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Schools of Thought on Degrowth
The economy of the future is described by different groups with different words in different languages and they do not always exactly translate into an identical idea. However, the words, like “Degrowth”, “Decroissance”(French) or “Postwachstum”(German) share an idea of contraction of the economy in order to stay within ecological limits while at the same time including the idea that there will be a need for community and political solutions to the problems that we already know will emerge – the unemployment, the energy shortages, the hunger and the homelessness. Since 2008 there have been 4 global “degrowth conferences” each larger than the previous one – in 2008 in Paris, 2010 in Barcelona, 2012 in Venice and, most recently, in September 2014 in Leipzig in Germany. The alternative vision and philosophies for society that has emerged from this process is drawing on a variety of sources. This includes a lively dialogue between the theorists of degrowth in the countries of the global north with activists and strategists against poverty and environmental degradation in the south. For example, ideas like “buen vivir” from the indigenous people of the Andes have become sources of inspiration that are widely accepted.[1]
The Spectrum of Degrowth Perspectives
This does not mean that absolutely all “post growth” or “degrowth” thinkers share the same values and understandings of what needs to be done. There is a spectrum that spans from the political right across to the left and includes feminist economic thinkers. Matthias Schmeltzer, an economic and political historian at the University of Geneva, and one of the organisers of the September 2014 Leipzig Degrowth Conference, describes 5 different schools of thought to be found among Degrowth thinkers in the German speaking world.[2]
One of the trends is politically and socially conservative. The thinkers in this group acknowledges that growth is coming up against natural and social limits and diagnose the problem as citizens and states living beyond their means – driven by consumption, the expenditures of the welfare state, debt, greed and decadence. For these thinkers contraction is unavoidable and will need to be brought about by a change in personal values in the form of more personal responsibility, a strengthening of the patriarchal family to take on more responsibilities, self denial and a reduction in what they see as the burden being carried by the welfare state.
Over and against this is a feminist economic perspective. It has not been explicitly developed as a contribution to the degrowth debate but has become an important source of inspiration. For the feminist thinkers the growth economy exploits and impoverishes the “subsistence activities” of the household, the societies of the global south and nature. This endangers future reproduction – in favour of growing production. The future of humanity and nature presupposes and requires reproduction yet the capital accumulation process, the separation of paid and unpaid work, has come to devalue the reproductive activities mostly carried out by women. The solution to this is a process of de-commercialisation, re-developing commons-based shared activities and resources and the development of non-hierarchical local structures. It is a perspective and strategy that matches well the redevelopment of local cultivation and food sources, the redevelopment of the local economy and particularly non-monetised activities.
Other approaches to Degrowth include social reformist; sufficiency orientated; and anti-capitalist approaches.
What Schmeltzer characterises as the Social Reformist School diagnoses the problems as arising because politics is fixated on growth – driven by economic sectors, institutions and structures that have become dependent on it. Actually it would be better to describe some of the people in this group, not as advocates of “Degrowth” but as proponents of “A-Growth” . This term is intended to mean a style of politics that is indifference to growth, a kind of “Growth Atheism” since GDP per capita is in any case a useless measure of social welfare.
Politicians and actors from civil society must bring about the end of the growth dogma and disentangle economic and institutional structures (like the social security system) from growth in the direction of sustainable kind of liberalism. It will be achieved by ecological taxation, policies to promote sufficiency, civic insurance systems, sustainable consumption and the development of alternative welfare indicators.
The Sufficiency School of Degrowth goes further. For the Sufficiency School it is impossible to adequately decouple resource use from growth. One consequence is that that overconsumption in the global north is taking place at the cost of the global south from which a large proportion of the material resources are extracted. The problem of growth and resource use is driven by the need to have a rising income in order pay interest on loans. It is further attributable to the volume of resources needed to sustain long distance large scale production chains. This Sufficiency School thus not only proposes a sufficiency rather than a consumerist approach in life, it also argues for the need to re-develop more local and small scale forms of self production. People must become “pro-sumers” – i.e. producers of what they themselves consume. To make this possible there is a need for land and financial reform, reform of work time and the extension of subsistence and regional economies.
The sufficiency approach has many similarities to that of the “Transition Movement” – an international network of groups that has come together to try to prepare local communities with information and practical projects for a future of “energy descent”. The movement tends to avoid explicit political engagement and favours communities making their own initiatives like community gardens without waiting for politicians to wake up to the gravity of the crisis.
