Chapter 1 Growth fetishism
1 This phrase is from Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism, in Robert Tucker, The Marx–Engels Reader, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1972, p. 215.
2 Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 1996, pp. 289–90.
3 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, 6th edn, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1923, p. 746. Mill’s Principles was first published in 1848; the sixth edition was first published in 1865.
4 ibid., pp. 748–9. In the first edition, Mill noted that America (except in the South) had attained an advanced state of wealth and political freedoms but, he observed sardonically, ‘All that these advantages seem to have done for them is that the life of the whole of one sex is devoted to dollar-hunting, and of the other to breeding dollar-hunters’ (p. 748, note 1).
5 E.J. Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth, Staples Press, London, 1967, pp. xviii, xix. Anticipating the extraordinary mathematisation of economics in the 1970s and 1980s, Mishan also wrote of the ‘mass flight from reality into statistics’ (p. 8). This preoccupation with the measurable in economics has been characterised as ‘physics envy’.
6 N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics, The Dryden Press, Orlando FL, 1998, p. 489.
7 ibid., p. 489.
8 Quoted by C. Cobb, T. Halstead and J. Rowe, The Atlantic Monthly, October 1995.
9 ibid.
10 The Harwood Group, Yearning for Balance: views of Americans on consumption, materialism, and the environment, prepared for the Merck Family Fund <www.iisd.ca/linkages/consume/harwood.html>.
11 ibid.
12 Noam Chomsky has, however, argued that the fall of the Berlin Wall was a small victory for socialism.
13 Sydney Morning Herald, 29–31 March 2002.
14 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, The Free Press, New York, 1992, pp. xi–xii.
Chapter 2 Growth and wellbeing
1 Steve Dodds, ‘Economic growth and human wellbeing’, in Mark Diesendorf and Clive Hamilton (eds), Human Ecology, Human Economy: ideas towards an ecologically sustainable future, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997.
2 The rank correlation coefficient between appreciation of life and GDP per capita is 0.71 and the ordinary correlation coefficient is also 0.71.
3 The conclusions based on this table are confirmed by Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer in Happiness and Economics, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2002, Table 2.2.
4 ibid., Figure 1.4 and pp. 74–6.
5 The rank correlation coefficient is 0.71 and the ordinary correlation coefficient is 0.46.
6 A. Wearing and B. Headey, ‘Who enjoys life and why? Measuring subjective wellbeing’, in Richard Eckersley (ed.), Measuring Progress: is life getting better? CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, 1998.
7 Michael Argyle, ‘Sources of satisfaction’, in Ian Christie and Lindsay Nash (eds), The Good Life, Demos Collection 14, London, 1998, p. 34.
8 See Dodds, ‘Economic growth and human wellbeing’, p. 114.
9 Quoted by Dodds, ‘Economic growth and human wellbeing’, 1997.
10 Argyle, ‘Sources of satisfaction’.
11 Argyle, ‘Sources of satisfaction’, reviews some of it.
12 Frey and Stutzer, Happiness and Economics, p. 83.
13 David Myers, ‘Does economic growth improve human morale?’, Center for a New American Dream <www.newdream.org> 1997.
14 Ed Diener, Jeff Horwitz and Robert Emmons 1985, ‘Happiness of the very wealthy’, Social Indicators Research, vol. 16, pp. 263–74.
15 Myers, ‘Does economic growth improve human morale?’.
16 Frey and Stutzer, Happiness and Economics, pp. 9–10.
17 See D.G. Myers and E. Diener, ‘The pursuit of happiness’, Scientific American, no. 274, May, 1996, pp. 54–6.
18 Myers, ‘Does economic growth improve human morale?’. See also Frey and Stutzer, Happiness and Economics, pp. 76–7.
19 Juliet Schor, The Overspent American, HarperCollins, New York, 1999, p. 6.
20 C. Hamilton, Overconsumption in Australia, Discussion Paper no. 49, The Australia Institute, Canberra, 2002.
21 Ian Castles, ‘Living standards in Sydney and Japanese cities—a comparison’, in Kyoko Sheridan (ed.), The Australian Economy in the Japanese Mirror, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1992.
22 These figures are for 1987 and may have changed since then, especially the split between males and females.
23 Myers and Diener, ‘The pursuit of happiness’.
24 See the paper by Michael Pusey, ‘Incomes, standards of living and quality of life’, in Eckersley, Measuring Progress.
25 Philip Brickman and Dan Coates, ‘Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 36, no. 8, 1978, pp. 917–27.
26 Myers (‘Does economic growth improve human morale?’) also makes the nice point that the need to build more storage space in our homes—built-in wardrobes, pantries, extra linen cupboards, kitchens with deep drawers, rumpus rooms, double garages, extra sheds—does not arise from a lack of planning by architects of earlier eras. They built houses that had enough storage space for the times, but nowhere near enough for the vast increase in the volume of goods a typical house must now accommodate. Fewer people, more possessions.
