These remarks suggest far-reaching agreement, a brotherhood in arms of Sismondi and Malthus, at least in their opposition against Ricardo and his school. Marx considers the _Principles of Political Economy_, which Malthus published in 1820, an outright plagiarism of the _Nouveaux Principes_ which had been published the year before. Yet Sismondi and Malthus are frequently at odds regarding the problem with which we are here concerned. Sismondi is critical of capitalist production, he attacks it sharply, even denounces it, while Malthus stands for the defence. This does not mean that he denies its inherent contradictions, as Say or MacCulloch had done. On the contrary he raises them quite unmercifully to the status of a natural law and asserts their absolute sanctity. Sismondi's guiding principle is the interests of the workers. He aspires, though rather generally and vaguely, towards a thoroughgoing reform of distribution in favour of the proletariat. Malthus provides the ideology for those strata who are the parasites of capitalist exploitation, who live on ground rent and draw upon the common wealth, and advocates the allocation of the greatest possible portion of the surplus value to these 'unproductive consumers'. Sismondi's general approach is predominantly ethical, it is the approach of the social reformer. Improving upon the classics, he stresses, in opposition to them, that 'consumption is the only end of accumulation', and pleads for restricted accumulation. Malthus, on the contrary, bluntly declares that production has no other purpose than accumulation and advocates unlimited accumulation by the capitalists, to be supplemented and assured by the unlimited consumption of their parasites. Finally, Sismondi starts off with a critical analysis of the reproductive process, of the relation between capital and income from the point of view of society; while Malthus, opposing Ricardo, begins with an absurd theory of value from which he derives an equally absurd theory of surplus value, attempting to explain capitalist profits as an addition to the price over and above the value of commodities.[223] Malthus opposes the postulate that supply and demand are identical with a detailed critique in chapter vi of his _Definitions in Political Economy_.[224] In his _Elements of Political Economy_, James Mill had declared: