Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ˈmælθəs/; 13/14 February 1766 – 23 December 1834)[1] was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography.[2]

In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[3] He saw population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".[4] As an Anglican cleric, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[5] Malthus wrote:

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery.[6]

Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor.[7] He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws).[8] His views became influential, and controversial, across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[9][10] He remains a much-debated writer.

Early life and education

The sixth[11] child of Henrietta Catherine (Graham) and Daniel Malthus,[12][13] Robert Malthus grew up in The Rookery, a country house in Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey. He was bullied from an early age because of his syndactyly, or webbed feet. This sparked his controversial ideas about eugenics. [source?] Petersen describes Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means... [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau".[14] The young Malthus received his education at home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire, and then at the Warrington Academy from 1782. Warrington was a dissenting academy, which closed in 1783; Malthus continued for a period to be tutored by Gilbert Wakefield who had taught him there.[15]

Malthus entered Jesus College, Cambridge in 1784. While there he took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, and graduated with honours, Ninth Wrangler in mathematics. His tutor was William Frend.[15][16] He took the MA degree in 1791, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College two years later.[17] In 1789, he took orders in the Church of England, and became a curate at Oakwood Chapel (also Okewood) in the parish of Wotton, Surrey.[18]

Population growth

Further information: Malthusian catastrophe

Essay on the principle of population, 1826

Malthus was a demographer before he was ever considered an economist. He first came to prominence for his 1798 publication, An Essay on the Principle of Population. In it, he raised the question of how population growth related to the economy. He affirmed that there were many events, good and bad, that affected the economy in ways no one had ever deliberated upon before. The main point of his essay was that population multiplies geometrically and food arithmetically; therefore, whenever the food supply increases, population will rapidly grow to eliminate the abundance. Thus eventually, in the future, there wouldn't be enough food for the whole of humanity to consume and people would starve. Until that point, however, the more food made available, the more the population would increase. He also stated that there was a fight for survival amongst humans, and that only the strong who could attain food and other needs would survive, unlike the impoverished population he saw during his time period.

Malthus wrote the original text in reaction to the optimism of his father and his father's associates (notably Rousseau) regarding the future improvement of society. He also constructed his case as a specific response to writings of William Godwin (1756–1836) and of the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794). His assertions evoked questions and criticism, and between 1798 and 1826 he published six more versions of An Essay on the Principle of Population, updating each edition to incorporate new material, to address criticism, and to convey changes in his own perspectives on the subject. Even so, the propositions made in An Essay were shocking to the public and largely disregarded during the 19th century. The negativity surrounding his essay created a space filled with opinions on population growth, connected with either praise or criticism of ideas about contraception and the future of agriculture.

The Malthusian controversy to which the Essay gave rise in the decades following its publication tended to focus attention on the birth rate and marriage rates. The neo-Malthusian controversy, comprising related debates of many years later, has seen a similar central role assigned to the numbers of children born.[19] On the whole it may be said that Malthus's revolutionary ideas in the sphere of population growth remain relevant to economic thought even today and continue to make economists ponder about the future.

Travel and further career

In 1799 Malthus made a European tour with William Otter, a close college friend, travelling part of the way with Edward Daniel Clarke and John Marten Cripps, visiting Germany, Scandinavia and Russia. Malthus used the trip to gather population data. Otter later wrote a Memoir of Malthus for the second (1836) edition of his Principles of Political Economy.[20][21] During the Peace of Amiens of 1802 he travelled to France and Switzerland, in a party that included his relation and future wife Harriet.[22]

In 1803 he became rector of Walesby, Lincolnshire.[17]

In 1805 Malthus became Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company College in Hertfordshire.[23] His students affectionately referred to him as "Pop", "Population", or "web-toe" Malthus.

Near the end of 1817 the proposed appointment of Graves Champney Haughton to the College was made a pretext by Randle Jackson and Joseph Hume to launch an attempt to close it down. Malthus wrote a pamphlet defending the College, which was reprieved by the East India Company within the same year, 1817.[24]

In 1818 Malthus became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Malthus–Ricardo debate on political economy

