The Biology of Capitalism: Scarcity, Poverty and Population (Part 3)

Part 3: Neo-Malthusianism

In the first two parts of this serial, I have looked at the effect of Thomas Malthus’s theory of population on Darwinian theories of biological evolution and the ways in which Malthus was effected by private property battles during the rise of capitalism. In closing, I will look at the implications these various theories have on public health policies, environmentalism and international development as well as their relationship to the capitalist mode of production.

Malthusian theory found an ally in the early eugenics movement. Malthus argued the poor were not equal to the rich on a biological level (see Part Two): they had too many children, lacked moral restraint, foresight and self-discipline. At the end of the 19th century (the height of the eugenics movement was 1890s-1945), eugenics took hold of these ideas to platform their own agenda: the poor were a threat to social order because they were too numerous and, moreover, they caused a deterioration of national “racial stocks.” Through arguments about “managing” population, came notions that linked birth control to a more developed or modern self. The middle and upper classes used birth control unlike the workers and poor. Neo-Malthusians who were in favor of curbing fertility no longer believed that voluntary birth control was an option, and they argued for direct intervention.

credit: ☻mrhappy☻

At first it was argued that birth control, including sterilization, should be imposed on groups of ill and disabled people who were seen as “polluting” the national gene pool. By the time the 20th century rolled around, social ills such as prostitution, vagrancy and petty crimes were seen as the result of “feeble-minded” genes propagated by the poor, and the only answer was population control. Inspired by Malthus and eugenics, policymakers argued that science had demonstrated that poverty was a result of physical and mental (as well as moral) weakness. But after WWII, the eugenics movement in most western countries lost steam due to the eugenic agenda of the (then defeated) Nazi movement, but Malthus would find new allies in the ecology movement some 20 years later.

In 1968, biologists revived Malthusian theory by publishing of a handful of influential academic and popular texts. One such book was Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich’s book Population Bomb (published by the Sierra Club), which predicted a devastating resource crash due to overpopulation and centered much of the blame for population growth on the global south and newly liberated post-colonies. Another eminent biologist, Paul A. Colinvaux, wrote in his 1978 book Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare, “ecology’s first social law should be written: ‘All poverty is caused by the continued growth of population.’”

But the most influential text uniting environmentalism and Malthusianism was Garrett Hardin’s essay “The Tragedy of the Commons.”

Hardin’s 1968 essay embodied central components of a Cold War reading of Malthus. It is a text that is anti-socialist, anti-democratic and pro-eugenic; even though the essay was devoid of any empirical evidence, it was published in one of the most important scientific journal Science. He argued that if people can freely breed and their children are given equal rights to the world commons there would be “a tragic course of action” leading to environmental destruction. According to Hardin, only private ownership of crucial resources and an unequal distribution of the “right to reproduce” could stop this “tragedy.” He specifically argued against the welfare state and land reform in developing countries because they only promote population growth among the poor.

“The Tragedy of the Commons” accomplished a two-fold task: 1) it defended private property and, 2) attacked land reform and more egalitarian forms of distribution in the name of environmentalism and demographics. Hardin’s central argument was that only private property could protect the environment against overpopulation. This idea has become very salient in the present configuration of neo-liberal capitalist dogma. Conservative policy institutions and think tanks as well as multinational corporations have passionately embraced this logic. But the question needs to be asked: is this really about the conservation of nature or population? I would argue that it is the legitimization of the process of privatization and enclosure. It is the naturalization of capitalist practices and dispossession through biology. It is these process and theories that we begin to see the biology of capitalism.

In every anthropology class I have ever taught, or was a teaching assistant for, a majority of my students have read “The Tragedy of the Commons” in either a political science or biology class. Unfortunately this is a strong foundational text that takes a lot of time to “unlearn.” Whether talking about development projects in the global south or various economic practices in different cultures, this essay continues to effect the way students think about population, aid and biology when learning about cross-cultural forms of production and distributions of economic relations (a central component of any anthropology class). These ideas create the limits to possibility and change because they construct a “human nature” that is biologically determined and only compatible with capitalist social relation.

For Further Reading

An Essay on the Principle of Population By Thomas Malthus

The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development By Eric B Ross

Darwin without Malthus: The Struggle for Existence in Russian Evolutionary Thought By Daniel P. Todes

Previously on this series

The Biology of Capitalism: Part 1
The Biology of Capitalism: Part 2