Literature / The Marching Morons

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A Science Fiction story by Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in April 1951.

In 1988, Con Man John Barlow is placed in suspended animation thanks to a freak accident. Barlow's eventually revived in the distant future, in a confusing world filled with hypersexualized advertisements, vapid entertainment, and people who exhibit erratic, nonsensical behavior. Barlow's told the world's the way it is due to the "Morons", simple-minded people who number in the billions, and are governed by a group of genuine intellectuals, of which there are only three million. The elites enlist Barlow's help because, since he comes from a different time and thus possesses a different perspective, they believe he can help them solve their population problem (which they call the "Poprob", for short).

It turns out that Barlow does have an idea to solve the Poprob!

Unfortunately, said idea is inspired by the actions of a certain Austrian painter...

The story was a major unacknowledged inspiration for the films Idiocracy and RoboCop (1987).

This story contains examples of the follow tropes:

• Asshole Victim: Barlow. He's a vulgar and racist (he refuses to work with one Elite upon realizing he's half-African) con-man who remorselessly made fraudulent deals with suckers back in his time, abrasively treats even the Intelligentsia of the future like dirt, and his solution to the "Poprob" is effectively a Final Solution on a global scale. Few tears are shed when he ended up on the receiving end of "Poprobterm" himself.
• Authority in Name Only: In exchange for a solution to the "Poprob", Barlow demands to be made world dictator. But the ending makes it very clear said title was just for show as the moment "Poprob" is solved he's subjected to "Poprobterm" i.e. getting rid of him via putting him in an actual rocket and blasting him off into space.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Barlow is a Jerkass con-artist who comes up with a very nasty (but effective) way of dealing with Earth's overpopulation crisis, which is exactly what the mostly well-meaning powers-that-be were hoping. He is unsurprisingly disposed of by his own method when no longer needed.
• The Barnum: Barlow. He's a vulgar and abrasive con-man who remorselessly scammed people in his time and shows absolutely no guilt with regard to his Final Solution to the Poprob. He eventually pays for it himself.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The elites wanted Barlow to solve Poprob, and he does... in a way that they never expected.
• Benevolent Conspiracy: The elites consist of roughly 3 million genuinely intelligent people who centuries ago began secretly breeding exclusively amongst themselves to ensure there would always be a clade of intelligent people who would run things from behind the scene to prevent the world from collapsing due to the presence of the Morons. It's emphasized that this elite class's existence must be kept secret from the Morons since the Morons would revolt and wipe them out if they realize they are being manipulated from behind the scenes, even if it's for their own good (and that won't even matter to them, as the Morons would hate the elites simply for being different or better than they are). The elites become decidedly less benevolent when despite their own reservations they approved of Barlow's Final Solution to the Poprob.
• The Coconut Effect: Pretty much every bit of technology is coated in this, to keep the idiot masses from causing even more trouble than they already are.
• Depopulation Bomb: The Poprob had to be dealt with, entailing this, but the elites cannot think of any solution to the problem, forcing them to turn to Barlow. Barlow's solution horrifies the elites, but works, leading to the Morons being completely disposed off.
• Downer Ending: Every last one of the Morons is disposed of and Barlow's now free to spend the rest of his life ruling over the world as its dictator... except the elites deemed Barlow part of Poprob, as well, and he's disposed of, too. Now the elites have the chance to fix the world and start ruling it properly, but they must live with the fact they essentially allowed a genocide of billions of people in order to get that chance.
• Driven to Suicide: One of Barlow's elite collaborators can't live with what he did in the service of Barlow's plan.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Intelligentsia turned to Barlow to deal with the 'Poprob', but they were horrified when Barlow's solution is effectively a complete and total genocide of the Morons. While they went along with it anyway because there simply isn't any other options available, they made sure that Barlow himself doesn't get away with it by putting him on an actual rocket and blasting him off into space.
• Genius Breeding Act: A relative handful of normally-intelligent humans breed with each other as they try to keep society from collapsing thanks to the idiocy of the rest of the population.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: "Poprobterm" is basically the elites doing to Barlow what he did to the Morons. Unlike the Morons, however, the rocket Barlow boards is fully-functional...
• Homeworld Evacuation: The Morons are all tricked into "emigrating" to Venus, when in reality they are just dumped into the ocean to drown or are disposed of in other ways.
• Human Popsicle: Barlow gets transported to the future in essentially this fashion, though he's not literally frozen.
• I Did What I Had to Do: The Poprob MUST be solved, no matter how unthinkable the solution, because the alternative is Human civilization eventually collapsing beyond recovery. Even so, the Intelligentsia were pretty horrified by Barlow's Final Solution.
• Idiot Ball: The population of Earth has literally "bred for stupidity" by smart people choosing to have fewer children while idiots continue to breed indiscriminately. To solve the problem, they have to resort to following the Final Solution proposed by Barlow.
