funny you picked just that moment to bail several years ago. my "nastiness" had never deterred you from responding prior to that exchange.

nevertheless, i cheerfully withdraw my insult with my apologies. it seems to me you have at least read something in the intervening years. actually, most honest marxists nowadays no longer accept marx's surplus labor population theory without qualification, as we no longer live in a world of unregulated capitalism, but for 19th century manchester, etc., the problem was obviously the direct result of arbitrary wage-setting, coupled with the catholic church's (most of the workers were catholics) complete opposition to family planning of any kind. whether you consider it a "cause" or a "symptom" is ultimately semantics. if cheap workers aren't invited to manchester by robber barons, manchester won't get overpopulated. simple as that. i would like to know if you (or malthus) think overpopulation just "happens" of a necessity, or if the phenomenon can be traced in various places to various historical causes (for example, unemployed people in 19th century manchester with nothing to do but have sex while being purposefully kept in the dark about contraceptive methods).

as for malthus, i haven't the time nor the motivation to read him right now. i'm behind enough on reading for my phd. and why should i read him? unlike you and marx, i never mention malthus, never comment on his theories, and never throw around "malthusian" as a pejorative. nor am i interested in "converting" you or anyone else here to marxism.

btw, i don't recall marx writing much about land at all, but my guess is he would classify it as fixed capital rather than a commodity.

WWW.MARXISTS.ORG/ARCHIVE/MARX/WORKS/1844/MANUSCRIPTS/RENT.HTM

I think this essay most effectively summarizes his thoughts on private real estate.

Try this:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/rent.htm

Interestingly, Smith basically calls Landlords welfare queens(Marx agrees). Ironic because he such a hero of conservatives. The right wing has just as many queens as left.

Smith seems to think this is OK. The free market will direct him to make most efficient use of the land. If there is an corn shortage, he'll grow corn to meet the demand. If there is a housing shortage he'll build houses on the land and rent it out. The market gets what it wants and the Landlord maximizes his profit. Win-win. I think Smith is correct when there is a close match between supply and demand.

Marx sees the Landlord's interests at odds with society at large. He seems to hint that the real problem is population growth, but then blames it all on the capitalist landlords. The population grows but the amount of land remains fixed. Land prices go up. The landlord wins big everyone else loses big time. I think Marx is correct when there is a great mismatch between supply and demand.

But does Marx ever explain how making the state(or communist party) the sole landlord alievates this problem? Why would a communist state grow more food or build more housing than private landlords?

Smith is right in that every market eventually corrects every mismatch in supply and demand. Unfortunatly, in this case of land shortage/labor oversupply it is in the form of a Malthusian castastrophe.

He was a smart guy. Was he aware that elements of capitalism were necessary for socialism to function?

So I'm assuming Marx would say land would eventually would become 'open source'. All the equals of the community would decide how it was to be used. How does that create an abundance and meet everyone's need. You still have too many mouths to feed and too little land to grow food, build houses, etc...

There is only one obvioius solution to the problem. They are trying it in China.

 Video on Marx.  Rather Telling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9NcLn6RkXY  

It is almost an hour and a half, but worth the watch. 

No he wasn't.

 Wait a minute....Al Capone used some of his extortion money to fund soup kitchens in Chicago in the great depression, that still does not changet the fact that he was still extorting and stealing from his victims.  How is that any different than what Capone did other than the fact the thugs are elected?  Yet, you still dodged the issue.  I never said I was completely opposed to ALL taxes.  I don't have a huge problem with sales tax, excise tax, severance tax, user fees, impact fees, and any that are truly voluntary.  Income and property taxes are in effect extortion.  Tell me how FUNCTIONALLY they are not extortion and theft.  If they are not theft, then I should have the ability and freedom to say 'NO' to paying them without penalty or repercussions. 

