International Order and Economic Integration

IV THE INTERNATIONAL POPULATION PROBLEM

THE DEVELOPMENT

The entire problem of raw materials and colonies cannot be fully understood, if it is not set in relation to the population problem. In this way however there arises for us in a quite general sense the question of the relationships between the population problem and the peace problem.

That under primitive social and economic conditions the overpopulation of an area can turn into a real cause of warlike expansion, is really not seriously doubted either by historians or by ethnologists. It is however true for this stage that one should not conceive the relationship between cause and effect as a particularly simple one. The over-population of a tribal area is indeed no coincidence, but the result of a conscious renunciation of all those manifold means of population-control, which exist at all times and among all peoples. Behind such a renunciation stand possibly the same motives for developing a domineering force which then lead to warlike expansion. In contrast, we come across examples indicating that a strict policy of population-control constitutes the essence of a policy directed towards the seclusion of the country and the warding-off of all external enlargements. (Japan up to the end of the Tokugawa-Period in the year 1868.)

It is necessary, to point out these connections, in order to refute from the very beginning the naturalistic conception of history, according to which there are natural forces such as increase of the population, which force the peoples with the inevitability of fate on to the path of warlike expansion. The increase in the population is, as we saw, as a rule the result of a certain spiritual dynamism, the causes of which must first be examined, if one really wants to get to the bottom of things. It is to be expected, that the Cimbri and Teutons – the model examples of our school text-books – were from their early days a restless and pugnacious people, the growth of whose lust for conquest are only two forms of expression of the same spiritual tendency. Our own time too gives us an opportunity of making these observations, for we also know ‘Peoples without living-space’, who have justified their desire for expansion by over-population, but who simultaneously strive by all possible means for a further increase in the population. The best example of this was offered by Fascist Italy, which by restriction of emigration and the encouragement of large families itself helped to make the Italian population problem more acute, at the same time however continued to use over-population as a justification for its conquest claims. Among the steadily changing excuses of the national-socialistic policy of conquest the supposed claim to living-space by the German population, who were simultaneously driven to multiply by all possible means, likewise played an unforgotten part. In both countries a grievance, in which there was actually a germ of truth, – as in the raw materials problem – was cynically misused as a screen for naked imperialistic aims, so that it could no longer be taken seriously.

The international population problem of the present-time can only be understood, if one bears in mind the development of the economy and population in the last hundred years 1). In this period there has taken place in the entire civilized world an increase in population, which in its extent and tempo has no parallel in the entire history of mankind. Its cause is to be sought less in an increase in the birth-rate than in a fall in the death-rate – especially in the case of infant mortality – alongside a steadily high birthrate. Whereas in previous centuries out of ten children perhaps two survived, by the 19th century thanks to the progress of medicine and hygiene and thanks to increasing prosperity it became possible to keep them all alive. As, however, the birth-rate was not immediately adapted to the fallen death-rate, it was inevitable, that the population-figure shot up sharply. That is the procedure carried out in the 19th century in the countries of western civilization and which is repeated before our eyes again and again, as soon as a country has adopted this civilization. Here there is a ‘historical interference’, by which the rationalist spirit of modern civilization lessens mortality in a first phase and within short time, whereas the birth-rate, persistent as it is, continues for a long time to move on along the old way. By chlorination of drinking water, by protective injections and measures against malaria one can immediately and by direct means force down the mortality rate, but not the birth-rate. Sooner or later the moment used to come in every land, in which the birth-rate is ‘rationalized’ and adapted to the death-rate, so that the stormy increase in population slows down and finally reaches stagnation. Most countries of the west, who are indeed the pace-makers in the entire development, were at this stage a short while ago. But how little in spite of everything the development allows itself to be moulded into a rigid form, is indicated by the fact that recently many of these countries have entered into a new phase of population increase.

The enormous increase in population of the last 100 years is therefore to be considered as a historically unique process, which contains in itself the possibility of coming sooner or later to a standstill or even of turning into the reverse process. The same intellectual forces, which inspired it, can end it, as soon as they have broken down the persistence of the birth-rate, and even before the First World War not a few serious observers were seized by anxiety that the modern rationalistic spirit, which we have to thank for the decline in the death-rate, finally, as soon as it begins to have the full effect on the birth-rate, may overshoot its goal, undermine the moral health of a people, devalue the family and force down the birth-rate far below a bearable level.

How incautious it would be to depend upon the ‘development-laws’ of the population and to dare prognoses in this field with too much assurance, has just been demonstrated by the period, which has elapsed between the first German edition of this book (1945) and this one. The anxiety, which had just been under discussion and which had given rise to manifold theories, had proved in the meantime to be unfounded. The western world itself has, as already mentioned, experienced an almost general boom in population during the last decade, which has drawn with it even a land like France and has reached an all but sensational level in the United States. In the last-named country the average annual increase in the population has nearly doubled in comparison with the preceding decade (1.4% in comparison with 0.71%), and in the last five years from 1945 to 1950 the average annual increase has even amounted to 1.73%. In this case the U.S. are as already stated, only a specially striking and important section in the development of the entire western world, although one should not overlook the special position of a few countries (especially England, Sweden and Denmark), which persist in the two-children system.

We realize today, that nowhere has a self-assured prophecy suffered such a wretched shipwreck as in this sphere of the development of the population, and it is high time that we became aware of this fiasco with all its consequences and accommodated ourselves to the radical volte-face in our thinking, which is in this way forced upon us. Whereas an increase in the population of the ‘underdeveloped’ countries – which is due not to an increase in the birth-rate, but to a reduction in the mortality-rate –, is progressing, there is added to it a great new flare-up in the population increase of the western countries, attributable both to a further fall in the mortality-rate and more especially to an unexpected and hitherto rather unexplained fresh rise in the birth-rate. The total result is a swelling in the world-population, which exceeds not only all prophecies, but also all historical examples. While it increased from 1850 to 1913 more or less regularly by about 0.95% a year, on the basis of today’s figures an average rate of 1¼% (Colin Clark) must be reckoned with for the next 20 years which applies to an entire world-population, amounting already to 2½ billions2).

