Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus , né près de Guildford (Surrey) le 13 février 17661 et mort à Bath (Somerset) le 23 décembre 1834, est un économiste britannique de l'École classique, et également un pasteur anglican.

Il est surtout connu pour ses travaux sur les rapports entre les dynamiques de croissance de la population et la production, analysés dans une perspective pessimiste, totalement opposée à l'idée smithienne d'un équilibre harmonieux et stable.

Son nom a donné dans le langage courant un adjectif, « malthusien », pour caractériser un état d'esprit conservateur qui s'oppose à l'investissement et craint la rareté et une doctrine, le malthusianisme, qui impose une politique active de contrôle de la croissance de la population.

“A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he do not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come fills the hall with numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity ; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learnt too late their error, in counteracting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full”