Aren’t we going to need “growth” to help the 3/4s of the planet who aren’t living our life of luxury attain such standards? Or do you suggest levelling down..?

(not that I disagree entirely with yr analysis but it seems a bit simplistic and ignores the millions of people who need growth so they are no longer border-line starving or worse.)

Excellent post, but you make the same mistake as many on LC, socialism has moved on from stalinism and I’m sure that if Marx was still alive, he would agree too.
The fact is, the world has changed since Smith and Marx, but while we get so many bleating-on about markets etc, in fact very little difference from Smith’s original analysis, marxist/socialists have developed new theories and models to take account of the changes.
At some stage we are going to have to face the fact that we cannot carry-on in the way we are, not least because of the gross inefficiencies of the system, we either have to start addressing it now, at a more rational and considered pace, or attempt to damage control within utter chaos.

You can’t lift people out of poverty without growth.

Aled, you might think there is something noble in everyone being as dirt poor as everyone else – but there are some things that money CAN buy, like food, clothing, and housing.

4
This is just not true, money is not the same as economic growth, and it’s certainly tripe to assert that without economic growth the existing poor cannot have the material things you have mentioned.

I think we have to distinguish between growth in output and growth in productivity.

I agree that we should be wary of judging a society in terms of growth in output, as if this is always necessarily a good thing. Indeed, it may be that to satisfy environmental limits we have to accept slower growth in output than we’re accustomed to or zero growth or even a cut in output and income. (I don’t know if any of these is true, but one of them might well be.)

But surely there would still be an interest in growing productivity – in reducing how much input of labour or energy or raw materials we use to make a given amount of output? To the extent that labour is unpleasant – and a lot of it still is! – then surely we have an interest in having to do less of it for a given amount of output. And if we want to conserve natural resources, then we have an interest in using fewer of them for a given level of output.

Moreover, I think it was this – growth in productivity – that Marx was really interested in when he spoke about the ‘development of the forces of production’. His concern was with the human capacity to produce, not the level of production as such. His vision of communism, I would argue, is one in which growing productivity is used to increase leisure-time rather than just being channelled into higher output.

And going back to the point that this post started with, if it were the case that a post-capitalist society was actually quite bad at promoting growth in productivity, then that would be a problem, wouldn’t it? It might not be a decisive objection to such a society, if it had other merits, but I don’t think one could dismiss the drawback just by saying ‘Well, growth doesn’t matter anyway’ – growth in prodictivity does matter.

Yeah, it’s about making sure our priorities are right for our potential productivity as well as making sure that productivity grows. There’s a balace to be struck.

6
You also fall into another myth of capitalism – that innovation and invention and new technology would somehow cease without markets and that post-capitalist society would not develop new technology to overcome some of the worst types of labour.
We don’t need net economic growth or growth in labour output, this is only needed within a capitalist system
Marx would view current capitalism in a very different light, Joseph Schumpeter would probably be nearer Marx’s view (if he still lived) and Schumpeter was not a socialist.

@4. blanco

I didn’t get the impression Aled was advocating that everybody should be dirt poor. There are limited resources on this planet and soon some of the most significant ones will start to run out. We can’t rely on digging more and more stuff out the ground to make sure everyone has a decent standard of living. We could change our economies to be less wasteful and more sustainable and we could redistribute wealth. Sure we’d have less of the trappings of Western lifestyles but I can do without obesity, cancer, depression, celebrities, fat cats, etc.

I think far too much emphasis is placed on economic growth. A strong national economy doesn’t necessarily make people happier in their daily lives. Surely that’s everyones ultimate goal, whatever their politics? Neither does it necessarily lead to improved health or education. I’d like to see more discussion among policy-makers about reducing inequality in the UK and other influential countries, about ways to imrove factors that contribute to peoples general well-being.

Thanks for all the feedback and criticisms – I appreciate having the chance to debate this.

Stuart White – I agree entirely with what you say. The growth I was talking about was only growth in output (i.e. GDP growth), as this is what Left Outside was discussing in the original article.

I would, of course, argue that a post-capitalist society would indeed be more productive, given that the way of organising society would be geared to the needs of all societies’ members rather than the production of profit. This would mean, in all fields, that time and energy were focussed on producing the outcomes that were necessary to meet the needs of all societies members. For example, under capitalism, much of scientific research is geared towards making a profit in certain, luxury fields; and, often, due to patenting laws and similar superstructural arrangements, the cross-over benefits, if any, from this kind of profit-driven research can be limited. Post-capitalist scientific research would be channeled into the pressing needs of sustaining and improving human society, with the results shared and improved upon openly and easily. This is the same kind of logic underpinning, for example, open-source software.

