On Growth Two

37. Adam Schaff

Professor Adam Schaff was born March 10, 1913, in Lvov, Poland. In 1935 he was graduated in law and economics from the University of Lvov. In 1935 and 1936 he continued his studies at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris. In 1941 he was graduated from the Institute of Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, and in 1945 received his doctorate there. After World War Two he lectured at the universities of Lodz and Warsaw. In 1951 he became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Since 1964, Professor Schaff has been chairman of the board of the European Coordination Center for Social Sciences in Vienna, which was founded with the assistance of UNESCO. Some of his best-known books are: Some Problems of the Marxist Theory of Truth, Introduction to Semantics, Language and Cognition, and The Generative Grammar and the Concept of Innate Ideas. Professor Schaff advises the executive committee of the Club of Rome.

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You were the first Eastern European scientist to join the Club of Rome.

Together with my Yugoslavian colleague, Dr. Leo Mates, I was the first member from Eastern Europe. Why did I become interested? Because I believe that the problématique which is being tackled by the Club of Rome will be of fundamental importance for all of mankind during the next twenty years. The problems that are now being studied will have a decisive impact on the entire development of humanity in the future. Of course, the Club of Rome is not a community of people with a unified world-outlook or with identical points of view. They are different people, and contribute opposing views. But perhaps all of them agree concerning the fundamental approach, namely that the problématique is a problématique indeed.

Still, there is a lot of criticism, even from so-called progressive Western media, that the Club of Rome is just another elite club of big industrialists and capitalists.

Yes, such so-called criticism does exist, even in circles of the left and among some of the intelligentsia. Some of this criticism was also voiced in Eastern Europe. But is is disappearing everywhere. This initial reaction is also changing in Eastern European countries, even faster among us than among some left-wing people in Western Europe. The critique you mentioned does exist, however, and at times it appears to be rather crude. Because if such criticism is made, it seems to me one should first investigate whether the ideas expressed by the Club of Rome are correct or not.

And not lambast someone as a no-good capitalist because he happens to have set up Fiat factories in Latin America.

Exactly. To what type of company a person belongs is, in this case, totally irrelevant. What some people criticized were not the fundamental concepts of the Club of Rome, but what its founders represented in society. If we were to approach things in this way, we should in reality disqualify all kinds of movements, including the Marxist movement. If you consider the founders of Marxism - Marx and Engels - they themselves were not exactly proletarians. The most important people in the international Marxist movement were persons belonging to the so-called higher classes. Never in the history of the Marxist movement did we make appraisals or put forward judgments concerning movements solely on the basis of who was the leader. Bakunin came from the aristocracy. Engels was an industrialist. If you take Lasalle, if you take all other big names, including Lenin: Lenin came from Russian nobility: all of them had backgrounds that had little or nothing to do with the so-called revolutionary class.

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Considering the Club of Rome: it is not at all true what is being said, and believed at times, that the inner circle of the leadership includes only big managers of multinational companies. The truth is that there are many scientists and well-known intellectuals in the club. But, at the same time, it is also true that there are some people from the so-called managerial circles. The man who is the soul of the whole thing is Dr. Aurelio Peccei. He also happens to be one of the leaders of Fiat. But Peccei is a great humanist. He is someone who sees farther into the future than many of those who perhaps do not belong to the management of Fiat or of any other large company. In any case, I, who have been in the Communist movement now for forty-three years, am not afraid of people belonging to different classes. Neither am I afraid of people coming from other movements. I study what they have to say, and if they are doing what is right, if they make sense, and if it is correct from the point of view of certain criteria that I accept as being right for the social development -

There is a large-scale debate about growth itself. Toynbee commented not so long ago that growth would not only have to slow down, but would have to cease altogether.

I cannot say that I have a fixed or final opinion about this. Our opinions should be based on empirical research. What the Club of Rome has done in this respect is not to offer ready solutions or give fixed answers. The merit of the Club of Rome was, in Limits to Growth, to raise questions that were real life problems. No one today can avoid these questions. It is a fact that man is faced with a demographic explosion. This question should be studied forthwith. It should be established to what extent humanity can or should grow.

Personally, I am convinced that there are limits to growth from the point of view of these demographic problems alone. If people in the Third World are hearing these sounds of limits to growth, they are too often thinking only in terms of industrial growth or growth in the production of commodities. They do not always think of some of the main problems which touch their part of the world: especially the problem of runaway growth of humanity. The demographic explosion could very well become pernicious.

The second real problem - and nobody can avoid it - is pollution linked to industrial growth. The problem is to be found everywhere; it is not linked to this or that social system. It is a generalized, global problem. Nobody can find solutions by himself. The most advanced powers have been unable to find suitable answers. It will need a global approach, a global policy, a global solution.

