Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 12:02:37 -0800 (PST)
From: John Bellamy Foster <Jfoster@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fw: overpopulation  &  Malthus
To: PPN@csf.colorado.edu
Message-id: <1.5.4.16.19981113121209.24b7229a@oregon.uoregon.edu>
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Ed,

I see your point about infants perfectly (which I think corresponds to
Malthus' own views) but I don't agree with the morality of it.  Malthus of
course never used the term "overpopulation" and the idea that his theory was
about the "overstocking of the globe with inhabitants" was explicitly
repudiated by him on more than one occasion.  That idea had been promoted
earlier by Robert Wallace and attacked by William Godwin and Condorcet.
Malthus tried to change the nature of the debate (which was really about
whether the future improvement of society was possible) by developing a
theory that said that an equilibrium ALWAYS existed--except for minor
fluctuations--between population and food supply. The equilibrating
mechanisms were vice and misery, hence society for this reason could not
progress.  The concept of "overpopulation" as it is now used is thus
completely foreign to Malthus' thought. Eventually, his theory moved even
further away from the issue raised by Wallace, and came to focus (much like
the work of Joseph Townsend) on the use of his "population principle" to
attack the English Poor Laws--which immediately connected him to the
developing tradition of political economy, where his future work was
directed.  There is nothing in his entire theory about shortage of raw
materials other than food. In fact he explicitly said that raw materials
could easily be obtained in whatever quantity was needed.  Nor can a
"carrying capacity" notion be attributed to him--at least in the sense that
this is used today.  The ecological Malthus (or neo-Malthusianism) was a
later invention--introduced in the 1940s as part of the ideology of the Cold
War and the Green Revolution when no one knew any more what Malthus had said
or the nature of the debate in which he had been engaged. What was most
useful about Malthus for the vested interests was the general character of
his argument which provided a naturalistic rationale for poverty (and
ecological destruction).  The one part of Malthus that is most relevant
today--in the age of agribusiness--is his statement that the peasants should
be "swept" from the land.  

John Bellamy Foster


At 07:30 AM 11/13/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Finally, an informative message from the PPN list.
>The additional information that I added is indented.
>
>I will be offline for a few days as I travel to attend a
>SC chapter meeting and training session in Austin.
>Some of you may even enjoy me not posting for a while.
>
>John, like many other people, seems to view some of
>Mathus' remarks in a different context than what may be
>appropriate. To me, Malthus envisioned an overpopulated
>world, or region of whatever size, and realized that the
>population must be reduced. Taken from that standpoint
>many of Malthus' population control statements, though
>offensive under other circumstances, do make sense.
>
>Below John says one such reprehensible statement is
>"his contention that infants are of comparatively little value
>to society (in the context of whether relief should be provided
>to prevent them from dying of starvation)." That makes a lot
>of sense to me because the younger a person, the less that
>society has invested in them and the greater will be society's
>future liability in support costs. Remember that this is in the
>context of having to reduce population. Hopefully, the world
>of today will realize the threat we face and we can avoid
>having to make such reprehensible, but necessary decisions.
>
>________   Ed Glaze  <eglaze@vsta.com>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: John Bellamy Foster <Jfoster@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
>To: PROGRESSIVE POPULATION NETWORK <ppn@csf.colorado.edu>
>Date: Friday, November 13, 1998 1:04 AM
>Subject: Re: overpopulation & Malthus
>
>
>Members of this list who are interested in Malthus may be pleased to
>know that the December issue of ORGANIZATION & ENVIRONMENT
><http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/usdetails/j0151.html>
>includes a Bicentennial symposium on Malthus with an extensive
>introduction to Malthus' population theory by me followed by articles
>by William Catton, Herman Daly, Tom Athanasiou, Richard Wiltgen,
>Eric Ross and Martha Gimenez.  The same issue also includes
>articles by David Korten, Edward Herman, Kari Norgaard,
>Susan Roschke, Peter Grahame and others.
>
>List members may be further interested to know that I have written
>a major article on "Malthus' Essay on Population After 200 Years:
>A Marxian View" which will appear in the December 1998 issue
>of MONTHLY REVIEW.
>
>         Monthly Review
>         committed to the Marxist approach to political economy and history.
>         <http://www.igc.apc.org/MonthlyReview/>
>
>         BOOKS REVIEWED  --  excerpt below
>         Science in a Skeptical Age by John Bellamy Foster
>         <http://www.igc.org/MonthlyReview/science.htm#Skeptical>
>         We live in a skeptical age. All of the basic concepts of the
>         Enlightenment, including progress, science and reason are
>         now under attack. At the center of this skepticism lie persistent
>         doubts about science itself, emanating both from within and
>         from without the scientific community. For example, Bruce  Rich,
>         a director of the conservative environmental organization The
>         Environmental Defense Fund, has turned to complexity theory
>         in his widely  influential book, Mortgaging the Earth, "predict,
>         plan, and manage 'global environmental crises'" (p. 30).
>         This may seem to exhibit a degree of rationality from an
>         environmental perspective; but it also suggests that we cannot
>         plan sustainable development, and thus has an eerie connection
>         (made more  credible because of the Environmental Defense
>         Fund's close connection to business) to the proposition of
>         another strong proponent of complexity theory, Friedrich Hayek.
>         In his final book, The Fatal Conceit Hayek launched an attack
>         on the whole Enlightenment notion of rationalism as exemplified
>         by "socialistically-inclined" thinkers like Einstein and Bertrand
>         Russell, on the grounds that society was too complex for
>         rational planning and that the  market system was in effect
>         an institutional recognition of that fact.
>
>The passage you mention on "building houses near polluted bodies of
>water" etc., although I doubt that it is to be found on the internet, is
>from
>Book IV, Chapter V of the Second Essay.  This quote is usually taken
>out of context and is not as reprehensible as it is usually thought to be,
>and not anywhere as reprehensible as some of Malthus' other, more
>provocative statements that produced a storm of criticism in his day.
>The logic of the passage to which you refer was as follows: if you
>decide to promote early marriages, and still want to avoid what
>everyone agrees is the worst of all tragedies (i.e. famine), you should--
>if you are to be logical (given the fact that population must always stay
>in equilibrium with food supply) "court the return of the plague," etc.
>(A key presumption of Malthus' analysis was that moral restraint was
>not generally possible for the poor, but only for the rich.)  This hardly
>compares to Malthus' other more reprehensible statements such as
>his contention that infants are of comparatively little value to society
>(in the context of whether relief should be provided to prevent them
>from dying of starvation); his claim that the poor had no right to relief;
>that the poor were not invited to the "mighty feast" of the well to do;
>that the peasants should be "swept" from the land, etc.
>
>John Bellamy Foster
>>
>>
>>At 10:05 AM 11/11/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>>Ed Glaze III wrote:
>>>
>>> >I thought that Angela and I could carry on out little debate
>>>> off the list but I guess I was mistaken.
>>>>
>>>> The basis of her recent Malthus message was evidently
>>>> to counter the links I gave her for publications that had
>>>> special issues on Malthus. Here are a few URLs for
>>>> online information. The other links are shown in my
>>>> message to Angela below.
>>>
>>> Do any of these links contain the bit where Malthus recommended building
>>> houses for the poor near polluted bodies of water, so they die earlier? I
>>> believe this has been suppressed in subsequent editions of his
>masterpiece.
>>>
>>> Doug
>
>
>