Beyond the Perpetual Pursuit of Economic Growth

JULIE L. ROSE

Introduction

Though economic growth is a leading policy goal of nearly all contempo­rary governments, with quarterly changes in gross domestic product (GDP) widely reported as a barometer of a society's health, skepticism about the pursuit of economic growth is increasingly prominent.¹ Challenges to growth first peaked in the 1970s² and have risen again today, with a political and social movement questioning the “growth paradigm,”³ as well as the develop­ment of alternative indicators of social progress “beyond GDP”⁴ Many critics object to how economic growth is unsustainably pursued and how its gains are inequitably distributed.

Though objections to how economic growth is pursued and distributed may be readily understood and granted, to reject the continued pursuit of economic growth itself is a more difficult proposition. Even if a society has attained high levels of income and wealth, continued economic growth, if sustainable and broadly shared, on its face could make everyone, including the worst off, still better off.

While any engagement with the question of whether a society ought in­deed to perpetually pursue economic growth, or whether at some point it may or should cease to do so, undeniably must draw on a set of empirical considerations, the question is at bottom a normative one.

The first approach denies that a society may cease to pursue economic growth. On this view, a society should aim to make its members (or people more generally) indefinitely better off, and to do so it ought to aim to in­crease their shares of income and wealth. The second approach instead im­plicitly or explicitly treats the question of whether a wealthy society should aim for further economic growth, or further gains more broadly, as a matter of societal discretion, on which principles of justice are silent or indifferent. This view focuses on the demands of meeting and maintaining sufficiency thresholds and egalitarian principles and leaves open whether and what fur­ther gains a society should pursue.

These two approaches, taken together, suggest either that a society is ob­ligated to aim to make its members (or people more generally) indefinitely better off, and that even wealthy societies must perpetually pursue economic growth, or that a society is not obligated to do so and accordingly may cease to pursue economic growth.

Earlier arguments against the perpetual pursuit of economic growth, how­ever, suggest an alternative approach. Two of the most prominent and gener­ative sets of arguments against the perpetual pursuit of economic growth— those in John Stuart Mill's chapter on “The Stationary State” in Principles of Political Economy (1848) and John Maynard Keynes's “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (1930)—instead suggest that, beyond some level of wealth, it is by ceasing to pursue economic growth that a society may make its members better off. This approach, distinctively, does not dispute that if it is possible for a society to make its members genuinely better off it ought to do so, but denies that this entails that a society must indefinitely pursue economic growth.

Mill's and Keynes's arguments are richly suggestive, but they merge the political and the ethical, tying their arguments to particular views of the good life. While some may welcome arguments against the perpetual pursuit of economic growth on such grounds, they are in tension with contemporary liberal principles of justice that preclude the justification of a society's basic political and economic institutions and public policies on perfectionist judg­ments about better and worse ways of living.

Yet the core insight of Mill's and Keynes's arguments—that people may be better off in a society that does not continue to pursue economic growth— need not rest on such perfectionist grounds, as examining this claim within the terms of John Rawls's theory ofjustice as fairness suggests. Rawls's prin­ciples of justice provide particularly productive terrain to pursue this idea because Rawls, most notably within contemporary liberal theories ofjustice, denies that a society must indefinitely pursue economic growth. Though Rawls's argument is not explicitly developed and is indeed “puzzling,” recon­structing his position that the principles ofjustice as fairness are “compati­ble” with Mill's “just stationary state” demonstrates how, without necessarily relying on perfectionist premises, a society may arrange its institutions and policies such that they do not pursue or realize further economic growth, on the grounds that it is under such arrangements that its worst-off members are better off.⁶

Developing this alternative approach drawn from Mill's, Keynes's, and Rawls's arguments more broadly within the contours of contemporary lib­eral principles of justice supports, I argue, a just agrowth position.⁷ On this view, a society should open-endedly aim to make people better off, insofar as is possible and consistent with a theory of justice's other principles, by fairly and reliably expanding their effective opportunities.⁸ Continued economic growth may, or may not, contribute to this aim, and so a society should nei­ther reject nor endorse the pursuit of economic growth itself.

Before proceeding, it is important to clarify a conceptual question about the definition of economic growth that arises in parallel with the normative question about whether it makes people better off, which Mancur Olson, writ­ing in the introduction to a volume on “The No-Growth Society” in 1973, puts well. If, following Lionel Robbins's canonical definition, one sees economics expansively as the “relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses,” then, as Olson sees it, there is “economic growth whenever existing wants are satisfied to a greater degree than they were in a previ­ous period.” If this definition of economic growth as simply an increase in preference-satisfaction is accepted, Olson presses, then the call for the cessa­tion of economic growth “comes down simply to saying that people should have no more of anything they want,” even a “cleaner environment,” or more “cathedrals and art galleries,” or whatever else the critic might prefer. But, Olson argues, this raises a contradiction, because when proponents “advo­cate zero economic growth, they do not mean that we should not be better off; on the contrary, they mean that if what they understood to be economic growth were to cease, we would be better off.” As Olson then recognizes and grants, contrary to the economist who holds that “the economic dimension has no logical outer limit,” critics of economic growth reject its identification with an increase in preference-satisfaction, or overall well-being or quality of life. They instead take economic growth to have a more circumscribed mean­ing, such as an increase in income and wealth, capital accumulation, or ma­terial throughput, and the conventional definition of economic growth as an increase in real GDP per capita generally serves as a practical referent for both its defenders and challengers.¹⁰

It is also important to note that the examination of Mill's, Keynes's, and Rawls's arguments considers whether a society may or should cease to pur­sue economic growth and whether in doing it may make its members better off, without directly considering how economic growth in one society af­fects or is affected by other societies, or whether a society has an open-ended obligation to make people in other societies better off, because their argu­ments examined here proceed within this societal frame.

The remainder of the chapter examines Mill's, Keynes's, and Rawls's argu­ments in turn, before concluding by showing how the alternative approach they suggest may be developed to yield a just agrowth position.

