Malthusianism

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Malthusianism refers to the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus whose ideas were first developed during the industrial revolution. It follows his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food supply was expected to be arithmetical, leading to a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote during the time of the Manchester School of thought.

It drew from this the inference that ideas of charity to the poor typified by Tory paternalism were futile as it would only result in increased numbers of the poor, and was developed into Whig economic ideas exemplified by the The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, described by opponents as "a Malthusian bill designed to force the poor to emigrate, to work for lower wages, to live on a coarser sort of food"^[1], which brought the construction of workhouses despite riots and arson.

By that time the ideas were widespread in progressive social circles, one proponent being the novelist Harriet Martineau whose circle of acquaintances included Charles Darwin, and the ideas of Malthus were a significant influence on the inception of Darwin's theory.

According to Dr. Dan Ritschel of the Center for History Education at the University of Maryland,

The great Malthusian dread was that "indiscriminate charity" would lead to exponential growth in the population in poverty, increased charges to the public purse to support this growing army of the dependent, and, eventually, the catastrophe of national bankruptcy. Though Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor![2]

One of the earliest critics of Malthusian theory was Karl Marx who referred (in "Capital", see Marx's footnote on Malthus from Capital - a reference below) to it as "nothing more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace" and others, postulating that progress in science and technology would allow for indefinite exponential population growth.