Forthcoming

 in  Environmental  Values  ©The  White  Horse  Press  http://www.whpress.co.uk

Liberalism and Economic Growth: A Theoretical

Exploration
Peter Ferguson
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia.

Abstract
This article explores how the liberal tradition of political thought has dealt with the prospect
of limits to economic growth and how it should approach this issue in the future. Using
Andrew Moravcsik’s explanatory liberal theory, it finds that the commitment of governments
to growth stems primarily from the aggregation of societal preferences for the social goods
that growth produces. The arguments of liberal thinkers who have grappled with the issue of
growth are then examined to gain a deeper theoretical understanding of the relationship
between liberal democracy and growth. These include John Stuart Mill, for whom a non-
growing economy was essential for overcoming the tension between liberty and equality;
Ronald Dworkin who argues that growth is a derivative means to further more fundamental
ends; and Marcel Wissenburg who suggests that it is legitimate for liberal democracies to
limit the preference for growth if it risks undermining liberal norms and institutions. Using
these theoretical insights, it is argued that environmental degradation, which is partly driven
by growth, now threatens the fundamental liberal commitments of many liberals, including
some forms of state neutralism, utilitarianism, inalienable individual rights and above all
human autonomy. Therefore, liberal democratic states not only can, but must move towards a
post-growth economy to secure these objectives into the future.

Keywords
Liberalism, liberal political theory, economic growth, limits to growth, post-growth economy

Introduction
The assumption that economic growth enhances political stability in liberal democracies is
generally taken for granted. This is because it is believed that it is easier for governments to
increase the overall size of the economic pie than to divide it into smaller pieces. However,
whilst growth may often perform this functional role, it is not clear whether the commitment
to growth is, or ought to be, a liberal value. Some critics contend that growth is central to
liberalism because of its individualism, instrumental view of nature and utilitarian conception
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of world order, in which peace, prosperity and stability are dependent upon growth (see Walt
1998, Murphy 1994, Laferriére and Stoett 1999, Russett 1982). This form of liberalism
originated in Locke’s (1973) writings on ‘possessive individualism,’ property rights and the
limited role of the sate (Mapherson 1975, de Geus 2001), and has been synonymous with
liberal/bourgeois political economy since it emerged during the late-18th century (Foucault
2008). In this context, increasing material affluence through global trade and economic
competition were seen as necessary to secure peace between rival European states (Doyle
1986).
In contrast to this pro-growth Lockean perspective, another strain of liberalism led by
Mill (1848, 2004), Dworkin (1978, 1985) and Wissenburg (1998, 2006), comes to the
opposite conclusion and maintains that under some circumstances economic growth is not
compatible with a liberal world order. Of these, Mill’s exposition is perhaps the most
eloquent, and thus serves as an instructive example of post-growth liberalism. Mill (2004:
189) welcomed the coming of what he called the ‘stationary state,’ as he was ‘not charmed
with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that
of struggling to get on.’ The best state for human nature, he asserted, is one in which ‘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’ (Mill 2004: 189). Moreover, this stationary condition
of capital and population need not imply a stationary state of human advancement, as there
would be ‘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’ (Mill 2004:
191).
Mill not only held that the stationary state was desirable, but that it was also
inevitable.1 This belief stemmed from the contention, inherited from Ricardo (1929) and
anticipating Marx (1909), that the rate of profit was indubitably headed toward ‘the
minimum,’ because ‘if capital continued to increase at its present rate, and no circumstances
having a tendency to raise the rate of profit occurred in the meantime, the expansion of
capital would soon reach its ultimate boundary’ (Mill 2004: 185-186). This boundary was
formed by the finitude of arable land, which was portended by rising food prices as marginal
lands were brought into cultivation, combined with increasing wage demands and decreasing
productive outlets for capital investment (Levy 1981). Population growth was also seen to act
as a break on economic growth, as increases in population risked outstripping the increase of
capital and, following Malthus (1973), stocks of food. At the same time, Mill believed that
increasing societal wealth through capital accumulation in and of itself also constrained
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growth. This was because greater wealth would render the sacrifice of consumption required
to accumulate capital progressively less onerous, so that the recompense for abstinence would
gradually diminish (Screpanti and Zamagni 2005). The result would be a society in which
wealth was so plentiful that there would no longer be any need or incentive for further capital
accumulation, thus precipitating a stationary state. In this way, Mill’s stationary state both
distinguishes his liberalism from Locke’s and establishes him as a key early exponent of
Green liberalism (de Geus 2001).
However, to date ‘little has been written to integrate the idea of the stationary state
into [Mill’s] overall system of political and social thought, nor to consider its meaning for the
tradition of Anglo-American liberalism with which [he] has so long been identified’ (Levy
1981: 273-274). This is perhaps because whilst some Mill scholars consider the stationary
state central to his political economy (Levy 1981), others believe that he was ambivalent
about economic growth (O’Riordan 1981), or that the stationary state was largely peripheral
to his vision (Hollander 1985). Nonetheless, the influence of Mill’s views about growth on
the development of liberal political economy well into the 20th century should not be
underestimated. Indeed, Hicks (1966) even argues that Mill’s advocacy for the stationary
state was partly responsible for a general ambivalence among economists about growth in the
late-19th and early-20th centuries.
However, to many contemporary liberals, who have become fully acclimatised to a
‘society of perpetual growth’ (Gellner 1983), Mill’s stationary state and scepticism about
growth probably seem like obsolete remnants of classical political economy (Levy 1981).
Whilst this assumption may have been reasonable during the post-war boom, in the current
epoch of persistent economic crises and global environmental decline, liberals would do well
to reengage with Mill’s critique and those of other liberals who have grappled with the issue
of growth, including Dworkin (1978, 1985), Wissenburg (1998, 2006), de Geus (2001), Bell
(2002), Dobson (2003), and Hailwood (2004). Liberals also ought to take seriously the
concerns about growth raised by numerous scientists, economists and other analysts over the
last four decades.
These critics have warned that economic growth faces significant ecological and
social limits (Bardi 2011, Heinberg 2011, Jackson 2009, Victor 2008, Meadows, Randers,
and Meadows 2004, Meadows et al. 1972, Hamilton 2003, Daly 1977, Inglehart 1996, Max-
Neef 1995, Hirsch 1977, Easterlin 1974) and that above a relatively low level, per capita
growth only brings diminishing marginal benefits (Layard, Mayraz, and Nickell 2008, Frey
and Stutzer 2002, Bruni and Porta 2005, Argyle 1999, Inglehart 1996, Easterlin 1995). Whilst
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these claims have been strenuously denied (Cole et al. 1973, Nordhaus 1973, Beckerman
1975, Simon and Kahn 1984, Bailey 1993, Enzensberger 1974), a range of recent studies
have confirmed that the world either has already or will in the near future breach a set of
fundamental ecological thresholds that will threaten the stability of modern societies. For
example, the World Resources Institute’s (2005) Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found
that approximately 60 per cent of the ecosystem services that support life on earth are being
degraded or used unsustainably. This is confirmed by recent calculations of humanity’s
‘ecological footprint’ (defined as the area available to produce renewable resources and
absorb waste emissions), which currently exceeds the Earth’s bio-capacity by 50 per cent
(Pollard 2010). Other studies have found that we have already transgressed three (greenhouse
gas emissions, biodiversity loss and changes to the nitrogen cycle) of the nine ‘planetary
boundaries’ that must not be breached if catastrophic and irreversible global environmental
change is to be avoided (Rockström et al. 2009).
The purpose of this article is not to weigh into these debates, but to explore how the
liberal tradition of political thought has responded to the spectre of limits to growth and how
liberalism ought to approach this problem in the current context. Whilst a range of theoretical
perspectives are needed to gain a full appreciation of the links between liberal democracy and
growth (Ferguson 2014b), liberalism is perhaps the most apposite. This is because, as
Johnson (1994: 7) argues, over the past couple of centuries, the ‘liberal tradition of political
thought has come to play a powerful part in political discourse…, and in some of the most
economically developed countries that tradition now occupies a position that might
reasonably be described as hegemonic.’ While this dominance does not extend to all or even
most nations, it is prevalent in the minority of wealthy liberal democracies who are most
responsible for global environmental problems, such as climate change and biodiversity loss
(Dobson 2003). Moreover, within these nations it is the ostensibly liberal political parties that
often have the most dubious record on environmental issues (de Geus 2001). Of course, this
is not to say that liberalism is necessarily a proximate cause of environmental degradation.
However, it does provide the heuristic basis upon which many issues are interpreted and
understood by policymakers and their publics at a time when global environmental problems
are becoming increasingly more serious. Establishing a liberal position on the relationship
between economic growth and environmental degradation, and crucially, whether liberalism
is compatible with a post-growth economy, is therefore a necessary philosophical prerequisite
to returning the global political economy to an ecologically sustainable footing.
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In a post-growth economy sustainable biophysical thresholds would not be breached;

