Comments on: Five argumentative fallacies and one methodological fallacy without which degrowth cannot stand

By: Sandwichman

Sandwichman — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 16:52:34 +0000

I agree that abundance and national income accounting growth are very different things. I admit that there are some advocates of degrowth who present a malthusian-racist message but I don’t think that is representative of the best degrowth thinking or of tendency as a whole. For the most part, what I see is people jumping to a growth-contrarian position as a reaction to the fallacy of growth. While I think such contrarianism is inadequate, I take some comfort in the suspicion that it is transitional. People abandoning one set of truisms are quick to embrace another set somewhat uncritically. I do think it is useful to challenge degrowth as a slogan and point out its conceptual ambiguities and lacunae. But at the same time it is necessary to recognize that those inadequacies are not unique to the degrowth argument.

By: David de Ugarte

David de Ugarte — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 11:12:44 +0000

We are very conscient that «abundance» is not equal to «growth» if you define growth in terms of national (capitalist) accountancy. Indeed an abundance society will be a zero-GNP economy, but we need to emphasize that we want abundance for all, not only for rich countries inhabitants, in other words we want to reject clearly the malthusian-racist message under degrowth

By: Sandwichman

Sandwichman — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:26:28 +0000

David de Ugarte correctly identifies some fallacies that underpin the populist notion of “degrowth” but he is wrong in attributing those fallacies to the advocates of degrowth themselves. Rather, the fallacies that infect the degrowth argument are derivative from the noxious metaphor of economic growth itself — the idea that you can bundle abundance and oppression together and quantify the sum. The problem is that degrowth doesn’t make a radical enough conceptual break from the failed metaphor of growth.

Does de Ugarte make that break? Not in this essay and not in his previous one on “Abundance Utopia and Degrowth.” Instead, he appears to adopt the equally fallacious position that if arguments for degrowth are fallacious, then “the opposite” of degrowth must be true. This is a false dilemma. Actually both growth and degrowth are fallacious because there is no conceptually coherent aggregate there that could perform the requisite growing or not growing. Degrowth at least has the value of drawing attention to the discrepancy, even if the terms in which it does so are flawed.

It might help de Ugarte’s critique for him to acknowledge that Alfred Marshall — one of the originators of neoclassical economics — offered a similar methodological critique of the ceteris paribus analytical method. And, of course, Marshall’s warning has gone unheeded. There is thus nothing new in pointing out the fallacy of static analysis. Actually similar fallacies have been pointed out throughout the history of political economy. Ironically, the criticism of fallacies has often formed the foundation for the erection of new and more formidable fallacies of the false dilemma or ignoratio elenchi variety.