27 Headey and Wearing, quoted by Eckersley, Measuring Progress.
28 Robert Emmons, Chi Cheung and Keivan Tehrani, ‘Assessing spirituality through personal goals: implications for research on religion and subjective wellbeing’, Social Indicators Research, vol. 45, 1998, pp. 391, 393.
29 This section draws on a number of papers: T. Kasser and R. Ryan, ‘A Dark Side of the American Dream: correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 63, 1993, pp. 410–22; T. Kasser and R. Ryan, ‘Further examining the American dream: differential correlates of intrinsic and extrinsic goals’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 22, 1996, pp. 280–7; T. Kasser and R. Ryan, ‘Be careful what you wish for: optimal functioning and the relative attainment of intrinsic and extrinsic goals’, in P. Schmuck and K. Sheldon (eds), Life Goals and Wellbeing, Hogrefe & Huber Publishers, Gottingen, 2001; T. Kasser, ‘Two versions of the American dream: which goals and values make for a high quality life?’ in E. Diener and D. Rahtz (eds), Advances in Quality of Life Theory and Research, vol.1, Kluwer, Dordrecht, Netherlands 2000; K. Sheldon and T. Kasser, ‘Pursuing personal goals: skills enable progress, but not all progress is beneficial’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 24, 1998, pp. 1319–31.
30 Kasser and Ryan, ‘Be careful what you wish for’.
31 ibid.
32 ibid. In an interesting twist, the results showed that people who report higher levels of the intrinsic goal of community feeling had higher levels of illicit drug use, a result perhaps explained by the communal use of certain types of drugs.
33 Kasser and Ryan, ‘Further examining the American dream’, p. 286.
34 Martin Seligman, referred to in Myers, ‘Does economic growth improve human morale?’, p. 5.
35 Gerald Klerman and Myrna Weissman, ‘Increasing rates of depression’, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 261, no. 15, 1989, pp. 229–34.
36 Christopher Murray and Alan Lopez (eds), The Global Burden of Disease: summary, Harvard School of Public Health, for WHO and World Bank, Geneva, 1996, p. 21.
37 See Lawrence Diller’s website <www.docdiller.com>.
38 Headey and Wearing, quoted by Eckersley, Measuring Progress.
39 Carol Ryff, ‘Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological wellbeing’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 57, no. 6, 1989, pp. 1069–81.
40 ibid.
41 Emmons et al., ‘Assessing spirituality through personal goals’, 1998, p. 404.
42 ibid., p. 405.
43 Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx–Engels Reader, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1972, p. 337.
44 Norman Brown, Life against Death, Wesleyan University Press, Connecticut, 1959, p. 251.
45 See, for example, H. Diefenbacher, ‘The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare in Germany’, in C. Cobb and J. Cobb (eds), The Green National Product, University of Americas Press, 1994; Clive Hamilton, ‘The Genuine Progress Indicator: methodological developments and results from Australia’, Ecological Economics, vol. 30, 1999, pp. 13–28; T. Jackson, N. Marks, J. Ralls and S. Stymne, ‘An index of sustainable economic welfare for the UK 1950–1996’, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, Guildford, 1997.
46 The factors vary somewhat from country to country, since some are important in some countries but not in others.
47 Although the tide of neoliberalism seems to have made gross inequality more acceptable, particularly in the United States.
Chapter 3 Identity
1 ‘Only as given wants remain constant and productive activity serves to narrow the margin of discontent between appetites and their gratifications are we justified in talking of an increase in welfare.’ E.J. Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth, Staples Press, London, 1967, p. 112.
2 Even here wider society acknowledges that people may be misled into acting against their own interests. Damages awarded to smokers against tobacco companies are a case in point. The use of tobacco appears to be a special case because the damage to health is so direct, incontrovertible and severe. As with most other consumer goods, tobacco advertising promises a range of positive emotional associations—sophistication, coolness, a sense of fun and even, in the more innocent 1950s and 1960s, greater sporting prowess. In contrast with most other consumer goods, tobacco actually delivers (to the addicted smoker) an enormous amount of physical pleasure.
3 It is well established in the retail industry that only 20 per cent of supermarket shoppers are price-sensitive. Another 30 per cent are somewhat influenced by price but it is not the vital factor, while 50 per cent do not take any notice of the price when making purchasing decisions. This fact invalidates the most basic conceptual tool of neoliberal economic theory, the demand curve.