Flawed analogy?...I think not.  You are right in that Capone did not provide services to all his victims. Also, if the government provides services to certain people who effectively to certain people and not others, mainly because they make too much money, that is not "ALL the taxpayers"...that is to some that pay none while fucking the others.  That is exactly the same thing as Capone did.  Besides, if you refuse to pay, and resist long enough, there will be armed men who will come to your house or place of work and lay hands on you, maybe even shoot you, and haul your ass away, JUST LIKE CAPONE and his thugs did.  Whether or not services are provided is irrelevant.  Capone provided funding for soup kitchens in the great depression, yet he was still a thief.  The government does the same thing functionally as Capone.  NO DIFFERENT.  

Prove it!

Maybe in your country of Canada, but not in the USA.  The constitution of both the USA and states recognizes complete private property and as such you cannot lose it without due process or payment for a debt in which the land is put up for collatoral and that is by mutual agreement of the individual parties involved, not some elected body.  

With your logic on display here, then what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany, they got what was coming to them because the Nazi's were elected, and they were found in violation of the law, so because by the fact they were Jewish and recognized themself as Jewish, they had no way to say 'NO', so in your mind what happened to them was OK.  After all, the Reichstag voted on it before Hitler signed the "Final Solution" into law.  

All of which has virtually nothing to do with Marx. As far as I know, Marx said very little about taxes outside of a passing reference in the Communist Manifesto. Certainly in Capital taxes weren't addressed in any depth. I don't think he said much about taxes anywhere else either (iwbiek correct me if I'm wrong). 

The only other time I recall Marx saying anything about taxes was advocating that people refuse to pay their taxes as a method of protesting when the military attempted to prevent the parliment from assembling in the 1840's.  

Then why did Marx include it as one of the planks in the Communist Manifesto?   

Ever heard of Mafia extrotion? Same thing in countries ruled by warlords or religious states. They all claim to be in charge and you need to pay a fee or tax.

Ever heard of pyramid scams? They have to pay out something to work.

I'm pretty sure anyone that showed up at the soup kitchen was served. He didn't do income verification. There are barrios in Latin America now run by gangs in the same way.

Do Billionares in Canada wait in line for 2 months for medical tests? But they still pay taxes for this.

You need to get out and travel more, instead of just listening to the propagda of the socialist  politial parties in Canada. All goverment to some extent is extortion and a pyramid scam, because your government is not as bad as many others only the result of Canada not having a much population preesure.

He mentions progressive taxation in the list of how to overthrow the current system. In context, he explains that despotic actions are necessary and that some of the actions are "economically insufficient and untenable"- I don't know if he included the progressive income tax in his thoughts as something untenable, but given that he never talked about it elsewhere, we can't assume that his mention of it as a tactic is a ringing endorsement of it as an end goal. Ironically, the one time that Marx mentions income taxes, his view of them seems much closer to American right wing thought than left wing as far as their function. However, I think it is unfair to really extrapolate anything definite with such a limited mention of the topic by a guy who wrote tens of thousands of pages and is known for his verbosity, not his brevity. Probably the only intellectually honest conclusion is that Marx didn't write enough about taxes to be confident what his views were on the topic. Unless there is some treatise or essay on it that I have never read, which is certainly possible since I haven't read everything. But a google search didn't turn up anything Marx wrote on taxes. 

The reserve army of labour has nothing to do with actual population or even workforce size. The reserve army of labour was the term Marx used to describe the unemployed and underemployed. Prior to capitalism, unemployment didn't really exist in a structural sense. Those who didn't have professions were more often than not in subsistence agriculture. The theory Marx had is that capitalism requires a pool of people who are not working to hold labour costs down. Unlike many on the American left, Marx viewed labour as a commodity. When there was little available the costs went up, therefore, capitalists benefit from having a large surplus and thus lower labour costs and more profit. As the number of unemployed shrank, labour costs would rise and thus less surplus value for the bourgeoise. 

He separated the reserve army of labour into 4 parts- the "floating reserve" which were people who had good jobs, lost them and would be employed again relatively quickly. The latent reserve which were people who still worked subsistence agriculture because they hadn't been absorbed into wage labour yet, but potentially could be. The stagnant reserve which are people who are chronically unemployed, work low level jobs (low paying or dangerous) and temporary jobs. And the paupers, which were essentially those who were unable or unwilling to work, living on the streets etc.

