Population Decline is a Terminal Risk to Capitalist Industrialism and possibly an Opportunity for a New Traditionalist Future

While the population of Earth will probably still grow for a few more years, it seems likely that the end of growth is nigh. According to new estimates, growth rates are slowing as societies are waking up to the fact that fertility rates are crashing. While projections are still claiming growth up to ten billion by 2050, there are hints that we might not even make it that far before a massive crash begins, hurtling humanity towards a meagre two billion a few decades after that.

Even before this, due to baby boomers and their children aging out, the population numbers will look better than the reality on the ground will be. With massive numbers of pension-aged people making up a majority of humanity, our greying planet will struggle to care for itself. Civil strife and pandemics can cause mass die-offs of the elderly and crash those numbers quicker than feels possible right now.

This skewered and shrinking population is going to be a disaster for our industrial society built upon the infinite renewal of capital, constantly growing production in cities and endless labour specialization. This is why, as the numbers become clearer and the scale of the coming population crash and its results become more apparent, we will hear more and more voices demanding people have more children. Without a youthful, growing population, there will be no masses of workers to staff factories, no kleptocratic middle managerial class to purchase high-end technological goods nor a steady stream of new capital into the coffers of the financial elite.

Already, braindead industrialist and technologist Elon Musk has come out with comments demanding people have more children. He has taken upon himself to set an example and produced numerous offspring that he has abandoned to be raised through a trust fund. His anti-familial, anti-humanist approach to society shines through as he pushes humanity closer to the brink of utter collapse while commiserating the lack of new exploitable bodies being born. The destruction of a loving family and engaged parents seems to suit him just fine while his children and spouses turn on him.

All the while humanity is rushing towards a sustainability crisis, an ecological crisis, a climate crisis and a crisis of the mind. In the midst of this change, people are becoming utterly alienated from each other, from society, from nature and from a healthy spiritual existence. The destruction of family, neighbourhoods, close knit communities and healthy living in exchange for technological goods being consumed in dehumanizing cityscapes is the current reality for an ever-larger portion of the Earth’s population.

The interesting thing about the fertility crisis is the fact that it is used by people on all spectrums of politics, both the left and the right, as tool for pushing their own pet political ideas. If you ask a leftist what their solution is, they will blame free market ideology and demand more social welfare programs, better childcare and a more flexible work life. If you ask a right winger, they will decry liberal values as the root of this evil and demand conservative values, the enslavement of women and the crushing of minority rights.

Yet as we look at examples of societies facing population decline and lowered fertility, this is something that everyone is facing. Liberal democracies with excellent social services such as Norway are in the same boat as conservative monarchy Thailand, poor Nepal, socialist Cuba or the filthy rich USA. No combination of social services, lack of them, wealth or poverty seems to lead to better fertility. Even countries experiencing high fertility, are seeing a reduction in numbers and face falling populations at some point in the future.

While I am not equating a better work-life with repressing minorities, I F. Faustus am extremely critical of mainstream political movements. While I believe prenatal care, childcare and the like is very important, I hate the left’s complicity in building and maintaining our industrialist hellscape. And while I support a stable conservative society built on the values of strong institutions, I am appalled at the overt hate, racism and destruction wrought by the right on minorities and weak populations.

At the same time, both movements merely compete over resources produced by our destructive industrialist death machine. The left demands a larger slice of the cake for the working class, the right more for the owning class. Both are willing to nurture and grow a cake made from poison, death and the destruction of humanity.

It is a fitting picture of our times, that there is nigh any political movement willing to recognize the real issue, let alone suggest solutions to our problems. While the left is willing to pay lip service to ecological issues and the far right claims some ecological affinity, we have no economic models, no societal ideas, no political organization that is willing to look critically at the big picture. And thus, societies are stuck in an endless loop of ever more polarizing left vs right politics. With both movements becoming more and more irrelevant to the reality of societal destruction, economic collapse, collapsing fertility and ecological collapse.

For an analysis of the situation, it benefits us to look at Hegelian, or Marxian ideas of dialectic change. While Marx’ wishful thinking predicted and end to capitalism through socialism and communism, it seems the next stage of dialogue will be something entirely different. A dialectic between ecological collapse, the collapse of populations and whatever we make of humanity’s existence within this new framework. F. Faustus isn’t egoistical enough to claim a new dialectic, but it’s clear that Marx was unable to comprehend, that there would be a sad end to growth and thus capital. Humanity is stepping in to new territory here.

With a soon-to-be-true future of empty cities being reclaimed by nature, even empty continents, with massive infrastructure projects being abandoned, what can be done for humanity to survive? Well, the answer is simple, we must look back in time to eras where humanity existed just fine at a smaller scale. Perhaps we can offer a lifeline to this dying planet of ours?

We have the opportunity to build a world that values community and spiritual belonging while producing food in sustainable and ecological ways. And we can do better. If we start now, we can have models that can uphold critical knowledge, such as health care, clean drinking water or labour saving models of farming. All of these can be the basis for a better society, perhaps one that does not suffer from a crisis in fertility and instead procreates a desirable amount. Food production can be sustainable and incessant growth finally abandoned as an ideology. Not to mention the end of industrialism.

And most importantly, we can build institutions, that remain strong and uphold this knowledge, both scientific and spiritual. For a better society, a family oriented, new traditionalist society.

AD2025