I saw an interesting quote today on the Internet. The quote, by Edward Abbey, read:
Growth for Growth’s Sake is the Ideology of the Cancer Cell.
It’s a strong aphorism, well constructed, aggressive and confrontational. It also immediately struck me as very wrong, or at a minimum highly misleading and ripe for mis-extrapolation. This gut check came to be before I even thought to find out who Edward Abbey was (I’d heard the name before, but that’s about it. More on that later).
First, what does growth for growth’s sake even mean? Are we speaking of individuals? Businesses? Communities? Cities? Nations? I’d surmise, based on the implication of the quote in its entirety, that the author is not railing against individuals bettering themselves, nor is he railing against the literal growth that leads to obesity. Tempted as I was to search out the source material, and find out more about the author in order to contextualize the quote, I first wanted to consider it “naked,” the way many who hear or read it would. Doing so, I observed that it lends itself very well to the imposition of external predilections and assumptions. Yet even in contemplating growth for growth’s sake in reference to a range of entities (including businesses large and small, businesses that are physically expansive, such as farms, mines, manufacturing plants, and the like, communities, cities, public service entities like the police and fire departments, and, of course, governments, local, state and national), I always drew the same conclusion.
Entities don’t grow simply for the sake of growing. There’s invariably some other purpose, such as increased profit potential, greater stability, diversification in order to better tolerate economic downturns or calamities, the providing of better service, greater safety, greater job security, more power and authority, greater autonomy and so forth. Reasons for growth are myriad, but I find it hard to think of examples or scenarios where growth is pursued solely for purpose of becoming or making something bigger. Growth is an activity, not an end.
Yet even if my imagination is inadequate, even if examples about of growth for growth’s sake, there’s still a problem with the metaphor. Unlike a cancer cell, which if not treated by active external intervention will kill its host, any entity we might think of that might want to grow for growth’s sake will run into passive external interventions, such as market forces. A business that grows without focus and purpose will suffer as its competitors’ efficiency becomes relatively better. A farm that simply adds land but doesn’t work it properly will end up devoting resources to maintaining that land without return, and will suffer accordingly. No one has to actively intervene to slow or halt the growing entity’s expansion if that expansion isn’t tied to a productive purpose. You don’t need a doctor to “treat” growth.
There are, of course, exceptions. Government growth seems to be little hampered by external checks and passive corrective forces. Even the limits of revenue collection don’t seem to matter much to growth-oriented politicians, who either borrow or get creative with their bookkeeping in order to do as they please. Government growth, however, is never couched in for growth’s sake terms, it’s never justified as “we just want government to be bigger.” Every expansion is based, rightly or wrongly, on addressing some need or want that some constituency has. There’s always a purpose, a driving motivation apart from for growth’s sake. Even if the stated purpose is a lie, even if it’s a smokescreen, the real purpose is still something other than for growth’s sake. Growth is simply a means to an end.
Now it’s time to discuss Mr. Abbey and possible subtexts. A quick internet search tells me that Mr. Abbey (1927-1989) was an essayist, environmentalist and anarchist, who stands as an inspiration for some radical environmental groups and eco-warriors. Knowing this, what do we make of his statement? Do we consider it a warning against the excesses of capitalism? Do we infer that he thinks growth should be tempered by some external metric such as environmental awareness? Is growth for growth’s sake an exhortation against self-interest, an implication that self-interest is bad, that it should be mitigated and counterbalanced by some more noble motive?
Growth is usually synonymous with advancement, with pursuit of ever-greater goals, with ambition towards a higher standard of living, with the drive to achieve. In these we find motivation for all the things that have improved our lives and the lives of the 100+ billion people who have inhabited the earth over the last 50 millennia or so. Without growth, our living standards would be a tiny fraction of what they are, our life expectancy would be much, much lower, and our lives would be harder, meaner and more dangerous. Yes, Abbey exhorts against a specific sort of growth, or perhaps a non-specific directionless or purposeless growth, but isn’t that exhortation really about imposing external rules and metrics on individuals’ motivations, whether they apply those to a business or to a community?
Yes, there are bad forms of growth. I don’t speak of bad choices made by business owners and managers, choices that involve growth but that end up harming their businesses. That’s part of the creative destruction of the free market, and it is what creates innovation and advances economies. I write of the sort of growth that’s parasitic or cannibalistic in nature, the sort of growth practiced by countless societies throughout history, growth that requires the pillaging of outsiders’ wealth in order to sustain itself. Yet even bad forms of growth are driven by a purpose other than for growth’s sake. Societies that have assumed unsustainable levels of government largesse or that live beyond their own productivity must look outward. Even in these, though, growth itself is not the enemy, the societal gluttony and life-beyond-means is.
There’s also a stark reality – any society that relies on transfer of wealth from the young to the old (as just about all first-world nations ones do) must grow or it will perish. There are a number of first-world nations that have catastrophically low birth rates, and without some other source of young people (i.e. immigration), their populations will age, fewer workers will have to support more retirees and standards of living (including health care, the arts, public services, etc) will decline. Growth, for much of the world, is an absolute necessity.
Many people, particularly those who fancy themselves enlightened or high-minded, will read into the quote the implication that growth without some higher purpose is inherently a Bad Thing, and I suspect that is part of the reason the quote exists. By “exist” I mean that a person or persons decided to snatch it out of the source material and send it out into the world alone, with just an attribution. Its persistence, persistence sufficient to induce someone to turn it into a bit of graphic art and someone else to share it with his millions of followers, implies that the message resonates as a stand-alone one. The message is cautionary, it associates an unobjectionable word (growth) with a foreboding word (cancer), turns the unobjectionable word in on itself, and tars it with a bad association. Thus, growth itself becomes suspect.
The chauvinism that some exhibit against capitalism, against free markets, and against unguided and unregulated self-determination fits in well with a condemnation of growth. Yes, Abbey qualifies his condemnation for growth, but he does so by repeating and thus reinforcing the word, and the qualifier tells us that for growth not to be “cancerous” it must have some purpose. But growth is a phenomenon, not an end unto itself, and a pithy quote isn’t going to change that fact. Demonizing the word growth serves the purposes of those who don’t like self-made success, who’d rather people live meaner lives than better them at the presumed expense of whatever they grow towards, who don’t like capitalism and free markets.
My perusal of Mr. Abbey’s bio has piqued my interest, and I may pick up one or two of his books. It may very well be he has some astute observations shared therein, and I expect I’ll find at least some ideas with which I’ll agree, but on this one Mr. Abbey is simply wrong. Growth isn’t something we should fear, seek to qualify, or demand be tempered by some other motive. It’s part of our lives, and without it we are doomed to wither and die.
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