MALTHUS REVISITED

Workers Press no. 860, 5 September 1972 · scan page 8

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Part 2 of a series on Science and the Environment by 1 Scie John !

At the end of the 18th century, as British capital's enslavement of the industrial working class was beginning to take its modern form, a wave of terror swept the ruling class. Support for the French revolution and demands for alleviation of the lot of the factory labourers were widespread among intellectuals and within the young working class itself.

The state went to work, suspending Habeus Corpus and passing the Combination Act, but it desperately needed ideological backing.

This is where the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus came on to the scene. He was able to provide the comforting argument that the misery of the masses was not due to any defect in the system of production, but arose from inexorable natural laws: they starved because they bred too fast.

In his 'Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society' (1798), he denied '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.' The Christian gentleman argued like this:

"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man . .. This difficulty must be felt somewhere; and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.' Tohn Crawford an opportunity of denouncing these ideas. Engels called them 'this vile and infamous doctrine, this repulsive blasphemy against man and nature? Marx showed that Malthus' 'Essay' *is nothing more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Stuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, etc., and does not contain single sentence thought out by himself.' ('Capital', Vol I. p. 616.)

For Marx, a 'law of population' could only be related to a particular stage of history. In particular, he described the way capitalism, driven forward by the search for profit, pushed up the productivity of labour, but in such a way that too many workers were continually being thrown on to the job market for the needs of capital.

But 'an abstract law of exists only for plants and animals, and only in so far as man has not interfered with them'. (Ibid, p. 632)