Louis Proyect wrote:
>> Mark Jones' alleged raising of the overpopulation question leads us
once
>> again into a discussion of the Marxist critique of Malthus. I would
refer
>> PEN-L'ers to Michael Perelman's "Marx's Crises Theory: Scarcity, Labor
and
>> Finance",
Lou, I agree with the rest of your post. I should, however, open a small
paranthesis that I don't frankly think that comrade Mark has Marx's
critique of Malthus in his mind when he defends Bartlett, since Bartlett,
is not a Marxist. What we should instead try to address here is the urgent
necessity of preserving Marx from the intrusions of social darwinist
theories of over-population. so the issue here is *not* to refuse to see
_overpopulation as an aspect of capitalism_ but rather to refuse to see it
as part of the _solution_ to capitalism's energy crisis....
actually, it is interesting to see below how Malthus' ideas are linked
to a particular religious world view. I have always wondered about how
social darwinism and religion meet at some point,although they seem
exact opposites in the first place. here is Marx's reply.
Marx (Volume 1) pp.766-767:
" the principle of population slowly worked out in the 18th century, and
then, in the midst of a great social crisis, proclaimed with drums and
trumpets as the infallible antitode to the doctrines of Condorcet, etc.,
was greated jubilantly by the English oligarchy as the great destroyer of
all hankerings after a progressive development of humanity........Let us
note incidentally that although Malthus was a parson of the Church of
England he had taken the monastic view of celibacy....The circumstances
favourably distinguishes Malthus from other protestant parsons, who have
flung off the Catholic requirement of the celibacy of the priesthood, and
taken "be fruitfull and multiply" as their special Biblical missionto
such an extend that they generally contribute to the increase of
population to a really unbecoming extent, while at the same time preaching
the principle of population to workers. ... With the exception of the
Venetical monk Ortes, an original and clever writer,most of the population
theorists are Protestant clerics. For instance Bruckner's Theorie du
systeme animal (Leyden 1767) in which the the whole of the modern theory
of population is exhaustively terated , using ideas furnished by the
passing dispute between Quesnay and his pupil, the elder Mirabeau, then
Parson Wallace,Parson Townsend, Parson Malthus and his pupil, the arch
Parson Thomas Chalmers, to say nothing of lesser reverend scribblers in
this line"
Mine, SUNY/Albany
