Progress and Poverty

Even though the Malthusian theory is generally accepted, it is “utterly untenable as the current theory of wages” (103). This theory is not supported by historical evidence. The tendency of populations to multiply cannot be used as the sole cause of poverty. The world is still “thinly populated” (107) even considering the entire history of human presence on Earth. For instance, in the past, Europe and China housed large populations “with very little commerce and a much lower stage of those arts in which modern progress has been most marked” (107). The population explosion that occurred in North America is only a recent phenomenon. Many consider Malthusianism a “universal law,” even though it has not been recognized in the past. After the death of Confucius in the 5th century BCE, China’s population should have exponentially increased to an unimaginable number, but this is not the case.

There are examples of a large death toll from starvation in China, India, and Ireland, but the cause is not overpopulation. In India, the working classes have always been oppressed. Famines in that country are also frequent, despite the fertility of the land, because they are largely caused by the ruling classes, as the documentation of the East India Company shows. English colonization of the Indian subcontinent led to technological advancements, such as railways and irrigation, but famines continued. The British Empire brought many problems to India, such as the high land tax. According to the English writer Henry Mayers Hyndman, starvation in India comes from “financial famines” (119), during which the local population cannot buy food, yet it continues to be taxed. Hyndman wrote that under British rule, “the Indian society as a whole has been frightfully impoverished” (120).

In China, too, poverty is linked to the ruling classes rather than overpopulation. In neither place is poverty the result of the mismatch between the population size and food availability. In Europe, it is Ireland that “furnishes the great stock example of over-population” (123) from its emigration to the famine. There, it was not the inability of the soil to support the food but, as with India, “a merciless banditti of tax-gatherers” and “a horde of landlords” (124) that caused the issues. It is not yet clear to what extent over-population contributed to starvation and poverty. However, “the pauperism and starvation of Ireland can no more be attributed to this cause than can the slave trade be attributed to the over-population of Africa” (127).

All living things can multiply, but “[n]o species reaches the ultimate limit of soil, water, air, and sunshine” (130). Unlike animals, humans are located higher in the hierarchy of existence. They are the ones who “can give play to the reproductive forces [. . .] which supply him with food” (131). Animal populations grow at the expense of their food. In contrast, “the increase of man involves the increase of his food” (131), as the U.S. population growth shows. Thus, the main difference between the animal world and humans is that “with man the limit of subsistence is, within the final limits of earth, air, water, and sunshine, dependent upon man himself” (132).

Malthusian theory also subscribes to the notion of the “diminishing productiveness of land” (132). However, in many cases, the ability of the given land to produce food may only be limited temporarily. Other land can be cultivated considering how much untouched land is available in the entire world. Furthermore, “the real law of population” (138) is not always uniform. When humans lack experience, it is not from “the ordinance of nature, but from social mal-adjustments that in the midst of wealth condemn men to want” (138-39).

The accepted doctrine of wages is linked to Malthusian theory, as “the question whether increase of population necessarily tends to reduce wages and cause want, is simply the question whether it tends to reduce the amount of wealth that can be produced by a given amount of labor” (140). The common belief is that the more is needed from nature, the less nature is able to provide. In turn, increasing labor does not increase the product, which results in wage decline and poverty. Contrary to this perception, however, “in any given state of civilization a greater number of people can collectively be better provided for than a smaller” (141). After all, it is societal factors and injustice that lead to misery rather than overpopulation.

The Industrial Revolution has given people the power to produce large quantities of wealth. The ability to produce wealth is akin to the ability to produce food. Furthermore, labor became more efficient—which means that it produces more wealth, not less: “The richest countries are not those where nature is most prolific; but those where labor is most efficient” (146, emphasis added). When entire communities are working, “no such consumption of wealth in proportion to the whole population takes place” (147). The difference between the Old and New Worlds is that more wealth exists in the former because the Europeans had more time to accumulate wealth. Furthermore, wealth is constantly recreated, which is obvious in new urban environments established from scratch, such as Melbourne and San Francisco.

The cycle of boom and bust under capitalism is not the result of labor inefficiency. Thus, several key aspects of the Malthusian theory are “utterly inconsistent with all the facts” (150).