The main stages of the biography of T.R. Malthus Views of Thomas Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus's contributions to biology in brief

Introduction

Malthus considered the problem of population without regard to any particular mode of production or social development in general. He spoke of the “law of population” as an eternal, unshakable law of nature. In his opinion, both in the world of animals and plants, and in human society, there is an immutable law of nature, which “consists in the constant desire, characteristic of all living beings, to reproduce faster than is allowed by the amount of food at their disposal.”

In relation to human society, Malthus argued that population grows in geometric progression (i.e., as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256), while the means of subsistence, in his opinion, grows in arithmetical proportions. progression (i.e. like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…). In two centuries, he argued, population would be to subsistence as 256 to 9; in three - as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years this gap would be limitless and incalculable.

Malthus did not substantiate this statement put forward by him; he proceeded from pure assumptions, not confirmed by any factual material. True, he cites one fact, which, however, not only does not confirm his fabrications, but exposes his dishonesty as a scientist. He talks about the doubling of the population in North America in 25 years and considers this fact to be proof that the population is growing exponentially. In fact, this doubling of the population took place only at a certain historical stage of development and it occurred due to immigration, and not natural population growth. The main conclusion that Malthus made from his “Essay on the Law of Population” was that poverty, the poverty of the working masses, is the result of the inevitable laws of nature, and not the social organization of society, that the poor, the poor have no right to demand anything from the rich, since the latter are not to blame for their misfortunes.

“The main and continuous cause of poverty,” wrote Malthus, “depends little or not at all on the form of government, or on the unequal distribution of property; the rich are unable to provide the poor with work and food; “Therefore, the poor, by the very essence of things, have no right to demand work and food from them: these are the important truths that follow from the law of population.”

Malthus, thus, very clearly revealed the purpose of his population theory - it is aimed at paralyzing the class struggle of the proletariat, “proving” the groundlessness and ineffectiveness of its demands made on the bourgeoisie. It is not for nothing that Malthus especially emphasized that the dissemination of his ideas “among the poor” would have a “beneficial” effect on the masses, which, of course, was beneficial for the ruling classes.

Making every effort to deprive the struggle of the working class of the soil, Malthus himself, as a zealous apologist for the ruling classes, openly and cynically opposed the vital rights of workers, against the elementary demands of human justice. He put forward the position that the working class is to blame for its poverty and that it can only reduce its poverty by limiting the birth rate. As a measure to combat population growth, Malthus proposed “moral restraint”—the abstinence of the poor from marriage. In diseases, exhausting labor, hunger, epidemics, wars, which constitute a true misfortune for the working people, he saw natural means of destroying the “surplus” population.

Thomas Robert Malthus is a representative of the classical school of European economic science of the 18th–19th centuries. The main works that contain his most noteworthy results are An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr., published in 1798. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers" ("An Essay on the Law of Population..." in Russian translation) and the 1820 work "The Principles of Political Economy" ("Principles of Political Economy"). The most important contribution made by T.R. Malthus' contribution to economics consists in his development of a “population theory,” in which an attempt was made to connect economic and demographic factors. It should be noted that in the Malthusian formulation of this issue, this relationship turns out to be two-way: both economic processes influence changes in population, and demographic factors influence economic development. Of course, attempts to establish this kind of dependence had been made earlier, but it was the work of Malthus that laid the foundation for the further development of the demographic trend in economic science.

1. Basic provisions of Malthus’ population theory

The population theory put forward by Malthus was outlined by him in his work “An Essay on the Law of Population...”, first published in 1798 and republished by the author with significant changes in 1803.

Malthus sets the initial goal of his research as “improving the life of mankind.” It should be noted that in presenting his ideas, Malthus widely uses not only economic, but also sociological, natural philosophical, ethical and even religious concepts and concepts.

Presentation of his theory by T.R. Malthus begins by postulating a certain universal "biological law" to which all living beings are subject - "a great law closely connected with human nature, which has operated unchanged since the origin of communities."

This law “consists in the constant desire manifested in all living beings to multiply faster than is allowed by the amount of food at their disposal.” Further, referring to the results of Dr. Franklin, Malthus points out the limitation of the reproduction process under consideration, noting the following: “the only limit to the reproductive capacity of plants and animals is only the circumstance that, by reproducing, they mutually deprive themselves of the means of subsistence.”