the social and ecological costs of economic activity would not exceed its benefits; and the
commitment of governments to economic growth would be replaced by objectives such as
societal wellbeing and environmental protection (Ferguson 2014a). This last point in
particular clearly distinguishes the post-growth economy from other economy-environment
discourses, such as sustainable development, green growth and green economy, because it
conceives of economic growth as only one means to achieve fundamental social ends, rather
than as a primary policy objective. This does not mean that no growth should occur; indeed in
many countries some forms of growth, such as growth in renewable energy production,
education and health services are desperately needed. However, the expansion of these
sectors must be offset by sharp reductions in other less sustainable forms of growth, primarily
in the fossil fuel sector (van den Bergh and Kallis 2012, Daly 2007). Thus a post-growth
economy should be thought of not as a static system in which the composition of output does
not change, but as one in which the economy is in ‘dynamic equilibrium with its
environment.’ This means that whilst the absolute material throughput of the system is
limited, the composition of output is in constant flux. Consequently, developmental
aspirations can continue to be realised by increasing the quality and form rather than the
quantity of production (Daly 1993, Lawn 2005).
This article develops a preliminary explanation for why governments in liberal
democracies have become committed to economic growth using Moravcsik’s (1997, 2008)
liberal preference theory. From this perspective, the commitment to growth is the result of the
aggregation of myriad societal preferences through the political and market systems. It
follows from this that the only way a liberal society could become a post-growth society
would be if a majority of citizens developed a preference for this to happen. However, like all
political theories, liberalism is not merely a set of explanatory precepts, but also a corpus of
normative assumptions about the social and political values and principles that ought to
govern political processes and thus the content of actors’ preferences (Richardson 2001). This
allows an exploration of the circumstances in which the liberal state can legitimately set
limits on the kinds of preferences it realises. It is argued that in the presence of mounting
costs and impending limits to growth, the preference for growth should be considered
illegitimate. Continuing in this normative vein, the article then explores whether the main
deontological, utilitarian and rights-based strains of liberalism are compatible with a post-
growth economy and finds that liberals of all persuasions should be amenable to moving in a
post-growth direction as this necessary to sustain the core liberal value of human autonomy.
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Liberalism and economic growth: a preliminary explanation