Mill and the Progressive Stationary State

Mill's chapter on “The Stationary State” in Principles of Political Economy pro­vides a clear vision of what we may call the progressive stationary state, in which a society, while ceasing to aim for economic growth, continues to pur­sue and realize gains on other dimensions. Beyond some level of wealth, Mill suggests that people may be better off in a society that ceases to pursue eco­nomic growth, and indeed that they may be continuously better off, without continued economic growth, as a society can still attain ongoing gains on other, relatively more valuable dimensions.¹¹

Mill's vision of such a progressive stationary state was a radical departure from the view of the classical political economists, who saw the stationary state, a condition in which economic growth ceases, as an unwelcome state of stagnation in which most people's lives would be “pinched and stinted.”¹² Though they saw the process of economic expansion as constrained by inevi­table limits, they nonetheless sought and recommended measures—such as restraints on population growth, expansion of foreign commerce, and tech­nological improvements—by which a society could attempt to continuously postpone the stationary state's arrival.¹³

Although Mill, too, believed that an increase in wealth was not “bound­less” or “in its nature unlimited,” he did not share the perspective of the “po­litical economists of the old school” who regarded the stationary state with “unaffected aversion.” Rather, Mill argues, he is “inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition.” Indeed, rather than recommending that societies unceasingly seek to defer the stationary state, he hopes that they “will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.”¹⁴

Mill argues that it is a mistake to assume that people must live in pov­erty in a society in which economic growth—which he treats as the “mere increase of production and accumulation”—has ceased.

A well-paid and affluent body of labourers; no enormous fortunes, except what were earned and accumulated during a single lifetime; but a much larger body of persons than at present, not only exempt from the coarser toils, but with sufficient leisure, both physical and mental, from mechanical details, to cultivate freely the graces of life, and afford examples of them to the classes less favourably circumstanced for their growth.¹⁵

“This state of things,” he continues, “which seems, economically considered, to be the most desirable condition of society, is not only perfectly compatible with the stationary state, but, it would seem, more naturally allied with that state than with any other.”¹⁶

Having recast what is economically possible consistent with a stationary state, Mill makes a series of arguments against the continuous pursuit of eco­nomic growth. First, Mill contends that the social relations that the pursuit of economic growth depends on and fosters are its “disagreeable symptoms.” He is, he writes, “not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is one of struggling to get on.” The “trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels” as­sociated with the “struggle for riches”—the “existing type of social life”—is far from the “most desirable lot of human kind.” Rather, “the best state for human nature” is one in which “while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.”¹⁷

Mill further argues that increases in production and consumption have diminishing value, to a point at which they indeed might provide no addi­tional value. He suggests that, above some threshold, consumption no longer serves to meet important interests and instead serves only as a means of ex­pressing one's wealth: “I know not why it should be matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth.” In the “most advanced” societies, “in­creased production” is no longer “an important object.”¹⁸

Moreover, Mill argues, beyond some degree of industrial progress, further increases in wealth are of diminishing value relative to other rival goods.¹⁹ The competing goods to which Mill gives particular emphasis are solitude and nature. Mill argues that if the increase of wealth and population were to be unlimited, the “earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness”:

It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of medi­tation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontane­ous activity of nature....²⁰

In addition to solitude and nature, this argument applies to any good that is more valuable than additional wealth and that further economic growth might limit, including leisure time, “to cultivate freely the graces of life.”²¹

Finally, Mill stresses that people could still be continuously better off without continued economic growth:

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being im­proved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial arts might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated, with this sole difference, that instead of serving no purpose but the increase of wealth, industrial improvements would produce their legitimate effect, that of abridging labour.²²

A society would continue to realize improvements, and indeed when people are no longer driven by the pursuit of wealth's “coarse stimuli,” these im­provements would take more valuable forms.²³

Taken together, Mill's case against perpetually pursuing economic growth is, first, that contrary to the claims of the earlier classical economists, the sta­tionary state could be a condition of secure and shared abundance; second, that the pursuit of economic growth itself depends on and fosters undesir­able social relations; third, that beyond some level of economic development, additional wealth and consumption have little value and are less valuable than competing goods; and finally, that a stationary state would continue to be one of progress, and its continued improvements would be realized in and directed toward more valuable domains. Accordingly, rather than seeking to continuously postpone the end of economic growth, such a just stationary state ought to be regarded and aimed toward as a social ideal.

Beyond the particulars of Mill's arguments on behalf of the stationary state, in view of the aim here of drawing from these arguments an alterna­tive approach to the question of whether a society must indefinitely pursue economic growth, the central idea that his vision provides is this: beyond some level of wealth, people may be better off in a society that ceases to pur­sue economic growth, and furthermore, they may be continuously better off as a society can continue to realize gains on other, more valuable dimensions.

Keynes and the Complete Stationary State

In the years after Mill's Principles of Political Economy, the idea of the station­ary state as the welcomed end of economic growth was absent from eco­nomic thought until it was resuscitated by Keynes in “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.”²⁴ Like Mill, Keynes provides a vision of the stationary state that suggests how, beyond some level of wealth, people may be bet­ter off in a society that does not continue to pursue economic growth. But his account goes further to suggest that people may be best off in a society that—because of the disvalues associated with perpetually aiming to be bet­ter off—does not continue to pursue improvements more generally. Keynes's vision requires more interpretive reconstruction than Mill's, but from this examination, it is possible to discern an ideal of what we may call the com­plete stationary state, in which a society ceases to aim not only for further economic growth but further gains on any dimension.

