “a fascist regime” for that reason. It is not something historically different in class terms from a capitalist regime. Once fascist movements come to power, they use the state and forms of capitalist economic planning to bolster the strongest components of the bourgeoisie against smaller rival capitalists and against the toilers. Historically, these governments are short-lived. They become more and more bureaucratized, corrupt, and brittle. But a horrible logic is played out — a drive toward war, a monstrously brutal crushing and atomization of the labor movement, a drastic reduction in the value of labor power, crimes such as the scapegoating and extermination of the Jews in Germany and others that challenge language to describe. This is how a declining capitalism, in an unplanned and pragmatic manner, attempts to restabilize itself. …The workers vanguard must chart a course to mobilize and lead the working class and our allies to take power. Along the way, the labor movement will have to defend our organizations and those of other oppressed layers against fascist thuggery and murderous violence.
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