Finally there is the Degrowth of Capitalist Critics. Their argument is that capitalist growth causes multiple crises and that the “imperial lifestyle” in the global north is at the cost of the global south (for example the climate change impacts). To the critics of capitalism the drivers of growth are to be found in the property and power relationships including the processes of privatisation. The necessary counter politics involves the promotion of the commons, the promotion of the solidarity economy, climate justice and more democracy in economy and state.
Rather than advocating a top-down centralised form of socialist planned economy people with this perspective tend to promote networked bottom-upwards forms of development. They see a place for exemplary projects at the same time as advocating political and trade union strategies for more economic democracy, state regulation and guided investment, reduction in working time, proposals for a basic citizens income on the one hand and maximum income limits on the other.
In summary new styles and understandings of politics and economics are emerging. There is variety and difference but, over a wide spectrum, the differences are best thought of as a healthy diversity. The diversity between the left and the greens can give rise to complementary relationships rather than being sources of deep division and antagonism.
Shaping New Utopias – or making the best in a difficult and highly uncertain time?
For all of that it seems to me that an important issue hangs over this movement – how much are we in the business of designing and shaping the future, using the current crisis to re-envisage new kinds of “concrete Utopias” – and how much are we in the business of preparing to cope with a very difficult and chaotic time where involuntary Degrowth happens anyway, opening up a Pandora’s Box of problems so that we need practical and political tools to get through them. Are we in the business of advocating a voluntary process of degrowth by design – or are we developing the ideas for surviving an involuntary and very challenging process that will happen anyway – and containing quite a few unpleasant surprises?
There is, as yet, too much that is unknown and that we cannot know. The current world economic situation is above all characterised by “strong uncertainty”. A highly complex society can disintegrate in many different ways that are unpredictable. I can, for example, write a book to attempt to describe a host of problems only to witness a type of disintegration not so far described in this book at all – for example brought about by an unstoppable Ebola epidemic which paralyses physical and financial infrastructures and global trade. Or perhaps we will witness chaos brought about by political turmoil and war caused by the miscalculations of politicians in a horrific future that is completely unexpected. That happened before – in 1914. I can advocate an open source society based on knowledge commons only to witness a disintegration of the internet because of a shortage of essential materials – or see the internet make possible a host of marvellous products for countries in the global south and then witness this internet using so much carbon energy that it helps tip humanity into runaway climate change.
Just as hottest months are after mid-summer because warmth accumulates and there is a lag so, perhaps, techno-optimism is at its height when decline has already started. At a time like this it is possible to see the problems ahead but they are still seen in the rosy glow, with a bright confidence that they can be fixed. It is even possible to imagine that these problems are a new opportunity to re-launch the utopian visions whose earlier versions failed.
Yet we should always take into account that our visions of the future are bound to be flawed by the limitations of what we know. All that we know, even if we go to university and think we know a great deal, is very limited indeed and the world in a short time will seem very different from what we expected it to be. The greatest challenge for all political and economic visionaries is that the world will inevitably evolve differently from what we expect because of processes and issues that we could not know about in advance. This is true even though we are obliged to try to anticipate the problems of the future in order, if possible, to forestall them, and, if not, to cope and do as best we can with them.
You can read Seán Conlan’s impressions of the Degrowth conference in Leipzig here.
15 Comments on "Schools of Thought on Degrowth"
Davy on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 1:00 pm
ARTICLE SAID – For all of that it seems to me that an important issue hangs over this movement – how much are we in the business of designing and shaping the future, using the current crisis to re-envisage new kinds of “concrete Utopias” – and how much are we in the business of preparing to cope with a very difficult and chaotic time where involuntary Degrowth happens anyway, opening up a Pandora’s Box of problems so that we need practical and political tools to get through them. Are we in the business of advocating a voluntary process of degrowth by design – or are we developing the ideas for surviving an involuntary and very challenging process that will happen anyway – and containing quite a few unpleasant surprises?
