(2 of 2)
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.