False Scarcity

False Scarcity

Erek Slater

April 27, 2013

[Unfinished Draft]

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False Scarcity

Abstract

The world-wide austerity drive is justified by a false understanding of the potential of

human beings to gather their needs from Nature. Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has

had the potential to produce and live in abundance, yet the continuation of class society has

necessitated a “false scarcity” that appears to us very real. At this moment the working class is

leading the most organized resistance to the world-wide austerity drive. The practical struggle to

resist the austerity drive must clarify for itself that the real problem is a failure of social

organization, not a lack of material resources on Earth. The workers’ movement must reorient its

direction from this resistance to overcoming the capitalist form of production itself.

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Around the world working people and our organizations are blamed for the consequences

of economic crisis. In contract negotiations and publically through the employers’ media outlets,

we are told that we must accept more difficult working and living conditions because there are

not enough money in the bosses budgets for education, health care, pensions and other social

needs. “Others have it worse than you. Shut up and be thankful for what you’ve got!”, we are

told and we repeat to each other. In many places we resist, but we have largely been forced to

accept these austerity measures. Our movements and organizations are partly handcuffed by an

argument that underpins this austerity drive: “Earth cannot sustain our population and many must

go without.” This essay will show that this argument is false. We must not give an inch to the

employers on this ground.

The austerity drive is based on several assumptions: 1. the continued destruction of the

environment’s capacity to sustain life, 2. the market valuation of all things, including people, 3.

society divided by class and property ownership, 4. the capitalist form of production. None of

these conditions of human life have always existed. The labor movement must be aware of and

refuse to accept these conditions if we are to successfully resist these attacks on the working and

living conditions of workers and other oppressed peoples.

Yes, hunger, thirst, and insufficient access to the basics of human civilization are very

real, complex problems that we live with every day. But these are not “natural” or “eternal”

problems imposed on human life by the limits of our environment. The real problem is a failure

of social organization: we do not yet work, live and make world-decisions consciously in the

interests of the great majority.

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Scarcity in an Epoch of Overproduction

Scarcity has been around for a long time. Scarcity conditioned the development of life on

Earth since the first single-celled organisms 3.9 billion years ago. About 200,000 years ago,

human beings first gathered, hunted and moved on when food or water became scarce. Things

started to change about 10-15,000 years ago with the development of agriculture and animal

domestication. With our increasing ability to transform our surroundings, private ownership of

this surplus developed and our population began to divide into those who worked and those who

owned. (Engles, 1884) Class divided society has existed only about 1/40th of our history, or about

10,000 years. Quite recently, about 200 years ago, another great change occurred in the basic

condition of our existence: for the first time we had the potential to live in abundance of the

necessities of life.

The Industrial Revolution represented a qualitative jump in our ability to

transform our surroundings to match our needs. The new factory or capital form of social

production created a new class of factory workers brought together to work collectively. Social

work could produce much, much more than a greater number of individual craftsmen could

separately. The productive process also used new scientific understanding, technique and

machinery to many times multiply the productivity of our labor. Over the next 100 years,

industrialization and capital spread all over the world to become the dominant form of

production. Capital revolutionized everything from agriculture to transportation, indeed our

everyday lives. Many fewer people needed to work to produce the total needs of the population.

This leap in the productivity of labor is the material base from which a great surplus can be

produced. For the first time in history, the trap of scarcity could be escaped. Yet capital – from

shoe manufacturing to agricultural firms to mining – produces only when a profit is expected to

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be made. Businesses that do not produce profit die out, often allowing more productive ones to

survive. This dynamic has created a great capacity of productive potential – so much more can

be produced than we can consume. Yet it is not produced, or not allowed to be consumed by

those who need it because they cannot afford to pay the market price. This is the central

contradiction of the epoch of capital: we can overcome scarcity, but we have not yet been able to

overcome class divided society.

No one in the period of history dominated by the feudal form of production could have

predicted the revolutionary transformation of society the Industrial Revolution unleashed. We

too cannot see the other side of a social revolution – into the next historical epoch – but the

workers’ movement must not be trapped by an outlook on production based on the capital form.

If we can overcome capitalism, “production” may cease to be the only “output” of labor. When

the people who work make the decisions, we may find better ways to do things; we may use our

imagination, our dreams to find whole new ways of working and living. This is the kind of

outlook towards the future that the labor movement must strive toward in each of our local

struggles. But is it true that there can be enough for all of us? Is this not just a utopian dream?

