The great sensation this pamphlet
caused was due solely to party interest. The French Revolution had
passionate defenders in the United Kingdom.... `The Principles of
Population' was quoted with jubilance by the English oligarchy as the
great destroyer of all hankerings after human development."(1)
The only attempt that Marx makes here toward answering the theory of
Malthus is to declare that most of the population theory teachers were
merely Protestant parsons.--"Parson Wallace, Parson Townsend, Parson
Malthus and his pupil the Arch-Parson Thomas Chalmers, to say nothing
of the lesser reverend scribblers in this line." The great pioneer of
"scientific" Socialism the proceeds to berate parsons as philosophers
and economists, using this method of escape from the very pertinent
question of surplus population and surplus proletariat in its relation
to labor organization and unemployment. It is true that elsewhere (2) he
goes so far as to admit that "even Malthus recognized over-population
as a necessity of modern industry, though, after his narrow fashion, he
explains it by the absolute over-growth of the laboring population, not
by their becoming relatively supernumerary." A few pages later, however,
Marx comes back again to the question of over-population, failing
to realize that it is to the capitalists' advantage that the working
classes are unceasingly prolific. "The folly is now patent," writes the
unsuspecting Marx, "of the economic wisdom that preaches to the laborers
the accommodation of their numbers to the requirements of capital.
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