Theories of natural rights have been supplanted by considerations of natural needs, both individual and social. Human needs are now considered the only imperatives, but even they are relative and changing.
Chapter XII
Malthus and Population Concepts
A unique and distinctive trend in social thought with important sociological implications developed in the closing years of the eighteenth century, namely, Malthusian thought regarding population. Malthusianism, however, was preceded by the ideas of William Godwin and Adam Smith. In 1775, Adam Smith had stated that “every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply beyond it.”[XII-1] Scanty subsistence, however, destroys a large percentage of offspring. Inasmuch as men, like all other animals, multiply naturally in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand; and food, or the cost of living, regulates population.[XII-2] City people must depend upon the country for their subsistence, whereas seaport towns can command food resources from all parts of the earth.
The population ideas of William Godwin (1756–1836) were the immediate stimuli which set Malthus at work. In 1793, Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Justice was published. Godwin elaborated several radical social ideas of the French Physiocratic philosophers. He declared that human misery is caused by coercive institutions. Government, he asserted, is an evil and should be abolished. He urged also the abolition of strict marriage relations, although he personally acquiesced in the custom and in his last days he commended marriage. He thought that no social group should be larger than a parish, and that there should be an equal distribution of property. Godwin thus carried the doctrine of natural rights to the verge of anarchy and licentiousness. His ideas furnished a basis for the nineteenth century experiments in communism. But what is more important, Godwin’s ideas regarding the reconstruction of society stimulated Thomas Malthus, who developed what is commonly known as the Malthusian doctrine of population.
In 1798, under an assumed name, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) offered to the world the first carefully collected and elaborated body of data, dealing with what he called the social problem, namely: What is the underlying cause of human unhappiness? This study may be counted, in a sense, the beginning of modern sociological study. Early in life Malthus showed an interest in social questions. Godwin’s ideas had centered Malthus’ attention on population. Malthus’ well-known treatise entitled, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, undertook two important tasks: (1) To investigate the causes that have impeded the progress of mankind toward happiness, and (2) to examine probabilities of a total or partial removal of these causes.[XII-3]
Among both plants and animals there is a constant tendency to reproduce numerically beyond the subsistence level. Wherever there is liberty, this power of increase blindly asserts itself. Afterwards, a lack of nourishment and of room represses the superabundant numbers.[XII-4] It appears, therefore, that the ultimate check to population is lack of food, due to the fact that population increases faster than food supply. Nature, in other words, sets a harsher law over the increase of subsistence than she does over the birth rate. Man fails to take cognizance of this law and brings untold misery upon himself. The lower economic classes are the chief victims, and the giants of poverty and pauperism rule over whole sections of human population. Malthus considers the question of population the fundamental social problem.
Since population outruns food supply, dire human consequences naturally follow. Food supply, as a check upon population, operates harshly; it is but representative of an entire series of rigorous natural, or positive, checks upon population. In this list there are unwholesome occupations; forms of severe labor; extreme poverty; damp and wretched housing conditions; diseases, epidemics, plagues, poor nursing; intestine commotion, martial law, civil war; wars of all forms; excesses of all kinds.[XII-5] These positive checks upon population are the results of two main causes, namely, vice and misery. As a result of the operation of these factors, population is being continually cut down and kept near the mere subsistence plane.
Malthus pointed out another check upon population, the preventive. The fear of falling into poverty causes many young people to postpone marriage until they can safely marry—economically. This check so far as voluntary is peculiar to man and, to the extent that it is not followed by irregular sex gratification, is prudential. The actual pressure of population upon food supply, or the fear of this impingement, prevents people from marrying earlier than they do and from reproducing their kind faster than they would do otherwise. This pressure, or the fear of it, cuts down the marriage rate in times of economic depression. But let prosperity come and the marriage rate leaps upward, especially among the poorer classes.
The positive and preventive checks upon population hold a definite relation to each other. “In every country where the whole of the procreative power cannot be called into action, the preventive and the positive checks must vary inversely as each other.”[XII-6] That is to say, when positive checks, such as famine and war, slay large numbers of people, moral restraint is diminished and the population numbers rapidly increase. When the preventive check expresses itself strongly, the population is kept down numerically, and positive checks, such as famine or even war, are defeated.
Malthus attempted to establish three propositions: