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Title: The Malthusians
Author: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Date: 1848
Language: en
Topics: England, food, France, population
Source: Retrieved on 10 September 2011 from http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2006/05/proudhons-malthusians-benjamin-tucker.html
Notes: Proudhon published “Les Malthusiens” in Le Représentant du Peuple (August 10, 1848). It was published separately the following year. We know William B. Greene was reading in it Massachusetts in 1849–50; the section on “Usury” in the 1850 Mutual Banking is full of references. Benjamin Tucker translated the essay for the May 31, 1884 issue of Liberty. The Research on Anarchism site lists an 1886 London publication, “reprinted from The Anarchist.” The text here is taken from Libertarian Microfiche Project reprint (PP 957) of the 1938 Ishill Freeman Press edition.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The Malthusians

Dr. Malthus, an economist, an Englishman, once wrote the following

words:

“A man who is born into a world already occupied, his family unable to

support him, and society not requiring his labor, such a man, I say, has

not the least legal right to claim any nourishment whatever; he is

really one too many on the earth. At the great banquet of Nature there

is no plate laid for him. Nature commands him to take himself away, and

she will not be slow to put her order into execution.”

As a consequence of this great principle, Malthus recommends, with the

most terrible threats, every man who has neither labor nor income upon

which to live to take himself away, or at any rate to have no more

children. A family, — that is, love, — like bread, is forbidden such a

man by Malthus.

Dr. Malthus was, while living, a minister of the Holy Gospel, a

mild-mannered philanthropist, a good husband, a good father, a good

citizen, believing in God us firmly as any man in France. He died

(heaven grant him peace) in 1834. It may be said that he was the first,

without doubt, to reduce to absurdity all political economy, and state

the great revolutionary question, the question between labor and

capital. With us, whose faith in Providence still lives, in spite of the

century’s indifference, it is proverbial — and herein consists the

difference between the English and ourselves — that “everybody must

live.” And our people, in saying this, think themselves as truly

Christian, as conservative of good morals and the family, as the late

Malthus.

Now, what the people say in France, the economists deny; the lawyers and

the litterateurs deny; the Church, which pretends to be Christian, and

also Gallican, denies; the press denies; the large proprietors deny; the

government which endeavors to represent them, denies.

The press, the government, the Church, literature, economy, wealth, —

everything in France has become English; everything is Malthusian. It is

in the name of God and his holy providence, in the name of morality, in

the name of the sacred interests of the family, that they maintain that

there is not room in the country for all the children of the country,

and that they warn our women to be less prolific. In France, in spite of

the desire of the people, in spite of the national belief, eating and

drinking are regarded as privileges, labor a privilege, family a

privilege, country a privilege.

M. Antony Thouret said recently that property, without which there is

neither country, nor family, nor labor, nor morality, would be

irreproachable as soon as it should cease to be a privilege; a clear

statement of the fact that, to abolish all the privileges which, so to

speak, exclude a portion of the people from the law, from humanity, we

must abolish, first of all, the fundamental privilege, and change the

constitution of property.

M. A. Thouret, in saying that, agreed with us and with the people. The

State, the press, political economy, do not view the matter in that

light; they agree in the hope that property, without which, as M.

Thouret says, there is no labor, no family, no Republic, may remain what

it always has been, — a privilege.

All that has been done, said, and printed today and for the last twenty

years, has been done, said, and printed in consequence of the theory of

Malthus.

The theory of Malthus is the theory of political murder; of murder from

motives of philanthropy and for love of God. There are too many people

in the world; that is the first article of faith of all those who, at

present, in the name of the people, reign and govern. It is for this

reason that they use their best efforts to diminish the population.

Those who best acquit themselves of this duty, who practice with piety,

courage, and fraternity the maxims of Malthus, are good citizens,

religious men, those who protest against such conduct are anarchists,

socialists, atheists.