Mr. S. Pill/Blanco – I am certainly not arguing for a ‘levelling down’. What I’m arguing for is, actually, a ‘leveling out’, and that this ‘levelling out’ be continued as society continues to progress and advance, so that future advances are also ‘levelled out’, i.e. shared among everyone. ‘Developing’ countries do not need growth – they need access to the wealth and advantages currently denied to them by the structure of international capitalism.

I am struck by the similarities in the assumptive world of libertarians and socialists, one being that assumption that “happiness” (for want of a better term) is achieved (principally) by consuming things, or in a broader sense, by consuming “goods and services”. Certainly, there is a certain modicum of things which is indispensable for human happiness. But in the society I live in, sufficiency is somewhat frowned on, and even regarded as detrimental to society.
From time to time, one will come across a report stating that people are no happier than they were 50 years ago. Notwithstanding the impossibility of measuring happiness, I am old enough to remember Mac in 1957 telling us that we had never had it so good. But in the 60′s we were better off still, 70′s even more so, and we have had it relentlessly better and better with time. At the moment of writing we are astonishingly, surreally, incredibly more materially rich than we were in the 1950′s. Yet were most people in Britain suicidally unhappy in the 1950′s? No. Nobody told us then that in the eyes of the future we were abjectly poor. And, that’s the essence of the paradox, that we are always poor in comparison with what is to come. If continual material enrichment is the case, then we are desperately poor now, compared to what people will be in 2060. And people in 2060 will be desperately poor in comparison with the people of 2110.
I always see this endless process as similar to the constant upping of tolerance in drug-takers. As the organism develops tolerance you have to increase the dose to get the same effect. The increased dose isn’t an increased dose for long – the consumer becomes habituated to it, and it becomes the norm, and a new increased dose is needed to achieve the same effect in turn. And so on. There’s something radically deficient in people whose happiness depends on consuming.
One of the happiest years of my life was in the USSR 197-79. Not because of the political set-up, but for numerous non-material reasons. Not least was the novel experience of being in the presence of people whose conversation did not consist entirely of “I’ve got an X; I’ve got a new X; I’ve got an X with such-and-such bells and whistles; I’ve got the first X in Bloggtown; I’m thinking of getting a new/bigger/flashier/more impressive X; I’ve got Z number of X’s X; I used to have a certain kind of X but now I’ve got a bigger X; I’m thinking about getting an X that does so-and-so; What X would you buy if you had the money? and so on ad nauseum. When I got back my head reeled to the point of sickness with the unremitting, almost inescapable surfeit of things. In the USSR there was only one kind of toothpaste, whereas when I got back I was forced to choose between 12.
But the left can hardly divorce itself from one of the fundamental tenets of its belief system. After all, people have got to consume to create and maintain jobs.

Bryn Tittle/9: “trappings of Western lifestyles but I can do without obesity, cancer, depression, celebrities, fat cats,”

I do agree that “Western lifestyles” have a lot of flaws, but you’ve picked some obviously false examples here
– cancer and depression have been around probably since the dawn of humanity, and occur in every society across the world nowadays. We can diagnose them better these days, and more people are living to the age where cancer becomes likely, but crucially we can also treat them more effectively.
– the evidence for obesity being harmful hasn’t passed the correlative stage in most cases. The evidence for malnutrition and starvation being harmful is exceedingly strong (and the mechanism by which it is harmful is also well known) and ending that should be a far higher priority.
– “fat cats” … like the feudal barons and monarchs whose word was law, perhaps? Many of the countries with the lowest levels of income inequality today are Western industrialised nations.

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Unfortunately we now live in a society where materialism is rife, it became worse post-Thatcher, socialists now acknowledge that the majority of people are not going to support a movement that seriously contrains this culture, and the operative word is ‘culture’. Socialists now speak of economic efficiency rather than fairness and equality, it’s true that in the past the language of socialism was off putting, but economic efficiency was always part of the narrative it’s just that it didn’t really come to the fore.
13
Our culture is responsible for increased stress levels, heart disease, mental health problems and many more, regular binge-drinking by young people is all too observable. In fact when we look at the statistics of newly industrializing countries, diseases like cancer are on the increase not least because cigarettes and alcohol become easily available and part of a new culture which is far less healthy. And in mid 19th century England, when historians suggest that the industrialization process had completed, the average life expectancy fell dramatically.
There are, as you polint out, massive benefits gained over the past two hundred years and this has been, to a large extent because of capitalism and markets. But this can exist under socialism with no markets, as Marx said, capitalism is the engine which will drive socialism.

