I agree with most of this article except for the main point; I think that "Growthism" and capitalism are synonymous. Growthism seems to be a scapegoat for the very real short comings of capitalism. Fact is that capitalism requires constant growth or it will fail. The real issue is valuing private property over the sacred right of life and that is what CAPITALism means.
no, captialism is valuing the accrual of property as a virtue in and of itself, not necessarily above or even competing with valuing human life. That growth is required as a part of the economic model is actually a rather modern concept that post-dates the development of capitalist philosophy, and accompanies the emergence of secular inflation as a matter of public policy.
If you would like to understand how growth is "built in" to the economic system as a matter of policy and structure (and has nothing to do with capitalism per se), I would strongly recommed three resources:
1) Zeitgeist takes a left-ish perspective, and unfortunately is diluted by a lot of conspiratorial nonsense, but importantly its description of the money system is more or less correct.
2) Chris Martenson's "crash-course" is centrist, and very very good, but also very long and tedious.
3) Hidden Secrets of Money (video 4 in particular) takes a more right-leaning approach, and is tainted by the fact that the guy is obviously trying to sell you gold and silver, but the description of the money system is spot on and he strongly makes the point that growth is required. It's also the most concise and well-produced of the three.
> captialism is valuing the accrual of property as a virtue in and of itself
Accrual: The act or process of accumulating; an increase.
Am I missing something? How is that not "growth"? If someone has more and more, the number of things they own has to keep growing. [I put growth in quotes because I think there is a world of difference between a tree or a person growing, and bank accounts or "places to put stuff" (see Carlin et al.) growing.]
> not necessarily above or even competing with valuing human life
I would argue that even the focus on property - owning things just for the sake of owning them, as opposed to making, using and sustaining things (not just objects, but also ideas and living beings) for the sake of furthering life - goes against the humanity and aliveness of the person subscribing to that view.
Moreover, since we're nowhere near being able to turn energy into matter, to conjure property out of, say, the energy that gets hurled around space by suns and such, property often has to come from somewhere. Not strictly necessarily, but quite often in practice, it means taking things that someone else owned, or could potentially own; wherever we're dealing with finite resources, amassing property must make the rest poorer. Sure, that's not an objective in itself, "just" an unavoidable side-effect. Kinda like alcoholism is "just" wanting to be happy/drunk, not wanting to feel miserable or making others miserable. 10 for noble intentions, 0 for intellectual honesty.
Yes, it is theoretically possible for such an addiction (to own more for the sake of owning more) to at least harm no other beings than the ones suffering from it. We may get there some day. We're not there, at all.
> Am I missing something? How is that not "growth"?
Because it's an individual value; there is no imposition that society as an aggregate MUST do so. That imposition is "growthism".
goes against the humanity and aliveness of the person
This smacks of the naturalistic fallacy. What constitutes "humanity"? One could argue, that being the only species that appears to have conjured up property rights, propertization is quintessentially human. When animals fight over scarce resources, they get bloody. When humans fight over scarce resources, they shout words at each other and ultimately go to court (in most cases). Occasionally blood is shed, but it's much rarer.
>the focus on property - owning things just for the sake of owning them
That's not the typical capitalist property rights model - most capitalists justify property rights via the Lockean model; that something comes to be your property so that you can transform it into something else, ideally useful to others for future trade. This is exactly opposed to the growthism model, where the investments are less made to promote the product being made (and score a bit of a profit in the meantimes), and more made for the purposes of securing your future against the treadmill of inflation.
I'm sorry, but it appears your views on what constitutes capitalism are exactly the caricature of capitalism that have come about because of growthism.
Just to clarify: I don't personally subscribe to any of these views, I take more of the free market position, which takes no position on property and has a weaker value associated with profit - by weak, non-profits are not to be stigmatized, and in fact I'm running a non-profit myself. Futhermore, my personal philosophy on property is that propertization is a social right (not an individual one) that is justified pragmatically as a means to avoid the tragedy of the commons.