However, if in animals the instinct of reproduction is not restrained by anything other than the indicated circumstance, then man has reason, which in turn plays the role of a limitation imposed by human nature on the action of the above biological law. Impelled by the same reproductive instinct as other creatures, man is held back by the voice of reason, which instills in him the fear that he will not be able to provide for the needs of himself and his children.

Malthus based his theory on the results of studies of the dynamics of population changes in the North American territories, at that time still colonies of the United Kingdom and other countries of the Old World, in the second half of the 18th century. He noticed that the number of inhabitants of the observed areas doubles every 25 years. From this he draws the following conclusion: “If the reproduction of the population does not encounter any obstacle, then it doubles every twenty-five years and increases in geometric progression.” Later critics of Malthus's theory pointed out the fallacy of this conclusion; they emphasized that the main reason for the increase in the population of the North American colonies was migration processes, and not biological reproduction.

The second basis of Malthus's theory was the law of diminishing soil fertility. The essence of this law is that the productivity of agricultural land decreases over time, and in order to expand food production, new lands must be developed, the area of ​​which, although large, is still finite. He writes: “Man is constrained by a limited space; when little by little... all the fertile land is occupied and cultivated, an increase in the amount of food can be achieved only by improving the previously occupied lands. These improvements, due to the very properties of the soil, not only cannot be accompanied by constantly increasing successes, but, on the contrary, the latter will gradually decrease, while the population, if it finds a means of subsistence, increases without limit, and this increase becomes, in turn, the active cause of the new increase.” As a result, Malthus concludes that “the means of subsistence under the most favorable conditions for labor can in no case increase faster than in arithmetical progression.”

Thus, Malthus comes to the conclusion that the life of mankind, while maintaining the observed trends, can only get worse over time. Indeed, subsistence production is expanding more slowly than population growth. Sooner or later, the needs of the population will exceed the available level of resources necessary for its existence, and famine will begin. As a result of such uncontrolled evolution of humanity, according to Malthus, “superfluous” people are created, each of whom is destined for a difficult fate: “At the great feast of nature there is no device for him. Nature orders him to leave, and if he cannot resort to the compassion of anyone around him, she herself takes measures to ensure that her order is carried out.”

However, in reality, as Malthus notes, population growth does not occur unchecked. He himself notes that the thesis about the population doubling every twenty-five years does not actually hold. It is not difficult to calculate that otherwise in 1000 years the population would have increased 240 times, that is, if in 1001 AD there were two people living on Earth, then in 2001 there would already be more than 2 * 1012, or two trillion people, which approximately three hundred times the actual value today (approximately six billion). Such reproduction, according to Malthus, is possible only under certain specific conditions, and in real life a person faces various “obstacles”, which can be classified as follows:

1. Moral restraint: “The duty of every person is to decide on marriage only when he can provide his offspring with the means of subsistence; but at the same time, it is necessary that the inclination towards married life retains all its strength, so that it can maintain energy and awaken in a celibate person the desire to achieve through work the necessary degree of well-being.”

2. Vices: “Promiscuity, unnatural relationships, desecration of the marital bed, tricks taken to hide the consequences of a criminal and unnatural relationship.”

3. Misfortunes: “unhealthy occupations, hard, excessive or weather-exposed work, extreme poverty, poor nutrition of children, unhealthy living conditions in large cities, excesses of all kinds, disease, epidemic, war, plague, famine.”

However, the population is still growing at a fairly rapid pace, so that the problem of hunger in the fate of humanity will sooner or later become decisive. From his reasoning T.R. Malthus draws the following conclusions: “If, in the present situation of all the societies we examine, the natural increase of population was constantly and inexorably checked by some obstacle; if neither the best form of government, nor projects of evictions, nor charitable institutions, nor the highest productivity or the most perfect application of labor, can prevent the invariable operation of these obstacles, in one way or another keeping the population within certain boundaries, then it follows that the order this is a law of nature and that it must be obeyed; the only circumstance left to our choice in this case is to determine the obstacle least injurious to virtue and happiness. If the increase of population must necessarily be checked by some obstacle, let it be better that it be a prudent precaution against the difficulties arising from the maintenance of a family, than the effect of poverty and misery.” As one of the solutions to this problem, Malthus proposed feasible “abstinence” from childbearing.

