Details

Bibliography, Index.
Format: Paperback, ebook
81 Pages
Edition: 1st
Year: 2023
Publisher: Commons Press
ISBN: 
Paperback: 978-1-7374810-9-6
Ebook: 979-8-218-28227-1

Review & Promo

Publisher’s Weekly/BookLife Reviews

Robert Dees

The Malthus Fraud

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The defeat of the British government by American revolutionaries and the role of the laboring classes in overthrowing the French monarchy in the late 1700s inspired confidence among working people and fear among the elites, posing the need for an ideological counterattack. The Essay on Population was Malthus’s contribution to this battle of ideas.

He argued that society’s ills are caused not by the greed-driven capitalist system, but by working people “overpopulating.” The fact that there is not a single historical ex­ample that supports his doctrine has had no effect on its continuing popularity among today’s propagandists for the status quo. This is be­cause it never was a scientific theory, but a religious-political dogma, more akin to antisemitism and racism. It serves to divert us from carrying out the necessary revolutionary solutions to the problems we face.

This booklet is an excerpt from The Power of Peasants: Economics and Politics of Farming in Medieval Germany.

“For all the deceits and absurdities in Malthus’s ideology, its most serious flaw lies not in what it maintains, but in what it ignores.”