On Growth Two

16. Amilcar O. Herrera

Professor Amilcar O. Herrera was born October 23, 1920, in Buenos Aires. He received a PhD from the University of Buenos Aires and a Master of Science from the Colorado School of Mines. He lectured on economic geology at the universities of Buenos Aires and Santiago, Chile. In 1969 he joined the Fundación Bariloche, of which he is chairman of the Department of Natural Resources. Since 1972, he has also been director of a Latin American model prepared at the same institute. Professor Herrera attends Club of Rome meetings and is a consultant to the United Nations. He is the author of various books on the subjects of natural resources and minerals.

What is your impression of the 1973 symposium held by the Club of Rome here in Tokyo? Do you feel the club has now reached the point where it will

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turn in a more positive direction instead of shouting from the rooftops that the world will fall apart?

As I am not a member of the Club of Rome, I can give you only my general impression on that matter. I think that the Club of Rome has taken a distinctly different direction since the last meeting, which took place near Paris, in January, 1973. The most important change is that the club now seems to recognize that the main obstacles to the development of mankind are not physical but sociopolitical. Naturally, there is still a great deal of discussion about limits to growth, zero growth, the population explosion, and so on, but there is a clear shift of interest in the direction just referred to.

The club started its activities a few years ago, trying to avoid political opinions and implications, in order to concentrate on what they thought were the ‘global’ problems facing mankind, but they soon discovered that this was impossible. There are no important world problems without sociopolitical implications. Trying to analyze them from a nonpolitical point of view means the same as taking a very definite political position. I think that the Club of Rome is now facing that reality, and going in the right direction.

I have the impression from the deliberation during the symposium that Afro-Asian and Latin American delegates actually forced this different turn in the direction of the Club of Rome.

I agree that they had a great influence on that change. When the Club of Rome first met, they were thinking in terms of a world that in the face of the global problems posed by the physical environment could be considered as a unit. Now they have to admit that humanity is really divided into two parts, a rich and a poor world, and that the situation has to be taken into account in any strategy for survival. The final aim might be a unified humanity, but to achieve that result the entire structure of world policies has to be radically modified. Anyway, this is far in the future, and at present we better accept the truth. It is the only way that offers some hope of eventually reaching a unified and better world.

So the Club of Rome can be expected to steer away from technology, computers, figures, and drafts and pay even more attention than hitherto to the human side of the story.

There is no contradiction between computers and a humanistic approach. Mathematical models are very useful, specifically in the study of the material side of the world, and can be of great help in the developing countries in finding the most rational way of improving their living conditions. But the

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fact remains, a computer is only an instrument and the results it gives are not better than the assumptions and data used as inputs.

The computer is only one appendix of the brain.

Yes, it is just an extension of the capacity of the brain. A mathematical model is only the formalization of a mental model, that helps to establish the exact quantitative relationships between the variables used, and to eliminate internal redundancies and inconsistencies.

A great number of the problems presently being discussed are centered around the social and physical effects of consumption. What do you think about this problem?

The problems of consumption have a completely different significance for the two sectors into which the world is presently divided. Most inhabitants of the underdeveloped countries cannot satisfy their basic material needs of life. For them, to increase consumption of such things as food, housing, health care, and education is a prerequisite for their incorporation as full active members of their societies. Freedom, democracy, and social participation have no meaning for people living in utter misery, who have to devote all their energy to the daily struggle for bare survival.

In the developed countries, the problem is entirely different. A great part of the population has a consumption of material goods far beyond that required to adequately satisfy the basic needs of life, and practically all the population lives well above the subsistence level. The production of material goods increases constantly owing to two main reasons: first, the market economy is based on profit; and second, and socially most important, economic growth is a substitute for social equality. The only justification for social inequality - which now is equivalent to economic inequality - in a rich society is the illusion that economic growth will eventually bring everyone to the same level of consumption now enjoyed by the privileged sectors of society. The truth is that the problem of the advanced countries is a problem of redistribution of wealth, not increasing production.

Where the MIT team advocates zero growth, they include two fallacies in their reasoning. The first is to consider average world consumption, thus hiding the fact that a third of the earth's population consumes about eightyfive percent of the total resources; and the second is to assume, implicitly, that zero growth is possible in a society in which material goods are unequally distributed.

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What do you think about the possibility of achieving, at some time in the future, the stabilization of economic growth?

I think that given an egalitarian humanity in the sense previously defined, the stabilization of economic growth is not an economic or natural resources problem, but a cultural one based on values. Today, consumption is a social value, a value per se, at least in the capitalist countries. Unless this value is replaced by others, to stop or reasonably stabilize economic growth will be impossible. The crucial decision will be whether to go on continuously increasing production or to increase free time, thus allowing people to enjoy the cultural values that at present are the privilege of a minority of mankind. I cannot predict which will be the choice, but I believe that an egalitarian humanity, from the point of view of material goods, will be in a better position to take really rational decisions.

Your team at the Bariloche Foundation is working on what aspects of the problématique?

The aim of our model is to present an alternative, from the point of view of the Third World, to the models being constructed in the advanced countries. Our model is based on a few basic premises.

The MIT model predicts a catastrophe which would take place in the next seventy or eighty years. The form of the catastrophe will be widespread hunger, high mortality rates - in general, miserable conditions of living. We believe that there is no need to wait seventy or eighty years to see the catastrophe: that is the present situation for a great part of humanity. We are concerned with this presently existing catastrophe, not with the one predicted for the future.