Marx never suggested that they did. The reserve army of labour expanded and contracted based on the need of the industrial system. He argued that when the army became too small to keep wages down, that innovation, invention and forcing one person to do more labour would cause the unemployed pool to increase and thus depress wages back to a profitable level. He wasn't talking about the population as a whole, only the percentage of the population employed in wage posistions vs the unemployed. He did argue that increased prosperity would lead to a larger army as fewer people would be needed to sustain the economy enough for the bourgeoise.  

Besides, anyone intelligent would reject Malthus' premise, it has been proven demonstrably wrong. The population growth rate hasn't outstripped food production in prosperous countries and the population growth rate shrinks the wealthier a country becomes. Something that would be predicted within Marx's framework and was not at all predicted by Malthus. It is ironic that 200+ years of evidence later, people like you still can't see that Malthus wasn't only wrong, he was 180 degrees off, even though our largest food problem in the modern world is obesity not starvation, and an aging population not a younger one. So why would Marx have agreed with Malthus? That would have made him wrong. 

Prove it. 

i have to admit, i've been so focused on my master's and then phd work the last few years, my command of marxism has grown pretty rusty. you actually have a better grasp of it than i do at this point. you damn sure did a better job explaining the surplus labor population than i could have. tbh, i don't even remember the four categories you mentioned.

I'm not the one making a cause and effect claim. 

He lived in a time before many things- fertilizer, tractors, highrise apartments and the hundreds of innovations that have created a world where we can support a growing population plus many billions more without food shortages. Even in places of starvation, the challenge has rarely been the world's ability to actually produce food, it has been the ability/willingness to distribute food to those who are starving. Since Malthus lived before all those things, he has a good argument, given what he knew. You don't have that excuse. 

I'm not so familiar with Malthus, but I will read anything, where did he predict this?

Correlation is not causation. Other countries facing starvation problems have reduced them without significant population controls. Prove that the one child policy was a significant factor and not the mass construction of factories, modernization of agricultural practices, construction of modern infrastructure and preferential trade agreements. 

Nice theory, prove it. (I actually used student loans to get laid in college, and never let a little thing like not having a house stop me, but hey, maybe I'm the exception.)

Ok, if your logic matches reality, than we should expect the wealthy to have higher birthrates than the poor. Go find the data that proves it. 

Lol. You obviously have never visted a country that actually has population pressure. The us is billions of people away from full capacity. Every single Mexican could come live up here and we would still be fat, there would still be plenty of empty living space. 

Lies and hypocrisy.

So you admit you lost.

They certainly can see how badly you got owned. Too bad you can't.

Ridiculous, like everything you've yet to say.

You're claiming the Malthus was wrong because as nations become wealther, their birth rate drops and they avoid food shortages. You claim that Malthus claimed this would not happen. Am I right? What exactly is your proof that Malthus was completely wrong?

Have you never encounted anyone that had fewer children, had no children or delayed having children because they didn't feel they were economically secure?

But I've also seen irresponsible people that don't care about their ability to support their children have a bunch. This is obviously what you get with socialist/communist societies(China excepted). Responsible people have few kids and pay the bills for the irresponsible that have many. A catastrophe waiting to happen.

The technology to grow food in Malthus time was better than in centuries before just as it is now better than then. So we can crowd more people onto the planet with better technology, but we still have hunger, war, disease, homelessness due to overpopulation. I don't think Malthus is brilliant, he is just stating to me what out to be common sense to any objective thinking person. The same thing is true we can only grow our infrastructure to support large populations at a linear rate with populations increase much faster. That is why is sit in traffic jams.

http://cgge.aag.org/PopulationandNaturalResources1e/CF_PopNatRes_Jan10/CF_PopNatRes_Jan108.html

http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap107h.html

Back in his day, the only 'moral restraint' was men marrying later in life(women didn't have and choice back then). The ban on sex outside of marriage was a type of moral restraint in that society.

http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/Side%20bar%20Pages/Buttons/Index%20Buttons/clip_image002.gif

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Prc1952-2005gdp.gif

Evidence for causation is if a potential cause preceeds an effect. The brithrate declined after the great famines in the 60s. The one child policy started in 81.

