#Primitive subsistence farming

[novella-november]

Fantasy Discrimination, and The Implications

A post on my dash reminded me to share some more writing advice, so here is a very good article by @mythcreantsblog , about how to make sure you're not dehumanizing a species or culture in your writing, which is a good guide on how to avoid accidentally writing racist or ableist tropes:

In particular, I want to talk about the ever-present racist trope in a lot of fantasy and scifi fiction, and that is the decision a lot of creators make where the villains are not just a single person, a faction, or a kingdom -- *its an entire species* who is not only the villain, but are outright, inherently *evil*.

To start out, here's a political cartoon by Tom Gauld you've probably seen all around tumblr with the name cropped out:

[ID: a political cartoon by Tom Gauld, showing two identical cities and boats mirrored on a river, each with a purple or yellow flag; one side is labled "Our Blessed Homeland, Our Glorious Leader, Our Great Religion, Our Noble Populace, Our Heroic Adventuerers", The other side is labled "Their Barbarous Wastes, Their Wicked Despot, Their Primitive Superstition, Their Backwards Savages, Their Brutish Invaders. End ID]

This political cartoon is a very good tool for testing your writing for the trope of demonizing/glorifying your fantasy/scifi species.

Let's use a classic example: your fantasy setting is made up of the following species: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs.

Your Elves are a long-lived, ethereal people who live in secluded, perfect cities, all of them tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, who are extremely wise and making plans that can stretch out over dozens of human generations, and they're the deciders of 90% of politics in your world. Your Dwarves are a short, squat, species who spend their lives working in forges, mines, and laboratories, tirelessly toiling (because they enjoy the hard work, of course!) and selling their products to the Elves who are their largest and wealthiest customer base; Dwarves work hard and studiously for decades at a a time to complete a piece of work in order to fufill the intricate orders from their Elven customers, which is how the majority of them provide for their families, working 16 hour shifts each day for decades per order. Your Humans are far more seperated, and often live on the fringes of what their longer-lived compatriots consider "Civilized Society", often living as Subsistence farmers and hunters, not out of choice, but often due to poor land and lack of resources; the wealthiest of Human cities are usually the capitals where the royals reside and may live in luxury with rich markets and high-quality products and running water, but the vast majority of Humans live in small, poor villages that must rely on traveling merchants to sell what produce and livestock they can spare from their farms in order to buy the supplies they need to live out another year. Your Orcs.... well, they don't really live anywhere, do they? Orcs strongholds can only maintain their grip in hellish wastelands where living is nigh impossible, with all food and water only obtained from outside sources; occasionally, Orcs will attempt to establish base camps in more fertile land, invading neighboring Human, Dwarf, and Elven territory to do so, who quickly unite to expel these vile, dark, brutish invaders lest they steal their daughters, destroy and taint all of the natural resources and steal the few jobs available to the Humans in Dwarven and Elven cities as manual labour and servants.

And Now, take a step back from this world, and take a long, hard look at these species (outside of humans who are just kinda there in the middle and the only ones capable of change because Humans Are Always Special) and societies and what ideas are being reinforced here, especially when the above descriptions are framed as Hard Facts which are both Just and True?

(archived read-more Here)

Elves are morally superior and are always Perfect and Correct,

Dwarves are happy to spend their entire lives toiling in the forges and mines to please their Elven patrons,

and Orcs are Evil Monsters who will rob, murder, and rape any hapless victim who comes their way, so it's better to slaughter them all on sight and kick them out of your cities and towns, and this is the 100% correct morally right choice every single time and the narrative and characters themselves support this?

Did you spot them already, or does the above just seem like a cool, fun fantasy world where Elves are the cool wise good guys and Orcs are the devil's army and can be used as canon fodder any time your main character needs to mow down some enemies for a Badass Scene?

Let's retrace our steps a bit, shall we, and examine this "perfect" world through a critical lens?

When your elves are all portrayed as Perfect Ethereally Beautiful Blonde and Blue-Eyed wise leaders of the civilized world, what idea is being reinforced here? Who does it harm, and what real world ideas is this mirroring and enforcing? Who is going to have their own biases reinforced by this narrative?

When only the longest-lived people are allowed to decide politics, what group biases are being enforced? Is portraying "young people" as "being incapable of making political decisions" as a correct, logical choice in your story something you wish to enforce? Are there any real world issues this trope mirrors?

When your Dwarves are all Happy Workers and Slaves, bound to and reliant on the superior Elves to live, spending the majority of their life purely in service to these Superior Beings while happy to do it, what idea is being reinforced here? Who might see themselves in the plight of the Dwarves and feel alienated and insulted by the Dwarves happily slaving away in the dark? Who might have biased ideas reinforced by seeing the Dwarves treated in such a way?

When your Orcs are portrayed as evil, dark skinned, brutish savages who will kidnap and rape poor helpless women from the "pure" species, when Orcs are incapable of creating anything of their own and can only steal, what racist messages are being enforced and upheld? Who are the real people and cultures being demonized when you perpetuate this? What real world peoples and cultures have faced *decades of propaganda framing them as such*?

If you spotted these harmful messages in the initial indented description, good job!

But if you didn't, it's time to find and read critical reviews and essays written by marginalized communities of works that include these damaging tropes, because if it your Evil Species are Weird Aliens, because when you characterize and describe your Evil Species, you are undoubtedly going to be drawing heavily on your own internal biases of what makes people Other and Wrong.

Are your Evil Species all dark-skinned, physically-strong and animalistic? Congrats, you have just regurgitated centuries-old racism that justifies slavery, segregation, and discrimination *to this day*

Are your Evil Species all nomadic ~cannibals~ who are incapable of creating anything of their own and have to loot and steal from others to have anything of value? Congrats, you are once again regurgitating racist propoganda that has been used against countless cultures and minorities for centuries.

Are your Evil Species reknowned for kidnapping and raping the women of your Good Guys in order to create Evil Twisted Halfbreed Offspring for ....uh, reasons? Congrats, once again, this is literally just racist propaganda being reinforced by your writing.

Anything you come up with to make your Species Inherently Evil is going to most likely be something that is weaponized against real world minorities that you are now reinforcing with your writing, from racism to ableism to queerphobia and all the ways they intersect.

How do you fix this?

It's incredibly simple!

Don't make an entire Species be Inherently Evil.

They need to be just as varied as real living people.

Your Species should not be a Monolith, let alone of *Evil*.

Your Species should not have their only "decent/civilized/kind people" examples come from ""crossbreeds"" [and this term itself should be used only by bigots as a deragatory term] or random orphans who were raised by one of the Good Species(tm)-- this is how your story starts advocating for *eugenics*, which is not something you want to do!

So, instead of having an entire Species be "Inherently biologically" Evil, consider instead:

Making your villain group diverse instead of all one Species.

if your villain group is a Species Supremacist, they're probably still going to have underlings and lower castes who do their dirty work, or have been taken in by the cult ideology.

Making the villains of this Species be a small fraction of a larger whole, who are part of a violent cult, ideology, or political party that not only puts them in conflict with your main characters, but also with the rest of their Species.

Having your main character or their friends be the same Species as your villain group, and they represents the vast majority of the Species, instead of hailing them as "the Paragon of Goodness who emerged somehow pure from of a species forged in hell" or anything similar.

You should also sit down and not only think about the harmful, racist tropes that would come from writing Inherently Evil Species, but also consider:

Why do you want to include an entire species of people who are inherently evil in your novel?

Is your novel gaining anything for including these tropes uncritically?

Does it make it a better, more interesting story to include these tropes uncritically?

What message are you trying to send with your story?

Does including these tropes uncritically in your story *undermine* your intended message?

Another trope in the opposite direction, is talking about "Oppression" and "Fantasy Racism" from the perspective of a character who is part of the oppressed minority, only to spend the entire novel talking about how your Opressed Class are Literally and Factually threats to the population that "discriminate" against them, usually by being rightfully wary in their prescence.

if the Oppressed Minorities in your story in anyway resemble the Orcs in Bright, the Predators in Zootopia, or the Khajiit in the Elderscrolls, where the Racism these peoples face in based on hard proven facts that these people have been and still are threats to most of the population..

... you're less writing a story about how "Racism Against Vulnerable Minorities is Bad"

and sound more like you're saying

"It's bad to be "mean" (afraid of) Nazis who literally want you dead and who can kill you with impunity and no consequences."

If you are writing a story about Fantasy Discrimination, and the basis of your Fantasy Discrimination is based on *cold hard facts that your narrative supports and upholds*, instead of actually basing it on and talking about what leads to discrimination in the real world

(xenophobia and the fear+hatred of The Other, economic gain, mainly),

then you are not making the progressive stance that you think you are, and instead are enforcing the ancient propoganda that racism is based on fact, that racism is "for a good reason", and you need to take care that you are not upholding this idea in your works.

TL;DR:

Instead of making an entire Species of people a trope of Wise Good Guys or Evil Incarnate, consider using *Factions not Races* for your groups, and think long and hard about the implications of your world's politics and how it mirrors our own world, especially in ways *you may not intend it to.* If your story is meant to be progressive and inclusive, but your villains are an entire race of black orcs who slave and rape the good guys species, you need to go back to the drawing board.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Against Agriculture: Sowing the Seeds of Resistance

For those of us conscious about the way our food choices affect others, the basic act of cutting out meat and/or dairy products, or eating only organic, feels like a huge step and is often as far as we can manage to take our concerns. But the politics of food go far beyond veganism and organics. Economic and social factors like the conditions of migrant farmworkers, or the low labor standards in most Agriculture in the global south, rarely influence our cultures’ purchasing decisions. Even organic farming often reproduces many of the same ecological and economic dynamics at work in commercial farming. What about the soil erosion from over-farming huge fields, even if crops are organic? (According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, topsoil is lost on average 17 times faster than it is formed, and it takes at least 100 years to form one inch of topsoil). The use of Slaughterhouse byproducts to replace the soil lost from heavy tilling, and the overuse of “biological” fungicides and herbicides, undoubtedly maintains an imbalance in the give and take relationship that forms the basis of ecological values.

