There is this weird cult I’ve encountered quite a few times now, of people who associate themselves with a politician named Lyndon LaRouche. Many media outlets describe them as “far-right,” but LaRouchites, as I will call them, themselves decry this label, insisting they are not…
  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 months ago

    A Malthusian is someone in the vein of Thomas Malthus, who argued that population growth would eventually outstrip food supply and so you needed to downsize human societies. In practice this proved untrue, but “Malthusianism” lives on as a more general term to refer to people who argue, in some way, that economic development is inherently unsustainable, and thus that society needs to go backwards.

    I have associated Malthusianism with the belief that "there are too many people and a slice of the poorest need to die off" rather than saying that development is inherently undesirable. Am I wrong?

    • D61 [any]
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, its the "we've got to do something about the useless eaters" argument.

      • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 months ago

        Yeah exactly. What I meant is they want to uphold the current standard of living and way of life but wipe out the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. Kinda like Snowpiercer.

    • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 months ago

      My understanding was Malthus was hired by some British capitalists back in the day to come up with an academic argument as to why the poors can and should be oppressed and even left to die. The flowery language only serves to package the argument in a less evil phrasing.