The most developed liberal explanatory theory is Moravcsik’s (1997, 2008) preference
aggregation model. This seeks to demonstrate how actor preferences are translated into
government policy and by extension into the preferences of states in the international system.
Moravcsik elaborates his model in terms of three core assumptions about the nature of
societal actors, the state, and the international system. These in turn provide the basic
components of a general liberal explanation for the commitment of governments to economic
growth.
The first assumption is more or less lifted directly from neoclassical economics and
holds that actors generally behave rationally in pursuit of what they perceive as their own
interests (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles 2009a). These actors engage in ‘bottom-up’
political processes that are embedded in domestic and transnational civil society, and involve
the aggregation of the preferences of utility-maximising individuals with differentiated tastes,
social commitments, and resource endowments. Material and ideational interests are defined
independently of politics and then advanced through political exchange and collective action,
with the role of the state being to realise these aggregations of preferences on behalf of its
citizens. The implication of this is that the commitment of governments to growth is simply
the aggregation of the expressed preferences of disparate societal actors (Purdey 2010). This
is exactly what many liberals would expect, because growth is believed to, ceteris paribus,
increase individual and group utility. Growth also provides a means to mediate between
differentiated interests which, under constraints imposed by material scarcity, conflicting
values, and variations in societal influence, generate competition and sometimes even conflict
over resources (Moravcsik 1997). As such, it is often not the preference for growth per se that
is being pursued, but a set of preferences for the social goods that growth is believed to
generate.
Moravcsik’s (1997: 518) second core assumption is that states ‘represent some subset
of domestic society, on the basis of whose interests government officials define state
preferences and act purposively in world politics.’ As such, the state is not so much ‘an actor
but a representative institution constantly subject to capture and recapture, construction and
reconstruction by coalitions of social actors’ (Moravcsik 1997: 518). For this reason, no state
is endowed with ‘universal or unbiased political representation [because] every government
represents some individuals and groups more fully than others’ (Moravcsik 1997: 518). State
institutions and practices merely transmit the preferences of powerful actors into state policy.
This tacitly acknowledges that the preferences of some groups, such as business, are more
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likely to be realised than others. To the extent that economic growth translates into profits
and capital accumulation,2 business actors can be expected to be committed to growth.
Moravcsik’s (1997: 520) third assumption is that in international affairs the
‘configuration of state preferences determines state behaviour.’ However, this does not mean
that states are always at liberty to convert their own domestic preferences into policy. Rather,
each state seeks to realise its preferences within the constraints imposed by the preferences of
other states. This engenders a condition of ‘policy interdependence,’ in which the costs and
benefits for a state of pursuing a course of action are determined not only by domestic
aggregations of preferences but also by the preferences of dominant groups in other
jurisdictions. As a result, governments who in isolation may be less committed to growth,
might find themselves locked into growth because of the preferences of other states.
At least three aspects of interdependence could be said to reinforce the commitment to
growth. One is participation in international institutions which are normatively and
functionally committed to promoting growth, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO),
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Purdey 2010, Bernstein 2001).
Another is the current relatively free international flow of capital, which compels states to
provide profitable business conditions in order to compete for investment (Cerny 1997). The
final factor is the need for states in an anarchical international system to maintain military
preparedness, which is partly dependent upon control and exploitation of economic resources
(Eckersley 2004).
However, these conditions of interdependence and anarchy have a structural
dimension that is significantly under theorised in Moravcsik’s model. As such, the realisation
of preferences that run counter to capital accumulation and the maximisation of state security
is often precluded, irrespective of prevailing public opinion. Moravcsik also fails to clearly
specify how rational actors come to possess preferences in the first place. Consequently, ‘the
possibility that there exists some sort of feedback loop in which political and strategic
interaction might play a role in defining preferences and demands is not acknowledged’
(Simpson 2008: 257). Rather, the tastes, commitments and endowments of individuals are
regarded as prior to politics. However, this separation of the formation of preferences from
participation in politics is questionable, because the very act of engaging in political activity
has the potential to reshape and possibly even fundamentally change actors’ preferences.
A further set of problems with Moravcsik’s model stem from its ostensible
agnosticism about how society ought to be constituted. Although, there is nothing in the
theory to prevent one from both explaining a social phenomenon whilst simultaneously
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lamenting the existence of the same phenomenon, the sharp separation between facts and
values tends to uncritically reify existing distributions of power whilst offering no ethical
framework with which to evaluate preferences (Simpson 2008). The satisfaction of
preferences is held to be good in and of itself, irrespective of their precise content. However,
some preferences are sadistic, envious, racist, unjust, and/or coerced and may constrain the
ability of other actors to form and/or realise their own legitimate preferences (Sagoff 2008).
Indeed, the preference for economic growth, to the extent that it generates environmental
degradation, could be placed in this category. What needs to be established, therefore, is
whether it is legitimate for the liberal state to ever place limits on societal preferences,
including the preference for growth. This introduces a more overtly normative dimension to
the analysis.

Limits on preferences
One liberal theorist who believes that the state can and often must place limits on societal
preferences is Marcel Wissenburg (1998, 2006), who argues that preferences are only
legitimate if they are socially and ecologically sustainable. As such, any preference –
including the commitment to growth – that threatens to destabilise the liberal democratic
system is incompatible with liberal democracy, and thus should be restricted by the state.
Unlike many liberals, Wissenburg is also prepared to acknowledge that we have now
reached this point as a consequence of environmental degradation. The existence of limits to
growth means that ‘liberal democratic political institutions are and will be confronted with a
need to reconcile a growing number of momentarily satisfiable desires with [a] decreasing
number of opportunities for desire satisfaction’ (Wissenburg 1998: 2). This is likely to cause
deprivation and disappointment for large numbers of people, thus posing ‘a fundamental
threat to the survival of liberal institutions, as these are predicated on the possibility of
reconciling antithetical preferences’ (Wissenburg 1998: 2), often through economic growth
(MacIntyre 1984, Daly 1977, Bell 1976). However, as preferences, including for economic
growth, are not necessarily predetermined by human nature or societal circumstances (Sagoff
2008), growth need not be the only means to alleviate this tension.
Impending limits to growth also engender a problem of intergenerational justice,
which Wissenburg attempts to resolve with what he calls the ‘restraint principle.’ This is
based upon the assumption that it is legitimate to distinguish between basic needs, such as
food and shelter, and further wants, such as haute cuisine and a second home. The former
constitutes unconditional rights and the latter conditional rights. His basic argument is firstly
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that conditional rights should be distributed so as to not reduce the scope for realising
unconditional rights; and secondly ‘that conditional rights to…scarce goods should be
distributed in such a way that they remain, within the limits of necessity, available for
redistribution’ (Wissenburg 1998: 123). In other words, ‘whenever there is a choice between
destroying a good, thus depriving others of present or future options to realise legitimate
plans, or merely using it without limiting other people’s options, we have a duty to choose the
latter’ (Wissenburg 1998: 123).
Wissenburg argues that the restraint principle can in turn be applied to future
generations through a modification of Rawls’s (1972, 1993) savings principle of justice.
Beginning from the premise that successive generations exist concurrently for a time, rather
than simply one after another, society can be understood as a system of cooperation between
overlapping generations rather than a system of transfers from one generation to the next.
Therefore, depriving the next generation(s) of some good will also at some point deprive
members of the present generation. For example, if those of us living today were to burn all
the world’s oil over the next 30 years, this would not only deprive future generations of the
benefit of this resource but also many members of the current generation who will still be
alive at this time. It is therefore rational for members of current generations to only exploit
resources in a manner that preserves them for the use of current and future generations. In
addition, there are sound ethical reasons not to compromise the ability of future generations
to meet their needs by our profligate exploitation of resources today. From a liberal
perspective, the most basic of these reasons is that this risks undermining the autonomy of
individuals in the future. (Wissenburg 1998).
While Wissenburg’s case for limiting the societal preference for growth is intuitively
appealing, as Eckersley (2004) demonstrates, his overall scheme is far too complacent. The
main issue is that ‘it assumes that social structures play no significant role in constituting the
individual interests, identities, and preferences of social agents’ (Eckersley 2004: 97). Indeed,
Wissenburg (1998: 219) makes this assumption explicit by stating that ‘[w]hether or not
liberal democracy can realise its potential for sustainability…ultimately depends upon the
preferences of humans’ rather than structural dynamics. However, as structures tend to reify
existing distributions of resources, rights and power in society, the liberal democratic state is
never impartial in the way it prioritises some preferences over others. Wissenburg, however,
is adamant that ‘it is not the structure of the free market itself that may or can be held
responsible for environmental degradation, but the preferences of both producers and
consumers’ (Wissenburg 2001: 39).
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This points towards a second, related problem, namely Wissenburg’s bracketing of

