Volume 24, Number 3 · March 3, 1977
The False Promise of Growth
By Robert L. Heilbroner
Social Limits to Growth
by Fred Hirsch
A Twentieth Century Fund Study, Harvard University Press, 208 pp., $10.00
Ever since the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776, growth has been recognized as the distinctive characteristic of a capitalist society—at once its chief glory and its principal concern. As Smith pointed out, the process of accumulation of wealth brought about a social result previously unknown in history, namely the extension of 'improvements' to the lower ranks of the people. But as Ricardo was soon to add, and Marx to hammer home, growth brought social dangers as well as material betterment. In Ricardo's view the process of growth seemed likely to terminate in a stagnant state in which wealth would be transferred mainly into the hands of the landowners. And in Marx's view, the accumulation process was not only inherently unstable, bringing with it recurrent periods of business ruin, but was bound eventually to create the conditions for the eruption of a new, anticapitalist, social order.
Review, 3239 words
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