Thomas Malthus and Marxist theory

[trizzonamus]

Hey this question may be a bit out of left field; but here goes. I've been wondering about Thomas Malthus' theory of The Principle of Population, which is the idea that future human progress will be stifled by human population growing to unsustainable levels. I understand that Marx objected strongly to this theory, but I'm not clear on exactly why. If anyone has any insight on this help me out.

[Vanguard1917]

A brief summary of the two positions:

http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/work/popissue.html

[JimmyJazz]

More stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Godwin#Attack_by_.28and_upon.29_Malthus

http://books.google.com/books?id=tDsui1AA7mIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=against+the+market+marxist+critique#PPP7,M1

According to that first link, Malthus started out in radical/socialist circles, then pulled a David Horowitz, and wrote his book on population explicitly to refute the idea that society could produce enough wealth to feed and care for all its citizens (including all the producers themselves). So it isn't the case that radicals simply like to pick on Malthus, but that he took aim at them first. His book was basically an attempt to show that increasing scarcity will always make a socialist commonwealth impossible.

You find the same fatalistic streak in other conservative writers like Edmund Burke and Richard Pipes. Burke would like democracy to work, Pipes would like socialism to work, but they're just convinced that it can't (and will argue for 700 pages why this is the case).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

There's a detailed demolition of Malthus's argument (and of Darwin's use of it) in a book I have uploaded here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/208568596/Darwinian_Fairytales_complete.pdf.html

Use the 'Free User' button, and read chapters 1-3.