Post-Capitalism by Design not Disaster: Creating Common Wealth via Degrowth
Two weekends ago I delivered a keynote presentation at the New Economy Network of Australia. I’ve had several requests for a transcript, so I’ve posted it below.
POST-CAPITALISM BY DESIGN NOT DISASTER
Samuel Alexander
MELBOURNE SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
(Keynote address at the New Economy Network of Australia Conference)
Designing the Descent
Good morning everyone, thank you for that introduction. I’m very happy to be part of the conversation today and am grateful for the invitation.
I’ve been asked to speak today on the topic of post-capitalist political economy. That’s quite an intimidating topic, you might agree, especially since transcending capitalism is proving to be quite difficult. Capitalism certainly isn’t going to lie down like a lamb at the polite request of Left-leaning environmentalists, so what that means is that we need to think very carefully about the question of strategy; the question of where and how to invest our time, energy and resources, if we genuinely seek what this conference is calling a ‘new economy’.
Attempting to save capitalism through ‘green growth’ is increasingly recognised as little more than neoliberal ideology, the function of which is to entrench the status quo while pretending to change. And yet hopes for an imminent proletarian uprising that abolishes capitalism and erects an eco-socialist utopia governed by an enlightened centralised state seems equally misconceived. This has led critical theorist Frederic Jameson to declare that it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, although perhaps that says more about a sterility of contemporary political imagination than it does about our future. In the time available I’m going to share some thoughts on what might come after capitalism and how we might manage and drive this transition by design rather than disaster.
I say by design not disaster, hinting at a certain optimism, however it will become clear that there is, in fact, an underlying pessimism that shapes my perspective – a pessimism which some of you might share. Or, perhaps rather than pessimism, a better term to describe my orientation might be ‘apocaloptimism’, which can be defined as the view that everything is going to hell but that things might still turn out ok. While in truth I am neither apocalyptic nor optimistic, this term does evoke something of the grounded but cautious hope that will inform my talk today.
I’m going to argue that deepening crisis in the current system is probably unavoidable now, for a range of reasons – our time for a smooth transition may have passed – although I certainly won’t use that to justify inaction or despair; quite the opposite. Indeed, the instability created by systemic crisis may be one of the prerequisites for deep societal change – unsettling though that is to admit – and our challenge will be to turn deepening crises, as they emerge, into opportunities to create something other than capitalism; a post-capitalist society that better accords with our shared ideals for social justice, ecological viability, and human flourishing.
If capitalism is coming to an end in coming years or decades as it collides with various ecological and financial limits, we can ask ourselves: how can we proactively design the end of capitalism rather than wait for its collapse? Or even, if necessary, how can we design the collapse of capitalism in ways that makes the best of a bad situation? These are the questions of an apocaloptimist.
Over the last ten years I’ve been advocating for a ‘degrowth’ process of planned economic contraction, about which I’ll have more to say shortly, and today I’m going to use this alternative economic paradigm to frame and analyse the political economy of post-capitalism. I don’t expect anyone to like the terminology of degrowth – I know very well it is an ugly term – and it may never be the banner under which a social or political movement marches. But as a slogan for justice and sustainability, I feel degrowth captures an essential insight, insofar as it directly evokes, more clearly than any other term, the need for planned contraction of the energy and resource demands of overgrown economies, including Australia, and that is an agenda that mainstream environmental and social discourse refuses to acknowledge.
In the next twenty-five minutes or so I’m going offer some thoughts on why I think the degrowth paradigm signifies the most coherent political economy for a post-capitalist society and how such a transition might unfold. In doing so I will highlight the role grassroots social movements and alternative economic experiments may need to play prefiguring degrowth economies and creating the cultural conditions for a politics and macroeconomics of degrowth to emerge.
Prerequisites for a Degrowth Transition
A couple of months ago a paper came out by a Danish political economist called Hubert Buch-Hansen, who outlined a conceptual framework that is useful for thinking about how paradigm shifts in political economy occur. He argued that there are four main prerequisites:
• First, there must be a crisis or series of crises that cannot be resolved within the existing mode of political economy;
• Second, there must be a coherent alternative political project;
• Third, there must be a comprehensive coalition of social forces attempting to produce the alternative paradigm through political struggle and social activism;
• And finally, there must be broad-based cultural consent, even passive consent, for the new paradigm.
Today I’m going to adopt this framework, add my own analytical flesh to its theoretical bones, and use it to discuss the question of a degrowth transition to a post-capitalist society. I hope this provides a useful broad-ranging analysis to get today’s conversation underway, although I’m sure I’ll raise more questions than I answer.
Capitalism is not in Crisis – Capitalism is the Crisis
The first prerequisite, then, for a paradigm shift in the existing mode of political economy is crisis – but not just any crisis. It must be a crisis or series of crises in the system that the system itself cannot resolve. I believe this prerequisite is met.
Growth economics has been called the ideology of the cancer cell, and this provocative metaphor neatly summarises the fatal anomaly in capitalism, namely, that on the one hand, it must keep growing for stability, and, on the other hand, for various ecological and financial reasons, it simply cannot keep growing. Like a chorus of others, I don’t believe capitalism can resolve this fundamental contradiction, which is creating conditions for a new, post-capitalist paradigm to replace it, and I believe that degrowth and ‘steady state’ models of economy are our best macroeconomic alternative.
The clearest way to understand the multidimensional crisis of capitalism is to grasp the so-called ‘limits to growth’ predicament, which I’ll review now, very briefly, and this will also help me frame and define the post-capitalist alternative of degrowth.
Limits to Growth: A Restatement
By all range of indicators, the global economy is now exceeding the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet. Climate change is perhaps the most prominent ecological transgression, but there is also biodiversity loss, resource depletion, pollution, deforestation, and a long list of other deeply unsustainable impacts, of which you will all be very familiar. In the haunting words of James Lovelock, ‘the face of Gaia is vanishing.’
It is important to understand the extent of ecological overshoot, because responding appropriately to the global predicament depends on a clear understanding of our situation. The ecological footprint analysis indicates that humanity would need 1.7 planets if the existing global economy could be sustained over the long term. If the United States or Australian way of life were globalised to the world’s population, humanity would need four or five planets worth of biocapacity, implying a need to reduce our ‘first world’ impacts by 75-80%. This is an imperfect metric for ecological accounting but most critics feel that the metric underestimates our planetary impacts.
Despite the global economy being in this state of ecological overshoot, it is also known that billions of people on the planet are, by any humane standard, under-consuming. If these people are to raise their living standards to some dignified level of material sufficiency, as they have every right to do, it is likely that this will place further burdens on already overburdened ecosystems.
To make matters more challenging still, there are now 7.6 billion people on Earth, increasing by about 200,000 people everyday. Recent projections from the United Nations suggest we are heading for around 9.8 billion by mid-century and more than 11 billion by 2100.
All this calls radically into question the legitimacy of continuous economic expansion and rising material living standards in rich nations like Australia. And yet, despite the fact that humanity is already making grossly unsustainable demands on a finite biosphere, all nations on the planet – including or especially the richest nations – are seeking to grow their economies without apparent limit. It is assumed that a larger economy is always better; that ongoing growth is necessary for progress.
One does not have to be a sophisticated thinker to see that this is a recipe for ecological disaster, although alarmingly this point seems to be lost on almost all politicians and most economists.
Capitalism Cannot Resolve its Ecological Contradictions
In theory, there are two broad ways to respond to the limits to growth predicament within capitalism. The first is to try to create a form of capitalism that deliberately stops growing and actually voluntarily contracts in order operate within sustainable limits. The problem here is that there are various growth imperatives built into the structure of capitalism, which makes the notion of ‘degrowth capitalism’ a contradiction in terms, to be distinguished of course from capitalism in recession, which is unplanned economic contraction.
Therefore, the only other means of resolving the limits to growth predicament within capitalism is to radically decouple economic activity from environmental impact through what is called ‘green growth.’ The hope here is that technological innovation, market mechanisms, and efficiency improvements will reduce energy and resource demands even as the economies continue to grow. Nice in theory, perhaps, but what is happening is that the absolute reductions in energy and resource demands needed for sustainability are not occurring, and as the global economy seeks ongoing growth, absolute decoupling gets harder and harder to achieve. Efficiency without sufficiency is lost.
