Malthusianism

In his An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) and subsequent revisions, British economist Thomas Robert Malthus set forth the political and economic concept that unchecked population growth outpaces the means of subsistence, or that population tends to increase exponentially or geometrically, whereas food supplies increase arithmetically or linearly. The result of unchecked population growth inevitably leads to economic catastrophe. Critics of Malthus's theory claim that progress in science and technology will inexorably solve the problems of scarcity of resources, particularly the food supply, as humans develop methods to increase productivity or substitute away from scarce resources in favor of less scarce or renewable resources. Malthus's controversial ideas continue to have salience today as Malthusians, or neo-Malthusians, apply Malthus's mathematical model to the increasing demands placed on the Earth's finite resources by the exploding human population.

Primarily based on his observations of demographic trends during the Industrial Revolution, Malthus argued that excessive population growth would inevitably be controlled by positive checks on populations when food shortages were imminent. Positive checks include war, famine, disease, and poverty, and these checks primarily afflicted the poor or lower class. He argued that it was the tension between people and the scarcity of resources that led to misery and conflict in society. To avoid such misery in the lower class, Malthus argued that preventative checks acted in a way to stave off such misery. These preventative checks included postponement of marriage, birth control, and abortion. He preached self-control and social responsibility in averting the disaster of unchecked population growth. Each of the checks would reduce the size of the human population or slow its growth.

At the time of publication, Malthus was heavily criticized for blaming the victims of the lower class for their misery and for combining discussions of scientific reasoning with lectures on moral behavior. Notably, Karl Marx asserted that it was the injustices of the capitalistic system that created the societal ills of poverty, famine, and disease among society's most vulnerable, not population growth. Moreover, Marx claimed that the technological innovations of society would avert the doom of food shortages predicted by Malthus. Malthus's doomsday prediction was proven wrong in the short run when the technological advances in the green revolution allowed for massive increases in agricultural [Page 268]productivity. However, his theory garnered a substantial following that continues today and is frequently revisited for its rational argumentation.

Malthusianism implies that there is a carrying capacity for the human population, or a limit to the size of the human population that the Earth can support. Below that capacity, the population will increase. Above that capacity, the population will decline. No one knows exactly what the maximum size is for the Earth to sustainably support the human population, and the figure depends a great deal on the standard of living and consumption patterns of that population. Some have argued that the carrying capacity has already been exceeded by the consumption-based lifestyles and habits of the people of the world's industrialized nations. The growing trend of consumerism in rapidly industrializing countries like India and China accelerates the demand on the Earth's finite resources, and the carrying capacity is surpassed further. Others suggest that population growth could continue well into the future with some modifications to human behavior. Malthus argued, incidentally, that society would be reduced to subsistence conditions when populations exceeded agricultural production.

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