The portent of these facts is enormous. They mean, that the never too well-founded anxiety about the economic stagnation and other possible consequences of a decrease in the birth-rate must now give way to the contrary and highly-justified anxiety about the economic, cultural and political consequences of an excessive increase in the birth-rate3). We have every reason to be concerned about the bare basis of existence of mankind, and even more reason, to fear the extra-economic consequences of such a human high-tide. If even today two thirds of the population of the world are insufficiently nourished, what is to happen, if, with mankind’s present rate of development, an additional population of the size of that of all North America, has to be fed within the next 10 years out of the available resources of the world, whereas at the same time the destruction of the soil in wide-spread areas of the globe is increasing to a horrifying extent? What will become of the world-supply of raw materials of all kinds, of wood, ores and everything else, to think only of water for the population of the highly industrialized countries which is concentrated more and more in the great towns and industrial centres? What has become of the theories, which only 10 years ago seriously put the question how, without a massive expansionary policy on the part of governments savings could be converted into investments, thus avoiding continued depressions? Does not the increase in the population which has meanwhile become recognizable force us to a radical ‘readjustment’ of our thinking in the direction of the opposite problem, how the increase in investments which has in this way become necessary, accompanied as it is by a world-wide political necessity for gigantic permanent armaments, can be so far financed from genuine savings, that the danger of continued inflation can be avoided? Does it not make it further necessary for us, to give the production of food and raw materials an entirely different and more favourable prognosis than was given only two decades ago?

These and other questions are to be taken up by us in a later part of this book, when we speak of the problems of a new world-economy, especially of the problem of the development of the ‘underdeveloped countries’. At this point we want to limit ourselves, to dealing with questions, which the gigantic growth of the world-population raises for international relations of an economic and political kind. For this we must go back a little further.

It is known, that the 19th century whose population-development we portrayed in its broad features, was introduced with a precept, which expected from population-increase only need, hunger and poverty (Robert Malthus). As one of the means which correct an incident over-population with gruesome relentlessness war was named in the pessimistic doctrine of Malthus. Has this pessimistic doctrine been fulfilled? The answer to this is given by the fact, that the population of the industrial countries has since then multiplied, but that the average prosperity has greatly risen. The catastrophe prophesied by Malthus did not occur, because the productivity of the world – in agriculture as in industry – has risen much more markedly than the population. These very historical forces, which on the detour via a forcing-down of the death-rate have led to a sharp rise in the growth curve, – the spirit of science, of progress, of the liberation from tradition – led to industrialization, to a world-economy and to the settling of vast, rich new countries.

England, Germany and all other countries, for which Malthus had prophesied over-population, have solved the problem of population-increase in two ways. First they have sent millions of people to the new countries overseas, which lay open in the 19th century to mass-settlement. Secondly they have superimposed on the agrarian foundation of their national economy an industrial storey, whereas at the same time in the new countries overseas huge surpluses of food were produced, largely by the very people, who had emigrated in masses from the old countries. Only in this way could the gigantic population of the 19th century emerge. Had it not been for the industrialization and the internationalization of the economy–two sides of one and the same process–it is not to be doubted that an increase in the population of this tempo and extent would have led to those melancholy consequences, which Malthus had prophesied, and it is more than probable, that the over-pressure of the population would have exploded in a war. But the very unfolding of industry and a world-economy–in a word what is generally meant by the expression ‘international capitalism’ – relieved the pressure of the population and stopped up this source of warlike developments. In fact none of the wars of the 19th Century has its direct or indirect cause in pressure of population.

It is true that since the turn of the century indications of tension were beginning to be perceived. While this very period up to the outbreak of the 1st World War is characterized by a further powerful development of industry and the world-economy, yet the possibilities of peaceful expansion towards the overseas territories (by mass-emigration to foreign states or by conflictless occupation of colonial-territories) approached the point of exhaustion and within the industrial countries the problem of the concentration of the proletarian-masses began to weigh more and more heavily on politics, in no country more than in Germany.

This was the first time broader strata of the society were beginning to feel a very real uneasiness concerning the world economic and industrial development. Not a few began to realize that the unparalleled increase in the population had brought the world into a situation full of dangers and problems, which would one day show themselves in all their enormity, as soon as the conditions, under which the additional millions had come to life, started to waver. Even then the realization was ripening, that modem mass-civilization, which has bestowed upon us the growth of the population, leads to serious manifestations of social instability and burdens it with moral and political tensions of all kinds, which also have a dangerous reaction on foreign policy. In this way however, it was possible to argue even at that time, arises a really tragic confusion: the earth has only been able to bear and nourish an increased population, because its entire productive power could be adapted to the purpose of supplying the masses by a complicated scheme of international division of labour, but the conditions necessary for the enormous mass-supplying apparatus are peace, order, freedom and security, in short a series of laboriously acquired principles of human communal life, which must be guarded as laboriously as they have been acquired. Mass-civilization however, implies powerful tendencies, which loosen rather than strengthen those principles, for which concentrated masses tend in general to have very slight respect.

An amorphous mass is the best soil for all well-known political movements, which carry into internal and external politics that unrest and decomposition which seem to be our fate. It is just this mass which is extremely sensitive to those words, so appealing to the lower instincts, of aggressive nationalism, of arrogant boasting, of inconsiderate disregard for the interests of others and of national autarky, and it is by their sheer number that the mass becomes in the end an unfluential factor in politics. Only by its preponderance can the worst form of nationalism, that of the totalitarian mass-state, be explained. In this way however the gigantic population increase of our time is on the point of destroying by its political and sociological reactions the foundations on which the entire system of modern mass-production rests. Malthus took revenge on his optimistic critics a century later, but in a way, which was in no way clear to him and to his time. That is the situation in which we find ourselves to-day.

