Population Pressure [1957]

THERE WAS A close connection in Russell’s political thinking between the seemingly discrete threats posed by the nuclear arms race and over-population in the developing world. The connection which he makes explicit in Paper 59a had been suggested previously in New Hopes for a Changing World (1951). More recently, in Paper 6 he had voiced an acute concern that the staggering rate of population growth in the world’s poorest countries “will swamp all improvements of technique and leave Asia and Africa to the alternatives of abject poverty or world conquest” (29:26-8).