An Essay on the Principle of Population

Why it’s on the list: Malthus’s 1798 argument that population grows geometrically while the means of subsistence grow arithmetically, so growth is checked by want rather than dissolved by improvement. Written against Godwin and Condorcet’s faith in indefinite progress, it is the pessimistic limit case much of economics has been answering since.

Where I heard about it

• University of Austin — assigned in Intellectual Foundations of Economics on its Fall 2025 reading list (November 2025), alongside Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions, Mill’s Utilitarianism, the Communist Manifesto, Lenin’s State and Revolution and Hayek’s Pretence of Knowledge. Full curriculum: UATX Fall Reading List.

About this edition

Published anonymously in 1798, then rewritten repeatedly over the next three decades as the objections came in. The first edition and the much-expanded later ones are very different lengths; the course names no edition.

Connections

• UATX Fall Reading List — the curriculum this was assigned in.
• The University of Austin — the institution whose course list this is.
• Economics — the course subject.
• Degrowth — the modern descendant of the argument.
• Progress — what Malthus was writing against.
• Ideological Family Tree