4 M. Csikszentmihalyi and E. Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: domestic symbols and the self, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1981, p. 164.
5 A. Rindfleisch, J. Burroughs and F. Denton, ‘Family structure, materialism, and compulsive consumption’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 23, March, 1997.
6 Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things, p. 229.
7 ibid., p. 230.
8 Quoted by Juliet Schor, The Overspent American, Basic Books, New York, 1998, p. 57.
9 Monica Videnieks, ‘How gen-X was sold a Chup’, Weekend Australian, 3–4 June, 2000.
10 Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 1996, p. 7.
11 ibid., p. 100.
12 R. Lane, ‘Friendship or commodities’, in N. Goodwin, F. Ackerman and D. Kiron (eds), The Consumer Society, Island Press, Washington DC, 1997, p. 102.
13 PBS TV News, 19 October 2001.
14 Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears (eds), The Culture of Consumption: critical essays in American history, 1880–1980, Pantheon Books, New York, 1983, p. xii.
15 Johann Goethe, Faust, Part One, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1949, p. 146.
16 Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth, p. 175.
17 For a polite critique, see <www.Pipedown.com>, the website of the anti-muzak lobby group.
18 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 6th edn, Longmans, Green and Co., London 1923, p. 750.
19 The following paragraphs are based on the article by Daniel Pink, ‘Metaphor marketing’, Fast Company, May, 1998.
20 Naomi Klein, No Logo, HarperCollins, London, 2001. This and the following quotations are taken from the more succinct version of the argument by Klein in ‘The tyranny of the brand’, New Statesman, 24 January, 2000.
21 ibid.
22 See, especially, <www.adbusters.org>.
23 Advice by the US Federal Trade Commission to House of Representatives, 14 October 1983.
24 Some of the ideas in this section (including the reference to gluttony and sloth) have been stimulated by an unpublished paper by Neil Burry, an Adelaide physician.
25 Figures are drawn from the US Surgeon General <www.surgeongeneral.gov>.
26 ibid.
27 See ‘NAASO responds to recent Harris poll on obesity’, Press release, 6 March 2002 <www.naaso.org>.
28 G. Egger and B. Swinburn, ‘An “ecological” approach to the obesity pandemic’, British Medical Journal, vol. 355, 1997, pp. 477–80.
29 Schor, The Overspent American, p. 19.
Chapter 4 Progress
1 A. Javary, quoted by Morris Ginsberg, The Idea of Progress: a reevaluation, Methuen & Co., London, 1953, p. 1.
2 Ginsberg, ibid., p. 1.
3 From ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ in The Marx–Engels Reader, Robert C. Tucker (ed.), W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1972, p. 437.
4 Quoted by Ginsberg, The Idea of Progress, p. 11.
5 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, The Free Press, New York, 1992, p. xi.
6 ibid., p. xii.
7 ibid., p. xii.
8 ibid., p. xiv.
9 Ulrich Beck, Democracy without Enemies, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998, p. 7.
10 A question posed by Beck, ibid., p. 39.
11 ibid., p. 3.
12 Andre Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, trans. Chris Turner, Verso, London, 1994, p. 21.
13 From ‘The Communist Manifesto’ in The Marx–Engels Reader, Robert C. Tucker (ed.), W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1972, p. 338.
14 The term is from David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: the new upper class and how they got there, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000.
15 R. Lesthaeghe and G. Moors, ‘Recent trends in fertility and household formation in the industrialized world’, Review of Population and Social Policy, no. 9, 2000, pp. 121–70.
16 Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, Doubleday, London, 1999, pp. 1–2.
17 ibid., p. 309.
18 ibid., pp. 320–1.
19 Introduction to Chris Sheil (ed.), Globalisation: Australian impacts, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2001.
20 David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: politics, economics and culture, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1999.
21 An argument first put forward, with astounding effect, by Lynn White Jr in ‘The historical roots of our ecological crisis’ in Science magazine in 1967. These issues are discussed at more length in Chapter 7.
Chapter 5 Politics
1 Ian Hargreaves and Ian Christie (eds), Tomorrow’s Politics: the Third Way and beyond, Demos Foundation, London, 1998, p. 1.
2 This definition comes from the ‘New Democrats’ Progressive Policy Institute <www.ppionline.org>.
3 Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: the renewal of social democracy, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1998, p. 2.
4 Giddens, The Third Way, p. 69.
5 See the illuminating discussion in Peter Holbrook, ‘Left of centre minus the philosophy’, Australian Financial Review, 18 August 2000.