Keynes's essay opens by considering the long-run trend of “economic progress” and then “takes wings into the future” to ask what we can expect the “level of our economic life” to be in another century. He predicts that, owing to “science and compound interest,” the standard of living in “progres­sive” societies will be four to eight times higher. Assuming that in a hundred years, people will be on average “eight times better off in the economic sense,” he comes to this “startling” conclusion:

Assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution... This means that the economic problem is not—if we look into the future— the permanent problem of the human race.²⁵

Keynes defines the economic problem as “the struggle for subsistence” and its solution as the point at which our “needs are satisfied” and our energies can be devoted to “non-economic purposes.” Though Keynes acknowledges that there are “relative” needs, or positional desires, he sees the solution to the economic problem as the point at which our specifically “absolute needs”— those felt “whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be”—are met.²⁶ Further, due to “revolutionary technical changes,” these absolute needs can be fully met with little “human effort.” The solution to the economic problem will then bring an “age of leisure and of abundance.”²⁷

Keynes predicts that this transformation will happen gradually, and in­deed had already begun, and that it will be realized as there are ever more “people from whom problems of economic necessity have been practically removed.” Since “it will remain reasonable to be economically purposive for others after it has ceased to be reasonable for oneself,” the pivotal point will be when the freedom from economic necessity is so widespread that “the nature of one's duty to one's neighbor is changed.”²⁸

When this point is reached and the economic problem is solved, human­kind will then face “his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure... to live wisely and agreeably and well.” All of society will then be in the position of the “wealthy classes” or the “wives of the well-to-do” who, without the “spur of economic necessity,” struggle to find “amusing” ways to spend their time. In the same way, without the need to work for subsistence, “mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose.”²⁹

Keynes argues that if a society is to benefit from solving the economic problem and to realize the possibilities of leisure and abundance, there must be a widespread transformation in people's values and social and economic practices.³⁰ Because humanity's “primary, most pressing problem” has always been the economic problem, “we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.” Existing values and practices have been maintained, “however distasteful and unjust,” because they are “tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital”—“foul is useful and fair is not.” But without the need for further economic growth, “we shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful human quali­ties into the position of the highest virtues.”³¹

Keynes focuses on two principles whose errors we will finally be able to see properly and “at last, to discard.” The first, more narrowly economic princi­ple, is the “money-motive”—the “love of money as a possession” rather than as a “means to the enjoyments and realities of life.” Reflecting his interest at the time in Freud, he argued that the “detestable” love of money “will be rec­ognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi­criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”³²

The money-motive (which, along with the principle of compound inter­est, Keynes sometimes equates with “avarice and usury”) is an aspect of the second, broader principle, which Keynes labels “purposiveness.” For Keynes, purposiveness “means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment.” This purposiveness, which almost everyone has to some extent, is ultimately irrational. “The ‘purposive' man is always try­ing to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into time.” By perpetually acting for the sake of the future results of our actions, we deprive ourselves of enjoyment in the pres­ent. The purposive man “does not love his cat, but his cat's kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens' kittens, and so on forward for ever to the end of cat-dom.”³³

Ultimately, these principles can “lead us out of the tunnel of economic ne­cessity into daylight,” and “we can reach our destination of economic bliss.” Led into the daylight, and now facing the permanent problem of occupying our leisure and living well, how then does Keynes propose that we ought to meet this true challenge? Keynes does not provide a full account of what it means “to live wisely and agreeably and well” but does provide suggestive remarks. Following his rejection of purposiveness, he contrasts “the activities of purpose” with “the arts of life” and argues that “it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.” Rather than continuously looking to the future results of one's actions, the person who cultivates the art of life itself enjoys the present: it is those “who take the least thought for the morrow” who “walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom.” We should emu­late “those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.” Along with taking “direct enjoyment in things” without “thought for the morrow,” we should, most fundamentally, “value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.” It is in this way that we can live well and realize the “real values of life.”³⁴

Keynes does not, in this essay, provide an account of the “real values of life” or what constitutes the “arts of life,” but understanding what he means by these values, and their distinction from “activities of purpose,” is central to reconstructing Keynes's account of the stationary state. To develop Keynes's account of what ways of living are truly valuable, the argument in “Economic Possibilities” can be read in the context of his lifelong commitment to the philosophy of G. E. Moore. While a student, Keynes attended Moore's lectures on ethics and became an active member of the Apostles, a society that in­cluded Bertrand Russell, Henry Sidgwick, and Moore.³⁵ As he recalled in “My Early Beliefs,” an essay read at a Bloomsbury group meeting that included many from this society in 1938, Moore's Principia Ethica profoundly shaped his views: “I went up to Cambridge at Michaelmas 1902, and Moore's Principia Ethica came out at the end of my first year... of course, its effect on us, and the talk which preceded and followed it, dominated, and perhaps still dominate, everything else.” Keynes became a close student of Moore's Principia Ethica, and in 1905 he wrote “Miscellanea Ethica,” an extended sketch of a “complete ethical treatise,” in which he embraced the central claims of Moore's ethics on the nature of the good. As Keynes wrote in 1906 to Lytton Strachey, “It is impossible to exaggerate the wonder and originality of Moore... How amazing to think that only we know the rudiments of a true theory of ethic; for noth­ing can be more certain than that the broad outline is true.” In his 1938 essay, Keynes remained faithful to Moore's philosophy: “It remains nearer the truth than any other that I know, with less irrelevant extraneous matter and noth­ing to be ashamed of.... It is still my religion under the surface.”³⁶

In the final chapter of Principia Ethica on “The Ideal,” Moore sets out his account of what it is that is intrinsically good in a passage Keynes cites in “My Early Beliefs”: “By far the most valuable things, which we can know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may be roughly de­scribed as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beauti­ful objects.” Moore argued that “it is only for the sake of these things—in order that as much of them as possible may at some time exist—that any one can be justified in performing any public or private duty.” It is, Moore ar­gued, the existence of these goods—the states of consciousness experienced in love, friendship, and the appreciation of beauty—that “form the rational ultimate end of human action and the sole criterion of social progress.”³⁷

The goods Moore identified as intrinsically valuable connect to the Bloomsbury ideal of life dedicated to friendship and beauty, and indeed Principia Ethics was a “sacred text” among the group of writers and artists united by their shared values. Keynes lived in Bloomsbury for several years with Vanessa and Clive Bell and remained a member of its circle, and as his biographer Robert Skidelsky describes, “they were not just his friends but his ideal.”³⁸

