Well-being and Economic Growth: Critical Perspectives

Abstract:In Democracy in America (1840), Tocqueville treats the passion for well-being as the consequence of equality. He does not forget to warn of the threats to democratic societies that could arise from the simple pursuit of "small and vulgar pleasures", but he concludes that no government can be stable unless it satisfies this democratic passion for the "greatest well-being of all" (II, 4, 8). Tocqueville's vision proved prophetic, and well-being did indeed become a matter of statecraft, with the welfare state emerging in the twentieth century as the indispensable mode of governance to regulate economic growth, protect the citizens and secure their standard of living against the ceaseless crises of capitalism and the vagaries of life. But this consensus on the nature and value of well-being and the economic growth that makes it possible is being increasingly challenged by the unprecedented crisis that we are experiencing, a crisis that simultaneously encompasses representative democracies, financial capitalism and the inequalities it engenders, welfare states and the threats to the environment posed by the race to consume and live well.In these circumstances, the colloquium presented in this introduction revisited the very notion of well-being and took stock of its different conflicting conceptions. Organized by The Tocqueville Society/La Société Tocqueville and The Center for Critical Democracy Studies at The American University of Paris, it was held by videoconference on 21 and 22 October 2020. All the papers in this dossier were presented at the colloquium.