I think you are mistaken about Malthus's central point. In fact, he was absolutely right that in the natural course of events, population increase would outstrip the ability to grow food, and humanity would face disaster. He was only wrong, if you can even call it that, because of a series of events that nobody could have foreseen have delayed the reckoning. The first, just after his death, was the discovery of massive deposits of bird guano in the pacific, followed by the discovery of nitrates in Chile, that allowed farmers to raise sufficient food to meet the needs of their booming populations. Neither could reasonably have been foreseen by Malthus, and neither makes him wrong--it just delayed the reckoning. Even given that, by the turn of the 20th C. it was evident that these deposits were giving out even as food demand was increasing, and pretty much all serious scientists saw world-wide famine coming, interestingly, first for Europe, which as wheat eaters, and thus more dependent on fertilizer, would no longer be able to produce enough food. Once more, something happened that nobody could have foreseen. Fritz Haber and Bosch almost magically came up with a way to fix nitrogen in a factory scale, which made powerful fertilizers a commodity that could be manufactured in any quantity. Without that triumph of science and engineering, massive Malthusian famine had been only a decade or so away. Then, in the 1960's it seemed that worldwide famine was coming again because of the population explosion, this time first to the non-wheat peoples. But the Green Revolution happened, a true scientific miracle, and it was forestalled again. We're facing it once more, but GMO's and similar high-tech seem like they will head it off one more time. None of this series of miracles makes him wrong! The population is getting ready to collapse, so we may avoid the Malthusian disaster, but again, it could not have been foreseen, and if anything, it supports his overall view, that exponential population growth will always eventually end in famine.