That the Revolution of February was the result of this protest

constitutes its inexpiable crime. Consequently, it shall be taught its

business, this Revolution which promised that all should live. The

original, indelible stain on this Republic is that the people have

pronounced it anti-Malthusian. That is why the Republic is so especially

obnoxious to those who were, and would become again, the toadies and

accomplices of kings — grand eaters of men, as Cato called them. They

would make monarchy of your Republic; they would devour its children.

There lies the whole secret of the sufferings, the agitations, and the

contradictions of our country.

The economists are the first among us, by an inconceivable blasphemy, to

establish as a providential dogma the theory of Malthus. I do not

reproach them; neither do I abuse them. On this point the economists act

in good faith and from the best intentions in the world. They would like

nothing better than to make the human race happy; but they cannot

conceive how, without some sort of an organization of homicide, a

balance between population and production can exist.

Ask the Academy of Moral Sciences. One of its most honorable members,

whose name I will not call, — though he is proud of his opinions, as

every honest man should be, — being the prefect of I know not which

department, saw fit one day, in a proclamation, to advise those within

his province to have thenceforth fewer children by their wives. Great

was the scandal among the priests and gossips, who looked upon this

academic morality as the morality of swine! The savant of whom I speak

was none the less, like all his fellows, a zealous defender of the

family and of morality; but, he observed with Malthus, at the banquet of

Nature there is not room for all.

M. Thiers, also a member of the Academy of Moral Sciences, lately told

the committee on finance that, if he were minister, he would confine

himself to courageously and stoically passing through the crisis,

devoting himself to the expenses of his budget, enforcing a respect for

order, and carefully guarding against every financial innovation, every

socialistic idea, — especially such as the right to labor, — as well as

every revolutionary expedient. And the whole committee applauded him.

In giving this declaration of the celebrated historian and statesman, I

have no desire to accuse his intentions. In the present state of the

public mind, I should succeed only in serving the ambition of M. Thiers,

if he has any left. What I wish to call attention to is that M. Thiers,

in expressing himself in this wise, testified, perhaps unconsciously, to

his faith in Malthus.

Mark this well, I pray you. There are two millions, four millions of men

who will die of misery and hunger, if some means be not found of giving

them work. This is a great misfortune, surely, and we are the first to

lament it, the Malthusians tell you; but what is to be done? It is

better that four millions of men should die than that privilege should

be compromised; it is not the fault of capital, if labor is idle; at the

banquet of credit there is not room for all.

They are courageous, they are stoical, these statesmen of the school of

Malthus, when it is a matter of sacrificing laborers by the millions.

Thou hast killed the poor man, said the prophet Elias to the king of

Israel, and then thou hast taken away his inheritance. Occidisti et

possedisti. To-day we must reverse the phrase, and say to those who

possess and govern: You have the privilege of labor, the privilege of

credit, the privilege of property, as M. Thouret says; and it is because

you do not wish to be deprived of these privileges, that you shed the

blood of the poor like water: Possedisti et occidisti!

And the people, under the pressure of bayonets, are being eaten slowly;

they die without a sigh or a murmur; the sacrifice is effected in

silence. Courage, laborers! sustain each other: Providence will finally

conquer fate. Courage! the condition of your fathers, the soldiers of

the republic, at the sieges of Genes and Mayence, was even worse than

yours.

M. Leon Faucher, in contending that journals should be forced to furnish

securities and in favoring the maintenance of taxes on the press,

reasoned also after the manner of Malthus. The serious journal, said he,

the journal that deserves consideration and esteem, is that which is

established on a capital of from four to five hundred thousand francs.

The journalist who has only his pen is like the workman who has only his

arms. If he can find no market for his services or get no credit with

which to carry on his enterprise, it is a sign that public opinion is

against him; he has not the least right to address the country: at the

banquet of public life there is not room for all.

Listen to Lacordaire, that light of the Church, that chosen vessel of

Catholicism. He will tell you that socialism is antichrist. And why is

socialism antichrist? Because socialism is the enemy of Malthus, whereas

Catholicism, by a final transformation, has become Malthusian.

The gospel tells us, cries the priest, that there will always be poor

people, Pauperes semper habebitis vobsicum, and that property,

consequently in so far as it is a privilege and makes poor people, is

sacred. Poverty is necessary to the exercise of evangelical charity; at

the banquet of this world here below there cannot be room for all.