This brings us to the most egregious flaw in growth economics, which is the apparent failure to understand the exponential function and its ecological implications. Post-growth economist Tim Jackson has shown that if the OECD nations grew their economies by a modest 2% over coming decades and by 2050 a global population of nine billion had achieved similar income per capita, the global economy would be 15 larger than it is today. It is obvious that ecological limits will not permit that scenario to eventuate – even an economy twice as large as today’s economy would surely wreak ecological havoc. The critical point is that the degree of ‘decoupling’ required to make ongoing growth ‘sustainable’ is simply too great.
So capitalism wants or needs what it cannot have: that is, limitless growth on a finite planet. This ecological predicament is the defining contradiction of capitalism in the 21st century, insofar as growth is now causing the problems that growth was supposed to be solving. This suggests that the first prerequisite of a paradigm shift in political economy is well and truly met: capitalism is facing a multi-dimensional crisis that capitalism cannot resolve, and therefore, sooner or later, it will come to an end. The question of our time, as stated in my introductory comments, is how to make the transition beyond capitalism by design rather than disaster.
The crisis of ecological overshoot also provides insight into what any alternative must look like. Broadly speaking, the implications here are clear but radical: if the global economy is to operate within the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet, this requires (among other things) the richest nations to initiate a degrowth process of planned economic contraction, on the path to a ‘steady state’ economy of stable and sustainable biophysical throughput. Obviously, the poorest nations would also need to achieve some ‘steady state’ in time, but first their economic capacities must be developed in some appropriate form to ensure basic needs for all are met. But my focus today is on the wealthy capitalist nations, including Australia.
An Alternative Political Project
The second prerequisite for a paradigm shift in political economy – for a degrowth transition, in particular – is the existence of an alternative political project. Rather than try to defend this alternative political project, I’m just going to state it, or one version of it, in order to show that an alternative post-capitalist political project is beginning to take form.
The following policy agenda is, in my view, both coherent and attractive, but it will soon become clear to everyone how disconnected it is from political realism in Australia today. Of course, I would argue that this is an indictment of mainstream politics, not the theory of degrowth. However, the political and social unpalatability of a deep green sustainability agenda is a point to which I will return, because it has implications on the question of strategy. But as an exercise in political imagination, these are the policies I would advance if I were benevolent dictator of Australia:
• Alternatives to GDP: First, any political transition beyond capitalism requires transcending the GDP fetish and establishing better and more nuanced ways to measure societal progress, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator. Post-growth measures of progress like this open up space for political parties to implement policy and institutional changes – including those which I am about to review – which would genuinely improve social wellbeing and enhance ecological conditions, even if these would not increase and perhaps even decrease GDP.
• Diminishing Resource Caps: If the rich, overgrown economies are serious about moving toward a just and sustainable human inhabitation of Earth, then first, we must acknowledge that we are hugely over-consuming our fair share of global resources, and second, we must institute diminishing resource caps which put strict limits on national resource flows. Fortunately, this would incentivise the efficient use of resources and dis-incentivise waste, and lead to degrowth in ecological impacts.
• Reduced Working Hours (in Formal Economy): One obvious implication of diminishing resource caps is that a lot less resource-intensive producing and consuming would take place in a degrowth economy. This would almost certainly lead to reduced GDP. To avoid the unemployment that typically flows from declining GDP, a degrowth economy would reduce work in the formal economy and share available work amongst the working population. (I will return to the question of informal or household economies in the next section.)
• Rethink Government Spending: Currently, as a general statement, governments shape their policies and spend their money in order to promote economic growth. Under a degrowth paradigm, it follows that the ways government spend their funds would need to be fundamentally reconsidered. For example, fewer airports, roads, and tanks; more bike lanes and public transport. How we spend our money is one way to vote for what exists in the world.
• Renewable Energy Transition: In anticipation of the foreseeable stagnation and eventual decline of fossil fuel supplies, and recognising the grave dangers presented by climate change, a degrowth economy would divest from fossil fuels and invest in a renewable energy transition with the urgency of ‘war time’ mobilisation. This will be much more affordable and technically feasible if energy demand across society is greatly reduced, and that is a key feature of a degrowth society. The energy transition needed cannot just involve ‘greening’ the supply of energy, it must also involve greatly reduced demand. This means anticipating and managing what David Holmgren calls ‘the energy descent future’.
