Growth: Capitalism’s problem

When people talk about Marx, we struggle to look at him objectively and see him for what he was which was a great critic of 19th century capitalism. Left on this level and viewed in this way his material is interesting and insightful. As a predicator of history, of an idealised society, of how to cure society’s problems he was no better than a London cabbie and probably a lot worse.

The one problem he did articulate was capitalism’s need for continued growth and expansion. This problem is something we are suffering now, we need growth everything in the world depends on it. Growth comes, at the moment, from two things increased consumption and growing populations. Here lies the problem how can we, in an ever more crowded world, continue to see increased population growth, increased consumption and not run out of natural resources; not begin to push more people into environments where survival is marginal.

Marx talked about the declining rate of return of capital this is not our problem, our problem is more Malthusian. How can we continually extract more from less without inflicting damage on our rotating sphere? The Economist would say the market will find solutions, lets hope so. Our generation, living in the developed segment of society wherever you are is probably the most fortunate in the history of the homo sapiens or any of the other two legged up right chimp that has had the luck to make the earth his or her home.