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Fertility is falling. Populations are shrinking. Is capitalism to blame?
July 29, 2024
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Awareness of falling fertility and demographic collapse is growing, even among the chattering class. What is the cause? Economics is certainly a factor, but the root cause is humanity’s crisis of confidence stemming from secularism, “a way of life and thinking that rejects religion.”
Is capitalism a factor?
Anti-capitalism is all the rage these days. During the Cold War the Capitalism vs. Communism paradigm defined a bipolar world order. What we once called the “free West” touted capitalism as the holy grail for a better life.
Communists, aka leftists, woksters, PC types, etc. despise capitalism, though they have no problem living well from it. Doesn’t matter. Their philosophical godfather, 19th century family-forsaker Karl Marx, called capitalism evil. Case closed.
America’s economy is a globalist capitalist/socialist hybrid. Looming problems will metastasize after the November elections. Leftists will blame it on capitalism.
What is capitalism?
The International Monetary Fund says:
Capitalism is often thought of as an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society. The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit.
The IMF is wrong saying that private actors function “in a way that can serve the best interests of society.” Maybe once upon a time. In today’s dog-eat-dog zeitgeist, these actors – technically “private” though heavily subsidized public companies — outsource good jobs and promote cheap labour immigration. This is harmful to society, though it benefits shareholders, especially corporate brass. The consequences of laying off millions and importing millions are on the taxpayer’s tab. Capitalism?
The better question: How does capitalism affect fertility and family life? What is the demographic impact?
Some months ago Philip Pilkington, an Irish macro-economist, posted a brilliant exposition on just that in American Affairs Journal: “Capitalism’s Overlooked Contradiction: Wealth and Demographic Decline.”
Left to its own devices, capitalism’s categorical imperative of work and consumption is, in the end, at odds with its structural needs, as it discourages family formation and thus stymies the capitalist economy’s ability to grow. This is the core contradiction of capitalism—much more profound than anything Marx imagined.
[T]he grim truth [is] that the relationship between capitalism and population is in fact a self-destructive one.
Yes, that’s today’s predatory capitalism where the deck is stacked against the American family and the middle class. It certainly “discourages family formation.”
When making ends meet is tough, folks cannot afford as many children as they desire, thus will be fewer future workers. That drives up labour costs, leading to inflation. Soon enough you have an ageing society where “the number of mouths to feed outstrips the number of cooks in the kitchen.”
In such a society, intergenerational conflict seems all but inevitable. Younger people will see their real wages stagnate in the face of inflation, while asset markets will be dominated by the elderly, who will have accumulated more savings. The cause of the problem will be obvious to all, but there will be no equitable solution that benefits both sides of the generation gap. In societies faced with such zero-sum games, social bonds fray and strife becomesinevitable—in this case, we should expect intergenerational conflict as children turn on their parents.
That is absolutely apocalyptic. Further:
Capitalism may help lift people out of poverty initially, perhaps even allow them to have more children, but this trend is short-lived… Simply put, unless a country has an unusually large, fertile traditionalist religious community, it is highly unlikely that its demographics will remain intact once it achieves a per capita income of $36,000.
The quick fix: immigration
Globalists have a (short term) solution: immigration. In 1990, immigrants were 6.2 percent of America’s population. By 2020, official (questionable) estimates were 13.7 percent. That’s 44 million folks. But immigration is not staving off an ageing society. In 1990, America’s average age was 32.9 years. By 2020 it was 38.6. When immigrants move from poor to rich countries, their fertility declines. Capitalism?
In order for wealthy countries to attract enough immigrants to counteract their demographic decline, poor countries must remain poor so that they can serve as breeding grounds for the developed economies’ labour forces. In an echo of historic systems of colonial resource extraction, it is almost as if poorer countries are not being allowed to develop so that they can continue to export human capital to the developed world—what commentators from these poorer countries mean when they talk about “brain drain.”
Pilkington calls this cheap labour immigration “biological imperialism.” In the throes of Enlightenment hubris we’re not supposed to mention biology. Insinuating that Mother Nature prevails flies in the face of egalitarian Economic Man ideology.
Another observation:
Unless the negative relationship between the accumulation of wealth and the decline in fertility rates is somehow broken, capitalism will ultimately undermine itself. It is only a question of when.
Trashing capitalism per se draws no fire from the chattering class. But capitalism, when governed by morality and consideration of the public good, has tremendously benefitted people throughout the world. We’ve had capitalism without running up government debt to unsustainable levels. We’ve had capitalism where Henry Ford started a pro-family corporate initiative that brought a living wage to auto workers and kick-started the American middle class. We’ve had capitalism where the dominant reserve currency was not weaponized by warmongers. We’ve had capitalism when family, country, hearth and home were prized and not valued solely for their economic utility. We’ve had capitalism when Christian values permeated society.
My purpose here is not to defend capitalism, of which there are many varieties. Today the US is in the vice grip of post industrial finance capitalism, where more wealth is generated from investments, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, stocks, bonds, and derivatives, etc. than from production.
The rise of post-industrial capitalism
Production? That’s the basis of industrial capitalism. But the US has been deindustrialized – by globalist finance capitalism. The manufacturing sector has been gutted by outsourcing while wages have stagnated from cheap labour immigration. Economist Michael Hudson:
Today, the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector has regained control of government, creating neo-rentier economies. The aim of this post-industrial finance capitalism is the opposite of industrial capitalism as known to nineteenth-century economists: it seeks wealth primarily through the extraction of economic rent, not industrial capital formation… Labor is increasingly exploited by bank debt, student debt, and credit card debt while housing and other prices are inflated on credit, leaving less income to spend on goods and services as economies suffer debt deflation.
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and their ilk were pro-family industrial capitalists with a social conscience. Aside from PC claptrap about “climate change,” post-industrial finance capitalism, aka globalism, cares naught about people, families, cultures or countries. It is a nefarious melding of state and corporate interests that is the enemy of family, folk and faith wherever it goes. This managerial “New Industrial State” (per John Kenneth Galbraith) steamrolls the will of the people regardless of election results or the public good.
There is, however, a silver lining:
[T]he largest religious groups in the American population—Protestant, Catholic, “Nones,” andAtheist/Agnostic—have a combined fertility slightly below replacement rate. On the other hand, “believing” religious groups who adhere to traditional ways of living have birth rates far above replacement, including traditionalist Catholics (3.6), Orthodox Jews (3.3), Mormons (2.8), and Muslims (2.8), not to mention voluntarily isolating sects like the Amish [6.7]. This suggests that the current tendency for American culture to secularize will not last forever; at a certain point, groups with a more robust capacity to reproduce will replace groups with less robust capacities in a simple Darwinian manner. Currently, these groups represent a very small fraction of the American population, but because human reproduction follows a multiplicative path these groups could grow rapidly in numbers, especially as the other groups decline.
Pilkington nails it there. This will ultimately steer society in a pronatalist direction, regardless of the economic system. Never forget that change happens. There are trends and there are sub-trends. The transition to a pro-family ethos is already underway.
Should we send Adam Smith to the doghouse? Tell us in the comments below.
Louis T. March has a background in government, business, and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author, and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Image credit: Bigstock
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Kenneth Ndehi commented 2024-08-03 07:20:41 +1000https://today.ucsd.edu/story/the-trump-baby-bump-among-republicans-after-the-2016-election?/pressrelease/the-trump-baby-bump-among-republicans-after-the-2016-election The study reported here attributes fertility to optimism about the future. When Trump was elected in 2016, republican counties experienced a small baby boom while democrat counties had a baby slump.
Let us bear in mind that before capitalism, parents raised the human resources for the family business. This made larger families more prosperous than smaller ones. With capitalism, parents raise kids for the market. Raising kids in a capitalist economy is a public service and should be rewarded to sustain the same capitalism. -
Susan Rohrbach commented 2024-07-30 19:45:44 +1000The error in thinking the pronatalist replacement rate will save us lies in the more than equal and opposite force of the frankentube new world, accelerating the production of creatures of the state as we speak.
Doubling down on this phenom is the doubly artificial production of creatures of the state via SSM adoption. In other words, if natural parents don’t toe the big gov line, they risk impoundment of their children into the “foster” clutches of Adam and Steve, to be raised as LGBT Marxists instead. -
mrscracker commented 2024-07-30 00:27:42 +1000Fertility rates amongst the faith groups mentioned don’t really correspond to the prevailing economic conditions. The Hasidic Jews & Anabaptists have their own networking economies. Some traditional Catholics network a bit but not to the same degree.
I think we could learn something from that. -
Steven Meyer commented 2024-07-29 17:54:33 +1000Wow, for once I’m in broad agreement with Louis T March.
Yes, contemporary capitalism is predatory. Yes it’s probably a factor in demographic decline. Probably not the only factor but almost certainly a factor.
Where March is wrong is harking back to some sort of golden age of capitalism guide by “ethics.” Never mind Marx,
Never mind Marx. Read Leo XIII encyclical, Rerum Novarum, published in 1891.
You can find it here:
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html
After going to great lengths to explain why he thinks “socialism” as he defines is a bad idea he lets rip on the capitalism of his era.
3. In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.
[..]
After a long screed in favour of private property and against state interference and the role of the church in looking after the poor we find the following:
32. By the State we here understand, not the particular form of government prevailing in this or that nation, but the State as rightly apprehended; that is to say, any government conformable in its institutions to right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the divine wisdom which we have expounded in the encyclical On the Christian Constitution of the State.(26) The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now a State chiefly prospers and thrives through moral rule, well-regulated family life, respect for religion and justice, the moderation and fair imposing of public taxes, the progress of the arts and of trade, the abundant yield of the land-through everything, in fact, which makes the citizens better and happier. Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference – since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them.
33. There is another and deeper consideration which must not be lost sight of. As regards the State, the interests of all, whether high or low, are equal. The members of the working classes are citizens by nature and by the same right as the rich; they are real parts, living the life which makes up, through the family, the body of the commonwealth; and it need hardly be said that they are in every city very largely in the majority. It would be irrational to neglect one portion of the citizens and favor another, and therefore the public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes; otherwise, that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each man shall have his due. To cite the wise words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “As the part and the whole are in a certain sense identical, so that which belongs to the whole in a sense belongs to the part.”(27) Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice – with that justice which is called distributive – toward each and every class alike.
Note:
“And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them”
and
“the public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes; otherwise, that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each man shall have his due”
Each man shall have his due? Really? Isn’t that what today we call “socialism”?
Given the context of the times, the threat posed by communism – and I mean actual communism as was to be practised in the Soviet Union, not “communism” as the word is used today by the right – this is quite a remarkable document.
It boils down to this:
Socialism – ie communism – is bad.
But
It is the duty of the state to organise matters so that the working class is protected.
Pope Francis and others have drawn on and expanded the message of this encyclical.
Of course if you’re an American Christian ca 2024 you care more about an Olympic opening in bad taste than organising the state so that the poor get a fair share of the benefits of economic growth.
And you get demographic decline.
Welcome to the club of realists, Louis. -
