Marx and Malthus
The population growth had been a matter of concern and debatable since long. Many economic theorist analyses the population growth from their theories. Malthus, while looking at the extraordinary increase in population calculated that the population would eventually surpass the food supply. While Karl Marx categorically rejected this analysis and argued that the overpopulation is not a matter of concern but the problem is unequal distribution of commodities. It cannot be solved even if population graph is declined.
According to Malthus’s theory, population would soon outshine the means of feeding it, if it were not kept downwards by vice, misery, or self-control. He stated that where self-restraint does not act at all, population would supplement till the poorest class of the community have only just sufficient to support life. Malthus argued that the operation of war and disease as the preventive check was the reason why population did not in actuality increase faster than food was the reason. His theory griped under criticism for his theoretical analysis on Population. Marx argued that there is a clear-cut repudiation. The Malthusian Theory did not succeed widespread assent. The Malthusian principle of population in its classical form was largely vanquished intellectually by the mid-nineteenth century; it continued to re-emerge in new forms.
From a Marxist perspective, if the population issue is to be at all understood then concrete historical, social, political, and economic relations, which should be taken into account. Malthus’ argument dependent on two proposition that is, unchecked population increases in a geometrical ratio while subsistence increases in a numerical ratio. Malthus supported his theory by law of diminishing returns the implication of which is that food production is bound to lag behind population growth that provides him with the most general theoretical basis for his principle of population and constitutes the basic argument with which Neo-Malthusian thought addresses itself to population problems today.
Marx responded very sturdily against Malthus’ population theory, which they saw as an admission of guilt for the status quo. Marxist theory represented that process of reification of social relations exemplified the nature of intellectual production under conditions of capitalist production and, through this process.
Malthu disregards the concrete social relations of exploitation and competition. He reifies the specific relations of exploitation, which obtained at that time between wageworkers and capitalists, and the antagonistic relations between the landed and the industrial interests, changing them into the operation of the natural law of necessity that manifests itself through positive checks to population growth. Marx’s contradict Malthus’ principle of population as the principle of the reserve army of labor or relative surplus population, which he complicated in the course of his analysis of the general law of capital accumulation.
As an economist, Malthus elaborated the consequent population increase produces a supply of labor larger than the demand and wages fall to their natural price. Marx discards the Malthusian explanation to the problems created by the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system. In the process of capital accumulation the composition of capital does not remain constant; it changes and it is this change, which is most important to understand the effect of capital accumulation and expansion upon the working population. Marx’s analysis demonstrates that population is the dependent variable. Whenever the reserve throng of labor is relatively at a low level and the level of wages tends to rise reducing the rate of surplus value, the capitalist class has a propensity to adopt measures, which, while increasing the productivity of labor and the rate of profit, will result to obsolete a number of jobs.
Today, Marxist analysis of population should elucidate the effects upon population structure and processes of the principle of the reserve army of labor and the other mechanisms with which the capitalist economy attempts to counteract its inherent fundamental contradiction, the declination in profit margin. A Marxist analysis of the current population situation in the countries of the Third World would aim at specifying, for each country, the concrete relations of economic dependency that link that country to another or to others. Neo-Malthusian emphasized on birth control and family planning programs aimed at underdeveloped countries.
Looking at the contemporary situation in underdeveloped countries, the Marxist critique of Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian analysis and policies does not deny the existence of the problems that stem from high dependency ratios and high rates of population growth. Today Malthus and Marxist both are contradictory in their principle Marx responded as a blind faith in the capacity of technology to overcome all ecological barricade. Malthus’ theory was not about the threat of “overpopulation” which may come about at some future date. Instead, it was his contention that there is a constant pressure of population against food supply, which was there in past and will remain in future.
Work cited
1) John Bellamy Foster; Malthus’ ‘Essay on Population’ at Age 200: A Marxian View. Magazine Title: Monthly Review. Volume: 50. Issue: 7. Publication Date: December 1998. Page Number: 1.
2) D. V. Glass; Introduction to Malthus. Publisher: Watts. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1953. Page Number: 8.
3) N. W. Chamberlain, Beyond Malthus (1970).
