POVERTY AS A HUMAN DESTINY

 (Once again, let us first quote the Malthus entry from my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary.---

“Malthus, Thomas Robert. 1766-1834. English economist, curate at Albury, Surrey (1798). Aroused controversy by his argument in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), that population when unchecked tends to increase in a geometric ratio while means of subsistence tend to increase only in an arithmetic ratio and that preventive checks on increase of population are necessary as an alternative to the exclusive operation of positive checks, such as overcrowding, disease, war, poverty, and vice; in second edition (1803), documented his argument, relinquished question of mathematical ratios, recognized influence of moral restraint as a preventive check, remained pessimistic of the possibilities of future progress of mankind. Author also of An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent (1815) and of Principles of Political Economy (1820).)

This entry is devoted to the English political economist and cleric Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), or rather to his gloomy projection of an inevitable conflict between the growth of world population and the capacity of the earth to feed the exponentially growing numbers. To Malthus belongs the following statement taken like practically all his quotes from his famous magnum opus An Essay on the Principle of Population, the six continuously updated editions of which appeared between 1798 and 1826:

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 show the immensity of the first power, in comparison with the second.

It seems that Malthus’s main motivation for developing his doom-and-gloom theory was to contradict the optimistic theories of Rousseau and Condorcet (the latter actually invented the population theory, but with a much happier ending, which Malthus would twist according to his pessimistic disposition), but especially to contradict his father, who happened to be an admiring follower of Condorcet. Unlike Condorcet’s cheerful conclusion that the population problem would eventually be resolved through the future improvement of society (had he prophesied the Industrial Revolution, he could have been even more specific, which does not minimize the fact that he turned out to be right, and Malthus wrong), Malthus saw just two solutions to the problem, one cataclysmic: hunger, pestilence, and war; and the other preventative: birth control, such as abortion and premarital celibacy, and… surprisingly for a cleric, prostitution! Even more surprisingly, he seems to have anticipated the much later idea of eugenics, but dismissed it right away as unimplementable:

It does not by any means seem impossible that by an attention to breed, a certain degree of improvement, similar to that among animals, might take place among men. Whether intellect could be communicated, may be a matter of doubt; but size, strength, beauty, complexion, and, perhaps, longevity are in a degree transmissible. As the human race, however, could not be improved in this way without condemning all the bad specimens to celibacy, it is not probable that an attention to breed should ever become general.

This line of thinking has led Malthus to the shockingly inhumane belief that the poor are largely responsible for their poverty because of their irresponsible urge to procreate no matter what. Consequently, his stand on public assistance to the poor is also pointedly negative. Public charity to him promotes irresponsibility in its recipient, and thus perpetuates the harmful conditions. Only private charity is encouraged, in emergencies. Having expounded such heartless propositions, it only shows his lack of understanding that he should feel hurt when his critics would accuse him of an uncaring disposition. In the 1817 revision of his work, he had the following addition in self-defense: “I have written a chapter expressly on the practical direction of our charity; and in detached passages elsewhere have paid a just tribute to the exalted virtue of benevolence. To those who have read these parts of my work, and have attended to the general tone and spirit of the whole, I willingly appeal, if they are but tolerably candid, against these charges,… which intimate that I would root out the virtues of charity and benevolence without regard to the exaltation which they bestow on the moral dignity of our nature.”

Incidentally, here is an excellent example of anti-socialist, ergo capitalist values, and hardly the worst of all imaginable ones!

The last question to ask and to answer is why should we include Malthus in our list of major philosophers, when he is primarily a political economist? I feel that the issues he raises, and the way he raises them, shows some important philosophical connotations which must not be overlooked. Among his followers we find no lesser a figure than Charles Darwin who was not an economist, but who was greatly influenced by Malthus, in his development of the survival of the fittest theory via the philosophical connecting ties between their respective theories. Moreover, there are other factors indicating that his “economic” theory is, in fact, more philosophical than economic in nature, and, hopefully, at a later time I may be able to address this issue at a greater length and in depth.