Thus, to achieve a balance between the rate of population growth and the provision of its necessary resources, according to Malthus, it is necessary to make political decisions aimed at limiting the birth rate among certain categories of the population. Subsequently, these conclusions of Malthus were subjected to severe criticism from a variety of points of view.

T.R. Malthus also carried out research in the field of value theory. He rejected the labor theory of value as revised by D. Ricardo; Malthus's complaints about it were as follows: this theory is not able to explain how capitals with different structures, i.e. with different shares of investment in labor, bring the same rate of profit. Why, for example, does the owner of a mill receive approximately the same income as a marine cargo insurer or a holder of royal coupon bonds? Moreover, if a worker's wages are only part of the value created by labor, then the purchase of labor by a capitalist represents an unequal exchange, that is, an obvious violation of the laws of a market economy.

Thomas Robert Malthus was born on February 13 (other sources say February 14) 1766 in Rookery, a country house in Surrey, UK.

Thomas was the sixth of seven children (in addition to him, Sydenham, Henrietta Sarah, Eliza Maria, Anne Catherine Lucy, Mary Catherine Charlotte grew up in the family). Thomas's youngest sister, Mary Ann Catherine, was born in 1771. He would later become the mother of Louise Bray, who would write an unpublished memoir about the life of Thomas Malthus.

The mother of a large family, Henrietta was attached to her sons and daughters. She had a forgiving nature and was loved by her children.

Father Daniel, according to the memoirs of Louise Bray, was a peculiar man with eccentric views. In her memoirs, Bray wrote: “He had a fairly developed mind and amazing manners. However, he was also cold and withdrawn from his family. He paid special attention to his eldest daughter and youngest son, in whom he may have seen talented abilities.”

Daniel knew and was in correspondence with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When Thomas was three weeks old, Daniel met the Genevan philosopher in person. This happened after Rousseau and David Hume had to hide in Britain due to the political situation in France at the end of the 18th century.

Education of Thomas Malthus

As a child, Thomas was educated at home by his own father. Subsequently, when the boy was 10 years old, he was transferred to study by teacher Richard Graves, who had lost the trust of his family due to his marriage to a lower-class girl.

As he grew older, Thomas was accepted into Warrington Academy in Lancashire.

However, in 1783 the educational institution was closed, and Thomas had to transfer to Jesus College, Cambridge. There Malthus studied the clergy, as well as mathematics and philosophy. Thomas took his studies quite seriously, showing a high interest in his subjects. The young man also had a sharp mind and tried to look good. Sometimes Toms stood out among his peers by powdering his wig with pink powder rather than white.

Since birth, Thomas had a small defect - a “cleft lip”, and as a result - problems with speech. According to the college's college teachers, this reduced Malthus's chances of advancing in the clergy. However, Thomas ignored the words of the leadership and, thanks to his academic success, was able to obtain a holy order and taught for some time in Oakwood.

Malthus returned to Jesus College in 1793 as a fellow. According to biographical sources, little is known about the life of Thomas Malthus between 1788 and 1798. This time was full of political unrest and unrest. In 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined and France declared war on England.

"An Essay on the Law of Population" by Thomas Malthus

His early works dealt with the political and economic issues of his time. In the 18th century, there was a utopia that society was constantly growing and improving. In contrast, Thomas Malthus put forward his own hypothesis about the dangers of excessive population growth, which is why the scientist was not understood and was considered a pessimist.

Perhaps the main work of Thomas Malthus was devoted to the issue of population. He traveled through countries and collected statistics on the number of births and deaths, the age of marriage and conception, and economic factors that contribute to longevity.

Thomas Malthus made a connection between available goods and population growth. In his opinion, the planet's population is increasing in accordance with geometric progression, and economic benefits and means of subsistence - with arithmetic progression.

However, it is possible to influence the population size. Malthus believed that such factors could be late marriages, emigration, moral abstinence, as well as wars, epidemics, diseases, famine, etc.

Famous scientists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace appreciated the work of Thomas Malthus. They acknowledged the great merit of Malthus in shaping their own ideas about the theory of evolution, in particular natural selection.

But not everyone received Thomas Malthus's essay positively. Many condemned him for cruelty, calling him a prophet of the destruction of humanity and an enemy of the working class.

The theory of Thomas Malthus is widely discussed today. According to generally accepted opinion, the scientist’s hypothesis is interesting, but not without flaws.

