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62 | THe Puitosopny or Eco-Pouirics
general which compels the concentration of capital and which, under
the guise of efficiency, ensures that the interest of the participants is in
the maximal exploitation of resources and their increasingly unequal
distribution. Modern industrial societies are incapable of overcoming
intolerable inequalities, because these are due not to the productive
relations but to the nature of productive forces.
Competition can naturally be eliminated from human contact. In
theory, even the increase of the circulation of goods could be limited in
the relation of nature and society, but only in small communities could
it be achieved as a result of peaceful agreement. In contrast, the forceful
government intervention that has aimed to make economic competition
impossible has been accompanied by brutal violence in every known
case, while failing to question forced, inhuman, destructive growth itself
as the main goal of society. On such occasions governments aim to
eliminate the democratic and market obstacles to growth instead,
invariably justifying this with an external threat or the wellbeing of
their subjects. Meanwhile, the promise of a more equitable distribution
was not kept. The old inequalities were merely replaced by new ones.
One could suppose that a power endowed with global sovereignty would
have no further need of growth, but the rule of such a competitionless
and therefore limitless and uncontrollable world government is the
darkest negative utopia imaginable. ‘The best that can be said of it is that
it is practically impossible to realise.
Our claim is therefore that the expanded reproduction of destitution
today and its perpetuation down the generations is a direct consequence
of the social order that wastes resources and takes no account of
ecological realities. We deplete the fundamental resources needed for
life, thereby constantly increasing our impoverishment. What is called
economic growth is in reality the concentration of power on one side
and of destitution on the other. We argued that this is the consequence
not of the conditions of distribution or even of some kind of exploitation
(as long as by exploitation we mean the “unpaid value” of work, because
that is an effect rather than a cause of the existing power relations), but
rather arises from the way of organisation of production and traffic. We
have counted our losses as gains for a long time now and this lie has
become the guarantee of social peace. Now that the lie is starting to be
revealed, we can pose the question: how can we be rid of the growth
that oppresses humanity? (By growth I still mean the growth of the
quantity of used-up material and energy, not the growth of knowledge,
nor that of satisfaction.)