Capitalism and population : Marx and Engels against Malthus

Abstract

The violence of the attacks on Malthus by Marx and Engels and the virulence of their criticism cannot but strike the reader of Capital and especially the Theories of Surplus Value. However Marx credits Malthus for his theoretical contributions. Secondly, Marx, unlike his contemporaries, is more interested in the various forms of mobility than in fertility, which he analyses through the concept of the industrial reserve army of labour. This paper shows that it is only by linking the economic and demographic aspects of Marx's writings that these questions can be answered. They are actually directly linked with two fundamental theoretical elements of Capital, the theory of accumulation and surplus value, and to his major doctrinal prediction, the demonstration of the necessary collapse of capitalism.