During the 1820s there took place a setpiece intellectual discussion among the exponents of political economy, often called the "Malthus–Ricardo debate" after its leading figures, Malthus and theorist of free trade David Ricardo, both of whom had written books with the title Principles of Political Economy. Under examination were the nature and methods of political economy itself, while it was simultaneously under attack from others.[25] The roots of the debate were in the previous decade. In The Nature of Rent (1815), Malthus had dealt with economic rent, a major concept in classical economics. Ricardo defined a theory of rent in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817): he regarded rent as value in excess of real production—something caused by ownership rather than by free trade. Rent therefore represented a kind of negative money that landlords could pull out of the production of the land, by means of its scarcity.[26] Contrary to this concept, Malthus proposed rent to be a kind of economic surplus.[27] The debate developed over the economic concept of a general glut, and the possibility of failure of Say's Law. Malthus laid importance on economic development and the persistence of disequilibrium.[28] The context was the post-war depression; Malthus had a supporter in William Blake, in denying that capital accumulation (saving) was always good in such circumstances, and John Stuart Mill attacked Blake on the fringes of the debate.[29]

Ricardo corresponded with Malthus from 1817 about his Principles. He was drawn into considering political economy in a less restricted sense, which might be adapted to legislation and its multiple objectives, by the thought of Malthus. Malthus in his own work Principles of Political Economy (1820) and elsewhere, addressed the tension, amounting to conflict, he saw between a narrow view of political economy, and the broader moral and political plane.[30] Leslie Stephen wrote:

If Malthus and Ricardo differed, it was a difference of men who accepted the same first principles. They both professed to interpret Adam Smith as the true prophet, and represented different shades of opinion rather than diverging sects.[31]

After Ricardo's death in 1823, Malthus became isolated among the younger British political economists, who tended to think he had lost the debate.[citation needed]It is now considered that the different purposes seen by Malthus and Ricardo for political economy affected their technical discussion, and contributed to the lack of compatible definitions.[28] For example, Jean-Baptiste Say used a definition of production based on goods and services and so queried the restriction of Malthus to "goods" alone.[32]

In terms of public policy, Malthus was a supporter of the protectionist Corn Laws from the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He emerged as the only economist of note to support duties on imported grain.[33] He changed his mind after 1814[citation needed]. By encouraging domestic production, Malthus argued, the Corn Laws would guarantee British self-sufficiency in food.[34]

Later life

Malthus was a founding member of the Political Economy Club in 1821; there John Cazenove tended to be his ally, against Ricardo and Mill.[35] He was elected in the beginning of 1824 as one of the ten royal associates of the Royal Society of Literature. He was also one of the first fellows of the Statistical Society, founded in March 1834. In 1827 he gave evidence to a committee of the House of Commons on emigration.[36]

In 1827, he published Definitions in Political Economy, preceded by an inquiry into the rules which ought to guide political economists in the definition and use of their terms; with remarks on the deviation from these rules in their writings.[37] The first chapter put forth "Rules for the Definition and Application of Terms in Political Economy". In chapter 10, the penultimate chapter, he presented 60 numbered paragraphs putting forth terms and their definitions that he proposed, following those rules, should be used in discussing political economy. This collection of terms and definitions is remarkable for two reasons: first, Malthus was the first economist to explicitly organize, define, and publish his terms as a coherent glossary of defined terms; and second, his definitions were, for the most part, well-formed definitional statements. Between these chapters, he criticized several contemporary economists—Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Ramsay McCulloch, and Samuel Bailey—for sloppiness in choosing, attaching meaning to, and using their technical terms.[38]

McCulloch was the editor of The Scotsman of Edinburgh; he replied cuttingly in a review printed on the front page of his newspaper in March, 1827.[39] He implied that Malthus wanted to dictate terms and theories to other economists. McCulloch clearly felt his ox gored, and his review of Definitions is largely a bitter defence of his own Principles of Political Economy,[40] and his counter-attack "does little credit to his reputation", being largely "personal derogation" of Malthus.[41] The purpose of Malthus's Definitions was terminological clarity, and Malthus discussed appropriate terms, their definitions, and their use by himself and his contemporaries. This motivation of Malthus's work was disregarded by McCulloch, who responded that there was nothing to be gained "by carping at definitions, and quibbling about the meaning to be attached to" words. Given that statement, it is not surprising that McCulloch's review failed to address the rules of chapter 1 and did not discuss the definitions of chapter 10; he also barely mentioned Malthus's critiques of other writers.[38]

In spite of this, in the wake of McCulloch's scathing review, the reputation of Malthus as economist dropped away, for the rest of his life.[42] On the other hand, Malthus did have supporters: Thomas Chalmers, some of the Oriel Noetics, Richard Jones and William Whewell from Cambridge.[43]

Malthus died suddenly of heart disease on 23 December 1834, at his father-in-law's house. He was buried in Bath Abbey.[36] His portrait,[44] and descriptions by contemporaries, present him as tall and good-looking, but with a cleft lip and palate.[45] The cleft palate affected his speech: such birth defects had occurred before amongst his relatives.[46]

Family

On 13 March 1804, Malthus married Harriet, daughter of John Eckersall of Claverton House, near Bath. They had a son and two daughters. His firstborn, son Henry, became vicar of Effingham, Surrey, in 1835, and of Donnington, Sussex, in 1837; he married Sofia Otter (1807–1889), daughter of Bishop William Otter, and died in August 1882, aged 76. His middle child, Emily, died in 1885, outliving her parents and siblings. The youngest, Lucille, died unmarried and childless in 1825, months before her 18th birthday.[36]

An Essay on the Principle of Population

Main article: An Essay on the Principle of Population

Malthus argued in his Essay (1798) that population growth generally expanded in times and in regions of plenty until the size of the population relative to the primary resources caused distress:

Yet in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment [i.e., marriage] is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition.

— Malthus, T. R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter II, p. 18 in Oxford World's Classics reprint.

Malthus argued that two types of checks hold population within resource limits: positive checks, which raise the death rate; and preventive ones, which lower the birth rate. The positive checks include hunger, disease and war; the preventive checks: birth control, postponement of marriage and celibacy.[47]

The rapid increase in the global population of the past century exemplifies Malthus's predicted population patterns; it also appears to describe socio-demographic dynamics of complex pre-industrial societies. These findings are the basis for neo-malthusian modern mathematical models of long-term historical dynamics.[48]

Malthus wrote that in a period of resource abundance, a population could double in 25 years. However, the margin of abundance could not be sustained as population grew, leading to checks on population growth:

If the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it ... yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.

— Malthus T. R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter 2, p. 8[49]

In later editions of his essay, Malthus clarified his view that if society relied on human misery to limit population growth, then sources of misery (e.g., hunger, disease, and war) would inevitably afflict society, as would volatile economic cycles. On the other hand, "preventive checks" to population that limited birthrates, such as later marriages, could ensure a higher standard of living for all, while also increasing economic stability.[50] Regarding possibilities for freeing man from these limits, Malthus argued against a variety of imaginable solutions, such as the notion that agricultural improvements could expand without limit.[51]

Of the relationship between population and economics, Malthus wrote that when the population of laborers grows faster than the production of food, real wages fall because the growing population causes the cost of living (i.e., the cost of food) to go up. Difficulties of raising a family eventually reduce the rate of population growth, until the falling population again leads to higher real wages.

In the second and subsequent editions Malthus put more emphasis on moral restraint as the best means of easing the poverty of the lower classes."[52]

Editions and versions

1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future improvement of society with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers.. Anonymously published.

1803: Second and much enlarged edition: An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an enquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions. Authorship acknowledged.

1806, 1807, 1816 and 1826: editions 3–6, with relatively minor changes from the second edition.

1823: Malthus contributed the article on Population to the supplement of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

1830: Malthus had a long extract from the 1823 article reprinted as A summary view of the Principle of Population.[53]

Other works

1800: The present high price of provisions

In this work, his first published pamphlet, Malthus argues against the notion prevailing in his locale that the greed of intermediaries caused the high price of provisions. Instead, Malthus says that the high price stems from the Poor Laws, which "increase the parish allowances in proportion to the price of corn." Thus, given a limited supply, the Poor Laws force up the price of daily necessities. But he concludes by saying that in time of scarcity such Poor Laws, by raising the price of corn more evenly, actually produce a beneficial effect.[54]

1814: Observations on the effects of the Corn Laws

Although government in Britain had regulated the prices of grain, the Corn Laws originated in 1815. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars that year, Parliament passed legislation banning the importation of foreign corn into Britain until domestic corn cost 80 shillings per quarter.[clarification needed] The high price caused the cost of food to increase and caused distress among the working classes in the towns. It led to serious rioting in London and to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819.[55][56]

In this pamphlet, printed during the parliamentary discussion, Malthus tentatively supported the free-traders. He argued that given the increasing cost of growing British corn, advantages accrued from supplementing it from cheaper foreign sources.

1820: Principles of political economy

In 1820 Malthus published Principles of Political Economy. 1836: Second edition, posthumously published. Malthus intended this work to rival Ricardo's Principles (1817).[57] It, and his 1827 Definitions in political economy, defended Sismondi's views on "general glut" rather than Say's Law, which in effect states "there can be no general glut".[citation needed]

Other publications

1807. A letter to Samuel Whitbread, Esq. M.P. on his proposed Bill for the Amendment of the Poor Laws. Johnson and Hatchard, London.

