rxians, as a "tool of the capitalistic class," seeking to dampen the
ardor of those who expressed the belief that men might create a better
world for themselves. Malthus, they claimed, was actuated by selfish
class motives. He was not merely a hidebound aristocrat, but a pessimist
who was trying to kill all hope of human progress. By Marx, Engels,
Bebel, Karl Kautsky, and all the celebrated leaders and interpreters
of Marx's great "Bible of the working class," down to the martyred Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Birth Control has been looked upon as a
subtle, Machiavellian sophistry created for the purpose of placing the
blame for human misery elsewhere than at the door of the capitalist
class. Upon this point the orthodox Marxian mind has been universally
and sternly uncompromising.

Marxian vituperation of Malthus and his followers is illuminating. It
reveals not the weakness of the thinker attacked, but of the aggressor.
This is nowhere more evident than in Marx's "Capital" itself. In that
monumental effort, it is impossible to discover any adequate refutation
or even calm discussion of the dangers of irresponsible parenthood
and reckless breeding, any suspicion that this recklessness and
irresponsibility is even remotely related to the miseries of the
proletariat. Poor Malthus is there relegated to the humble level of
a footnote. "If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose essay on
Population appeared in 1798," Marx remarks somewhat tartly, "I
remind him that this work in its first form is nothing more than
a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart,
Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, etc., and does not contain a single
sentence thought out by himself. The great sensation this pamphlet
caused was due solely to party interest. The French Revolution had
passionate defenders in the United Kingdom.... `The Principles of
Population' was quoted with jubilance by the English oligarchy as the
great destroyer of all hankerings after human development."(1)

The only attempt that Marx makes here toward answering the theory of
Malthus is to declare that most of the population theory teachers were
merely Protestant parsons.--"Parson Wallace, Parson Townsend, Parson
Malthus and his pupil the Arch-Parson Thomas Chalmers, to say nothing
of the lesser reverend scribblers in this line." The great pioneer of
"scientific" Socialism then proceeds to berate parsons as philosophers
and economists, using this method o