Gordon Fitch wrote:
> >A few years ago there was supposed to be a crisis because
> >there were too many people. Now there's supposed to be a
> >crisis because there aren't enough people. But will or should
> >capitalism, even imagined as a coherent, intelligent and
> >willful entity, care?
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> I wrote in a different thread some time ago: "If all moms and dads
> stop changing diapers for a day, the only ones who get sore are
> babies, whereas strikes, even slowdowns, at several strategically
> important industries (like cargo transportation) for a day will
> indeed wreak havoc on profits. Wage labor and unpaid work for social
> reproduction have very different relations to capital." So, women
> (and men to a lesser extent) can't slow down their unpaid work of
> social reproduction and hope to have a direct and immediate impact on
> profits, very unlike, for instance, a slowdown of longshoremen and
> other workers who labor to produce goods or services, especially in
> the private sector. Nevertheless, capital is at bottom dependent
> upon women's willingness to give birth to future workers/consumers,
> and many women's refusal to do so (especially when it is not
> compensated by immigration and other measures) begins to have an
> impact on the conditions for capital accumulation over time.
>
> The Post-WW2 economic boom came hand in hand with the baby boom,
> mutually reinforcing each other for some time; deflation and falling
> birth rates, I think, have and will reinforce each other as well.
> "Britain is among more than 60 countries, accounting for two-fifths
> of the world population, with a birth rate under the replacement
> level of 2.1 children per woman. In 2006, Japan is set to be first
> to begin the descent, but others could easily follow" (@
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4348775,00.html>):
>
> ***** Japan has an ageing population with a low birth rate. Already
> by the 1980s, the average life expectancy of the Japanese was the
> highest among OECD countries, and this factor alone means an ageing
> population. In addition, smaller families have become the norm in an
> urban society, with fewer people supported by the self-employed,
> including farmers. More and more families depend on employed workers.
> This tendency is further augmented by rising educational levels,
> increased female labour force participation, the trend towards later
> marriage and/or the decision to remain single: all of these factors
> contribute to the phenomenon of a declining birth rate. Total
> fertility has declined from 1.7 children in 1986 to 1.43 in 1996, and
> a further decline is anticipated. In 1995, the number of new
> graduates entering the labour force began to decrease for the first
> time, and it is expected that the total workforce and then the total
> population will begin to decline by 2005 and 2010, respectively. In
> other words, national institutions have to cope with the transition
> to an ageing society with a declining birth rate within a period of
> about 20 years. Western European countries have been making this
> adaptation over the past 50 to 100 years. Moreover, the much
> increased labour force participation of women has meant that the
> social functions traditionally assumed by families and communities
> (often cited as Asian characteristics) have waned. Thus, there is an
> urgent need for childcare, nursing for the sick and elderly, and
> pension schemes for retired workers.
>
> Therefore, Japan has to become a welfare state in the context of
> stringent budget constraints due to the significant decline in
> economic growth. While the need to develop welfare schemes at a
> faster tempo is widely recognized by the Japanese public, there is a
> parallel debate on the crisis of the welfare state, as was
> experienced in Western European countries some time ago.
>
> <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/papers/1999/dp106/#I.1.2>
> *****
>
> The power elite in Japan have so far responded to "the crisis of the
> welfare state" by (1) employing more women and older workers, (2)
> increasing part-time employment ("The ratio of part-time workers,
> mostly women, to total workers rose from nearly 10 per cent in 1980
> to around 20 per cent in 1995,"
> <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inst/papers/1999/dp106/#I.1.2>),
> and (3) cutting pensions and social programs. (2) and (3), however,
> have exacerbated the government's inability to lift the economy out
> of deflation.
>
> To present an alternative to the power elite's response, left-wingers
> need to develop a women-centered political program.
Of course, as an anarchist I'm going to tell you that what left-wingers need to develop is a _centerless_ political program, but actually we probably agree on the general idea.
However, I don't think that declining population necessarily presages a crisis for capitalism. Part of the genius of capitalism is its ability to exploit practically anything, including social problems. To take an example from another realm, one might have looked at the dark Satanic mills of an earlier day and decided that environmental destruction was going to create a crisis; but instead, some capitalists began to exploit pollution and environmental degradation in various ways so that, while some made money out of creating it, they made money out of reducing or eliminating it. The point is, after all, merely to keep production-consumption going along and getting bigger all the time; the production and consumption can be more and more metaphorical or abstract, as long as they lead to the exchange of money and the acquisition or preservation of social status and power for the capital manipulators. So, if the population ages or declines, I expect to see somebody making money out of it, possibly with the assistance of the State. (EDS might be a forerunner.) The crisis will come when a sufficient number of people realize the fandango of prod-con is about nothing they want enough to enslave themselves for, and start to do something else.
-- Gordon