Gregory Clark, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, has written a work of economic theory that has shaken the very foundations of the established views of wealth and poverty, and, in the words of the New York Times, is "the next blockbuster in economics."  Besides the book's startling initial impact, it has been viewed as a work of enormous controversy, and as challenging the received knowledge of modern economic theory. All considered, the book would appear to be a modern incarnation of great classic works like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Marx's Capital, or Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population.

Appearances in this case, however, are deceiving. In point of fact, the book is immensely flawed–so flawed that it would take another book to adequately cover all the flaws. But given space constraints, I would like to here focus on what I consider the three main failings of the work: (1) The presumption that the assumptions of the guiding theory of the text–the Malthusian trap — are unquestionably correct and therefore fully support the author's thesis. (2) The exclusion of virtually all alternative social and historical causes for the kind of political economy Clark theorizes, particularly with regard to the causes of poverty and population variations. (3)  The claim that there is a direct, demonstrable correlation between phylogenic development and wealth and poverty, i.e., what amounts to a subtle reformulation of social Darwinist-biological determinist thinking.

The general thesis of Clark's work is that the acquisition of wealth is an inherited characteristic, as opposed to a social-historical legacy. The characteristic which, according to Clark, had lain dormant in humans since prehistoric times was triggered at approximately the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (1800). But it was not–as many economists believe– the political, social and economic stability that emerged during the Industrial Revolution that opened this new avenue to wealth. On the contrary, the external environment had little if any influence on the accumulation of personal wealth. After all, people had lived under more or less the same environmental conditions since hunter-gatherer times. Rather, in some uncanny way the arrival of the Industrial Revolution set into motion entirely new and different attitudes in the British gentry, ones guided by the virtues of hard work, education, saving rather than wasting, and rational thought, as opposed to the violence, irrationality, and impatience so indicative of primitive tribal cultures. It also warmed the normally frigid loins of that same British gentry, creating an unprecedented rise in fertility and, subsequently, offspring. The remarkable turn of events in 1800 eventually led to the acquisition of wealth, and an unprecedented emergence from the throes of a completely impoverished world. This emergence, however, was not easily accomplished. It required overcoming the foremost impediment to accumulating wealth: the so-called Malthusian Trap.

Trap or Crap?

The guiding concept of the "trap" is relatively simple. It is derived from Thomas Robert Malthus's influential work, An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus summarizes his theory in the following way:

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. [1]

This rather dogmatic conclusion, however, is supported by neither rigorous

scientific data nor anthropological evidence, but, rather, by invoking "the fixed laws of nature" dictated and maintained by "that Being who first arranged the system of the universe." Not much, it seems, to hang a revolutionary new economic theory on.

But even given its largely metaphysical, theological, and speculative origins, Clark assumes that the extrapolated Malthusian trap is the economic equivalent of gravity itself. Like gravity, it is imminently demonstrable, undeniable, and constitutes a universally valid law. Indeed, Clark even goes so far as to illustrate the implacable, irresistible, and tangible force of the Trap in a graph (Figure 1.1, p. 2) that shows it as creating a more or less economic flat- line from BCE 1000 to the onset of the Industrial Revolution (1800).  The explanation under the graph reads "World economic history in one picture."

"One picture," in Clark's view, seems to fit all. The myriad other pictures, however, do not tend to confirm his unfailing belief in a model derived from an economic theory inspired by that "Being who first arranged the system of the universe." The criticisms directed at the accuracy and applicability of Malthusian population theory regarding its economic implications are indeed plentiful, ranging historically from Malthus's own time to the present. Malthus's contemporary David Ricardo, for example, found very little to recommend his Principle of Political Economy: "There is hardly a page which does not contain some fallacy." [2] Modern views are not much kinder. John Kenneth Galbraith writes: "But among the many who sought to put the poverty of the poor on the shoulders of the poor–or remove it from those of the more affluent–none did so more completely than Malthus." [3] Joseph Schumpeter saw Malthus's population theory in an even darker perspective, arguing that it was basically valueless: "The teaching of Malthus's Essay became firmly entrenched in the system of economic orthodoxy of the time in spite of the fact that it should have been, and in a sense was, recognized as fundamentally untenable or worthless. . ." [4]  In a more contemporary vein, Rosalind Petchesky considers the fatal flaws in both Malthusian and anti-Malthusian positions to involve blatantly anti-feminist thinking, that is, to wrongly assume that it is natural for women to both want and to have numerous children; that community and state interests take precedence over women's interests in reproduction, and that there is no contradiction between women and men as to how, whether, or when to control reproduction.[5]