Personal life and subsequent career

In April 1804, Malthus, at the age of 38, married his cousin Harriet Eckersall. The couple had three children.

Thomas Malthus took up the leadership of the Department of Modern History and Political Economy at the College of the West Indies.

He continued to publish his own works, for example, "Principles of Political Economy", "The Policy of Restricting the Import of Grain".

Malthus was admitted to the Royal Society in 1818, and also became a member of the French Academy and the London Statistical Society.

Death of Thomas Malthus

Thomas Malthus suddenly fell ill and died on December 29, 1834, after a Christmas visit to his parents. He was buried in Bath Abbey Cemetery.

His youngest son died at the age of 17, and the other two, Henry and Emily, started their families late and had no children.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) - a prominent representative of classical political economy in England. The work of this scientist was formed mainly in the first quarter of the 19th century, but the results of his scientific research are also valuable for modern economic theory. In 1798 it appeared An anonymously published book entitled An Essay on the Law of Population. Its author turned out to be an unmarried young pastor - the future scientist-economist T. Malthus, who caused countless attacks on himself. Largely for this reason, or rather, to improve his work, he during 1799-1802. travels through a number of European countries. AND 5 years later, this time under my own name, in 1803 publishes the second edition of this book(in total, six editions were published during his lifetime, with circulation increasing over and over again).

Continuing his scientific research, in 1815 T. Malthus published another work. It was the book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Increase of Land Rent.” In this work, T. Malthus, based on the natural nature of rent, tried to reveal the mechanism of its formation and growth, to substantiate the significance of this type of income in the implementation of the total product produced in society. However, he expressed his final judgment on rent and some other problems of the economy later, in 1820. In that year, T. Malthus published his main creative work, “Principles of Political Economy, Considered in Consideration of Their Practical Application,” which in theoretical and methodological terms plan had no significant differences from the famous “Principles of Political Economy” published three years earlier by his friend D. Ricardo.

For your information. T. Malthus was born in the countryside near London in the family of a landowner. His father was an educated man, he made acquaintance with philosophers and economists of his time, including D. Hume and others.

As the youngest son, T. Malthus was traditionally destined for a spiritual career. Therefore, it is no coincidence that, having graduated from Cambridge University College,he took holy orders and received in a rural parishplace secondpriest However, the young Malthus, always drawn to science, from 1793 (at the age of 27)began teaching at the college at the same time . At the same time, he devoted all his free time to the study of the problem of the relationship between economic processes and natural phenomena, which had captivated him in his youthful conversations and discussions with his father.

Of the main stages in the biography of T. Malthus, it is also important to point out the fact that he married quite late, at 39 years old, and had three sons and one daughter.

The talent of T. Malthus as a research scientist and teacher with more than ten years of experience did not go unnoticed. In 1805 heaccepted the professorship offered to him modern history andpolitical economy at the newly created East India Company College, where he also served as a priest.

The main provisions of the teachings of T. Malthus:

1. Subject and method of study.

T. Malthus, like other classics, saw the main task of political economy in increasing wealth, thanks to, first of all, development of the production sector, material wealth of society. At the same time, a certain feature of his views in this regard was the first attempt made to link the problems of economic growth and population growth, because before him in economic science it was considered “indisputable” that in a liberal economy, the larger the population and its growth rate, the supposedly this will have a more beneficial effect on the development of the national economy, and vice versa.

The originality of T. Malthus's methodological principles is obvious from the fact that he, unconditionally accepting the concept of economic liberalism, was at the same time able to substantiate from a scientific point of view his prediction of the relationship between economic growth rates and population. After all, his theory of population became, as they themselves admitted, an integral part of the methodological basis of Charles Darwin, David Ricardo, and many other world-famous scientists. Moreover, from the point of view of the novelty of the methodology, the value of the Malthusian population theory lies in the fact that it allows one to obtain important analytical conclusions for the development of appropriate national economic policies to overcome the causes of poverty, determined by the simple ratio of the population growth rate and the growth rate of living goods, determined by the so-called subsistence minimum.

Population theory.

