ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to trace the relationship between Malthus and the organization of modernity. It discusses how the principle of population attaches itself to new places and people in order to invent and reinvent the Malthusian couple. The chapter describes how Malthus's ideas arrived in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. It highlights the importance of Malthus as a rhetorician and as a political economist. The chapter demonstrates how the principle of population begins to be recontextualized in the second half of the nineteenth century through its encounter with the discourses of race and empire. One reason for turning to how the principle of population penetrated the debates taking place in classical political economy is to take up Arthur Walzer's insight concerning Malthus's relationship to the Enlightenment. Malthus problematized the power of population in such a way that the body became a central component in the discourses of social planning.
