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

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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".

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.

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.

The reverend Thomas Robert Malthus is one of these figures that influences, in his case for good, generations to come. The concepts he developed, which is not the same to say that he discovered the fundamentals of these concepts, are of such working capability, that they can be used even today on a daily basis, some 200 + years after the first publication of his seminal and most important book, certainly one of the most important texts of all times. His name turned itself into an important adjective, malthusian, sometimes associated to a lot of misconceptions and misuse, mainly due to undue interpretations of things Malthus did not said, or did write with a different manifest meaning. Troughout his lifetime, Malthus, already a recognised and famous man, had to revise a lot of editions of his works in order to precise what he meant to say.

Dipping down into the original malthusian fountain is, in this way, a pretty much refreshing and inspiring experience, shunning aside the many bad interpretations attached to his original thinking by second hand reading. As a plus, the book presents at the end two extremely beatifully written chapters on the philosophical reasons behind Good and Evil, a necessary explanation in a revolutionary theory that could be interpreted as intrinsically evilsome. To add content and lustre to all Malthus wrote, one has to remind that the greatest economist of the XX century, John Maynard Keynes, felt himself philosophically and theoretically affiliated with Malthus in a very great scale, to the point of saying that, if Malthus had been better understood, the world would not had to suffer the weaknesses of David Ricardo's theories.

"Survival in The Real World"

"An Essay On The Principle of Population ", by T. R. Malthus, Oxford Univ. Press, NY 2004. ISBN 0-19-283747-8, SC 172 pgs. 19 Chapters plus Introduction 20 pgs., Contents 4 pgs. Notes 9 pgs., & Index 4 pgs. Inveiglement is a chronology of TR Malthus.

This is 3rd reprint of Oxford World's Classics of the original publication in 1798 of Malthus's acclaimed work, one that's always timely and of tremendous value to readers on anthropology, societal structure, economics, class struggle, moral values & Christianity. Charles Darwin attributed his own insight for later writing "Origin of Species" on evolution after reading Malthus's ideas on survival of the fittest in over population from famine, war, pestilence, etc. and "'the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".

Written in 1798 the book is, by today's standards, flowery and wordy, but uses exceptionally robust prose, logic and analogies to promote his Principle of Population as he skillfully disassembles conjectures by Godwin and Mr. Condorcet.

Chapter XVIII-XIX dwell on necessity of food for support of life that gives rise to needed exertion, rouses man into action, and with trust in the constancy of the laws of nature, man's mind forms to reason after preparatory labor and ingenuity; and, finally deals with good vs. evil, virtue & vice, mind formation by original thinking not just additive values, and concluding moral evil as necessary to produce moral excellence.

- finis -

This book is available, for free reading on internet.Then , I read almost all of it, some years ago.
In XVIII Century, the science was begining, but instead of going to rational view, many people instead was looking to change normal religions, to a godless religion.And the reverend Malthus wrote this trash-book.It was a sucess, specially among upper class.
The main bad ideas of this book are:
1-Mankind is doomed to a massive extermination.
2-How much the time pass, the world will become worse and worse.
3-Only if a massive part of mankind, would be exterminated by war, famine or desease, the world can becomes bettter.
4-The main problem in the world is mankind.

About England itself, in XIV, England had just about 2 million people and famine was massive.The life expectancy was just about 12 years, in England during XIV Century.Today, England has more than 70 million people, there's no famine and a normal english has more than the triople life expectancy than a royal prince in XVI century and decades more than in XIX Century.Tecnology, politic,religion and not population growing really decided the level of life.

These same bad ideas of this book , were later plagiated and became part of marxism, eugenics and in nowadays of ecology.Even being ridiculous in level of ideas, this book remains believed and preached.Malthus was the founding father of marxism, eugenics and ecology.All of these bad ideas , at their begining are in this book.Why two stars, instead of one star?Because this book remains believed, for many powerfull people in our times.The first godless religion in the world- malthusianism- was created by this book.Then came marxism, eugenics and ecology; all godless religions based on Malthus' believes of this book.