Language has become a problem. Left-wing politics has become afraid of words like culture and happiness and equality, opting for more abstract terms like economic efficiency. I think this has led to disillusion for traditional Labour voters and prompted articles in the national press about whether the Green Party is the natural home now for traditional Labour voters. It’s a shame we feel we have to put happiness in quote marks. Culture is one of the key words because so many of the problems we’re facing are due to unhealthy cultures, the most unhealthy of which is consumerism. I think tackling unhealthy cultures and attitudes needs to be a central focus for any kind of progressive politics, not economic growth.

15
I was a member of the old labour party and, to some extent I agreed with Blair who stated that the old language needed to evolve, of course, I didn’t know then what his real agenda was.
While capitalism appeared to deliver this wonderful life-style and new technologies (which appeared under Thatcher) the left (socialism) didn’t stand a chance. But what few people realized was that this new technology had been researched under the charge of the state, not private ownership.
Economic efficiency was addressed by Marx, although when he died he had failed to establish a way of calculating exchange value under socialism. Considering Marx lived in the 19th century, a world away from our own, he was incredibly accurate about many things. He would certainly be amazed at the all encompassing presence of the state in the economic base. But many marxist have continued his work and have adjusted his theories to suit modern society and this includes environmental issues. And yes, the Green Party is now a good bed partner for the new socialism.

@13 cim
You are right of course that there have been major advances in medicines and diagnosis, and technology in capitalist countries. The problem is that an economy built on consumerism has its own set of problems.Whilst it is probably true that cancer is more prevalent in the West because we aren’t killed off by something more easily preventable first, it is pretty well established that people who consume cigarettes, alcohol, and fatty foods are more likely to have cancer and heart disease.

Of course people consume these things around the word but what I have a problem with is the sense that this over consumption makes people in any way happier or better off; that this is the model that we want to encourage every region of the globe to follow, and in many cases we aggressively impose.

The fact that I am against corporate fat cats does not mean that I want us to return to a time of feudal barons and absolute monarchs. I’d rather we had neither. Again, I don’t think the capitalist model is the means of achieving an end to poverty, raised equality and empowerment for the most people.

Do you have a source for the claim that: “Many of the countries with the lowest levels of income inequality today are Western industrialised nations.”? I think that evidence shows that Western industrialised nations with the lowest income disparity are the countries with the most redistributive tax systems and strongest welfare states. I also think we might find that Cuba has quite high levels of income equality, not that I want us to follow their economic strategies but it does make me question what you mean by your statement.

17: I was using Gini coefficients for that claim. It’s not exactly a measure of equality but it’s a decent proxy figure in capitalist and semi-capitalist societies.

The US is a large exception, but Canada and many of the European countries all have some of the lowest Gini coefficients in the world. I was questioning your claim about “Western lifestyles”, given that – with the partial exception of the US, which is an outlier in terms of Western industrialised countries anyway – the problems you cited are generally less severe in Western industrialised countries than elsewhere/elsewhen.

(This isn’t to say that a more widespread adoption of the scandanavian styles of regulation of capitalism and social democracy wouldn’t be a good thing, of course)

Wow – with all this Thatcher-driven depression and disease I am amazed that UK male life expectancy has risen from 71 in 1980 to over 77 today.
Without her I guess we’d all be pretty much immortal by now, huh?

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=168

Anyone else amazed?
Or is this just 6 additional years of misery that we could well do without?

Yeah, let’s turn the clock back to 1950.

I have to disagree with this argument, which is one I’m seeing increasingly from greens these days. I consider myself on the left and an environmentalist, but I can’t agree that a society without economic growth is desirable (or even possible). As blanco says above, growth is what allows people to escape poverty.

Assuming it were even possible, let’s imagine for a moment that we could stop the world’s growth tomorrow. What would happen? Well, we could make the poor richer by redistributing the wealth of the rich to them; but what about after that? Without growth, there would be no wages or incomes; no investment or development; no way for people to replace things as they broke down, or otherwise improve their lives materially. Society would gradually grind to a halt and collapse. It would be the recipe for the slow death of human civilisation.

Some people in the green movement might like the sound of that, but I don’t. It’s possible for us to keep growing while avoiding the destruction of the environment – it’s just got to be about growing *differently*. And no, infinite growth is by definition impossible, but the hard limits to it – the resources of Earth – are a long way from being reached just yet.

18. Thanks I will check that out. As for “the problems you cited [which were: obesity, cancer, depression, celebrities, fat cats] are generally less severe in Western industrialised countries than elsewhere/elsewhen.” I’m still not sure this is actually true, but I’m sure we could both find statistics to back us up. I think these things are on the whole undesirable and I’d rather we did without them.

19. Good use of sarcasm. However, we don’t know how much longer life expectancy could have been under a different set of Government policies or how much less disease or depression there would be. We can only look elsewhere, evidence suggests that by curbing the worst excesses of capitalism we could have done better.

