ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political questions dominant in a no-growth or slow-growth future. The future is an outgrowth of the process of economic decline as well as a product of a declined economy; put another way, the politics of limited growth reflects the politics of limiting growth. Resistance to growth-reducing policies takes on the aura of patriotism. Corporate-conservatism would politicize the distribution system as surely as neo-Marxism would, but with totally different consequences. The development of a two-tiered economic system is especially conducive to the sort of social cleavages most supportive of corporate-conservatism. Traditional-conservatism, more reminiscent of feudalism than of postindustrialism, is a plausible model of the future because, despite the intrusions of modern economies and social patterns, it has remained an attractive way of life. Traditional-conservatism thus presupposes a philosophy that limits the actions of the power holders along with the hopes of the powerless.
