Some
recent discussions with friends about the current explosion of family planning
policies in Africa are leading me to present an interesting point of view about
the morality of those policies mostly imposed by the Western world in Africa.
This
point of view was published by my late father Fernand Bézy in 1975 under the
title “Démographie et Sous-Dévelopment” (Demography and Under-Development). I remember
my father telling me that this book was so controversial that no publisher agreed
(or was authorized) to publish it. The main reason for this is probably that
his thesis was going against the interest of rich countries (particularly the
USA) that were sponsoring the family planning policies. He demonstrated that
the reasons used to justify these policies were erroneous and actually that the
main reasons was that “ the
working classes in Anglo-Saxon countries became aware of their privileged
position on the planet: the American worker knows that his purchasing power is
much higher than that of an Asian or even a European; there is much more to
lose than to gain from a general sharing with the world”.
So
my father decided to use his own money to publish it, but obviously, it did not
reach as many people as he wanted. In addition, it was written in French. I
have translated that study in English and you can find it in my father’s website
as REF8 in the bibliography web page.
This
blog posting is an edited summary of that study. I did not reproduce the
references but they can be found in the original document. Also remember that
it was published almost 40 years ago, so some numbers like China’s population
are not current anymore.
Here
it is:
In
the early seventies, some preachers of the Apocalypse, as evidenced by the titles
of their works: “The Hungry Future” (R. Dumont and B. Rose), “Geopolitics of Hunger”
(J. de Castro), “Famine” (Paddock brothers), “The Population Bomb” (R. Ehrlich)
have led to the emergence of a neo-Malthusian strategy across the planet. It
can be briefly expressed as follows: excessive population growth is the main
obstacle to the development of the third world; therefore birth control must be
the essential element of any development strategy.
And
the fascination with such a notion is even stronger because the cost of a birth
control program is negligible compared to the costs required by alternate
development policies. In the words of Lyndon Johnson, former president of the
United States marking the twentieth anniversary of the UN (June 25, 1965),
"An investment of less than five
dollars in population control is equivalent to an investment of one hundred
dollars in economic growth”.
Speaking
at the Second Asian Conference on Population, the American William H. Draper,
adviser to the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) has estimated at one
dollar per capita the operational costs of birth control services: "In total, therefore it will cost
about three billion dollars per year for Asia, Africa and Latin America. This
is only one eighth of the amount spent annually to purchase arms, and only 0.1%
of global domestic product”. And
to conclude, in a beautiful euphoric burst of enthusiasm: “Just three billion dollars to
convince three billion people that the two-child family is the right size for
their well-being and happiness!”
But
are family planning programs really designed for the well-being and happiness
of African population? Or are they rather designed to benefit the developed
countries?
If
the answer is the second one, it is long overdue for one to wonder if the
politics of birth control can be morally tolerated.
The
problem of overpopulation belongs primarily to economic science, as it is true
that what is at stake is the allocation of scarce resources to alternative use
among users whose number and capacity for consumption are ever increasing.
The
first theory goes back to Malthus, who fully associated human multiplication
and animal multiplication, failing to clearly separate sexual instinct from
reproductive instinct. History has proven him wrong on this point, but his
error is shared today by demographers arguing that if poor nations have as many
children it is because they cannot help but to have them. In other words, they
are not aware of methods of birth control or they could not afford to get instruments
of birth control. Frankly, what are they thinking about men and women of the
third world? That they are mentally handicapped?
First,
let’s make a distinction between the instruments of birth control, coming from
the pharmacy or the toolbox of the family planning propagandists, and the non-instrumental
methods, such as withdrawal, periodic abstinence, late marriage, etc.
Until
proven otherwise - but we need serious and credible evidence - we argue that
the majority of third world people are deliberately prolific in their majority,
(and the exceptions that can certainly be explained, prove the rule).
Obviously, for certain categories of individuals, it is probably not with a
light heart: the African girl is probably not excited by the prospect of eight
births, in God knows what conditions and for how many pregnancies. And we understand
that she confides to the investigator from family planning organizations who
seek nothing else, her desire to have fewer children. But as undesired as they
are, she wants these children, and the clan requires them: infertility is a
disgrace.