20. Who said anything about not replacing things when they broke down? We’ll just have to get more savvy at building things to be fully recyclable rather than disposable or using renewable raw materials.
I don’t understand when you say without growth there would be no wages or income. I don’t see any evidence for this. You also seem to imply that as finite resources won’t run out soon (although many would beg to differ especially regarding oil) that we should just leave it to future generations to worry about.
I think this argument that we can’t do without growth is really just a way of making ourselves feel easier about living in such relative global affluence and knowing that we could easily do without so much of the toys, food and drugs that we permit ourselves. That we personally could redistribute our wealth to lift people out of poverty but we generally don’t. That if we did it would take on average 1% of our income in the West. Instead we convince ourselves that through our own greed we’re oiling the wheels of the global economy to which we’ve hooked up a winch that sometime in the next thousand years or so might start dragging people up out of the mire and into a decent standard of living.
I’d rather live lightly and give away what I know I can do without: http://bit.ly/QXqka

You live lightly if you want to. Is anyone stopping you?
You clearly have a computer, an object which is the perfect physical representation of globalised technological progress.

Perhaps you might in the meantime consider the hundreds of millions who have been lifted out of abject poverty in India and China over the past decade.
Your “thousand year” rhetorical flourish is simply bollocks.

Under no system have “the conditions of the working class” improved more than under capitalism with free trade and free markets.

I know this really grates dyed-in-the-wool socialists, but if you compare the conditions that Britain’s poor live under and compare with, say, Russia, China or Cuba’s poor, tell me under which system would you prefer to be poor?

Of course you don’t improve the conditions of the poor solely with economic growth. But it’s a heck of lot more difficult to raise the living standards of the poor without economic growth. Based these observations, it’s fair to say that economic growth is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to raise the living standards of the poor.

In Manchester in 1850 a newly born child had a lesser chance of reaching their fifth birthday than a child born into slavery in the American South. At this time, Britain was the most powerful industrial nation on earth. The most powerful military and the wealthiest nation on earth. Yet, in the heart of the most powerful empire a child had no better prospects than a slave. So how did we get from there to here? Even people on modest incomes now are richer in real terms than the wealthy from those days. And we got where we are now because we grew ourselves to here.

Sure successive governments have legislated redistributive measures. Trade unions have fought on behalf of their members. However, none of that redistribution can directly make society wealthier on a net basis. The government can put in place supply side measures that help growth to flourish. Housing, education system, health service, reasonable taxation and public infrastructure. They can also put in place barriers to growth. However, no matter what redistribution occurs to make a fairer society. The government cannot create a net wealthier society. Only growth can do that.

@22. cjcjc
I do try to live lightly; no one is stopping me as you say. Despite being relatively affluent on a global scale, there are many people much richer than me in this country. It saddens me that relatively rich people feel the need to compete acquisitively but with all the money that goes into advertising it’s hardly surprising.
I choose to live with enough and the extra I have I give to a development charity, Practical Action. I support them because they draw inspiration from Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful. The concept being that development doesn’t have to be a mad rush to Western style industrialisation, but by supporting communities with appropriate technology poverty is eliminated without reducing empowerment.

My computer is made from components from around the world; it doesn’t mean it has to be.

While there have undoubtedly been many people who are less impoverished than ten years ago for many there has been little or no progress. I don’t think it’s so unlikely that it could take a thousand years to eliminate world poverty. The effects of growth are concentrated where there is cheap labour for companies to exploit. In some African nations poverty is increasing.

@24. Richard W
Your historical example helps to illustrate that capitalism has been cruel from its outset, paying workers only the smallest amount possible to get their labour to create profit for those who had capital to invest in the first place.

I don’t believe that there should be no increase in output in majority world countries; just that it should be at a level appropriate for alleviating poverty without compromising (but instead encouraging) empowerment through ownership of land and the means of production. However, I don’t think that the driver of that growth (which would barely make it onto figures for GDP) should be over-consumption in the West, or that the level of production needs to remain as high globally.

23
Sweeping statement Mark, some have gained and some have lost (as you would expect in a capitalist system)
And Marx himself extoled the virtues of capitalism, in fact he asserts that socialism can only emerge from mature capitalism,(he viewied capitalism as the engine for socialism), and I think you’ll agree that Imperial Russia and China hardly had the economy of fledling capitalism with their so-called attempt at introducing socialism..
As a dyed-in-the-wool socialist I accept the great benefits that capitalism has delivered (as well as the disadvantages) but like all previous economic systems it has started to fail and despite the best attempts of the state to keep it alive, there comes a time when the life-support system has to be switched off. It will be done in a considered way or in complete chaos.