The third large problem - we see it now all around and feel it - is the

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energy crisis. At last we have discovered that there are some resources which are nonrenewable and restricted, from the point of view of their availability, to the world. Some of these resources, if further exploited, will soon be exhausted. Therefore, the problem immediately linked to that of energy is that of food, which now has likewise become of paramount importance. I do not mean to imply that man is going back to Malthus, but we should remember that our life situation today is quite different from that of the days of Malthus. There are now billions of people more in the world who are faced with the problem of the possibility or nonpossibility of producing food. These are all very real problems and no one has been offering any solutions. The first group that began the real work on the question of limits to growth was the Club of Rome. They had no other ambition than to show statistically, on a global scale, what the tendencies and directions were in which we were moving. Of course, there were plenty of criticisms of these very first global calculations, some coming from my own part of the world, the socialist countries. Some of this criticism was justified. But we in the socialist countries believe the problems of limits to growth to be real. We are becoming more and more convinced that we have to cooperate. These vital questions can not be solved within the limitations of one particular group anymore. Not even within the limits of one big power alone. By way of résumé, I am personally convinced that here lies our real problématique. These are the questions that are extremely important for the future of mankind, and answers will not be found in launching criticism at these or other calculations. The only way out is to sit down together and to think about these problems.

I must add that my own criticism of the initial work of the Club of Rome, and in particular of the MIT study, was that they did not sufficiently take into account the existing differences in the world. They were thinking too much in a global way.

As if there really existed one world.

Exactly.

It seems as though a kind of class war between the rich northern half of the globe and the poor southern half is developing: a war over food, over resources, over energy....

Yes, this is one serious problem among others. I would say, even from the point of view of a more profound criticism of the first work done by the Club of Rome, that this question of North and South would be the very first

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problem for me personally. But the reply to this matter from the Club of Rome also makes sense. They are saying the following: ‘We know it. What we did is to use a simplified way of treating global problems. Before going any deeper one must first see in a general way what is going on. Therefore, we had to treat humanity as an entity; we had to take the earth as one unit. We had to see what were the relations among the various movement among humanity, which means the demographic explosion and so on. We had to take the existing resources and see how they link together. This was all necessary in order to have an initial view of what can be done on a global scale.’ The Club of Rome is of the opinion that afterward, after these initial calculations, it will be possible to go deeper, to go into the existing differentiation, because they also realized that if one would take the statistical data for humanity as a whole, one would automatically get the answers for the problems of humanity as a whole. The Club of Rome realizes that the answers will be totally different for the rich and developed countries in comparison to the poor and developing ones. And here lies the gap between the northern and southern parts of the globe.

And there is another problem: the class question. And, I mean, the class problem even within the rich countries. For we are, after all, not only faced with the problem of differentiation between the poor and the rich countries. We also have problems of discrepancies among the populations inside each separate country. These are some of the social problems not being taken into account in Limits to Growth. The new research projects undertaken by the Club of Rome do. For instance, one project now in motion at the Bariloche Foundation in Argentina is considering this question in its studies of the Third World. They are even treating it as one of the main aspects of their study. These are the studies and calculations that must be pushed forward. It is certain that aside from a global problématique of growth, there are also within these global problems subclasses and subproblems that touch different continents, different groups of countries, or even different classes inside these countries. The whole thing is much more complicated than could be shown simultaneously in a global way on the basis of the statistical analysis used by the original MIT group.

I wonder how there could ever arise the kind of solidarity among all peoples, which seems so needed if one is to discuss these problems without always resorting to competition in political or social ideals.

Well, that is a very difficult question. Even more than that, it touches upon the most subtle and delicate problems linked to the political and social

