{"id":11815,"date":"2011-10-28T09:02:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T13:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11815"},"modified":"2011-10-28T10:13:19","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T14:13:19","slug":"malthus-provides-cover-for-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/28\/malthus-provides-cover-for-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Malthus provides “cover” for racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Black<\/a> explores why Thomas Malthus’ ideas have never been more popular than they are today:<\/p>\n

\n

Lisping, reclusive and reviled by the working class of his day, the Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) — the man behind the idea that the \u2018lower orders of society\u2019 breed too quickly — would probably be surprised by his current popularity. Because that\u2019s what he is today: popular. Commentators, activists and academics positively fall over themselves in the rush to say, \u2018you know what, that Malthus had a point. There are too many people and, what\u2019s more, they are consuming far too much.\u2019<\/p>\n

Earlier this summer, a columnist for Time<\/em> magazine was in no doubt as to the pastor\u2019s relevance. The global population is \u2018ever larger, ever hungrier\u2019, he noted, \u2018food prices are near historic highs\u2019 and \u2018every report of drought or flooding raises fears of global shortages\u2019. \u2018Taking a look around us today\u2019, he continued, \u2018it would be easy to conclude that Malthus was prescient\u2019. Writing in the British weekly, the New Statesman<\/em>, wildlife lover Sir David Attenborough was similarly convinced: \u2018The fundamental truth that Malthus proclaimed remains the truth: there cannot be more people on this Earth than can be fed.\u2019 Not to be outdone, the liberal-left\u2019s favourite broadsheet, the Guardian<\/em>, also suggested that Malthus may have been right after all: \u2018[His] arguments were part of the inspiration for Charles Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution, and they have validity in the natural world. On the savannah, in the rainforests, and across the tundra, animal populations explode when times are good, and crash when food reserves are exhausted. Is homo sapiens<\/em> an exception?\u2019 The melancholy tone whispered its answer in the negative. Writing in the New York Times<\/em>, Paul Krugman was less coy: \u2018Malthus was right!\u2019 shouted the headline.<\/p>\n

Given the encomia that are currently coming the way of Malthus you may well wonder what exactly it was that he was meant to be right about. To find the answer to this it is worth actually taking a look at the work, first published in 1798, on which his supposed prescience is based: An Essay on the Principle of Population<\/em>. It makes for surprising reading.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Black explores why Thomas Malthus’ ideas have never been more popular than they are today: Lisping, reclusive and reviled by the working class of his day, the Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) — the man behind the idea that the \u2018lower orders of society\u2019 breed too quickly — would probably be surprised by his current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,28],"tags":[319,477,308,213,309,99],"class_list":["post-11815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-media","tag-demographics","tag-magazines","tag-malthusianism","tag-newspapers","tag-overpopulation","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-34z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11815"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11817,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11815\/revisions\/11817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}