The Ideology of Unending Economic Growth

In this introduction, I open the discussion into economic growth as an ideology and how it is shaped.

How can we explain the unrestrained progress of the green growth narrative, despite its blatant inconsistency? Drawing back on the paradigm of nature domination, described by Adorno and Horkheimer and applying Lacanian discourse- and psychoanalytical theory, "nature" reveals itself as an imaginary and symbolic construction underpinning occidental subjectivity. While neoliberal ideology is centered around the imaginary construction, i.e. the neurotic fantasy of nature, the narrative of green growth reveals a process of foreclosure, which points to a psychotic condition. The signifier Nature in its law-giving and limiting function is irretrievably expelled from the symbolic order, leading to a loss of reality and its paranoid hallucinatory reconstruction. The pathological and morbid character of the green growth narrative needs to be recognized by civil society to vehemently reject it, take action and detain its life-threatening consequences.

‘Capitalism’ has a variety of meanings: 1. Capitalism is ‘the possession of capital or wealth’, and it exhibits increasing levels of inequality. Only Basic Income schemes that reduce inequality should be implemented. 2. Capitalism is ‘an economic system in which private capital or wealth is used in the production or distribution of goods, and prices are determined mainly in a free market’. A Basic Income could assist capitalism as it could make the employment market more like a free market. 3. Capitalism is ‘the dominance of private owners of capital and of production for profit’. Basic Income might enable workers to leave jobs in which they were dominated, so less domination would occur. 4. Capitalism assumes that everything has its price. Basic Income could work very happily alongside capitalism; and it would offer a new paradigm based on gifts: of Basic Income to every individual, and of people’s time and energy to society.