Population, Housing and Employment

200 years after the economist Thomas Malthus argued that human population was limited

by finite natural resources, we are still bombarded with fears of world overpopulation. However,

we have learned that population dynamics in postindustrial peoples are not explainable by simple

mathematical formulas of population increase vs. food. The 19th century population jump was

partly resolved by new forms of sanitation, medicine, new-world foods, etc. The “green

revolution” in agricultural productivity showed how false the 1960-70s over-population scare

was. In fact, our population may begin to stabilize or even decrease in this century. The fact of

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lowered world-wide fertility rates started to be accepted about ten years ago. In 2002, the

Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations

writes:

Perhaps the most significant demographic change over the past three decades has been

the substantial decline in fertility in all areas of the world. Since 1970-1975 world total

fertility has declined by 37 per cent: from 4.5 births per woman to the 1995-2000 level of

2.8…. The driving force of fertility decline is socio-economic development, in particular,

decline in mortality, female education and labour force participation, urbanization and

family planning programmes…. (p. 136)

So, our fertility rates are generally going down, especially in industrialized areas. When a

woman’s worldview reaches beyond her partner’s or her children’s’ needs – she may choose to

plan her pregnancies to match her life-goals. The more educated a woman is the fewer and later

in life she tends to choose to have children. This trend is shown in the birth rates of industrialized

countries vs. non-industrialized countries as well as with access to birth-control, legal divorce,

and abortion.

Commemorating our reaching a world population of seven billion, the National

Geographic magazine writes in 2011:

Fixating on population numbers is not the best way to confront the future. People packed

into slums need help, but the problem that needs solving is poverty and the lack of

infrastructure, not overpopulation…

As this quote indicates, poverty and lack of infrastructure – issues of social organization and will

– are the problem, not “overpopulation.”

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If world-wide social revolution is the beginning of a solution to false scarcity, then

literacy, access to human culture, and abundance of material necessities must be some of our first

priorities. As these conditions develop over generations, population dynamics may become more

an act of conscious will than a simple algorithm of resources vs. population. We are more than

bacteria on the social engineer’s Petri-dish! We are thinking, choosing, moral human beings.

Someone who lives in a major city of this historical epoch sees the contradiction of

homeless people sleeping next to buildings which are empty. Today, so much work, such as

education, health care, sanitation, transportation and other infrastructure projects need to be

done, yet productive workers are laid off. Joblessness, like homelessness, is actually necessary

for capitalism. If you had a right to a union-scale job, you wouldn’t take crap from your boss (or

anyone else for that matter) - you would just walk away and do something worth your time. If

there were fewer homeless people, then all property would lose ‘value’ – that is, its value for its

owners to force others to work in exchange for living on their property. The land or the building

isn’t actually what is important – there is plenty of that – what is important is the social power

(in the generalized form of money) owners of property have over other people.

The problem of housing scarcity is not lack of land, or building materials to build safe,

convenient, and artful places to live. The problem is we live in a class-based society where

wealth and opportunity are unequally distributed. This often vast inequality of property

ownership is built on scarcity of housing and other necessities. You cannot get someone to pay

rent if they can go live for free someplace nearby just as good or better. This legal, not material

scarcity necessitates the threat and use of violence via police and prisons to enforce laws such as

trespassing and theft. This violence and scarcity of material needs, in turn, forces us to work for

people who own property so that we can pay for rent and other necessities of life.

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Food and Water

A billion people today do not have enough food (Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO) of the United Nations, 2009) while the richest agricultural countries deliberately leave

productive land fallow. While people starve, food is produced for conversion into energy

because energy may fetch a higher price on the world market (e.g. corn made into ethanol). Even

if we assume the current techniques and productivity of agriculture, there is more than enough

capacity to produce food to feed the world. There needs be no material tension between farming

and the survival of species and the ecosystems that support them. Already developed methods of

re-forestation and sustainable agriculture can be expanded beyond the limits imposed by profit.

The fundamental problem with food scarcity is that, like other commodities on the market, food

is only produced and transported to people who need it if they can pay the market price for it. If

food was given away, it would cease to have value; it would be like air: we would just enjoy it

together and worry about more important things.

Although the surface of the Earth is mostly water, only a tiny percentage of Earth’s water

is freshwater, and much of it is trapped in the Polar Regions as ice, or so deep in the ground that

it is very difficult to use. Yet, the total amount of readily available freshwater is far greater than

the needs of our current or an expanded world population. While acknowledging serious water

challenges face humanity, in The World’s Water (2008) Meena Palaniappan and Peter H. Gleick

debunk the false idea that we are running out of water:

Considering the total volume of water on Earth, the concept of running out of water at the

global scale is of little practical utility. There are huge volumes of water—many

thousands of times the volumes that humans appropriate for all purposes. In the early

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2000s, total global withdrawals of water were approximately 3,700 km per year, a tiny

fraction of the estimated stock of 35 million km of water. (p. 5)

So, there is actually a great deal more water on Earth than we need. Why then is water scarcity a

very real and growing problem?