This theory, set forth by T. Malthus in the book “Essay on the Law of Population”, from a short pamphlet in the first edition, in all others, represented a capacious study. In its first editions, the course of T. Malthus’s reasoning was aimed at proving that “all peoples about whose history there is reliable data were so prolific that the increase in their numbers would have turned out to be rapid and continuous, if it had not been delayed either by a lack of means of subsistence , either by disease, war, murder of newborns, or, finally, voluntary abstinence.” But already in the second and subsequent editions, he clarifies, “Malthus builds his research on such a large number and on such a careful selection of facts that he can claim a place among the founders of historical and economic science; he softened and eliminated many of the "sharp corners" of his former doctrine, although he did not abandon (as we assumed in the first editions of this work) the use of the expression "in arithmetical proportion." It is noteworthy that he took a less gloomy view regarding the future of the human race and expressed the hope that population growth could be limited on the basis of moral principles and that the effects of "disease and poverty" - the old limiting factors - could be prevented.

Indeed, the central idea of ​​Malthus's theory about the influence of population size and rate of population growth on the well-being of society is, in principle, correct and relevant. However, his calculations, which should have reliably confirmed the predictions arising from it, turned out, fortunately, to be unrealistic. After all he tried to elevate to the rank of law the provision that under favorable conditions (if wars, diseases and poverty of the poor sections of society, which have become almost natural and inevitable due to unbridled population growth, are eliminated), the population, increasing according to the principle of geometric progression, will double every 20 -25 years, and the production of food and other necessary items of existence, increasing only by arithmetic progression, will not be able to increase at a similar pace. And then, due to overpopulation, poverty can become the miserable lot of all humanity.

As we see, T. Malthus characterizes a person’s biological ability to procreate by natural instincts in the same way as in animals. Moreover, this ability, he believes, despite the constantly operating compulsory and preventive restrictions, exceeds the physical ability of a person to increase food resources. Such simple ideas that do not require additional arguments and facts became the true reason for numerous and controversial responses to the theory of T. Malthus.

Finally, attention should be paid to the fact that despite the absolutely incredible success that his population theory brought to T. Malthus, it does not free him from errors not only in the calculations mentioned above. The fact is that, according to Malthus, the inability to increase food production is explained not so much by slow technical improvements in agriculture and limited land resources, but primarily by the far-fetched and popular at that time “law of diminishing soil fertility.” In addition, the American statistics he used in favor of a “geometric progression” of population growth are more than doubtful, because they do not reflect the difference between the number of immigrants in the United States and the number of people born in this country. But at the same time, apparently, we cannot forget the reservation of T. Malthus himself that, having become acquainted with his work, “every reader must admit that, despite possible errors, the practical goal pursued by the author of this work was to improve the lot of and increasing the happiness of the lower classes of society."

Theory of value and income.

It was already noted above that the theory of three factors by J.B. Say occupied an important place in the theoretical views of classical economists of the 19th century. This is especially obvious from the theory of value and income of T. Malthus. In particular, According to Malthus, value is based on the costs of labor, capital and land in the production process. Therefore, we can say that the difference between this cost theory of value and the similar theory of the followers of Smith and Ricardo lies in the recognition of land and capital as a source of value, along with labor.

As for the theory of income of T. Malthus, here too his judgments are consonant with the provisions of J.B. Say and even D. Ricardo. Thus, in the economic literature, as a rule, it is noted that Classical economists of the post-manufacturing period shared precisely the “iron law of wages” of T. Malthus, arising from his theory of population and in accordance with which (by law) wages allegedly cannot grow, invariably remaining at a low level.

To what has been said, we also add that T. Malthus actually repeated D. Ricardo in covering the theory of profit. Both authors imagined the latter as an integral part of the price. Moreover, according to the formulation of T. Malthus, in order to identify it, costs in the production process for labor and capital should be subtracted from the cost (price) of the product.

Reproduction theory.

T. Malthus’s personal contribution to the development of classical political economy and the concept of market economic relations is by no means limited to identifying the relationship between economic processes and nature or polemics with D. Ricardo, which helped both scientists make adjustments to their theoretical and methodological positions. There is also an important aspect in which T. Malthus went further than D. Ricardo and other economists of that time and which does him great honor in the history of economic thought, this is his study of the problems of realizing the total social product, i.e. theory of reproduction. The fact is that, in accordance with what was achieved by the beginning of the 19th century. At the “classical school” level of economic theory (especially “thanks to” A. Smith and D. Ricardo), accumulation was considered the key problem in the economy, ensuring investment in further growth of production. Possible difficulties in consumption, i.e. sales of the produced commodity mass were not taken into account and were assessed as a private, transitory phenomenon. And this despite the industrial revolution that had completed by this time in developed European countries, which was accompanied by such new social adversities as the ruin of small owner-entrepreneurs in the competitive struggle and unemployment.

