{"id":40234,"date":"2025-08-22T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=40234"},"modified":"2025-08-23T01:57:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T01:57:59","slug":"misunderstood-malthus-the-english-thinker-whose-name-is-synonymous-with-doom-and-gloom-has-lessons-for-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/misunderstood-malthus-the-english-thinker-whose-name-is-synonymous-with-doom-and-gloom-has-lessons-for-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Misunderstood Malthus: The English thinker whose name is synonymous with doom and gloom has lessons for today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Roy Scranton<\/a>, University of Notre Dame<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one uses \u201cMalthusian\u201d as a compliment. Since 1798, when the economist and cleric Thomas Malthus first published \u201cAn Essay on the Principles of Population<\/a>,\u201d the \u201cMalthusian\u201d position \u2013 the idea that humans are subject to natural limits \u2013 has been vilified and scorned. Today, the term is lobbed at anyone who dares question the optimism of infinite progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, almost everything most people think they know about Malthus is wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story goes like this: Once upon a time, an English country parson came up with the idea that population increases at a \u201cgeometrical\u201d rate<\/a>, while food production increases at an \u201carithmetical\u201d rate. That is, population doubles every 25 years, while crop yields increase much more slowly. Over time, such divergence must lead to catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Malthus identified two factors that reduced reproduction and held off disaster: moral codes, or what he called \u201cpreventative checks,\u201d and \u201cpositive checks,\u201d such as extreme poverty, pollution, war, disease and misogyny. In the all-too-common caricature, Malthus was a narrow-minded clergyman who was bad at math and thought the only solution to hunger was to keep poor people poor so they had fewer babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding Malthus in a broader context reveals a very different character. As I discuss<\/a> in my 2025 book \u201cImpasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress<\/a>,\u201d Malthus was an innovative and insightful thinker. Not only was he one of the founding figures of environmental economics<\/a>, but he also turned out to be a prophetic critic of the belief that history tends toward human improvement, which we call progress<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God and science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the topic of progress, Malthus knew what he was talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was raised and educated by dissenters: progressivist English Protestants who advocated the separation of church and state<\/a>. He was taught by the radical abolitionist Gilbert Wakefield<\/a>, and his father was a friend and admirer of the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau<\/a>, whose ideas helped inspire the French Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite struggling with a cleft palate, Malthus distinguished himself at Cambridge, where he studied applied math, history and geography. Going into the clergy was a common choice for educated young men of middling means, and Malthus was able to secure a parsonage in Wotton, Surrey. But that didn\u2019t mean giving up his interest in social science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn Essay on the Principle of Population<\/a>\u201d was shaped by Malthus\u2019 theological views, but it is also a deeply empirical work and became more so as he revised it in later editions. His argument about geometrical and arithmetical growth rates, for instance, was based on the rapid population growth witnessed in the American Colonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u2018Reapers,\u2019 by 18th-century British artist George Stubbs. Tate Britain\/Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was also based on what he saw happening around him in Britain<\/a>. Over the final decades of the 18th century, Britain was wracked by repeated food shortages and riots<\/a>. The population rose from 5.9 million to 8.7 million, an increase of almost 50%, while agricultural production lagged. In 1795, hungry Londoners mobbed King George III\u2019s<\/a> coach demanding bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boundless optimism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But why was Malthus talking about population in the first place? As Malthus himself explains, his essay<\/a> was inspired by an argument with a friend about the journalist and novelist William Godwin<\/a> \u2013 best known today as the father of Mary Shelley, author of \u201cFrankenstein.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malthus and Godwin had similar backgrounds. Both came from dissenting middle-class families, were educated in progressive schools and began their careers as ministers. But Godwin\u2019s extreme radicalism<\/a> put him at odds even with his fellow dissenters, and he soon left the pulpit to take up the pen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book that made Godwin\u2019s name and provoked Malthus was \u201cAn Enquiry Concerning Political Justice<\/a>,\u201d published in 1793. Today, it is considered a founding text of philosophical anarchism. Originally, however, Godwin\u2019s \u201cEnquiry\u201d was seen as a thunderous articulation of Enlightenment progressivism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A portrait of William Godwin by James Northcote, now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Dea Picture Library\/De Agostini via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Godwin argued that all social problems could be eliminated by reason\u2019s proper application. He advocated abolishing marriage, redistributing property and eliminating government. What\u2019s more, he asserted that progress led inevitably to a utopian world<\/a>, where humans will no longer have to reproduce because we\u2019ll be immortal:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice as it is called, and no government. \u2026 But beside this, there will be no disease, no anguish, no melancholy and no resentment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardour the good of all.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Such things would come about in due time, Godwin assured his readers, solely through the spread of rational discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From his poverty-stricken parsonage in Wotton, Malthus saw things differently. Historian Robert Mayhew<\/a> describes Wotton at the time as an industrial wasteland afflicted by \u201cagrarian poverty \u2026 high birth rates and short life spans<\/a>.\u201d Studying history led Malthus to conclude that societies moved not in an ever-ascending line of progress but in cycles of expansion and decline. Godwin\u2019s utopian story didn\u2019t seem to match the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reform \u2013 within reason<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Malthus aimed to puncture Godwin\u2019s grandiloquent progressivism. But he wasn\u2019t saying positive change was impossible, only that it was limited by the laws of nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAn Essay on the Principles of Population\u201d was his attempt to ascertain where some of those limits might lie, so that policy could respond to social problems effectively, rather than exacerbating them by trying to achieve the impossible. As a writer and active member of the Whig Party<\/a>, Malthus was a reformer who advocated free national education, the extension of suffrage, the abolition of slavery and free medical care for the poor, among other programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, science and industry have made incredible advances, leading to changes Malthus would have scarcely found credible. When his essay was published, the global human population was around 800 million<\/a>. Today it is over 8 billion, a tenfold increase in little more than two centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over that time, proponents of progress have scorned the idea that humans are subject to natural limits and denigrated anyone who questioned<\/a> the fantasy of infinite growth<\/a> as \u201cMalthusian<\/a>.\u201d Yet Malthus remains important because his pessimistic account of society so clearly articulates an insight that refuses to be repressed: The laws of nature apply to human society<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, \u201cthe Great Acceleration<\/a>\u201d in human development and impact over the past 80 years may have pushed society to the breaking point. Scientists warn that we\u2019ve exceeded six of the nine boundary conditions<\/a> for sustainable human life on Earth and are close to exceeding a seventh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those conditions is a stable climate. Global warming<\/a> threatens to not only raise sea levels, increase wildfires<\/a> and supercharge storms<\/a>, but also amplify drought<\/a> and disrupt global agriculture<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malthus may not have foreseen the developments that fueled human growth over the past two centuries. But his fundamental insight into the limits of growth<\/a> has only become more relevant. As we face accelerating global ecological crisis, it may be time to revisit the pessimistic idea that we live in a world with limits. Reconsidering what we mean by \u201cMalthusian\u201d might be a good place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roy Scranton<\/a>, Associate Professor of English, University of Notre Dame<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roy Scranton, University of Notre Dame No one uses \u201cMalthusian\u201d as a compliment. Since 1798, when the economist and cleric Thomas Malthus first published \u201cAn Essay on the Principles of Population,\u201d the \u201cMalthusian\u201d position \u2013 the idea that humans are subject to natural limits \u2013 has been vilified and scorned. Today, the term is lobbed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":40235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[826,5,8025,277,10,36,38],"tags":[13216,2316,172,16795,16796,1606,885,891,886,860,16797,581,4897,4770,6610],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40245,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40234\/revisions\/40245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}