Another point is that we believe the effect of mankind on its physical environment depends to a great extent on its form of social organization. This position is completely different from that implicitly assumed in most of the solutions proposed in the advanced countries. In general, it is assumed that in the interrelationship between man and his ecosystem, the social organization is relatively negligible, or, in other words, can be considered as a constant. Even when some of the physical components - the total amount of natural resources, for instance - are also considered constant, the whole system becomes univocally determined. So the fatalist sometimes appears, advocating that only by reducing population and stopping economic growth can the disaster be prevented, even at the cost of perpetuating the misery of the Third World.

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If we accept the fact that the social organization and the system of values can be modified, and this, in turn, will change the impact of mankind on its environment, new degrees of freedom in the system appear. In other words, the future of mankind is again an open option, depending on the will of humanity and not on unchangeable physical constraints.

To understand the reason why many of the solutions advocated by the advanced countries are of the fatalistic type, we can review some historical precedents. When Malthus developed his theory of scarcity at the beginning of the nineteenth century, his scientific base was very weak to say the least. However, if his thesis was so widely accepted, it was because it responded to the interests of the dominant classes of the time. The policy of salaries, implicit in Malthus' thesis, was the basis of the accumulation of capital during the Industrial Revolution.

In another context, the situation is similar now. The solutions advocated by the advanced countries tend to perpetuate the international and social organization upon which their privileged position is based. For that reason, only the victims of the system, the underdeveloped countries, have the motivation to explore all the degrees of freedom of the system-mankind-environment to look for new, more realistic, and rational solutions.

We believe, also, that the disadvantaged countries cannot develop by following the same path adopted in the past by the now rich countries. In the first place, it is impossible: historical and social conditions are now entirely different from those prevailing during the Industrial Revolution. Secondly, even if it were possible, it is undesirable, as it would mean repeating the same mistakes that have led the advanced countries to their present situation of social deteroration and growing alienation.

Finally, we believe that for their development the backward countries will have to rely on their own resources, natural as well as human. We have to accept the fact, and the sooner we do the better, that we cannot expect any substantial help from the advanced countries.

Those are your general premises. On what social and economic assumptions is your mathematical model built?

The central assumptions of our model are the following: We aim at an egalitarian society. By that we understand a society in which every human being - by the mere fact of his or her existence - has an absolute right to adequate satisfaction of the basic material and cultural needs, namely: food, shelter, health care, and education. That means these needs must be fulfilled as a social service, independently of salary. Beyond these basic needs appear

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the cultural options, which the model does not try to determine, as they depend on the cultural values of each society. The only assumption at that level is equal opportunity for access, which means full participation in all social decisions. Another essential point is that production will be determined by social needs and not by profit.

With these premises, we constructed our model around a function of basic needs that determines what is the total amount of material goods a human being requires to be wholly incorporated as an active member of his society without wasting resources. The adequate level of satisfaction of these needs - food, housing, health care, and education - has been determined through a careful study of each. We also built a model of population - based on the analysis of historical evidence - which generates the population as a function of the socioeconomic variables used in the model. The population model confirms the historical evidence that the only way to effectively control the rate of demographic growth is by improving the socioeconomic conditions of the people.

The main purpose of the model is to show that, given the appropriate social decisions, an adequate level of living for every human being can be reached in a reasonable time.

Finally, I want to stress again that we include in our model only basic needs, in other words, needs that are invariable for any possible society, because we think that all other higher-order needs are culturally determined and vary with every human group. We believe that the cultural diversity of mankind should be maintained and enriched.

Not like China?

Why not?

Well, all of China seems to be wearing the same dull gray suit - all are waving the same red book; I mean, regardless of their fantastic achievements since the rise of Mao Tse-tung. You seem to aim at a greater variety instead of strict programming of all people.

Yes, but don't forget that China is in a period of transition to a new society. I don't think we can judge the rich and complex Chinese process by such external features as a red book or a gray suit. I believe that all processes of deep social change are very complicated, nonlinear, and full of contradictions, and the Chinese experience is not an exception to this rule. I do not know which form the process of change will take in the rest of the Third World, because history never repeats itself; but it will surely be a very

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complex one, given the economic, social, and cultural diversity of that sector of the world. From a long-term point of view, we are already immersed in that process of change, although we still cannot foresee how it will evolve and what type of society will emerge from it.

One of my African interviewees expressed the view that it was too early to speak to his students about problems of ‘limits to growth’ or hand over the MIT study to the popular press of Africa. How is this situation in Latin America? I am particularly interested in whether young people take part in your team.

The MIT model has been much discussed in Latin America, and the predominant opinion is that it represents the point of view of the advanced countries.

As to the second part of your question, the members of our team are not too young, usually between their late twenties and early forties. We believe that the ideas incorporated in our model reflect the ideals of a great part of the youth of Latin America. In these ideals are embodied the best possibilities for change in Latin America.

Then perhaps we do not find too many flower children among Latin American youths, turning to Eastern religions, Zen, and Buddhism, as we find nowadays in the advanced nations?

No, our youth in general consider these contemplative attitudes as a form of escapism. They realize that sixty percent of our population is below the minimum level of decent living, and that such a situation can only be changed through a hard political struggle.

My personal opinion is that most hippy movements are more an expression of a decadent society than the vanguards of a new world. They represent a personal ‘solution’ which has nothing to do with the construction of a new society.