Malthsian Population Policy - An Apology for Privilage

I am sorry but I cannot take Thomas Malthus seriously. My opinion on him was formed years ago and one of my old text books summed it up perfectly. The text book is EK Hunt, History of Economic Thought: A Critical Perspective (Belmont, Cal. USA: Wodsworth, 1979).

Hunt points out that Malthus developed his population theory defending the British capital and landlord classes against the emerging organised labour movements. The reason for the poverty of the poor was the poor. (This sounds very modern!)

Malthus believed that human population increases geometrically while food production increases arithmetically. These are kept in equilibrium by preventative and positive checks. Preventative checks reduced the birth rate by sterility, sexual abstinence and birth control. Positive checks included those things that increase the death rate: war, famine and the plague. Ultimately, the major means of increasing the death rate was starvation. (Hunt, p.66)

Hence, any measure to aid the poor would disturb this equilibrium and only increase their suffering (Hunt, p.65). It was also tired up with notions of born to rule of the ruling class.

For Malthus the reason why there were too many poor people were they lack of moral character compared to the ruling classes. Only the ruling class had the moral fibre to practice abstinence and birth control. The poor lacked the moral fibre (Hunt, p.67).

The problem with over population has never been that there is not enough food, the problem has always been the equitable distribution of the food. Malthus was defending the ruling class by claiming the poor’s lack of food was part of a natural process of population control. And that poverty is the norm, not the extra-ordinary.

Sorry, I refuse to accept that. Poverty has always been caused by the greed of the ruling classes. They have constantly refused to have an equitable distribution of recourses. I am proudly an economic irrationalist.