1808. Spence on Commerce. Edinburgh Review 11, January, 429–448.

1808. Newneham and others on the state of Ireland. Edinburgh Review 12, July, 336–355.

1809. Newneham on the state of Ireland, Edinburgh Review 14 April, 151–170.

1811. Depreciation of paper currency. Edinburgh Review 17, February, 340–372.

1812. Pamphlets on the bullion question. Edinburgh Review 18, August, 448–470.

1813. A letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord Grenville. Johnson, London.

1817. Statement respecting the East-India College. Murray, London.

1821. Godwin on Malthus. Edinburgh Review 35, July, 362–377.

1823. The Measure of Value, stated and illustrated

1823. Tooke – On high and low prices. Quarterly Review, 29 (57), April, 214–239.

1824. Political economy. Quarterly Review 30 (60), January, 297–334.

1829. On the measure of the conditions necessary to the supply of commodities. Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom. 1, 171–180. John Murray, London.

1829. On the meaning which is most usually and most correctly attached to the term Value of a Commodity. Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom. 2, 74–81. John Murray.

Reception and influence

Further information: An Essay on the Principle of Population § Reception and influence

Malthus developed the theory of demand-supply mismatches that he called gluts. Discounted at the time, this theory foreshadowed later works of an admirer, John Maynard Keynes.[58]

The vast bulk of continuing commentary on Malthus, however, extends and expands on the "Malthusian controversy" of the early 19th century.

In popular culture

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Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, represents the perceived ideas of Malthus,[59] famously illustrated by his explanation as to why he refuses to donate to the poor and destitute: "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population". In general, Dickens had some Malthusian concerns (evident in Oliver Twist, Hard Times and other novels), and he concentrated his attacks on Utilitarianism and many of its proponents, like Bentham, whom he thought of, along with Malthus, as unjust and inhumane people.[60]

In the musical Urinetown, written by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann, the characters live in a society in which a fee must be played in order to pee, as a drought has made water incredibly scarce. A revolution starts with a "pee for free" agenda. At the end of the show, the revolution wins but the characters end up dying because water was not being preserved, unlike when the pee fee was in place. The penultimate line is "Hail Malthus".

In Marvel's film Avengers: Infinity War, the main villain called Thanos appears to be motivated by Malthusian views about population growth, though he already shared similar motivations in the comics.[61][62]

Epitaph

The epitaph of Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, just inside the entrance to Bath Abbey.

The epitaph of Malthus in Bath Abbey reads [with commas inserted for clarity]:

Sacred to the memory of the Rev THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS, long known to the lettered world by his admirable writings on the social branches of political economy, particularly by his essay on population.

One of the best men and truest philosophers of any age or country, raised by native dignity of mind above the misrepresentation of the ignorant and the neglect of the great, he lived a serene and happy life devoted to the pursuit and communication of truth, supported by a calm but firm conviction of the usefulness of his labours, content with the approbation of the wise and good.

His writings will be a lasting monument of the extent and correctness of his understanding.

The spotless integrity of his principles, the equity and candour of his nature, his sweetness of temper, urbanity of manners and tenderness of heart, his benevolence and his piety are still dearer recollections of his family and friends.

Born February 14, 1766 - Died 29 December 1834.

See also

Cornucopianism: a counter-Malthusian school of thought

Exponential growth

Food Race, a related idea from Daniel Quinn

The Limits to Growth, from the Club of Rome

Hong Liangji, China's "Malthus"

Malthusian trap

Malthusian growth model

Malthusian equilibrium

Malthusianism

National Security Study Memorandum 200

Overpopulation

World population

Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.

Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply is linear. It derives from the political and economic thought of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus believed there were two types of "checks" that in all times and places kept population growth in line with the growth of the food supply: "preventive checks", such as moral restraints (abstinence and delaying marriage until finances become balanced), and restricting marriage against persons suffering poverty or perceived as defective, and "positive checks", which lead to premature death such as disease, starvation and war, resulting in what is called a Malthusian catastrophe. The catastrophe would return the population to a lower, more "sustainable", level.[1][2] Malthusianism has been linked to a variety of political and social movements, but almost always refers to advocates of population control.[3]

Neo-Malthusianism is the advocacy of human population planning to ensure resources and environmental integrities for current and future human populations as well as for other species.[2] In Britain the term 'Malthusian' can also refer more specifically to arguments made in favour of preventive birth control, hence organizations such as the Malthusian League.[4] Neo-Malthusians differ from Malthus's theories mainly in their support for the use of contraception. Malthus, a devout Christian, believed that "self-control" (abstinence) was preferable to artificial birth control. In some editions of his essay, Malthus allowed that abstinence was unlikely to be effective on a wide scale, thus advocating the use of artificial means of birth control as a solution to population "pressure".[5] Modern "neo-Malthusians" are generally more concerned than Malthus with environmental degradation and catastrophic famine than with poverty.

