Volume 27, Number 17 · November 6, 1980
A Populist Vision
By Robert O. Keohane
The Lean Years: Politics in the Age of Scarcity
by Richard J. Barnet
Simon and Schuster, 349 pp., $12.95
The economic and ecological disturbances of the 1970s have put thinking about economic power into confusion. The governments of rich countries have defined the 'energy crisis' and other shortages of essential raw materials as problems of their own access to resources. The poor nations demand a 'New International Economic Order' in which they would have much greater power and in which the terms of trade would shift sharply in their favor. Others have interpreted the difficulties of the 1970s as evidence of 'limits to growth' and the need to impose controls in the interests of the biosphere. Some have even advocated letting hundreds of millions of people starve under the guise of 'lifeboat ethics' or 'triage.' What often emerges from such conflicting views is a vague sense of panic, tinged with fatalism. The problems seem so vast as to be beyond human control, whether they are created by technology fertility, or the iron laws of economics.
Review, 3011 words
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