Malthus’ Essay on Population at Age 200:
A Marxian View
by John Bellamy Foster
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The First Essay
The full title of the First Essay was An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Effects the Future Improvement of Society; with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet and Other Writers. As the title indicates it was an attempt to intervene in a debate on the question of the future improvement of society. The specific controversy in question can be traced back to the publication in 1761 of a work entitled Various Prospects for Mankind, Nature, and Providence by Robert Wallace, an Edinburgh minister. Wallace, who in his earlier writings had demonstrated that human population if unchecked tended to increase exponentially, doubling every few decades, made a case in Various Prospects that while the creation of a "perfect government," organized on an egalitarian basis was conceivable, it would be at best temporary, since under these circumstances "mankind, would increase so prodigiously that the earth would be left overstocked and become unable to support its inhabitants." Eventually, there would come a time "when our globe, by the most diligent culture, could not produce what was sufficient to nourish its numerous inhabitants." Wallace went on to suggest that it would be preferable if the human vices, by reducing population pressures, should prevent the emergence of a government not compatible with the "circumstances of Mankind upon the Earth."
Wallace's argument was strongly opposed by William Godwin in his Enlightenment utopian argument for a more egalitarian society, which he enunciated in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness. First published in 1793, it was followed by a second edition in 1795 and a third edition in 1797 (the year before Malthus' essay appeared). In answer to Wallace, who had claimed that excessive population would result eventually from any perfect government, thus undermining its existence, Godwin contended that human population "will perhaps never be found in the ordinary course of affairs, greatly to increase, beyond the facility of subsistence." Population tended to be regulated in human society in accordance with conditions of wealth and wages. "It is impossible where the price of labour is greatly reduced, and an added population threatens still further reduction, that men should not be considerably under the influence of fear, respecting an early marriage, and a numerous family." For Godwin there were "various methods, by the practice of which population may be checked; by the exposing of children, as among the ancients, and, at this day, in China; by the art of procuring abortion, as it is said to subsist in the island of Ceylon ... or lastly, by a systematical abstinence such as must be supposed, in some degree, to prevail in monasteries of either sex." But even without such extreme practices and institutions, "the encouragement or discouragement that arises from the general state of a community," he insisted, "will probably be found to be all-powerful in its operation."
Malthus set out to overturn Godwin's argument by changing the terrain of debate; rather than contending, like Wallace before him, that a "perfect government" would eventually be undermined by the overstocking of the earth with human inhabitants, Malthus insisted that there was a constant tendency toward equilibrium between population and food supply. Nevertheless, population tended naturally when unchecked to increase at a geometrical rate (1, 2, 4, 8, 16), while food supply increased at best at an arithmetical rate (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Under these circumstances attention needed to be given to the checks that ensured that population stayed in equilibrium (apart from minor fluctuations) with the limited means of subsistence. These checks, Malthus argued, were all reducible to vice and misery, taking such forms as promiscuity before marriage, which limited fecundity (a common assumption in Malthus' time), sickness, plagues, and—ultimately, if all other checks fell short, the dreaded scourge of famine. Since such misery and vice was necessary at all times to keep population in line with subsistence any future improvement of society, as envisioned by thinkers like Godwin and Condorcet, he contended, was impossible.
Malthus himself did not use the term "overpopulation" in advancing his argument—though it was used from the outset by his critics.2 Natural checks on population were so effective, in Malthus' late-eighteenth-century perspective, that overpopulation, in the sense of the eventual overstocking of the globe with human inhabitants, was not the thing to be feared. The problem of an "overcharged population" existed not at "a great distance" (as Godwin had said), but rather was always operative, even at a time when most of the earth was uncultivated. In response to Condorcet he wrote "M. Condorcet thinks that it
cannot .. be applicable but at an era extremely distant. If the proportion between the natural increase of population and food which I have given be in any degree near the truth, it will appear, on the contrary, that the period when the number of men surpass their means of subsistence has arrived, and that this necessary oscillation, this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery, has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind." In the 1803 edition of his work on population he wrote, "Other persons, besides Mr. Godwin, have imagined that I looked to certain periods in the future when population would exceed the means of subsistence in a much greater degree than at present, and that the evils arising from the principle of population were rather in contemplation than in existence; but this is a total misconception of the argument."
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http://monthlyreview.org/1298jbf.htm
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