Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:22:03.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In Defence of Abundance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Philippe Van Parijs
Philippe Van Parijs*
Affiliation:
Université Catholique de Louvain1348 Louvain-la-Neuve Belgium
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Every single day, every newspaper in the world carries some further evidence as to how limited the Earth’s resources are. Every single day, therefore, we should grow more deeply convinced that the notion of abundance has become hopelessly irrelevant and can safely be shelved forever. Or so it seems. In the final section of this paper, I shall defend the opposite view: that growing awareness of the limits of our resources should make the notion of abundance, suitably (though still plausibly) defined, more and not less relevant to our pursuits. Whether or not this defence turns out to be successful, I hope this paper will go some way towards clarifying this notoriously elusive notion, as well as its no less elusive and no less important antonym: scarcity.

Type
IV Historical Materialism and Ideology
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 15: Analyzing Marxism , 1989 , pp. 467 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This is a much revised version of a paper discussed at the Universities of Amsterdam and Louvain-la-Neuve in May and November 1985. I am very grateful to Philippe Mongin, Alec Nove, Roald Ramer, Gérard Roland, Ian Steedman, Robert van der Veen and Bob Ware, for having helped me out of some of the confusions contained in earlier versions. Conversations with Hans Achterhuis, Ivan Illich, Riccardo Cappi and Marc Germain have drawn my attention to neglected dimensions, which I am sure I have not incorporated to anything like their satisfaction. I have been greatly exercised by a number of earlier treatments of these issues, especially by Tartarin (1981), Nove (1983, ch.1), Phelps (1985, ch.1) and Roland (1989, ch.1). It is because these have not left me fully satisfied that I felt I wanted to have a go at it myself. Without them, however, my job would have been far tougher, and the end result far rougher.

References

Baudrillard, Jean, Pour une Economic politique du signe (Paris: Gallimard 1972).Google Scholar
Braybrooke, David, Meeting Needs (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresson, Yoland and Guilhaume, Philippe, Le Participat (Paris: Chotard 1987).Google Scholar
Cohen, G.A., Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978).Google Scholar
Cohen, G.A., ‘The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983) 3-33.Google Scholar
Cook, Stephen, Can a Social Wage Solve Unemployment? (Birmingham: University of Aston Management Center, Working Paper 165 [1979]).Google Scholar
Debreu, Gérard, Theory of Value: An Axiomatic Analysis of Economic Equilibrium (New Haven & London: Yale University Press 1971 [1959]).Google Scholar
Doyall, Len and Gough, Ian, The Theory and Politics of Human Needs (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Dumouchel, Paul, ‘L’Ambivalence de la rareté,’ in Dumouchel, P. & Dupuy, J.P., L’Enfer des choses: René Girard et la logique de l’economic (Paris: Le Seuil 1979).Google Scholar
Elster, Jon, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985).Google Scholar
Elster, Jon, ‘Comment on van der Veen and Van Parijs,’ Theory and Society 15 (1986) 709-22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geras, Norman, ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice,’ Philosophica 33 (1984) 33-86Google Scholar
Girard, René, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (Paris: Le Livre de Poche 1961).Google Scholar
Goblot, Edmond, La Barrière et le Niveau (Paris: P.U.F. 1967 [1925]).Google Scholar
Hagenaars, A.J.M. and Van Praag, B.M.S., ‘A Synthesis of Poverty Line Definition,’ in Review of Income and Wealth 32 (1985) 139-54.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Fred, Social Limits to Growth (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1977).Google Scholar
Illich, Ivan, Gender (London: Marion Boyars 1983).Google Scholar
Johnson, Warren, ‘The Guaranteed Income as an Environmental Measure,’ in Daly, H.E., ed., Toward a Steady-State Economy (San Francisco: Freeman 1973) 175-89.Google Scholar
Kolm, Serge-Christophe, Le Bonheur-Liberté: Bouddhisme profond et modernité (Paris: P.U.F. 1982).Google Scholar
Lange, Oskar, ‘On the Economic Theory of Socialism, Part II,’ Review of Economic Studies 5 (1937) 123-42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir I., State and Revolution, in Selected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart 1969 [1977]).Google Scholar
Levine, Andrew, Arguing for Socialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1984).Google Scholar
Mandel, Ernest, Traité d’Economic Marxiste Vol. 4 (Paris: U.G.E. 1969).Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, Das Kapital Vol.2 (Berlin: Dietz 1962 [1885]).Google Scholar
Nielsen, Kai, Equality and Liberty: In Defence of Radical Egalitarianism (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld 1985).Google Scholar
Nove, Alee, The Economics of Feasible Socialism (London: Allen & Unwin 1983).Google Scholar
Phelps, Edmund S., Political Economy (New York: Norton 1985).Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, “The Feasibility of Universal Grants Under Democratic Capitalism,’ in Theory and Society 15 (1986) 695-708.Google Scholar
Roland, Gérard, L’Économic politique du système soviétique (Paris: L’Harmaltan 1989).Google Scholar
Sachs, Wolfgang, “The Gospel of Global Efficiency: On Worldwatch and Other Reports on the State of the World,’ in IFDA Dossier 68 (1988) 33-9.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine 1972).Google Scholar
Schumacher, Fritz, Small is Beautiful (London: Abacus 1974).Google Scholar
Sherman, Howard, Radical Political Economy (New York: Basic Books 1972).Google Scholar
Stoleru, Lionel, Vaincre la pauvreté dans les pays riches (Paris: Flammarion 1974).Google Scholar
Tartarin, Robert, ‘Gratuité, fin du salariat et calcul économique dans le communisme,’ in Lavigne, Marie, ed., Travail et monnaie en système socialiste (Paris: Economica 1981), 233-55.Google Scholar
Van der Veen, Robert I., ‘From Contribution to Needs: A Normative-Economic Essay on the Transition Towards Full Communism,’ Acta Politica 19 (1984) 463-92.Google Scholar
Van der veen, Robert J. and Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘A Capitalist Road to Communism,’ Theory and Society 15 (1986a) 635-55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der veen, Robert J. and Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘Universal Grants Versus Socialism: Reply to Six Critics,’ Theory and Society 15 (1986b) 723-57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘Marx, l’écologisme et la transition directe du capitalisme au communisme,’ in Chavance, Bernard, ed., Marx en Perspective (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales 1985), 135-55.Google Scholar
Van der veen, Robert J. and Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘A Revolution in Class Theory,’ in Politics and Society 5 (1987a) 453-82.Google Scholar
Van der veen, Robert J. and Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘Basic Income in a Green Economy,’ Address to the Third European Green Congress, Stockholm (Sweden), August 1987b.Google Scholar
Van der veen, Robert J. and Van Parijs, Philippe, On the Ethical Foundations of Basic Income (Université Catholique de Lou vain: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie rapports (MID 31-2 1989).Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class (London: Allen & Unwin 1970 [1989]).Google Scholar