Dear Comrade,
The August issue of Socialist Voice published an excellent piece by Niall Cullinane entitled ‘Stalling into Oblivion’, which outlined the stagnating tendency of contemporary capitalism and the decline of GDP growth decade by decade since the 1960s. The article ended with a slight nod to those who may favour ‘degrowth’ concepts by arguing that less growth—while maybe using fewer resources—would then create other mitigatory growth elsewhere or would likely leave people poorer and worse off, which we don’t want.
I write this letter to highlight a potentially dangerous conclusion that could be drawn from this article: the assumption that GDP, or economic growth more generally, is always good. Consider these points for example:
- Growth in imperialist core countries is of a significantly different political character than growth in other regions of the world.
- Growth in Dublin is quite different from growth in rural parts of Ireland.
- Growth in fracking is different from growth in solar technologies.
- If a socialist economy focused purely on GDP growth, would it risk replicating the capitalist process of alienation in the workplace (socialist ‘scientific management’ forms of labour control)?
The debate on growth and degrowth needs to be reframed to a redirection or realignment of growth towards socialist principles.
Le meas,
NL
