On Darwin and Malthus
‘Darwin, at whom I have had another look, amuses me by saying that he applies the ‘Malthusian’ theory also to plants and animals : the whole point about Malthus was that it was to be applied not to plants and animals but only to men – in geometric progression – in contradistinction to plants and animals. It is notable that Darwin recognises among the beasts and plants his own English society with its division of labour, competition, opening of new markets, ‘inventions’, and Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’. This is Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes [the war of all against all] and it reminds one of Hegel in his Phenomenology, where bourgeois society appears as a ‘spiritual animal kingdom’, while the animal kingdom appears to Darwin as a bourgeois society…….’
spmay 