• Banking and Finance: Our systems of banking and finance currently have a growth imperative built into their structures. Any degrowth society would have to create systems that did not require growth for stability. Debt jubilees would probably be required, especially with respect to the poorest nations. Banking and finance aren’t areas of my expertise, so I’ll move on before I get into trouble. But the point is that any post-growth transition is going require deep changes to the most fundamental banking, monetary, and financial institutions of capitalism.
• Population Policies: This is always controversial territory, especially in an age of Trump, but the logic is compelling. As a population grows, more resources are required to provide for basic needs. As Paul Ehrlich once said: ‘whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.’ I won’t pose specific policies, my point is that we need to discuss this topic openly and with all the wisdom and compassion we can muster. This must be part of any coherent politics of sustainability in recognition that we live on a ‘full Earth’.
• Distributive Justice: Last but not least, environmental concerns cannot be isolated from social justice concerns, both nationally and globally. The conventional path to poverty alleviation is via the strategy of GDP growth, on the assumption that a ‘rising tide will lift all boats.’ A degrowth economy would recognise that a rising tide would sink all boats, and thus poverty alleviation would be achieved much more directly. Rather than growing the economic pie, a politics of degrowth would slice the economic pie differently through redistribution of wealth and power. Prominent policies in this space include the notion of a Universal Basic Income, while others argue for a ‘job guarantee’. Either policy would go a long way to directly eliminating poverty, with funding supported by a maximum wage, wealth taxes, and land taxes that sought to reduce inequality.
These policy platforms – all in need of elaboration and discussion – are coherent political, economic, and social goals if a transition to degrowth society were recognised as necessary. Although each of these policies could take various forms, and there is, and should be, debate within the degrowth movement and beyond about various ways to structure a post-capitalist society, my present point is simply that a relatively coherent and developed alternative politico-economic project is emerging to replace the capitalist paradigm. So, the second prerequisite for a paradigm shift is also arguably present, which is to say: alternative structures exist.
Nevertheless, as implied above, I am the first to admit that this policy platform, coherent though it may be, is so unpalatable to the dominant cultural consciousness that it would essentially be political suicide for any political party to try to implement it. In other words, what is arguably politically necessary is both socially and politically unthinkable, which is one reason, no doubt, for our current state of despairing political paralysis.
Because of this situation, whereby the politically necessary is unthinkable, I would argue that the policy platform outlined is unlikely to initiate a degrowth transition, but will only ever be the outcome of social movements – social forces that emerge out of crisis or a series of crises and which actively create the cultural consciousness that see policies for degrowth as both necessary and desirable.
It is through crisis that I see the citizenries in affluent societies being shaken awake from the depoliticising effects of affluence. Encountering crises can play, and might have to play, an essential consciousness-raising role, if it triggers a desire to learn about the structural underpinnings of the crisis situation itself.
While I do not deny the need for, and desirability of, deep structural changes in the nature of our economic and political systems, what I am proposing is that a post-capitalist government may only be the outcome, not the driving force, of a transition to a just and sustainable society, and that our best hope for inducing a degrowth transition by design is to build a post-capitalist economics ‘from below’, within the shell of the current system that is currently in the process of deteriorating. Waiting for governments would be like waiting for Godot – a tragi-comedy in two acts, in which nothing happens, twice.
Support from a Comprehensive Coalition of Social Forces
This leads me to the third prerequisite for a degrowth transition, and that is that it must have support from a comprehensive coalition of social forces. I can be especially brief on this point, important though it is, because this conference itself presents a diverse portfolio of such social forces. It seems to me that many if not most of the sessions throughout the weekend are inspiring examples of post-capitalism in practice, in the sense that they are exploring modes of economy that are transcending the profit-motive for the common good, or simply building new forms of informal or household economies ‘beyond the market’. These can easily be seen to be prefiguring aspects of a degrowth economy, even if this terminology is not used.
I’ll just mention four key features of post-capitalism that I see emerging from the grassroots up, features which I feel must scale up for a degrowth economy to emerge:
• First, non-monetary forms of the sharing economy, whereby communities self-organise to share resources in order to save money and avoid significant amounts of production. Indeed, this is a key feature of why a degrowth economy could still thrive even when contracting: produce much less but share much more. This is part of what efficiency means in a degrowth economy. We can create common wealth through sharing.