THE PRESENT SITUATION

We are once more throwing a glance back on this peculiar century, in which the multiplication of the population has gone hand in hand with the unfolding of the modem industrial production relying as it does on a world-wide division of labour. This combination has had two effects: it has converted the increase in the population from a factor for misery into a factor for prosperity and in this way from a factor of political tension into a factor for peace: it has at the same time united all nations by the solidarity of economic interests. The free circulation of goods and people, which a characteristic principle of the liberal world-economy, has opened the entire globe to the economic activity of every individual, without requiring a shift of the political frontiers: he could either emigrate to a foreign country or send his products there, in order to exchange them for others. On the other hand every country had the economic power of the entire globe at its disposal, without the necessity for political submission: it could get men and capital from everywhere and make sure of getting the products of every other country by international exchange, the higher profitability of which needs no more proof. Thanks to this economic system an extension of the political frontiers for the alleviation of the population-pressure had not only become unnecessary, but at the same time nonsensical, since the entire system was based on peace and reciprocity. Among civilized nations war had become an unprofitable business and in this way a completely valueless means of alleviating population-pressure.

If all nations and their leaders had solely and with total clarity borne their economic interests in mind, the First World War – of which the Second is only a worse continuation – need never have broken out. The fact that it did nevertheless break out, proves however that the spiritual and sociological foundations of the system had fallen into disorder, and thus very thoroughly and disastrously. Never before had an objective and nationally developed interest in peace been greater among all peoples than at that time, never before had the bare existence of such a number of human beings been directly dependent on the preservation of peace, and yet this terrible war, from which everything else started, broke out, the first great war, which was borne, fought out and suffered by the same masses, the same masses to whom, as a whole the war was suicide. Every explanation of this horrible paradox, will remain a superficial one, if it does not take into account the fact that the invasion of the masses, who easily become a tool of those who know how to arouse, to direct and to use their anarchistic instincts, endangers the principles which assure the security of civilization.

To express this previously-stated idea in another way: modern mass-civilization has become economically possible thanks to principles which do not really fit in with the sphere of human thought. Modern mass-civilization lives on a spiritual and moral capital, which has been collected in more aristocratic, more individualist days, with Christianity and a humanity rooted in the tradition of classical antiquity as a foundation. Whatever may be said western liberalism was its last form and nothing proves our thesis more clearly, than the very fact that the masses can do so little with it. ‘Live and let live’ is indeed a maxim, for which one can not expect the man of the masses to understand ‘Die and let die’ is better suited to him. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, these figures which are so representative of mass-civilization, have astounded the world by the flexibility with which they clothed themselves now in this, now in that ideological toga. (Almost every contemporary current – Socialism, Marxism, the middle-class movement, and any others.) They have cynically tried in the course of their pragmatic politics to direct into their mills. Never however have they asserted they were representatives of liberalism. They knew why; they perceived that an unbridgeable gulf separated them and their masses from this strange world of liberalism.

The First World War – which appears to us to-day as the first phase in a new 90 years war – means in nearly every respect the beginning of a new epoch and puts the population problem on a new basis. Tendencies which up till then were still latent or subdued, now advance free and change the face of the world. The rule of the masses makes gigantic strides and with it the shaping of the world, which corresponds to it: nationalism, economic seclusion, collectivism, the softening of fixed standards. We are still in the middle of this process of dissolution and can now ascertain with the deepest concern, that the population problem, which until then was only a cultural and intellectual problem, is, through the resulting reactions becoming a threatening economic problem. The liberal world-economy of former days has given place to a multiplicity of international economic ties, unrelated to each other and subject to the pressure of thousands of crippling controls; this has ended an era in which an increasing population was diverted over the entire globe by free movement of people and by free exchange of goods. If in the liberal world-economy the population problem found its continued solution in the individual sphere regulated by civil-law, of non-political movement of people and goods, so how does the nationalization and political direction of the economy mean that the solution is being sought in the political and collectivist sphere.

In this way the size of the politically dominated space is becoming of more and more importance for the existence of the present and further population of every nation. The multiplication of the population is becoming in this way, as it was in prehistoric times, a factor of unrest. If the channels of world transactions are more and more blocked, if the daily changing friendships and enmities are opening and closing markets, if the entire intricate mechanism of the liberal world-economy is rusting, if a leading country like England, which has first shown the peoples the way to a world-economy and with exemplary fidelity to principle, first ensured its smooth running, could after 1931 short-sightedly deny this glorious past and shake off its responsibility for the world-economy, if international movements of capital become solemn exceptions, if everywhere the doors of immigration are closing and there are fewer and fewer countries in which one could become even a dustman without possessing the appropriate passport – then the political frontiers do indeed become a really serious economic problem, then the question of raw materials and colonies is no longer a mere phantom, then there are satiated and proletarian peoples, and then there is for many countries a population problem in the sense that the relationship between the size of the population and the politically dominated area is more unfavourable than elsewhere. But then the favoured peoples – the great empires – who neglect their trustee duties towards the geographically-restricted nations, have every reason to be displeased with themselves and to fear an ‘international class-struggle’. We are not exaggerating: it is dynamite which is being piled up here. In order to be completely clear about the matter, one must visualize the connection once more in a somewhat different way.

The development of industry and a world economy with a division of labour extending over the entire globe has brought about an extraordinary increase of productivity of labour, which has in great part been absorbed by an equally extraordinary multiplication of the population and has created the necessary conditions of existence for countless additional millions. The level in the division of labour which was thus reached cannot suddenly be lowered, without endangering the existence of millions and millions and in this way our social order in general – just as one cannot lower the temperature of a saturated solution without getting an undissolved deposit. Once the multiplication of population of the 19th and 20th centuries had taken place, one cannot pull from under the feet of the additional millions the conditions, under which they were born, without producing a catastrophe. We cannot simply turn back economic history, without at the same time screwing back the population-capacity of the world to the low level of the past. That is all the more dangerous for international peace, as the individual nations are very unevenly affected by this reversing process, which is at the same time the process of subjecting the economy to political direction according to the status of their population, i.e. according to the relationship between their population and the quantity and quality of the politically dominated area. No economic theory or political philosophy of any kind can change these hard facts in any way.

