The Biology of Capitalism: Scarcity, Poverty and Population (Part 2)

Part 2: Historically Situating Malthus

In Part One of this serial, I set the stage for the need to understand the biology of capitalism. Here, in Part Two, I will explore the foundational theories of Thomas Malthus, and I will situate them in their historical context. Then to conclude, in Part Three, I will offer a reading on the effects of his ideas in contemporary policy making that effects issues ranging from humanitarian aid to public policy as well as naturalized understandings of capitalism and its effects.

credit: Jacob Bøtter

The basic principle of Malthus’s theory is that every 25 years human population doubles unless there is an active intervention because population grows at a geometric rate (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), but food production increases at just an arithmetic rate (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). To be clear, by his argument, population will always outstrip the food supply. As outlined in his Essays on the Principle of Population, first published in 1798, population pressure is treated as a “natural law” that makes poverty both natural and inevitable. Malthus argued that there were “positive checks” to overpopulation that could and should alleviate the pressure-these “checks” were primarily disease and starvation. Malthus never advocated for outside interventions towards population growth (disease and starvation intervenes “naturally”); instead, his main political cause was to reduce the obligation of the rich to mitigate human misery. He is famous for his battles advocating for the enclosures of the commons and against the poor laws. The enclosures (From 1760s-1820s) took common property and created “private property”; this movement allowed for the landed class to evict landless peasants from newly formed private property. The poor laws were parish relief funded by taxation against property owners. Although Malthus argued that population growth (of the poor) caused poverty and misery, he also argued that this poverty drove the poor to find work and this was necessary to stimulate industry.

When Malthus was writing there were anxieties regarding the legitimacy of private property, and his writing on population should be read as a defense of private property even though his theories has become a standard within biological theory (see Part One of this serial). When the first addition of his essay was published, England was in the middle of an agricultural revolution that was reformulating the agrarian relations between landlords and tenants. The country was on the verge of an industrial revolution leading to England to become the manufacturing center of Europe. Also, there was a counter-revolution against the growing commercial revolution (the rise of capitalism). And in the wake of the French Revolution, ten years earlier, there were rising critiques and attacks on the old established order of politics, economics and social behavior. In the midst of these critiques and changes there became a strong opposition to private property (which unfortunately never won over).

credit: paolo màrgari

Although his essay was revised many times, two major points never changed: 1) his attack on the radical critiques of private property; 2) his argument regarding the role of poverty in relation to population and natural resources. In his essays, the system of private property was absolved of all blame for poverty and misery because the blame was squarely in the hands of “nature” and “natural law” specifically the biological urges of the suffering class (and their inability to make rational choices.) The argument went: the fertility of the poor, which was being stimulated by relief and charity, makes the habits of the poor the cause of their own poverty.

Malthus’s theory helps obscure the fact that while there was an increase in poor people dependant of relief, they were made (through dispossession, capitalism, the enclosures and industrialization), and not born. The dispossession was a result the intense commercialization of agriculture, the enclosure of the commons and laws keeping the price of grains high (the Corn Laws); it was not the result of reproductive practices. The crisis was seen as “natural law” not the result of changing economic and political relations.

One of the famous cases that became central to Malthusian theory was the Great Irish Famine of 1846-1849. During this famine, two million people died or emigrated within a five-year time span; the famine was triggered by a potato blight-a fungus. During this time, potatoes were popular and staple to most workers diets. Landlords encouraged tents to grow potatoes because they grow on poor soil; this left the good soil to grow wheat and feed for cattle, which was grown for export trade. When the fungus destroyed the potato crop, the poor could not afford to buy or eat anything else-even though they were producing other foods for export. So, it was not that Ireland produced too many people, but that landlords prevented the workers and tenants access to other food. Amplifying these stresses, was the pressure exerted by the enclosures; landlords were consolidating land to raise more cattle for export and running off tenant farmers to make room. These enclosures drove thousands of homeless people to Dublin.

But the famine was not seen as a result of people’s lack of access to food other than potatoes or access to land. Instead it was offered as an example-as a result-of the Irish peoples unruliness and laziness. Left unexplored was England’s dependence on Ireland to provide food for its Caribbean plantations as well as to England itself; the Irish were also as a reserve for cheap labor for England’s factories. But Malthusian theory did not speak to England’s colonial project.

Although today’s part of the serial may seen like a long detour into the history of biology and economics, the next (and last part) of the serial will explore how Malthus’s theory found a home in the eugenics movement for about 100 years having huge effects on public policy and development interventions the world over. More recently, Malthus found support within factions of the environmental movement and with biologists in the 1960s and 1970’s.

The Biology of Capitalism: Part 1
The Biology of Capitalism: Part 3