Another
interpretation —an interpretation that is just as disrespectful of the
intelligence and observational powers of third world people — posits that the
fertility of the present generation is a continuation of the mortality level of
previous generations. It is nothing more natural than peoples’ desire to
compensate for high mortality through a high birth rate: in India, to ensure
the survival of at least one son when the father reaches the age of 65, a
couple must have a minimum of five children; in several regions of West Africa,
the figure is more than seven.
But
if we take this very natural concern for the fundamental explanation of
natalist ideology, we cannot fail to be puzzled by noting that birth rates
remain around 4 or 5%, when those mortality rates gradually lowered at 3, 2 or
even 1%. It would suit then to reconsider the explanation. Some provide it by
invoking the idea of a delay between the drop in mortality and the collective
realization that such a drop has occurred.
This
interpretation once more implies that adults living in poor countries are
mentally handicapped.
In
our opinion, it is not through ignorance that poor people remain fertile
despite reduced mortality; instead reduced mortality is rather seen as a good
opportunity to increase their living family. This means that in their view,
their family had not reached its optimal size in the previous situation.
Another
explanation advanced to account for the natalist ideology is its prominent
position in the moral code of many religions that have retained their power in
the third world. This is both true and false; one should be careful to
distinguish between proximate cause and remote
cause.
There
is no doubt that religions promote the fertility cult, which is used to form
the basis of the socio-political structure of traditional societies. For
example, what constitutes the essence of Bantu philosophy, is the vital force,
related to the notion of being that is supposed to move from divinity to
humanity through the channel of the tribes’ founders (the archipatriarchs);
then the departed ancestors, now spiritualized and participating to some extent
to the divine Force; then the living chief, the Elder, who distributes it to
all that is living in the clan: it is he who strengthens the lives of men,
animals, plants. This principle of continuing transmission of the being has two
consequences: it is the seniority which determines the whole social structure
and it is the fecundity— the most obvious expression of the vital force— which
best ensures social promotion. It goes without saying that such a philosophy is
encouraging prolificacy.
The
economic structure of society is characterized inter alia by the variety and
relative importance of the production factors it implements: what economists
call its manufacturing coefficients or its production functions. In the
underdeveloped world, the combinations of factors are intensive in unskilled
labor; the use of capital is very low. In contrast, in industrialized
countries, the functions of production are capital intensive and using skilled
labor.
We
argue that it is their economic structure which dictates natalist ideology to developing
countries because the child is really not a burden but an advantage, more a
necessity, and this both for a production and savings point of view. It is precisely
because of the domination of unskilled labor in the production function that
the child represents an early economic value, while in the developed world he
acquires value only at the end of a long and expensive training. Indeed, even
as low as it is, the child’s productivity is significant in relation to that
quite low level of
the adult worker who only produces enough to feed 1.5 to 2 people annually in
the country side. So, in developing countries, the child brings up more than he
costs.
Some
will object: how is it possible to draw an argument from the contribution of
child labor in economies that are distinguished by underemployment and
disguised unemployment? This is because although important - but is it really
important everywhere? -unemployment is only seasonal. In non-mechanized
agriculture, the crop cycle includes periods of, sometimes short, but crucial
intense activity in which any impairment of labor results in a collapse of production.
The abundance of child labor is then vitally important.
So
far, our argument’s relevance comes from the characteristics of production function
in the countryside. For the record, it is because two-thirds of the third world
active labor force is still employed in agriculture.
We
know that in traditional societies, social structure is characterized by the
predominance of the extended family, which includes all members of the same
lineage, compelled to a series of several obligations, under the rule of an
undisputed chieftain. On the contrary, in modern societies, the sociological
unit is the nuclear family, which counts only the father, mother and immediate descendants.
Not only is this unit independent of those that are related, but dependency
within that unit is attenuated significantly after education and social
security, as we know, took over support from young to old.
The
requirements governing the operation of the clan provide parents with the
personal enjoyment of the work of youngsters, which are in a way their pension
scheme. Should these rules come to weaken, and it should not be surprising to
see the natalist ideology being questioned. Here is what Alfred Sauvy believes:
"The father does not want more
children from the day they cost him or when he no longer has full authority
over them". That is indeed what occurs, with
varying intensity in the developing countrires’ cities when the bonds of
extended family are weakening.