All this would be true, even if the increase in the population had to-day reached a standstill in all important countries. It is however particularly true for the present situation and more especially for those countries, the growth of whose population will continue over a considerable period and at an appreciable rate. If these countries have not, like Russia, the good fortune to possess room for further expansion at hand, they must realize that for them, the problem of population increase becomes more and more difficult to solve, in contrast to the time when the old industrial countries like England and Germany had to deal with the same problem. Japan is doubtless the best example of such need. Italy too belongs to this category although in a less striking manner. These countries might well be given a timely admonition to apply the brakes to their population development. But that in no way alters the fact that in the meantime the population of these countries is growing further while the old safety-valves for pressure of the population have been more and more blocked up. The political reactions of the resulting over-pressure, contribute appreciably and in a disastrous manner to the destruction of the world-economy, and the extremely nationalistic policy, in which those countries, certainly not solely on account of pressure of population, had indulged, leaves behind an economic burden, which only further intensifies the population problem.

THE PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

The most effective means of levelling up international differences in the status of the population and in this way solving the international problem, doubtless consists in removing all barriers to emigration and immigration, and so to create complete freedom of movement for men over the whole globe. In this way we should return to the conditions which on the whole existed during the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, before the strict barriers to movement of to-day were erected. If men would only act upon rational considerations, they would distribute themselves over the globe in such a way that there would no longer be either over- or underpopulated countries. If there were added to this complete freedom in the movement of capital, the marginal productivity of the factors of production, soil, capital, and labour would tend to even out as between countries; hence, the level of incomes from soil, capital and labour would be the same everywhere within each category and that finally these would no longer be ‘poorer and richer peoples, but only more densely and less densely populated and more or less intensively cultivated managed countries’ (L. MISES, Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, Wien 1919, p. 52)4). Reality will never completely correspond to this theoretical scheme, since it would be an unreal assumption to think that – in their choice of a place of residence – men would only be influenced by economic calculations. But these and many other complications in no way alter the fact that unlimited freedom of movement for men and capital would make of the relative poverty of a country a self-chosen fate, against which men would probably have neither the right nor the inclination to react with dissatisfaction and political restlessness. The international population problem would lose its economic and social meaning and could never serve as an excuse for an aggressive foreign policy.

Now our task would be easy, if we could assert with a clear conscience, that all barriers to international movement could only be created out of unreasonableness and narrow-mindedness. This is not however the case. There is certainly enough unreasonableness and narrow-mindedness in these spheres: the limits of reason are certainly over-stepped almost everywhere. Likewise many of the alleged motives are incapable of standing up to serious criticism. Nobody who is a friend to peace and humanity and an opponent of national egoism will even at best get rid of a permanent feeling of uneasiness, and only with the most extreme reluctance will be admit to himself, that here may exist a real and genuine case of disharmony between the interests of the individual nations and the overall interest of humanity. To this we have obviously to resign ourselves in so far as we are dealing with principles.

First intellectual honesty demands of us that, in spite of the unbounded misuse, which has been applied to the idea of rational eugenics, we should acknowledge a germ of truth in the fear of a country like the United States, Australia or New Zealand of being inundated by an unrestricted immigration from the over-populated countries of the Mongolian peoples, and that we should understand the efforts of such a country to erect effective dams against this tide. Furthermore: every land must have the right to protect its intellectual and political tradition from an influx of immigrants, who might endanger it by their incapacity to be assimilated or even by their sheer numbers.

Immigration restrictions can be justified, however, on purely economical grounds, as a measure which protects a land from an increase of population, which would exceed the optimum ratio of people and resources and would lead to a worsening of an already existing over-population. It seems at first sight that such a policy is only the logical application of the idea of tariff protection to the human labour force, as it is mainly highly-protected countries which have introduced a specially strict immigration legislation (U.S. and Australia). This analogy is however only a superficial one, as the influx of human beings cannot be compared with the import of goods. Immigration means an increase in population, which cannot really be judged differently from a natural increase in population due to the surplus of births. Its restriction can therefore be considered as one of the means of curbing the increase in population. Viewed from this angle restriction of immigration appears as a quantitative measure in pursuit of a given population policy, just as, in the argument above it appeared as a qualitative act. Has not a country the right, in the same way as it seeks to protect its biological and intellectual inheritance, to strive to achieve the most favourable relationship possible between the number of human beings and its resources, that is, to strive for the optimum ratio of the population? No one will wish to dispute this. And yet the most notable and highly disturbing feature in restriction of the population is that it is an act of national population-policy, which affects not the unborn, but the people of other countries, who are now compelled to remain in a relatively over-populated country. Here there exists a genuine collision of interests, which will only lose in acuteness when the increase in population of the relatively over-populated countries will have come to a stop.

If we therefore with a heavy heart see ourselves compelled for the sake of intellectual sincerity, to make some basic concessions which result from the ratio of a qualitative and quantitative population-policy, this in no way implies a defence of the present-day practice, which has become more and more narrow-minded. This narrow-mindedness proves, that it is no longer a question of a well-considered population-policy, but an indefensible expression of economic nationalism. The theoretical possibility that the economist may under certain circumstances have to acknowledge a limitation of immigration as being in the general national interest, is conditional on such intricate combinations of circumstances that the present-day practice of international limitation of immigration can scarcely be justified by it.