Malthusianism has attracted criticism from diverse schools of thought, including Marxists[6] and socialists,[7] libertarians and free market enthusiasts,[8] social conservatives,[9] feminists[10] and human rights advocates, characterising it as excessively pessimistic, misanthropic or inhuman.[11][12][3][13] Many critics believe Malthusianism has been discredited since the publication of Principle of Population, often citing advances in agricultural techniques and modern reductions in human fertility.[14] Many modern proponents believe that the basic concept of population growth eventually outstripping resources is still fundamentally valid, and "positive checks" are still likely in humanity's future if there is no action to curb population growth.[15][16]

Origins

Malthus was not the first to outline the problems he perceived. The original essay was part of an ongoing intellectual discussion at the end of the 18th century regarding the origins of poverty. Principle of Population was specifically written as a rebuttal to thinkers like William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, and Malthus's own father who believed in the perfectibility of humanity. Malthus believed humanity's ability to reproduce too rapidly doomed efforts at perfection and caused various other problems.

His criticism of the working class's tendency to reproduce rapidly, and his belief that this, rather than exploitation by capitalists, led to their poverty, brought widespread criticism of his theory.[17]

Malthusians perceived ideas of charity to the poor, typified by Tory paternalism, were futile, as these would only result in increased numbers of the poor; these theories played into Whig economic ideas exemplified by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The Act was described by opponents as "a Malthusian bill designed to force the poor to emigrate, to work for lower wages, to live on a coarser sort of food",[18] which initiated the construction of workhouses despite riots and arson.

Malthus revised his theories in later editions of An Essay on the Principles of Population, taking a more optimistic tone, although there is some scholarly debate on the extent of his revisions.[1] According to Dan Ritschel of the Center for History Education at the University of Maryland,

The great Malthusian dread was that "indiscriminate charity" would lead to exponential growth in the population in poverty, increased charges to the public purse to support this growing army of the dependent, and, eventually, the catastrophe of national bankruptcy. Though Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor.[19]

One of the earliest critics was David Ricardo. Malthus immediately and correctly recognised it to be an attack on his theory of wages. Ricardo and Malthus debated this in a lengthy personal correspondence.[20]

Another one of the 19th century critics of Malthusian theory was Karl Marx who referred to it as "nothing more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace" (in Capital, see Marx's footnote on Malthus from Capital – reference below). Marx and Engels described Malthus as a "lackey of the bourgeoisie".[17] Socialists and communists believed that Malthusian theories "blamed the poor" for their own exploitation by the capitalist classes, and could be used to suppress the proletariat to an even greater degree, whether through attempts to reduce fertility or by justifying the generally poor conditions of labour in the 19th century.[citation needed]

One proponent of Malthusianism was the novelist Harriet Martineau whose circle of acquaintances included Charles Darwin, and the ideas of Malthus were a significant influence on the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution.[21] Darwin was impressed by the idea that population growth would eventually lead to more organisms than could possibly survive in any given environment, leading him to theorize that organisms with a relative advantage in the struggle for survival and reproduction would be able to pass their characteristics on to further generations. Proponents of Malthusianism were in turn influenced by Darwin's ideas, both schools coming to influence the field of eugenics. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr. advocated "humane birth selection through humane birth control" in order to avoid a Malthusian catastrophe by eliminating the "unfit".[1]

Malthusianism became a less common intellectual tradition as the 19th century advanced, mostly as a result of technological increases, the opening of new territory to agriculture, and increasing international trade.[1] Although a "conservationist" movement in the United States concerned itself with resource depletion and natural protection in the first half of the twentieth century, Desrochers and Hoffbauer write, "It is probably fair to say ... that it was not until the publication of Osborn’s and Vogt’s books [1948] that a Malthusian revival took hold of a significant segment of the American population".[1]

