Limits without Scarcity, or Why Malthus was Wrong

Malthus continues to cast a shadow over environmentalism, especially in the debates over limits to growth. The important question is not whether Malthus was wrong, but why Malthus was wrong. In the first part of this lecture I will provide an alternative critique of Malthus’ infamous Essay on Population, and argue that rather than a precursor of environmental limits, Malthus was an early apostle of economic growth. Naturalizing scarcity, Malthus pre-figured the supposedly ‘pro-poor’ argument of modern economics according to which redistribution backfires, and only growth can pull the poor out of poverty. Malthus was an early inventor of scarcity, a concept invented precisely in a period when capitalism started producing unparalleled amounts of goods. The spectre of scarcity is used to this day to justify the unlimited growth of capital. Malthus in my reading did not underestimate the possibilities of technological development; he was a social conservative who refused to imagine that societies have the capacity to self-regulate and self-limit their reproduction. In that sense he is much closer to growth economists and eco-modernists today, than to those who want to see limits imposed upon the growth of production.