political and economic liberalism (Eckersley 2004). He justifies this by arguing that it is only
‘in the latter sphere that materialistic [and] consumeristic attitudes and behaviour find their
most extensive freedom from public and moral scrutiny’ (Wissenburg 1998: 90). Moreover,
according to Wissenburg, the social and environmental ills of the free market can be counter-
balanced with liberal civic virtues. However, this seems rather optimistic because like
Moravcsik, Wissenburg essentially takes societal preferences as given, or in his terminology,
preferences are a ‘black box.’ Thus as Stephens (2001) points out, it is difficult to believe that
preferences for environmental protection will simply appear in civil society without some
encouragement from the state or other preference-shaping agency or process. Although
Wissenburg, as noted above, is open to the possibility that the state might sometimes have to
limit illiberal preferences, his implicit believe that the state must remain neutral between
competing conceptions of the good life greatly restricts the capacity for this to happen
(Stephens 2001).
Therefore, while Wissenburg is correct to point out that liberal democracy and
economic liberalism are not one and the same, and that the existence of one is not predicated
upon the existence of the other, these positions are more or less diametrically opposed to
liberal practice since the Second World War. Furthermore, there is little in his green
liberalism to delineate a clear separation between the economic and political realms
(Stephens 2001). Therefore, any distinction between political and economic liberalism, whilst
defensible from a normative perspective, is rather empirically tenuous.
A final problem with Wissenburg’s scheme is that when applied to the specific issue
of economic growth, it does not properly account for the crucial difference between
preferences for economic growth itself and preferences for the various goods that growth is
purported to generate. As noted above, the most significant of these is the capacity for growth
to reconcile antithetical preferences for the distribution of resources within society by
effectively growing the economic pie rather than cutting it into smaller, more equitable slices.
Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that in most cases, growth is supported not as an end in
itself but as a means to a set of more fundamental ends, such as gainful and meaningful
employment, and health, education and other public services (Barry 2012). As these
objectives could not be reasonably construed as illegitimate, it is only their realisation by
means of economic growth that is problematic. Therefore, it needs to be established whether
economic growth is a liberal objective in and of itself, or merely a means to fulfil some other
set of more fundamental liberal ends.
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Growth as a derivative liberal value