T. Malthus, like D. Ricardo, believes that there are no limits to the expansion of production. And to the question about the scale of overproduction he answers this way: “The question about overproduction consists solely of whether it can be general, as well as affect individual spheres of the economy, and not whether it can be permanent as well as temporary.” . Consequently, according to Malthus, unlike Ricardo, not only private, but also general crises are possible. But at the same time, both of them are unanimous that any crises are temporary phenomena, and in this sense, arguments about their apostasy from the postulates of “Say’s law” are excluded.

The English economist Thomas Malthus, who was also a priest, published the book “An Essay on the Law of Population...” in 1798. In his scientific work, the scientist made an attempt to explain the patterns of fertility, marriage, mortality, and the socio-demographic structure of the world's population from the point of view of biological factors. Malthus's ideas are used in other sciences, including economic theory and political economy. The theory that arose on the basis of scientific works and the concept of the researcher was called Malthusianism.

Main theses of the theory

The concept of population developed by Malthus is based not on social laws, but on biological factors. The main provisions of the theory of the scientist from England are as follows:

• The population of our planet is growing exponentially.
• The production of food, money, and resources, without which human life is impossible, occurs in accordance with the principles of arithmetic progression.
• The growth of the planet's population is directly related to the laws of reproduction that exist in nature. It is growth that determines the level of well-being of a society.
• The life activity of human society, its development, and functioning are subject to the laws of nature.
• Human physical resources must be used in order to increase the amount of food.
• In their development and existence, the inhabitants of the Earth are limited by the means of subsistence.
• Only war, famine, epidemics, and diseases can stop the growth of population on the planet.

Malthus tried to develop the last thesis further, arguing that overpopulation could not be avoided anyway. Hunger and epidemics, according to the scientist, are not able to fully cope with the problems of population growth. Therefore, it is necessary to create additional tools for regulating the increase in the number of inhabitants on the planet. In particular, it was proposed to regulate the birth rate as much as possible and regulate the number of marriages, ignoring the need of couples for children and creating their own families. At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries. such statements were quite radical and did not align with the declared family principles in most countries of the world. The primary problem was to limit the number of children that families had. Conservative societies in England, France, the USA, and Russia did not particularly limit the number of children in families created. But this principle was adopted by the Chinese government in the 1970s, when the “one child, one family” policy was proclaimed. Such controlled fertility planning began to bring results only after 20 years, but disproportions in the gender structure appeared. More boys were born, and fewer girls. Because of this, men could not find a partner to start a family. Since 2016, it has been allowed to have two children in one family, but no more. The exception is cases of multiple pregnancy.

What did Malthus leave out?

When developing his theory, the scientist did not take into account many factors that influence the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the population process. These factors include:

• Incorrect statistics regarding migration processes. In particular, emigrants, who had a significant impact on migration, were not taken into account at all.
• The existing mechanisms of self-regulation of the number of inhabitants on planet Earth, which allow for the demographic transition, were discarded.
• The law that characterizes the decrease in soil fertility
• Reducing the area that is cultivated to produce resources and food. For example, in traditional societies of gatherers and hunters, the area for searching for food is larger than that of a farmer cultivating a vegetable garden.
• State participation in the process of regulating demographic processes was discarded. The scientist believed that such an intervention would have negative consequences, since the existing self-regulation mechanisms would be destroyed.

Further development of Malthus's views

• Emphasis was placed on demographic problems.
• The possibility that the adoption of social legislation could control population growth was rejected.
• Economic and social doctrines began to be developed that dealt with population issues.
• In subsequent works, Malthus tried to further substantiate the impact of demographic changes on the stability of social and public development.
• The scientist connected and looked for the interdependence of natural and economic factors. The British scientist believed that population affects the economic stability and balance of society, causing problems with resources and their production.
• Malthus agreed that a large number of inhabitants is one of the conditions for social and economic wealth. But he emphasized that the population should be of high quality, healthy and strong in many respects. Getting able-bodied residents is hampered by the desire to reproduce and give birth. This natural desire goes against the amount of food, water, and resources that humanity has at its disposal.
• The main mechanism of self-regulation is limited funds and resources. If their number grows, then the population on the planet should increase.
• Malthus also argued that the increase in the number of inhabitants on Earth causes the development of immorality, the level of morality decreases, vices appear, emergencies and other misfortunes arise.

