Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 12:28:32 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Rev Thomas Malthus returns


James Heartfield wrote:

>Here Proyect departs from any pretence of Marxism. Adoption of modern
>farming techniques in the US have increased yields exponentially, to
>become a net grain exporter. The Malthusian myth that natural resources
>will run out if population is not restricted is precisely what Julian
>Simon argued against. And that myth has been exposed in every one of the
>two hundred years since Malthus wrote his Essay on Population.

What then do you make of this passage from Capital, vol. 1 [p. 638 of the
Penguin edition], James?

"In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in the
productivity and mobility of labour is purchased at the cost of laying
waste and debilitating labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in
capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the
worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility
of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more
long-lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country proceeds from
large-scale industry as the background of its development, as in the case
of the United States, the more rapid is this process of destruction."

Marx's celebration of capitalist "progress" was highly ambivalent. Not so
Julian Simon. I can understand refuting Malthus; I can understand reading
Simon to do so. But this kind of cheerleading has nothing to do with
Marxism and everything to do with capitalist propaganda.

Doug




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