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                                                                                SPECIAL ISSUE: MILLENNIUM -- BEYOND THE YEAR 2000 

THE CENTURY AHEAD, Page 71

Is Progress Obsolete?


A noted historian argues that the dream has become far too
exclusive

BY CHRISTOPHER LASCH


    Progress and democracy, we assume, go hand in hand.
Progress means abundance: more labor-saving machines, more
comforts, more choices. It means a rich life for everyone, not
for the privileged classes alone. Or so we used to believe,
until recent events began to suggest that progress may have
limits after all.

    Compared with the rest of the world, industrial nations
enjoy a lavish standard of living. The affluence generated by
industrialism looks even more impressive when compared with
living standards that prevailed throughout most of the
millennium now drawing to a close. Goods that would once have
been considered luxuries have become staples of everyday
consumption. Medicine has reduced infant mortality and
conquered many of the diseases that formerly struck down people
in their prime. A vast increase in life expectancy dramatizes
the contrast between our world and that of our ancestors in the
distant past.

    To be sure, we pay a price for prog ress. Constant change
gives rise to widespread nervousness and anxiety. In solving
old problems, we often create new ones in their place.
Improvements in life expectancy make possible an aging
population that puts a growing strain on the health-care system.
Private cars give us unprecedented mobility but swell the volume
of traffic to the point of gridlock. In the course of enjoying
the delights of consumption, we generate so much garbage that
we are running out of places to dump it.

    Yet none of this destroys our faith in progress. The
benefits, we think, outweigh the costs. As long as the question
of progress is posed in this way, the question answers itself.
The price may be high, but few would seriously choose not to
pay it. Progress is an offer we have been unable to refuse.

    The real question today is whether progress has built-in
limits. Environmentalists argue that the earth will not support
indefinite economic expansion along the old lines. Reports of
global warming, damage to the ozone layer and long-term
atmospheric shifts caused by deforestation raise further doubts
about unlimited growth. Even though much of this evidence
remains controversial, it has already transformed the debate
about progress. For the first time we find ourselves asking not
whether endless progress is desirable but whether it is even
possible, as we have known it in the past.

    The global distribution of wealth raises the same question
in a more urgent form. If we consider the effect of extending
Western patterns of consumption to the rest of the world, the
potential impact on the earth is truly staggering. Imagine the
populations of India and China equipped with two cars to a
family, air conditioning in private homes and appliances
galore, participating fully in a consumer economy that already
makes heavy demands on the world's environment even when it is
confined to a mere fraction of the world's population. It is
obvious that the wasteful, heedless life now enjoyed by the
West cannot be made available to everyone without stretching
the energy resources of the earth, as well as its adaptive
capacity, beyond the breaking point.

    The idea of progress loses all meaning if progress no
longer implies the democratization of affluence. It was the
prospect of universal abundance that made progress a morally
compelling ideology in the past. According to the old way of
thinking, the productive forces unleashed by industrialism
generated a steadily rising level of demand. Even humble men
and women could now see the possibility of bettering their
condition. The desire for a full life, formerly restricted to
the rich, would spread to the masses. The expansion of desire --
the motor of progress -- would assure the expansion of the
economic machinery necessary to satisfy it. Economic
development would thus continue indefinitely in a
self-generating upward spiral, without any foreseeable end or
limit.

    But affluence for all now appears unlikely, even in the
distant future. The emergence of a global economy, far from
eliminating poverty, has widened the gap between rich and poor
nations. The revolution of rising expectations may not be
self-generating, as we had thought. It may even be reversible.
Famine and plague have returned to large parts of the world.
Poverty is spilling over into the developed nations from the
Third World. Desperate migrants pour into our cities, swelling
the vast army of the homeless, unemployed, illiterate,
drug-ridden, derelict and effectively disfranchised. Their
presence strains existing resources to the limit. Medical and
educational facilities, law-enforcement agencies and the supply
of available jobs -- not to mention the supply of racial and
ethnic goodwill, never abundant to begin with -- all appear
inadequate to the enormous task of assimilating what is
essentially a surplus population.

    The well-being of democracy, a political system that
implies equality as well as liberty, hangs in the balance. A
continually rising standard of living for the rich, it is
clear, means a falling standard of living for everyone else.
Forcible redistribution of income on a massive scale is an
equally unattractive alternative. The best hope of reducing the
gap between rich and poor lies in the gradual emergence of a
new consensus, a common understanding about the material
prerequisites of a good life. Hard questions will have to be
asked. Just how much do we need to live comfortably? How much is
enough?

    Such questions implicitly challenge the notion of progress,
which is usually taken to mean there is no such thing as enough.
The prospect of a world in which people voluntarily agree to set
limits on their acquisitive appetite bears little resemblance
to what is conventionally understood as progress. But then
neither does the prospect of a world in which unparalleled
affluence coexists with frightful depths of misery and squalor.