The trends toward “natural food” and “organic” are quickly being co-opted, as green businesses consolidate their power and corner markets, gobbling up profits as they go. Consequently, these concepts are losing their meaning altogether. The notion of “sustainability” has been colonized by the profit-hungry. The biotechnology industry touts the term whenever they get the chance. Of course, what they are talking about is the sustainability of profits and the dependence of farmers on them, not sustainability of ecological systems and social bonds. So when we examine the idea of sustainability we should always define what ft is we are trying to sustain. If we are thinking of ecology and cultural survival, then we must remove the factors that contradict those: industrialism and capitalism, to start with.

To be against agriculture does not require advocating mass starvation or a return to an exclusively primitive or foraging existence, and it doesn’t lave to mean eradicating cultivated food altogether. We need to make a distinction between “agriculture” and other plant (aid possibly animal, although the ethics of the domestication of animals should be viewed with suspicion) “cultivation” methods that have been, and are continuously being developed by people around the world. The problem of agriculture is largely related to the scale. “Horticulture” refers to garden-scale cultivation rather than field-scale, as in the prefix “agri”. For example, permaculture is a specific cultivation method that aims to integrate die garden system into the wild ecosystem around it. Industrial farming (even organic) places the “field” — the monocrop — outside of our immediate surroundings, removing our social lives from the polycultural, intimacy of “the garden”. Subsistence horticulture doesn’t depend on industrial systems or take more than they give back ecologically, or even require specialization of labor, or long monotonous work hours. The most effective methods have always been diversified community efforts, which cut down on work hours as well as monotony.

When farmers in India plant a seed they pray for its endurance. But the “gene giants” have their sights trained on “terminator” technologies that break the seed’s reproductive cycle. Hybrid seeds produced in laboratory conditions are usually bred to retain certain characteristics patented by the breeder. If saved and replanted they will not show the same traits, and may turn out to be something weird and unpalatable. Open-pollinated seeds defy this controlled approach. When replanted for generations they adapt to local climate conditions, and develop a bioregionally distinct immunity. When saved for many generations they become Heirloom Seeds. For example, we have seeds that have been in circulation since Cherokee gardeners first grew and saved them hundreds of years ago, and took them on the Trail of Tears. They made their way back to the Southeast and to this day are still being passed around. The more they’re grown out, the more decentralized the seed becomes. These seeds are crucial to maintaining plant biodiversity. The reduction in varieties that comes with industrialization and capitalism has created a massive loss of genetic diversity (75% in the last century, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization), which weakens the plant’s insect blight and disease resistance, and their adaptability to changing growing conditions. The Irish potato famine was a direct result of the dependence on one variety. Breeders had to go back to the Andes to find a potato that would resist the blight. In the face of the elimination of ancient varieties in favor of more uniform crops that ship and store more efficiently, heirloom seeds are truly Seeds of Resistance. Check out Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth for detailed instructions on seed saving.

Humanure and Greywater are traditionally used methods intended to keep nutrients in the garden ecosystem, thereby closing the circuit rather than requiring imported materials. As these methods are inherently non-capitalist and non-industrial, it would not be possible to adopt these practices (or to return to them, depending on how we look at it) beyond just a small privileged minority, within the capitalist market or the industrial model. True sustainability actually requires the subversion of those institutions.

On a personal level, we can take steps to re-establish foodways in our cultures by learning about our food, discovering what foods grow where and in what season — and where those foods originated. We should know where our food comes from and seek out food grown locally. We can seek out those with traditional knowledge, learn how to cook with whole foods, then teach others. We can learn about the wild edible plants that grow around us, and about the ancestral people who ate and propagated those foods. This knowledge provides us with an essential missing component that early horticultuialists combined with cultivation. (A great reference is the work of Steve Brill, an urban wild plant forager in New York City: www.wildmanstevebrill.com). Challenge your taste buds to appreciate foods in their natural state, and replace the junk foods you crave with natural sweets and snacks.

Reconnecting with our food goes beyond the personal. Taking food out of the capitalist market means reintegrating ourselves with the processes of growing food — whether that means getting to know local farmers and buying from them, getting involved in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) or a food co-op, going to farmers markets, or even better — growing your own. These options increase the security of our access to healthy food, lessening our dependence on the market. In urban areas this can be much more challenging, but all the more rewarding if you can challenge the obstacles. For some inspiring examples of urban food security check out Www.foodsecurity.org. The Hartford Food System in Hartford, CT (www.hartfordfood.org) and The Food Project in Massachusetts (www.thefoodproject.org) are amazing examples of urban food security ] that truly challenge the class structures that keep people dependent on Agriculture.

The challenge of feeding ourselves ! sustainably might be the fundamental question for our future survival. There is not one path forward out of this mess, but many possible options, and we’ll have to make up a lot of it as we go. But our paths will be totally new and unique. Learning from the mistakes and the successes of the past is crucial to bringing the modern world back in direct relationship with nature, and the life-support systems on which we depend. We should celebrate the opportunity we have to examine and analyze what has worked and what has compromised our freedoms and our health, and move toward post-industrial and post-capitalist models of sustenance. Rather than an afterthought of social revolution, reclaiming truly sustainable foodways could itself be a catalyst for challenging the deep alienation of our modern world.

[comradeclevername]

The Garden and the Stars: Some thoughts on the Agrarian Urge of Cottagecore and Motivational Visions more broadly.

Tomas Jefferson ascended to the presidency on March 4th, 1801... (okay, just stick with me here. It is going somewhere.) Jefferson was a Republican, the oppositional party to the Federalists, and Jefferson believed in personal independence and subsistence farming. When in office he cut every tax he could find, shrunk the army & navy, and preformed the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States. Jefferson was also an ardent White Supremacist, rapacious Slaver, and ecologically destroyed North America.

After the Napoleonic Era the German nation was shattered into little warring states, with the space of hegemon contested between the Militaristic Prussians and Conservative Austrians. In this volatile environment a new Aesthetic trend emerged from the fleeting Feudal and precarious Middle Classes, Volkism. The Volkists wanted to return to "Nature;" they thought Germany was being poisoned by Capitalism and Modernism, that the Industrial and the Urban were tools of oppression and all of it had to be smashed. They fostered hiking communities, youth groups, communes, many even went so far as trying to revive Pagan Spiritualism or creating a new Animist faith. The Volkists were also Proto-Fascists, their aesthetics and political activity being a key trend in the development of Nazism.

The 2008 Financial Crash lead to, conservatively speaking, some Skepticism about the stability of the Neo-Liberal order. Concurrent to the idea scramble of the late 00s to early 10s was the popularization of the Internet and social media like Tumblr; which in turn developed a new organization of Culture around mass instant and highly pictographic communication. What took a book and a printing house could now be done with some photos and a pocket sized phone. Aesthetics exploded. Already latent though they were Aesthetics, which are a language of signs and symbols, took the front seat in shaping culture, with many people emergently creating and combining Aesthetics to suit their needs or tastes.

One such Aesthetic was called "Cottagecore;" which valorizes personal independence and subsistence farming, wanting to return to "Nature," thinking society is being poisoned by Capitalism and Modernism. Often followers of Cottagecore foster hiking communities, youth groups, communes, many even going so far as trying revive Pagan Spiritualism or creating a new Animist faith. (Told you I was going somewhere.)

Aesthetics are not simply a series of images, they are an organization of symbols around some concepts and each Aesthetic is appealing to its adherents because of those concepts expressed by the organization. The above two Aesthetics (Volkism and Cottagecore) organize from the same source concept first fully exampled by Jefferson, this concept we will call "the Agrarian Urge" onward going.

The Agrarian Urge first developed in the Early-Modern period as a reaction to Primitive Accumulation, Capital seizing up the Commons and developing that land for Capitalist Relations. Many dispossessed Peasants and Lords understood this as a destruction of a particular idea of Nature; a "Nature" that was bound up with the "Land," this chunk of territory people were enmeshed in with particular social relations. It all was a very Feudal idea, very Reactionary. But, as time moved forward and Feudalism fully was swept into the dustbin of History the Agrarian Urge developed towards Capitalist Reaction against Communism and in it emerged a strong Racist and Individualist streak. So, by now the Agrarian Urge has within itself an interest in Whiteness, Naturalism, Spiritual Hygiene, Pastoralism, and Rugged Individualism.

As briefly mentioned before, Aesthetics draw people because of its Organizational Concepts which are appealing by some means, which then begs the question (especially for those of us who grew up on a farm) what exactly is appealing about the Agrarian Urge? This is where we get into Motivational Visions, which are the driving force of all actions. As an example when one buys an object they have a Vision what that object will do for them in their life; A vase will beautify their home, a chair will give them relaxation, a gaming console will give them joy et cetera. They have imagined a state of being where they have the object and what that would be like. Motivational Visions also work for negatives, the emotion of fear is the most common articulation. One doesn't go over to an unfamiliar area at night because they imagine what can happen to them in a collection of speculated scenarios. This phenomenon continues to more complex things like Ideology. You, reader, are a Communist because of a Motivational Vision, particular to you, but I can safely bet it has something to do with the idea of a peaceful and stable life after the Revolution or avoiding almost certain poverty and death under Capitalism.

Now, the Motivational Vision behind the Agrarian Urge is a peaceful life of total Social freedom, where one is not beholden to nor reliant on anyone. Everything is DIY and the subject capable. It is the dream of Homesteading. It is a totally impossible Vision that Jefferson attempted to achieve on the backs of slaves and in the blood of uncountable Natives, the Volkists with the attempted annihilation of every Jewish, Romani, Slavic, Queer, Disabled, and "impure" person. Visions have Concepts too, and this one presupposes able bodied people in rigid productive-reproductive relations in isolated, Pre-Industrial capability in service of an Idealistic and Pseudo-Scientific concept of Nature invented by bitter European Landlords. Only a small number of very particular people could survive like that, I am not one of them, you most likely are not ether.