In the late-1970s Ronald Dworkin (1978, 1985) probed whether economic growth is
constitutive or merely derivative of liberalism. Constitutive political positions are those that
remain more or less constant over time and are valued for their own sake, whilst derivative
positions are valued merely as a strategic means to achieve constitutive objectives. When
actors who are sufficiently moved by a particular constitutive morality settle on a scheme of
derivative positions to advance this ideal, a distinct theoretical settlement is formed.
As Dworkin (1978) notes, opposition to growth for its own sake and opposition to the
concentration of power in large bureaucratic apparatuses and multinational corporations
appear to be liberal in spirit because they run counter to liberal notions of equality. However,
this contradicts the strategies of central economic and political organisation and market
structures that have been considered distinctly liberal preoccupations, at least since the
Second World War. As a result, it is more commonly understood that ‘liberals are committed
to economic growth, to the bureaucratic apparatus of government and industry necessary for
economic growth, and to the form of life in which growth is pursued for its own
sake,…[which] emphasises competition, individualism and material satisfactions’ (Dworkin
1978: 118). Dworkin surmises that this view is largely derived from some form of
utilitarianism that considers overall prosperity as a good in and of itself. However, he rejects
the assertion that it is constitutive of liberalism, because the constitutive normative morality
of liberalism extends only to ‘a theory of equality that requires official neutrality amongst
theories of what is valuable in life’ (Dworkin 1978: 142). The commitment to economic
growth, therefore, was merely a derivative element of post-war liberalism that made a
reasonably egalitarian distribution of resources politically possible at that time.
This is an argument that carries significant historical weight. The post-war Fordist
system, based upon ‘the mass production of standardised industrial goods and services and
the associated rise of a range of new consumer and producer goods industries’ (Dunford
2000: 149), increased overall living standards and significantly reduced the income gap that
had opened during the inter-war period in many Western countries. This saw the
‘reconciliation of the increasing returns and the rapid increase in productivity…with the
growth of real income and stability in its distribution’ (Dunford 2000: 150). Wages and
consumer demand thus rose steadily as wage growth was effectively linked to productivity
growth. At the same time, the distribution of this growth remained stable between wages and
profits, as increases in wages were paralleled by increases in prices. High wages and full
employment also kept domestic demand buoyant, while high rates of profit increased tax
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receipts, in turn facilitating a significant level of redistribution through the welfare state
(Jessop 2001, Gambino 2007). However, Fordism only remained a durable political
compromise for a couple of decades. By the early-1970s, stagflation had reversed real wage
growth and the relative reduction in prices, while the greater internationalisation of trade,
investment and finance saw wages increasingly become a cost of production rather than a
source of domestic demand. Downward pressure on wages also emanated from the expansion
of the international financial sector once returns from money capital exceeded those from
productive capital (Jessop 2001: 293).
Whilst during the 1950s and 1960s economic growth may well have facilitated liberal
equality, Dworkin (1978: 141) contends that ‘[i]f it now appears that economic growth
injures more than it aids the liberal conception of equality, then the liberal is free to reject or
curtail growth as a strategy.’ Indeed, this appears to be exactly what liberals should now be
doing, given evidence that growth is driving environmental degradation that exacerbates
inequality (Newell 2005); that the growth process tends to widen income disparities
(Woodard and Simms 2006, Galbraith 1958); and that as the world economy has been
growing exponentially inequality both within and between countries has increased
(International Labour Organization 2004, Harvey 2005).
However, for Dworkin, the philosophical grounds upon which this questioning of
growth can occur are somewhat circumscribed by his ‘state neutralism,’ which is a form of
what Sandel (1998) calls ‘deontological liberalism.’ This holds that ‘society…is best
arranged when it is governed by principles that do not themselves presuppose any particular
conception of the good’ (Sandel 1998: 1). As such, Dworkin argues that the liberal may not
oppose growth simply because he or she believes that a post-growth economy would further
their conception of the good life (because they desire a less materialistic world, for example),
as this would contravene the neutrality principle about what is valuable in life. Opposition to
growth and support for environmental protection, therefore, can only be predicated on the
grounds that growth and environmental degradation endanger the equitable distribution of
resources and opportunities in society by potentially rendering a way of life that has been
satisfying and desirable in the past unavailable to future generations. Under these conditions
the commitment to growth is not neutral amongst competing ideas of the good life, but in fact
destroys or curtails the possible enjoyment of this for some people (Dworkin 1978). Similar
arguments have also been made by Dobson (2003) and Norton (1999) with respect to the
potential for environmental degradation in general to reduce the range of good lives available
to future generations. Indeed, Dobson (2003: 166) contends that any state that does not seek
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to maximise these opportunities by preserving the natural would ‘stand accused of non-
neutrality by omission.’
In any case, as Rawls (1993), Bell (2002) and Hailwood (2004) point out, the liberal
state only needs to be neutral on questions of environmental protection when these have
implications for constitutional impartiality or basic principles of justice. Even then, as noted
above, the state sometimes must actively pursue environmental protection to uphold these
ideals. Thus state neutrality does not provide sufficient grounds to believe that liberalism is
incompatible with a post-growth society, although the liberal state’s position on this question
is still ultimately dependent upon democratic argumentation and the aggregation of societal
preferences.

