|
Edited on Mon Jun-16-08 03:48 AM by Hannah Bell
of the Distress Prevailing among the Laboring Classes of the British Isles & the Means of Remedying It, 1846: Wm Thomas Thornton, London, Longmans, 1846
Chapter 7:
"To cure overpopulation is to restore the proper proportion between the number of laborers & the fund for the renumeration of labor. Either the first must be diminished or the second must be augmented....we must also guard against a return of the disease. Population must if possible be prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence. This can only be done by restraining people from marrying before they to bear the expenses of a family...therefore, restrictions on the marriages of the poor are an indispensable part of the regimen to be observed."
The book was written more than 100 years ago, in England. In 1851 the population of England was about 17 million. Today, about 51 million. Yet this foundational text on overpopulation contains all the elements found in similar tomes ever since:
1. It's written by an upper-class twit.
2. Its focus is the poor.
3. The upper-class twit takes it for granted that his class unilaterally defines "the problem" & determines "the solution" for "the poor".
4. The upper-class twit takes it as his right to unilaterally impose restrictions on "the poor" - restrictions he wouldn't tolerate were the same attempted on him.
5. The basis for his assumption that he has the right to organize the lives of others is his class position. He is richer & holds more power. "The poor," in his eyes, aren't fully human; they are a lesser order, like children, or savages, that can be "done to" without consultation.
6. He never questions (or can't admit) the reason "the poor" aren't able to "bear the expense of a family" as he deems fit: his class has the monopoly of power, owns most productive assets, & doles out just enough to keep "the poor" at subsistence.
According to him, there is a limited pool of resources, a limited "fund for renumeration" of "the poor". They must therefore control their numbers. It's not suggested that the writer's class control its numbers (even though wealthy families at the time were quite large). Because, of course, they have the resources to provide for their children; the fund for their "renumeration" is appaently limitless.
There's a long, long list of such books & essays on overpopulation, from 1846 to the present. "The poor" change identities as time passes: the English laboring classes, the Irish, Negroes, Indians (of both types), immigrants generally, 3rd-world peasants.
But it's always an upper-class twit (or someone who identifies with the twits)speaking, & always a poor person being spoken about. The speaker almost always has more possessions & power than the person he labels a "problem" & wishes to control.
The upper-class twits speak of "educating & empowering 3rd-world women" in dulcet tones: they never speak of raising wages for men - or women. Educate - for what, where there's 50% unemployment, & what employment there is pays a few dollars a day? Or where war & dispossession (fueled largely by 1st-world proxy wars for resources) is constant?
Their "education & empowerment of women," under such circumstances, = destroying traditional family & social structures & substituting NOTHING useful in their place. They're the modern version of the missionaries who were the shock troops in the US, africa, latin america - destroying culture & replacing it with self-hatred, fairy tales & cargo cults.
And many of the NGOs & think tanks pushing this line know this; turning families into monadal "individuals" is precisely their aim: people who've been taught to emulate the powerful & despise their own culture & peers are easier to control & coerce.
According to the twits, there has never been enough for the poor, there have always been too many of them, & it's always been their outrageous overbreeding that creates resource shortage. "If only they'd have fewer children," say the twits, "they'd have more."
This is, of course, a bald-faced lie. The reverse is historically true; if they had more, if they lived in a more equal society, they'd have fewer children.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