Evolution of the theory

They highlight the classic concept, which emphasizes that all attempts to increase people’s means of subsistence will end in failure, since consumers will still appear again and again; and neo-Malthusianism. The movement emerged in the late 1890s and was represented by unions, societies and various leagues. The main provisions of Malthus's updated concept were:

• Families can be created, but without children.
• The social impact of social factors on demographic processes is recognized.
• The biological component in fertility and population reproduction is brought to the fore.
• Economic and social transformations have been relegated to the background.

Thomas Robert Malthus (English) Thomas Robert Malthus, he usually omitted his middle name; 1766-1834) - English priest and scientist, demographer and economist, author of the theory according to which uncontrolled population growth should lead to famine on Earth.

Thomas Malthus was born on February 13, 1766 on the Rookery estate, Dorking (English county of Surrey), near the city of Guildford, into a wealthy noble family. The scientist's father, Daniel Malthus, was a follower of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (he knew both of them personally). In 1784, Thomas entered Jesus College, Oxford University, where he successfully studied mathematics, rhetoric, Latin and Greek. After graduating from college, he was a council member and adjunct professor for some time. In 1788, he was ordained into the clergy of the Anglican Church, which in those days did not even require formal belief in God. In 1796, he became a priest in the town of Albury (Surrey), in England at that time this meant only a government position with a modest salary and not particularly burdensome responsibilities. In 1804, Malthus married and three children were born in this marriage. Malthus died on December 23, 1834 and was buried in Bath Abbey. Throughout his life, Malthus lived very modestly, not to say poorly, but consistently and on principle refused both high government positions that the government offered him and a church career, considering scientific work to be the main work of his life. He was elected both a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the French Academy (an honor given to few scientists), became the founder of the Political Economy Club and one of the founders of the London Statistical Society.

Scientific achievements

• Because of man's biological ability to procreate, his physical abilities are used to increase his food supply.
• The population is strictly limited by means of subsistence.
• Population growth can only be stopped by counter causes, which boil down to moral abstinence or misfortunes (wars, epidemics, famine).

Malthus also comes to the conclusion that population grows in geometric progression, and means of subsistence - in arithmetic progression.

Disadvantages of the theory from a modern point of view:

• Malthus used incorrect migration statistics (does not take into account emigrants).
• Malthus does not take into account the mechanisms of self-regulation of the human population, leading to the demographic transition. However, in Malthus's time this phenomenon was observed only in large cities where a minority of the population lived, whereas today it has spread to entire continents (including all developed countries without exception).
• Law of diminishing soil fertility. Malthus believed that neither capital accumulation nor scientific and technological progress compensate for the limited nature of natural resources.

At the same time, Malthus's theory quite correctly describes the patterns of economic and demographic dynamics of pre-industrial societies.

Malthus's ideas had a powerful positive impact on the development of biology, firstly, through their influence on Darwin, and, secondly, through the development on their basis of mathematical models of population biology, starting with the Verhulst logistic model.

Applied to human society, Malthus's view that a decrease in population leads to an increase in average per capita income led to the formation in the 1920s of the theory of optimal population size, at which per capita income is maximized. However, at present, the theory is of little use in solving real socio-economic problems, but it is good in analytics, as it allows one to judge under- or overpopulation.

Modern followers of Malthus, neo-Malthusians, say this about modern underdeveloped countries: “The birth rate in them is high, as in agricultural countries, and the mortality rate is low, as in industrial countries, due to the medical care of more developed countries.” They believe that before helping them, the problem of birth control must be solved.

In general, Malthus's theory has demonstrated its high explanatory power in relation to pre-industrial societies, although no one questions the fact that in order to effectively use it to explain the dynamics of modern societies (even in Third World countries), it requires the most serious modifications; however, on the other hand, Malthus's theory demonstrated the highest ability to adapt to such modifications and integrate into them.

Malthus's ideas were partially used by Karl Haushofer in his work on geopolitics and the theory of "living space".

Scientific works

Add to bookmarks