Population Theories and their Economic Interpretation by Sydney H. Coontz

Author:Sydney H. Coontz [Coontz, Sydney H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136228902
Google: G65RVnPd_S4C
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-07-04T05:48:08+00:00

Chapter Five

The Economic Analysis Continued: Marxian and Leninist Influence on Soviet Demography

SOVIET demographic theory, as represented in the currently available writings of Urlanis, Boyarski, and Shusherin, is based on Marx’s and Lenin’s analyses of capitalism. This therefore requires a general knowledge of Marx’s theory of capitalist development and, more particularly, familiarity with Marx’s doctrine of relative overpopulation under capitalism. But a knowledge of Marx alone is not sufficient, since Soviet demographers stress heavily Lenin’s thesis of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism. The procedure followed in this chapter therefore is to begin with Marx, proceed to Lenin and, then only, to consider current population theory in the Soviet Union.

Marx’s strictures on Malthus surpass those of Sadler. For whereas Sadler was concerned only to argue that Malthus had plagiarized the population theory, Marx denies Malthus originality in any field. According to Marx, neither Malthus’ doctrine of rent nor the theory of population was discovered by him:

Malthus used this theory of rent of Anderson’s in order to endow his law of population for the first time with an economic and real, natural-historical foundation, for his nonsense (borrowed) from earlier writers about the geometrical and arithmetical progressions was a purely chimerical hypothesis. Malthus availed himself of the opportunity at once…. A careful comparison of their work shows that he knows Anderson and uses him. Malthus was altogether a plagiarist by profession. One has only to compare the first edition of his work on population with the work by the Rev. Townsend to become convinced that he does not use the latter as raw material, as an independent producer would, but that he copies and paraphrases him, like a slavish plagiarist, although he nowhere mentions him, keeping his existence a secret.1

And the doctrine of overproduction has its origin in Sismondi:

Who would think at first sight that Malthus’s Principles of Political Economy was merely a Malthusianized version of Sismondi’s Nouveaux Principles de l’Economie Politique? And yet this is in fact the case. Sismondi’s book appeared in 1819. One year later Malthus’s English caricature of it saw the light of day … here too with Sismondi he found a theoretical foothold for one of his bulky economic tracts—in which, incidentally, the new theories which he had learned from Ricardo’s Principles also came in handy.

Just as Malthus, when opposing Ricardo, fought against those tendencies of capitalist production which were revolutionary in relation to the old society, so with the unerring instinct of a parson he took from Sismondi only what was reactionary in relation to capitalist production, in relation to modern bourgeois society.2

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