Summary
Oddly enough, since his income was modest and he owned no land, Thomas Malthus defended the landlord and attacked Ricardo's views. Instead of viewing landlords as villains, Malthus praised them as ingenious capitalists. Still, Malthus was pessimistic over the future of capitalism, but for a different reason. He warned of general gluts, when the process of saving might lead to a lessened demand for goods and thereby to an excessive quantity of products without enough buyers. Although Ricardo refuted this logic, Malthus did demonstrate his foresight in predicting depressions. While motivated by compassion for the poor, Malthus earned criticism by opposing relief and housing projects, objecting to these measures on the grounds that charity is really cruelty in disguise. He reasoned that by keeping the poor alive, they would continue to propagate, producing more poor.
It was not his articles on economics nor his Principles of Political Economy (the same title as Ricardo's book) which made Malthus famous. Rather, it was his anonymously published Essay on the Principles of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798), whose reception was so great that Malthus expanded the original edition from a 50,000-word pamphlet to a 600-page book. The effect changed Adam Smith's optimism to an outlook so bleak that Thomas Carlyle named economics "the dismal science." Critics heaped scorn and derision on "Parson" Malthus. Yet approval came from an unexpected quarter, for David Ricardo substantiated Malthus' claims about the perils of rising population.
The inspiration for Malthus' masterpiece came from his reading of Political Justice, an incorrigible piece of optimism by William Godwin. Godwin's vision of the future was a utopia containing neither war nor crime nor disease nor government—nothing but complete happiness. Malthus expressed his dissension through his Essay on Population.
Malthus' thesis—known as the Malthusian Doctrine—states that population grows at a rate greater than the means to feed it, and, if unchecked, the world's population will double every twenty-five years.
Being the first economic statistician, Malthus based this estimate on the population growth of the United States, where a real census appeared before it did in England and revealed that the U.S. population had doubled in twenty-five years. So, explained Malthus, population will continue to increase geometrically, doubling itself from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 times its original size until it reaches cataclysmic proportions.
Meantime, the land, which cannot keep pace with subsistence, is put into cultivation in units of one additional section at a time. In other words, the means of subsistence can only increase arithmetically from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 and so forth. Clearly, Malthus concluded, the result will be too many people with not enough food—that is, if population growth continues unchecked.
How can population be checked?
1. First, by positive checks—war, disease, infanticide, poverty, and famine. However, it's obvious that these age-old inhibitors cannot halt the disastrous population spiral.
2. Second, there are the preventive checks of sexual abstinence and vice—that is, prostitution and homosexuality. What Malthus advocated as the only possible solution is abstinence or "moral restraint." He called for late marriages because fertility lessens in the later years and passions cool. Even though he was acquainted with birth control, he disapproved of it on moral grounds. Being a minister, Malthus could hardly advocate vice, so he stressed the advantages of restraint. However, the Reverend, a realistic observer of human conduct, doubted the ability of people to practice restraint. Consequently, he predicted that the future of humankind will be starvation.
Are Malthus' facts correct? Yes, if measured by the actual rate of population growth in much of the world, particularly in India and China. Why, then, has his prediction not come to pass? Basically, because of the widespread use of modern birth control methods, especially in the Western world, and the tremendous increase in agricultural technology, which provides more than enough food in advanced countries.
Commentary
While the majority of economists and scientists consider the Malthusian Doctrine invalid, an increasing number of demographers (scientists who study population statistics) warn that it is very real indeed. Less than 20 percent of the world's people depend on preventive checks. These people live in advanced areas of the world, especially Europe and the United States. The countries where population explosions occur are less technologically advanced areas in the Third World, notably India, China, and Latin America. Ironically, the increased use of modern sanitation, hygiene, and preventive medicine has increased the problem of overpopulation by reducing high death rates, which once served as a positive check.
Malthus was not as incorrect in his analysis as modern economists would have us believe, but the Malthusian Doctrine is still a specter that haunts the minds of an increasing number of modern theorists. In any case, the warnings of the chief spokesmen for the school of Classical Economists swayed the minds of the nineteenth century, and the wonderful world of Adam Smith became the gloomy world of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, paving the way for the Utopian Socialists.
