Jim Devine wrote:
> If growth is democratically planned, then it's hard to imagine that
> growth of "output" would be the only criterion. There would be much more
> attention to issues of quality -- and issues such as the definition of
> what in heck is meant by "output."
Economic _growth_ is, by definition growth of economic output and is
distinct from economic _development_, which may well take into
consideration qualitative criteria.
> "Output" is measured differently in different societies; I can imagine
> that in a democratically-planned society, a vector
> would be used rather than a scalar in defining "output."
If I measure output in physical units and you measure it in monetary
units, does that make me more democratic or qualitative? When you start
talking about vectors, you should drop the growth metaphor altogether and
talk about development, change, transition or progress instead. A
magnitude [scalar] can only grow, but a direction [vector] can change.
> It's only under capitalism or societies imitating capitalism (as the old
> USSR sometimes did) that "output" is defined as a single number
> (GDP) added up using market-defined weights (prices) while ignoring
> non-market goods and bads.
Speaking of which reminds me of an Oskar Lange address in Egypt in the
late 1950s where he was extolling the superior virtues specifically of
state-directed GROWTH.
> In any event, people would choose their own criteria rather than
> automatically using criteria left over from the past.
One of the real problems of social transformation is that people often DO
automatically use criteria left over from the past, whether or not they
are or ever were relevant. Surely, there might be something, which in some
future democratically planned society could be conceptualized as
"growth". But the problem here and now is with an _ideology of growth_ and
not with some abstract, possibly useful future "liberation of the
concept". It has been precisely that ideology of growth which has been
used to stifle debate about quality, equitable distribution and
such "vectors". Consider, for example, Krugman's apoplectic reaction to
the Genuine Progress Indicator folks a few years back [which I think was
pretty representative of mainstream economists' responses].
The _ideology of growth_ labels anyone who questions that ideology an
anti-growth luddite. Saying "we're not anti-growth, we're just
anti-capitalist growth" doesn't seem to me to be a persuasive
counter-argument, especially when what the growth ideologists MEAN when
they say "growth" is precisely expanded reproduction of capital.
Tom Walker