This practice appears in a still more unfavourable light, if we put its popular motives under the magnifying-glass. That is specially true of the opinion that immigration increases the danger of unemployment, an opinion which is very often to be found in the crude form of the belief that an immigrant can only find employment at the expense of a native. This idea, unhappily so wide-spread, is based on the error, inbearable for anyone trained in economics, that the total sum of productive work to be mastered is of a fixed pre-established size, a cake so to speak, from which no one can cut a bigger piece, without another’s faring badly. After all, we do not work, in order to occupy ourselves, to satisfy but our needs, as well as one can outside the fools’ paradise and we urgently need every unit of manpower for this. The absolute limit of the total volume of work to be done is determined by the sum of our wants: in practice therefore it lies in the infinite. It is true that the number of opportunities for employment is actually dependent on the market, i.e. on the effective purchasing-power. Purchasing-power however emanates from work with the proper aim; all produce for all, and it only depends on whether they produce correctly, that it to say for each other’s needs. The problem of unemployment relates consequently not to the entire volume, but to the correct composition of production; the problem is one of equilibrium, not of absolute total volume, it is of a functional and qualitative, not of a global and quantitative nature. The volume of production to be performed is not determined, by the extent of the consumption but on the contrary the extent of the consumption is determined by the volume of production. The measure of unemployment is a question of the better or worse functioning of an economy governed by division of labour, not of a lack or a surplus of human beings. A drastic lessening of the population in a country suffering from unemployment by mass-deportations which left the pattern of occupations entirely unchanged would not lead one step nearer the conquering of unemployment, but rather once again confirm the truth, that what matters is the quality, the functioning of the apparatus and not the quantity, its mere size.

Here we have to do with a thoroughly tough piece of popular economics, with one of the most common, but also the most obstinate and most dangerous weeds in the garden of our already pretty much overgrown economic science. It has even its botanical name: ‘lump-labour fallacy’, the English call it, which we can perhaps reproduce with ‘Trugschluß vom festen Arbeitsquantum’. We shall meet it in a later chapter (3rd Part, Ch. 2)5).

Now we can see clearly, wherein lies the crude fault in the argument, that immigration means a danger for the home labour-market. It is to be sought in the idea, that immigration by its mere quantitative effect is bound to create unemployment. That is decidedly not the problem. The true problem, as we saw, is to be sought elsewhere. It is the question whether immigration has a favourable or unfavourable effect on the economic equilibrium.

It is obviously impossible to give an unambigious reply to this. All we can say, is this: since we are dealing with a problem of balance and not with one of a quantitative general level, a lot will depend not only on the economic situation at the given moment but also on the type of the immigration and its relationship to the economic structure of the immigration-country. If it is of the ‘right type’, that is to say, if it fits in with the economic structure of the country of immigration, it can even in a depression very well revive economic activity and so create as many jobs as it needs, if not even more. It can give to the economic life an impulse which is quite incalculable. That is all the more probable, as immigrants belong as a rule to the most enterprising and adaptable type, are in short men, who, because they are moreover already in movement and are used to accepting discomforts, possess exactly that characteristic, which is deserting the resident type of worker to the detriment of the elasticity of our economic system, namely the readiness and the ability to change places of work or residence or both according to the needs of production. It is, to take an example, naturally imaginable, for dockers to immigrate into a country, in which the docks are suffering from unemployment. But in the first place it is not very probable that they would turn to just this industry, and secondly such immigrants would be the first to look around for a new job, even if for this purpose they had to switch over to another occupation. In addition must be considered the fact that the immigration arising from economic motives – naturally not the political – is usually itself subject to fluctuations of the market, of such a kind, that it decreases when the immigration-country is in a state of depression and increases, when it is in a state of prosperity. It therefore increases when it is most needed, and decreases when it could really become a burden; it might even give way to a reflux of emigrants, which relieves the labour-market of the depression – ridden immigration-country – obviously the most useful arrangement from the point of view of the immigration-country, although certainly not always from the point of view of the emigration-country. Immigration doubtless increases the overall flexibility of the economy of the immigration-country, for which Switzerland could be named as an example.

If neither the narrow-mindedness, which dominates the immigration-policy of so many states, nor their more or less untenable motivation gives us the right to demand complete international freedom of movement, yet we have all the more right to stigmatize the narrow-mindedness of national commercial policies, especially when countries combine a strict restriction of immigration with an extremely protective tariff policy. While the restriction of immigration can still be defended by invoking a clear national interest, the policy of exclusion, pursued everywhere with regard to goods, money and capital, cannot possibly be explained, with the best will in the world, by anything but vested interests, which are entirely opposed to the general national interest they are using to promote their own ends. While the policy of immigration may be faced with a genuine conflict between the interests of an individual country and those of an emigration-country, in the field of commercial-policy proper, this conflict is as a rule, only a seeming one and it only serves to hide the real conflict which exists between the vested interests, and the general interest of the country thus shutting itself off. To this survey must be added a further important circumstance. If in the present situation of the world, limitations on international freedom of movement are unavoidable, their effect on relatively over-populated countries can only be kept within more or less bearable limits, if the international movement of goods, money and capital enjoys all the greater freedom and can therefore, work as a substitute for the hampered movement of human beings. If men are compelled to hold out under relatively unfavourable conditions of production, they must at last, by means of a proportionately freer international trade be granted the opportunity of making the best out of their situation and specializing in those types of production in which they are least handicapped (Law of comparative costs). If they are no longer permitted to export themselves, they must be all the more freely permitted to export the products of their work on the most favourable conditions. It is bad enough, that the one permission must be withdrawn from them under exceptional circumstances. If however the one is taken from them together with the other, then all safety-valves are closed.

We can express this idea in another way: the situation of poor countries in comparison with rich countries can be relieved either by the free international movement of goods and services or by that of capital and labour. The last is obviously the most perfect method, but in so far as the international movement of capital and people is restricted, the first will serve as an indispensible substitute. Both lead to the achievement of the maximum possible balancing-out of the level of income and the standard of living of the nations. But this levelling-up serves not only the interest of the poor, but also that of the rich countries, because it is not carried out not so much by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as by making the production on the entire globe as rational as possible and by exploiting to the maximum the total economic potential of the world.

If we have combined the movement of capital and the movement of human beings into a group, and set it in contrast to the movements of goods, we must now add that the substitution-relationship existing between both groups, is now also valid within the group of capital and human movement. That means therefore, that not only the movement of goods must be all the freer, the more the movement of men and capital is hindered, but also the international movement of capital must be all the freer, the more the movement of humans is hampered.

We cannot conclude these remarks on the modern problems of international movement without making two observations:

The first refers to the bearing, which the international restrictions of movement have on the total economic and social order of our time. They must not be judged according to the special arguments discussed here, but also as an expression of the increasing collectivization and nationalization of economic life, which, as we know, are inseparable twin-sisters. It is clear that a government, which under the banner of collectivism and economic planning takes over more and more the responsibility for the functioning of the economic process, cannot leave the comings and goings of men to their own inclination, or it would let slip one of the most important elements of planning. If such a government eventually develops into a totalitarian regime – which is after all a scarcely avoidable consequence of a consistent pursuance of this policy – it will consider with doubled mistrust everyone who comes from outside and might be a dangerous germ-carrier of freedom. For the same reason, it will resist the idea that anyone, who is weary of totalitarian collectivism, might leave the national prison at his own discretion.

So in this way we arrive from limitation of immigration to limitation of emigration. Whereas, as we saw, we must admit the validity of certain reasons for the former, there is no reasonable argument that could justify limitation of emigration in the eyes of anyone who has retained an elementary respect for the freedom and dignity of mankind. That, even on this side of the iron-curtain we have progressed alarmingly far on the way to the ‘nationalization of man’, is best proven by the degree, to which even the restriction of emigration, albeit in subtle and indirect form, has become the rule. He who speaks of ‘the flight of capital’ as a crime requiring forcible prevention by the police, should be clear how near he comes to the spirit of totalitarianism, for which the prevention of the ‘flight of labour’ is only the logical next step on this path of the ‘nationalization of man’!

It is no less obvious that we cannot continually increase the importance of the national government for the well-being of the individual by a broader and broader extension of the welfare-state without subjecting the influx of new receivers of government-manna to a stricter and stricter control. The more we leave the responsibility for our welfare to the national government – in reality of course the collective total of the tax-payers – the more jealously we shall watch over the numbers of those who must share in the booty. The more the passport becomes by means of the extensions of the social services a gratuitous insurance-policy, all the less tolerant shall we be in the issuing of such a document, and in the end anyone who is not firmly attached to a national community is lost. He sinks to the level of a vagabond in a world which has gone back to the feudal principle: nulle terre sans seigneur.

Here, as in other fields – and in this way we advance further to the second remark – the problem of an international liberation must be seen in its entirety, i.e. in its inner connection with the problem of the entire economic order. Let us moreover sum up the recommendations for a timely international migration policy under the following points:

1. There is no excuse and justification for limitations on emigration.

2. The present restrictions on immigration are especially unbearable where they affect members of the group of the intellectual and economic leaders and entrepreneurs.

3. As far as mass-immigration is concerned, there exists not only the right, but moreover the duty of every nation, to subject it to a qualitative control, which protects the spiritual patrimony, the political tradition, the ethical, linguistic character and the social structure of the country from an immigration undesirable from these points of view. Apart from the fact, however, that a warning must be given against a misuse of this argument, it must be emphasized that the process of assimilation is all the easier, if the immigrants do not cling like a rootless proletariat to the big towns and industrial centres, but scatter over the plain land and get an opportunity to take root in a world which is more natural and which simplifies the creation of a community. A proof of this is the experience, that in the case of Italian immigration to France peasants are far more easily assimilated than proletarians.

4. Corresponding to this, there should be in the emigration countries an economic and social policy, which lessens the impetus to emigrate. The last thing we should wish for is a world of wandering nomads, and when we place such emphasis on greater international freedom of movement, it is not because we wish that as many as possible should make use of it. What we have in mind is rather the idea that the greatest possible number of humans should have freedom of migration but that only the least possible number should have the wish to actually make use of it because they enjoy living and working conditions, which make them happiest in the place where they are born, even at the price of a low material income. On the other hand, the more the freedom conceded is one of potential and not actual immigration, the more will the immigration countries be inclined to a liberal policy, and it is this potential freedom, not the actual one with which we are mainly pre-occupied. We must consider that for the normal man it is in no way natural, to leave home and country and to seek his happiness abroad, in a strange climate, among people of another language and other customs, and to seek it in a completely uncertain future. On the average it needs a powerful economic, social or political pressure, to drive men to the desperate measure of self-uprooting. If we do everything to lessen this pressure in the emigration-countries, by agragrian reform, by de-proletarisation and evoking a sense of belonging and by combating persecution for political, religion and racial reasons, we shall have made a not insignificant, although indirect contribution to the reduction of the international barriers to migration.

5. Since, as we saw, a lot depends on the right type of immigration and its adaption to the economic needs of the immigration country, it follows that the barriers to migration can be made all the more surmountable, the more is done to effect this choice and this adaptation. There is a broad and fruitful field for an international migration-policy in the true sense of a co-operation of governments in the international organs, which have been successfully created since the war (IRO, Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration).

6. While all these measures should make it easier for the immigration-countries to adopt a more liberal policy, yet it would be naive to expect the restoration of the earlier freedom of immigration and indeed this could not be unreservedly recommended. Then however countries should realize, that they must guarantee international freedom of movement for goods and capital with all the more zest.

CONCLUSIONS

After this excursion into the territory of international movement we now return to our main question.

We sum up our rather involved trains of thought in a few words and establish that the historically abnormal population increase of the 19th and 20th century has placed a great strain on peace in two ways. In the first place the concentration of masses and the emergence of the type thereby created of the homo insipiens gregarius, leads to dangerous manifestations of social fermentation which at least strengthen international tension, if they do not on occasion even produce it. Secondly, however, the process of the dissolution of the world-economy and the nationalization of the economy puts the problem of the population on quite a new basis, for it renders the population problem of the world more acute and the international balancing-out of a population-pressure of varying intensities more difficult. From this result certain conclusions, which can be reduced to three mainpoints.

Firstly in the interests of peace one has every reason to consider a sudden increase of the population with downright uneasiness, to wish the restraining forces complete success and to encourage them as much as possible. That is true in the first instance for Asia and Africa, but the newest development makes it necessary to extent the monition with emphasis to the western world. Henri Bergson is right, when in his book ‘Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion’, he says: ‘Si l’on ne ‘rationalise’ pas la production de l’homme lui-même comme on commence à le faire pour son travail, on aura la guerre. Nulle part il n’est plus dangereux de s’en remettre à l’instinct. La mythologie antique l’avait bien compris quand elle associait la déesse de l’amour au dieu des combats. Laissez faire Vénus, elle vous amènera Mars’.

Secondly it is in the greatest interests of peace to promote with energy the process of transforming the masses into a community, a process which a slowing up of the growth of the population could under certain circumstances relieve. A social and economic policy, which ‘reduces’ the masses, appears to be at the same time a peace-policy of the best kind. Structureless masses have always been a better tool of aggressive foreign policy than country-folk and towns-folk. For this reason, the idolization by Marxism of the proletariat as an avant-garde of peace needs correction. On the contrary, it is certain that uprooted masses conceal an emotional explosive of the highest force; in which direction and for what cause it explodes, whether in the vertical class struggle or in the horizontal international struggle, depends in the main on what ideology and leadership devolve upon the masses.

Thirdly the international population problem is once again specially brought home to us by the fact that the disastrous dissolution of the liberal world-economy, the nationalization and the giving of a political direction to the economy and the economic over-emphasis of the national boundaries must in the interest of peace, at last be halted and the work of reconstruction undertaken. If we cannot help conceding certain special rights to the limitation of the international movement of human beings, we emphasize on the other hand that the freeing of the international movement of goods and capital is an all the more urgent commandment.

 

NOTES

6. (p. 131) Bases of the population problem:

Cf. W. RÖPKE, Die Lehre von der Wirtschaft, 7th. Edition, Erlenbach-Zürich 1954, p. 80 et seq. and the further reading mentioned there. In addition: R. v. UNGERN STERNBERG, Grundriß der Bevölkerungswissenschaft, Stuttgart 1950; R. MUKERJEE, The Political Economy of Population, London 1943; G. MYRDAL, Population, a Problem for Democracy, Cambridge Mass., 1940; A. M. DE JONG, Inleiding tot het Bevolkingsvraagstuk, Den Haag 1946; G. TH. J. DELFGAAUW, De economische theorie en enkele economische bevolkingsproblemen, Amsterdam 1947; ALFRED SAUVY, Théorie générale de la population, Vol. I, Paris 1952; LANDRY, La Révolution démographique, Paris 1934.

A survey of past development is provided by the essay ‘Un demi-siècle d’évolution démographique’, Bulletin Mensuel de Statistique (League of Nations), November 1944.

About the change-over during the last decade: JOSEPH S. DAVIS, Our Changed Population Outlook and its Significance, American Economic Review, June 1952; G. FRUMKIN, Populations Changes in Europe since 1939, New York 1951. ROBERT C. COOK, Human Fertility, London 1951, moreover draws one’s attention to the important fact that today the reduction of mortality in the underdeveloped countries is proceeding very much more quickly than in the western countries. The curves of mortality and nativity therefore diverge more quickly today than previously. As far however as the birth-rate boom in the western countries is concerned, it is a phenomenon of very complex origin. Meanwhile one must however ask very seriously how much responsibility must be laid at the door of the modern welfare-state, which does away with the psychological mechanism based on a sense of responsibility, a mechanism which the entire previous population-theory has always pre-supposed; the welfare state may in fact even twist this sense into its contrary, in as much as it makes the production of children into a profitable business. Even that belongs to the fateful vicious circle, into which the welfare-state is bound to slide.

7. (p. 133) Growth of the world-population:

Annual rate of growth of the world-population

1650-1750	0.29%
1750-1800	0.44%
1800-1850	0.51%
1850-1900	0.63%
1900-1940	0.75%

(according to KINGSLEY DAVIS, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1945, p. 3).

Consider also the single fact, that in 1927 the population of Japan amounted to 56 millions, in 1955 however will have increased to 90 millions. The population of Egypt has increased sevenfold in the course of 100 years.

8. (p. 133) Consequences of the hectic growth of the population:

On this point there exists a vast and highly informative literature, which, partly due to a tendency towards exaggeration, is to be used with caution. The following should be especially noted: COLIN CLARK, Halfway to 1960, Lloyds Bank Review, April 1952; M. ROBERTS, The Estate of Man, London 1951; G. O’BRIEN, The Phantom of Plenty, Dublin 1948; M. D. Dijt, De economische toekomst van het Westen, Haarlem 1950; K. SAX, Bevölkerungszuwachs und Welternährungslage, Universitas, August 1952.

9. (p. 141) The international migration-problem:

Cf.: W. RÖPKE, Barriers to Immigration, in: 20th Century Economic Thought, published by Glenn E. Hoover, New York 1950, p. 605-645. Out of the huge volume of further reading are specially to be recommended: L. MISES, Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, Wien 1919; L. MISES, Die Gemeinwirtschaft, 2nd. Edition, Jena 1932, p. 201 et seq.; E. A. Ross, Standing Room Only?, New York 1927; L. ROBBINS, Economic Planning and International Order, London 1937, p. 316 et seq.; JULIUS ISAACS, Economics of Migration, Toronto 1947; H. A. CITROEN, Les migrations internationales, Paris 1948.

10. (p. 143) Lump-labour fallacy:

The locus classicus for this is: J. E. CAIRNES, Some Leading Principles of Political Economy, London 1874, p. 304 et seq. Cf. also: W. RÖPKE, Crises and Cycles, London 1936, p. 77 et seq. In this connection L. HERSCH (Unemployment and Migration, International Labour Office, Genf, 1931, p. 216) comes to the pithy conclusion: ‘If it is desired to reduce and prevent unemployment to any appreciable extent, we must try in the demographic field to promote freedom of migration just as in the more strictly economic field we must try to promote international freedom of trade’.

