The Need to Breed

[cratehorus]

Here's an essay on the subject

There are people who regard the question of population as one of the most important and urgent of all, because, they claim that we are threatened with over-population, indeed, that it is already at hand. Therefore this question must be specially treated from an international standpoint, for nourishment and distribution of the population have become more and more a matter of international concern. There has been much discussion on the law governing the growth of population since Malthus. In his famous and notorious book, an “Essay on the Principle of Population,” that Karl Marx has described as a “school-boyish, superficial plagiarism on Sir James Stewart, Townsend, Franklin Wallace, etc., declaimed in a priest-like manner and not containing a single original thought,” – Malthus propounds the theory that mankind has the tendency to increase at the ratio of geometrical progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), while food increases only at the ratio of arithmetical progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.). The consequence, he asserts, is that a disproportion arises between the number of human beings and the food supply which must lead to wholesale starvation, and that, therefore, it becomes necessary to impose abstinence upon one’s self in the procreation of children. He, who has not sufficient means to support a family should not marry, as there would not be sufficient room at “nature’s table” for his descendants.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/18...m/ch30.htm