• Second, a degrowth economy is likely to require a transformation of the household economy, away from merely being a place of consumption and into a place of production and self-provision. On this topic there is no better place to look than the work of permaculturist, David Holmgren, who is speaking at various times throughout the conference and whose insights here are utterly indispensable. I won’t attempt to anticipate what David will do perfectly well in later sections, other than to note two reasons why a resurgence of household economies is central to a degrowth paradigm shift: First, by producing more within the household, less time is needed to work in the formal economy, leaving more time outside the market for social activism and community engagement. This strategy is about escaping capitalism in order to erode it, that is, building the new economy within the shell of the old. Secondly, if financial crises deepen in coming years, the household economy may be an essential means of meeting basic needs, so the task is to prepare now for what may well prove to be harder economic times ahead. We should aim for sustainability, but we may have to settle for resilience.
• A third key feature a degrowth economy involves significant localisation of the economy, moving toward an economy where local needs are predominantly met with local resources, shortening the chain between production and consumption. There is a session on bioregional economies tomorrow morning, which looks like it also draws on Kate Raworth’s brilliant book, ‘Doughnut Economics.’
• Finally, for want of more time, I’ll just note that any post-capitalist economy is going to require new forms of business enterprises, moving away from profit-maximising corporations which are often owned by absentee shareholders, toward an economy where worker cooperatives, community enterprises, and not-for-profit models are the dominant forms of economic organisation, paying people living wages but reinvesting surpluses back into the community. Again, there are various sessions that touch on these issues, issues that speak to the goal of creating economic and social systems in which more wealth and power are held in common, rather than concentrating it in private hands.
It seems to me that these alternative modes of economy, and many more besides, are bubbling everywhere under the surface, which is a hopeful sign, but one must also admit that often these transgressive experiments remain small and marginalised by the dominant modes of economy. So, in terms of the third prerequisite for a post-capitalist transition, we might have to conclude that the social forces are mobilising but have not yet been able to scale up to positively disrupt the dominant paradigm. Presumably one of the purposes of this conference is to help change this.
Cultural Consent: The Sufficiency Imperative
The final prerequisite for a post-capitalist degrowth transition is broad-based cultural consent. Passive consent may suffice here, without the majority of people actively seeking degrowth.
This really is a critical element in any planned transition in political economy and one that currently does not exist in terms of degrowth. It seems that the majority of people, certainly in Australia, either do not think degrowth (or what it represents) is necessary or, if they do, they do not like what it means in terms of reduced and transformed consumption and production practices.
I think there are two main reasons why culture is not ready to embrace degrowth. The first reason is a deep-seated techno-optimism that shapes cultural thinking about environmental problems. This view assumes that technology and market mechanisms will be able to resolve the crises of capitalism without system change and without even much in terms of lifestyle change. In other words, the zeitgeist of our times seems to be that consumer affluence is consistent with justice and sustainability, because it is assumed that efficiency improvements in modes of production will be able to produce ‘green growth’ without having to rethink consumption practices.
Although this techno-optimistic blind spot is a major obstacle to degrowth, I hold some uneasy confidence that as capitalism continues to collide with ecological limits in coming years and decades, the case for degrowth will only become clearer to more and more people, which could act as a mobilizing force.
However, even if the crises of capitalism deepen and the majority of people come to desire a post-capitalist political economy, it does not follow that a degrowth economy is what they would demand (Buch-Hansen, 2018). This points to a serious cultural obstacle to a degrowth transition: the fact that the dominant conception of the good life under capitalism is based on consumer affluence. It seems to me that there will never be a post-capitalist politics until there is a post-consumerist culture that is prepared to embrace material sufficiency as a desirable way of life. Herein lies the importance of the voluntary simplicity, simple living, or downshifting movements. Although in need of radicalisation, these movements or subcultures are beginning to create the cultural conditions needed for a politics and economics of degrowth to emerge.
It All Depends on the Ideas (and Practices) that Are Lying Around
Let me conclude. When the crises of capitalism deepen – perhaps in the form of a new financial crisis or a Second Great Depression – the task will be to ensure that such destabilised conditions are used to advance progressive humanitarian and ecological ends, rather than exploited to further entrench the austerity politics of neoliberalism. I recognise, of course, that the latter remains a real possibility, as did the arch-capitalist Milton Friedman, who expressed the point in these terms:
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
I’m not often in complete agreement with Milton Friedman, but on this point I am. Our basic function – and I’m talking to we, the people, gathered in this room – our basic function is to keep hopes of a radically different and more humane form of society alive, until what today seems impossible or implausible becomes, if not inevitable, then at least possible and perhaps even probable. And as I look through the schedule for the rest of this conference, ‘the ideas that are lying around’ and indeed ‘the practices that are lying around’ look so strong and convincing that it tempts even this apocaloptimist into becoming a plain, old-fashioned optimist.
