Biography: Thomas Malthus: the man we love to hate

Thomas Robert Malthus (seen above) was born Guildford, Surrey on the 14th February 1766 to a wealthy liberal family. Known for his ‘essay on the principle of population’ and routinely misinterpreted: he is scowled as cruel and callous especially in Romantic literature of the time. Despite this he was a remarkable progressive, writing about the rights of indigenous people, religious minorities, and the importance of freedom for all. He made leaps in demography, statistics and social sciences; contributing to debates on population growth, mercantilism, Say’s law, economic rent, and the corn-laws.

Being home-schooled in a large household, debate was common; Malthus would discuss high-level thinking on moral philosophy and human behaviour with his father, Daniel Malthus, and father's friends amongst which included David Hume (Scottish sceptic and philosopher) and William Godwin (Anarchist and Journalist) who was heavily influenced by the Ideas of Jean Jacques Rosseau. His relationship with William Godwin would inspire his future work; both stood diametrically opposed: Godwin a Idealist and Malthus a pessimistic realist.

At the age of 16 Malthus went to Warrington Academy, a non standard choice at the time because it was Non-Anglican and highly progressive. Gilbert Wakefield would tutor Malthus imparting his radical views with students - especially on the rich. Wakefield was later sent to prison for sedition. A symptom of his progressive education was in his view of patriarchy: he rarely let his wife wear a wedding ring for it was a symbol of patriarchy.

In 1791 he completed his masters at Cambridge and 1793 became a fellow of Jesus college which at the time was the centre for more progressive views. Here he became interested in Newtonian mathematics (which would inspire his scientific approach) and studied history, philosophy, Greek and Latin. In 1796 he became a priest and then a professor of history and political economy at the East India Company College till his death.

He wrote 3 important papers namely – Essays on the Principle of Population (1798); Nature and Progress of Rent (1815); Principles of Political Economy (1820). In 1819 he joined the Royal Society to support and the Political Economy Club in 1821 - which included members such as David Ricardo and John Mill. In 1834 he co-founded the Statistical society of London, encouraging more thorough empirical process in social sciences.

His writings have become extremely influential. The Malthusian Dilemma and the constant struggle for scarce resources was the inspiration for Darwin’s theory of evolution and he credits him as such.

Relationship with William Godwin

William Godwin (seen above) was a journalist and anarchist who believed in Utopian ideals and sacrosanct nature of individual decision making; building upon ideas discussed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He believed that politics worsened moral decision making and saw that the rapid increase in technology was an opportunity for human perfection and high living standards of all, providing redistribution. He even thought immortality was possible.

Godwin also wrote how the individual utility of actions governed all decision making. In Economics this led to utilitarian approaches of human behaviour and that most laws can be rid of. We can see how this affected Malthus who would develop his opinions in backlash to these ideas, writing in the 'Principles of Population... and remarks on the Speculations of Mr. William Godwin'.

Godwin’s enquiry concerning political justice was (admittedly) highly speculative. Malthus’ personal copy was highly annotated, especially the latter half. Malthus saw himself as an impartial observer. labelling these opinions as naïve and unachievable. Whilst maybe possible in the short run he argued that society would always regress to subsistence levels – see principles of population. Malthus' critiques of Godwin's work were later help of scandal in Godwin's lifestyle. A man who believed individual decision making was sacrosanct was adulterous, and his lovers fickle. Consistently conservatives would use Malthus's work throughout his life.

The principles of population (1798)

The first edition of this essay was written as a retort to Godwin's writing and took a highly pessimistic view on reality, stating the inevitability of poverty. It was a major success and became the defining work on demography and started over 200 years of research into the matter as focal point of social and political change. It also why so many love to hate him.

The motivation for Malthus’ original pamphlet came about due to his profession: a clergyman. A man who was in charge of accounting the deaths, marriages and births. Malthus noted an extraordinary increase in the population at the time despite the cruel levels of poverty. Thus in 1799 he travelled Europe and researched the accounts of Benjamin Franklin and James Cook, documenting abundancy of resources and the size of population across the globe using a historic approach and empirical data to sway others. In Benjamin Franklin's work he found his premise of the geometric and arithmetic growth, quoting that Franklin's estimate that the population doubled every twenty years. This laid the foundation of his theories.

With this premise he showed that population growth would lead to famine, disease, and war over scarce resources. In this he was probably heavily influenced by the Napoleonic and revolutionary wars and bleak condition that dominated Europe. Oscillating levels of food insecurity, he argued, led to excessive population growth, scarcer necessities (socially determined) and then inevitably 'misery and vice'. alluding to Godwin's ideals of erasing vice. Whilst many criticise this abstract mathematics as 'weak', it illustrated and was a simple but effective persuasive tool used by Malthus, a symptom of his Newtonian education.