How does a nation spend money on inftastructure and modernization if they need to feed and house the masses immediatly?

You didn't use a latex moral constraint? I'm saying people decide not to have children when the bill for the loan comes due, the fact that you had a loan made you feel economically secure at least temporarily. That is what socialism does is give people a false sense of security. Your example is actually proof in my favor, the loan made you buy stuff to make yourself more attractive and gave you more assurance to pursue women. The women had sex with you because the loan made you look like a good provider. When the bill for the loan comes due, the opposite happens.

You know birth rates dropped during the great depression and they rose dramatically when people felt economically secure after WWII. Do I need to show the charts?

Again, what I'm saying is that lowering the birthrate causes an increase in wealth later. The fear of poverty causes people to have fewer babies. Both in individuals and societies. Obviously kids cost a lot of money, you'll be wealther later in life if you don't have any. China decided to lower its birthrate in the 70s and 80s and became very prosperous in the 90s and 00s.

Obesity is not a sign of being overfed but of being undernourished. Poor people want to eat a lot because the cheap food they can afford doesn't nourish them much, so their bodies tell them to keep eating more.

Some of reasons there are a lot of fat people:

No land for parks for kids to play. Junk food is cheaper(uses less land and water) to grow than organic fruits and vegtables. People have no time to exersize because they need to work so much and commute so far. All can be blamed on population preesures. The welfare state pays people to not work. The US has staved off famine by borrowing money to pay for the welfare state. But the catastrophe is on its way.

Where in the USA is there cheap land with water? Why don't we just give the poor this land to farm for themselves and get rid of the welfare state?

The stresses in Mathus time and in the 3rd world famine and war. I would say today the stresses in the USA are more in the form of no cheap housing, pollution, traffic, debt., high taxation, stagnant wages. All have their root in populaiton preesure.

What I don't get is why Marxist and the left are so pro-immigration. Why would they want to give capitalist a larger reserve labor pool if this is the great enemy of the working man? You let immigrants in, they compete not only for jobs but also housing, food, land, parking spaces, etc... Only the wealthy capitalist benefit, which is why rich Republicans love it so much.

Not at all.  I just think he was somone with common sense and insight. What he did that Marx and a lot of other so called brilliant economist won't do is tie sociology and human biology with economics.

He was a clergy member and he thought this was all just part of God's plan. So obviously he was wrong on that one. He saw population catastrophies as moral failures. I would say they are rational failures. He called abstainence a moral restraint, I would call mandatory birth and immigration control a rational constraint. I don't agree that it is all the poor overpopulating, it is also the rich hoarding natural resourses. This is more in line with Marxism, the rich take advantage of scarce natural resouses by monopolizing them.

Also he needs to be updated because population preesures isn't just famine. It's nearly all the ills of the modern world(low wages, traffic, homeless, etc..).

You often see brilliant and insightful in one area just lack total common sense in others. This seems to be what Marx and a lot of other lintellectual leftist do. Just ignore common sense to push a political agenda that benefits only themselves short term.

You know Malthus was a great source for Darwin:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html

I think a rational understanding of the causes of poverty and wealth disparity should include some Marx some Malthus and others. Neither was totally right or totally wrong.

Because most of the first world not only feed their own populations, but also a large portion of the rest of the world. He claimed that population would grow to outstrip resources, it hasn't. So unless I am mistaken about his claim, he was wrong. 

Irrelevant. I know many more people who had children they weren't planning on. Even in a day and age where it is theoretically possible to plan the timing of every baby, many are born completely unplanned. In this case, anecdotal evidence isn't sufficient because plenty of examples can be found on both sides... you yourself are the one who routinely rants about the welfare queens with bunches of kids.

Exactly, and that "catastrophe" hasn't appeared, is in no immediate danger of appearing and is why people who freak out about overpopulation are wrong. There is no doubt that over the last several generations, 1st world countries have pursued social policies designed to provide economic support to the poor, and overtime those policies have gotten increasingly generous. Using your (and I presume Malthus') logic, that should have led to continued increases. Instead, growth rates have slowed to the point where some countries are below replacement levels if you don't include immigration (and some even if you include immigration). 

