“Development” liberates, “Growth” depletes “life”

From Manfred Max-Neef, excerpts with editing by Carolyn Bennett

Regression, BREAKDOWN — more critical indicators and how to reverse into a path forward

Airing today on the Pacifica program Democracy Now was an interview in Bonn, Germany, with the acclaimed Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef, a Right Livelihood laureate. His books include Outside Looking in: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. This is an excerpt from Manfred Max-Neef’s responses in that interview.

The principles that should be of an economics “are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle—

• The economy is to serve the people, not the people to serve the economy
• Development is about people, not about objects
• Growth is not the same as development, development does not necessarily require growth
• No economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services
• The economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere; hence, permanent growth is impossible

The fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest — under any circumstance — [should] be above the reverence of life.”

On Amy Goodman’s further prompting in follow up, Manfred Max-Neef lays out his notions concerning life, development and growth —

“Nothing can be more important than life.

“Life — not human beings: For me, the center is the miracle of life in all its manifestations. If there is an economic interest, you forget about life — not only of other living beings, but even of human beings.…”

“Growth is a quantitative accumulation.
“Development is the liberation of creative possibilities.

“Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. You are not growing anymore— nor he/she, or me; but we continue developing ourselves.…

“Development has no limits. Growth has limits. That is a very big thing — that economists and politicians do not understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth.

“…[I]n every society, there is a period in which economic growth, conventionally understood or no, brings about an improvement of the quality of life — but only up to a point, the threshold point, beyond which, if there is more growth, quality of life begins to decline. That is the situation in which we are now.”

The United States of America “is the most dramatic example that you can find. …

“‘The United States [is] an Underdeveloping Nation’, which is a new category. We have developed, underdeveloped and developing. Now you have underdeveloping. [The United States] is an example in which the one percent of the Americans are doing better and better and better and the 99 percent is going down — in all sorts of manifestations.

“People [are] living in their cars, now, and sleeping in their cars parked in front of the house that used to be their house—thousands of people.

“Millions of people have lost everything. However, the speculators who brought about the whole mess are fantastically well off.”


Source and notes
“Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef: U.S. is becoming an ‘Under-developing Nation’, September 22, 2010,
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/22/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_us

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