The ideas stated in his first edition became widely popular, with a large backlash. Many Anti-Malthusians labelled his work as as reductive, inhumane and utilitarian. A widely known reference to Malthus:

"If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population"

Charles Dickins' Christmas Carol

Malthus argued against the poor laws as they created the very misery they were meant to relieve. He believed that the aggregate happiness would be greater without them.

From this he mis-caricatured as supporting the potato famine. Instead in 1808 he was writing about the need to emancipate Irish Catholics. He agreed that overpopulation had fed this disaster but said that it was impossible for the Irish to 'improve' themselves due to inequality so subsistence and famine was inevitable.

In 1801 Malthus was vindicated when the British took its first census and British and Irish population had swelled much larger than anyone thought - to around 10 million. However, Malthus underestimated the importance of technological change, industrialisation, and manufacturing which became a large source for improvements in living standards.

In 1803 he published his second edition which was revised to include solutions: preventive checks to control the birth-rate. The two solutions were vice and misery. Vice lay in prostitution, abortion, contraception and misery in the postponement of marriage and celibacy. Further, It included extensively more statistics and anecdotes from his travels in Europe and even discusses the issues of depopulation in the Ottoman Empire and Persia.

This work would inspire Darwin and lead to a periodic resurgence in Malthusian thinking be of different forms. Erroneously many cite Malthus for making Economics the 'dismal science'. This is untrue - it goes to his fellow: John Stuart Mill.

Mercantilists vs. Physiocrats

In the late 18th century, the UK was going pivotal demographic change as cities were ballooning in size and manufacturing and industrialisation were speeding up leading to megacities. The UK population had doubled in 70 years and cities like Manchester in one century grew tenfold.

During this period there was continuous debate between Physiocrats and Mercantilists over the size of the population. Mercantilists believed a fast-growing population was desirable as more workers on lower wages meant more profits and larger armies. However, Physiocrats preferred a smaller rich population with a high standard of living.

The UK was a high wage society with relative good living standards. Richard Cantion, an Irish-French economist, noted in the large disparity between the UK and France. In France the population was vast approximately 30 million in 1800 whereas Britain has 10 million (1801). The French population lived subsistently, on meagre portions of bread and onion and linen clothes. Britons by comparisons had extensive diets of meat, beer, cheese, dairy and grains as well as woollen clothes leather shoes and beds.

In 1796 Malthus wrote an unpublished pamphlet known as the ‘crisis’ which supported the poor laws which later one seventh of the population would rely on for providing workhouses. This was in contrast to his later work which criticised these laws. Whilst in the short-run he argued the poor-laws would ease suffering, in the long-run it would do nothing but encourage a large population.

Malthusianism

Even in his own time Malthusianism had developed into a common phrase associated with economic pessimists and became somewhat detached from the views of the actual man himself who at heart was concerned greatly for the suffering of others and wrote many articles supporting the rights of minorities.

Whilst originally concerned with population and poverty it has been applied to many fields. It is usually associated with some kind of 'Malthusian Catastrophe' (seen below) due to the excess growth of human civilisation and has had periodic resurgences, 1st in the late 18th century with the rise in geneticists, Darwinism, then in WW2, Communist China and finally recently with the issues of climate change and greater environmental destruction as humans push the earths biosphere to its limits.

Other Works

In later works, the nature and progress of rent (1815) and principles of political economy (1820), Malthus developed new theories to critique Say’s Law – the idea that supply creates its own demand. Here he coined the term effective demand and proposed that ‘public works’ can correct for short falls and gluts in an economy. His views were almost Keynesian in this regards – proposing that the solution lie in government intervention. He alluded to the paradox of thrift which lay the foundation for Physiocrats and Keynes’ circular flow income.

He argued ‘the principle of excess saving would destroy the motive of production’. In other words, it would result in less effective demand and entrepreneurs would not recieve as high a price. Without the same incentive to operate they would shut. Ergo in 1815, he argued the government priorities should be to address the post-war depression by raising economic development rather than lower spending. Nevertheless, Malthus was the only notable Economist of his era to support the corn-laws as he wished Britain to pursue self-sufficiency and recovery.

In his 1815 work, the nature of rent, he worked alongside with David Ricardo whom he was good friends with. They approached their problems with the same first principles but drew different conclusions. Malthus saw rent as economic surplus whereas Ricardo saw it as the ‘value in excess of real production’ which was caused by private ownership. In other words, he believed it was undeserved and landlords created scarcity for undeserved rewards. Malthus was the first economists to write about the demand schedule in an economy – noting the cyclical nature of agriculture.

Death

On the 23rd December 1836 Thomas Malthus died in Bath at the age of 68. His works would shape two centuries of demographic thinking and driven near continuous debates on human progress. His legacy lived on in the Statistical Society of London (Royal Statistical Society) which he co-founded in 1834, encouraging the empirical research of society so we can be best informed.