Engels and Marx, Malthusians?

It would seem strange, perhaps even tendentious, to claim that Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx were “Malthusians” in any respect. Engels and Marx repeatedly dismissed Malthus as a plagiarist and sycophant, and scathing criticisms of Malthus can be found across their major writings. By shedding new light on Malthus’s idea of “hopeless poverty,” I show that in the case of Engels and Marx’s analyses of the Karrenbinder and lumpenproletariat, they bear striking resemblance to Malthus. The consequences of this are three-fold. First, it demands a reconsideration of the role of isolation in Engels and Marx, as opposed to alienation. Second, it allows us to recast the problems of demoralization Engels and Marx identify in the isolated poor as a Malthusian anxiety, revealing concerns not so much with “population bombs” but marginalized poverty and urban criminality. Finally, I suggest that when interpreted from this perspective, Engels and Marx’s views on the isolated poor point to a unique vantage from which we can assess the practical value of William Julius Wilson’s sociological studies, despite Marxist criticism to the contrary.