 Dear students, in this module, we are going to discuss Marxian theory of population control. Karl Marx, the renowned philosopher economist, he offered the perspective on population growth, which is quite different from the perspective of Malthus. His theory is driven more by the social and economic structures than by these biological or natural impulses. So he criticized Malthus' theory, arguing that it blamed the poor rather than the poverty and the divert attention from the real causes of capitalism and class struggle. So basically, Karl Marx's key argument is that when we talk about population growth, it is not necessary that we agree with Malthus' point of view. Just look at it from this perspective. The way Malthus thought that the growth of the population is exponentially higher as compared to the available resources, so resources will get scarier as much as the population and then the population will explode like a bomb and ultimately that would become a very dangerous situation. In comparison to that, Marx thought that the real cause of this population growth is not a natural process, rather it is inherent in the capitalist system. The way the capitalist system needs more and more cheap labour, a reserve army of labour is more beneficial for the capitalist system, so the capitalist system promotes ideas and ideologies in such a way that people are more likely to have children. So ultimately Marx is responsible for the capitalist system rather than for a natural process. So in Marx's perspective, population growth is not the cause of poverty or resource shortage. Instead it is a social system specifically capitalism that leads to resource inequality. According to Marx, under capitalism overpopulation occurs when the labour supply surpasses the capital's demand leading to a surplus population or the reserve army of labour. So this reserve army keeps the wages low as there is always a ready pull of labourers willing to work for less. So the more people there are, the more possibility that you will be affected by cheap labour. So Marx thinks that there is inherent flaw in the capitalist system because of which such policies and ideologies are promoted so that people are more likely to have children. And the capitalist system is more likely to have cheap labour. So he proposed that the solution lies in a classless society where resources are equally distributed and the exploitation of proletariat ends. So Marx's system suggested that there is a classless society and in a classless society, the potential inequalities between the people will be reduced and therefore the chance to promote those ideologies or to grow those ideologies will be reduced and in this way you will be able to control your population. In Pakistan for example, the high rate of unemployment, especially among the youth in urban areas can be seen as the reflection of this Marxian concept of the reserve army of labour. If we talk about Pakistan, you see that the rural population, especially the poor population has a very high growth rate and birth rate. And the principle reason for that is that the more children they have, the more earning hands they will have. And those earning hands become the potential army of reserve labour. And ultimately what happens is that in this capitalist system, because there are more people and more labourers, then the capitalist is potentially in an exploitative position in which the cheaper labour possible in the reserve army of labour can be used for themselves to form an exploitative system or exploitative system.