In
modern societies, the child never contributes more than he costs. Better, he is
expensive and brings nothing. To allow him to integrate into a technical
economy, parents need to provide him with a lengthy and costly training. And
once this training is acquired, no sociological imperative compels him to
surrender the fruits of his work. Socially and economically, modern societies
are the antithesis of traditional societies. Need we say more to account for a
difference in procreative behavior, which is fundamental and not subject to the
level of contraceptive information. The proof is that if the policy of birth
control can take advantage of some success in developing countries, it is
precisely in those few countries that actually entered into the path of
development, which involves a transformation of their economic and social
structures: this was the case yesterday in Japan, in Taiwan today. But in other
countries, if our friend, William H. Draper is trying to persuade the poor that
"two-child family is the right
size for their well-being and happiness",
he runs great risk of sounding insane and rightly so!
Certainly,
with adequate pressure - and we are unfortunately on the way to doing just that
- it is not impossible to convince the poor families to follow the views of the
Malthusian apostles. The ability of advertising, injected at high doses, to
shape the consumers’ behavior against their interests is not the least of the
paradoxes of our consumer society.
It
is here that the moral question shows its true cruelty. We will deal with it in
the last part of this study.
We
have defended the idea that children, as numerous as they are, for families in developing
countries, are a real economic value and we have to condemn a Malthusian view
that can only increase poverty if not preceded by a fundamental organic transformation
of production methods.
The
economic history of agrarian societies attests unequivocally that the earth has
never been a limiting factor. Everywhere populations have developed or reduced
under the influence of exogenous factors and a wide range of farming systems have
emerged in response to the different pressures of men on the regions, and
agricultural production has adapted to the population expansion.
Could
the less dense countries show a faster growth, offsetting in the global
development statistics a slower or even a growth decline in overpopulated
countries? It is not. G. Ohlin, who certainly did not fail to carry out audits
of this nature, concludes: "In
the present circumstances, it is easy to show how it is absurd to claim that
the population density alone is a determinant of economic prosperity. Whichever
way you measure it, we find that the density is high or low in poor countries
as in wealthy nations, while we can’t detect any systematic trend”.
So
we will rely upon the per capita product, measuring instrument of well-being -
or rather well have. Regression calculations, performed worldwide, clearly show
that countries with the highest population growth rate present, on average, a
faster increase in per capita product, as is the case today in Rwanda.
It
is also one of the most widespread errors to attribute famine to overpopulation.
Developing
countries and Africa in particular have been and still are subject to many
famines, naturally attributed to overcrowding, with no more reason than for the
pre-industrial Europe. In an underdeveloped society, famines come primarily
from the technical inability to comply with the agricultural calendar or to
address the irregularities of climate. And in that matter, tropical agriculture
is unfortunately much more vulnerable than that in temperate regions. Colin
Clark tells us that in Kenya, for example, sorghum has a yield of 1.7 tons per
acre if planted before the rains, yield which reduces by 27% if one waits just four
days after the early rains, and 50% at least for a delay of seven days. Maize,
which produces between 1.5 and 2 tons per hectare depending on the season if
planted before the rains, is losing 40% of its performance for a delay of six
days.
When
nothing is done to remedy the drawbacks of agriculture in areas with highly
irregular climate, crop size can vary from 1 to 8 depending on the years: in
Libya, the barley harvest was 22,000 tons in 1947, the year of drought, and
177,000 tons in 1949, the year of plenty.
There
would be a remedy: the support of the regions suffering from shortages by those
who enjoy plenty, but the developing countries are poorly integrated (particularly
in Africa): the frequency of famine is also the result of a lack of
transportation infrastructure and trading. It is well known that in late
nineteenth century, parts of India have been depopulated by starvation, while others
lived in abundance.
