The Limits to Growth
The Essay on Population that made Malthus's reputation also gave him a strong voice in a new community of scholars. Joining a circle of men committed to the science of self-interest, he began to debate the nature of the business cycle, the implications of foreign trade and the future of economic growth.
Despite his observation that moral restraint might slow the growth of population, he and virtually all his colleagues remained convinced that wages could not, in the long run, exceed subsistence.8This skepticism was firmly rooted in assumptions regarding the limits of technological change. The quantity of land was fixed. Even if agricultural productivity grew, it could not, Malthus insisted, keep pace with population growth. In the words of one historian of economic thought, Malthusian arguments ‘‘cast a shadow over the optimism of early classicism.''9 Ricardian
146 GREED, LUST & GENDER arguments cast an even darker shadow. Malthus emphasized the adverse effects of population growth on wages; Ricardo explained in more detail how population growth would increase the demand for food, which would require expansion of cultivation into less fertile and productive areas, increasing the price of food. Capitalists—whether in agriculture or in industry—would be forced to pay higher wages in order to feed their workers. This would necessarily lower their profits and bring a halt to economic growth. Ricardo was initially more optimistic about the potential for innovation in manufacturing. In the third edition of his Principles of Political Economy, however, he noted that labor-saving innovations could have the effect of throwing men out of work for more than a short while.
Such gloom and doom help explain why political economy was dubbed ‘‘the dismal science”, though the author of that phrase, Thomas Carlyle, also registered distinctly racist, pro-slavery complaints.10 What made the new pessimism both plausible and aggravating was the irregular rhythm of economic transformation.
The growth of cottage industry contributed to a new prosperity, making it possible for men and women to marry at a younger age. But the handloom weavers soon became painfully vulnerable to relentless competition from new textile factories springing up in Manchester and other cities. In 1811, resentful saboteurs under the colorful banner of General Ned Ludd and his Army of Redressers began smashing machinery.Trends in the standard of living of British workers in the era of industrialization have been hotly debated for many years. The emerging consensus suggests that the gains made before the 1840s were at best uneven. 11 The war with Napoleon, which lasted until 1815, consumed vast sums of money and manpower. Wealthy landowners who sought, above all, to keep taxes low dominated Parliament. Ordinary men and women had little voice. In 1819, workers gathered outside the city of Manchester to demand the right to vote. Among the many rabble rousers scheduled to speak was Mary Fildes, a leader of the Manchester Female Reform group (and known advocate of contraception). Fearing a riot, magistrates attempted to arrest the leadership. In the ensuing Peterloo Massacre, eleven people were killed, and many more wounded.12
A Reform Movement gradually gained momentum, leading to an expansion of the franchise in 1832 that was neatly calculated to allow working men
with a modicum of property to vote.13 The consequences of wealth inequality became apparent, and the Poor Law Reform of 1834 increased feelings of class antagonism. The cotton industry was particularly hard hit by economic contractions at the beginning and end of the 1840s. 14 Labor organizers began defying laws against trade unions. The Chartist Movement began demanding universal male suffrage.
Malthusian principles offered a shield of sorts, deflecting attention from specific policies toward putatively natural laws. They were invoked more officiously in Great Britain than in either France or the United States.
Overpopulation was the least of French concerns, given the decimation of the French army by Napoleon’s ill-fated visions of territorial conquest. And perhaps capitalists looked good compared to emperors. Jean-Baptiste Say, an industrialist himself, retained his Smithian optimism. In the second edition of his Treatise, published in 1814, he persuaded many of his countrymen of the productivity of capital and the self-regulating nature of the market. 15 His countryman Sismondi, less enthusiastic about market efficiency, faulted Malthus for not looking beyond England to the global economy as a whole, in which land was abundant.16American economists were even more faithful to the ideal of progress. The white man’s Enlightenment burned brightly on the western frontier, where civilization sought victory over something it called barbarism. Alexander Everett and Henry C. Carey, marveling at the abundance of land in the U.S., proclaimed that increased population was a boon, not a burden, because it promoted technical change and a more advanced division of labor. 17 Carey interpreted the Ricardian claim that population growth would limit the wealth of nations as a scandalous infidelity to Adam Smith.18