Knowledge And Decisions

Malthus’ population theory was openly intended to counter contemporary revolutionary political theories, notably those of Godwin and Condorcet. After these theories faded with the years, later editions of Malthus’ Essay on Population turned its thrust toward other policy issues, the aim being not so much policy solutions as moral justification of the existing institutions:

... it is evident that every man in the lower classes of society who became acquainted with these truths, would be disposed to bear the distresses in which he might be involved with more patience; would feel less discontent and irritation at the government and the higher classes of society, on account of his poverty ... The mere knowledge of these truths, even if they did not operate sufficiently to produce any marked changes in the prudential habits of the poor with regard to marriage, would still have a most beneficial effect on their conduct in a political light.¹⁰³

While the mere intentions or applications of a doctrine, in themselves, have no necessary effect on its cognitive validity, the Malthusian theory’s many intellectual flaws related directly to its political goals. Like many other intellectual productions with political “relevance,” its most fundamental flaw was not a particular conclusion but an inadequate basis for any conclusion. On a theoretical level, the Malthusian doctrine inconsistently compared one variable defined as an abstract potentiality (population growth) with another variable defined as an historical generalization (food growth).¹⁰⁴ On an empirical level, there was grossly inadequate evidence for the postulated behavior of either variable. The supposed doubling of the population in colonial America every 25 years was based on a guess by Benjamin Franklin, repeated by a British clergyman named Price and obtained third-hand by Malthus. The first American census was published after Franklin’s death and the first British census was taken three years after Malthus’ book was published. The theoretical argument depended on shifting usages of the word “tendency,” to sometimes mean (1) what was abstractly possible, (2) what was causally probable, or (3) what was historically observable — each according to the polemical convenience of the moment. Though contemporaries criticized this shifting ambiguity that was central to the Malthusian doctrine, Malthus refused to be pinned down to any given meaning.¹⁰⁵ Empirically, the successive censuses after Malthus’ book was published revealed that in fact the food supply was growing faster than the population, and that most of the population growth was not due to reckless marriages and childbearing among the poor, as Malthus claimed, but to reduced death rates.¹⁰⁶ The Malthusian theory boils down to the proposition that population growth increases with prosperity — an empirical relationship that is demonstrably false from both the history of given countries over time and from comparisons of countries at a given time. As countries become more prosperous, their birth rates and population growth rates generally decline. At a given time, prosperous countries typically do not have higher population growth rates than poorer countries. In purely cognitive terms, it may well be that the Malthusian theory has received one of the most thorough refutations of any theory in the social sciences,¹⁰⁷ but in social and political terms, the Malthusian doctrine is still going strong almost two centuries after its first appearance. Like so many other political-intellectual productions, its triumph is largely a triumph of reiteration. Malthus’ crucial success was in identifying poverty with “overpopulation” in the public mind, so that to deny the latter is deemed tantamount to denying the former.