1 Gross Domestic Product… appears to provide the most convenient measure of ecological demand’ (Blueprint for Survival, special issue of the Ecologist, 1972, p. 3). But it has to be kept in mind that the GDP above all reflects an increase in value, and its content is subject to change. Some technologically very advanced products (such as computers) have a minimal environmental impact.

2 Beckerman, Wilfred, Two Cheers for the Affluent Society , St Martin’s Press, New York, 1974, pp. 36 and 203–204.Google Scholar Pavitt, Keith, ‘A European View of the “Environmental Crisis”’, in Axtmann, Robert C., ed., Rescuing Man’s Environment , Princeton University Council on Environmental Studies, Princeton, N. J., 1972, p. 129. 129.Google Scholar

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4 Heilbroner, Robert L., An Inquiry into the Human Prospect , Norton, New York, 1974, pp. 89 ff.Google Scholar

5 Hirsch, Fred, Social Limits to Growth , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar His argument is more complex; but he holds that market capitalism, combined with political democracy (universal participation) and pyramid‐shaped income distribution result in uncontrollable pressures for growth, and that at least one of those has to give. See in particular p. 165.

6 Ophuls, William, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity , Freeman, San Francisco, 1977, p. 145.Google Scholar

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10 The Wall Street Journal, 1 March 1976, p. I.

11 Fred Hirsch, op. cit., e. g., pp. 3–4.

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13 Mishan, E. J., Technology and Growth , Praeger, New York, 1969.Google Scholar Schumacher, E. F., Small is Beautiful , Harper & Row, New York, 1973.Google Scholar

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16 Ibid., p. 26.

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19 Stillman, Edmund O., L’envol de la France , Hachette, Paris, 1973, pp. 51 and 64.Google Scholar

20 Survey conducted 13–15 May 1969: Modernization of the Economy. Source: Institut français de l’opinion publique. Modernization has to be as fast as possible because foreign competition does not wait The economy has to be modernized without delay even if this means temporary dificulties such as the closing down of nonprofitable businesses and localized unemployment.

21 Shonfield writes: ‘I remember the undisguised glee of a member of the staff of the Commissariat du Plan in Paris who was describing the success of a plan to change the structure of an industry in which there was a proliferation of small, backward firms: they were being killed off ‐“un vrai holocauste!” he said.’

As to the idea that industrialization systematically enhances the development of discrepancies and inequalities in French society, see the quasi‐official study Une image de la France en l’an 2000. Scénario de l’inacceptable, La documentation française, Paris, 1971, in particular pp. 43–8.

22 Delouvrier, Paul, et al., 1985. La France face au choc du futur , Armand Colin, Paris, 1972, p. 164.Google Scholar

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27 Ibid., p. 29.

28 Andrew Shonfield, op. cit.

29 Heilbroner, op. cit., p. 83.

30 The technostructure are all those who have power in the corporation and are therefore committed ‐ according to Galbraith ‐ to the corporation’s expansion. See Galbraith, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State , Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, 1971.Google Scholar

31 See, e. g., Knorr, Klaus, Power and Wealth ‐The Political Economy of International Power , Basic Books, New York, 1973, pp. V‐VII (editor’s preface, by Benjamin Cohen, which sums up this point).Google Scholar

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35 Hayek, F. A., The Road to Serfdom , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1944.Google Scholar

36 Shonfield, op. cit., Part 4.

37 Ibid., pp. 119–20.

38 Ibid., p. 112.

39 On the authoritarian aspect of Bismarck’s welfare system, see Dahrendorf, Ralf, Society and Democracy in Germany , Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y., 1967, pp. 58–60.Google Scholar

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41 Shonfield writes that some of the Nazi industrial planning methods foreshadowed methods commonly adopted in postwar Europe, such as a planned investment programme covering a whole industry and an effort to achieve more collaboration in research aimed at accelerating technical development. Shonfield, op. cit., pp. 243–4.

42 Thus, General Hugh Johnson of the NRA (National Recovery Administration). Quoted by Shonfield, op. cit., p. 310.

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44 Ralf Dahrendorf, The New Liberty, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1975. P. 29.

45 Illich, Ivan, Tools for Conviviaity , Harper & Row, New York, 1973, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

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47 See footnote 29.

48 Shonfield, op. cit., pp. 176–98.

49 In Marckolsheim (on the French side of the Rhine), a chemical plant (with danger of lead pollution) was at stake; after very strong and well‐organized local protest, the government revoked the permit for the installation. In Wyhl (on the German side of the Rhine), the permit for a nuclear power plant was finally suspended in court, but only after a history of local protests and administrative and judicial proceedings.

50 Thoreau, Essay on Civil Disobedience.

51 The Economist, 19 March 1977, p. 12.

52 Ibid., 13 November 1976, p. 63.

53 In France, the Electricité de France and the Atomic Energy Commission are not only conducting a publicity campaign for nuclear energy but the latter has also forbidden all its employees and all personnel under contract to publish anything about nuclear energy without its previous clearance. See Samuel, Pierre, Le nucléaire en question , Entente, Paris, 1975, p. 95.Google Scholar

54 See Heilbroner, op. cit., p. 89; and also his review of Fred Hirsch’s Social Limits to Growth, where he writes: ‘The necessary remedy may be beyond our grasp, for it requires nothing less than an abandonment of the primary behavioral premise of capitalism ‐that is, the replacement of the individualistic acquisitive ethos by a social, communally oriented perspective. Can this be achieved without falling into Chinese thought control?’ Heilbroner, Robert L., ‘The False Promise of Growth’, The New York Review of Books, 3 03 1977, p. 10. Konrad Lorenz has similarly argued for a ‘dictatorship of the good’ to save the world from ecological disaster. And many have wondered about the political nature of the Club of Rome’s proposals; there is a strong suspicion of authoritarian politics. See Dahrendorf, op. cit., pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

55 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation , Beacon Press, Boston, 1957.Google Scholar