ABSTRACT

Liberal theorists argue that a wide range of rights serves not only the interests of those individuals who possess them, but that rights also constitute the foundations of a just and stable political order and therefore are to the advantage of everyone, bringing about a desirable and free society, thus ensuring the continued existence and development of the collective as a whole not only in the short run, but also in the long run. The first section of this paper shows argues this dual defense of liberal rights relies on the presupposition of an "invisible hand," which ensures that a large-scale aggregate of free, individual and self-interested choices will have a stable and beneficial result for all.
The second section describes how demographers undermine this liberal logic of harmony, pointing to the probability that allowing a wide range of autonomy to a large number of individuals, such as in their choice of partners, whether to have children or not and at what age, where to live, etc., can be counter-productive for all, undermining stability, destroying social progress and human dignity in the long run.

In order to illustrate the way the conflictual logic of demographic arguments contradicts liberal ones, the third section provides a short overview of the contemporary debate on fertility in Germany, in which demographers claim that the German population is shrinking and getting older as a result of the fact that a large number of German individuals have made an autonomous choice to have only one child or not to have any children at all, and thus Germany as we know it, may disappear.
Drawing on the German example, the forth section elaborates on the anxieties that stem from the way in which such demographic thinking dismantles the luring logic of the invisible hand by invoking the possible – or even probable – death of the collective. It shows that the demographic anxieties stirred in the German debate have specific features that may distinguish it from other demographic debates and that may account for the fact that the German state seems paralyzed in the face of what commonly is depicted as a severe demographic threat.

Finally, the concluding section argues that in contrast to other instances of contradictions between autonomy and demography, a way out of the German impasse can be found only by adding and extending rights and that therefore this case may become one in which demographic anxiety will lead to an increase in rights for the local population or migrants, or both.