Research paper on Malthusian Melancholy as the Hunting Specter of Karl Marx

Economics has always played a crucial role in human life, but particularly, it relates to our time. For instance, Marx talked about the absurdity of ideas, according to which the ancient world lived by politics, while the Middle Ages were oriented at Catholicism. It is undoubtful fact that mankind has always lived by economic interests, and only on this basis, there could be politics, religion and other ideologies. Thus, the modern economy powerfully interferes in the lives of everyone nowadays.

Before we begin to discuss Malthusian melancholy as the hunting specter of Karl Marl, it is necessary to mention that according to Helburn & Bramhall (1986), the genius of Marx with standing precisely was in the fact that he gave answers to questions, which progressive minds of mankind have already delivered. Marx’s doctrine emerged as a direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy, and socialism. Being more specific, it is necessary to mention that it is hard to overestimate the role of Karl Marx in economic and political study. To add, the bourgeois classical political economy was one of the sources of Marxism. However, the teachings of Marx were a revolutionary upheaval in the political economy. Marx showed that capital is a social relationship, the essence of which lies in the exploitation of labor of the proletarians. He explained the nature of this operation by creating and developing the theory of surplus value, and showed a historical tendency of capitalism: intensification of its antagonistic class contradictions and the ultimate victory of labor over capital. Thus, a dialectical unity lies at in Marx’s economic doctrine, while it is simultaneously a rejection of bourgeois conceptions of Marx’s predecessors and creative continuation of everything the positive that they distributed.

Observing Malthusian melancholy, it is good to mention that this type of economic development was named after its creator Malthus. According to Fischer (2003), Malthus considered the problem of population without regard to any particular mode of production and social development in general. He talked about the “Principle of Population” as the eternal, immutable law of nature. According to Malthus, there exist immutable laws of nature, which consists of a constant effort, characteristic of all living beings, which multiply faster than permitted under their disposal of food, both in the world of plants and animals and in human society.

Making all efforts to take away the struggle of the working class of its ground, Malthus by himself, as an ardent apologist for the ruling classes, openly and cynically opposed the vital rights of workers against the elementary requirements of human justice. He put forward the proposition that the working class should blame itself in the own poverty, and it is possible to reduce the poverty only limiting the birth rate. In his turn, Malthus suggested to implement a kind of moral restrain in a way of refrain from poor marriages, as measures to combat the growth of population, while he also saw the destruction of natural remedies of “superfluous” population in disease, exhausting labor, starvation, epidemics, wars, which constitute a true disaster for working people.

In this regard, the classics of Marxism gave scathing criticism of the Malthusian ”˜law’ of population, and they also revealed its reactionary role. Marx showed that the main content of this ”˜law’ is based on the substitution of specific socio-economic laws of capitalism, non-existent ”˜eternal’ and ”˜immutable’ laws of nature.



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