Modern Malthusianism

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Malthusian theory is a recurrent theme in many social science venues. John Maynard Keynes, in Economic Consequences of the Peace, opens his polemic with a Malthusian portrayal of the political economy of Europe as unstable due to Malthusian population pressure on food supplies.[22] Many models of resource depletion and scarcity are Malthusian in character: the rate of energy consumption will outstrip the ability to find and produce new energy sources, and so lead to a crisis.[citation needed]

In France, terms such as "politique malthusienne" ("Malthusian politics") refer to population control strategies. The concept of restriction of the population associated with Malthus morphed, in later political-economic theory, into the notion of restriction of production. In the French sense, a "Malthusian economy" is one in which protectionism and the formation of cartels is not only tolerated but encouraged.[citation needed]

Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party and the main architect of the Soviet Union was a critic of Neo-Malthusian theory (but not of birth control and abortion in general).[23]

"Neo-Malthusianism" is a concern that overpopulation as well as overconsumption may increase resource depletion and/or environmental degradation will lead to ecological collapse or other hazards.[citation needed]

The rapid increase in the global population of the past century exemplifies Malthus's predicted population patterns; it also appears to describe socio-demographic dynamics of complex pre-industrial societies. These findings are the basis for neo-Malthusian modern mathematical models of long-term historical dynamics.[24]

There was a general "neo-Malthusian" revival in the mid-to-late 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s after the publication of two influential books in 1948 (Fairfield Osborn's Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt's Road to Survival). During that time the population of the world rose dramatically. Many in environmental movements began to sound the alarm regarding the potential dangers of population growth.[1] The Club of Rome published a book entitled The Limits to Growth in 1972. The report and the organisation soon became central to the neo-Malthusian revival.[25] Paul R. Ehrlich has been one of the most prominent neo-Malthusians since the publication of The Population Bomb in 1968. Leading ecological economist Herman Daly has acknowledged the influence of Malthus on his concept of a steady-state economy.[26]:xvi Other prominent Malthusians include the Paddock brothers, authors of Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive?

The neo-Malthusian revival has drawn criticism from writers who claim the Malthusian warnings were overstated or premature because the green revolution has brought substantial increases in food production and will be able to keep up with continued population growth.[14][27] Julian Simon, a cornucopian, has written that contrary to neo-Malthusian theory, Earth's "carrying capacity" is essentially limitless.[1][how?] Responding to Simon, Al Bartlett reiterates the potential of population growth as an exponential (or as expressed by Malthus, "geometrical") curve to outstrip both natural resources and human ingenuity.[28] Bartlett writes and lectures particularly on energy supplies, and describes the "inability to understand the exponential function" as the "greatest shortcoming of the human race".

Prominent neo-Malthusians such as Paul Ehrlich maintain that ultimately, population growth on Earth is still too high, and will eventually lead to a serious crisis.[11][29] The 2007–2008 world food price crisis inspired further Malthusian arguments regarding the prospects for global food supply.[30]

From approximately 2004 to 2011, concerns about "peak oil" and other forms of resource depletion became widespread in the United States, and motivated a large if short-lived subculture of neo-Malthusian "peakists."[31]

See also

Doomer

Food Race

Food security

Garrett Hardin

Law of rent

List of population concern organizations

Malthusian trap

NSSM 200: a National Security Council Study advocating population reduction in selected countries for U.S. security and interests

Peak oil

Political demography

Population ecology

Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth

Subsistence theory of wages

Survivalism

"The dismal science"

Tragedy of the Commons

Thanos

Political economy is the study of production and trade and their relations with law, custom and government; and with the distribution of national income and wealth. As a discipline, political economy originated in moral philosophy, in the 18th century, to explore the administration of states' wealth, with "political" signifying the Greek word polity and "economy" signifying the Greek word "okonomie" (household management). The earliest works of political economy are usually attributed to the British scholars Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, although they were preceded by the work of the French physiocrats, such as François Quesnay (1694–1774) and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781).[1]

In the late 19th century, the term "economics" gradually began to replace the term "political economy" with the rise of mathematical modelling coinciding with the publication of an influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890.[2] Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, a proponent of mathematical methods applied to the subject, advocated economics for brevity and with the hope of the term becoming "the recognised name of a science".[3][4] Citation measurement metrics from Google Ngram Viewer indicate that use of the term "economics" began to overshadow "political economy" around roughly 1910, becoming the preferred term for the discipline by 1920.[5] Today, the term "economics" usually refers to the narrow study of the economy absent other political and social considerations while the term "political economy" represents a distinct and competing approach.