The above criticisms of Malthus's thought pale, however, in comparison to those of Marx and Engels. Marx himself wrote many passages critical of Malthus's theories, but perhaps none so scathing as a famous footnote in Capital disparaging the Essay on Population on numerous points, but particularly with regard to its unoriginal character:

If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose "Essay on Population" appeared in 1798, I remind  him that this work in its first form is nothing more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of Defoe, Sir James Steurt, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace &c, and does not contain a single sentence thought of by himself. The great sensation this pamphlet caused was due solely to party interest. . . .Malthus, hugely astonished by his success, gave himself to stalling into his book materials superficially compiled, and adding to it new matter, not discovered but annexed by him. [6]

Engels is not quite as accusatory and colorful in his comments, but no less critical. In his essay on political economy, he attacks Malthusian population theory for, in a manner of speaking, completely missing the point:

Malthus, the originator of this doctrine, maintains that population is always pressing on the means of subsistence; that as soon as production increases in the same proportion; and that the inherent tendency of population to multiply in excess of the available means of subsistence is the root of all misery and all vice. . . . If Malthus had not considered the matter so one-sidedly, he could not have failed to see that surplus population or labor power is invariably tied up with surplus wealth, surplus capital, and surplus landed property…The population is only too large where the productive power as a whole is too large. . . .These were the facts which Malthus ought to have considered in their totality. And whose consideration was bound to have lead to the correct conclusion. Instead, he selected one fact, gave no consideration to the others, and therefore arrived at his crazy conclusion. [7]

Criticism in and of itself, of course, does not invalidate the work of a thinker. To be sure, there are numerous economists who have embraced and employed aspects of Malthus's theory, including the so-called trap. But Clark does not employ the concept of the trap as an accessory to or inspiration for his own theory. Instead, he stipulates that it charts the primary cause of wealth and poverty, and, in the end, asserts that "wealth–and wealth alone–is the crucial determinant of lifestyles, both within and between societies."[8] All this, derived entirely from a theory that seems to have neither scientific nor, according to Ricardo's implication, logical grounding. A course something like claiming that the Ptolemaic theory would account perfectly for global warming–which would certainly be the case. Or, that the phlogiston theory would serve to explain the chemical reactions of combustion–which, in a somewhat odd sense, it would.

Do Wealth and Poverty Have Primarily Material and Natural Causes?

To say that Clark overlooks numerous other pertinent factors in the creation of wealth and poverty is a vast understatement. But he does not overlook these factors unintentionally. This calculated oversight becomes clear in an early statement regarding more traditional views of economic history, particularly those related to the Industrial Revolution:

The focus on material condition in this history will strike some as too narrow, too incidental to vast social changes over the millennia. Surely our material riches reflect but a tiny fraction of what makes industrialized societies modern.

On the contrary, there is ample evidence that wealth–and wealth alone–is the crucial determinant of lifestyles, both within and between societies.[9]

The obvious questions that arise from the above claim are: how could wealth possibly not itself be the product of those "vast social changes over the millennia," and therefore dependent principally on those changes? And, by extension, how could wealth possibly stand alone in being the "crucial determinant" of the abovementioned lifestyles,

while detached from the countless socio-economic and political acts that generated it historically?    

The narrowness of Clark's analysis is observable in virtually all of the early chapters devoted to fleshing out his conception of the effects of the Malthusian trap. In chapter 3, for example, he gives us a great deal of what he calls "empirical" evidence regarding the history of worldwide living standards prior to the Industrial Revolution. The chapter is replete with charts and graphs containing quantative data about wages, human height, nutrition, birth rates, and a few other indicators of economic status. The figures displayed in the charts seem precise and objective, to the extent that we are informed that the Ache women of Paraguay consumed on the average exactly 2,630 kilocalories daily, consisting mostly of palm fiber and shoots. Other arcane statistics indicate that the Shipibo toiled for only 3.4 hours a day on subsistence agriculture and fishing, while the average British worker of 1800 was employed for 9.1 hours of the day. The main point here being that the living standards for the rather primitive Ache and Shipibo were more or less the same as those of the British worker, and achieved with significantly less effort and time. By the end of chapter 3, the immense catalog of quantative statistics drawn from the historical and skeletal record is cited as "ample evidence to support the key contention of the Malthusian model." [10]