This paragraph describes the dilemma of degrowth. I see little chance of this movement doing any more than intellectual abstract work for voluntary degrowth at the top. The top is pointed in a different direction towards growth in every important segment of the global system. There is nothing wrong with intellectual theories and papers. We need to explore all possibilities. A crisis could hit and the TPTB at the top could choose degrowth for whatever reason. Since the real power to manage significant degrowth is at the top we cannot afford to discount this possibility completely. The research needs to be complete and ready for TPTB to draw on these alternative degrowth strategies in the unlikely event of mass conversion away from growth from the TPTB. More likely these voluntary degrowth strategies should be pointed at the bottom up with local and small regional efforts. Yet, as with the transition movement, this bottom up will never gain the critical mass to make a meaningful difference. It is wholly inadequate consider what awaits us. It can make a difference for those locals that embrace degrowth but little more. This still matters because of the importance of dispersed lifeboats as monasteries of knowledge for a postmodern world. The better direction of this movement is to recognize BAU globalism’s inability to change and plan for the involuntary degrowth. Make models and mitigation strategies directed at all level of the human organizational spectrum. Have the plan B’s packaged and on the shelf ready for use. The science is available and strategies are known. This movement needs to refrain from dire predictions and focus purely on tool kits for voluntary degrowth. There is no time to waste the rollover is near and when degrowth hits it may be fast and furious with little time for normal disaster management.
GregT on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 3:57 pm
I have always suspected that the reason usury was once considered to be a sin, was that people at the time actually understood the impossibility of infinite exponential growth. Our systems now demand growth, and without that continued growth, they will collapse.
We are already past the point of no return. We either collapse voluntarily, and rebuild from the bottom up, or wait until the collapse is forced upon us, and deal with starvation, chaos, and a complete breakdown of society.
In other words, move away from large population centres, learn to grow your own food, and get involved in small local communities. We are not going to collectively collapse these systems voluntarily. In is not in the best interests of those at the top.
penury on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 4:49 pm
Degrowth, isn’t that what used to be called collapse? Really shrinkage in the economy and in the trade around the world is inevitable. A population in overshoot will contract. When all resources of a location are exhausted the population must move on or perish. Where are humans going next? There is no option degrowth will occur alog with a lot of other nasty words that people hate to hear.
JuanP on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 5:30 pm
“Degrowth… an idea of contraction of the economy in order to stay within ecological limits while at the same time including the idea that there will be a need for community and political solutions to the problems that we already know will emerge – the unemployment, the energy shortages, the hunger and the homelessness.
I honestly can’t see how degrowth leads to or aggravates unemployment, hunger, or homelessness. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact, reducing the population is the only possible way to solve those problems.
I completely disagree with this assumption that degrowth necessarily leads to these problems.
paulo1 on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 5:55 pm
Does anyone know what a ‘feminist economic thinker’ is? I reread it and still don’t, although I was curious. I did find the following.
re: “The solution to this is a process of de-commercialisation, re-developing commons-based shared activities and resources and the development of non-hierarchical local structures.”
I think this means (in our house) that my wife and I share the work and benefits. I cooked last night and she washed up. Tonight she will cook and I will wash. Today she is spreading compost and today I thinned trees on our woodlot.
I thought we were just a married couple who shared. I didn’t realize we have evolved so far? (Excuse the sarcasm).
Paulo
GregT on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 6:26 pm
Juan,
“I honestly can’t see how degrowth leads to or aggravates unemployment, hunger, or homelessness.”
All you need to do is read the daily newspapers. Unemployment has skyrocketed globally since 2008, food riots have lead to revolutions and civil wars, and millions have already lost their homes.
Davy on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 6:49 pm
Degrowth will quench the economy just like glass is made. If you cool a liquid quickly it behaves like glass. If and when our global system gets “degrowthed” too quickly that’s all she wrote folks for BAU. Degrowthed is just a nice word for collapse.
Makati1 on Thu, 9th Oct 2014 9:04 pm
Degrees do NOT indicate intelligence…
Studies and reports do NOT indicate answers…
Too many colleges and not enough intelligence…
Degrowth is the ‘politically correct’ term for the end of civilization as we have known it. Whether it takes a few decades or a few years is not important. The only sure thing is that there will be a whole lot of suffering and dying between now and then. I’m working to ease the pain for me and mine as much as possible. What are you doing?
Jerry L on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 4:03 am
I like the comment about usury as being a sin. I would like to see a simple law strongly restricting what commercial banks could lend out in comparison to their deposits. With time banks would not be allowed to lend out more than their deposits. This would slow growth, help stabilise the monetary system and perhaps help reduce the gaps between rich and poor. Capital would not be so powerful as it is today because it could not be leveraged. Furthermore, a cap and trade system with strick limits for say CO2 would block the rebound effects and yet still encourage advances in knowledge & technology that would improve the quality of life of people.
