Growth: A History and a Reckoning
Daniel Susskind
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2024 (304 pages)
In Growth: A History and a Reckoning, economist Daniel Susskind reckons with the meaning and future of economic growth in light of its material gains—and its costs. Starting from the premise that giving up on growth would be tragic, Susskind charts a path that reimagines growth. “What we need is to chase after a different type of growth,” he states, drawing on economic history and imagination to envision it (180).
When reckoning with the promise of growth, and its costs, we must weaken the tradeoffs. Susskind believes this is best achieved through harnessing ideas, markets, and technological dynamism over capital, with a vision that retains growth while redirecting economic incentives around collective values. Further, normative discussions about growth cannot be limited to economists. They must take place democratically, ultimately answerable by citizens. While features of Susskind’s argument are compelling, particularly his dialectical method and sources in economic history, much of his proposal for redirecting incentives is already taking place globally. And, paradoxically, despite his valorization of democratic processes, he fails to demonstrate how the collective values ideally orienting market order would arise through democratic contestation.
As an economist, Susskind recognizes the centrality of tradeoffs to economic thinking. Yet he maintains, “as technological progress is redirected, and new ways of weakening the tradeoff between growth and the environment are discovered, the possibility frontier is pushed out” (208). Susskind believes we can have both growth and richer ecological quality, drawing on the power of ideas and technology. Though not a novel argument, with forms of it previously articulated by Amartya Sen and Paul Romer, Susskind’s work is powerfully grounded in economic history. He notes how Romer’s work marked a transition from the rival—scarcity and tradeoffs—to the non-rival, chiefly ideas. Ideas, then, can drive sustained growth.
Rather than abolishing markets, as post-growth thinkers suggest, Susskind maintains markets should be retained, reflecting collective values. This reorientation would steer growth through dynamic moral ideas, attaining the kind of growth we want rather than one that sacrifices environmental quality. Technology, especially AI, can drive this transformation of market order, and Susskind seeks to press forward a “liberation of ideas” through technology. This would be informed by the Solow-Swan economic model of growth, which found that the driver of sustained growth is largely technological progress, not capital (177, 38).
Both a work of economic history and an imaginative proposal, Susskind’s work is compelling in its dialectical thinking. He demonstrates that the way forward for growth requires reconciling polarities and weakening tradeoffs. Additionally, readers will learn much from Susskind’s data-driven exposition of economic history, especially his account of economists’ endeavors to discern the elusive drivers of growth—from the Harrod-Domar model’s centrality of capital, to the Solow-Swan model’s focus on technological progress, to Romer’s priority of ideas over capital.
Despite Susskind’s insightful economic history, which shows how the objective of growth became preeminent through a historical account enriched by data visualizations, I question the originality of his proposal. If we wish to retain growth, yet orient it around desirable ends, how would this be enacted in a way that changes the status quo? Capitalist societies already actualize Susskind’s vision that “Prices must be influenced … to close the gap between the market value they capture when left to their own devices and the social value they neglect” (190). Carbon taxes and renewal energy subsidies already enact this, so it is unclear what Susskind’s advocacy of “taxes and subsidies, laws and regulations, social narratives and norms” adds beyond energetic framing (211).
Furthermore, although the book is largely concerned with economics, there are latent moral and political considerations that remain undertheorized or reveal contradictions. Susskind contends that the book aims at moral renewal through centering valuable ends beyond growth, yet his call for “demoting growth in the hierarchy of ends” paradoxically tends toward the degrowth he critiques, while the substance of these ends lacks a basis in democratic contestation (220). Susskind does elsewhere propose a pluralist “dashboard approach” I found compelling for liberal societies. However, it exists in tension with his assertions of values elsewhere like “a healthy climate, fair distribution, strong communities, good work, functioning democracy” (217). Susskind’s dashboard approach offers an account of society’s values which recognizes the plurality and incommensurability of persons’ ends, with growth just one of them. Societies would value these ends on their own terms, while refraining from rendering GDP all-encompassing by integrating such values into a complex calculation accessible only to technocrats. This approach deserves more articulation, and it seems to contradict Susskind’s advocacy elsewhere of a fixed set of values.
Susskind’s concluding chapters move from economics to democratic theory. He advocates a more thoroughly deliberative democracy through “mini-publics” that bring citizens together to discuss important issues. Since he finds that delegated representatives have failed to confront the tradeoffs of growth, there must be a stronger role for the citizenry. I concede features of Susskind’s critique that economists are not the ideal persons to resolve normative dilemmas, yet one wonders about his priority of the general public over ethicists. If we already draw on sophisticated thinking from economists in broader analyses of growth, integrating ethicists’ reflections logically follows.
These criticisms aside, Susskind has done valuable work. The book’s strengths lie in its dialectical approach, finding truth in competing approaches. It also offers a data-driven economic history. We must retain market order, Susskind contends, while weakening tradeoffs by redirecting incentives around collective values. His economic history is also exemplary. He uncovers nuanced thinking on growth throughout history to discern why growth became preeminent, and how economists have grappled with it. Although the book is well-researched in its economic history, and visionary in its focus on ideas and technological progress, much of Susskind’s proposal for changing incentives is already underway. Meanwhile, his articulation of collective values to orient market order evinces a contradiction between values he asserts and his emphasis on democratic deliberation. Nevertheless, Susskind has done worthwhile work articulating a dynamic, future-oriented vision of growth, not sacrificing growth but imagining it anew.
Sarah Thomas
Journal of Markets & Morality