The problem with the above chapter and most of the rest of Clark's work is that all of the statistical data he cites were the direct result of complex and differing socio-political or historical occurrences not adequately reflected in the statistics.  To simply recount the results of historical or skeletal remains surveys only provides a minute part of the overall picture. This becomes painfully clear if one takes the island of Hispaniola as an example of population dynamics.  Prior to its "discovery" by Columbus in 1492, Hispaniola was a thriving island community of about 8 million inhabitants (a commonly accepted estimate). The Arawak/Taino natives fished, hunted and farmed to maintain their standard of living, which, in Clark's view, was probably more or less equal to that of western Europe at the moment. But a short time after Columbus's arrival, a curious population glitch occurred. By 1496 the population of Hispaniola had declined by about a half to four or five million. By 1508 it was down to less than a hundred thousand. By 1518 it numbered less than twenty thousand, and by 1545 the entire native population of Hispaniola was effectively extinct. [11] This precipitous decline had certain material causes–no doubt recordable in Clark's statistical charts and graphs–but it also reflected a significant socio-economic factor, that is, the dire results of the exploitation of native populations for their resources. In this particular case, Spain's attempt to build both national and personal wealth. The Spanish missionary, Bartolome de Las Casas, imparts some of the sheer abjection of wealth building on Hispaniola:

Once the Indians were in the woods, the next step was to form squadrons and pursue them, and whenever the Spaniards found them, they pitilessly slaughtered everyone like sheep in a corral. It was a general rule among Spaniards to be cruel, but extraordinarily cruel so that harsh and bitter treatment would prevent Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings or having a minute to think at all. So they would cut an Indian's hands and leave them dangling by a shred of skin and they would send him on saying 'Go now, spread the news to your chiefs.' They would test their swords and their manly strength on captured Indians and place bets on the slicing off of heads or the cutting of bodies in half with one blow. They burned or hanged captured chiefs. [12]

What is also missing in the picture drawn by Clark's narrow statistical view is the extent to which the economic exploitation factor had affected population and poverty in the Americas in general after 1500. After decimating the populations of the Caribbean islands, the Spanish conquerors and other Europeans moved on into Mexico, Central and South America. Population declines were similar to those in earlier discovered islands, as were the brutal tactics and disease epidemics. "Overall in central Mexico the population fell by almost 95 percent within seventy-five years following the Europeans first appearance–from more than 25,000,000 people in 1519 to 1,300,000 in 1595." [13] This remarkable decline in population could hardly be accounted for in purely Malthusian terms. The relative size of the populations of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America in the 16^th century may have been subject to the pressures of certain material dynamics, but whatever population that may have been produced or lost was certainly not exclusively the result of these factors. Life spans, incomes, farming yields, caloric intake, average heights, etc. seem insignificant in view of the massive slaughter and epidemics that took place during the 16^th century in the Americas.  

In the above respect, one could also cite large dislocations of populations that do not seem to fit Malthusian abstractions. The Atlantic slave trade, for example, imported approximately 25,000,000 young African men and women to the Americas during the period of 1450 through 1850. Charting and rigorously quantifying fertility, nutrition, height, real wages (!), and so on seems lacking in several important respects. Although African population was reduced significantly during this period, much of the reduction could not be attributed to material or natural causes within the African continent. Food production in Africa meant little to those who were forced to produce goods and agricultural products for slave owners in the New World. Population growth was stunted not because of the Malthusian trap, but by the violent removal of potential generations of African offspring. The same could be said for a later African phenomenon: the Belgian colonization of the Congo. During the nearly 30 year occupation of the so-called Congo Free State by Belgium's King Leopold II, the population of the Congo and Central Africa in general declined by some 7-10 million. There was very little natural or "material" about the decline. Most of the deceased Congolese natives were worked to death in the rubber plantations or ivory mills. Many others were slaughtered outright by the Force Publique–vicious mercenaries hired by Leopold to keep "law and order" in the Congo Free State. [14] Still others died of disease or enforced starvation, as it was common for resistant native populations to be driven out of their villages into the jungle. [15]

Now one might argue that the province of economic theorists is economics, and that social, cultural and political extensions are best left to others in other fields. There is probably some truth to the statement, but the work of many economists belies this claim. The socio-political, historical, and philosophical extensions of Marx's writing are well known. Engels, too, wrote numerous tracts on politics, religion, family dynamics, neo-Hegelianism, and a spate of other subjects generally considered peripheral to economic theory. This tendency to incorporate other fields of inquiry into economic theory also extends to modern economists like J.M. Keynes, Galbraith, Paul Krugman, and Lester Turow. Even Malthus himself deliberated seriously on certain societal conditions contributing to the exploitation of British workers in his own time. The weakness of relying solely on statistics and abstraction in developing economic theories is perhaps best summed up by another of Marx's comments on Malthusian theory: "overpopulation is. . .a historically determined relation, in no way determined by abstract numbers or by the absolute limit of the productivity of the necessaries of life, but by the limits posited rather by specific conditions of production." [16]