Post-growth liberalism?
Many liberals argue that there is more to the constitutive morality of liberalism than some
abstract notion of neutral equality (Sinopoli 1993, Sandel 1998, Dobson 2003, Stephens
2001). For instance, Sinopoli (1993: 644) contends that whilst some sense of neutrality
among conceptions of the good life is fundamental to liberalism to an extent, ‘the application
of the neutrality principle…has become unjustifiably broad in much contemporary liberal
theory.’ This is a result of the tendency of its advocates ‘to extend the paradigmatic case from
which the concept if not the term neutrality originates – religious toleration – into other quite
different areas where notions of the good are disputed’ (Sinopoli 1993: 645). However, not
all conceptions of the good life are analogous and thus do not require the same degree of state
impartiality. Indeed, as noted above, some of these might be based on decidedly illiberal
preferences and thus likely to constrain the ability of other citizens to realise their own
legitimate aspirations (Sagoff 2008).
In practice, the belief of liberals such as Wissenburg that societal preferences are only
legitimate if they are socially and ecologically sustainable significantly tempers his state
neutralism, although as argued above, he does not allow the state an affirmative role in
shaping preferences. This is in contrast to theorists such as Dobson (2003) who argue that the
state actually has a responsibility to instil sustainability values in its citizenry through state
apparatuses such as the education system.
Deontological liberalism is also predicated on a set of assumptions about the primacy
and independence of the individual that are impossible to realise in practice, because all
people are unescapably embedded in communal structures which to some extent privilege the
interests of the group over the preferences of the individual (Sandel 1998). Neutrality also
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risks being illiberal when it allows only one vision of the autonomous being or when it limits
the grounds for state action to exclude the other normative considerations that have
traditionally been at the heart of liberalism (Kent 2008). These include utilitarianism, some
concept of inalienable rights and most fundamentally human autonomy (Johnston 1994,
Sandel 1984). Whilst not necessarily dispensing completely with the notion of state
neutrality, all of these liberalisms offer a broader range of justifications both for and against a
post-growth economy than Dworkin’s deontological liberalism, and are worth exploring in
some detail.
The key premise of liberal utilitarianism is that general societal welfare ought to be
maximised. To the extent that it is framed in neutralist terms, this extends only to a
requirement that the ‘state should not impose on its citizens a preferred way of life, even for
their own good, because doing so will reduce the sum of human happiness’ (Sandel 1984:
15). Any other appeals to state neutrality or abstract rights play little part in this argument, as
the only relevant principle is the greatest good for the greatest number. At one level,
therefore, the easiest way for governments to maximise pleasure and to minimise pain for the
largest number of individuals is to have access to the biggest possible volume of resources to
distribute throughout society, which as noted above, has traditionally been sought through
economic growth.
More fundamentally there are two distinct utilitarian positions within liberalism with
different implications for the commitment to growth. The first seeks to maximise preference
satisfaction at the individual level by affording citizens the opportunity to fulfil their own
personal preferences to the greatest extent possible. This conception of utilitarianism
undergirds Moravcisk’s preference aggregation model. It is also the type of utilitarianism that
most lends itself to a commitment to growth. The other liberal-utilitarian position stems from
the social liberal tradition that emphasises the interdependence between community
development and the development of the individual (Sawer 2003). Social liberalism is
concerned less with the utility of individuals in isolation and more with the capacity of
society as a whole to promote human autonomy.
This second liberal utilitarian position conforms closely to Mill’s (1962) conception
of utility, which as Levy (1981) argues, his stationary state sought to further by reconciling
notions of liberty and equality. Mill’s (2004) dilemma was that whilst he considered private
property and the market to be inequitable, he also believed that redistributive socialism was
detrimental to individual liberty. The political economy of the stationary state solved this
problem, as it could increase equality without recourse to punitive redistribution. This was
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because under stationary state conditions, there would be insufficient accumulated capital to
continue financing private enterprise, thus leading workers to form cooperatives as the
primary means of organising production. As these cooperatives would be the only new outlets
for capital investment, rational capitalists would have little choice but to invest in them and
accept lower returns than had hitherto been attainable on the open market. The utility of
labour would thus be increased by the receipt of a greater proportion of the fruits of
production. Meanwhile, although the capitalists would suffer some loss of utility, this would
not impinge upon their liberty as it would be the consequence of a natural decline in profits
rather than a state-orchestrated redistribution of wealth. The stationary state would thus
‘create the material conditions for both liberty and equality – conditions freely arrived at and
in turn thoroughly capable of maintaining freedom in the future’ (Levy 1981: 285).
However, just like his stationary state, Mill’s broader social liberal project has not
been widely integrated into contemporary liberalism. The dominance of individual-level over
society-level utilitarianism in liberal theory stems partly from the way liberalism developed
in lockstep with the market economy and neoclassical economic theory, in which individuals
rather than collectives are considered the main constitutive economic actors.
A further move away from society-level utilitarianism came with the rise of welfare
economics in the mid-20th century, which utilises concepts such as Pareto optimality and
cost-benefit analysis (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles 2009b). This has seen these tools
become a kind of heuristic ‘filter’ to interpret and resolve policy issues (Edwards 2007). By
definition, a Pareto optimal outcome – which is where the welfare of one party cannot be
improved without reducing that of another - generally implies economic growth, because
expansion of the economy increases the volume of goods, thus avoiding the need to distribute
resources on a zero-sum basis. Similarly, cost-benefit analysis also tends to start from the
assumption that growth is always of benefit, although there is no a priori reason why these
cannot reveal that the full costs of growth actually outweigh its benefits.
Indeed, this is exactly what a range of alternative measures to gross domestic product
(GDP) suggest has been occurring in most developed countries for several decades (Offer
2006). These metrics compare the benefits and costs of economic activity by deducting lost
leisure time, income inequality, resource depletion and defensive expenditures such as
pollution abatement, traffic accidents and remedial healthcare from total private consumption
expenditure, whilst making additions for public goods including preventative healthcare,
public services and domestic and volunteer work (Lawn 2006, Daly 1999). Unless the ambit
of cost-benefit analysis is sufficiently widened to take into account the full range of social
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and ecological costs and benefits of economic activity, it can in no reasonable way claim to
be liberal, at least not in the sense intended by social liberal-utilitarians such as Mill.
Ultimately however, it must be questioned whether utilitarianism really is the
constitutive morality of liberalism. For surely in a liberal polity, which ostensibly takes
expressed preferences and state neutrality about conceptions of the good life seriously, it is
likely that many citizens will prefer some other societal value to the greatest good for the
greatest number. These might include equity, compassion, social justice, common sense,
wisdom, ecological sustainability and/or personal integrity. Moreover, by seeking above all to
maximise general welfare, utilitarianism ‘treats society as a whole as if it were a single
person; it conflates our many, diverse desires into a single system of desires’ (Sandel 1984:
16), thus contravening the liberal injunction that it is individuals that matter most (Johnston
1994). Utilitarianism also fails to accord intrinsic importance to each and every individual, as
‘one individual’s happiness or pleasure…may be sacrificed to procure a greater happiness or
pleasure located in other persons’ (Hart 1979: 829-830). The upshot is that a situation in
which some enjoy immense wellbeing whilst others suffer great hardship can be considered
as good if not better than circumstances in which wellbeing is more equally distributed.
Of course, some utilitarian schemes contain safeguards to protect individual rights and
mechanisms to balance these against crude utility calculi. Mill’s utilitarianism is notable in
this respect, as unlike other leading utilitarians such as Bentham (1823), by distinguishing
between ‘morality,’ ‘expediency’ and ‘worthiness,’ he accords a central place to rights that
prevents the sanctioning of individual injustices in the name of the common good (Mill 1962,
Donner and Fumerton 2009). Nonetheless, utilitarianism frequently risks using some people
as a means to the general happiness of others, and thus fails to respect each individual as an
end in themselves.
Following Rawls (1972, 1982), in the late-20th century there was a concerted shift
within liberal theory away from utilitarianism towards a new conviction ‘that the truth must
lie not with a doctrine that takes the maximisation of aggregate or average general welfare for
its goal, but with a doctrine of basic human rights, protecting specific basic liberties and
interests of individuals’ (Hart 1979: 828). The rights-based liberal case against utilitarianism
is usually built upon Kant’s distinction between the right and the good – that is, the
difference ‘between a framework of basic rights and liberties, and the conceptions of the
good that people may choose to pursue within this framework’ (Sandel 1984: 16). From this
perspective, ‘individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good; and the
principles of justice that specify these rights cannot be premised on any particular vision of
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the good life’ (Sandel 1984: 16). The role of the state is only to uphold certain principles of
procedural justice and to protect a set of basic inalienable rights. Whilst this constitutes a
somewhat less constricted notion of state neutrality than that proffered by Dworkin, it
nonetheless remains illegitimate for states to affirm some particular ends, such as the greatest
good for the greatest number, or the maximisation of economic output.
However, proponents of rights-based liberalism disagree intensely about which rights
are fundamental, and about the shape of the political framework required to uphold these
rights. There are two main perspectives on this question. The first defends the market
economy and holds that redistributive policies violate peoples’ rights, the most fundamental
being the right to private property. It also often holds that regulative measures that proscribe
what one may and may not do with their property constitute an unjustifiable interference with
this basic right (Guth 2007). This ‘gives rise to the presumption that governments must
compensate property owners whenever…legislation diminishes the economic value of their
property’ (Alexander 2011: 21), which has the effect of making the state less inclined to
introduce reforms that limit the realisation of economic benefits from private property. Given
that any move toward a post-growth economy would necessarily reduce the economic
potential of some forms of property, such as fossil fuel holdings, these property-rights liberals
can be expected to oppose this objective.
However, a post-growth economy need not necessarily be inconsistent with a strict
property rights conception of liberalism. If it is accepted that economic growth risks
undermining the biophysical basis of society, then growth also risks destabilising the private
property system. As such, the curtailment of a proprietor’s rights could not be reasonably
objected to if this is necessary to preserve the institution of private property or liberal
democracy more broadly. Whilst some liberals may not accept that anyone other than the title
holder has a right to dictate what can and cannot be done with one’s property, most would
abide by some form of the so-called ‘Lockean proviso.’
Originally, Locke (1973) stated that ‘a property right to a resource x requires that
“enough and as good” of x is left for others’ (Wissenburg 1998: 83). As most resources were
until recently assumed to be sufficiently abundant as to be effectively inexhaustible,
unrestricted rights to most commodities were generally considered legitimate. However, as
the depletion of resources became more obvious during the mid-20th century, this axiom was
modified by Nozick (1974) to assume that while all resources are not infinitely abundant,
they are generally substitutable. The implication is that while one may not have an absolute
right to any particular form of property, one does have the right to some form of property to
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an equivalent value. However, the problem with both these formulations is that in the
presence of limits to growth, not only are resources no longer abundant, but the alternative of
easy substitution is also unavailable.
Conditional rights to property are therefore entirely consistent with many liberal
theories of justice. Indeed, they are at the heart of the social liberal tradition stretching right
back to Mill (Wissenburg 2006). The only points of contention concern what these conditions
are and how they ought to be established. As a basic rule of thumb, it seems reasonable that
any prohibition on the use or disposal of property ought to be justified if this is necessary to
uphold the liberal property system. Given that environmental problems now endanger some
forms of property, limiting the economic exploitation of private resources in the name of
environmental protection is consistent with rights-based liberalism. At one level this is
because environmental damage has the potential to greatly reduce the value of many types of
property, such as agricultural land that is highly exposed to climate change risks such as
extreme drought or flooding. More fundamentally, the prevailing property system may itself
become a casualty of the ecological crisis if environmental problems generate sufficient
social upheaval.
Liberal conceptualisations of property rights have also evolved markedly over the last
few centuries in response to a range of social and economic forces. Admittedly, the general
trajectory of this evolution has been towards the commoditisation of a range of hitherto un-
commoditised social and ecological phenomena (Manno 2002). At the same time, the belief
that the public good is best served by the fullest exploitation of the economic potential of
property, primarily through industrial development, has also become widespread (Alexander
2011). However, there have been exceptions to this general movement, the most notable
being the abolition of slavery, when the right to own slaves was withdrawn by the state.
Moreover, as the institution of slavery had come to be seen as abhorrent, in most cases those
who had profited from it were not considered to be entitled to any form of recompense (Radin
1993). This demonstrates that those things that are considered legitimate commodities can
change over time. There is, therefore, ‘nothing natural about buying and selling things for
profit, and allowing markets to determine their value [because before] commodities can be
bought and sold, they have to become objects that people think can be bought and sold’ (Patel
2009: 17-18). As such, qualifying or even rescinding property rights if they endanger
fundamental liberal values, as slavery once did, cannot be considered illiberal. On this basis,
some critics now even contend that the de-legitimisation of holding humans as property
provides a prototype for rescinding the right to exploit fossil fuel holdings (Hayes 2014).
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Without delving into the annals of property law, it can be seen that conceptions of
private property vary even between contemporary liberal democracies. These display
significant discrepancies between the balance of public, private and collective ownership of
resources, and the extent to which the use of these resources is regulated. At one end of the
spectrum are the ‘liberal market economies’ such as the US, UK and Australia, in which
economic action is facilitated to a large extent by competitive markets. At the other end are
the ‘coordinated market economies’ of Western Europe, which are characterised by relatively
high levels of public ownership and state regulation (Hall and Soskice 2001). The institution
of private property is a central feature of both systems, but the rights and responsibilities
attached to property ownership and the relative ‘freedom’ of market transactions varies
significantly between them.
Of course, all private property systems must be underwritten to some extent by state
intervention in the market. At a minimum, this is necessary to ensure that contracts are
honoured and the basic ownership rights of proprietors upheld. More substantially, in order to
realise the full potential of their investment, proprietors usually depend upon a range of
public goods such as transport and energy infrastructure that can only be provided by the
state. All private property systems are thus necessarily embedded in social and ecological
systems (Meyer 2009). This means that any objection to moving to a post-growth economy
cannot be sustained merely on the basis that it would require state interference with existing
property regimes (Alexander 2011).
In any case, the key issue for liberals is surely not rights per se, but the constitutive
principle(s) rights seek to promote or protect. Whilst ‘individual rights are, in all likelihood,
indispensable in any society that operates in accordance with liberal principles…[they]
cannot bear the entire weight of an account of the bases of political and social criticism’
(Johnston 1994: 67). In order for a rights-based normative theory to be persuasive, the
content of the rights it protects must be a statement of the fundamental purpose these rights
are supposed to serve.
This points toward the second group of rights-based liberal theories, which are usually
associated with egalitarian or social liberalism. These approaches support a scheme of social
and economic rights, such as the right to welfare, education and healthcare. This positive
rather than negative conception of liberty seeks to provide the resources necessary for human
fulfilment, not just freedom from the interference of the state and other citizens (Richardson
2001, Berlin 1969). Whilst it could be argued that the provision of social services such as
health and education is dependent upon a growing economy, most social liberals would not
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hold that growth per se is a fundamental civic or economic right, but merely a derivative
means to achieve these. Once again, to the extent that growth is failing in this role and risks
undermining these rights, social liberals have good reasons to support a post-growth
economy.
Finally, what needs to be established is whether there is a fundamental constitutive
morality common to all strains of liberalism; and whether this is compatible with a post-
growth economy. Many liberals would agree that individual human autonomy is at the core
of their philosophy (Johnston 1994). This was the case in the thought of Locke (1975), as
well as that of Kant (1949). It is also evident in all the liberal theories discussed in this article
and most other contemporary liberal approaches, all of which subscribe to some notion of
individualism or individual liberty (Richardson 2001).
Perhaps the most celebrated statement of the liberal conception of the autonomous
person is Mill’s (1863: 113) declaration that ‘[h]e [sic] who lets the world, or his own portion
of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of
imitation.’ Whereas ‘[h]e who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.’ The
most fundamental liberal premise, therefore, is that ‘[a] set of political and social
arrangements is good to the extent to which it protects and promotes a life of autonomy for
all members of the society’ (Johnston 1994: 70). For liberals, few criticisms about a society’s
political and social organisation could be more devastating than the aspersion that those
arrangements fail to secure the conditions necessary for this to happen. The argument that
individuals ought to be autonomous can thus be used to support a diverse range of liberal
prescriptions for social and political arrangements, including libertarian, egalitarian and
utilitarian schemes (Johnston 1994). However, bridging this theoretical divide in practice
presents a challenge, as rights-based approaches tend to be at odds with utilitarian
approaches, while libertarians, individual-level utilitarians and social liberals generally do not
see eye-to-eye.
One way around this impasse is Dworkin’s (1977) principle of ‘rights as trumps.’ In
this scheme rights do not occupy the position of strict priority over all other considerations,
but only take priority over some social goals. However, few rights, if any, take priority over
all social goals. This is because ‘rights do not do the real work – [that is] the work of
describing or accounting for the bases of political criticism...The real work…is done by the
view that human beings should have the resources they need to give meaning to their lives’
(Johnston 1994: 66). This demonstrates that a liberal theory can - in fact must - be based upon
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both a set of inalienable rights and a set of social goals, which requires balancing individual
and collective rights.
Economic growth is constitutive of neither of these objectives. Nor does it lessen the
tension between individual and collective rights. Moreover, as the above discussion has
demonstrated, growth is also not fundamental to individual or societal level utilitarianism,
strict property rights formulations of liberalism, or the fulfilment of the liberal ideal of human
autonomy. Indeed, in an era of impending dramatic global environmental change, ongoing
economic growth is likely to be detrimental to these objectives.

