Oldal 64 [64]
OCR
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.)