We see the trajectory of Cottagecore into Fascism already, there is no secret that the "Trad Wife" movement (Sexist women part of Christian Extremism and Neo-Nazism) associates itself with the Aesthetic. (See this video here from Strange Æons for an example https://youtu.be/SXGBYAOMLsA ) This development was inevitable from the Concepts inherent in the Agrarian Urge, but we Communists should use this as a lesson. The Historic Process is a great teacher, if you listen. The burgeoning Noosphere suggests Aesthetics as a prime tool for Propaganda, we can and should organize an Aesthetic around the Concepts of Communism, valorizing Democratic Production and Collectivism; expressing our Dynamism, Social interconnectivity, and the awesome Promethean potential of self-aware Masses. An Aesthetic around the will to build a better tomorrow.

[todaysfarming]

TODAY'S FARMING

INTRODUCTION

India is one of the major players in the agriculture sector worldwide and it is the primary source of livelihood for about 58% of India’s population. India has the world's largest cattle herd (buffaloes), largest area planted to wheat, rice, and cotton, and is the largest producer of milk, pulses, and spices in the world. It is the second-largest producer of fruit, vegetables, tea, farmed fish, cotton, sugarcane, wheat, rice, cotton, and sugar. Agriculture sector in India holds the record for second-largest agricultural land in the world generating employment for about half of the country’s population. Thus, farmers become an integral part of the sector to provide us with means of sustenance. Consumer spending in India will return to growth in 2021 post the pandemic-led contraction, expanding by as much as 6.6%. The Indian food industry is poised for huge growth, increasing its contribution to world food trade every year due to its immense potential for value addition, particularly within the food processing industry. The Indian food processing industry accounts for 32% of the country’s total food market, one of the largest industries in India and is ranked fifth in terms of production, consumption, export and expected growth.

Modern Farming Techniques in India

Primitive Farming - One of the oldest techniques in India, primitive farming is practiced in small farms with traditional instruments like a hoe, digging sticks, etc. Farmers depend upon soil fertility, environmental conditions and other factors like heat for the harvest. This method is usually employed by those who use the output for their consumption. This technique is also called “Slash and Burn” farming where farmers burn the land once the crops have been harvested.

Subsistence Farming - Cultivation takes places across wide and larger land areas with two types of crops : wet and dry. Wet crops include paddy and dry crops grown are wheat, maize and pulses. This method demands extensive use of chemical fertilizers and different methods of irrigation.

Commercial Farming - This technique is a modern day farming method where the farmers use a variety of new-age tools for surplus profits. Insecticides and fertilizers are also used because the crops grown are spread across large patches of land. It contributes a great percentage to the country’s GDP. While farmers in Haryana, Punjab and West Bengal practice commercial farming techniques, farmers of Orissa continue to prefer subsistence farming for large productions.

Plantation Farming - It is another subset of commercial farming. It makes use of both labor and technology to ensure the process is sustainable as plantations are spread across huge patches of land. It includes both agriculture and industry because of the nature of the crops grown.

MODERN FARMING METHODS IN INDIA

Aeroponics System

Aeroponics is the process where plants are grown in the air or mist environment without the use of soil. It is the subset of hydroponics, and suspends the plant root in the air to work. Farmers, by using this method will have better control over the amount of water to use.

Aquaponics System

Aquaponics is a closed-loop system that relies majorly on the symbiotic relationship between aquaculture and agriculture for fertilization. This farming method combines conventional aquaculture with hydroponics.

Hydroponics System

The hydroponics method is a less-soil type of farming, and it doesn't require any type of soil. The process involves growing healthy plants without the inclusion of solid medium using nutrients including water solution which is mineral-rich. Hydroponic farming is the subset of hydroculture, and the nutrients used in hydroponic farming systems have different sources.

Monoculture System

This method is the raising of a single crop in a specific area of farming. However, in a country like India, the Monoculture technique of farming isn't widely followed. Indoor farming like growing medicinal plants falls under the monoculture. In plain words, monoculture is a modern agriculture practice where a single crop or plant is grown.

[unsoundedcomic]

Where were the Rortidians originally based? If Fachlyne, Durlyne, both Avelpits, Grattaerin, Rotsa, and Tain were all separate kingdoms, that seems to leave Ulpha, Lolyne, and Valyne, where the capital is. Was Valyne also the home of Rortide and his people?

It's difficult to talk specifically about where anyone was from back in those days. The Rortidians were a loosely allied itinerant group of raiders and pillagers that wandered all over Kasslyne in the days of walled villages and subsistence farming. They'd established a more permanent settlement in the sparsely populated North after taking over Ulpha and the surrounding territories, and were moving into Valyne when they discovered a way over the Gold mountains and into Tain. But even then there were competing groups within Valyne and proto-Alderode that skirmished with them. This was thousands of years ago; a primitive world in constant flux and perpetual small warfare.

Conquering Tain and taking pymary helped Rortide and his successors defeat the surrounding kingdoms and absorb them into their newly founded country, but this happened over long centuries.

[hustlerose]

post apocalypse stories are so fucking stupid, it’s like writers don’t or WON’T understand how people actually work. like “oh people will instantly form gangs of marauders and kill each other for what little canned food is left over because they’re DESPERATE for food and water and shelter.” people are social creatures who don’t actually love murder. trust me on this one, cooperation is human nature. if the bombs fell tomorrow, in 5 years people would be foraging, subsistence farming, building homes, and relying on one another for survival, not tearing each other apart to pick at the scraps. there’s no other way to survive in the long term and also we’ve been doing it for thousands of years. also a primitive form of purified water existed in ancient societies, long before modern water treatment. it was called beer soup

in conclusion, i didn’t like fallout 3 

[argyrocratie]

“In the case of agricultural communities, the folk histories of original appropriation by individuals similarly fail in the face of historical evidence. As we already saw, Locke actually equated cultivation to individual appropriation. But the historical record shows that the breaking and cultivation of land was overwhelmingly by groups, and that groups established collective property in newly cultivated land by altering it with their joint labor. “All of the thousands of village societies known to ethnographers, archeologists, and historians exercised collective control over land and recognized a common right of access to land…”

The reasonable conclusion is that the first farmers almost everywhere in the world voluntarily chose to work together to appropriate land rights that were complex, overlapping, flexible, nonspatial, and partly collective, and they chose to retain significant common rights to the land.62

As original appropriators who worked together to clear land and establish farms, swidden and fallowing communities had the right — under propertarian theory — to set up any property rights system they wanted to.63

A survey of literature on surviving autonomous agricultural villages within historical times, combined with available archeological evidence, suggests that both semi-nomadic communities practicing slash-and-burn/swidden methods and settled villages using fallowing and crop rotation, “usually have no fixed property rights in land; all members of the village are entitled to access to land, but not necessarily a particular plot.”64

James C. Scott, in Seeing Like a State, described the universal pattern in settled agricultural villages:

Let us imagine a community in which families have usufruct rights to parcels of cropland during the main growing season. Only certain crops, however, may be planted, and every seven years the usufruct land is distributed among resident families according to each family’s size and its number of able-bodied adults. After the harvest of the main-season crop, all cropland reverts to common land where any family may glean, graze their fowl and livestock, and even plant quickly maturing, dry-season crops. Rights to graze fowl and livestock on pasture-land held in common by the village is extended to all local families, but the number of animals that can be grazed is restricted according to family size, especially in dry years when forage is scarce…. Everyone has the right to gather firewood for normal family needs, and the village blacksmith and baker are given larger allotments. No commercial sale from village woodlands is permitted.

Trees that have been planted and any fruit they may bear are the property of the family who planted them, no matter where they are now growing…. Land is set aside for use or leasing out by widows with children and dependents of conscripted males.65

And while colonial authorities outside Europe, going back at least to Warren Hastings, attempted to coopt the village headman and disingenuously redefine him as a “landlord,” the headman’s authority in villages with collective land tenure is in fact largely administrative. To cite Widerquist and McCall again: “To the extent any entity can be identified as an ‘owner’ in Western legal terminology, it is the community or kin group as a whole.”66

There are individual property rights, but they inhere in the individual as a member of the group.

It is wrong to say that people living in autonomous villages have no property rights at all. The group often holds land rights against outsiders. Each family keeps the crops they produce subject to the responsibility to help people in need. Often different individuals hold different use-rights over the same land. Land rights in small-scale farming communities have been described as “ambiguous and flexible” and “overlapping and complex.”  

In Honoré’s terms, the incidents of ownership are dispersed: some incidents held by various members of the community, some incidents held by the community as a whole, and some or all incidents subject to revision by the group. Throughout this book, we describe “traditional” or “customary land-tenure systems” (both in stateless societies and in many villages within state societies) variously as complex, overlapping, flexible, nonspatial, and at least partially collective with a significant commons.

Most land in most swidden and fallowing stateless farming communities is a commons in at least three senses. First, individual members of the village have access rights to cultivate a portion of the village’s farmland though not to any particular spot each year. Second, individual members usually had shared access to farmland for other uses (such as grazing) outside of the growing season. Third, individual members had access rights to forage on or make other uses of uncultivated lands or wastes….

…These societies are neither primitive communists nor Lockean individualists. Autonomous villages, bands, and many small chiefdoms around the world are simultaneously collectivist and individualist in the extremely important sense that the community recognizes all individuals are entitled to direct access to the resources they need for subsistence without having to work for someone else. Independent access to common land is far more important to them than the right to exclude others from private land.67

To the extent that communal land tenure tended to decay into a system of class stratification, or that some amount of severable individual property began to appear, it was associated with the ossification of the chief’s or headman’s authority in individual villages, or the rise of an elite stratum at the higher level of a paramount chieftaincy. “The origin of genuinely private individual landownership appears to have had nothing to do with any particular act of appropriation but rather the amassment and disbursement of centralized political power for the benefit of chiefs and other elites.”68 In other words, the earliest appearances of private property were the result of what could most accurately be described as proto-state formations.”