Thank you.
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Samuel, my friend, an excellent talk – eloquent as always. Below are some thoughts which others might be interested in as well. No need to respond.
The Policy Proposals
The first thing to say about the policy ideas you outline in the talk is that, if implemented (although see below) I don’t think they would do away with capitalism (perhaps we should all define what we mean by capitalism!). This is not necessarily a criticism. I am just pointing out that what you are advocating sits with the very honourable reformist steady state (i.e. Herman Daly) tradition. This actually accepts the capitalist market economy – indeed, in the case of Daly argues for it explicitly on normative grounds (fair enough) – but insists it is made to work within planetary boundaries i.e. via resource/carbon caps etc. Whether or not this is persuasive (I am not persuaded) is not my point. I am just saying that you were talking about “post-capitalism” but these proposals are not (at least in my book) post-capitalist…
There are also some policy ideas in your list that I also have serious doubts about. Reducing work hours, for example, is to me very debatable – especially if we are talking about radical degrowth. Most people who advocate this are assuming the economy will still be powered by the resource-energy intensive machines which leverage the productivity of human labour massively. But we are talking about radical degrowth! This will mean less energy/resources to power the machines. Ideally, it will mean moving to an economy where much, if not all, of the economy uses low or intermediate technologies. This will gladly create lots of jobs. The trade off is that it will mean low productivity and lower wages. In this context, will people be happy to work far less? Saral Sarkar argues that they emphatically won’t be – people will need (and want) to work at least as hard as they do now (of course, he insists, we will make sure all have work and inequality is minimal). Ted Trainer says working less (at least for money) will be fine but with the big simpler way qualifiers: we will be content to live far more simply and share a lot more etc. I have to admit that in my sceptical moments I doubt that the simpler way he describes will be as idyllic in reality…but I hope he is right and I am wrong.
Transition
My more important thought bubble re your talk is about how degrowth will come about? The scenario you outline seems to suggest (correct me if wrong) something like the following: There will be a crisis/depression within capitalism. This will help to coalesce a mass movement for degrowth – perhaps similar to the mass anti-war movements or climate movements we have seen in recent decades, but presumably much bigger and more influential. Eventually this movement will form political parties (or get hold of an existing one i.e the greens) and attain state power and then implement (something like) the policy proposals you outline. The eco-socialists are hoping for a similar kind of process – only, they would just want the government to implement some more socialistic measures (i.e nationalisations/socialisation of industry, comprehensive state planning etc.). Either way, I don’t find any of this plausible. This is partly due to Trainer’s often raised point – i.e even if we could get state power on a degrowth platform, the officials could not implement it successfully from on high. This is because they could not get the essential local communities to work, on the simpler way relies – this depends on enthusiastic citizens who have embraced the new practices and values etc. But, in addition, I also just really doubt that a powerful/influential mass movements will ever emerge demanding degrowth…at least in the way in which you seem to be imagining it.
How then will degrowth come about? As ted argues – and I agree – it will occur through the collapse/breakdown of the economy. We need to pray this does not happen a) too fast (that will be to guarantee chaos or b) too slow because that will mean a climate bomb and the end of the humans. But nobody will protest for degrowth – at least not many people. Degrowth will just happen – because we will have breached the ecological and financial limits to growth. The question for us – at least to my mind – is what happens next? Does it result in some kind of neo-feudalism/fascism. Or does it result in some kind of simpler way? This will be one of those epoch defining moments in human history. Like the transition from the Bronze age to the Iron age (which involved collapse of the then empires across the entire fertile plan). Which way it goes depends entirely on the localism movements emerging today. They are planting the seeds today (perhaps not with enough radicalism), but in the context of crisis, they will need to expand and grow and build a new cooperative-egalitarian localism. People will come over to our movement because they are desperate. The new local towns/suburbs will need to network and build together (hopefully an internet will still be around so we can do it globally). The (crumbling) capitalist state will be our target towards the end of the process. We will (desperately) need that state to re-orient its (diminishing) resources – and to take over parts of the remaining mainstream economy – to support our new local and regional economies. This will be the biggest and most important task for the state in the degrowth revolution. But, as Ted says, the revolution will mostly be won or lost in the towns and suburbs and in the context of a crumbling capitalist-consumer-global society.