Reading “Economic Possibilities” in the context of Keynes's abiding commitment to Moore's ethics and the ideals embodied by his Bloomsbury friends provides grounds to develop Keynes's account of what it would mean to meet the permanent problem of living well.³⁹ First, when Keynes holds that we ought to “value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful,” this can be read not only as a general appeal for ultimate over instrumental values but specifically for Moore's understanding of intrinsic good. Second, and more concretely, the content of the good can be filled in, from Moore, as the states of mind experienced in love and friendship and the enjoyment of beauty. The “art of life itself” is, then, not to be concerned with pursuing the means to some future good but, like those “delightful people,” to take “direct enjoyment” in the goods of human relationships and aesthetic appreciation. Upon solving the economic problem, we ought to cast aside not only the love of money but all purposiveness and occupy our newfound leisure with the enjoyment of relationships, community, and beauty. Keynes's ideal then reverses the tendency “to strive and not to enjoy,” as people reject purposive­ness in favor of taking direct enjoyment in these goods without regard for the future. Because enjoying the “real values of life” is in conflict with per­petually seeking improvement, people may be best off, on Keynes's account, by forgoing the continuous pursuit of further gains.

Both Mill's and Keynes's visions of the stationary state suggest that be­yond some level of wealth, people may be better off in a society that forgoes further economic growth. The structures of Mill's and Keynes's accounts illustrate two ideals of the stationary state: one in which a society ceases to pursue economic growth but continues to aim for gains on other dimen­sions, and one in which a society ceases to aim for further gains on any di­mension. In the progressive stationary state, because the society continues to pursue gains on other, relatively more valuable dimensions, people are con­tinuously better off, while in the complete stationary state, because of the disvalue of continuously aiming for improvement, people are best off with­out being continuously better off.

Rawls and the Possibility of the Stationary State

In the most notable endorsement of the stationary state in contemporary theories of justice, Rawls argues that the principles of his theory of justice as fairness do not require a society to perpetually pursue economic growth.⁴⁰ Rawls's position is, however, not explicitly developed and requires recon­struction. In developing Rawls's argument here, I take up an interpretation provided by Samuel Freeman and build on it to show how Rawls's position may be extended in a way that furthers the tracks set by Mill and Keynes. This position provides grounds, without necessarily relying on perfectionist judgments about better or worse ways of living, to develop the approach in­dicated by Mill's and Keynes's suggestions that, beyond some level of wealth, people may be better off in a society that does not continue to pursue or realize further economic growth, or indeed they may be best off without any further gains.

Rawls argues that neither justice as fairness's intergenerational nor intra- generational principles entail that a society must indefinitely aim for fur­ther economic growth. The intergenerational just savings principle requires each generation to “put aside in each period a suitable amount of real capital accumulation,” but it does not require perpetual accumulation. The savings principle has an ultimate “objective,” which is the point at which “just insti­tutions are firmly established and all the basic liberties effectively realized.” When this cutoff point is reached, justice does not require a generation to continue accumulating capital to further improve the prospects of future generations. As such, the just savings principle does not require “maximizing indefinitely,” a point Rawls reiterates in Law of Peoples and there connects to Mill.⁴¹ The principle's “aim is to realize and preserve just (or decent) institu­tions, and not simply to increase, much less to maximize indefinitely, the average level of wealth, or the wealth of any society or any particular class in society.”⁴² He continues, in a footnote:

I follow Mill's view that the purpose of saving is to make possible a just basic structure of society; once that is safely secured, real saving (net increase in real capital) may no longer be necessary. “The art of living” is more impor­tant than "the art of getting on,” to use his words. The thought that real sav­ing and economic growth are to go on indefinitely, upwards and onwards, with no specified goal in sight, is the idea of the business class of a capitalist society. But what counts for Mill arejust basic institutions and the well­being of what Mill would call "the labouring class.”⁴³

Moreover, he argues, the realization of just institutions does not depend on having "great abundance,” as "it is a mistake to believe that a just and good society must wait upon a high material standard of life.”⁴⁴ As such, the just savings principle does not require a society to aim indefinitely to make fu­ture generations better off and, taken on its own, suggests that a society that has met the cutoff point may then cease to pursue further economic growth.

But, for Rawls, the route to justifying the stationary state is not so direct. Though the just savings principle specifies a cutoff point for justice between generations, it is only one component of Rawls's full theory of justice, and the theory's central intragenerational principles do not have the same struc­ture. Of greatest relevance here, consistent with the satisfaction of the theo­ry's prior principles, the difference principle holds that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are... to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.”⁴⁵ As Rawls explains, what this entails is that "we are to compare schemes of cooperation by seeing how well off the least advan­taged are under each scheme, and then select the scheme under which the least advantaged are better off than they are under any other scheme,” and then within this scheme, to aim to maximize the expectations of the least advantaged.⁴⁶

The difference principle itself contains two conditions, as Rawls indicates in his discussion of the distinction between a "just throughout” and a "per­fectly just” society. The first condition is that social and economic inequali­ties are permissible only to the extent that they are to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged. The second condition is that inequalities ought to be arranged so that they maximize the expectations of the least advantaged. A society that meets the first condition but not the second is "just through­out.” It is not unjust, as it would be if inequalities exceeded their permissible bounds, but it is not "the best just arrangement.” In a "perfectly just” society, both of the difference principle's conditions are satisfied, as "the expecta­tions of the least advantaged are indeed maximized... No changes in the expectations of those better off can improve the situation of those worst off.”⁴⁷ As such, the difference principle both limits the extent of permissible inequality and directs a society ideally to maximize the expectations of the least advantaged.

Given that Rawls often refers to the expectations of the least advantaged in terms of their “prospects of income and wealth over a complete life,” on its face, it then seems that the difference principle directs a society to indefi­nitely pursue economic growth to maximize, within generations, the lifetime expectations of the least advantaged.⁴⁸ Yet, in clarifying the meaning of the difference principle in his later works, Rawls makes plain that the difference principle does not require indefinite economic growth. Repeating and elab­orating on a footnote in Political Liberalism that the difference principle is “compatible with Mill's idea of a society in a just stationary state where (real) capital accumulation is zero,” Rawls writes in Justice as Fairness:

The difference principle... does not require continual economic growth over generations to maximize upward indefinitely the expectations of the least advantaged (assessed in terms of income and wealth). That would not be a reasonable conception of justice. We should not rule out Mill's idea of a society in a just stationary state where (real) capital accumulation may cease. A well-ordered society is specified so as to allow for this possibility.⁴⁹

Rawls continues, explaining how the difference principle is compatible with the cessation of economic growth:

What the difference principle does require is that during an appropriate in­terval of time the differences in income and wealth earned in producing the social product be such that if the legitimate expectations of the more advantaged were less, those of the less advantaged would be less.... Per­missible inequalities (thus defined) satisfy that condition and are compat­ible with a social product of a steady-state equilibrium in which a just basic structure is supported and reproduced over time.⁵⁰

Rawls here suggests that the difference principle is compatible with the ces­sation of economic growth because it is possible that a society could be at a point at which any additional inequality, though it would incentivize greater production and so result in economic growth, would not benefit the least advantaged (e.g., if the marginal increase in the social product would be con­sumed entirely by the more advantaged's incentive). This inequality would not be permissible, and so the society would remain at an equilibrium with a zero growth rate.

When here clarifying that the difference principle does not require per­petually pursuing economic growth, Rawls makes reference only to the least advantaged's shares of income and wealth, or shares of a society's produc­tive output as realized in wages and salaries.⁵¹ Yet, within this focus on in­come and wealth, the argument only narrowly establishes the possibility of a just stationary state. As long as inequalities earned in producing the social product are restricted to those that are to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged, the difference principle would still direct a society, within its constraints, to institute an economic arrangement that allows for maximal economic growth and then to aim to continuously maximize productive output.⁵²

There are two ways to reconstruct Rawls's account to more robustly rec­oncile the difference principle with the stationary state. The first focuses on the difference principle's limitation on the extent of permissible inequality and holds that, on its best interpretation, the difference principle does not require a society to indefinitely maximize the expectations of the least ad­vantaged. It would then not direct a society to aim to make the least advan­taged indefinitely better off, and so would not require a society to perpetually pursue economic growth.⁵³

The second does not question the difference principle's directive ideally to maximize the expectations of the least advantaged, but instead broadens the difference principle's focus beyond income and wealth. Though Rawls often treats income and wealth as a proxy, the expectations of the least advan­taged are more accurately assessed with reference to their expected shares of a bundle of primary goods, weighted in an index, over a complete life. Primary goods are the social conditions and all-purpose means that are gen­erally necessary to develop and exercise one's moral powers and to pursue one's particular conception of the good. The difference principle applies not only to the primary goods of income and wealth, but also to the powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority and responsibility, and the social bases of self-respect.⁵⁴

Freeman proposes such a reconstructive argument to square Rawls's claim that the difference principle is compatible with the stationary state.⁵⁵ Some economic arrangements, such as those in which workers have cooperatives or partial ownership in their workplaces and more control over production and their work conditions, may provide the least advantaged with greater shares of the powers and prerogatives of office and the social bases of self­respect. Yet, such arrangements may provide the least advantaged with less income and wealth than other economic arrangements, such as those of the capitalist welfare state, and it is possible that such arrangements might dra­matically dampen or entirely cease economic growth. Nonetheless, such ar­rangements may indeed be to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged, depending on how the different primary goods are weighted in the index.

As such, considering the difference principle's directive to maximize the expectations of the least advantaged within this appropriately broad focus reveals wider grounds on which it is compatible with the stationary state. Following Mill's and Keynes's suggestions that people may be better off in a society that ceases to aim for further economic growth, the least advan­taged's expectations may be maximized, in terms of the full bundle of pri­mary goods, under arrangements that do not pursue or realize economic growth.

Moreover, broadening the range of the difference principle to apply not only to Rawls's listed primary goods but a fuller set of the social conditions and all-purpose means that citizens generally require to develop and exer­cise their capacities and pursue their conceptions of the good provides even wider scope for the stationary state, either progressive or complete, to be to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged. Further, the argument that the difference principle is compatible with the stationary state need not rely on perfectionist judgments about better or worse ways of living, as long as the index is composed of such generally required resources and conditions and the weights in the index are not determined on the basis of such judgments.⁵⁶ The fuller set of resources and conditions also ought to include the tempo­ral resource of free time (understood as time not committed to meeting ba­sic needs) and the social bases of health and longevity (in the form of both health care and measures for public health) and other internal resources. The list should also include access to relational goods and environmental goods (both as instrumental resources and as components of conceptions of the good).⁵⁷

The possibilities for how arrangements that cease to pursue or realize eco­nomic growth may still be to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged are significantly extended if the index of resources and conditions to which the difference principle applies is composed of such a multidimensional set, and given that economic and social arrangements can affect shares of these goods in both beneficial and burdensome ways. Depending on how the goods are weighted in the index and a society's circumstances, it may be the case that the lifetime expectations of the least advantaged are greatest under ar­rangements that cease to pursue or realize economic growth, while continu­ously increasing their free time, the social bases of health and longevity and other internal resources, and their access to relational and environmental goods. But it may also be the case that, if realizing gains on some dimensions could only be achieved in ways that produce outweighing losses on other dimensions, the least advantaged are best off under arrangements that cease to pursue or realize not only economic growth but gains on any dimensions.

The result is that, while Rawls's difference principle directs a society to arrange its social and economic institutions such that they are to the great­est benefit to the least advantaged, it is potentially compatible with both the progressive and complete stationary states suggested by Mill and Keynes. Depending on circumstances and how goods are weighted in the index, the least advantaged may be best off under arrangements that continue to pursue and realize economic growth or under arrangements that cease to pursue or realize gains in income and wealth, or further gains on any dimensions.