Conclusion
From a liberal perspective, the commitment of liberal democratic governments to economic
growth is the product of the aggregation of myriad societal preferences through the political
and market systems. Thus the only way liberal polities can be expected to move beyond
growth is through the widespread adoption of a strong societal preference for a post-growth
economy. At first glance this appears unlikely to happen because of the historical connection
of liberalism to a form of utilitarianism that makes overall prosperity an end in itself, or
because liberalism affords citizens a set of rights that permit extensive and largely
unconstrained participation in economic processes and the full realisation of the economic
potential of private property. However, this explanation is problematic, because it does not
countenance whether the liberal state can legitimately place limits on the kind of preferences
it realises, whether utilitarianism and liberal rights are furthered only through economic
growth, or whether these are actually constitutive of the fundamental morality of liberalism.
This article has demonstrated that liberal democracies can and often must place limits
upon the kinds of preferences they realise, including the preference for economic growth. For
whilst growth might have once furthered a range of liberal objectives, it now threatens to
undermine liberal institutions by destroying the conditions of socioeconomic equality and
ecological stability upon which they are predicated. Ongoing growth also endangers more
abstract liberal concerns such as societal utility, inalienable rights and most fundamentally
the preservation of human autonomy. Thus to the extent that economic growth undermines
these objectives, liberals ought to support a post-growth economy.
However, whether actually existing liberal democracies can transcend their
commitment to economic growth in practice is another question entirely. Many analyses have
already grappled with this issue (see for example Hay 1996, Dryzek et al. 2003, Eckersley
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2004, Barry 2012). It is hoped that this article has provided some more theoretical depth to
these debates.

