Sweta C. Saxena
“Remember to celebrate milestones
as you prepare for the road ahead.”
Nelson Mandela
The year 2030 is a pivotal milestone. By then, not only should we have achieved all 17 Sustainable Development Goals but also 100 years will have passed since John Maynard Keynes wrote the Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.
This famous essay was written while the world was reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. Despite the gloom and doom of those days, Keynes was optimistic about the future. He predicted that in a 100 years’ time people would be eight times better off in economic terms than they were in 1930, given the pace of technical progress and capital accumulation.
With technological progress, he argued, “we may be able to perform all the operations of agriculture, mining, and manufacture with a quarter of the human effort to which we have been accustomed.” However, he acknowledged that rapid technological changes can be painful, and the countries that would suffer are the ones that are not at the forefront of this change.
In fact, he mentioned a phenomenon that was unheard of at the time but would be talked about in times to come – technological unemployment. How prescient!!!
Indeed, we are now discovering ways to economize on the use of labour. However, Keynes thought that this phase would be temporary. He thought that in 100 years we would all be manyfold better off than in 1930 and would have solved major economic problems. By then, all our basic needs would be satisfied and, assuming that there were no major wars and no significant increases in population, we would be faced with the future permanent problem of the human race. That is, “how to use [our] freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure …. to live wisely and agreeably and well.” Keynes spoke of a shift towards “purposiveness …. which means we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment.” This means we will “value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.” How wonderful!
Thus, 95 years later – it is only fair to ask, “Are we any closer to achieving that leisurely life that Keynes thought people would dread”? Or “are we closer to accomplishing the purposiveness that he thought would trump selfishness”?
Our answer is an emphatic NO! We are living in a world still divided by classes and driven by a short-sighted pursuit of materialism, often behaving as though there were no tomorrow! Mindless materialism has brought us to the brink of a climatic disaster.
Just 30 years ago, delegates from 186 countries (117 of which were represented at the level of Heads of State) met in Copenhagen, from March 6 to 12, 1995, for what is known as the first World Summit for Social Development. Together, they adopted the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action that placed people at the centre of development. The signatories made 10 commitments: to eradicate poverty, promote full employment, achieve gender equality, provide universal health care and education for all, and accelerate development in Africa and the least developed countries, among others.
Just five years later in June 2000, leaders realized that their progress in reducing poverty and unemployment was not satisfactory and that countries were far from attaining the goals set on health and education. Once again, they pledged renewed commitment to these goals.
In the meantime, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) came and went. Then came the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which recognize that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability. Countries are struggling to achieve them by the deadline five years hence. However, the story remains the same. We are still not close to achieving any of the Sustainable Development Goals under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
So, while Keynes believed that at this point the preoccupation for humans would not be to fend for a living but to live with a larger purpose – with religion, traditions and values being the driving force. Yet, we remain far from this ideal!
When the world’s leaders reconvene in November 2025 in Doha, Qatar, for what will be known as the Second World Summit for Social Development, we can only hope that the conversation will echo the challenges that Keynes envisioned – that is, having too much leisure time to contemplate the more important purpose in life and what we were born to do!! This means, among other things, to figure out how to escape the four ills of birth, death, old age and disease!
If that happens, it would certainly be a milestone to remember.
The author is the Director of the Gender, Poverty and Social Policy Division, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)