The
obsession with physical limitations, which inspired the Malthusianism of a
privileged class in England in the late eighteenth century, is at the origin of
a neo-Malthusian, but this time on a global scale and from all privileged
nations, including the United States. This is the view of Alfred Sauvy: "The sense of international
solidarity, the Malthusian paternalistic concerns, occurred also on a broader
level: the fear of global overpopulation. As soon as the commercial if not
political dominance of the West was not as absolute, and as soon as various forms
of assistance, somewhat comparable to the "Law of the poor" emerged,
the fear of the excessive number would preoccupy minds. And it was logical that
it developed especially in the richest country, that is to say the United
States. The fear of having to feed needy people, and even stronger the fear of
having to one day open a place for immigration in their vast barely exploited
territories, had to awaken this Malthusian
reflex.
"On the other side, the
working classes in Anglo-Saxon countries became aware of their privileged
position on the planet: the American worker knows that his purchasing power is
much higher than that of an Asian or even a European; there is much more to
lose than to gain from a general sharing with the world ... ".
In
a strong article, Peter Pradervand cites several statements by U.S. officials,
immediately revealing the concerns of their countries about the third world.
Here, as an example, that of ex-President Johnson, who at least had the merit
of frankness: "There are 3 billion people
around the world and we are only 200 million. We are
outnumbered 15 to 1. If the
force was the law, they would sweep the United States and take what we have. We
have what they want ".
And
don’t believe that the Malthusian ideology is the monopoly of politicians from
the rich world or official aid agencies, such as AID. It clearly contaminates
the specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as FAO, UNESCO, WHO, the
United Nations Fund for Population Activities, etc. It is found in scientific
institutions financed by major American foundations, such as the Population
Council which does not just "study
the problems posed by growing world population, in terms of material and
cultural resources…stimulate and support research ... ". It helps governments, they send special units to deal
with issues of information and education related to family planning, it
participated in the production and distribution of contraceptives, both through
government programs and through commercial channels. That a body funded mainly
by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, outside the scope of scientific
research became the producer and distributor of contraceptives is very
surprising.
Since
population policies are so dependent on ideologies, it is necessary to
carefully scrutinize the validity of the criteria that inspire them.
VALUE
CRITERIA
Should
we use the axiology? If the problem of relations between people and natural
resources belongs to economics, can we rely on economists? After all is this
not simply a matter of optimization? Far from it. A pure product of Western
civilization, economic science does not challenge its specific aims. There is
no universal economic science: the one whose authorship is attributed to Adam
Smith is based on data presented as based on human nature, while they are purely
contingent and related to industrial societies’ culture. That is the case for
example of the assumption of the homo economicus: the individual is assumed to
be determined by his greatest material interest. That such a philosophy of life
characterizes the West is all too true. But we cannot say the same of Bantu,
Muslim, Hindu civilizations.
In
every society, the different structures (religious, social, economic) are more
or less integrated, of course, but on different planes: they are hierarchical.
And culture is nothing other than the identification of that hierarchy in the
social mentality: it is a value system that imposes standards of behavior. And
from one civilization to another, we observe fundamental differences in the
order of importance of the structures which are the very expression of their specificity.
In modern societies, it is the techno-economic structure that is predominant;
in traditional societies like in Africa, it is the religious structure, or the
social and prestige structure.
Therefore
the economic optimum is not the maximum possible use of production factors, but
their use that best fit for the operation of each society in its specificity.
This means that the rationality of intentional economic behavior of members of
a given society is always aligned with the basic unintentional rationality of
the hierarchical system of structures that characterizes that society.
Therefore there is no rationality by itself, nor is there a final form, a model
of economic rationality (M. Godelier).
Nothing
is less objective than the notion of well-being: each civilization has its own.
In the West, growth in production has often been regarded, at least implicitly,
as the growth of welfare or even happiness, so much so that recently it seemed
to be the necessary and sufficient condition for human progress in all social
systems. The West has been claiming to impose this design on the universe: to
colonize was to bring back the world's diversity to unity of which two or three
Western countries were then the models and the recipients (J . Berque). And
everywhere there was an elite that swayed towards the West, which seemed the ideal
model of all civilization and real culture (A. Memmi).
