p Population is another necessary condition for the material life of society. Production is impossible without people, whose labour constitutes the mighty force which subjugates nature and puts it to the service of man. In certain conditions, therefore, a large or small population and its high or low growth rate can accelerate or slow down a country’s development. Large manpower resources and a high population growth rate are undoubtedly an important factor in the Soviet Union’s great successes.

p But does population play a decisive role in society’s development? History answers this question in the negative. There are countries with a high population density and growth rate which lag economically,politically and culturally 195 behind countries with considerably lower population density and slower growth rates.

p This means that population density and growth do not determine society’s progress. On the contrary, they themselves depend on the character of a social system.

p Nevertheless, supporters oi malthusianism, a reactionary trend in bourgeois sociology, proceed from the assumption that it is the growth of population that determines the course of social development. The father of this theory, the English clergyman and economist Thomas Malthus, at the end of the 18th century announced his “discovery” of the “universal principle" that the means of subsistence grow in arithmetical progression, while the population grows in geometrical progression and that this is the cause of the poverty, starvation, unemployment and other suffering which afflict the working people. Malthus also proposed a “way” to get rid of these evils—the poor should abstain from marrying and having children.

p Malthus needed the pseudo-scientific “theory” of population to exonerate capitalism and to justify the hardships capitalism inflicts on the working people. Malthusianism is now used by the imperialist bourgeoisie to mask the deep contradictions of imperialism, and to justify their aggressive foreign policy. Present-day malthusianism has become openly misanthropic: it no longer confines itself to preaching celibacy and birth control, but proposes that H-bombs, germ warfare and other monstrous means of destruction should be used to do away with the “superfluous” mouths.

p Science and practical experience refute malthusianism. Marx proved that the causes of the working people’s poverty and starvation under capitalism are rooted not in the natural laws of population, but in the very essence of the capitalist system, in the extremely unjust distribution of material wealth. The lion’s share of this wealth is appropriated by the capitalists, while the working people are often deprived of even the most essential means of subsistence. Malthusianism has been conclusively refuted by the economic progress of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries where capitalism has been abolished, and starvation, poverty and unemployment have been banished for all time, where man’s life is becoming increasingly secure and prosperous.

Neither the geographical environment nor the population are the determining factors in social development. The determining factor is the mode of production of material wealth, which we shall now examine.