• Killed Off for Real: After Poprob is solved, the elites initiate Poprobterm a.k.a. force Barlow inside a rocket that actually works and launch it into space the moment he's inside. The sudden acceleration of the rocket causes Barlow to be crushed against the floor and reduced to a mangled mess.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The Intelligentsia were all pretty horrified by Barlow's solution to Poprob. While they went along with it because they can't think of any other option, at least one elite was Driven to Suicide out of guilt of his complicity in it, citing in his suicide note that he 'couldn't live with [his] conscience'.
• Noodle Incident: The elites have previously made several attempts to solve the Poprob themselves. One such attempt involves them simply holing up in the South Pole and letting the Morons sort themselves out. That attempt was eventually aborted when the Elites realize while the Morons would get rid of themselves that way, the collateral damage would cause civilization to collapse beyond recovery (and that enough of them would survive and breed anyways, continuing the Poprob). This is why they turned to Barlow as they are simply out of ideas, options and time.
• Overpopulation Crisis: The "Poprob", which threatens to spiral beyond even the elites' exhausting attempts to manage and would cause the collapse of Human civilization on Earth beyond recovery. Barlow solves it by tricking the Morons into thinking they're taking a trip to Venus, when they're actually being sent out to sea and left to drown. "Poprobterm" is the "final cleanup" of Poprob: Getting rid of Barlow.
• Patriotic Fervor: Exploited to implement Barlow's 'solution' to the Poprob on a global scale. Barlow's 'Venus' campaign initially targeted America, where the Morons up to and including the politicians are fired into a frenzy through the manipulations of the elites to colonize Venus as part of America's Manifest Destiny, creating a programme guaranteeing Venusian settlers permanent land rights on the planet if they go. Other nations, not wanting to be left behind in the 'Venus Race', are similarly fired up and launch their own programmes. Eventually even the American president and his cabinet joined the 'great migration' to Venus.
• Pet the Dog: His other glaring flaws aside, Barlow is quite sad when he realizes his wife is long dead.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: One of the elites lambasts Barlow and the people of his time, noting how their lack of foresight and various issues with their society (including the ones that gave rise to a sleaze like Barlow) eventually gave rise to the Poprob in their time. Barlow brushes it off, seeing the very problems with his society which the elite pointed out as what made it great in his eyes, while also pointing out the elites themselves are not faultless in letting the 'Poprob' get so bad such as by breeding so little while letting the Morons' breeding go out of control.
• Released to Elsewhere: How the Marching Morons are finally dealt with: Barlow creates a propaganda campaign encouraging the morons to emigrate to planet Venus, but the 'spaceships' are in fact disguised passenger airplanes which flies the morons over the oceans and disposes of them after they are drugged (although the mention of furnaces in Europe hints other forms of disposals as well). This eventually included Barlow himself.
• Ruler Protagonist: The elites make Barlow the dictator of their world, which provides him with all he needs to solve Poprob and rule over everyone long after it's solved. Unfortunately for him, the elites are smart enough to "dethrone" him before he becomes completely unstoppable.
• Stupid Future People: The Morons make up the vast majority of the population in the billions, with civilization being barely held together by a small elite class of genuinely intelligent people who work themselves to the bone to save the Morons from themselves. The trope is Deconstructed in that by the time Barlow is revived this has become a huge problem as the combination of unrelenting stupidity and overpopulation threaten to crash Human civilization beyond recovery unless a solution is found. Barlow eventually presents that Final Solution to it.
• Take a Third Option: The very reason the elites turned to Barlow after he was revived is because while intelligent the Intelligensia are too set in their future ways to conceive of an effective solution to the Poprob that MUST be dealt with for Human civilization to survive. Barlow can help them because, being from a past era, he is an outsider who can conceive of an outside-the-box solution that they had all been missing. The elites ended up getting more than they bargained for when Barlow presents his Final Solution.
• Walking Spoiler: Barlow eventually solves the 'Poprob' for the elites by implementing what is effectively a global genocide of the Morons, tricking them into getting themselves disposed with a 'Venus colonization campaign' with tactics inspired by the Nazis, his own experience as a conman and lemmings' notorious tendency to drown themselves at sea.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The elites. Poprob had to be dealt with, but it's obvious from how some of them react to Barlow's plan that that isn't how they wanted to go about doing so. Which is why they ultimately get rid of Barlow, so what he did could never happen again.
• World of Dumbass: Might be the Ur-Example. Similar to Idiocracy, which it predates by several decades, the human race has become progressively dumber as stupid people outbreed smart ones. The smart people are forced to work harder and harder to feed and support the stupid ones. Just like in the film, a person from hundreds of years before (1988, even though the story was written in 1965) is found in suspended animation and asked to help solve the world's problems. His solution and final fate are much darker than in the movie.