But
even here in the West, the dogma of economic growth is questioned. We begin to
become aware, even if we are still confused, of the harm of growth and its
fatal results: destruction of nature, abuse of the concentration of economic
power, frustration due to growing inequalities, etc... Then a council of wise people
advocated zero growth, under penalty of apocalyptic disasters, and the American
economist JK Galbraith reassures us: "Fear
not, St. Peter will not ask you how you have contributed to the growth of national
output!”. Finally some calming words! This is
the end of Eurocentrism: each culture has its own system of values and there is
none that can boast of being superior. The comparisons are pretty useless,
everyone being only able to appreciate each other's culture through its own,
which removes any objectivity in the comparison. Suffice it to acknowledge that
while economic growth will increase the control of man over his environment,
and even increases its freedom, it is subject to a purpose that goes beyond economics
and may vary from one society to another. Few economists have bothered to rise
to this level of thinking. One is of them is LH
Dupriez,
penetrating analyst of the secular expansion of industrial society: "After reflection, the purpose
of economic action cannot be ended in the realization of the human condition
most conducive to secular economic expansion. For if this were so, the
expansion would be the very purpose of the entire production process and
maintenance of human qualities would be appreciated only in terms of the
resulting
efficiency. . . The human
qualities required for the secular expansion turn out to be necessary
conditions, but they present the subjective problem in a way which may not
present any real purpose.
This purpose can only be found
by going beyond the political economy, which cannot lose its specificity of
being a resource science. As such, it cannot comment on whether the increase in
goods and services actually benefits men, it cannot, let alone claim to measure
the intensity of progress in the human condition. It must stop at the point
where it finds that man becomes more powerful at mastering of nature. Except
for things related to conditions of survival, it must yield to other
disciplines to judge whether the use made of this control of nature is
subjectively good”.
"Beyond the economic argument it
falls to the field of philosophy and even beyond it, to the religious
conceptions of human destiny. The first will tell us, with the help of subject
disciplines, to what extent the orientation of economic expansion and forms of
economic progress are conducive to the development of human faculties and
improving the human condition, on the natural plane. The second reminds us of
the insufficiency of such an objective and the need to report the economic achievements,
like all other forms of action to the achievement of purposes higher than human
destiny ".
So,
as long as the conditions of survival are assured - which would require
sacrificing everything for it - the basic choices are not economic. Should we
prefer the domestic product growth to other objectives? And if there is growth,
should it be more or less rapid, in relation to other purposes? It is the
responsibility of the ethics of each society to decide. And there is no a
priori reason to advocate for a single ruling solution at the global level.
Consider
first the agricultural land, which is very unevenly distributed. China, India
and Japan, which grouped 40% of world population and have rapidly growing
economies, have only 10% of the land; on an equal area, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand have 1% of world population, with derisory growth rates. For an
area of the same order of magnitude, Brazil and China have respectively 100 and
nearly 800 million inhabitants; Argentina and India 25 and 570 million. Two
times more populous than New Zealand, Australia, and Canada combined,
Bangladesh has only 1 / 125th of their area. And those Commonwealth countries
are practicing, as we know, a very restrictive policy of immigration of people
of color. How can we get these people to recognize the merits of the
restricting births policy that we want them to practice?
With
regard to industry, it is estimated that 6% of the world population consume
more than 40% of raw material resources. Based on the current U.S. standard of
living, we are told, the world could maintain up to 600 million people. And if
we wanted to ensure for the third world the same standard of American life in
1967, we would need to extract more than 50 billion tons of iron, 1 billion
tons of copper, 100 million tons of tin, etc. However, for iron, copper and
tin, known reserves amounted to 98 billion tons, 280 million and 6.6 million.
We are far from sharing the pessimism of these forecasts, based on fragile
estimates, and deliberately ignoring the substitution possibilities and
especially the effect – totally unpredictable – of technical progress. These data
are presented here merely to emphasize the inequality of the current
consumption of raw materials.
There
is also a synthetic expression of this inequality: the income gap per capita.
Assuming, as a rough approximation, that consumption of resources is proportional
to income1,
we must admit that an American consumes as much as 43 Indians or 80 people living
in poor countries of Central Africa (Upper Volta, Rwanda, Burundi). Therefore,
the 205 million Americans have the luxury of a consumption equivalent to 9
billion Indians or 16 billion Rwandans.
In
these circumstances, they have some nerve to preach continence to poor people!