— Kevin Carson, Capitalist Nursery Fables: The Tragedy of Private Property, and the Farce of Its Defense

[holding-infinity-and-a-book]

why....can I remember only one primitive subsistence farming tool...hoe

[mitrasprayers]

Different types of farming techniques in India

In this continuation, we’ll discuss the basics of three distinct agricultural methods. Agriculture is crucial to the economy of every nation. Farming includes the production of food and ornamental plants. A  tractor sprayer attached to a tractor’s back is called a tractor-mounted sprayer. Farming is the one economic foundation upon which every nation rests. The success or failure of a farm is affected by its location, the market for its products, the availability of skilled workers, and the sophistication of its machinery. If you’re looking to save time, energy, and resources, an orchard sprayer is a way to go.

There are three main types of farming:

The following are examples of the three main types of farming and agriculture:

Subsistence farming

Family farming is another name for subsistence farming since it provides for a farmer’s immediate family: only basic machinery and manual labour from around the house where needed. Low yields are typical of this type of farming. They do not use modern farming techniques or high-yielding varieties of seeds and fertilizer.

They lack access to essential services like electricity and water irrigation. Farming for subsistence is typically done by hand.

Subsistence farming can be classified into two types:-

Intensive subsistence farming:-

It entails a relatively modest amount of land, some essential, low-cost tools, and additional labour for crop production. Because “intense” connotes strenuous effort, the implication is that more significant effort is needed. Multiple crops can be grown yearly on the same plot of land because of the favourable climate and rich soils typical of this type of farming.

Rice is the primary crop here. Wheat, maize, pulses, and oilseeds are some additional crops. The more populated monsoon areas are where this type of farming is most prevalent. Southeast Asia and East Asia fall within this category.

Primitive subsistence farming:-

Nomadic farming and herding are also part of this lifestyle.

Shifting cultivation:-

This farming grew in heavily wooded regions like the Amazon basin, tropical Africa, Southeast Asia, and northeast India. This is where the rain is heaviest. Rapid plant growth is regenerated.

At the outset of the shifting cultivation process, the area is cleared by cutting down and burning trees. The resulting tree ash is then incorporated into the ground.

Crops, including maize, yam, potatoes, and cassava, are cultivated using this method. This soil is suitable for growing crops every two or three years. Then the abandoned land as soil fertility declines. The farmers relocate to the new area and begin cultivating it similarly. Slash-and-burn farming describes this method of agriculture.

Nomadic Herding:

The semiarid and arid regions are ideal for this method of farming. Like the central Asian republics, India’s Rajasthan and Jammu & Kashmir are home to beautiful landscapes. The farmers in this system herd their animals along predetermined paths as they go from one location to another in search of food and water.

Sheep, camels, yaks, and goats are commonly raised for their meat and fibre in this region. Farming provides milk, meat, and other foods for the herdsmen and their families.

Commercial Farming

Crops are grown on this farm to be sold in local markets. This farming is done mainly for commercial reasons.

It needed a lot of space and advanced machinery.

High-priced equipment is used to complete the task.

Commercial farming is 3 types.

Commercial grain farming:-

Grains are the primary reason for this cultivation.

Seasonally, this type of farming occurs during the winter.

In this type of farming, only one crop can be cultivated at a time.

Many wealthy farmers are living in this region.

Commercial mixed farming:-

This type of farming is done for growing foods, fodders crops.

In this farming, one or more crops are grown together.

It has good rainfall and irrigation.

The crops are cared for carefully.

The crops are done almost at the same duration.

This farming is most used in Europe, the eastern USA, Argentina, southeast Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Home Farming:-

Growing food at home may be done on a terrace or in a garden.

You only needed a little area and essential garden tools like a rake and pruners.

You only needed a little room and some compact equipment like a garden rake and pruning shears.

It’s not just food; this farming is utilized as a decorative item in people’s homes.

It was done for both profit and survival purposes.

There are two types of farming:-

How many different kinds of farming do people in India practise? If this isn’t the case, then we’re likely to be categorised with the lower forms of farming in India. Check out this site for specifics on various farms. An agricultural sprayer machine is a vital tool for farmers.

Container farming:-

These farming methods are ideal for those with only a tiny plot of land to cultivate, such as in a city apartment’s balcony, courtyard, or yard. This farming method can grow almost any fruit, vegetable, or flower.

Vertical Farming:-

A “window garden” is how it’s being referred to here. Small plant crops and vine crops see the most vertical farming utilization. Ghee, Loki, tomato, chile, and coriander are all components. Since traditional methods of growing vine crops tend to provide lower yields, vertical farming is ideal for these plants. Air-assisted sprayer, and choose from a wide variety of sprayers available on the market.

In India, the anna data are the farmers. They put up long hours to ensure everyone has enough to eat. The farmers organized themselves by the size of their farms. Listed below are the many categories of Indian farmers. Consider looking at the Farmer profile. The Agriculture Blower is a vital component of feed mills and blenders.

Marginal Farmers – When a farmer owns less than 1 hectare of land, they are considered Marginal farmers.

Small Farmers – Small farmers tend to have 1–2 acres of land.

Semi-medium farmers – Farmers with between 2 and 4 hectares of land are considered semi-medium.

Medium Farmers– Farmers with 4–10 ha of land are considered medium farmers.

Large Farmers – When a farmer owns 10 hectares of land or more, they are considered a Large farmer. These folks are also classified as farmers.

Conclusion –

In India, farming is the primary source of income, and there are many types of farming. This completes the exhaustive descriptions of the various farming methods. Please stay tuned for further developments along these lines, and I hope you enjoy this post. The latest in Agriculture news is also available here daily. As a necessary aspect of vineyard management, using a vineyard sprayer with pesticides to combat grapevine diseases and pests is essential.

Keep reading if you’re interested in learning more about crop farming!

[philippmichelreichold]

Home

Analog Science Fiction Science Fact is the oldest surviving Science Fiction magazine. As Analog's  (then Astounding's) editor,   John W. Campbell ushered and nourished the  Golden Age of Science  Fiction. Campbell insisted on science in Science Fiction.  Today, Analog still  contains hard science stories and has a regular Science Fact feature. I had not read Analog in years, and am absolutely thrilled with my first issue in far too long. In a world where I feel I would be better off without a television, It's refreshing to find drama and suspense that does not reek of violence, and comedy and humor that is not redolent with obscenity/profanity. At a time when the Discovery Channel has reached new lows in pseudo science, it is encouraging to read science popularizations that are actually based in science. The underlying motif to this issue is doing the right thing. In Buddhist terms-- Right Action. Of course, reasonable beings may disagree as to what Right Action might be in a given situation. And sometimes one learns after the fact that one's action was not the best choice after all.

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

about doing what's right. Never thought I'd read a story where a Buddhist T. rex was the protagonist. Bokeerk is a wonderful character, and her companion for her mission, a sentient gun, is a delight. The gun reminded me of the talking bullets in

Who framed Roger Rabbit

or Yosemite Sam. To get home to her children's imminent hatching, she must follow the Eightfold path. Neptune�s TreasureBy Richard A. Lovett is an AI story.   Floyd has an AI living in his head name of Brittney. Reminiscent of the movie

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

space and without Steve Martin and Lilly Tomlin. Floyd and Brittney have serious personal/autonomy issues. The science of the story is wonderful-- mass drivers and recovery vessels. And space bicycles as well. Also spracht Strattman

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

with a more up close and personal approach. And they are quite implacable about weeding if the need arises. To say the story is rich in allusions to other works would be a vast understatement. The connection between the title of the story and of Richard Strauss's song, widely acclaimed for its use in

2001

, could not be an accident.

The key to the story is a problem that is not often addressed, or more to the point-- it's largely ignored. There is a dead line for establishment of a real presence in space-- the point at which we exhaust cheap, abundant sources of energy. Somewhere before we reach that point is the point where a struggle ensues for control of those energy sources that remain. Whether or not civilization survives that struggle will have little impact on  what happens next. No alternative, renewable source will be able to fill the gap that will be left with the depletion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will remain expensive, dangerous, and will only postpone the collapse. Fusion will remain as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp for some time. We have gigatons of Hydrogen, but fusion's most

promising process

relies  not on Hydrogen but Lithium. Even if a Lithium-to-Tritium  plant started working tomorrow, we have no way of foreseeing the consequences of eliminating any particular element from the biosphere and would need to work with highly radioactive Tritium.  

Unless Stratman's aliens show up soon to terraform Mars and Venus, and  hand us the keys to the secrets of the Universe, tough times are ahead of us. We will have to use less energy per person or reduce the number of people using energy. We would eventually return to subsistence farming with limited manufacturing powered by wind and solar power-- essentially back to the 17th century. Perhaps the answer to the

Fermi-Hart paradox

 is that no civilization has been able to solve the energy crisis and overcome the energy gap. (It takes a huge amount of energy to go from planet to planet. Witness the huge fuel tanks of the Saturn V's needed to send

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used  

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

to establish a local system space program, the unavailability of cheap, abundant energy would make it difficult to maintain the necessary level of technology. Once nuclear fuel became the mainstay of the economy, space exploration could be sacrificed as having a lower priority than meeting needs back home. Perhaps we are not the first civilization to see the stars not quite in our grasp and then to watch them slip away forever.  The Possession of Paavo Deshin

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

� stories. Retrieval artists are bounty hunters in a convoluted universe, and  Miles Flint is among the very best. Paavo was adopted after his birth parents fled to evade some outstanding alein warrants. But his birth parents have made sure they can keep in touch, naturally.  

