Thomas Robert Malthus, Adam Smith and Karl Marx each address the influence of production and prices on the human population and well-being. Specifically, in relation to food, they had different expectations of the markets and growth in response to the industrial revolution. Malthus focuses on a big picture notion of food versus people, and how the human population will fight through scarcity. Smith concentrates on prosperity and its relation to the human population and productivity. Marx, similar to Smith, argues from a smaller picture and highlights how rural migration will affect populations and that welfare is deemed by those with power. In relation to poverty, each author has expectations of exploitation as one of the causes and misery
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In this he argued that, because of industry, farmers living on plenty of land and growing enough for their family needed to become wage-laborers (working under dangerous conditions) in cities. This change in methods of production, food production in particular, led to lower quality of life for the general population. When addressing the welfare of those who moved, and were employed by industry, Marx claimed that “the instrument of labor appears as a means of enslaving, exploiting and impoverishing the worker” (638). In this, Marx was in agreement with the other authors in that the worker has an unfortunate position in society, but he specifically focuses on how their misery is derived from industry and the hegemony of those who are not workers. Additionally, by moving to urban areas and struggling for employment in factories, the “primitive familial union” was “disintegrated” (637), meaning that the rural migration decimated family dynamics of the time (most likely for the worse). Inciting rural migration caused countless groups of people to collect in the urban environment and Marx believed this change would “[concentrate] the historical motive power of society” while also “[disturbing] the metabolic interaction between man and the Earth” (637). These claims further explain how the rural migration changed the average life – humans were no longer thriving with the land but rather facing a new technocratic, instrumentalist lifestyle. Overall, when discussing the well-being of the populations, Marx, like Malthus, touched on the misery of the populations saying that it is “a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth”
In this he argued that, because of industry, farmers living on plenty of land and growing enough for their family needed to become wage-laborers (working under dangerous conditions) in cities. This change in methods of production, food production in particular, led to lower quality of life for the general population. When addressing the welfare of those who moved, and were employed by industry, Marx claimed that “the instrument of labor appears as a means of enslaving, exploiting and impoverishing the worker” (638). In this, Marx was in agreement with the other authors in that the worker has an unfortunate position in society, but he specifically focuses on how their misery is derived from industry and the hegemony of those who are not workers. Additionally, by moving to urban areas and struggling for employment in factories, the “primitive familial union” was “disintegrated” (637), meaning that the rural migration decimated family dynamics of the time (most likely for the worse). Inciting rural migration caused countless groups of people to collect in the urban environment and Marx believed this change would “[concentrate] the historical motive power of society” while also “[disturbing] the metabolic interaction between man and the Earth” (637). These claims further explain how the rural migration changed the average life – humans were no longer thriving with the land but rather facing a new technocratic, instrumentalist lifestyle. Overall, when discussing the well-being of the populations, Marx, like Malthus, touched on the misery of the populations saying that it is “a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth”