THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1993

'Growing' the Economy Is a Fertile Idea

Counterpoint

By Robert S. McElvaine

The first time that I heard Bill Clinton say during last year's campaign that he wanted to "grow the economy," I cringed. Another misuse of the language, it seemed -- and this from a Rhodes Scholar. One can grow vegetables or flowers, but people do not grow economies; economies grow.

It was not until shortly after the president's economic message to Congress, when I heard Hillary Rodham Clinton speak of "growing the economy," that I suddenly realized that those who head this administration are not playing loose with our mother tongue. Rather, they are being very precise in their meaning. Indeed, nothing more clearly reveals the difference between the philosophy of the Clinton administration and that of its two immediate predecessors than does the construction "grow the economy."

As an intransitive verb, "grow" means "to increase naturally in size." As a transitive verb, it means "to cause to grow; cultivate; raise." The intransitive "the economy grows" states the belief of those, such as the people who held power under Ronald Reagan, that this is a natural process that requires merely that the government get out of the way. By using "grow" as a transitive verb, on the other hand, President and Mrs. Clinton have identified themselves with those who believe that government can play a part in the solution. The Clintons are right.

Plants, after all, can grow in the intransitive sense of the word, by themselves. But some 10,000 years ago humans began to discover that plants perform considerably better if humans intervene and grow them, in the transitive usage. Cultivation usually produces more bountiful crops than does just letting nature take its course. Hunter-gatherers were at the mercy of plants and animals left to grow in the intransitive sense. We refer to the cultivation of plants as "agriculture"; we might call the corresponding interventions in the economy "econoculture."

It is one of the oddities of the modern world that many of those who have done the most to move us farthest from a "natural" existence -- the people who have overseen the rise of an industrial and highly technological world -- have insisted that there should be no intervention in the economy. We must, these laissez faire advocates have long maintained, leave our economic fortunes to the gods of the marketplace. The opponents of agriculture many millennia ago probably made similar arguments: "Mother Earth will provide; don't interfere. Don't grow food; let food grow."

"Let nature take its course," the supporters of an intransitive "to grow" say today. But that is an absurdity in our modern industrial and technological society. Those who, through their massive intervention, created a wholly unnatural world now insist that there be no further intervention.

We can "grow the economy," much as we can grow vegetables. But it is a considerably more complicated matter.

It is certainly true that not all interventions are beneficial. Growers make mistakes. It is quite possible to kill by over fertilizing, and this applies to economies as well as plants. Interventions sometimes produce short-term benefits at the expense of creating greater long-term problems. The overuse of pesticides, for example, can have an effect on agriculture similar to the effect the overuse of deficits can have on econoculture: Immediate stimulation is eventually offset by the undesirable side-effects. In both cases, the original target -- insects or depressed demand -- eventually builds up a resistance to the grower's medicine.

But such problems should not lead us to the conclusion that the abandonment of all cultivation and the return to complete dependence on nature is preferable to intervention. We've come too far to leave our fate entirely to mystical forces.

Practitioners of agriculture do not go against natural processes; they direct those processes in ways that better suit human ends. Farmers encourage some natural tendencies and discourage others. Those who practice econoculture must do the same. They can no more ignore the nature of the humans who compose the economy they are trying to grow than farmers can ignore the nature of the plants they want to grow.

With the coming of the Clinton administration to Washington, economic breeders and farmers have replaced economic hunter-gatherers. That is cause for at least cautious optimism. The Clinton economic plan involves modest fertilization combined with selective pruning. Its distinction between spending and investment, though ridiculed by Republicans and this newspaper's editorial page, is a sensible one that is used by all successful businesses. But if the plan is to work, it will be necessary not only to use "grow" as a transitive verb, but to employ it in the correct number and person. It cannot be I, you or they grow the economy. If the plan is going to succeed, it must be "We grow the economy."

Mr. McElvaine is a professor of arts and letters at Millsaps College, Jackson, Miss. His latest book, "The Way We Are: Human Nature, Sex, and Traditional Values," will be published by Scirbners this fall.