Paavo's birth parents are Disappeareds-- essentially outlaws in the old sense of the word. Flint is hired by not one but two clients to locate the birth parents. His adoptive parents are well to do, powerful, and tainted by underworld connections. And they adore Paavo as if he were born to them. Maybe more so.  Rusch make quite plain her view on the subject of birth parents that re-enter a child's life wreaking havoc as they assert their rights. She equates them with terrorists, while Paavo's adoptive father is in his eyes, regardless of how others see him, the ideal and epitome of fatherhood.

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by  

Mike Resnick

&

Lezli Robyn

is a fairly straight forward example of what not to do. Given the colonists's mindset and attitude toward Satan, their actions should not have been unexpected. Perhaps that's the real shame of the story-- that as atrocious as the colonists's appear to the author and to his moral authority figure, given human nature they were unsurprising.

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

is a story about the stereotypically greedy corporation out to profit on the simplicity's and naivety of the primitive, non tech natives. What could be more innocuous than a race that closely resembles (in appearance) the

Who's of Whoville

. The ethnologist and linguist sent to learn about the alien's language and culture implore the company to slow down on making a deal with the aliens and are disregarded as obstructionists. The outcome is inevitable, but the suspense building makes it all worthwhile. On Rickety Thistlewaite by  

Michael F. Flynn

is about the prison that is public service. Making oneself indispensable can be very rewarding and satisfying. Then it becomes an obligation not taken lightly by those who depend on you. As Harry Mudd exclaims to the

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

. . . . A War of StarsDavid L. Clements writes a crisp and interesting story about questioning values and making choices. The concept of intelligence housed in celestial bodies-- the cores of planets and stars-- is reminiscent of

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.  

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their  Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

You may Share-- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format  Adapt--  remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. I cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Attribution--  You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that I endorse  you or your use. No additional restrictions-- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

Copyright  of material that is not mineImages used in reviews are from

ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

[xhxhxhx]

Herman Khan, The Emerging Japanese Superstate (1970):

[The] Japanese are something between the West, with its general Faustian attitudes and concept of "dominion over land and animal," and China, India, and many primitive cultures, which usually try to fit man into the environment in a natural, noncoercive, and nondisturbing manner. The Japanese are somewhat willing to make changes in the environment and to assert their will and fulfill their objectives, but they tend to do so less grossly, less starkly, and with greater moderation, care, and even love for the environment than is characteristic of the root-and- branch restructuring common in Western tradition.

Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons (2001):

Writers on Japan today mostly concern themselves with its banks and export manufacturing. But in the greater scheme of things, for a wealthy nation does it really matter so much if its GNP drops a few percentage points or the banks falter for a few years? The Tang dynasty poet Du Fu wrote, “Though the nation perishes, the mountains and rivers remain.” Long before Japan had banks, there existed a green archipelago of a thousand islands, where clear mountain springs tumbled over mossy stones and waves crashed along coves and peninsulas lined with fantastic rocks. Such were the themes treasured in haiku, bonsai and flower arrangements, screen paintings, tea ceremony, and Zen – that is, everything that defined Japan's traditional culture. Reverence for the land lies at the very core of Shintoism, the native religion, which holds that Japan's mountains, rivers, and trees are sacred, the dwelling place of gods. So in taking stock of where Japan is today, it is good to set economics aside for a moment and take a look at the land itself.

When we do, we see this: Japan has become arguably the world's ugliest country. To readers who know Japan from tourist brochures that feature Kyoto's temples and Mount Fuji, that may seem a surprising, even preposterous assertion. But those who live or travel here see the reality: the native forest cover has been clear-cut and replaced by industrial cedar, rivers are dammed and the seashore lined with cement, hills have been leveled to provide gravel fill for bays and harbors, mountains are honeycombed with destructive and useless roads, and rural villages have been submerged in a sea of industrial waste.

Similar observations can be made about many other modern nations, of course. But what is happening in Japan far surpasses anything attempted in the rest of the world. We are seeing something genuinely different here. The nation prospers, but the mountains and rivers are in mortal danger, and in their fate lies a story-one that heretofore has been almost entirely passed over by the foreign media.

H. P. Lovecraft, describing a creepy New England hamlet doomed to be the setting for one of his horror stories, would say, “On viewing such a scene, who can resist an unutterable thrill of ghastliness?” For a modern traveler seeking something of that Lovecraftian thrill, nothing would do better than a trip to Japan's countryside.

During the past fifty-five years of its great economic growth, Japan has drastically altered its natural environment in ways that are almost unimaginable to someone who has not traveled here. In the spring of 1996, the Japan Society invited Robert MacNeil, the retired co-anchor of The MacNeil/Lehrer News-Hour, for a month's stay in Japan. Later, in a speech presented at the Japan Society in New York, MacNeil said that he was “confused” about what he saw, “dismayed by the unrelieved banality of the [800-kilometer] stretch from Hiroshima to Tokyo, the formless, brutal, utilitarian jumble, unplanned, with tunnels easier on the eyes.”

Across the nation, men and women are at work reshaping the landscape. Work crews transform tiny streams just a meter across into deep chutes slicing through slabs of concrete ten meters wide and more. Builders of small mountain roads dynamite entire hillsides. Civil engineers channel rivers into U-shaped concrete casings that do away not only with the rivers' banks but with their beds. The River Bureau has dammed or diverted all but three of Japan's 113 major rivers. The contrast with other advanced industrial nations is stark. Aware of the high environmental cost, the United States has decided in principle not to build any more dams, and has even started removing many that the Army Corps of Engineers constructed years ago. Since 1990 more than 70 major dams have fallen across America, and dozens more are scheduled to be dismantled. Meanwhile, Japan's Construction Ministry plans to add 500 new dams to the more than 2,800 that have already been built.

To see at close hand how the construction frenzy affects one small mountain village, let us take a short journey to Iya Valley, a picturesque fastness of canyons and peaks in the center of the southern island of Shikoku. When I bought an old thatch-roofed farmhouse in Iya in 1971, people considered this region so remote that they called it the Tibet of Japan. Villagers subsisted on crops such as buckwheat and tobacco, as well as forestry.

Over the next twenty-five years, young people fled Iya for the prosperous cities, and local agriculture collapsed. With its dramatic landscape and a romantic history going back to the civil wars of the twelfth century, Iya had a golden opportunity to revive its local economy with tourism and resorts in the 1980s. Yet in a pattern that repeats itself in countless regions across Japan, Iya failed to develop this potential. The reason was that the village suddenly found itself awash with cash: money that flowed from building dams and roads, paid for by a national policy to prop up rural economies by subsidizing civil-engineering works. Beginning in the 1960s, a tidal wave of construction money crashed over Iya, sweeping away every other industry. By 1997, my neighbors had all become construction workers.

Most foreigners and even many Japanese harbor a pleasing fantasy of life in the Japanese village. While driving past quaint farmhouses or perusing lovely photographs of rice paddies, it's tempting to imagine what bucolic country life must be: oneness with the seasons, the yearly round of planting and harvesting, and so forth. However, when you actually live in the countryside you soon learn that the uniform of the Japanese farmer is no longer a straw raincoat and a hoe but a hard hat and a cement shovel. In 1972, for example, my neighbor Mrs. Оto farmed tea, potatoes, corn, cucumbers, and mulberry for silkworms. In 2000, her fields lie fallow as she dons her hard hat every day to commute by van to construction sites, where her job is to scrape aluminum molds for concrete used to build retaining walls. In Iya Valley, it makes no sense to ask someone, “What line of work are you in?” Everyone lives off doboku, “construction.”

More than 90 percent of all the money flowing into Iya now comes from road- and dam-building projects funded by the Construction, Transport, and Agriculture ministries. This means that no environmental initiative can possibly make headway, for Iya has become addicted to dams and roads. Stop building them, and Mrs. Оtо and most of the other villagers are out of work. Without the daily pouring of concrete, the village dies.

The most remarkable paradox is that Iya doesn't need these roads and dams; it builds them only because it must spend the construction subsidies or lose the money. After decades of building to no particular purpose, the legacy is visible everywhere, with hardly a single hillside standing free of giant slabs of cement built to prevent “landslide damage,” even though many of these are located miles from any human habitation. Forestry roads honeycomb the mountains, though the forestry industry collapsed thirty years ago. Concrete embankments line Iya River and most of its tributaries, whose beds run dry a large part of the year because of the numerous dams siphoning water to electric power plants. The future? Although traffic is so sparse in Iya that in some places spiderwebs grow across the roads, the prefectural government devoted the 1990s to blasting a highway right through the cliffs lining the upper half of the valley, concreting over the few scenic corners that are left.

If this is what happened to the “Tibet of Japan,” one can well imagine the fate that has befallen more accessible rural areas. To support the construction industry, the government annually pours hundreds of billions of dollars into civil-engineering projects-dams, seashore- and river-erosion control, flood control, road building, and the like. Dozens of government agencies owe their existence solely to thinking up new ways of sculpting the earth. Planned spending on public works for the decade 1995-2005 will come to an astronomical ¥630 trillion (about $6.2 trillion), three to four times more than what the United States, with twenty times the land area and more than double the population, will spend on public construction in the same period. In this respect, Japan has become a huge social-welfare state, channeling hundreds of billions of dollars through public works to low-skilled workers every year.

It is not only the rivers and valleys that have suffered. The seaside reveals the greatest tragedy: by 1993, 55 percent of the entire coast of Japan had been lined with cement slabs and giant concrete tetrapods. An article in a December 1994 issue of the popular weekly Shukan Post illustrated a ravaged coastline in Okinawa, commenting, “The seashore has hardened into concrete, and the scenery of unending gray tetrapods piled on top of one another is what you can see everywhere in Japan. It has changed into something irritating and ordinary. When you look at this seashore, you can't tell whether it is the coast of Shonan, the coast of Chiba, or the coast of Okinawa.”