Political economy, where it is not used as a synonym for economics, may refer to very different things. From an academic standpoint, the term may reference Marxian economics, applied public choice approaches emanating from the Chicago school and the Virginia school. In common parlance, "political economy" may simply refer to the advice given by economists to the government or public on general economic policy or on specific economic proposals developed by political scientists.[4] A rapidly growing mainstream literature from the 1970s has expanded beyond the model of economic policy in which planners maximize utility of a representative individual toward examining how political forces affect the choice of economic policies, especially as to distributional conflicts and political institutions.[6] It is available as a stand-alone area of study in certain colleges and universities.

Etymology

Originally, political economy meant the study of the conditions under which production or consumption within limited parameters was organized in nation-states. In that way, political economy expanded the emphasis of economics, which comes from the Greek oikos (meaning "home") and nomos (meaning "law" or "order"). Political economy was thus meant to express the laws of production of wealth at the state level, just as economics was the ordering of the home. The phrase économie politique (translated in English as "political economy") first appeared in France in 1615 with the well-known book by Antoine de Montchrétien, Traité de l’economie politique. Other contemporary scholars derive the roots of this study to the 13th Century Tunisian Arab Historian and Sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, for his work on making the distinction between "profit" and "sustenance", in modern political economy terms, surplus and that required for the reproduction of classes respectively. He also calls for the creation of a science to explain society and goes on to outline these ideas in his major work, the Muqaddimah. In Al-Muqaddimah Khaldun states, “Civilization and its well-being, as well as business prosperity, depend on productivity and people’s efforts in all directions in their own interest and profit” – seen as a modern precursor to Classical Economic thought.

Leading on from this, the French physiocrats were the first major exponents of political economy, although the intellectual responses of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, Henry George and Karl Marx to the physiocrats generally receives much greater attention.[7] The world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1754 at the University of Naples Federico II in southern Italy. The Neapolitan philosopher Antonio Genovesi was the first tenured professor. In 1763, Joseph von Sonnenfels was appointed a Political Economy chair at the University of Vienna, Austria. Thomas Malthus, in 1805, became England's first professor of political economy, at the East India Company College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. In its contemporary meaning, political economy refers to different yet related approaches to studying economic and related behaviours, ranging from the combination of economics with other fields to the use of different, fundamental assumptions that challenge earlier economic assumptions:

Current approaches

Robert Keohane, international relations theorist

Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, sociology and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system—capitalist, socialist, communist, or mixed—influence each other.[8] The Journal of Economic Literature classification codes associate political economy with three sub-areas: (1) the role of government and/or class and power relationships in resource allocation for each type of economic system;[9] (2) international political economy, which studies the economic impacts of international relations;[10] and (3) economic models of political or exploitative class processes.[11] Much of the political economy approach is derived from public choice theory on the one hand and radical political economics on the other hand, both dating from the 1960s.

Public choice theory is a microfoundations theory that is closely intertwined with political economy. Both approaches model voters, politicians and bureaucrats as behaving in mainly self-interested ways, in contrast to a view, ascribed to earlier mainstream economists, of government officials trying to maximize individual utilities from some kind of social welfare function.[12] As such, economists and political scientists often associate political economy with approaches using rational-choice assumptions,[13] especially in game theory[14] and in examining phenomena beyond economics' standard remit, such as government failure and complex decision making in which context the term "positive political economy" is common.[15] Other "traditional" topics include analysis of such public policy issues as economic regulation,[16] monopoly, rent-seeking, market protection,[17] institutional corruption[18] and distributional politics.[19] Empirical analysis includes the influence of elections on the choice of economic policy, determinants and forecasting models of electoral outcomes, the political business cycles,[20] central-bank independence and the politics of excessive deficits.[21]

A more recent focus has been on modeling economic policy and political institutions as to interactions between agents and economic and political institutions,[22] including the seeming discrepancy of economic policy and economist's recommendations through the lens of transaction costs.[23] From the mid-1990s, the field has expanded, in part aided by new cross-national data sets that allow tests of hypotheses on comparative economic systems and institutions.[24] Topics have included the breakup of nations,[25] the origins and rate of change of political institutions in relation to economic growth,[26] development,[27] financial markets and regulation,[28] the importance of institutions,[29] backwardness,[30] reform[31] and transition economies,[32] the role of culture, ethnicity and gender in explaining economic outcomes,[6] macroeconomic policy,[33] the environment,[34] fairness[35] and the relation of constitutions to economic policy, theoretical[36] and empirical.[37]

Other important landmarks in the development of political economy include:

