On my desktop I have a
Word doc. titled “The Surplus Population” and it is in the context of a desire
to expand on that title that I read Malthus’s 1798 essay in the original version
included within this larger collection of his work. Malthus started off in
Mathematics and this is no doubt the main reason why he formulates his Principle of Populaton in
mathematical terms:
Population,
when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in
an arithmetical ratio
In consequence, in all
human societies famine is a real and permanent possibility. There are two principal
ways to try to defeat Malthus’s argument. First, you can claim that population can
readily be checked by preventive measures, of which contraception is the one that Malthus
refuses even to contemplate since it is a severe violation of Christian
morality. Second, you can argue that Malthus underestimates the real
possibility of raising agricultural productivity.
These counter-claims
are not as convincing as on first read they may appear. Leave aside the baleful
influence of the Roman Catholic church, and it is still the case that human
beings, given the chance, do seem inclined to breed at a level which in many
cases they must know is prejudicial to their ability to feed the children they
are begetting. Those who have no such material worries are often happy to preen
themselves on their own fertility, as if we should look up to them as a model
to emulate. As I write, Jacob Rees-Mogg is the most prominent in England among the ranks
of those inviting our admiration for the prowess of his sperm. He has outperformed both Prince Philip and Tony Blair. But if he was not a wealthy man, he would be considered as simply feckless.
Second, there are major
examples of political leaders vastly overestimating their ability to increase agricultural
production and productivity. Stalin did it and gave the world the Ukrainian
famine which cost several million lives; Mao Tse Tung did it and caused deaths
in the tens of millions before he was stopped; the dynasty which rules North
Korea has done it repeatedly and now has so many soldiers and so few peasants
that it will never be able to feed its population (which in the past few
decades has meant that the USA has repeatedly stepped in to feed them).
So Malthus may be on to
something after all. But the Essay is
interesting also because of many side thoughts, notably on topics such as the
relation between national wealth and general happiness and the likely absence
of trickle down effects from very unequal distributions of wealth and income.
He was one of the first, if not the first, to point out that demand does not
always generate supply and that measures to fund demand still do not do the
trick. In his day, poor relief did not turn into more food produced only into
higher food prices . In our own day, Help to Buy does not turn into more houses
built only into higher house prices – which, of course, every British
government must deliver at peril of losing its voting base.
