_ Dr. Hendrik Hagedorn, economist, MIWI Institute. First published in the Krautzone issue Nr. 38 “Remigration” available for subscription HERE.
It is widely acknowledged that the predictions made by the “Club of Rome” have not materialized. Contrary to their forecasts, we have neither exhausted our resource reserves nor do we face significant shortages in any strict sense. In fact, since the 1970s, global market prices for all relevant minerals have continuously declined. Competitive discovery processes have repeatedly yielded new technologies and efficiency gains, reducing resource consumption, enabling the substitution with cheaper materials, or uncovering new resource sources—simultaneously fostering growth and prosperity. Fuel sources, in particular, remain abundant, with vast untapped methane hydrate reserves still theoretically available. Without even invoking the abiotic oil theory, it is apparent that economic growth is unlikely to be thwarted by resource scarcity. A similar case can be made regarding environmental pollution, where advancing technology has provided ever more solutions for avoidance and recycling, indicating that humanity will not necessarily fail in this domain either.
Regardless of whether the Club of Rome’s scenario analyses were “correct,” it is undeniable that their theses have significantly influenced politics and society. The notion of “Limits to Growth” evidently struck a chord, as evidenced by the sale of 30 million copies of their book. It tapped into a deep-seated insecurity among the Western populace regarding whether their materialistic lifestyle was “good and right,” and whether their economic practices were compatible with the natural world. This explains its profound impact.
The critique of growth combined with a legitimate questioning of economic practices was not novel even in the 1970s. Marx had previously engaged with a concept that resonated with the people’s insecurities. Beyond the workers’ issue, which remains complex and unresolved even today, Marx introduced the notion of “alienation,” questioning whether workers, trapped in mass production, could still relate to their products, or whether these could be considered “the work of their hands.” This idea, originally from Friedrich Schiller in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” posited that man, perpetually confined to a small fragment of the whole, becomes himself a fragment, never developing the harmony of his being, and instead of imprinting his nature with humanity, becomes merely a product of his occupation.
By adopting this idea, Marx found a theme for intellectual discourse that provoked thought far more than his theories on declining profit rates, which likely could not withstand honest scrutiny even in his time, and should have been dismissed by the end of the 19th century. Not so with the theme of alienation; it touched on a concept familiar to the spirit of the age and could not be easily dismissed.
Environmental protection and dignified labor—two concepts appealing to the healthy instincts and views of humanity, and fundamentally endorsed by any humanist. Yet, they become dangerous when linked with contemporary slogans like “growth,” “capitalism,” or “climate protection.” Goethe recognized that “general concepts and great arrogance are always on the path to causing terrible misfortune.” As an unwavering advocate of a perspective contrary to empirical-intellectual analysis, he saw abstract concepts themselves as a danger. And rightly so.
Growth, in itself, is neither good nor bad, neither extrinsic nor intrinsic to any system. It happens, but it is merely a byproduct of a free society and is fundamentally irrelevant to the average person. It escapes their notice. Economists, business managers, and laypeople all understand it differently. However, when the ideas behind concepts disappear—when environmental protection becomes merely a critique of growth, human dignity a critique of capitalism, or climate observation a pretext for climate protection—the ideas are distorted, the terms become mere illusions, and the resulting actions presumptuous. Steering these abstractions invariably leads to catastrophe.
Ironically, the true limits to growth emerge precisely from the warnings about those limits. The forecasts themselves have always been wrong. Marx predicted that capitalism would run out of profit opportunities—incorrectly. The Club of Rome made similar errors, and today’s climate advocates will likely face the same fate. Common to all three movements is that their predictions imposed constraints on society, undermining its capacity for great achievements. It is the measures taken to prevent systemic collapse that ultimately trigger it. Additionally, all three trends capitalized on people’s insecurities with a kind of “intellectual comfort program.” As Hegel noted long ago: “the fear of error is already the error itself.”
Today’s symbol of this is the fourth-generation nuclear reactors being built in China, not in Germany or Europe—not because the technical know-how is lacking, but because our society no longer dares to undertake such projects, lacking the strength for such endeavors despite their potential to solve many problems.
Humanity has never lacked doomsayers, nor have the prophets of doom lacked followers. Yet, it is remarkable how readily people embrace predictions they do not understand, with impacts spanning far beyond their usual expectations. This raises two questions: first, whether what was termed “seeing ghosts” in the Middle Ages is not a related phenomenon, merely arising from a different societal context; and second, whether the society born of the Enlightenment will ultimately perish from its own insecurities.