Re: Does capitalism really need growth to survive?

["Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx>]

I agree Henry.  Put slightly differently, "growth" is not the same thing
as "development."  Development usually includes growth, but it is more
than that.  It should be said in this regard, that proponents of the
stationary state, from John Stuart Mill (whose short but prescient ch.
"Of the Stationary State" included in the first edition of his
Principles (1848) was the first case of a classical author urging that
society choose to have a stationary economy before it is compelled to)
to the Meadows (authors of the Club of Rome report) and Herman Daly,
have all argued that the economy and society would not be stagnant in
other respects--there would be cultural development, moral development,
political development, individual development, etc.  In fact, they argue
that a no-growth or no-expansion economy could be more dynamic in these
other respects.  Also, J.S. Mill confined his proposal to the
industrialized countries--as many proponents do today--arguing that only
when standards of living have reached a certain level can the emphasis
be taken away from production and put on distribution.

-----Original Message-----
From: Henry C.K. Liu [mailto:hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 1:58 PM
To: pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Does capitalism really need growth to survive?

Economists need to learn the difference between growth and expansion.
GDP
denominated growth is often merely guantitative expansion.  Growth has
to do
with improved quality of life which was of economic concern breifly in
the
60s, with notions of "limits of growth" being circulated.

Henry C.K. Liu

"Forstater, Mathew" wrote:

> A lot of Marxist economics emphasizes the impossibility of a no growth
> capitalism.  "Accumulate, accumulate, that is Moses and the prophets!"
> "Accumulate or die!"
>
> If you are interested in the intersection of this Marxist notion and
> environmental sustainability, there is a decent edited book collection
> called "Is Capitalism Sustainable?" and an article a few years back in
> Rethinking Marxism called "Grow or Die."
>
> Georgescu-Roegen, who was one of the key economists to argue that
> economies operate in the physical world and therefore must obey the
laws
> of thermodynamics, actually did not agree with his student, Herman
Daly,
> who popularized the "steady-state economics" (here meaning what the
old
> classical economists called the "stationary state" and not what modern
> growth theory means by a steady-state.).  Georgescu-Roegen argued, I
> believe that a no growth system is impossible, not because the economy
> must grow, but because he believed the 2nd (entropy) law means that
the
> only possible system is a shrinking one!