It
requires a certain audacity to advocate zero growth. The model of the Club of
Rome is in fact serving the interests of the rich: stopping growth means
maintaining an established order. In the short term, only the rich have a
vested interest in maintaining an environment and reserves that they are alone
to enjoy. Ultimately, what is at stake is not so much the problems raised by
the growth as it is the additional product composition and the distribution of
the fruits of progress.
Finally
what can be criticized is the allocation of scientific and technical resources
of the world. About half is devoted to military purposes, or for pure prestige,
against less than 2% for urgent problems arising from agriculture, ecology and
the industrialization of developing countries. How would these countries not conceive
bitterness thinking of that relative ridiculous cost, and the almost miraculous
effects of the green revolution? The solution of its problems is in easy reach for the rich
world. How not to suspect the good faith of those who advocate the Malthusian
formula as an alternative?
If
poverty is widespread in the developing world and their economic growth is
poor, it is not proved so far that the fault lies to extreme densities or excessive
survival rates. Instead, the highest rates of population growth are often
combined with a rapid increase of domestic products. In terms of individual
producer, as long as modes of production are basically using labor, the large
family is economically profitable. Unless all this is reversed, Malthusianism must
be held as fatal. That poverty must be eradicated, nothing is more desirable;
that the prevention of births has the power of doing it, nothing is less clear.
It
is beyond our purpose to judge the moral attitude of couples towards contraception.
What is at issue in this study is the legitimacy of government decisions and
international agencies to organize and promote contraception especially among
people who do not practice it deliberately and clearly show no desire to
receive assistance in that matter.
The
family planning policy is multifaceted and includes the following methods,
listed in order of increasing constraints:
—Removal
of benefits granted to large families;
—Lifting
of the ban on selling contraceptives;
—Legalization
of abortion;
—Free
distribution of contraceptives or reimbursement by Social
Security;
—Organization
of advertising campaigns;
—Benefits
(monetary or others) to couples who agree to limit their offspring, or to be
sterilized;
—Penalizing
families at the birth of Xth child;
—Automatic
enforcement of sterilization.
All
this is more or less happening, including the most extreme measures. Dr. Cecile
Goldet, deputy secretary general of the medical college of "Family Planning", assures us that in some countries, they automatically
insert an IUD into all women who come to the hospital to give birth to their
second, third or fourth child without asking for their consent. And the
constraints are used at all levels: in a press conference that raised a lot of
resentment in the third world, Mr. McNamara, president of the World Bank, even
said that he would refuse economic assistance to countries that have no program
of birth control. Peter Pradervand, describing the remarks, in fact, commented:
"Apart from the fact that this
statement shows a worrisome misunderstanding of the problem by a person
occupying a position of such importance, that is exactly the opposite of what
he should have said: we will provide assistance in the field of population policies
only to countries that pursue an aggressive development policy".
Alas,
the Malthusian ideology is becoming wicked. This is the opinion of the late
Joshua Castro, who has devoted his life to fighting hunger: "In
the century of science and technology, the neo-Malthusian policies sound more
like a magic trick from the barbarian times than a scientific prescription. It
does not appear that there is a big difference between the attitude of some
primitive peoples of Polynesia, who ascribe volcanic eruptions to evil spirits
of nature and seek to appease their wrath by sacrificing animals that are
thrown into the craters of volcanoes and the pseudo-scientific attitude of
those who attribute hunger to the wickedness of nature and who order the
sacrifice of lives in the form of genocide, mass abortions, birth control to
appease it… And there is no doubt that the attitude of the latter proves far
more
barbaric and far more dangerous".
Finally,
it all depends on the value one places on human lives—even if they are
miserable. One can indulge in laxity if we agree with Jacques Sternberg, author
of the Dictionary of contempt: "When
a car speeds through the night, one finds hundreds of insects stuck to the
radiator killed by the speed and the headlights beam. The human life at the
global scale has exactly the same importance. Neither more nor less". But of these insects, if we consider that they think
and have a soul, we will be compelled to join - and this time in a spiritual
sense - the views of Jean Bodin, a philosopher of the sixteenth century: THE
ONLY WEALTH IS MEN.