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situation in our present-day world. If we take humanity as a whole, and consider our planning on a global basis, we cannot ignore it. This question even becomes the main problem in the Third World. If limiting growth meant simply economic or industrial growth, or engineering a halt to the demographic explosion, I think this would represent both a utopian and an unjust way of thinking. Apart from the fact that the poor masses in many developing nations cannot easily conceive the worldwide implications of the baby boom, it would be totally impossible to make even a beginning in restricting the demographic explosion everywhere without simultaneously changing the existing social conditions in these parts of the world. In order to make any progress in this direction, we would have to make poor nations grow richer. It would be the only way. We know it from history. In any case, it would be necessary to reduce the demographic explosion in a sensible way. We do not have much of a demographic problem in most advanced nations. On the contrary, they are often already diminishing their populations. The real problem of demography comes from two-thirds of humanity, from the people who suffer from hunger and miserable poverty. By merely postulating these matters, we will not advance the cause of restricting population. Here lies the weak point in the Limits to Growth study. They end their booklet by announcing, ‘Let us stop the population explosion.’ One cannot achieve this by simply announcing it must be done. There are many many other factors involved. It is purely utopian. Secondly, I think such a statement is unjust. And it is here that we find some of the harshest opposition to the activities of the Club of Rome. Because the Third World is saying the following, and they are right: ‘If we were to stop economic growth today, it would mean that we would be letting this unjust situation in the world rest as it is. It would mean that our people, who are suffering hunger and dismal poverty, would continue to suffer.’ The Third World is right in taking this attitude. Most people in the world do not seem to realize that humanity is chronically suffering from hunger. If the developing nations stopped growing, it would in effect mean that one-third of humanity, in the developed nations, would continue to flourish, to be rich, and to live wastefully. No one will accept this status quo anymore. And if this is not understood in time, it could well lead to the beginning of a class fight between the poor and the rich; not only the poor and the rich of different social origin or classes within nations, but between different lands. This could be the most disastrous development in the history of mankind. Therefore, entering deeper into the problématique of limits to growth, the entire spectrum of social relations on an international scale must be taken into account. There are already signs that the Club of Rome is doing exactly

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that. Their recent document, The New Threshold, brings the discussion of this problem into their deliberations and projects. No one can demand of the Club of Rome that they become a new revolutionary international. That would likewise be utopian.

Aggression could very well become a way for the poor to improve their miserable lot, while even the rich may soon be fighting over diminishing resources.

Surely. Not only can we not exclude aggression, but we logically must include aggression in our calculi measuring our present and future situation. There is however another aspect to this question which is particularly well understood by those often-despised global managers. They realize that even if the poor would agree to remain poor and accept their miserable lot, would continue to die of hunger and live by that gap between rich and poor, that even under those unimaginable circumstances the world economy would face a deadly danger. Because our planetary economy is based at an ever-increasing pace on global relations. It simply could not exclude one part or one region of the world that had decided to remain underdeveloped and poor. All kinds of equivalent balances exist in the world economy. All economists - including bourgeois economists, who follow the theories of Keynes and others - agree on this one point: that the situation I just described is an impossibility. Then, on top of this comes the certain opposition from the people who cannot and will not take for granted that they will continue to starve to death, and who will certainly not accept the deteriorating situation in their lands. They are certainly going to fight. We have already seen a first signal of what is to come. It was a very unfortunate signal, one not too advantageous for the developing countries themselves: oil.

Developing countries are mostly producers of various raw materials. Many of these are restricted. They will start a fight on an economic basis, and could further develop a confrontation on a political level. We have already seen the first signs on the wall. Phenomena such as terrorism have appeared. The entire world could be turned into a terrorist battlefield. This would mean unimaginable danger to the survival of all normal life on earth. Terrorism has so far been restricted to certain areas. Nevertheless, it is spreading. What could be the result of terrorist moves by frustrated or desperate people? If we do not change the situation these developments may well become worse.

It was interesting to listen to President Houari Boumédiene of Algeria

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during the recent United Nations conference on natural resources, when he appealed not to the US or to the USSR, but to Europe for guidance. He must have meant all of Europe; the Europe stretching from Lisbon to the Urals, envisaged by de Gaulle.

I cannot answer this question for President Boumédiene. However, I do not think that anybody speaking of Europe today has only Western Europe in mind. Europe is Western and Eastern Europe. I happen to think that Europe could contribute considerably to reconciliation in the world and could help find answers to our global problems. I am a Pole. Not only do I come from Poland, but I am a Marxist. I belong to the Communist movement. I am deeply convinced that the countries that are basing their activities on Marxism could contribute to the solution of these problems. This includes finding ways to solve general European problems together. But for the moment, I am afraid we are still very far from this kind of cooperation.

Once upon a time the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves allies in the struggle against Hitler. Is it not possible that Eastern and Western Europe will find each other in our common struggle against hunger and poverty in the world?

This is a possibility. In my opinion, it is a necessity. Either we find a way to work together to find solutions in close cooperation, or it simply means world catastrophe. Therefore, I am hopeful and optimistic enough to say that this cooperation will be found. But, on the other hand, let me also introduce a note of skepticism and caution. It was easier to fight a common enemy like Nazi Germany than to find a common ground to fight problems such as world poverty. We in the socialist countries have a program. We say, ‘Let us change the social structure of the world. Let us change from private ownership to collectively owned social ownership.’ I personally think that it would be easier to find solutions on this basis. But at the same time I am skeptical enough to understand that just because it would be easier does not mean that people would necessarily accept these solutions. However, I should add that on the basis of our knowledge of history, perhaps not always, but in the majority of events, if humanity needed to meet an emergency, it often found a way, simply because it was necessary to do so in order to survive.