Paper Topic:

Marx and Malthus

Neo-Malthusian thought addresses itself to population problems today

Marx responded very sturdily against Malthus ' population theory , which they saw as an admission of guilt for the status quo . Marxist theory represented that process of reification of social relations exemplified the nature of intellectual production under conditions of capitalist production and , through this process

Malthu disregards the concrete social relations of exploitation and competition . He reifies the specific relations of exploitation , which obtained at that time between wageworkers and capitalists , and the antagonistic relations between the landed and the industrial interests

br changing them into the operation of the natural law of necessity that manifests itself through positive checks to population growth . Marx 's contradict Malthus ' principle of population as the principle of the reserve army of labor or relative surplus population , which he complicated in the course of his analysis of the general law of capital accumulation

As an economist , Malthus elaborated the consequent population increase produces a supply of labor larger than the demand and wages fall to their natural price . Marx discards the Malthusian explanation to the problems created by the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system . In the process of capital accumulation the composition of capital does not remain constant it changes and it is this change which is most important to understand the effect of capital accumulation and expansion upon the working population . Marx 's analysis demonstrates that population is the dependent variable . Whenever the reserve throng of labor is relatively at a low level and the level of wages tends to rise reducing the rate of surplus value , the capitalist class has a propensity to adopt measures , which , while increasing the productivity of labor and the rate of profit , will result to obsolete a number of jobs

Today , Marxist analysis of population should elucidate the effects...

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