Malthusianism

The Malthusianism is a policy preaching the demographic restriction, inspired by work of the British economist Thomas Malthus (1766 - 1834). The term is used for the first time by Pierre Joseph Proudhon in 1849.

At the hostile origin doctrines with the increase in Population of a territory or a State, and recommending the voluntary restriction of the birthrate, the word " malthusianisme" also indicate by extension any apprehensive attitude in front of the life and the development.

Contexts

The Malthusianism of the 19th century justified the selfishness of the people and groups supported by fortune, by appearing to theorize the idea that the poor were responsible for their state, and that very undertaken in their favor was not only inoperative, but even contrary with their interests.

Any exchange at the end of the XIXe century with the Neo-Malthusianism, whose Paul Robin and Octave Mirbeau is, in France, the most known representatives. To the analysis of Malthus, the néo-Malthusians, of libertarian, and concerned inspiration above all the wellbeing of the broad masses, add their refusal horrified to massively produce cannon fodder for the wars to come and their proclamation from the right to the abortion, in order to allow the desired children to live under the best material conditions, intellectual and emotional.

The " model malthusien" of formation of the minimal income of the classical economists has nothing to do with the " behavior malthusien" , voluntary restriction, not only of procreation, but also of production. Alfred Sauvy, large destroyer of this behavior, admits that the name of Malthus “indicates a doctrinal frame of mind more than the man who bore this name. ” For Malthus, only the procreation of the not very sure families to be able to nourish their children was to be restricted, and this by a voluntary chastity extremely far away from the contraceptive methods and antinatales which will however be indicated later on like néo-Malthusians .

Scientific research

The ecological concerns renew the problems Malthusian today. Thus, some, like the commander Cousteau, see in the excessive human population the main obstacle with the safeguard of the animal species and vegetable. Ian L. McHarg describes the search for John B. Calhoun and Jack Christian but it does not give the bibliographical reference.

John B. Calhoun discovers by chance that the stress caused by the density would be the leading cause of incidence of infectious illness in the musky savages. What they confirm in these experiments with rats, in the zoo of Philadelphia. They identify the diseases of tension which affect the reproductive capacities and cause the diseases of the heart and the kidneys. The social behaviors degenerate then, the dominant males catch physical diseases, the digger males replace them and become hypersexuels, while the homosexual ones are it more and the cataniques ones present an extreme mental pathology.

McHarg still quotes Paul Leyhausen " Nearly five years in a prison camp taught me that the over-populated human society reflects in the least detail the symptoms of the communities of wolves, cats, goats, mouse, rats, rabbits and that all the differences are related to the characteristics of the species; the fundamental aspects of the interaction and the social organization are in theory identical and there is a true homology between the Man and the Animal through all the species of vertébrés"

See too

References

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