"Critiques of Growth in Classical Political Economy: Mill's Stationary State and a Marxian Response," Gareth Dale, *New Political Economy*, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 3, 431-457,
"Demeter's mistaken identity: Marx, Engels and the growth paradigm" "M *arx and Engels' critique of capitalism is commonly depicted as 'productivist' in character, in that it putatively centres on the system's failure to maximise output in a balanced way. As outlined above, the reasons to dissent from this depiction are many. But I would go further, and would suggest that their theory contains a critique of what is nowadays called the 'growth paradigm'. Fundamentally, the growth paradigm is the idea that economic growth is good, imperative, essentially limitless, and a matter of pressing concern for society as a whole. In addition, it relies upon two flanking assumptions that may appear self-evident but should nonetheless be stated: that 'an economy' exists as a definite entity, occupying a distinct dimension of society within which processes occur that can be meaningfully understood as parts of an articulated assemblage, rather than as a congeries of unrelated acts; and that aggregated 'economic' activities have in common some quantifiable substance that can be measured in order to ascertain whether 'the economy' is or is not growing. All of these aspects of the growth paradigm are subjected to critique by Marx and Engels. Although they lived before the term 'economic growth' had entered the lexicon and before the growth paradigm had achieved its complete form, a trenchant critique of it can be assembled from their writings, in particular from their analysis of capital's imperative to the relentless expansion of production for its own sake.* "The axial concept in Marx's theory of capitalism is the contradiction between wealth (use value - anything that satisfies human needs) and its alienated form under capitalist conditions (value). He wasn't the first to identify contradictory aspects of this relationship. For example the Earl of Lauderdale noted the paradox that an increase in the scarcity of a good such as water would enhance 'private riches' (exchange values) at the expense of the common wealth (Bellamy Foster et al. 2010: 55). But Marx was able to 'make the Lauderdale paradox his own' by analysing generalised commodity production simultaneously in terms of value relations and material processes (Bellamy Foster et al. 2010: 59)." On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 3:58 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > "Tom Walker" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I said nothing whatsoever about economic "progress." I specifically > challenged the meaningfulness of the > > notion of economic "growth". Economic *progress,* by contrast, would > require discarding the obsolete > > and discredited terminology from the mid-1950s. > > How do you define economic progress? And how was terminology from the > Mid-1950s discredited? > Are you throwing Marx out with the bathwater? > > -- > Ron > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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