Growthism
Rated • 2 reviews • politics, society, sustainable development, growth, limits of growth • growthism.com
Ken Welton:
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 ruin proceed. With capital's mis-measures we progressively destroy all real wealth and avoid issues of factor parity, natural freedom, quality of life and population balance. With empty statistics, we may then decline in real terms as we "grow" to profit stateless corporations, and private central bankers.
By counting population increase as "growth" rather than per-capita decline, growth is not only synonymous with progressive ruin but devoid of reference to quality, purpose, justice, equity, natural right, ecology, and root estate. As a result, "growth" means incomes and disparities may increase, and societal power of capital expand, while the very quality of life, and per-capita space and freedom, decline.
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.
After centuries of "growth", our enclosure, desperation, dependency, and disparities are greater than ever - a clear indication we are not only moving in the wrong direction but have no other countervailing motive force or ethic. Despite its failures, Growthism remains the dominant shibboleth of our time, one demanding genuflection from capital's economists and politicians.
Wherever enclosure and factor imbalance prevail, rights of the penultimate individuals, and powerful possessors of capital, become supreme. Few community rights and majority powers are not overruled by the influence of money as powerful individuals and mega-corporations become nearly, if not completely, omnipotent in society.
In this setting, without balancing principles and forces, we are destined to grow disenfranchisement, discontent, social pathology and eco-ruin. Packed like rats into ever-shrinking cubicles, and driven to compete for capital's growth and benefit, this dismal ethic must soon collapse of its own absurdity and excess. In the interim, Growthism remains the force in our lives due to enclosure, capital's supremacy and extortion of labor, and a host of western, patriarchal, religio-economic, values from an age with little relation to our own.
