2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. In an insightful review, entitled The Midwife of Miserablism, British financial and economic journalist Daniel Ben-Ami suggests that the roots of today’s anti-growth movement can be found in Galbraith’s work, and especially in the Affluent Society.

Ben-Ami notes that one of the most well known passages from the Affluent Society argues that the pursuit of growth can make individuals wealthy but it has damaging consequences for the rest of society:

?The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air conditioned
power-steered and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through
cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted
buildings, billboards and posts for wires that should long since have
been put underground. They pass on into a country that has long been
rendered largely invisible by commercial art?. They picnic on
exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream
and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public
health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a
nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect on the
curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American
genius??

Ben-Ami asserts that this passage, with its miserablism, anticipates many of the themes of the anti-growth movement: growth damages the environment; growth leads to inequality; and growth leads to an unhealthy obsession with consumer goods. These views are now the conventional wisdom.

He concludes: “Half a century on it is time to launch a counter-attack against the
ideas that have become the conventional wisdom. Economic growth will
not provide all the answers to society?s problems, but it is a
necessary start. Contrary to the arguments of the sceptics, it does not
necessarily lead to environmental degradation or unhappiness. The
resources generated by economic growth give humanity the ability to
reshape the environment for its own benefit. A rich society is also one
where we can potentially spend less time working for a living and more
time engaging in more fulfilling tasks.”