Tetrapods may be an unfamiliar word to readers who have not visited Japan and seen them lined up by the hundreds along bays and beaches. They look like oversize jacks with four concrete legs, some weighing as much as fifty tons. Tetrapods, which are supposed to retard beach erosion, are big business. So profitable are they to bureaucrats that three different ministries – of Transport, of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, and of Construction – annually spend ¥500 billion each, sprinkling tetrapods along the coast, like three giants throwing jacks, with the shore as their playing board. These projects are mostly unnecessary or worse than unnecessary. It turns out that wave action on tetrapods wears the sand away faster and causes greater erosion than would be the case if the beaches had been left alone.

It took some decades for this lesson to sink in, but in the 1980s American states, beginning with Maine, began one by one to prohibit the hard stabilization of the shoreline; in 1988, South Carolina mandated not only a halt to new construction but removal of all existing armoring within forty years. In Japan, however, armoring of the seacoasts is increasing. It's a dynamic we shall observe in many different fields: destructive policies put in motion in the 1950s and 1960s are like unstoppable tanks, moving forward regardless of expense, damage, or need. By the end of the century, the 55 percent of shoreline that had been encased in concrete had risen to 60 percent or more. That means hundreds of miles more of shoreline destroyed. Nobody in their right mind can honestly believe that Japan's seacoasts began eroding so fast and so suddenly that the government needed to cement over 60 percent of them. Obviously, something has gone wrong.

[vyldan]

The Merikins or Merikens[1][2] were African-American Marines of the War of 1812 – former African slaves who fought for the British against the USA in the Corps of Colonial Marines and then, after post-war service in Bermuda, were established as a community in the south of Trinidad in 1815–16. They were settled in an area populated by French-speaking Catholics and retained cohesion as an English-speaking, Baptist community. It is sometimes said that the term "Merikins" derived from the local patois, but as many Americans have long been in the habit of dropping the initial "A" it seems more likely that the new settlers brought that pronunciation with them from the United States. Some of the Company villages and land grants established back then still exist in Trinidad today. During the American Revolution, the British recruited Freedmen.[3] After that war, the British settled the Marines in colonies of British Empire including Canada, Jamaica and the Bahamas.[3] During the War of 1812, there was a policy that was somewhat similar except that Freedmen were treated as free as soon as they came into British hands and there were no conditions nor bargains attached to recruitment. Six companies of Freedmen were recruited into a Corps of Colonial Marines along the Atlantic coast, from Chesapeake Bay to Georgia.[3][4]Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, on taking over the command of British forces on the North America station on 2 April 1814, issued a proclamation offering a choice of enlistment or resettlement:[3]... all who may be disposed to emigrate from the UNITED STATES will, with their Families, be received on board His Majesty's Ships or Vessels of War, or at the Military Posts that may be established, upon or near the Coast of the UNITED STATES, when they will have their choice of either entering into His Majesty's Sea or Land Forces, or of being sent as FREE Settlers to the British Possessions in North America or the West Indies, where they will meet with due encouragement ...Cochrane's recruitment of the Colonial Marines, mostly in the Chesapeake, went doubly against his orders from the British government, who had instructed him to accept volunteers for military service only from Georgia and South Carolina and to send all such volunteers away immediately for training overseas for the Army.[4][5]After the end of the War, the Colonial Marines were first stationed at the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda. Although they had signed on for a military life, they rejected government orders to be transferred to the West India Regiments, and finally agreed to be settled in Trinidad and Tobago.[4]The Governor of Trinidad, Sir Ralph Woodford, wanted to increase the number of small farmers in that colony and arranged for the creation of a village for each company on the Naparima Plain in the south of the island.[3] Local planter Robert Mitchell managed the establishment and maintenance of the settlements, petitioning the governor for supplies when needed.Unlike the American refugees who were brought to Trinidad in 1815 in ships of the Royal Navy, HMS Carron and HMS Levant, the Veteran Marines were brought there in 1816, with their families, in the hired transports Mary & Dorothy and Lord Eldon .[6][7][8] There were 574 former soldiers plus about 200 women and children.[3] To balance the sexes, more black women were subsequently recruited – women who had been freed from other places such as captured French slave ships.[3] The six companies were each settled in a separate village under the command of a corporal or sergeant, who maintained a military style of discipline.[3] Some of the villages were named after the companies and the Fifth and Sixth Company villages still retain those names.[3][4]The villages were in a forested area of the Naparima Plain near a former Spanish mission, La Misión de Savana Grande.[9] Each of the Veteran Marines were granted 16 acres of land and some of these plots are still farmed today by descendants of original settlers.[7][9] The land was fertile but the conditions were primitive initially as the land had to be cleared and the lack of roads was an especial problem.[9] It is sometimes said that some of the settlers were craftsmen more used to an urban environment and, as they had been expecting better, they were disgruntled and some returned to America,[8] but this comment applies to later free Black American settlers, who came from towns, and not to the Veteran Colonial Marines, who were all refugees from the rural areas of the Cheasapeake and Georgia. The settlers built houses from the timber they felled, and planting crops of bananas, cassava, maize and potatoes.[3] [4] Rice was introduced from America and was especially useful because it could be stored for long periods without spoiling.[3]Twenty years after the initial establishment, the then governor Lord Harris supported improvements to the infrastructure of the settlements and arranged for the settlers to get deeds to their lands, so confirming their property rights as originally stated on arrival, though it is not clear that the initiative was carried through universally.[7][3] [4] As they prospered, they became a significant element in Trinidad's economy.[3] Their agriculture advanced from subsistence farming to include cash crops of cocoa and sugar cane.[3] Later, oil was discovered and then some descendants were able to lease their lands for the mineral rights.[3] Others continued as independent market traders.Many of the original settlers were Baptists from evangelical sects common in places such as Georgia and Virginia.[3] The settlers kept this religion, which was reinforced by missionary work by Baptists from London who helped organise the construction of churches in the 1840s.[3] The villages had pastors and other religious elders as authority figures and there was a rigorous moral code of abstinence and the puritan work ethic.[3] African traditions were influential too and these included the gayap system of communal help, herbal medicine and Obeah – African tribal science.[3] A prominent elder in the 20th century was "Papa Neezer" – Samuel Ebenezer Elliot (1901–1969)[10] – who was a descendant of an original settler, George Elliot, and renowned for his ability to heal and cast out evil spirits.[3] His syncretic form of religion included veneration of Shango, prophecies from the "Obee seed" and revelation from the Psalms.[3] The Spiritual Baptist faith is a legacy of the Merikin community.[11][12]

Famous Merikins[edit]The following people are descended from this community:Tina Dunkley, American museum director[13]Hazel Manning, Trinidadian senator and education minister[13]Althea McNish, British textile designer[14]Brent Sancho, footballer, Minister for Sport for Trinidad and Tobago

[amaanpacheco-blog]

Take an Charming Vietnam Cruise trip Through Ha Long Bay and Enjoy a Mythical Vacation

Beyond the brave background rich blend of colonial heritage, there are numerous more intriguing stories and legends about Vietnam that you can discover. Once a war-torn country, Vietnam changed in a safe and thriving place packed with historic cities, elegant French style architecture, upscale departmental stores, classy restaurants, chic boutiques and cafes, and countless iconic natural sights. The continent can be found in one's heart of Southeast Asia and is just a quick flight away. Yet, if you like to explore Vietnam at the slower, more romantic pace, then forget about flying. Instead have a relaxing cruise and enjoy probably the most delightful mix of vibrant landscapes and delightful cuisines or sail to the fiery sunset down the country's gorgeous bay. With the perfect Vietnam cruise, surely you will get overwhelmed by the exotic flavors and sights with this tropical sanctuary. Sail In the Bay of Descending Dragons An attractive seascape set amidst rocky limestone cliffs, Ha Long Bay attracts flocks of tourists and locals alike. Ha Long Bay is one kind of those beautiful places that boast a formidable atmosphere and huge selection of natural sights and mythical attractions. The place itself is beautifully studded with little clusters of verdant islets, idyllic islands and magnificent caves that embellish lots of.

But beyond this untouched and plush landscape is something much more mystical. Ha Long Bay which literally means "Bay of Descending Dragons" has an enchanting and enchanting legend that is passed down with the ages. Based on the famous legend, the Ha Long Bay islands were formed every time a family of dragons descended to help you the locals defend their land through the rushing hordes of Chinese invaders. The dragons spit jade and jewels to the sea, and these jewels turned into a huge number of islets and islands studding the bay, creating an unyielding fortress that prevented the invaders from taking the land. Basic mystical scenery etc a lovely legend, it's not surprising that the bay has been renowned among the world's natural heritage sites. Things to See at a World's Most incredible Fishing Villages Ha Long Bay can be an enthralling spot with much to offer. Besides feasting on a picturesque look at luxuriant islands, you can aquire a full glimpse of the floating villages that shelter from the tranquil and emerald waters from the bay. There are lots of fishing villages in the place along with the Cua Van Village may be the largest. Cua Van is probably the greatest attractions you will see during a cruise tour to Ha Long Bay and it's among the sights that you shouldn't miss out on as you visit Vietnam. There are a few hundred families in the village who reside in either houseboats or traditional floating houses created from wood or bamboo. Almost all these families rely heavily on fishing and fish farming for his or her subsistence. Cua Van Village is definitely thought to be among the world's best fishing villages. Even initially glimpse, you'll be easily attracted to the loveliness from the craftily woven bamboo basket boats, humble floating homes and comforting primitive scene. With all the unique charm with this vibrant community, an ideal Vietnam cruise is undoubtedly an experience to keep in mind. For additional information about homestay Quang Ninh you can check our webpage.

[timclymer]

Pregnancy In The Stone Age – Can We Learn Something?

The woman who became pregnant during the Stone Age faced huge risks compared with today’s mother-to-be. There was no way to control bleeding or infection; Caesarean section was not an option. That we survived as a species seems remarkable – until you dig a little deeper.

