BOOK REVIEWS 299 that objective knowledge is possible to attain, although it is historically conditioned. This historicality of knowledge is no impediment to achieving objectivity when one is able to take simultaneously the vantage point of emerging social movements (e.g., proletarian or African national movements) and the vantage point of society. Both view points are essential to raise all relevant questions for the development of society. As McKelvey asserts (p. 24):

This book, then, seeks to formulate a social scientific method through which social scientists can develop objective knowledge. The method, in short, involves seeking to encounter social movements constituted by subjected social groups. By objective knowledge, I mean an understanding that does not reflect the particular interests rooted in the social position of the sociologist who formulates the understanding. It is knowledge that formulates the common interest of all who are bound together in an economic system in a particular stage in its development. I take the terms objective knowledge and scientific knowledge to be syn- onymous. Scientific knowledge is knowledge that does not reflect particular interests. Scien- tific knowledge is attained through the scientific method of encounter with social movements constituted by subjected social groups.

Indeed, in his chapter on the proletarian point of view, McKelvey specifies that "the task is to construct an analysis of capitalism from the vantage point of society as a whole and from a vantage point based on the objective conditions of the worker" (p. 83). In this sense, McKelvey's reconstruction of the Marxian concept of science is an important contribution to a critical understanding of science. His liberation of Karl Marx's scientific insights from the chains of ideological stigmatization and his "back to the roots" attitude combined with his search for objective knowledge make us sensitive to the fact that science also can become ideological and a reproduction of itself, if nobody tries to go beyond its own cultural horizon in our time.

Department of Politics JOSÉ M. MAGONE University of Vienna Vienna, Austria

Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers, : Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future. Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992, pp. 300, $ 19.95 (cloth).

Twenty years ago the world was stunned by the grim prophecies of which launched the first of a series of reports to the , the group led by a young system scientist, Dennis Meadow. That book triggered an extensive debate over the world's future and its present state, and helped make the environmental crisis a fact of day-to-day life for millions; it was one of the very first alarm bells for society of an impending global disaster. Thus, Limits to Growth contrib- uted to shaping modern environmentalism and social science. Now in 1992, the same team endeavors to assess the current global system in light of their predictions of two decades ago. In 1972 the authors concluded that the limits to energy and material resources were just a few decades away. In 1992, using basically the same computer model with updated parameters, data, and facts of world development, the team realized that despite greater awareness, more input-efficient technologies, and stronger environmen- 300

tal policies, the world has exceeded or is tending to "" sustainable physical limits of most of its vital resources. The three principal conclusions of The Limits to Growth are strengthened in the sequel, Beyond the Limits: 1. Human use of many essential resources and generation of many kinds of pollu- tants have already surpassed rates that are physically sustainable. 2. The resulting decline in per capita food production, energy use, and industrial production is not inevitable. To avoid decline, two changes are necessary: a revision of policies and practices perpetuating growth, and a drastic increase in efficiency. A sustainable society is still technically and economically possible. The transition toward one requires a balance between long-term and short-term goals and an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality of life rather than quantity of output. However, the sequel does not present just a revised edition of these old ideas. The authors present an optimistic motif especially evident in comparison with their first bestseller. Humankind is up to the challenge although changes are too fast; signals are late, ignored, or denied, responses are slow. But a deliberate turnabout, a correction, is possible and could lead to a desirable, sufficient, equitable, and sustainable future. But if such a correction is not made quickly, a collapse is certain to occur within the lifetime of many who are alive today. Such an encouraging message could be considered fulfillment of a duty to demands of readers overfed with terrifying pictures during the last two decades of a world doomed by ecological disasters, but I consider this book more a call for action. The story is built around the computer model derived from the original World model that framed Limits to Growth: Therefore, the composition of the new book looks much like the earlier one with virtually the same parameters, similar curves of thirteen scenarios of world dynamics, parallel trends buttressed with contemporary data. Though the intention had been merely to update the earlier work, when the program was rerun with new knowledge of the past two decades, it was realized that continuation of many growth trends had brought human society to a new position relative to its limits-closer to unsustainability. Scenario 10, modelling the acceptance of a sustainable policy in 1995, even with exponential growth, projects a sustainable society of 7.7 billion people at a comfortable standard of living with high life expectancy and declining until at least the year 2100. A rerun of Scenario 11which assumes adopted in 1975 would have produced a more secure and wealthy world, but not a qualitatively different one. But twenty more years forward would make a notable difference: Scenario 12, assuming sustainability policies adopted in 2015, indicates action too late to avoid heavy turbulence due to chaotic dynamics of interre- lated elements affecting the global socio-. The red line of the book's design may be to urge immediate actions rather than just to present shallow descriptions of the modeling process and resulting images of possible states of the world. A world strategy is loosely defined around the concept of : slowing down growth, efficient and sustainable use of renew- able resources, pollution control, effective distribution of goods and services, providing a relatively high standard of living for all. But the authors find it difficult to circumvent the problems of shattering differences between the rich and poor countries and among social strata; such gaps actually undermine the accuracy of modeling methodology. The question, "if the world as a whole is exceeding its limits, who should do something about it: the wasteful rich or the multiplying poor or the sloppy ex-socialists?" largely remains unanswered, followed by a rather banal statement that "every society should make improvements where it has the most opportunity to do so" (p. 100). This shortcoming is