Notes
1. Mill’s classical forbears also recognised the inevitability of the stationary state. For
example, Smith (1967: 81) believed that this would be reached when a country ‘acquired that
full complement of riches which the nature of its soils and climate, and its situation with
respect to other societies allowed it to acquire;’ Malthus (1973) argued that the food supply
could never keep pace with population growth; Ricardo (1929) highlighted the limited supply
of arable land; and Jevons (1865) warned of the exhaustibility of non-renewable resources
such as coal. However, unlike Mill, they did not welcome this prospect (O’Riordan 1981,
Arndt 1978, Heilbroner 2000). Smith (1967: 91), for instance, asserted that ‘the progressive
state’ is the ‘cheerful and hearty state to all the different orders of society; [while the]
stationary state is dull; [and] the declining melancholy.’
2. Whilst there has been a close historical semblance between economic growth and capital
accumulation over the last couple of centuries, these are actually distinguishable processes.
Growth is conventionally defined as the increase in a country’s net and/or per capita national
income measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), whilst capital accumulation is
the process of increasing the stock and often the concentration of capital. This can generate
growth in the short-term. However, in the long-term, rates of growth are determined more by
increases in the quality of capital (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles 2012). Although there is an
ongoing debate about the relationship between accumulation and growth, a recent review of
global data covering the period 1960-2000 found a negative correlation between
accumulation and growth across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) countries and a positive correlation in non-OECD countries (Bond, Leblebicioglu,
and Schiantarelli 2010). This seems to imply that the wealthier a society becomes the less
capital accumulation drives economic growth.

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