6 Giddens, The Third Way, p. 44.
7 For an analysis of one aspect of this complex question, see Juliet Schor, The Overspent American, Basic Books, New York, 1998.
8 The terms derive, respectively, from Robert Reich, The Work of Nations (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1991) and David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000).
9 A fantasy of the Australian Third Way politician Mark Latham in ‘Marxism, social-ism, and the Third Way’, Arena Magazine, vol. 42, August–September, 1999.
10 Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘Monica’s year’, Prospect, January, 1999.
11 The Times (London), 10 June, 2002.
12 Giddens, The Third Way, p. 2.
13 ibid., p. 26.
14 For a sharp, popular critique see James Galbraith, ‘How the economists got it wrong’, The American Prospect, vol. 11, no. 7, 2000.
15 David Card and Alan Krueger, Myth and Measurement: the new economics of the minimum wage, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997.
16 Joseph Stiglitz, ‘What I learned at the world economic crisis’, The New Republic, 17 April, 2000.
17 A. Fishlow, C. Gwin, S. Haggard and D. Rodrik, Miracle or Design? Lessons From the East Asian Experience, Overseas Development Council, Washington, DC, 1994.
18 Giddens, The Third Way, p. 40.
19 ibid., p. 109.
20 Latham, ‘Marxism, social-ism, and the Third Way’.
21 ‘Unambiguously’ may be too strong a word. After all, some members of Christian religious orders willingly commit themselves to poverty, as do some sufis, monks and saddhus from Eastern spiritual traditions.
Chapter 6 Work
1 The distinction between liberation of and from work is made in Andre Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, trans. Chris Turner, Verso, London, 1994, p. 54.
2 As noted in Chapter 5, the terms come, respectively, from Robert Reich (The Work of Nations, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1991) and David Brooks (Bobos in Paradise, Simon & Schuster, 2000).
3 Craig Thompson and Siok Kuan Tambyah, ‘Trying to be cosmopolitan’, Journal of Consumer Research, December, 1999.
4 Quoted by Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, p. 59.
5 ibid., p. 61.
6 This raises an awkward question: If work is alienating, but is essential to sustain high levels of consumption, what happens when consumption is alienating too?
7 See John Haworth, Work, Leisure and Wellbeing, Routledge, London, 1997, pp. 24–5.
8 Quoted by Haworth, ibid., pp. 25–6.
9 Some cases are discussed by Richard Sennett in his book The Corrosion of Character, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998.
10 Haworth, Work, Leisure and Wellbeing, p. 31.
11 Fortune, 19 September 1994.
12 Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 1996, p. 80. The extent to which hours in Japan exceed those in other countries, and indeed the whole question of which countries have the longest hours, is debated.
13 ibid., pp. 82, 85.
14 Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, p. 73.
15 Harald Bielenski, Gerhard Bosch and Alexandra Wagner, Working Time Preferences in Sixteen European Countries, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin, 2002, Table 16.
16 ibid.
17 John Maynard Keynes, ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’, Essay In Persuasion, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1963, p. 361.
18 ibid.
19 Bielenski, Working Time Preferences, Figures 6–8.
20 Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, p. 23.
21 ibid., p. 25.
22 ibid., p. 26.
23 ibid., pp. 9, 120.
24 Sennett (ibid., p. 122) makes this distinction.
25 For Canada see M. Anielski and J. Rowe, The Genuine Progress Indicator: 1998 update, Redefining Progress, San Francisco, 1999. For Australia, where hours of housework per adult have been very stable, at around 26 per week, see C. Hamilton and R. Denniss, Tracking Wellbeing: the Genuine Progress Indicator 2000, Discussion paper no. 35, The Australia Institute, Canberra, 2000. For the United States see J. Schor, The Overworked American, Basic Books, New York, 1991, pp. 86–7.
26 The Journal of Political Economy, reproduced in G. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1976.
27 Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, p. 63.
28 The term is due to James Robertson—Future Work, Gower Publishing Co., Aldershot, UK, 1985.
29 Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, p. 21.
Chapter 7 Environment
1 World Resources Institute, September 2000 <www.wri.org>.
2 Herman Daly, ‘From empty-world to full-world economics’, in R. Goodland, H. Daly and S. El Serafy (eds), Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development: building on Brundtland, UNESCO, Paris, 1991, p. 30.
3 William Laurence, ‘Future shock: forecasting a grim fate for the Earth’, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 16, no. 10, 2001.
4 Mathis Wackernagel, ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol. 99, no. 14, 2002.
5 ibid.
6 OECD, Economic Instruments for Pollution Control and Natural Resource Management in OECD Countries: a survey, OECD Environment Directorate, Paris, 1999.
