Marx and Resource Scarcity: An Institutionalist Approach
The current debate on limits to growth, spurred by the publication of the first Club of Rome study,' is now well into its second decade. So far, neither the "neo-Malthusians" nor the "neo-utopians" can claim a clear victory. The purpose of this essay is to consider the debate from an institutional point of view and to examine the contribution of Karl Marx from this perspective. A basic question in this debate, succinctly phrased by Joseph Spengler, is "whether in the long run the limits to growth lie outside man or within him."2 Are resources finite in an absolute sense or does the potential creativity of the human mind mean that resources are virtually unlimited? The most illustrious exponents on the side of resource finity are Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Kenneth Boulding. Both argue that the laws of thermodynamics put an absolute limit on the availability of energy and matter. Georgescu-Roegen's position is that matter is also subject to the entropy law while Boulding states that it is not.3 They argue that even moderate rates of economic growth cannot continue given a finite resource base. On the other side economists such as Julian Simon argue that even exponential population increases can occur indefinitely since, by adding to the total pool of technical knowledge, each new person will more than make up for the added resource depletion he or she causes.4 The perspec-