Thanks again for your talk and for your amazing efforts for the cause. Its genuinely an ongoing inspiration.
We have heard many of these things before. When said politically, it’s easy to say. You know the key is in economic modelling. If social changes worked alone, we would have solved it. If ethics worked alone, this would be old news. Is your economic model based on LETS? What exchange model can scale to bring resources to your degrowth econonyvsnf people survive abundAntky through experiences?
You can’t objectify regrowth like a political rah. Sustainability is the key. What do we create that benefits us all that is in synergy with Earth? By default this degrows and empowers, emphssising creative excellence. Why make it political? Hsvecsenn how much energy we waste on fighting politics, with the money type to drive it? Focusing on politics to drive change doesn’t work. It’s the wrong framework. It’s ethics and compromise. It doesn’t have to centre on this, does it? Why not excellence and resolution?
You are sounding like a competitive to CASSE, which says much the same thing with a different title.
What was discussed in relation to currency models to achieve chat you want? Anything? Other than LETS?
Johnny, thanks for your comments – always stimulating, although I feel I’ve been misread. Quick response below:
You think that the political program I outline is capitalist? Surely not. I clearly state it is a deliberately contracting bioregional economy, defined by cooperative enterprises and household economies, with sustainable resource caps, run on renewable energy in an energy descent context, where poverty is directly addressed through social safety nets (UBI or job guarantee), post-growth banking systems, and sufficient redistribution via wealth and land taxes to create a radically egalitarian society. Doesn’t sound capitalist to me. It would be so fundamentally different from what we know today that calling it capitalist would just be a gross misuse of language. I don’t think you’re helping clarify the debate by labelling my position capitalist (which is what you’ve done by saying the economy I outline is not post-capitalist).
If your definition of capitalism is any system that includes some private property and doesn’t abolish the market completely – which is the only interpretation I can make of your critique – then I think your definition is far too broad and encompassing. That would even include Ted Trainer’s vision, and I presume you couldn’t accuse Ted of being capitalist. Private property and ‘the market’ are infinitely malleable concepts. I feel that in the ideal society there will still be private property and market transitions, but in radically different forms (as well as much community ownership), but I don’t think that makes me a capitalist – as I argue in my doctoral thesis, ‘Property beyond Growth’ (especially chapter two) and elsewhere.
You made critical comments of my case for reduced working hours. You seem to have missed that I said “in the formal economy”. I agree that working hours in a degrowth economy will involve increased (but hopefully non-alienated) labour in the informal economy, partly due to a decline in cheap and abundant fossil energy supplies.
Your summary of my theory of transition is roughly accurate although you greatly under-emphasise my point highlighted throughout my talk about how most of the work is going to need to be done at the grassroots level, certainly at first. I argued that a degrowth state will only ever be the outcome, not the driving force of a degrowth society. The driving force will have to be social movements.
But eventually the systems of property, production and distribution need fundamental change, and how is that going to happen without some state action? For example, land law is functioning to concentrate wealth and keep many people from owning a home / or land. How does this feature of society change without state action? Are you telling me the state has nothing to do? If a strong carbon became a policy campaign issue, would you hope it was implemented? I hope you would. Not because it is the answer to our woes but because the state is an actor in the world and we should want the lesser of various policy evils. If you think the state has nothing to do then I think your theory of transition is deeply flawed.
I think the state is going to have to play a role, even if in time I argue that it should decentralise and in many ways ‘wither away’. There will be many triggers and many levers for change, and we need to assess our options and use everything we have available, even if modest reforms (e.g. carbon tax) merely buys the grassroots movements more time to build.
It is not enough to say my theory of change is implausible. I know very well it is implausible (i.e. unlikely) and say as much often. But that is not fatal to the position I am defending. You need to provide a better theory of change, not just say mine is implausible. In any case, even if (as is likely) the degrowth movement does not scale up, all the grassroots activity I mention would still be a useful means of building resilience. So we should aim for sustainability but may have to settle for resilience.
