“All higher development of the faculties, no less than all material progress, is at a stand-still since the abolition of free competition. Self-interest used to sharpen the wits of individuals, and bring out their inventiveness. But the emulation of the many who strove in the same field of labour, constantly operated to make common property of the achievements of individuals.
“All the proposals of the Chancellor will prove as powerless in making good the vast deficit, as our attempted organisation, some years ago, of production and consumption in our prisons proved powerless to cover even a third part of the current expenses of those places. In a very short time, in spite of the Chancellor’s programme, you will find yourselves face to face with a new and a greater deficit. Hence I counsel you not to be too greatly elated at the advent of children as being welcome additions to Socialism. On the contrary, consider rather how you may best promote a diminution of population. For it is quite certain that, even with the beggarly style of nourishment which the Chancellor is compelled to place in prospect for us, Germany, on the basis of the present order of things, will be able permanently to support but a very thin and sparse population. The same applies, of course, to the neighbouring Socialist countries. The inexorable law of self-preservation will hence compel the Socialists on this side, and on that side, to engage in a deadly struggle, which will last until that superfluity of population, which can only be supported by such forms and systems as you have uprooted, shall have succumbed.
“So far as I am aware, the hope that Bebel once expressed is not yet any nearer its accomplishment--the hope, namely, that in the course of time the desert of Sahara would, by means of irrigation, be turned into fruitful districts, and prove a favourable colonising ground to which to draft off the surplus Socialist population of Europe. I take it, too, that there is as yet no great liking on the part of those of your side in politics who are superfluous here, to follow the other proposition which Bebel was once good enough to suggest as an outlet for surplus population. That suggestion was the settling in the north of Norway, and in Siberia. (Laughter from the Left.)