He feigns ignorance, the infidel, of the fact that poverty, in Biblical

language, signified every sort of affliction and pain, not hard times

and the condition of the proletaire. And how could he who went up and

down Judea crying, Woe to the rich! be understood differently? In the

thought of Jesus Christ, woe to the rich means woe to the Malthusians.

If Christ were living today, he would say to Lacordaire and his

companions: “You are of the race of those who, in all ages, have shed

the blood of the just, from Abel unto Zacharias. Your law is not my law;

your God is not my God!...” And the Lacordaires would crucify Christ as

a seditious person and an atheist.

Almost the whole of journalism is infected with the same ideas. Let “Le

National,” for example, tell us whether it has not always believed,

whether it does not still believe, that pauperism is a permanent element

of civilization; that the enslavement of one portion of humanity is

necessary to the glory of another; that those who maintain the contrary

are dangerous dreamers who deserve to be shot; that such is the basis of

the State. For, if this be not the secret thought of “Le National,” if

“Le National” sincerely and resolutely desires the emancipation of

laborers, why these anathemas against, why this anger with, the genuine

socialists — those who, for ten and twenty years, have demanded this

emancipation?

Further, let the Bohemian of literature, today the myrmidons of

Journalism, paid slanderers, courtiers of the privileged classes,

eulogists of all the vices, parasites living upon other parasites, who

prate so much of God only to dissemble their materialism, of the family

only to conceal their adulteries, and whom we shall see, out of disgust

for marriage, caressing monkeys when Malthusian women fail, — let these,

I say, publish their economic creed, in order that the people may know

them.

Faites des filles, nous les aimons, — beget girls, we love them, — sing

these wretches, parodying the poet. But abstain from begetting boys; at

the banquet of sensualism there is not room for all.

The government was inspired by Malthus when, having a hundred thousand

laborers at its disposal, to whom it gave gratuitous support, it refused

to employ them at useful labor, and when, after the civil war, it asked

that a law be passed for their transportation. With the expenses of the

pretended national workshops, with the costs of war, lawsuits,

imprisonment, and transportation, it might have given the insurgents six

months income, and thus changed our whole economic system. But labor is

a monopoly; the government does not wish revolutionary industry to

compete with privileged industry; at the workbench of the nation there

is not room for all.

Large industrial establishments ruin small ones; that is the law of

capital, that is Malthus.

Wholesale trade gradually swallows the retail; again Malthus.

Large estates encroach upon and consolidate the smallest possessions:

still Malthus.

Soon one half of the people will say to the other:

The earth and its products are my property.

Industry and its products are my property.

Commerce and transportation are my property.

The State is my property.

You who possess nether reserve nor property, who hold no public offices

and whose labor is useless to us, take yourselves away! You have really

no business on the earth; beneath the sunshine of the Republic there is

not room for all.

Who will tell me that the right to labor and to live is not the whole of

the Revolution?

Who will tell me that the principle of Malthus is not the whole of the

counter-Revolution?

And it is for having published such things as these, — for having

exposed the evil boldly and sought the remedy in good faith, that speech

has been forbidden me by the government, the government that represents

the Revolution!

That is why I have been deluged with the slanders, treacheries,

cowardice, hypocrisy, outrages, desertions, and failings of all those

who hate or love the people! That is why I have been given over; for a

whole month, to the mercy of the jackals of the press and the

screech-owls of the platform! Never was a man, either in the past or in

the present, the object of so much execration as I have become, for the

simple reason that I wage war upon cannibals.

To slander one who could not reply was to shoot a prisoner. Malthusian

carnivora, I discover you there! Go on, then; we have more than one

account to settle yet. And, if calumny is not sufficient for you, use

iron and lead. You may kill me; no one can avoid his fate, and I am at

your discretion. But you shall not conquer me; you shall never persuade

the people, while I live and hold a pen, that, with the exception of

yourselves, there is one too many on the earth. I swear it before the

people and in the name of the Republic!