Conclusion

To return, then, to the opening question: Must a society perpetually pursue economic growth, or may it cease to do so? Contemporary theories of justice suggest two possible approaches to this question: either a society is obligated to aim to make its members (or people more generally) indefinitely better off and even wealthy societies must perpetually pursue economic growth, or a society is not so obligated and so may cease to pursue economic growth.

Yet, Mill's and Keynes's earlier arguments against the perpetual pursuit of economic growth suggest an alternative approach. Both centrally argue that, beyond some level of wealth, people may be better off in a society that ceases to pursue economic growth. Mill's vision of the stationary state sug­gests that because a society can continue to realize improvements on other dimensions, people may be continuously better off without the continued pursuit or realization of economic growth. Keynes's vision instead suggests that, because of the disvalues associated with perpetually pursuing improve­ments, people may be best off without the continued pursuit or realization of further gains on any dimension. Their accounts support ideals, respectively, of progressive and complete stationary states.

While Mill's and Keynes's arguments depend on particular ideas of the good life, as the reconstruction and extension of Rawls's difference principle demonstrates, it is possible to develop their central claim without necessarily relying on such perfectionist judgments. That is, the principle that a society ought to aim to arrange its institutions and policies such that they are to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged is compatible with the stationary state, in both its progressive and complete forms. Depending on a society's circumstances, and on how the multidimensional resources and conditions that people require to develop their capacities and pursue their ends are weighted, people may be best off in a society with institutional arrangements that continue to aim for economic growth or with arrangements that do not.

Developing these arguments more broadly within contemporary liberal egalitarian principles of justice suggests and supports an alternative posi­tion. This just agrowth position comprises, first, the principle that a society ought to open-endedly aim to make people better off (insofar as is possible and consistent with a theory of justice's other principles) and, second, the contention that this principle is compatible with a society continuing or ceasing to pursue or realize further economic growth.

While it is beyond the present scope to fill in an account of such a just agrowth position, in general form this position holds that a society's aim to make people better off must be constrained and guided by a broader set of principles of justice setting the terms of this aim. These broader principles must centrally address the international and intergenerational scope, the in­dividual liberty constraints, and the distributive principles within which a society ought to pursue the aim of making people better off.⁵⁸ Then, within the terms set by these broader principles of justice, a just agrowth position requires an account of the standard by which a society ought to aim to make people better off, and such an account may take a range of forms. Central liberal egalitarian commitments to effective freedom and respect for plural­ism, however, suggest, again in general form, that a society should aim to expand people's effective opportunities to form, revise, and pursue their indi­vidual and collective ends, and to do so in a way that respects the diversity of people's ends. Such an account, in this general form, then guides a society to open-endedly aim to make people better off, insofar as is possible and consis­tent with broader principles of justice, by fairly and reliably expanding their effective opportunities.

A society should, accordingly, neither reject nor endorse the pursuit of economic growth itself. Rather, a society ought to aim to fairly and reliably expand people's opportunities. Because economic growth may or may not contribute to the realization of this principle, a society should treat eco­nomic growth as at most a subsidiary aim, pursued only if, and to the extent and on terms such that, it is consistent with the realization of this principle.

Such a just agrowth position, if developed within a full account of the principles, values, and aims that ought to guide a society, provides an argu­mentative framework within which the normative and empirical evaluation of a society's continued pursuit of economic growth may then more con­structively proceed.

Notes

I am grateful to all of the participants in the Political Economy and Justice working group for their insightful and constructive comments. Previous versions of this chapter were presented at Harvard University, the University of Montreal, and Stanford University, and at conferences of the American Political Science Association, Association for Political Theory, Association for Social and Political Philosophy, and Ethics and Economics Network. I thank participants in these events, and Danielle Allen, Franςois Claveau, Eric MacGilvray, Herschel Nachlis, Heather Pincock, Emma Saunders-Hastings, and Juliet Schor for their helpful comments.

1. See Heinz W. Arndt, The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth: A Study in Contempo­rary Thought (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1978); Robert A. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Matthias Schmelzer, The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

2. Influential critiques from this period include E. J. Mishan, The Costs of Eco­nomic Growth (London: Staples Press, 1967); Donella Meadows et al., The Lim­its to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972); Herman E. Daly, ed., Toward a Steady-StateEconomy (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973); E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as IfPeople Mattered (2010 repr., New York: Harper Collins, 1973); Richard A. Easterlin, “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence,” in Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz, edited by Paul A. David and Mel­vin W. Reder (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 89-125; Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Tibor Scitovsky, TheJoyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).

3. Valerie Fournier, "Escaping from the Economy: The Politics of Degrowth,” InternationalJournal of Sociology and Social Policy 28 (2008): 528-45; Federico Demaria et al., "What Is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement,” Environmental Values 22 (2013): 191-215.

4. Marc Fleurbaey and Didier Blanchet, Beyond GDP: Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mismeasuring OurLives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up (New York: The New Press, 2010).

5. Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill, Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), 15; see also Rob­ert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough?Money and the Good Life (New York: Other Press, 2012); Peter A. Victor, “Questioning Economic Growth,” Nature 468 (2010): 370-71; Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth: Economicsfor a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan, 2009); James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossingfrom Crisis to Sustainability (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003). I examine whether a society must indefinitely pursue economic growth in Julie L. Rose, “On the Value of Economic Growth,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 19 (2020): 128-53.

6. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded ed. (New York: Columbia Univer­sity Press [1993], 2005), 7n5. Both Samuel Freeman and Andrew Williams describe Rawls's position as “puzzling.” Samuel Freeman, Rawls (New York: Routledge, 2007), 112; Samuel Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 106; An­drew Williams, “Linguistic Protectionism and Wealth Maximinimization,” in Arguing about Justice: Essaysfor Philippe Van Parjis, edited by Axel G osseries and Philippe Vanderborght (Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2011), 395-402.

7. On the agrowth idea more generally, see Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, “Green Agrowth: Removing the GDP-Growth Constraint on Human Prog­ress,” in Handbook of Growth and Sustainability, edited by Peter A. Victor and Brett Dolter (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2017), 188-90; see also Peter A. Victor, Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008), 2.