Water scarcity is a function of how resources are distributed and decisions are made in

class society. Water scarcity exists regionally because world society has not consciously

prioritized infrastructure and sanitation projects to get water to people and farmers who need it.

There is great potential for world-wide rational use of water. If it were shared as a world

resource, it could support a far greater population. If the need arises, we may also desalinate sea

water or even combine hydrogen and oxygen into water (H2O). The water question boils down

to energy. It takes infrastructure and energy to recycle and transport it. But do we have enough

energy?

Energy and Environment

Even if fossil fuels were to be depleted, we are close to sources of energy that dwarf

human consumption: solar, fusion, geothermal, wind, nuclear, etc. Safely developing and

building the infrastructure for these sources of energy is a matter of social will. We must

collectively and rationally address these challenges free from capitalism’s drive for profit.

In the context of climate change, class rule acts as a break on environmentally sustainable

use of energy. Capital, such as car manufacturing and oil companies, direct their power at

holding back motion towards sustainability (cars vs. public transportation, petroleum vs. solar or

wind power, for example).

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As of the writing of this essay, our understanding of the human impact on the world

environment is growing. Legitimate and serious concerns are raised by working people in

industrial centers: “If everyone in the world lived as we do, wouldn’t the world environment

greatly worsen?” Capitalists use these concerns against workers in negotiations: “Accept less

because it’s better for the environment.” Working people are made to pay more of their wages in

transportation costs, fuel, and taxes of every sort, “for the planet...” Accepting worsening

working and living conditions is no solution to world environmental deterioration – it is a way

for capitalists to make short-term profits (and sidestep any solutions that impact those profits).

We may need to transform our energy consumption to more renewable sources. This

requires human society acting consciously on a scale not seen in this epoch. Humanity needs to

radically change our ways of working and living, which is – by definition – a world-wide social

revolution.

Conclusion

Capitalism has created for humanity the potential to produce in great abundance. Yet the

market and class system holds back this potential and enforces upon us a false scarcity. In its

long decline, the epoch of capital has proven – by a century of wars, nuclear brinksmanship and

decades of powerless environmental and human rights conferences – that it is not capable of

existing without attempting to kill itself (and much of life along with it). Rather than succumb to

the trajectory of this decay (deepening economic crisis, austerity, international wars,

environmental and health deterioration, increasingly brutal and sophisticated repression of our

ability to organize an alternative), the labor movement must change its goals. It must aim not

simply at better pay and working conditions, nor even ultimately at those who are currently

wealthy. We must aim at the capitalist system itself. We must connect our day-today struggles to

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a world-wide social movement building a society capable of democratically organizing our

production and use of material needs. That aint easy! We have been trying, failing, learning and

trying again for over a hundred years. We may or may not overcome this historical epoch,

however, do not judge this challenge impossible on the basis of false claims of scarcity of the

necessities of life.

Next time somebody says to us, “I am sorry, but we just cannot afford to pay your wage,

pension or health-care. We cannot afford to keep your schools, libraries and hospitals open. We

cannot make a profit. There isn’t enough money in the budget. Look at our facts and figures.”,

we can tell them, “There is more than enough for everyone. If you cannot organize society for

the benefit of all, stand aside and we shall learn to rule ourselves.”

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References

Engels, Frederick (1884, Republished 1972). The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State, Pathfinder Press, New York, NY.
Placing the beginning of property relations and class society around the time of the first
city-states is an idea that predates Engels. However, this is one of the first scientific
works to popularize the understanding that class society has not always existed and may
not in the future.

Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat,

Population Division. (2002, March). Fertility levels and trends in countries with
intermediate levels of fertility. Retrieved from
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/completingfertility/
RevisedFFPSPOPDIVpaper.PDF
This statement quantifies the change in fertility rates to bolster the argument that the
world population is not accelerating in growth. The second part of the quote argues that
these fertility declines are due to factors at least partly within the control of society.

Kunzig, Robert (2011, January). 7 Billion. National Geographic, Retrieved from

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text
Not overpopulation, but poverty and lack of infrastructure are pointed to as one of the
main problems looking towards the future. Education and support of women is also
argued for. These are social priorities, not material constraints from Nature.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (2009) Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/.
The UN estimates that a total of 1.023 billion people were undernourished in 2009. This
quantifies one part of the contradiction between a surplus of food production and
starvation that is not materially necessary.

Gleick, Peter H. and Palaniappan, Meena. (2008-2009) The World’s Water, Island Press, pp. 5.
Retrieved from http://www.worldwater.org/data20082009/ch01.pdf
This quote quantifies the amount of water used for all purposes versus the total amount of
available water. The source here drives home the absurdity of arguing that there is a
material scarcity of water on the planet.

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