There rest of your comment didn’t seem to be significantly different from the position I detail in the talk, so not sure where you were going with that.
Thanks again for your comment.
Sam, thanks for response. Ill attempt to briefly clarify my position on what are complex issues that I know we both grapple with.
First let me re-iterate that my point re capitalism was NOT a criticism of your proposals. And I certainly was not saying you were a capitalist! I was just attempting to classify your position which I think is broadly aligned with the Herman Daly model (at least in terms of state policy – I know you put more emphasis than him on simpler living etc) – a model I grapple with and I think has a lot of merit.
I think you raise a fair point that my definition of what constitutes ‘anti-capitalism’ is probably too restrictive. On reflection, I am happy to say the agenda you outline is anti-capitalist (even if Herman Daly, who I think does advocate similar policies to what you describe, would reject this label and would normatively defend it as a form of highly regulated ecological market-capitalism). But then I guess I would also want to say there are then ‘many’ anti-capitalisms, and we need to grapple with which will be the most viable/desirable, especially within the context of limits. The debate will go on…
Re Unemployment, I guess I was just raising that one for discussion. It’s actually a potential criticism of the simpler way in general. Will the model of informal economy + reduced work hours be viable in the context of a much more frugal future economy without fossil fuels? I hope so, but I am not always so sure. As I mentioned, Saral thinks not. I guess I was raising it because I see a lot of degrowthers put forward reduced work hours as if its an obvious degrowth policy, but I reckon that one will prove to be a real challenge and probably different societies will come to different answers about what works…
I think you misread me a bit on the issue of transition/degrowth – though I can see why. The issue I was getting at was not about whether the state will be involved in the transition – like you I think it will be. It was more about the order of events and the role of the state in transition. What I was trying to suggest is that I don’t think degrowth – i.e. “planned contraction” – will come about via a deliberate process of state policy in which the state (on the back of social movements etc) implements the policies you outline (or other policies) and, as such, phases down the scale of the economy. Degrowth will happen, in my view, via a combination of collapse/breakdown of the economy and (we hope) the scaling up of localist revolutionary movements. If we are too be successful, the state will have a crucial role. But it will mainly be about facilitating and supporting the emerging new local economies. The state will not, I submit, legislate degrowth through a planned process. I have many reasons for thinking that – most obvious – and I won’t elaborate here.
Maybe we are not saying anything different at all. But I guess the talk gave me the impression that you think degrowth will happen as a matter of state policy. That’s what I was trying to say I disagree with. If we are successful, the state will simple help us facilitate a process which will have begun, and most of which will be carried out, at the grassroots.
1) Georgescu-Roegen points out that the world is a dynamic system subject to the laws of physics- basically entropy which makes Daley’s “Steady State economy a nice system to model but one that belies Nature. This is the major flaw in the UN’s 2015 issue of the SDG’s. Like any construct, it’s not the “costs” but the ongoing maintenance.
2) The world is an open ecosystem and “society” is global:
a) most of the proposals in the “sustainability realm are based on western values and top-down implementation which fits the current sensibility that those with the “gold” or “tech” make the rules. There is a growing sentiment amongst fiscal oligarchs, globally, that this is the path. It’s global neocolonialism.
b) Capitalism requires production to be in the hands of the few and the masses to work within the system. Most proposals in the “degroth” movement still have built their future around “work” in the capitalist model, even considering the adoption of a UBI
c) Capitalism requires a medium of exchange. Therein lies the weak point. If the material assets can be decoupled from the current monetary system then the “luxury” consumption of goods can be shifted in parallel with the way in which society’s reward system changes. Think “lottery”, think the decoupled financial markets even if secured by blockchain and one’s choice of a currency scheme.
Think about the fisherman in his tree house and boat tied up on the edge of the river with his current version of a smart phone. Think about IBM HAL’s offspring putting professionals into the precariat and the future not some 60’s back to the simple life .model. Someone has said that human intelligence may not be a survival characteristic.
Is there any way to share this article, on social media for example? I love especially the part Capitalism is not in Crisis – Capitalism *is* the Crisis” – I’ve never heard or read anyone else say such things anywhere else (only myself), even though the writer of the article says there is a chorus saying that – if there is, I wish to find those people! 🙂 Everyone (whether politicians or ordinary people) still just keeps repeating the same old mantra about growth, jobs etc. ad nauseam.