Forget the Poor

It is not surprising that as a close follower of Malthusian theory Clark would be accused of social Darwinism (an accusation he vigorously denies in an on-line interview).[17] After all, Malthus had influenced Darwin and written numerous passages that seemed like previews of some later conception of evolutionary fatalism: "It has appeared, that from the inevitable laws of our nature some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank." [18] Despite his denial of being a social Darwinist, Clark's conclusions regarding poverty and the poor follow precisely the tenets of this movement, which is perhaps best described by Stephen Jay Gould in his seminal work on biometrics, psychometrics, and racism, The Mismeasure of Man, as "the general term for any evolutionary argument about the biological basis of human differences, but the initial meaning referred to a specific theory of class stratification within industrial societies, particularly to the idea that a permanently poor underclass consisting of genetically inferior people had precipitated down into their inevitable fate."[19]

Like social Darwinists-biological determinists in general, Clark is careful to eliminate or diminish the effects of "inconvenient" socially and culturally produced phenomena–what Gould sometimes refers to as "anomalies."  He thus grounds his theory in only those "natural" and materially observable facts that can be reified and recorded in terms of numerical or mathematical quotients, generally avoiding other crucial elements inconsistent with his central thesis.  Although this approach appears throughout, a particularly striking example occurs with his analysis of happiness in the concluding chapter of the text. Happiness, of course, is neither a concrete entity nor a static measurable state; rather, it is, like nature, truth, beauty, intelligence, and so on, an abstract and extraordinarily complex term that has been explored critically by both philosophers and psychologists since Aristotle's time.  Is happiness the entelechy of a virtuous life? Is it achievable at all?  To what extent is psychological well-being a source of happiness? Is the source of happiness inner or external, or a combination of both? These are just a few of the questions raised in the millennial investigation of this vexing subject. But, even given its immense complexity, Clark treats it–with the assistance of "happiness researchers"– as though one could simply assign a specific number to happiness and sum up its effects statistically. On this, he matter-of-factly writes:

The second set of evidence (graph in fig. 18.1, p. 385) is derived from administration of the same survey questions. . .People in contemporary countries as poor as  those of the world before 1800 on average report little difference in happiness from those in very rich countries such as the United States. Average happiness at an income level of $20,000 is only modestly greater than that at $4,000 per person and less, the level of hunter-gatherer societies. At the national level the response of happiness to income is modest at best.[20]

          But what does the term "happiness" refer to here? Are people happy with their incomes or with their general state of being? If it refers to the latter, the graph is largely skewed.  Income represents merely a single value of happiness. And there are numerous circumstances in which income itself is largely negated as a contributing factor to happiness. For example, an Iraqi citizen making $20,000 annually in 2007 would, I expect, be far less happy than a Sumatran worker making $4,000 in the same year. This would no doubt also hold true nationally, thus weakening the claim that "on the national level the response of happiness to income is modest at best." The reason, of course, is that Iraqis live under the constant threat of violence, chaos, and death, while the others live a life of relative peace and security.  These factors and scores of other external "stressors" are not at all reflected in Clark's final conclusion. Yes, the graph shows that happiness does not vary much with income, but it tells one virtually nothing as to what happiness is–or even what it is in this limited context.

The ill-defined–perhaps undefined– notion of happiness leads elsewhere to an even more extreme view of the relation between poverty and happiness. This time Clark employs the poor of today as a guide to the happiness of pre-1800 societies and finds a key element lacking:

The finding that relative income is crucial also suggests that the poor countries today may not be a good guide to the likely happiness of the mass of humanity before 1800. These poor nations, through the medium of television, can witness almost firsthand the riches of successful economies. If this helps set the point of reference for the economic position for the people of poor societies, then possibly there is no absolute effect of income on happiness even at the lowest incomes. [21]

Not only is it absurd to assume that this basically undefined notion of happiness would remain constant over a 200 year period, therefore rendering the analogy null, but the suggestion that the poor in so-called poor countries sitting in front of their television sets watching reruns of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" in order to get their economic bearings in the world is both debasing and wrong on numerous counts. To begin with, indigenous organizations like Mexico's Chiapas and Zapatista movements, Hugo Chavez and his centralized Latin American bank know precisely where their "economic bearings" lie: findin

Categories: Philosophical