New political economy which may treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to explain, per the traditions of Marxian political economy. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests that a political economy approach "interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises.... in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained".[38] This approach informs Andrew Gamble's The Free Economy and the Strong State (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay's The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published in New Political Economy, an international journal founded by Sheffield University scholars in 1996.[39]

International political economy (IPE) an interdisciplinary field comprising approaches to the actions of various actors. In the United States, these approaches are associated with the journal International Organization, which in the 1970s became the leading journal of IPE under the editorship of Robert Keohane, Peter J. Katzenstein and Stephen Krasner. They are also associated with the journal The Review of International Political Economy. There also is a more critical school of IPE, inspired by thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi; two major figures are Matthew Watson and Robert W. Cox.[40]

The use of a political economy approach by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers used in reference to the regimes of politics or economic values that emerge primarily at the level of states or regional governance, but also within smaller social groups and social networks. Because these regimes influence and are influenced by the organization of both social and economic capital, the analysis of dimensions lacking a standard economic value (e.g. the political economy of language, of gender, or of religion) often draws on concepts used in Marxian critiques of capital. Such approaches expand on neo-Marxian scholarship related to development and underdevelopment postulated by André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.

Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests.[41]

Political economy and law is a recent attempt within legal scholarship to engage explicitly with political economy literature. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal realists (e.g. Robert Hale) and intellectuals (e.g. John Commons) engaged themes related to political economy. In the second half of the 20th century, lawyers associated with the Chicago School incorporated certain intellectual traditions from economics. However, since the crisis in 2007 legal scholars especially related to international law, have turned to more explicitly engage with the debates, methodology and various themes within political economy texts.[42][43]

Thomas Piketty's approach and call to action which advocated for the re-introduction of political consideration and political science knowledge more generally into the discipline of economics as a way of improving the robustness of the discipline and remedying its shortcomings, which had become clear following the 2008 financial crisis.[44]

In 2010, the only Department of Political Economy in the United Kingdom formally established at King's College London. The rationale for this academic unit was that "the disciplines of Politics and Economics are inextricably linked", and that it was "not possible to properly understand political processes without exploring the economic context in which politics operates".[45]

In 2017, the Political Economy UK Group (abbreviated PolEconUK) was established as a research consortium in the field of political economy. It hosts an annual conference and counts among its member institutions Oxford, Cambridge, King's College London, Warwick University and the London School of Economics.[46]

Related disciplines

Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives:[47]

Politics studies power relations and their relationship to achieving desired ends.

Philosophy rigorously assesses and studies a set of beliefs and their applicability to reality.

Economics studies the distribution of resources so that the material wants of a society are satisfied; enhance societal well-being.

Sociology studies the effects of persons' involvement in society as members of groups and how that changes their ability to function. Many sociologists start from a perspective of production-determining relation from Karl Marx. Marx's theories on the subject of political economy are contained in his book Das Kapital.

Anthropology studies political economy by investigating regimes of political and economic value that condition tacit aspects of sociocultural practices (e.g. the pejorative use of pseudo-Spanish expressions in the U.S. entertainment media) by means of broader historical, political and sociological processes. Analyses of structural features of transnational processes focus on the interactions between the world capitalist system and local cultures.

Archaeology attempts to reconstruct past political economies by examining the material evidence for administrative strategies to control and mobilize resources.[48] This evidence may include architecture, animal remains, evidence for craft workshops, evidence for feasting and ritual, evidence for the import or export of prestige goods, or evidence for food storage.

Psychology is the fulcrum on which political economy exerts its force in studying decision making (not only in prices), but as the field of study whose assumptions model political economy.

History documents change, often using it to argue political economy; some historical works take political economy as the narrative's frame.

Ecology deals with political economy because human activity has the greatest effect upon the environment, its central concern being the environment's suitability for human activity. The ecological effects of economic activity spur research upon changing market economy incentives. Additionally and more recently, ecological theory has been used to examine economic systems as similar systems of interacting species (e.g., firms).[49]

Cultural studies examines social class, production, labor, race, gender and sex.

Communications examines the institutional aspects of media and telecommunication systems. As the area of study focusing on aspects of human communication, it pays particular attention to the relationships between owners, labor, consumers, advertisers, structures of production and the state and the power relationships embedded in these relationships.

See also

Economic sociology

Economic study of collective action

Constitutional economics

European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE)

Economic ideology

Institutional economics

Land value tax

Law of rent

Important publications in political economy

Perspectives on capitalism by school of thought

Political economy in anthropology

Political economy of climate change

Social model

Social capital

Socioeconomics