7 See, for example, Environmental Defense, From Obstacle to Opportunity: how acid rain emissions trading is delivering cleaner air, Environmental Defense, New York, 2000.
8 National Academies of Science, Abrupt Climate Change: inevitable surprises, Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 2002.
9 See, for example, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: synthesis report, Robert Watson (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001, p. 343.
10 In fact, a survey commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists in July 2002 concluded that 76 per cent of US citizens want their government to require power plants and industry to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Despite widespread concern, the issue has not gained enough political traction for people to take to the streets over it.
11 Mathis Wackernagel, Ecological Footprints of Nations: How much nature do they use? How much nature do they have? <www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/>, 1997.
12 Quoted in G. Reynolds, ‘Space property rights’, Ad Astra, September–October, 1998.
13 Virtually nothing has been written on the subject. UN treaties dating from the 1950s and 1960s reserve space for the common benefit of humankind. At a seminar in Copenhagen in 2000, Vigdis Finnbogattodir, the former President of Iceland, posed the question, ‘Who will take responsibility for outer space?’
14 Warwick Fox’s Towards a Transpersonal Ecology (Shambhala, Boston, 1990) is an excellent discourse on these questions. The subsequent paragraphs draw heavily on Fox.
15 David Pearce, Blueprint for a Green Economy, Earthscan, London, 1989.
16 Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology.
17 Interestingly, the Catholic Church appears to have formally accepted such a view. Calling for an ‘ecological conversion’, in 2001 Pope John Paul II declared that humanity ‘is no longer the Creator’s “steward”, but an autonomous despot, who is finally beginning to understand that [it] must stop at the edge of the abyss’. He called for a new philosophy that recognises ‘the fundamental good of life in all its manifestations’, a life-based ethic akin to that advanced by Albert Schweitzer.
18 Quoted in Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, p. 176.
19 In the words of George Sessions, quoted in Fox, Towards a Transpersonal Ecology, p. 225.
20 Max Weber, Economy and Society, Bedminster Press, New York, 1968, p. 376.
21 Rogers Brubaker, The Limits to Rationality, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1984, p. 10.
22 Weber, Economy and Society, p. 86.
23 James Poterba, quoted in J. MacKenzie, R. Dower and D. Chen, The Going Rate: what it really costs to drive, World Resources Institute <www.wri.org>, 1992.
24 V. Brajer, ‘Recent evidence on the distribution of air effects’, Contemporary Policy Issues, vol. 10, no. 2, 1992, pp. 63–71.
25 John Donovan, Lead in Children: report on the National Survey of Lead in Children, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, 1996.
26 World Bank, Indonesia: growth, infrastructure and human resources, World Bank, Jakarta, 1992, p. 53.
27 See, for example, David Imber, Gay Stevenson, and Leanne Wilks, A Contingent Valuation Survey of the Kakadu Conservation Zone, Resource Assessment Commission research paper no. 3, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1991.
Chapter 8 The post-growth society
1 Juliet Schor, The Overspent American, HarperCollins, New York, 1999, p. 22.
2 Clive Hamilton and Elizabeth Mail, Downshifting in Australia: a sea-change in the pursuit of happiness, Discussion Paper no. 50, The Australia Institute, Canberra, 2003.
3 Juliet Schor, The Overspent American, pp. 113–15.
4 Hamilton and Mail, Downshifting in Australia, Table 5.
5 The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘eudemonism’ (also spelt eudæmonism) as the ‘system of ethics which finds the moral standard in the tendency of actions to produce happiness’, and traces its first use to 1827.
6 Andre Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, trans. Chris Turner, Verso, London, 1994, p. 30.
7 ibid., p. 5.
8 Although doing so without commodifying and imposing market rationality on household activities.
9 Janis Birkland, Mark Diesendorf and Clive Hamilton, ‘Some pathways to ecological sustainability’, in Mark Diesendorf and Clive Hamilton (eds), Human Ecology, Human Economy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997.
10 See especially Herman Daly, ‘The economics of the steady state’, American Economic Review, vol. 64, 1974, pp. 15–21.
11 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, 6th edn, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1923, p. 751.
12 ibid., pp. 750–1.
13 John Maynard Keynes, ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’ in Essays in Persuasion, W.W. Norton, New York, 1963, p. 362.
14 Gavan McCormack, ‘Demolishing the Doken Kokka? The Japanese struggle to get over the growth obsession’, Unpublished paper, Australian National University, Canberra, 2002.
15 McCormack suggests the real figure in 2001 was closer to 10.4 per cent: Gavan McCormack, ‘The end of Japan’s construction state?’, New Left Review, vol. 13, Jan–Feb, 2002, p. 2.