Growthism by Kent Welton




“To hasten growth is to hasten decay.” (Lao Tzu)

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” (Edward Abbey)

“The real meaning of capital’s progress is that growth must proceed until all desirable optimums are exhausted and destroyed. Preservation of any human or ecological balance, and more desirable state of affairs, is denied in theory and practice.” (Kent Welton)

“I think that when we are discussing global imbalances, we have to think about the causes. The biggest cause is the economic myths and our growth-mania. And more growth is not the solution. This economic growth-mania has already created the biggest extinction of life the Earth has seen in the last 65 millions of years… We are not solving economic problems and, as a matter of fact, we are creating economical problems along with social and ecological imbalances.” (The Daily Reckoning)

“The vast mass of mediocre economists are entrapped in their own unnatural love for a growing gross national product. Growthmania is surely the most pervasive social disease in America… most economists are hooked on growth the way junkies are hooked on heroin.” (Paul Ehrlich)

“A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.” (Paul Samuelson)

“At critical size, the survival requirements of society begin to increase at a faster rate than productivity. As a result, an ever-increasing proportion of goods previously available for raising personal living standards must be diverted to social use… It makes no difference whether the body is governed by a capitalist or communist brain. In either case it suffers from the inner instability of the overgrown… the only way of restoring stability and manageability is not by changing governments or economic systems but by reducing social size to a magnitude commensurate to the small stature of Man.” (Leopold Kohr)

 

Two Dead-Ends: “Grow or Die” & “Grow and Die”

What is commonly termed ‘economic growth’ today is a combination of productivity enhancements and population increase. In fact, nearly 70 per cent of so-called economic ‘growth’ is not productivity rise but simply population increase, not to mention inflation and currency decline further skewing the statistics.

Despite increases in sales and profits in recent decades have we have seen nearly unrelieved declines in real wages, political power, and per-capita estates of wage-laboring majorities.

For these reasons it is the task of capital’s economists to translate real decline, and ‘trickle-up’ transfers of wealth from the many to the few, into ‘growth’ and ‘universal gain.’ The trick here is to mask decline, hide concentrations of wealth and power, and protect capital’s factor hegemony from which the greater profit and power is mined.

While a labor with a few shares of stock may be temporarily profited by concerns exploiting disparities between markets, at the same time one’ job, community, and children’ future are devastated by capital’ extortions gone global. Short-term gains in one’s meager stock portfolio are subject not only to market declines but most are also hit by ‘flexible’ employment, job export and loss, wage ruin, devaluation, overcrowding, debt, eco-collapse and declining natural estates.

Ravaged by multiple booms and busts, and subject to at-will employments without refuge, many never gain in real terms or recover losses. We may lose all we have worked for and remain locked into wage-labor. In fact, most ‘retire’ into subsidized poverty with a declining currency courtesy of capital’s ‘free’ trade. Given endless booms and busts, what is termed ‘growth’ by economists is often but recovery of losses suffered in the last decline. In effect, we are going nowhere as recovery of our previous position is confused with growth. In fact, we may only be re-attaining what we once had… in a more crowded world. When and if we do recover, or gain in real terms, a new decline soon begins and, once again, we may lose our jobs, health, wealth, security, and any landed freedom attained.

In practice, we may spend half our lives getting back to where we once were, only to find we have worked all our lives to get nowhere! Real surplus from a lifetime of wage-work is either non-existent or, more likely, in someone else?fs hands along with the land for independence.

Nevertheless, capital’s economists refer to this state of affairs as ‘progress,’ and recommend its replication everywhere. As always, recovery, salvation, and re-enfranchisement are just around the corner… if only we allow more ‘growth’.

As a process without limits, Growthism has no relationship to the most important qualities in our lives, much less social equity, democracy, human rights, factor balance, or environmental sustainability. As a goal and good measured only by increases in widgets and beings, a short-term, quality-less, profit and per-capita ruin becomes an end unto itself. Corrupt values and dismal measures drive a corporate need divorced from effective freedom, democracy, and eco-sustainability… and continually crush the better estate.

Growthism has become the intellectual equivalent of perpetual-motion machines – i.e., a dogma device driving a pseudo economics, feeding an empty ideology, and meant to give the illusion of progress as corporate predation and per-capita decline in the essential qualities of life proceed.

Economics [centered on growthism] remains then, at best, a half-brained ideology missing essential concepts of factor and population balance, feminine values, qualitative measures, and right relation to nature’s sinks and capacities.

As a quantity-driven faith without relation to equity, balance, or the condition of one’s community and environment, Growthism lacks both context and assent by the vast majority. As such, it is doomed to produce social and ecological ruin, and political turmoil. With balance and balancing values missing from our core societal ethics, and within a finite space on earth, the prevailing ethic of “grow or die” becomes one of “grow and die”.

(This article is an excerpt of “GROWTHISM – The `Economic’ Cancer of Growth-To-Ruin” by Kent Welton)

Keywords: economic growth, GDP, growthism, growth cancer, overpopulation, ecosocial crisis, ecosocionomics, political economy, steady-state economics, life-sustaining civilization design

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Published::
8.28.07 / 10am
Category:
Ecosocionomics, Global Governance, Means, Paths, Ends
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