An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Thomas Malthus (Author), Geoffrey Gilbert (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0192837478 | ISBN-13: 978-0192837479 | Publication Date: November 11, 1999

As the world's population continues to grow at a frighteningly rapid rate, Malthus's classic warning against overpopulation gains increasing importance. An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources, and argues that checks in the form of poverty, disease, and starvation are necessary to keep societies from moving beyond their means of subsistence. Malthus's simple but powerful argument was controversial in his time; today his name has become a byword for active concern about humankind's demographic and ecological prospects.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

He is also the author of many articles on Malthus, the Poor Law, and the Welfare State. He is currently researching a book on Malthus and poverty.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192837478
• ISBN-13: 978-0192837479
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,636 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important essay., July 11, 2000

By 

Mark Forkheim (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

This small and often overlooked essay by Thomas Malthus is probably one of the most important essays ever written.

Way back in 1798 Malthus wrote this essay to expose how human population is still being kept in check by mother nature. Famine, plague and war pop up whenever a population gets too high.

The essay has been overlooked mostly because of the stance Malthus takes in this book towards the poor. He suggests that when you give money to people who don't work, you help them have children. This increases the population without increasing production of food. Also, by increasing the standard of living of these people, you then qualify more people to receive without working, exacerbating the situation. Malthus clearly supports workhouses to welfare in this essay.

This essay had influenced two notable people. First is Charles Dickens. In 'A Christmas Carol' you read how Scrooge said, "that if the poor would not go into workhouses, they might as well die and decrease the surplus population". This was aimed straight at Malthus. The second person he influenced with this essay is Darwin. While reading Malthus, Darwin realized that population pressure was that "natural selector" that made evolution possible.

If you want to read a piece of history, read this essay. If you then want to get a more modern and thorough take on the subject read Marvin Harris's "Cannibals and Kings".

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scary., September 29, 2005

By 

Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

That Thomas Robert Malthus was a cleric might startle some readers, who could look on his pessimism as something that is more typical of a man of hard, God-less science. Malthus was clearly, once one examines deep within the heart of his treatise on overpopulation, a theist, and a hard-hearted "God Disposes" sort of one at that. Underneath everything, we can sense Malthus' view being, "ultimately what does this brief, cluttered, hopeless world matter next to eternal life in Heaven?" Malthus' statements about the human race breeding past its ability to feed itself, have merit, but he failed to take into account the capacity of science to be humanity's deliverer. Revolutions in agriculture, medicine, social health, as well as many other fields, not excluding simple advances in birth control, have to an extent nullified the ABSOLUTE nature of Thomas Malthus' ideas, and instead, alas, made them true primarily in the 21st century for the Third World alone. Malthus was a man both in and ahead of his time--in it because he had but to open his eyes and see starvation and orphaned children, poverty and overcrowding in the slums, and ahead of his time in that he looked forward and forecast a dire warning to the world of a time when the horrors of this state might over-sweep civilization and strangle it to death with numbers alone. Malthus was a cruel man on one hand, advocating the selective starvation of a segment of society. He totally opposed any form of welfare, charity or aid to those who could not contribute to their own upkeep. Those types, he argued, decayed human society and lead it closer to the nightmare state he detailed in his work. He cited wars, plagues, famines, as servants of humanity, in that they thinned the ranks and tried to keep us from reproducing ourselves into extinction. Malthus' fearful prognostications might yet see its consummation one day and some may say that in various parts of the world we are already seeing it, but I take the stance that if our species has one great gift, it is its intellect, and that intellect might-if we are motivated by conditions made intolerable--yet serve to deliver us from even our self-created scenarios of mad destruction.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Was Malthus Right?, May 21, 2008

By 

D. W. MacKenzie (New London CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population has been the subject of much debate. 19th Century economists accepted The Population Principle as fact. 20th century economists have arrived at such a strong consensus against the Population Principle, that the subject is considered as closed. The main reason for this consensus is failure to realize Malthus' dire predictions. Declines in birth rates among prosperous nations indicate that Malthus was wrong.

An Essay on the Principle of Population is important today for several reasons. First, it is an important part of history. Second, population issues still loom large. Also, historian Ross Emmett has reinterpreted Malthus in a way that fits better with world experience. My own reading of An Essay on the Principle of Population fits with Emmett's reinterpretation of Malthus.

Malthus reasoned through one of the biggest issues. This is a classic of political economy, worthy of careful consideration. Don't listed to those who say Malthus has been proven wrong. Read this book and judge its merits yourself.