Davy on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 8:54 am
Jerry, it is simple ideas like yours that could have been employed but were not. The sad truth is it is no longer possible to employ degrowth policies without derailing BAU. Degrowth is already happening but through dysfunction. The debt and market bubble is destabilizing. Foreign exchange and emerging economies are suffering economic instabilities. We already know the social fabric is fraying everywhere with the resulting wealth transfer environment from the Ponzi economics the central banks have developed. These Ponzi policies are coupled with overshoot issues both economic and population related. Your idea would have been great along with limits to the investment banks back before Greenspan unleashed the genie of debt growth way back when. That is when all the imbalances exploded. They were always there but that was a green light to psychopathic greed and unhealthy macro policies of excessive debt, unproductive speculation, and wealth transfer. The China Bubble was unleashed around this same time ensuring mass growth and consumption would continue. My view now is we are too far into limits of growth and diminishing returns to have any chance of sane policies from the top. The system has congealed into a new normal BAU. There is no turning back because these changes have been fundamental at the core and global. There is no time and no money to go back to the basics that everyone knows is sane. Just like with food, energy, and consumer consumption there are levels and types that have more value for resilience and sustainability. We chose the worst kinds in relation to sustainability with the markets and technology vector. These vectors are growth driven and growth is finite. We have been going blindly where the markets and technology have taken us in the name of progress and prosperity. We are at the end of the road and the end of growth. Everything that is happening now is part of the rollover to a new paradigm of descent. This will be characterized by dysfunction, irrational abandonment, and system failures. These failures will be random and at all levels. This process will continue until a reboot into a new normal that has some kind of stability at some lower level of economic activity and lower population
rockman on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 9:03 am
Good words, Davy. But I still have to smile when I see the word “degrowth”: So what’s next…do we start calling death “delife”? LOL. It’s as if they don’t get that the system self adjusts for such changes in the dynamics. We might not like the changes but the system doesn’t care. It mutes as conditions vary.
Davy on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 9:38 am
Davies salad shooters Rock. If I were smarter I would not have to try to baffle with word salad. I think this time is different that is the reason for words like degrowth. I am trying to sculpt a new mind’s eye of what may await us. I hope I am wrong because my life is wonderful besides the normal difficulties of growing old. I want to be ridiculed and made fun of when everything manages to turn out OK. We know the good old days are over there is no doubt on that count but maybe something OK will fall into our laps. Maybe I am delusional as a doomer. Maybe my pessimism is getting the best of me. I hope this is the case for my children’s sake.
JuanP on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 10:10 am
Greg, You missed my point, I was talking about a contracting population, not economy. I understand that with today’s growing population economic contraction leads to increased hunger and poverty. But in a world with a contracting population that needn’t be so. That is what real degrowth needs to be about, contracting both the population and the economy in sync. Not that I think it is possible, these guys are unrealistic utopians without exemption. The vast majority of the degrowth humanity will experience will be forced not voluntary.
Davy on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 10:39 am
Juan, at this point contracting population will be anything but stable from the start. I can see no way to reduce population at the point we are at and not see an uncontrolled negative economic and social outcome. Population decline will happen per the laws of nature. If we could have started this process around 1930’s I think it could have had a chance of succeeding. Today we are in an energy and population trap which there is no escape. I am hoping we can mitigate the fall itself. Surely when a crisis gathers steam we can as a global people take steps to alleviate the suffering. This may be optimistic if we see trade wars and hot wars continue and intensify. Maybe some here are right that believe there are conspiracies of the powerful steering events towards population decline. There may be globalists and or a club of global wealthy in a general agreement for allowing a die off to benefit a new world order. I tend to see a natural ecosystem cycle always present in nature running its course. I see no central control over a self-organizing system. This centralized control can commit global suicide but I don’t see the ability to control a destiny.
JuanP on Fri, 10th Oct 2014 11:45 am
Davy, I agree.
Around 56 million people die every year in the world. If all humans stopped breeding today, the population would decrease by about 50 million a year for the next decades due to present mortality, once you discount infant and maternity deaths, which would be no more, from the total. At that rate it would take 20 years to reduce the population by a miserable 1 billion, with more than 6 billion still alive.
This little mental exercise makes very obvious the nature of the overpopulation predicament. Since this voluntary abstinence from breeding will NEVER occur, there is no way to reduce the population fast enough without significantly increased deaths.