Since Mat has brought it up, the article in question is (by me, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.) "The Dialogue Between the Economic and the Ecologic Theories of Evolution," _Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization_, March 1992, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 195-215.
I simply note here that Malthus may well have been the economist that Marx despised the most. But I would also agree with Brad De Long that there are "undigested lumps of Malthusianism" in Marx's writings.
There is controversy about the degree of influence of Malthus on Darwin, as has been noted, but there certainly was influence. Darwin in turn influenced Marx and Engels because they saw evolution applying to society and they saw the gradualistic version of it contributing to a materialist assault on traditional idealist religion. They then had to resolve the contradiction as to how human evolution could proceed in a discontinuous dialectical fashion (see my article for further discussion on that).
BTW, a major generally forgotten figure in all this is the execrable Herbert Spencer. It was he who coined the term "survival of the fittest" and who also was very influential in tying biological and economic concepts together in Social Darwinism in the late nineteenth century. Barkley Rosser Barkley Rosser On Sat, 15 Aug 1998 11:37:00 -0400 Mathew Forstater <forstate at levy.org> wrote:
> Barkley Rosser has a good article on all this.
>
> Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
>
> > > > Isn't it interestng how Malthus struck a vain for both Marx and Darwin.
> > > > Regards.
> > > > Ed EVans
> >
> > Rakesh responds:>
> > > I think Darwin's debt to Malthus is much exaggerated.
> >
> > Hi Rakesh,
> >
> > I'm away from my library so I can't get you the exact cite, but, in the
> > *Origin of Species*, Darwin explicitly states that his theory is "Malthus
> > as applied to natural selection" or something of the sort. Desmond and
> > Moore, in their biography of Darwin (*Darwin*), also have a good bit on
> > this. I'll send the Darwin quotation along tomorrow.
> >
> > Frances
>
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu