MRSA Fellow Tim Lenehan

Growth Fetish by Clive Hamilton is an important book if for no other reason than it will effect your livelihood. Growth Fetish is a rave against our materialistic society and its handmaidens, advertising and marketing.

Hamilton proposes that 'the transition to a post-growth society would begin by imposing restrictions on the quantity and nature of marketing messages, by first banning advertising and sponsorship from all public spaces and restricting advertising time on television and radio - to provide a daily respite from the torrent of commercial messages and allow people to cultivate their relationships, especially with children, television broadcast hours should be restricted' (page 220).

That it will be widely discussed is almost guaranteed. Ross Gittins (SMH 7/8 June, 2003) has already written a flattering piece. Dust cover praise from Noam Chomsky ('Right on Target and Badly Needed'), Tim Costello and Natasha Stott Despoja will ensure wide readership.

Hamilton's agenda is to replace growth economics with something like a steady state economy that encourages a broader concept of social democracy. There's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, most would agree, that there's a pressing need for a 'rebalancing' away from external materialism to a more nourishing system; that the dominance of the economic rationalists and ABM (American Business Model) needs to be countered with goals higher up the Maslowian hierarchy.

While Hamilton's end objectives are laudable, his supporting arguments and prescriptions for change, unfortunately, are not. They're frighteningly naïve and piecemeal for a policy oriented economist. Chaos, rather than progress, would most likely result from their implementation.

Evidence of polemic thinking abounds and Hamilton often cuts his cloth to fit his hypothesis.

He spends a lot of time discussing economic theory as a way of illustrating where neoliberal economics gets it wrong. On several points he's far from convincing. His inference (if not insistence) that 'utility' is only derived from physical goods is too narrow an interpretation. Utility theory is easily expanded to accommodate a broader concept of the sources of well-being.

Similarly, his quest against the cancer of 'self-interest' betrays little understanding of the concept (the Lockian concept) of ENLIGHTENED self-interest (see Bloom - The Cloning of The American Mind). One senses a polemist's familiarity with the subject matter, but little depth.

Too obtuse? Well let's turn from theory to pragmatics.

Hamilton's rush toward a new society has very few prescriptions of how to get there. Making the transition from a growth economy to a steady-state model would be very, very difficult to accomplish without triggering a recession (if not a depression). One would have to hasten slowly - and be very, very careful. He needs to present a far more convincing blueprint of how to get from where we are to where he wants us to be. Not only doesn't he discuss how our domestic economy could survive, he fails to explain how Australia could survive militarily or economically in an increasingly troubled world. You can't just skip over these issues and still be convincing.

Enough of economics. What about the evils of marketing and advertising?

Well, who wouldn't agree that some advertising is bad, or that some marketing is bad? The trouble is that Hamilton doesn't think there's any such thing as 'good' marketing or advertising. At best they're something to be tolerated, even once controlled.

This is where the book's immaturity shows through.

Three points -

First, marketing and advertising are tools, catalysts. They're means to an end. Their muscle and skill can be turned to any purpose. In many ways, marketers and advertisers are advocates in much the same sense that lawyers are advocates, except that our cases are presented en mass, to the community at large.

Marketing and advertising don't have to push 'greed' or chimeras. If values change, if client demands change, then so too will marketing 'messages'. After all, marketers and advertisers mirror society, they rarely lead it.

I, for one, take some pride in having been involved in the HIV/AIDS campaign, the successful launch of the Superannuation Guarantee, ditto developing an RBT strategy that convinced drink drivers that they would be caught. Bring on the new world, our industry would welcome it.

Second, Growth Fetish repeatedly associates product differentiation with the trivialisation of life - particularly so when such differentiation is not based on physical, product attributes. Often that's true but Hamilton doesn't seem to understand that competition of this kind also results in change and progress, over time - the opening up of markets to new entrants and new products.

Without marketing, advertising and product differentiation we'd still be driving variants of the black, Model T Ford. Henry Ford didn't want to change his system. He was forced to do so by the marketplace.

If Dr. Hamilton plays tennis, I can't help but imagine he'd still be wearing Dunlop Volleys onto the court.

Third, and most importantly, Growth Fetish presents the consumer as a passive, malleable victim. It's a patrician's view of the vulnerability of the hoi polloi. It's patronising.

In today's world it's not producers who have the whip hand, it's consumers. Consumers account for 60%+ of national expenditure. If the consumer stops spending, capital and shareholders suffer. The easiest way to change our economic system is to bring this enormous consumer power to bear. You don't have to change the system to do that. Enlightened self-interest will result in business towing the line.

Consumers have the power (if not the consciousness as to know how to use it, as yet). You don't need a 'benevolent' state to protect them from TV or ads - or marketing. If you empower consumers they can change things themselves.

If, for example, consumers are against third-world, wage exploitation, all they have to do is STOP BUYING the products that practice such policies. The State's/community's job is to let people know what's happening, not to ban or control, by law. The latter would be to treat consumers as forever adolescents.

The same argument applies to putting an adequate welfare-net in place for the needy, or calling on politicians to mount an income equalisation policy - whatever. Efforts should be focused on encouraging people to be engaged, active and involved. That's the only route to self-actualisation.

Australia needs change, but it doesn't need a PC elite to dictate the shape and form of that change. The economic system we have is flexible enough to accommodate the changes recommended in GROWTH FETISH. If enough people, enough consumers, want change they will get it if they make themselves heard. Now that would be economic democracy at work.

Growth Fetish was published by Allen & Unwin (2003) and retails for $24.95. It is available from the AMSRS Bookshop for only $21.21 - visit www.amsrs.com.au, click on 'Online library' and follow the links or email orders@gbaust.com.au.

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