Yet our infrastructure hasn't grown at a linear rate, nor is there any reason to expect it to grow linearly in the future. Hence, the mistake of Malthus.

Yet obviously people don't always follow those restraints. Back then, it was also much more common for a married couple to have a dozen or more children. None of the laws that Malthus suggested were necessary to prevent the catastrophe were passed, yet the catastrophe hasn't happened. 

Like I said, correlation does not equal causation. You have ONE country that implemented a one child policy and it has had the SAME experience as every other country that experienced an industrial revolution. How is it rational to chalk their experience up to that one unique policy? At least in China, they have a large enough population that it is rational to discuss population pressure issues. In a country like the US with a small population and great productivity, it is delusional. Although the main problem in China wasn't too much population overall, it was too many people moving to the cities to work in factories in hopes of making money. Much of China remains sparsely inhabited and as they continue to improve their agriculture and their infrastructure, within a few generations it will be a net exporter of food whether they maintain the one child policy or not. 

When you have an immediate need, why wouldn't you spend money on it?

No, not that it is any of your business, but if you must know, I despise using condoms, have only used them a couple of times in my life.

Lol, we had sex because we were young, horny, stupid and fueling our decisions with chemicals. To think that economics were even in the formula is absurd. You put a bunch of coed teenagers or 20 somethings together and fucking is going to ensue. I'm pretty sure there are a few reality tv shows based on that concept. 

And immediately before WWII there was a huge spike of "war babies", women having kids when their future economic situation was completely unknown. You are assuming that people make their decisions on a purely economic level, they don't. Sure, a temporary bad economy might cause people to slow down and wait, but if a family has 2.5 kids, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme if they have them at 20 something or 30 something. They have the same number of offspring. That isn't comparable to a situation where they are permanently broke and have no reason to believe it will get better. And since we are talking a generational problem, looking at 10 years is ridiculous- especially since both sides of the Great Depression were surrounded by periods of great economic growth. Overall, our wealth has grown exponentially and so has our population. Yet we sit today in absolutely zero danger of widespread famine, whereas 100 years ago, we did. 

And you haven't shown anything to support the cause and effect. Using China as an example doesn't help, since we have dozens of other countries that also see a decreasing birth rate today, are growing in wealth and don't have national policies to limit birth rates. 

It is so ridiculously absurd to even discuss the US as an example of population pressures. We are the wealthiest nation in the history of mankind and we have more vacant land than most. We could easily support 10 times our current population.

Even top shelf farm land is only $7-$8,000 an acre, and that is us being in a huge bubble (3 years ago it was $2,000-$4,000 an acre). We don't have subsistence farming because it is inefficient. Mass farming is far cheaper and far more productive. If we gave all the poor their own few acres, we would have the population pressures you fear. Food is ridiculously cheap in the US. It takes a lower percentage of a person's income than in any country at any time in history. 

Only because you have decided beforehand that population pressure is the root. You didn't determine it was the root from any kind of analysis. I can get you a house for under $20,000. Less than an average new car. I know this isn't the only place in the US like that. There are hundreds of vacant houses sitting around just my county. Sure, maybe it is sensible to discuss population pressures in certain localities, but overall, we have plenty of capacity in this country. If we lived in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China or Bahrain it would make complete sense do discuss the issues of population pressures- for them it is a severe reality (despite China's one child policy you love to tout). For the US and most of Europe, it simply isn't an issue of consequence. 

I don't think Marx ever discussed immigration at any great length or detail. Although, I do occasionally have fun poking at right wing anti-immigration nuts that they are Marxists, because the one thing I've read of Marx on immigration sounds a lot like the American right wing. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch06.htm

Clearly, the most fervent historical support of open borders comes mostly from economists of the free market persuasion like J.S. Mill and Ludwig von Mises. Would Marx think the same thing of the Mexican immigration to the US? I don't know. The situations seem similar enough to me, but I'll let his words stand for themselves.