Concept
Growth imperative
Overview
Growth imperative is a term in economic theory regarding a possible necessity of economic growth. On the micro level, it describes mechanisms that force firms or consumers (households) to increase revenues or consumption to not endanger their income. On the macro level, a political growth imperative exists if economic growth is necessary to avoid economic and social instability or to retain democratic legitimacy, so that other political goals such as climate change mitigation or a reduction of inequality are subordinated to growth policies.
Current neoclassical, Keynesian and endogenous growth theories do not consider a growth imperative or explicitly deny it, such as Robert Solow. In neoclassical economics, adherence to economic growth would be a question of maximizing utility, an intertemporal decision between current and future consumption (see Keynes–Ramsey rule). Other sociological and political theories consider several possible causes for pursuing economic growth, for example maximizing profit, social comparison, culture (conformity), or political ideologies, but they do not regard them to be compulsive. Possible growth imperatives are discussed in Marxist theory, Schumpeterian theory of creative destruction and ecological economics, as well as in political debates on post-growth and degrowth. It is disputed whether growth imperative is a meaningful concept altogether, who would be affected by it, and which mechanism would be responsible.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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It is the fashion with economists to open their works with a general introduction, which is entitled “production” (see, e. g., John Stuart Mill) and deals with the general “requisites of production.” This general introductory part treats or is supposed to treat: 1. Of the conditions without which production is impossible, i. e., of the most essential conditions of production. As a matter of fact, however, it…
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
The author is tied to Growth imperative in the knowledge graph.
COUNSELS, indeed, involve necessity, but one which can only hold under a contingent subjective condition, viz. they depend on whether this or that man reckons this or that as part of his happiness; the categorical imperative, on the contrary, is not limited by any condition, and as being absolutely, although practically, necessary, may be quite properly called a command. We might also call the first kind of…
Michel de Montaigne, Literary and Philosophical Essays
States what Growth imperative is.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
The author is tied to Growth imperative in the knowledge graph.
Related ideas
- Joseph Schumpeter
- Karl Marx
- Ecological economics
- Culture
- Exponential growth
- Conformity
- Neoclassical economics
- Parameter
- Scientist
- Institution
- Surplus value
- Marxian economics
- Capitalism
- Free trade
- Economic growth
- Ideology
- Cooperative
- Stock-flow consistent model
Place in the tradition
Part of Ecological economics.