MALTHUS’ PRINCIPLE
OF POPULATION
Excerpts of the 1st edition
of Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle
of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with remarks
on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers.
The book was first published in 1798 and immediately caused a considerable
stir. A second edition, substantially expanded and rewritten to include
replies to critics, was published in 1803. The Essay was very
influential and widely-read in the 19th century, generally provoking praise
from the “classical economists” and condemnation from socialists -- most
notably Marx and Engels (see below). Both Darwin and Wallace credited
this essay with stimulating their notions of the "struggle for existence"
and natural selection. As the full title indicates, the essay was
intended as a refutation of the optimistic arguments put forth by some
leading thinkers of the later Enlightenment. It is also this essay
which led to the characterization of economics as "the dismal science.”
Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the
power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth
to produce subsistence for man.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical
ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight
acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in
comparison of the second.
By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to
the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.
This implies a strong and constantly operating check on
population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall
somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.
Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has
scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand.
She has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary
to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with
ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds
in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious
all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds.
The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive
law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from
it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and
premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. The former, misery,
is an absolutely necessary consequence of it. Vice is a highly probable
consequence, and we therefore see it abundantly prevail, but it ought not,
perhaps, to be called an absolutely necessary consequence. The ordeal of
virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.
This natural inequality of the two powers of population
and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which
must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that
to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
All other arguments are of slight and subordinate consideration in comparison
of this. I see no way by which man can escape from the weight of this law
which pervades all animated nature. No fancied equality, no agrarian regulations
in their utmost extent, could remove the pressure of it even for a single
century. And it appears, therefore, to be decisive against the possible
existence of a society, all the members of which should live in ease, happiness,
and comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means
of subsistence for themselves and families.
Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument
is conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind.
I have thus sketched the general outline of the argument, but I will examine
it more particularly, and I think it will be found that experience, the
true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth.
...It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour
universally falls, but we well know that it frequently remains the same,
while the nominal price of provisions has been gradually increasing.
This is, in effect, a real fall in the price of labour, and during this
period the condition of the lower orders of the community must gradually
grow worse and worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing
rich from the real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals enable
them to employ a greater number of men. Work therefore may be plentiful,
and the price of labour would consequently rise. But the want of freedom
in the market of labour, which occurs more or less in all communities,
either from parish laws, or the more general cause of the facility of combination
among the rich, and its difficulty among the poor, operates to prevent
the price of labour from rising at the natural period, and keeps it down
some time longer; perhaps till a year of scarcity, when the clamour is
too loud and the necessity too apparent to be resisted.
The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is
thus concealed, and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion
and favour to the poor, in consideration of a year of scarcity, and, when
plenty returns, indulge themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints,
that the price does not again fall, when a little reflection would shew
them that it must have risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy
of their own.
But though the rich by unfair combinations contribute
frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor, yet no possible
form of society could prevent the almost constant action of misery
upon a great part of mankind, if in a state of inequality, and upon all,
if all were equal.
The theory on which the truth of this position depends
appears to me so extremely clear that I feel at a loss to conjecture what
part of it can be denied.
That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence
is a proposition so evident that it needs no illustration.
That population does invariably increase where there are
the means of subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed
will abundantly prove.
And that the superior power of population cannot be checked
without producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter
ingredients in the cup of human life and the continuance of the physical
causes that seem to have produced them bear too convincing a testimony.
But, in order more fully to ascertain the validity of
these three propositions, let us examine the different states in which
mankind have been known to exist. Even a cursory review will, I think,
be sufficient to convince us that these propositions are incontrovertible
truths.
The following observations on Malthus’ influence come
from Frederick Engels’ book The Condition
of the
Working Class in England,
published in 1845, and written before Engels had hooked up with Marx. This
excerpt
reflects the fact that, though Malthus is now known
mostly
for his influence on Darwinism, the more significant impact of his theories
was to undermine existing social welfare legislation in England.
Meanwhile the most open declaration of war of the bourgeoisie
upon the proletariat is Malthus' Law of Population and the New Poor Law
framed in accordance with it. We may sum up its final result in these
few words, that the earth is perennially overpopulated, whence poverty,
misery, distress, and immorality must prevail; that it is the lot, the
eternal destiny of mankind, to exist in too great numbers, and therefore
in diverse classes, of which some are rich, educated, and moral, and others
more or less poor, distressed, ignorant, and immoral. Hence it follows
in practice, and Malthus himself drew this conclusion, that charities and
poor rates are, properly speaking, nonsense, since they serve only to maintain,
and stimulate the increase of, the surplus population whose competition
crushes down wages for the employed; that the employment of the poor by
the Poor Law Guardians is equally unreasonable, since only a fixed quantity
of the products of labour can be consumed, and for every unemployed labourer
thus furnished employment, another hitherto employed must be driven into
enforced idleness, whence private undertakings suffer at cost of Poor Law
industry; that, in other words, the whole problem is not how to support
the surplus population, but how to restrain it as far as possible. Malthus
declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted
in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words of
a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover
laid for him, and adds that she ‘bids him begone’, for he did not before
his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now
the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois... If, then, the
problem is not to make the “surplus population” useful, to transform it
into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the
least objectionable way and to prevent its having too many children, this,
of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives
its superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation....
...In 1833, when the bourgeoisie had just come to power
through the Reform Bill, and pauperism in the country districts had just
reached its full development, the bourgeoisie began the reform of the Poor
Law according to its own point of view. A commission was appointed,
which investigated the administration of the Poor Laws, and revealed a
multitude of abuses. It was discovered that the whole working class
in the country was pauperized and more or less dependent upon the rates,
from which they received relief when wages were low; it was found that
this system by which the unemployed were maintained, the ill-paid and the
parents of large families relieved, fathers of illegitimate children required
to pay alimony, and poverty, in general, recognized as needing protection,
it was found that this system was ruining the nation, was:
-
"A check upon industry, a reward for improvident
marriage, a stimulus to increased population, and a means of counterbalancing
the effect of increased population upon wages; a national provision for
discouraging the honest and industrious, and protecting the lazy, vicious,
and improvident; calculated to destroy the bonds of family life, hinder
systematically the accumulation of capital, scatter that which is already
accumulated, and ruin the taxpayers. Moreover, in the provision of aliment,
it sets a premium upon illegitimate children." (Words of the Report
of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1833)
...They accordingly brought in the New Poor Law, which was
passed by Parliament in 1834, and continues in force to the present day.
All relief in money and provisions was abolished; the only relief allowed
was admission to the workhouses immediately built. The regulations for
these workhouses, or, as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such
as to frighten away every one who has the slightest prospect of life without
this form of public charity. To make sure that relief be applied
for only in the most extreme cases and after every other effort had failed,
the workhouse has been made the most repulsive residence which the refined
ingenuity of a Malthusian can invent.
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