Growth Fetish
By Clive Hamilton
Allen & Unwin, 2003
280pages, $24.95
Review by John Tognolini
"Clive Hamilton's garbage is just silly, dangerous, left-wing crap" — NSW treasurer Michael Egan.
After reading Clive Hamilton's Growth Fetish, I wondered what was Bob Carr's minister for privatising everything was on about.
Maybe it's Hamilton's observation that there really isn't much difference between the ALP and the Liberals. Hamilton writes, "Increasingly, modern social democratic politics is the politics of politicians who are not sure what they stand for but who employ advertising agencies to convince us that they stand for something. Today both conservative and social democratic parties complain that the other party has stolen its policies."
Economic growth is normally what people see as a sign of strength within a nation's economy. Hamilton argues, however, that we don't need growth. He advocates the "politics of happiness", explaining: "Such a politics would rob the market of its most powerful weapon, people's willingness to transform themselves into consumers. A post-growth politics would deprive capital of much of its political power, because people everywhere would reject the assumption that everything — including our communities, the natural world and our dignity — should be sacrificed on the altar of growth."
But Hamilton's vision is a utopian fantasy.
The problem isn't just economic growth, it is the question of market greed. For example, in New South Wales, much of the community would love to have the railways expanded and running in the interests of commuters, railworkers and rural communities. Instead we have privatisation. We've had a workforce of around near 40,000 in the mid-1980s slashed to near 10,000. Country train services have been removed from parts of the state and — in the best cases — replaced by buses. In Newcastle we have the obscenity of state ALP transport minister Mick Costa trying to remove the railway line to that city so developers can rip up the tracks and put buildings up.
Not all growth is a bad thing. A massive public works campaign to build basic infrastructure in areas like Western Sydney would be a very good thing.
Hamilton rejects Marxism and class analysis. He states, "Whereas Marxism called for the power of capital to be destroyed, eudemonism [the politics of happiness] calls for it to be ignored. This possibility is permitted by the presence of abundance and democracy." Hamilton goes further, "The defining struggle is no longer between proletarians and capitalists about how to divide the surplus of the production process; today it is about how to live a genuine life in a social structure that manufactures 'individuality' and celebrates superficiality."
We still live in a society which is face-to-face, and class-to-class. As a result of the cross-class collaboration enshrined in the 1983-1996 social accords between the federal ALP government and the unions, we now have a massive number of working poor in Australia, mainly casual and temporary workers.
While Hamilton's book contains some inspiring polemics against the major political parties and some very useful statistical information, Growth Fetish doesn't offer that much. Hamilton is wrong to say: "Neoliberal economics seemed to have destroyed the case for greater social ownership and collective provision of many services."
One other section of the Growth Fetish that is disturbing is Hamilton's comment: "Despite some initial resistance from unreconstructed Keynesians, there is now almost universal acceptance among economists that there is 'natural rate of unemployment' and if the actual rate is pushed below the natural, it will accelerate." It is nice to know that as Socialist Alliance campaigns against unemployment with massive socially useful public works projects that we have the support of those "unreconstructed Keynesians" out there.
[John Tognolini is a member of the Socialist Alliance]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 19, 2004.
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