8. Effective opportunities are here understood broadly, encompassing the ideas of real or effective freedom, capabilities, and genuine opportunities. See John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 179; Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedomfor All: What (IfAnything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 21-24; Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: A Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1999); Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit, Disadvantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Elizabeth S. Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics 109, no. 2 (1999): 315-21. For related ideas, see Allen's account of empowerment and Woodly's account of flourishing in their chapters in this book.

9. The just agrowth position may be specified in a range of ways. I develop one way of specifying this position in “The Evenhanded Gains Approach,” chap­ter in progress in The Ends of Growth (book manuscript in progress), where

I draw on the capabilities approach. The capabilities approach—developed most notably by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, and from which Nuss­baum in particular has built a partial theory of justice—has been central to challenging ideas of development that focus on growth in GDP per capita. Capabilitarian theories of justice have, however, thus far generally followed

the second approach described above, attending primarily to the demands of sufficiency and equality and leaving open, as a matter of societal discre­tion or as a question still to be addressed, whether and on what dimensions a wealthy society should pursue further gains. As such, a just agrowth posi­tion, though specifiable in a range of ways, can be understood and developed to build on the capabilities framework. On the capabilities approach gener­ally, see, for instance, Sen, Development as Freedom; Nussbaum, Women and Human Development; Martha C. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); Ingrid Robeyns, Wellbeing, Freedom and SocialJustice: The Capabil­ity Approach Re-Examined (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017); Ingrid Robeyns, “The Capability Approach,” in The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, edited by Serena Olsaretti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 109-28. More specifically, on GDP-focused approaches to development, see Martha C. Nussbaum, "Tell Narendra Modi: Human Development Is More than GDP,” Boston Review, June 18, 2014; Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, 46-50, 56-58. On other questions of justice to be addressed, see Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 75; Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, 40.

10. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932), 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1935), 16; Mancur Olson, "Introduction,” in The No-Growth Society, edited by Mancur Olson and Hans H. Landsberg (New York: Norton, 1973), 4-5. Material throughput, a concept from ecologi­cal economics, measures the economy's biophysical scale, as the "flow begin­ning with raw material inputs, followed by their conversion into commodi­ties, and finally into waste outputs.” Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 28.

11. This section follows closely my discussion of Mill's progressive stationary state in Rose, "On the Value of Economic Growth,” 131-33.

12. John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” in Principles of Political Economy and Chapters on Socialism, edited by Jonathan Riley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 125. This edition uses the seventh and final edition version of Mill's text from 1871; the passages cited here, except where noted, are the same in the original 1848 and final 1871 versions.

13. On the classical political economists' view of the stationary state, see Mur­ray Milgate and Shannon C. Stimson, After Adam Smith: A Century of Transfor­mation in Politics and Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 191-99; E. A. Wrigley, "The Limits to Growth: Malthus and the Classical Economists,” Population and Development Review 14 (1988): 30-48; Lisa Herzog, "The Normative Stakes of Economic Growth; Or, Why Adam Smith Does Not Rely on 'Trickle Down,'” Journal of Politics 78, no. 1 (2015): 50-62.

14. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 124, 126, 129. For discussion of Mill's view of the stationary state, see Jonathan Riley, "Mill's Political Economy: Ricardian Science and Liberal Utilitarian Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, edited by John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 293-337; Nadia Urbinati, “An Alternative Modernity: Mill on Capital­ism and the Quality of Life,” in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, edited by Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller, and David Weinstein (Oxford: Oxford Univer­sity Press, 2011), 236-63.

15. Mill, “Principles of Political Economy,” 127-28.

16. John Stuart Mill, "Principles of Political Economy, Books III-V,” in The Collected Works ofJohn Stuart Mill, edited by J. M. Robson, vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 755. In the 1871 version, this sentence begins: “This condition of society, so greatly preferable to the present, is not only....” (Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 128).

17. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 126-27. Mill's view of this sort of economic competition as undesirable bears a connection to the closing paragraph of Principles of Political Economy, where he writes of the govern­ment's role in limiting conduct that is "clearly injurious”: "Even in the best state which society has yet reached, it is lamentable to think how great a proportion of all the efforts and talents in the world are employed in merely neutralizing one another. It is the proper end of government to reduce this wretched waste to the smallest possible amount, by taking such measures as shall cause the energies now spent by mankind in injuring one another, or in protecting themselves against injury, to be turned to the legitimate em­ployment of the human faculties, that of compelling the powers of nature to be more and more subservient to physical and moral good” (Mill, 367).

18. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 127.

19. On this point, more broadly, see Deva Woodly's chapter in this book discuss­ing the plural dimensions of well-being.

20. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 128-29.

21. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 128.

22. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 129.

23. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy,” 127.

24. Skidelsky and Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough?, 54; see also Milgate and Stimson, After Adam Smith, 216. There are some references to Mill's Principles of Political Economy throughout Keynes's writings, as Thomas Baldwin notes, so it is likely that Keynes read Mill's chapter on the stationary state. But, as Baldwin notes, Keynes did not otherwise engage with his political or moral philosophy, and this likely owes to G. E. Moore's critique of Mill as "naive and artless.” See Thomas Baldwin, "Keynes and Ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, edited by Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 240.

25. John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930),” in Essays in Persuasion (New York: Norton, 1963), 365-66; emphasis in original.

26. Keynes defines relative needs as those felt "only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows,” and grants that they "may indeed be insatiable” (Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 365), but he does not consider their significance in the remainder of the essay. For critical discus­sions on this point, see, for instance, Robert H. Frank, “Context Is More Important than Keynes Realized,” in Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 143-50; Stephen A. Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Com­munity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 207-22; Skidelsky and Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough?, 33-42.

27. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 358-68.

28. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 372.

29. Keynes, ““Economic Possibilities,” 366-68.

30. Keynes grants that, “for many ages to come,” we will not have complete leisure, as “the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented.” He suggests that 15 hours of work per week should be sufficient (Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 368-69).

31. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 366-69.

32. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 369-70; Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Volume II: The Economist as Saviour, 1920-1937 (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 234; John Forrester and Laura Cameron, Freud in Cambridge (Cam­bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 485-86.

33. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 370-72.

34. Keynes, “Economic Possibilities,” 366, 368, 372-73. For rich connections to these ideas, see Deva Woodly's analysis of the concept of flourishing and Marc Stears's discussion of the everyday “unforbidden pleasures” in the chapters in this book.

35. Tiziano Raffaelli, “Keynes and Philosophers,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, edited by Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 160; Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman, “A Cunning Purchase: The Life and Work of Maynard Keynes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, edited by Roger E. Backhouse and Brad­ley W. Bateman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1.

36. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Volume II: The Economist as Saviour, 56-57, 408 emphasis in original; Baldwin, “Keynes and Ethics,” 237, 240-46; Raffaelli, “Keynes and Philosophers,” 160.

37. Baldwin, “Keynes and Ethics,” 238; Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Volume II: The Economist as Saviour, 64; Raffaelli, “Keynes and Philosophers,” 160; Craufurd D. Goodwin, “The Art of an Ethical Life: Keynes and Bloomsbury,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, edited by Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 219.

38. Goodwin, “The Art of an Ethical Life,” 220; Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Volume II: The Economist as Saviour, 10-13.

39. Crauford Goodwin argues that “Economic Possibilities” should instead be read as influenced by Roger Fry, an artist and critic and member of the Bloomsbury group who argued that as society progressed, it should increas­ingly focus on the “imaginative life”—the arts, literature, and pure science and inquiry (Goodwin, “The Art of an Ethical Life,” 219-22).

40. On the development of Rawls's ideas on this point, see Katrina Forrester, “The Problem of the Future,” in In the Shadow ofJustice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 172-203. See also Alyssa Battistoni, “The Limits to Justice: John Rawls and Herman Daly at the End of the Golden Age,” unpublished manuscript, October 2019.

41. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, 252-58.

42. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 107. The same is true of the international duty of assistance—which, as Rawls notes in The Law of Peoples (106-107), is structurally analogous to the intergenerational duty of just savings.

43. Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 107n33.

44. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, 257.

45. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, 266.

46. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 59-60, 63; see also Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 175; Samuel Freeman, “Rawls on Distributive Justice and the Differ­ence Principle,” in The Oxford Handbook of DistributiveJustice, edited by Serena Olsaretti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 19-24.

47. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, 68; see Freeman, “Rawls on Distributive Justice and the Difference Principle,” 24-29; Williams, “Linguistic Protectionism and Wealth Maximinimization.”

48. Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, 175, see also 83; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 62, see also 59-63.

49. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 7n5; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 63-64, repeated at 159-60.

50. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 63-64, repeated at 159-60.

51. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 61-64.

52. See Freeman, Rawls, 112.

53. Williams, “Linguistic Protectionism and Wealth Maximinimization.” Free­man has also offered an interpretation of the difference principle that rejects the “mandatory maximizing” view, developing a “qualified optional inequality” view that is similarly compatible with ceasing to pursue eco­nomic growth. Freeman, “Rawls on Distributive Justice and the Difference Principle,” 24-34. Another view holds that, on its best interpretation, the difference principle does direct a society to maximize the expectations of the least advantaged and, in particular, their shares of income and wealth, and so it should not be compatible with ceasing to pursue economic growth; see John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 184-96; John Tomasi, “Market Democracy and Meaningful Work: A Reply to Critics,” Res Publica 21 (2015): 446-48. See also Steven Wall, “Rescuing Justice from Equality,” Social Philosophy and Policy 29 (2012): 180—212. I discuss these two interpretations more fully in Rose, “The Even­handed Gains Approach.”

54. The primary goods included in the index also include "non-basic rights and liberties,” that is, those that are not covered by the theory's prior principles; see Freeman, Rawls, 113. On the primary goods more generally, see Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 57-61.

55. Freeman, Rawls, 111-14, 133-34; Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract, 106-8; Samuel Freeman, "Capitalism in the Classical and High Liberal Traditions,” Social Philosophy and Policy 28 (2011): 47-52. See also Samuel Arnold, "The Difference Principle at Work,” Journal of Political Philosophy 20 (2012): 113-14; Samuel Arnold, "Right-Wing Rawlsianism: A Critique,” Journal of Political Phi­losophy 21 (2013): 398-404; Matthew Clayton and David Stevens, "Is the Free Market Acceptable to Everyone?,” ResPublica 21 (2015): 367-70. I also develop this position in Rose, "On the Value of Economic Growth,” 136-38.

56. Rawls's own remarks that "great wealth” is "more likely to be a positive hin­drance, a meaningless distraction at best if not a temptation to indulgence and emptiness,” may provide such objectionably perfectionist grounds to determine the weight of income and wealth in the index (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 257-58). He also made reference to "a civil society awash in mean­ingless consumerism” in a letter to Philippe Van Parijs; see John Rawls and Philippe Van Parijs, "Three Letters on the Law of Peoples and the European Union [1998],” Autour de Rawls, Special Issue of Revue de PhilosophieEconomique 7 (2003): 7-20. However, the argument in its general form does not and need not draw on such perfectionist judgments.

57. Julie L. Rose, Free Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); Chi­ara Cordelli, "Justice as Fairness and Relational Resources,” Journal of Political Philosophy 23 (2015): 86-110; Kristin Shrader-Frechette, EnvironmentalJustice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Rosa Terlazzo, "Entitlement and Free Time,” Law, Ethics and Philosophy 5 (2017): 91-104. As Rawls notes, the list of primary goods, which are to be specified in full detail at a society's legislative stage, is open to extension and might include leisure time and health care and public health goods. Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 168-72, 179.

58. The form these broader principles take will determine how such a just agrowth position bears on and addresses an important set of concerns that arise within discussions of the value and imperative of economic growth—in particular, related to international geopolitical stability and se­curity, international distributive obligations, and climate change. The focus here is to begin at a prior step: to show how a society can be committed to making its members indefinitely better off and at the same time cease to pursue economic growth.

6