The outcome of pregnancy depends on the underlying health of the mother, nutrition before and during pregnancy and the threat of infection. In all those areas the woman of 50,000 years ago was better off than her counterpart today. How is that possible in an age when there was no plumbing, no medical care and no protection from infectious diseases?

Better diet, better pregnancy

The primitive woman’s diet was less likely to be deficient in important nutrients than that of today’s young girls. (Ref 1) A study from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center has confirmed earlier reports that adolescent and adult pregnant women take in too little iron, zinc, folate and vitamin E.

A woman who begins pregnancy without sufficient calcium, vitamin D and other bone-building nutrients increases her risk of developing osteoporosis in middle age. But that’s not the end of the story. Her infant may also be at greater risk of fracture in the future. Osteoporosis of middle age is at least partly programmed before birth, especially if the mother smokes and has little physical activity. (Ref 2, 3, 4)

Most laypersons believe that Stone Agers were hearty meat-eaters. Anthropologists know that isn’t so. They lived on a predominantly meat diet for only about 100,000 years, from the time that Homo sapiens developed keen hunting skills until the advent of farming. Before that time meat came from carrion and small game. The bulk of their calories came from vegetables, fruit, roots and nuts.

Plant foods contain everything that a pregnant woman needs, including vitamins, antioxidants, protein and minerals. Modern vegetarians often become deficient in vitamin B12 but small game, birds’ eggs and the deliberate or accidental inclusion of insects in the Stone Age diet provided more than enough of that critical nutrient.

Folic acid deficiency in early pregnancy leads to defective formation of the infant’s brain and spinal cord. Those abnormalities are much less likely among the babies of mothers who receive an adequate amount of folate, at least 400 micrograms per day. So few women eat enough green leafy vegetables to boost their folate levels, the U.S. government requires that manufacturers of baked goods add it to their products.

Obstetricians have been prescribing multivitamins for their pregnant patients for decades but it is only in recent years that studies confirmed the wisdom of that practice. In 2002 the American Medical Association reversed a position of long standing and recommended that everyone, with no exceptions, needs a multivitamin/multimineral preparation every day in order to avoid subtle but health-damaging inadequacies of these nutrients. Taking a multivitamin reduces the risk of congenital defects of the newborn, especially those that involve the heart. Preeclampsia is a serious, sometimes fatal complication of pregnancy. Women whose intake of vitamins C and E is low have a threefold greater risk of that condition. (Ref. 5, 6)

Would these mostly vegetarian early Stone Agers have become iron-deficient? Not likely. Their diet was rich in iron as well as in Vitamin C that facilitates iron absorption. Under those conditions iron deficiency would have been rare. Cereal grains interfere with iron absorption, which explains why iron-deficiency is common in societies that subsist primarily on grains. However, one of the main reasons why Stone Age women were unlikely to be iron deficient is that they didn’t have nearly as many menstrual cycles as modern women do.

In a primitive society the onset of menses is about 5 years later than that of American young women. Modern hunter-gatherers, like the oldest Stone Agers, are either pregnant or nursing during most of their childbearing years and they only menstruate a few times between weaning one child and conceiving another. In those groups breastfeeding does suppress ovulation because it is literally on demand, i.e., every few minutes, even throughout the night. For a modern breastfeeding mother, on demand often means no more frequently than every couple of hours and perhaps once or twice a night after the third or fourth month. Thus menses return in spite of nursing and monthly blood loss continues.

The fish-brain connection

Beginning about 150,000 years ago our ancestors discovered seafood. The increased intake of fatty acids in fish and shellfish initiated the great advance in brain size and complexity that allowed humans to progress more quickly in the next 100,000 years than they had in the preceding million. Enormous gains in toolmaking and the development of language and group communication followed.

The human brain is composed mostly of water but the solid portion is mostly fat. The body can’t manufacture the omega-3 and omega-6 fats that make up so much of the structure of the brain and eye so we need them in our diet. Maternal deficiency of these nutrients, especially omega-3s, prevents the newborn brain and eyes from reaching their full potential. The best source of omega-3 fats is fish; nuts and leafy green vegetables are also good sources.

Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are found in every cell of the body. They allow efficient flow of nutrients, regulate nerve impulses and keep inflammation in the right balance. In a proper diet there is an equal amount of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. That allows the immune system to fight infection, a real threat that humans faced from the Stone Age until the age of antibiotics, a mere 70 years ago.

The advantage to the baby of a diet that is rich in omega-3 fats is obvious but mothers need it, too. Nature protects the unborn infant by tapping into the mother’s stores of omega-3 fats. A woman whose intake of omega-3 fatty acids is low during the months and years preceding pregnancy will develop a deficiency of her own. This becomes worse with succeeding pregnancies if her intake of omega-3s remains low. Postpartum depression affects about 10 percent of women following delivery and it is associated with a deficiency of omega-3 fats. (Ref 7, 8)

The newest epidemic

There is one complication of pregnancy that never occurred in the Stone Age: type 2 diabetes. No disease in modern times has risen so fast. It has increased several-fold since the 1950s; between 1990 and 2001 it rose by 61 percent. Gestational diabetics (Ref. 9) are those who do not yet have the full-blown disease but they cannot process blood sugar (glucose) properly during pregnancy. About half of them will develop frank diabetes in the years following delivery of their infant.

Most of us know type 2 diabetes, which was once referred to as adult-onset diabetes, as the disease that our grandparents developed in their later years. It’s no longer uncommon to find it in adolescents, even in grade-schoolers. As it has dipped into the younger generation it has alarmed – but not surprised – physicians to find that it is no longer a rarity in obstetric practice.

How can we be so certain that the pregnant Stone Ager didn’t have diabetes? This is a lifestyle disease that has three major associations: a low level of physical activity, a diet that is high in refined grains and sugars, and obesity. Those conditions simply didn’t occur during the Stone Age. Their lifestyle demanded strenuous effort. Grains of any sort were not part of their diet because they require tools and controlled heat. Sugar as we know it simply didn’t exist and honey was an occasional lucky find. Obesity would have been non-existent, as it is today among the planet’s dwindling populations of hunter-gatherers.

Diabetic mothers have more complications of pregnancy than normal women do. Their babies are 5 times as likely to die and are 3 times as likely to be born with abnormalities of various organs.

They kept germs at bay

Common wisdom states that Stone Age people were an infection-ridden lot but that simply isn’t true. They had powerful immune systems because of high levels of physical activity and a remarkably varied diet. Between the protective antibodies that a mother passed across the placenta and those that she conferred on her newborn via breastmilk, Stone Age babies had more protection against the germs of the day than modern infants do.

Sexually transmitted diseases don’t spread very far or very fast when people live in small isolated bands as they did during the Stone Age. The likelihood that today’s pregnant female will have at least one of these infections is more than 50 percent (Ref. 10). The impact on babies can be severe; some die, some will be brain-damaged.

Choice and consequences

Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs have produced a generation of infants with problems that Stone Age babies never faced. Mothers who smoke have infants that are smaller than the norm and whose brain development may be compromised. Alcohol or cocaine use by the mother during pregnancy results in stunted growth, congenital defects and other severe problems.

Given a choice, none of us would want to live in a Stone Age world but we have neutralized the almost miraculous medical advances of the last century. We have allowed our daughters to be less physically active and to subsist on a marginal diet. If we could reverse those two factors alone there would be a dramatic decline in prematurity and other complications of pregnancy. The lessons that we can learn from the Stone Age are not subtle, obscure or beyond our capacity to imitate them. We can produce the healthiest generation ever by making better choices for our children and for ourselves.

Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him via his web site at http://www.stoneagedoc.com.

References

1. Giddens JB et al., Pregnant adolescent and adult women have similarly low intakes of selected nutrients, J Am Diet Assoc 2000;100:1334-1340

2 Cooper C et al., Review: developmental origins of osteoporotic fracture, Osteoporosis Int 2006; 17(3):337-47

3 Prentice A et al., Nutrition and bone growth and development, Proc Nutr Soc 2006 Nov;65(4):348-60

4 Lanham SA et al., Intrauterine programming of bone. Part I: alteration of the osteogenic environment, Osteoporos Int 2008 Feb;19(2):147-56

5 Keen CL et al., The Plausibility of Micronutrient Deficiencies Being a Significant Contributing Factor to the Occurrence of Pregnancy Complications, Am Soc Nutr Sciences J Nutr 2003 May;133:1597S-1605S

6 Bodnar LM et al., Periconceptional multivitamin use reduces the risk of preeclampsia, Am J Epidemiol 2006 Sep 1;164(5):470-7

7 Freeman MP, Omega-3 fatty acids and perinatal depression: a review of the literature and recommendations for future research, Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids 2006 Oct-Nov;75(4-5):291-7

8 Kendall-Tackett K, A new paradigm for depression in new mothers: the central role of inflammation and how breastfeeding and anti-inflammatory treatments protect maternal mental health, Int Breastfeed J 2007;2:6

9 Greene MF and Solomon CG, Gestational Diabetes Mellitus – Time to Treat, N Engl J Med 2005 June 16; 352(24):2544-46

10 Baseman JG and Koutsky LA, The epidemiology of human papillomavirus infections, J Clin Virol 2005 Mar;32 Supple 1:S16-24

Source by Philip Goscienski

from Home Solutions Forev https://homesolutionsforev.com/pregnancy-in-the-stone-age-can-we-learn-something/ via Home Solutions on WordPress from Home Solutions FOREV https://homesolutionsforev.tumblr.com/post/186636697340 via Tim Clymer on Wordpress

[theculturedmarxist]

Frederick Engels on Thomas Malthus and Overpopulation

“The struggle of capital against capital, of labour against labour, of land against land, drives production to a fever-pitch at which production turns all natural and rational relations upside-down. No capital can stand the competition of another if it is not brought to the highest pitch of activity. No piece of land can be profitably cultivated if it does not continuously increase its productivity. No worker can hold his own against his competitors if he does not devote all his energy to labour. No one at all who enters into the struggle of competition can weather it without the utmost exertion of his energy, without renouncing every truly human purpose. The consequence of this over-exertion on the one side is, inevitably, slackening on the other. When the fluctuation of competition is small, when demand and supply, consumption and production, are almost equal, a stage must be reached in the development of production where there is so much superfluous productive power that the great mass of the nation has nothing to live on, that the people starve from sheer abundance. For some considerable time England has found herself in this crazy position, in this living absurdity. When production is subject to greater fluctuations, as it is bound to be in consequence of such a situation, then the alternation of boom and crisis, overproduction and slump, sets in. The economist has never been able to find an explanation for this mad situation. In order to explain it, he invented the population theory, which is just as senseless – indeed even more senseless than the contradiction of coexisting wealth and poverty. The economist could not afford to see the truth; he could not afford to admit that this contradiction is a simple consequence of competition; for in that case his entire system would have fallen to bits.

