Mill says among other things: "But Communism is precisely the state of
things in which opinion might be expected to declare itself with
greatest intensity against this kind of selfish intemperance. An
augmentation of numbers which diminished the comfort or increased the
toil of the mass, would then cause (which now it does not) immediate and
unmistakable inconvenience to every individual in the association;
inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the avarice of
employers, or the unjust privileges of the rich. In such altered
circumstances, opinion could not fail to reprobate, and if reprobation
did not suffice, to repress by penalties of some description, this or
any other culpable self-indulgence at the expense of the community. The
Communistic scheme, instead of being peculiarly open to the objection
drawn from danger of over-population, has the recommendation of tending
in an especial degree to the prevention of that evil." And Prof. Ad.
Wagner says: "Least of all could freedom of marriage or freedom of
procreation be tolerated in a Socialist community."[232] These authors
proceed from the theory that the tendency towards over-population is
one common to all social conditions, but both allow that Socialism is
better able than any other social system to establish the equilibrium
between population and food. The latter is true, not so the former.

True enough, there were one time Socialists, who, tainted by the
Malthusian theories, perceived the "imminent danger" of over-population.
But these Socialist Malthusians have disappeared. A clearer insight into
the nature of bourgeois society, together with the fact that, judging
from the plaintive songs of our Agrarians, we produce not too little but
too much food, and that the resulting low prices render the production
of foodstuffs unprofitable, has enlightened them on the subject.

A part of our Malthusians imagine--and the chorus of the mouth-pieces of
the bourgeoisie parrot-like echo their utterances--that a Socialist
society, in which there is freedom in the choice of love and ample
provision for a livelihood worthy of human beings, must soon degenerate
into a rabbit warren: it would succumb to excessive sexual indulgence
and to excessive procreation. Exactly the reverse is most likely to
happen, as certain observations go to prove. Until now the largest
number of children were had, not by the best, but by the worst situated.
It may even be said without being