• 1. (p. 25) The Sociology of War:
• 2. (p. 27) War of Conflict and War of Aggression:
• 3. (p. 31) The inadmissable over-simplification of the peace problem:
• 4. (p. 57) Communist Imperialism:
• 5. (p. 74)
• 6That the various factors are interwoven with extraordinary intricacy becomes particularly evident in the dramatic catastrophe of international interrelations which we call war). One of the moral perversities with which our age is afflicted was to deny at times the supremely catastrophic character of war, until two world wars brought disillusionment – let us hope for ever. For centuries the time-honoured belief existed that war was, as a rule, one of the incomprehensible evils of the world system, which – like the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Pestilence, Hunger and Death – had to be borne with resignation. Pacifism, in the sense of a mass movement directed towards the abolition of war, only became possible after the beginning of the modern age, when war, like all other things alleged to be the Will of God, came to be regarded in the light of critical and ameliorative reason, and, together with other social institutions, as a work of man which it would be quite possible to alter. Thus instead of being a subject of theology, war became a subject of sociology. Has it in this way become entirely comprehensible? To be honest we must admit that we are still very far from understanding it. Although men have at all times pondered over the phenomenon of war, and although recent generations especially have amassed a gigantic literature on the sociology of war, all that progress adds up to is that we possess a fairly complete list of the possible causes of war and that we realize the extraordinary intricacy which links these causes and which excludes any monistic theory of war sociology. Only a separate and comprehensive volume could do justice to the epistemology which results.
• 7In order to understand in detail what an international peace based on justice must accomplish, the various categories of war must be distinguished. Above all a difference must be made between two types of war, the importance of which is not lessened by the fact that they have often been combined with each other in the course of history and that there are borderline cases in which it is not easy to say whether the one or the other type predominates. A war may arise either through a conflict over concrete claims, which may be compared with a case under civil law (war of conflict), or through an act of violence which corresponds to a breach of the peace under criminal law (war of aggression) ). Whereas individual legal disputes arising from contentions of personal honour or material claims are finally settled by judicial decision, international conflicts of this kind may easily lead to war, as long as a decision by force of arms, which corresponds to the ordeal of the Middle Ages, is not abolished through obligatory international legal procedure, and before this is the case we shall continue to regard war rather as a tragic chain of events than as a vicious action. From their very nature such wars of conflict make it difficult to clarify the question of guilt, provided one of the warring parties – as is however often enough the case – does not misuse the conflict as an excuse for a war of aggression, or does not oppose the readiness of the antagonist to come to an understanding with inexcusable intransigence. This last applies on the whole to the case of the first world war, whereas we should not hesitate to characterize the second in its origin and in all its phases purely as a war of aggression, after it had already been preceded by the wars of aggression in China and Abyssinia.
• 8Is not then the solution of the war problem in reality very simple and only dependent upon the firm determination of the governments and the peoples? If this were our opinion we should be contradicting ourselves, since earlier on we termed just such thinking ‘internationalism’ and warned our readers against it. In actual fact this contradiction is only an apparent one. To explain it we should consider that the problem can be regarded from various angles. In formulating the solution of the war problem so sharply and smoothly above, we were regarding it from the juridical angle. Here in fact everything appears much simpler than it actually is. To be content with such considerations is to lapse into that monistic way of thinking which may be termed legalism and which is no better than economism or any other one-sided outlook. In indicating the legal solution the question has still not been answered as to the conditions under which the peoples and governments would be prepared to accept it firmly and undeviatingly. This question however brings us back to the higher level of the sociological, ethical and political considerations with which we started).
• 9Already in the first German edition of this book, which appeared at the end of the war, attention was diverted, with an outspokenness which at that time was understood by only a few, from the recently overthrown totalitarianism of the Axis powers to the new threat to peace and international order presented by the last remaining totalitarianism of Russian Communism). This danger has meanwhile grown so enormous that all questions of international order today must be considered in its perspective. This fact emerged very clearly in the foregoing section. Everything is of a temporary nature, everything is in a state of constant tension, everything is doubtful, as long as the world is overshadowed by this danger. What is the nature of this danger, and how can it be abolished? A book which deals with the fundamental problems of international order must at least give some indication of the lines along which these questions which weigh so heavily upon us are to be answered, if it is not to lack the foundation of hard and fast reality which the middle of this century demands.
• 10(1) Instead of the world state, which is an indispensable setting for a world economy, but which did not exist, a practicable and robust substitute was found, and that in a way with which, on a limited scale, the Res Publica Christiana of the Middle Ages may be compared). This substitute was the international ‘open society’ (Henri Bergson)) of that liberal age, a sort of unwritten ordre public international, a secularized Res Publica Christiana, which for that reason spread all over the globe. It is the ‘communitas seu res publica hominum sub Deo’ of St. Thomas Aquinas, to which natural law gave the double roots of universalism, which postulates the brotherhood of man, and of personalism, which postulates the inviolability of the individual, but replanted out of the spiritual earth of Christian Theism into the loose soil prepared by the Renaissance, by Humanism, Enlightment and Liberalism, while the addition ‘sub Deo’ was gradually suppressed and finally dropped). No description can be given here either of the complicated structure of this international ‘open society’ of the 19th century and its manifold workings, nor of the theological, philosophical, moral and sociological forces which underlay this effective substitute for a world state and which penetrated among even the lowest intellectual classes). It must suffice to say that these forces which created the universalist system of the ‘open society’ of the 19th century are for the greater part rooted – as indeed is only to be expected – in the same soil which produced the predominantly ‘liberal’ social, political and economic systems of the same age. What first strikes us in considering this order is the respect it enjoyed, which is only accentuated by the bad conscience or apologetics accompanying cases of infringement, which made it possible for international law to be regarded as a genuine law, on a par or even superior to that of the national state; for the world to be united through a network of long-term agreements which therefore made for the stabilization of international relationships; for tensions between large and small states to be continually adjusted – the unjustly suspected ‘balance of power’ – and for a high degree of agreement to exist regarding legal conceptions and national standards of justice. This external order was, however, fostered by the moral and political atmosphere of the ‘open society’, of the secularized Res Publica Christiana; to which a considerable and by no means unwholesome measure of Pax Britannica was added.