For us the matter is easy to explain. The productive power at mankind’s disposal is immeasurable. The productivity of the soil can be increased ad infinitum by the application of capital, labour and science. According to the most able economists and statisticians (cf. Alison’s Principles of Population, Vol. I, Chs. 1 and 2), “over-populated” Great Britain can be brought within ten years to produce a corn yield sufficient for a population six times its present size. Capital increases daily; labour power grows with population; and day by day science increasingly makes the forces of nature subject to man. This immeasurable productive capacity, handled consciously and in the interest of all, would soon reduce to a minimum the labour falling to the share of mankind. Left to competition, it does the same, but within a context of antitheses. One part of the land is cultivated in the best possible manner whilst another part – in Great Britain and Ireland thirty million acres of good land – lies barren. One part of capital circulates with colossal speed; another lies dead in the chest. One part of the workers works fourteen or sixteen hours a day, whilst another part stands idle and inactive, and starves. Or the partition leaves this realm of simultaneity: today trade is good; demand is very considerable; everyone works; capital is turned over with miraculous speed; farming flourishes; the workers work themselves sick. Tomorrow stagnation sets in. The cultivation of the land is not worth the effort; entire stretches of land remain untilled; the flow of capital suddenly freezes; the workers have no employment, and the whole country labours under surplus wealth and surplus population.

The economist cannot afford to accept this exposition of the subject as correct; otherwise, as has been said, he would have to give up his whole system of competition. He would have to recognise the hollowness of his antithesis of production and consumption, of surplus population and surplus wealth. To bring fact and theory into conformity with each other – since this fact simply could not be denied – the population theory was invented.

Malthus, the originator of this doctrine, maintains that population is always pressing on the means of subsistence; that as soon as production increases, population increases in the same proportion; and that the inherent tendency of the population to multiply in excess of the available means of subsistence is the root of all misery and all vice. For, when there are too many people, they have to be disposed of in one way or another: either they must be killed by violence or they must starve. But when this has happened, there is once more a gap which other multipliers of the population immediately start to fill up once more: and so the old misery begins all over again. What is more, this is the case in all circumstances – not only in civilised, but also in primitive conditions. In New Holland [The old name for Australia. – Ed.], with a population density of one per square mile, the savages suffer just as much from over-population as England. In short, if we want to be consistent, we must admit that the earth was already over-populated when only one man existed. The implications of this line of thought are that since it is precisely the poor who are the surplus, nothing should be done for them except to make their dying of starvation as easy as possible, and to convince them that it cannot be helped and that there is no other salvation for their whole class than keeping propagation down to the absolute minimum. Or if this proves impossible, then it is after all better to establish a state institution for the painless killing of the children of the poor, such as “Marcus” has suggested, whereby each working-class family would be allowed to have two and a half children, any excess being painlessly killed. [emphasis added] Charity is to be considered a crime, since it supports the augmentation of the surplus population. Indeed, it will be very advantageous to declare poverty a crime and to turn poor-houses into prisons, as has already happened in England as a result of the new “liberal” Poor Law. Admittedly it is true that this theory ill conforms with the Bible’s doctrine of the perfection of God and of His creation; but “it is a poor refutation to enlist the Bible against facts.”

Am I to go on any longer elaborating this vile, infamous theory, this hideous blasphemy against nature and mankind? Am I to pursue its consequences any further? Here at last we have the immorality of the economist brought to its highest pitch. What are all the wars and horrors of the monopoly system compared with this theory! And it is just this theory which is the keystone of the liberal system of free trade, whose fall entails the downfall of the entire edifice. For if here competition is proved to be the cause of misery, poverty and crime, who then will still dare to speak up for it?

In his above-mentioned work, Alison has shaken the Malthusian theory by bringing in the productive power of the land, and by opposing to the Malthusian principle the fact that each adult can produce more than he himself needs – a fact without which mankind could not multiply, indeed could not even exist; if it were not so how could those still growing up live? But Alison does not go to the root of the matter, and therefore in the end reaches the same conclusion as Malthus. True enough, he proves that Malthus’ principle is incorrect, but cannot gainsay the facts which have impelled Malthus to his principle.

If Malthus had not considered the matter so one-sidedly, he could not have failed to see that surplus population or labour-power is invariably tied up with surplus wealth, surplus capital and surplus landed property. The population is only too large where the productive power as a whole is too large. The condition of every over-populated country, particularly England, since the time when Malthus wrote, makes this abundantly clear. These were the facts which Malthus ought to have considered in their totality, and whose consideration was bound to have led to the correct conclusion. Instead, he selected one fact, gave no consideration to the others, and therefore arrived at his crazy conclusion. The second error he committed was to confuse means of subsistence with [means of] employment. That population is always pressing on the means of employment – that the number of people produced depends on the number of people who can be employed – in short, that the production of labour-power has been regulated so far by the law of competition and is therefore also exposed to periodic crises and fluctuations – this is a fact whose establishment constitutes Malthus’ merit. But the means of employment are not the means of subsistence. Only in their end-result are the means of employment increased by the increase in machin-epower and capital. The means of subsistence increase as soon as productive power increases even slightly. Here a new contradiction in economics comes to light. The economist’s “demand” is not the real demand; his “consumption” is an artificial consumption. For the economist, only that person really demands, only that person is a real consumer, who has an equivalent to offer for what he receives. But if it is a fact that every adult produces more than he himself can consume, that children are like trees which give superabundant returns on the outlays invested in them – and these certainly are facts, are they not? – then it must be assumed that each worker ought to be able to produce far more than he needs and that the community, therefore, ought to be very glad to provide him with everything he needs; one must consider a large family to be a very welcome gift for the community. But the economist, with his crude outlook, knows no other equivalent than that which is paid to him in tangible ready cash. He is so firmly set in his antitheses that the most striking facts are of as little concern to him as the most scientific principles.

We destroy the contradiction simply by transcending it. With the fusion of the interests now opposed to each other there disappears the contradiction between excess population here and excess wealth there; there disappears the miraculous fact (more miraculous than all the miracles of all the religions put together) that a nation has to starve from sheer wealth and plenty; and there disappears the crazy assertion that the earth lacks the power to feed men. This assertion is the pinnacle of Christian economics – and that our economics is essentially Christian I could have proved from every proposition, from every category, and shall in fact do so in due course. The Malthusian theory is but the economic expression of the religious dogma of the contradiction of spirit and nature and the resulting corruption of both. As regards religion, and together with religion, this contradiction was resolved long ago, and I hope that in the sphere of economics I have likewise demonstrated the utter emptiness of this contradiction. Moreover, I shall not accept as competent any defence of the Malthusian theory which does not explain to me on the basis of its own principles how a people can starve from sheer plenty and bring this into harmony with reason and fact.  

At the same time, the Malthusian theory has certainly been a necessary point of transition which has taken us an immense step further. Thanks to this theory, as to economics as a whole, our attention has been drawn to the productive power of the earth and of mankind; and after overcoming this economic despair we have been made for ever secure against the fear of overpopulation. We derive from it the most powerful economic arguments for a social transformation. For even if Malthus were completely right, this transformation would have to be undertaken straight away; for only this transformation, only the education of the masses which it provides, makes possible that moral restraint of the propagative instinct which Malthus himself presents as the most effective and easiest remedy for overpopulation. Through this theory we have come to know the deepest degradation of mankind, their dependence on the conditions of competition. It has shown us how in the last instance private property has turned man into a commodity whose production and destruction also depend solely on demand; how the system of competition has thus slaughtered, and daily continues to slaughter, millions of men. All this we have seen, and all this drives us to the abolition of this degradation of mankind through the abolition of private property, competition and the opposing interests.  

Yet, so as to deprive the universal fear of overpopulation of any possible basis, let us once more return to the relationship of productive power to population. Malthus establishes a formula on which he bases his entire system: population is said to increase in a geometrical progression – 1+2+4+8+16+32, etc.; the productive power of the land in an arithmetical progression – 1+2+3+4+5+6. The difference is obvious, is terrifying; but is it correct? Where has it been proved that the productivity of the land increases in an arithmetical progression? The extent of land is limited. All right! The labour-power to be employed on this land-surface increases with population. Even if we assume that the increase in yield due to increase in labour does not always rise in proportion to the labour, there still remains a third element which, admittedly, never means anything to the economist – science – whose progress is as unlimited and at least as rapid as that of population. What progress does the agriculture of this century owe to chemistry alone – indeed, to two men alone, Sir Humphry Davy and Justus Liebig! But science increases at least as much as population. The latter increases in proportion to the size of the previous generation, science advances in proportion to the knowledge bequeathed to it by the previous generation, and thus under the most ordinary conditions also in a geometrical progression. And what is impossible to science? But it is absurd to talk of over-population so long as “there is ‘enough waste land in the valley of the Mississippi for the whole population of Europe to be transplanted there” [A. Alison, loc. cit., p. 548. – Ed.]; so long as no more than one-third of the earth can be considered cultivated, and so long as the production of this third itself can be raised sixfold and more by the application of improvements already known.”

– Frederick Engels, “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy”