Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth (Transforming Capitalism) 1786608952, 9781786608956

Citation preview

Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth

Transforming Capitalism Series Editors: Ian Bruff, University of Manchester; Julie Cupples, University of Edinburgh; Gemma Edwards, University of Manchester; Laura Horn, University of Roskilde; Simon Springer, University of Victoria; Jacqui True, Monash University This book series provides an open platform for the publication of path-breaking and interdisciplinary scholarship which seeks to understand and critique capitalism along four key lines: crisis, development, inequality, and resistance. At its core lies the assumption that the world is in various states of transformation, and that these transformations may build upon earlier paths of change and conflict while also potentially producing new forms of crisis, development, inequality, and resistance. Through this approach the series alerts us to how capitalism is always evolving and hints at how we could also transform capitalism itself through our own actions. It is rooted in the vibrant, broad and pluralistic debates spanning a range of approaches which are being practised in a number of fields and disciplines. As such, it will appeal to sociology, geography, cultural studies, international studies, development, social theory, politics, labour and welfare studies, economics, anthropology, law, and more. Titles in the Series The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt, edited by Simon Springer, Marcelo de Souza and Richard J. White Theories of Resistance: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt, edited by Marcelo Lopes de Souza, Richard J. White and Simon Springer The Practice of Freedom: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt, edited by Richard J. White, Simon Springer and Marcelo Lopes de Souza States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order, edited by Cemal Burak Tansel The Limits to Capitalist Nature: Theorizing and Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living, by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen Workers Movements and Strikes in the 21st Century, edited by Jörg Nowak, Madhumita Dutta and Peter Birke A Century of Housing Struggles: From the 1915 Rent Strikes to Contemporary Housing Activisms, edited by Neil Gray Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance in a Latin American Context, by Alexander Dunlap Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth, edited by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson and Stefania Barca

Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth Edited by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson and Stefania Barca

London • New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and London (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2019 by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson and Stefania Barca All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB 978-1-78660-895-6 ISBN: PB 978-1-78660-896-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949079 TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction: The End of Political Economy as We Knew It? From Growth Realism to Nomadic Utopianism Stefania Barca, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, and Alexander Paulsson Part 1: Critical Political Economies 1

2

3

4

5

19

The Limits of Systems: Economics, Management, and the Problematization of Growth during the Golden Age of Capitalism Alexander Paulsson Reorienting Comparative Political Economy: From Economic Growth to Sustainable Alternatives Hubert Buch-Hansen The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology: Rethinking Écologie et liberté (1977) to (Re)Connect Marxism and Degrowth Emanuele Leonardi

7

8

21

39

55

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy Max Koch

69

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’: Maria Mies’s and Marilyn Waring’s Critiques of Growth Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

83

Part 2: Emerging Terrains 6

1

99

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action: Exploring the Russian and Soviet Contexts Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

101

Countering the Order of Progress: Colonialism, Extractivism, and Re-Existence in the Brazilian Amazon Felipe Milanez

121

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South Patrick Bond

137

v

vi

9

Contents

Degrowth in Practice?: Unraveling the Post-Political Effects of Slow City (Cittaslow) Movement in the Anatolian Town of Halfeti- Xalfetî Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

Part 3: Contested Concepts

157

173

10 “An Alternative Worth Fighting For”: Degrowth and the Liberation of Work Stefania Barca

175

11 The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth Alf Hornborg

193

12 Problematising Self-Sufficiency: A Historical Exploration of the “Autarky” Concept Santiago Gorostiza

209

13 Having, Doing, Loving, Being: Sustainable Well-Being for a Post-Growth Society Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

225

14 The State of Degrowth Giacomo D’Alisa Index About the Contributors About the Editors

243

259 269 273

Introduction The End of Political Economy as We Knew It? From Growth Realism to Nomadic Utopianism Stefania Barca, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, and Alexander Paulsson

The political economy of growth, or “the economy”, became hegemonic in the post-war era (Schmelzer 2016). Its ecological limits were already signalled in the 1970s and are now superseded by evidence of a planetary crisis. Meanwhile, social inequalities have dramatically increased on all scales, which has pointed to the social limits of economic growth as a recipe for human progress and a measure of development. Since the 2008 financial meltdown, growth has not only been sluggish but its rates seem to have reached their economic limits (Borowy and Schmelzer 2017; D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015). Facing multiple evidence of the limits of growth, degrowth has emerged as a powerful call for an alternative economic model, that is, “a trajectory where the ‘throughput’ (energy, materials, and waste flows) of an economy decreases while welfare, or well-being, improves” (Kallis 2018, 9). For about forty years, but more loudly so in the past decade, the degrowth slogan has served to highlight how the continuation of “the economy” as currently taught in schools and practised in policy is not only at odds with the preservation of life on this planet but fundamentally in contradiction with human well-being and social justice. And yet, to paraphrase a popular quote from Fredric Jameson, it is still easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of GDP growth. Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” offers a powerful analogy here: like capitalism in the post-Soviet neoliberal era of there-are-no-alternatives, so economic growth is configured as a form of realism, “a pervasive atmosphere . . . acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action” (Fisher 2009, 16). Like capitalist realism, growth realism does not operate by claiming that growth is the perfect system but that it is the only system compatible with human nature and economic law. It naturalises growth into a social device that obeys mechanical laws. Its self-proclaimed virtue consists in protecting us from the illusions of unrealistic alternatives. 1

2

Introduction

Growth realism, however, has a longer history than capitalist realism. Invented in the 1930s, GDP growth became a “pervasive atmosphere” in the post-war era (Paulsson, this volume), and growth-centrism has informed not just political economy as a discipline (Buch-Hansen, this volume) but also historical narratives of modernity ever since (Barca 2011). The “treadmill of production” of the Fordist era, moreover, has acted as a powerful mechanism of growth realism, by which even working-class politics and Marxist political economy have become constrained within the growth horizon (Koch, this volume). As a consequence, even though a number of theoretical and experimental studies in economics that take degrowth seriously are now available (Kallis et al. 2018)—an achievement unthinkable only a decade ago—their potential contribution to economic policy is hindered by them being at odds with the hegemonic politico-economic imaginary. As the latter is entirely geared on growth, the end of growth could never be considered an option. All this has made it urgent to devise an alternative political economy language, one not geared on economic growth. If growth has been one of the most depoliticised words in our vocabulary, 1 the discipline of political economy (and economics), as taught in most university courses and reproduced in public discourse, has greatly contributed to such dangerous depoliticisation and naturalisation of economic growth (Raworth 2017). That is why it becomes essential for the degrowth movement to rethink political economy—intended here as the study of “the economy” as a political arena (rather than vice versa 2)—with a view to criticise and transform its discourse, steering it away from its current growth-centrism and turning it into a useful instrument for the politics of degrowth. In this perspective, the fundamental question that originated this book was, What could a political economy of degrowth look like? Or else, what kind of political economy could support the degrowth movement in its effort to combine environmental sustainability with social justice, decolonisation, and democracy? At the same time, we need to come to terms with the political implications of degrowth itself. In other words, we should not end up with a depoliticised version of it, for example, one centered on downscaling of production and consumption as a technical solution to biophysical limits, independently of social, historical, spatial, and other differences (Chertkovskaya et al. 2017). This requires asking difficult questions, such as how can we steer away from a scenario where ecological sustainability is the prerogative of the privileged, direct democracy is ignorant of environmental issues, and localisation of production is xenophobic (Gorostiza, this volume)? How can we move towards socioecological transformation in an informed way, including different voices and geographies, without reproducing, even unwittingly, the existing hierarchies and injustices? This book offers a collective contribution to such rethinking of political economy in degrowth terms, and calls for a continuous politic-

Introduction

3

isation of the degrowth imaginary itself. Before delving into a description of its contents, we think it is important to flesh out the theoretical and methodological concerns that have informed our work. RETHINKING “THE ECONOMY”: THE POWER OF DIVERSITY The first step to imagining a political economy of degrowth is to reject hegemonic, universal ideas of what “the economy” is and to reckon with the diversity of political economy, acknowledging the variety of possibilities that stem from opening up its semantic field. This approach strongly resembles that of the diverse economies, which emerged in the mid-nineties as a response to the “end of history” that had been announced following the demise of the Soviet Union. With a book called The End of Capitalism as We Knew It (1996), J. K. Gibson-Graham 3 came out with the idea of steering the political economy discourse away from what they called “capitalocentrism”, and towards a variety of already existing alternatives for rethinking “the economy”. In their words, the diverse economies represented “an anti-essentialist approach, theorising the contingency of social outcomes rather than the unfolding of structural logics”, in order “to produce a discourse of economic difference as a contribution to a politics of economic innovation” (Gibson-Graham 2008, 615). Thinking in terms of diverse economies required (and also enabled) scholars to overcome structuralist approaches where “power was assumed to be concentrated in capitalism and to be largely absent from other forms of economy” (ibid.), which contributed to strengthening capitalism itself by way of its representation as the only game in town. This ontological approach to economic critique was not a purely discursive projection but was based on evidence provided by two decades of feminist political economy, starting with early critiques of GDP accounting (Gregoratti and Raphael, this volume). Building on this evidence, the diverse-economy approach pointed to the fact that what is commonly understood as marginal economic practices accounts in fact for more hours worked and more value produced than the formal/capitalist economy. Hence, the end of capitalism as we knew it came out as a powerful metaphor of the performativity of knowledge, and specifically of the political economy discourse. Scholars had a choice: to continue ignoring those activities as irrelevant because they did not fit the dominant political economy discourse, or to change that discourse in a way consistent with and capable of empowering them. Choosing the second option, they wrote, implied “becoming different academic subjects”, abandoning the paranoia of strong (typically structuralist) theories and embracing an ethical practice of “weak theorising”—as proposed by queer theorist Eve Sedgwick (2003). This was made of three moments: ontological refram-

4

Introduction

ing, reading for difference, and thinking creatively, or bringing together different things to create something new. The diverse-economy approach could function as the basic platform from which to build a political economy of degrowth (see also Fournier 2008). Like the diverse-economy model, degrowth brings together various forms of economic activity that are not tied to growth, thus helping to rethink the economy as a pluriverse—a world that is always multiple (Escobar 2011). In the political economy of degrowth, market transactions are not the main component of economic and social organisation; they are not what everything else is organised around. Values like care, cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity, conviviality, autonomy, and direct democracy are often seen as being at the core of a degrowth understanding of good life (Asara, Profumi, and Kallis 2013; Demaria et al. 2013; Leonardi, this volume). Thus, degrowth rejects understandings of human beings as individualist, consumerist, and workerist homo economicus that are characterising the political economy of growth. As a result, the very meaning of a good life and what it comprises is rethought in a much wider and less materialist sense (Helne and Hirvilammi, this volume). The political economy of degrowth resists excessive marketisation and commodification of economy and life, strives for decommodification, and supports nonmarket exchanges, where possible. While it is not against trade, it would organise it in a completely different way, moving away from unsustainable long-distance trade while focusing on ecological sustainability and the “no exploitation” principles instead (Kallis 2018). In contrast to both corporations and other for-profit enterprises, cooperatives, commons, and various forms of community organising are the key organisational forms (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015). They may exist both within and outside trade relationships, though exchange is present in all of them. There is a sympathy towards “open relocalisation” (Liegey et al. 2016), which puts an emphasis on more localised production while having spaces for cooperative economic exchanges and relationships across geographical borders. Like the diverse-economies approach, degrowth scholarship so far has been oriented by a process of “weak theorising”, collectively practised by a large community of scholars and activists in convergence with a number of heterodox and critical theories that have been of inspiration for politicising “the economy”. Introducing a collection of seventeen essays on degrowth in different world contexts, Susan Paulson (2017) notes how the degrowth literature has not manifested any intent to become an orthodox scientific paradigm with a unified political programme but rather configures as a “multi-sited, multilingual and multiform network supporting the opportunity for lifeways motivated by desires other than growth” (ibid., 426). This heterodoxy is what allows degrowth to be an inclusive conversation, based on the shared assumption that the growth imperative must be overcome in the twenty-first century, enriched by a

Introduction

5

diversity of approaches that strive to learn from each other rather than constituting a unified knowledge system. On the other hand—as Paulson (2017) again notes—the multitude of activities and life choices celebrated by degrowth do risk remaining impotent towards powerful economic and social drivers such as money, advertisement, and debt, or the global trade system. They might even remain invisible and unaccounted for, we could add, in the face of a political economy discourse that considers these alternative economies irrelevant or unrealistic. One level on which this problem can be more effectively addressed, Paulson suggests, is that of the production of knowledge. In order for a multitude of tiny efforts to “add-up towards a great transition”, she argues, there is a need for change in the way power and knowledge are articulated with each other rather than “the global empowerment of one scientific culture” (ibid., 436). Therefore, degrowth must aim towards cognitive justice, that is, a convergence among different forms of knowledge and science, and practise activist research that shares and supports counter-hegemonic and alternative modes of living (see also Chertkovskaya, this volume; Milanez, this volume). This view of degrowth is resonant with the one offered by what has become known as “the degrowth vocabulary”, probably the most popular publication in this area over the last decade (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015). Translated into ten languages, it aggregates more than fifty entries from a multiplicity of perspectives and disciplinary approaches. Other contributions offer similar views of degrowth as resulting from a variety of converging sources (Demaria et al. 2013; Muraca and Schmelzer 2017; Petridis, Muraca, and Kallis 2015). Multiplicity is a key resource and strength of degrowth, and this multiplicity is making degrowth capable of including a variety of converging ideas and movements, while offering them a space for meaningful interchange (Barca 2018; Chertkovskaya et al. 2017). This is degrowth at its best, as demonstrated by a series of very successful biennial conferences held in Europe in the past decade, and by a number of collaborative transdisciplinary publications that have come out in the same period. Degrowth initiatives—under this or different labels—have been also taken in different world contexts, animated by a spirit of cognitive justice and decolonial conversation. A multiple vision of what degrowth is all about is indeed emerging from these efforts (Demaria and Kothari 2017), and this constitutes the most important novelty with respect to original formulations of the degrowth concept. THE POLITICISED ECONOMY OF DEGROWTH While the diversity of degrowth is its key strength, the problem posed by Paulson (2017)—how multiplicity can lead towards a paradigm shift—is key. Unless this issue is grappled with, the political economy of de-

6

Introduction

growth might remain helpless against soul-crushing “growth realism”. In fact, the heterogeneity of the degrowth conversation generates a methodological conundrum insofar as it seems to be at odds with the need for a consistent corpus of policy-oriented knowledge. In other words, we must reckon with the fact that political economy (as we know it) is the scientific domain that receives most attention from politicians, the media, and the general public when it comes to societal understanding of and debates over “the economy”. If degrowth aspires to change the hegemonic economic policies and structures that orient our lives towards growth, it needs to speak its own language of political economy—one that can be acknowledged as relevant to policymaking and sound credible and realistic while pointing towards the necessary paradigm shift. In Gramscian terms, we could understand this as a problem of counterhegemony (Goodman and Salleh 2013). In order to address this problem, the degrowth movement should devote much greater attention to political subjectivity and strategy. A relevant contribution to this reflection is given by Hubert BuchHansen (2018), who notes how little discussion there is in the degrowth literature regarding the question of “why degrowth remains politically marginalised or of what it would take for the desired ‘paradigm shift’ to materialize” (ibid., 157). He points towards critical political economy as an existing body of research that could be of much help in analysing degrowth’s current shortcomings and in identifying a viable political strategy. End-of-history theories notwithstanding, critical political economy assumes that no political project remains hegemonic forever, and that when a convergence of multiple crises appears, the opportunity is set for a new political project to present itself as the right alternative (see also Bond, this volume). The key to its success, however, is that “a constellation of social forces with sufficient power and resources to implement it then needs to find it appealing and struggle for it” (Buch-Hansen 2018, 160). This is probably the weakest spot in the degrowth political project, insofar as degrowth is perceived to be ideationally driven, that is, not based on the material interests of any particular social constituency. In his latest book on degrowth, Giorgos Kallis (2018) acknowledges that— when it comes to the social forces capable of pushing for the adoption of a degrowth agenda—there is a lack of clear political strategy (see also Barca 2017). The awareness of this issue has given rise to calls for formulating concrete policies that would prefigure socioecological transformation. Abolishing GDP, introducing a carbon tax as well as basic and maximum income, and reducing working hours are some examples of degrowthoriented policy intervention (Kallis and Research & Degrowth 2015, Kallis 2018). While these proposals are far from being implemented, an attempt to draw the attention of institutions—at least of the European Union—to the problems with growth has been taking place. In September

Introduction

7

2018, a conference addressing the problematics of growth took place at the European Parliament in Brussels. Synchronised with this event, a call for the European Union, its member states and institutions, to stop growth-dependency was launched. Signed by 238 scholar-activists and later complemented by more than 90.000 signatures, it was framed around four key proposals: (1) constitute a special commission on postgrowth futures in the EU parliament; (2) incorporate alternative indicators into the macroeconomic framework of the EU and its member states; (3) turn the stability and growth pact (SGP) into a stability and well-being pact; and (4) establish a ministry for economic transition in each member state (Guardian 2018). While a political economy of degrowth can be characterised as grassroots and bottom up, changes of policies require action at state level (Cosme, Santos, and O’Neill 2017). This brings attention to the importance of conceptualising degrowth in relation to the state. The principle of municipalism (Bookchin 1991) speaks to direct democracy and could be a way to imagine how to reorganise the state in a degrowth society. However, it might be hard for this principle of governing to break through the currently existing institutions. An alternative discussion revolves around a Gramsci-inspired concept of the “integral state”, which sees counterhegemonic practices as being in a dialectic relationship with institutions and shaping their structures (D’Alisa, this volume; see also Kallis 2018). By moving towards such an “integral state”, it will be possible to avoid situations where the demands of the degrowth movement are simply neglected by state institutions or by representative democracies, which, in many cases, tend to be dominated by corporate interests. However, it is important that the dialectical relationship between social movements and state institutions does not come with compromises that would discredit the degrowth idea itself. This, we argue, can only be accomplished through political struggle, that is, it requires a strong coalition of social actors with a common strategy, working towards shaping new common senses and exercising leverage power on public decisionmakers at all levels. Policy proposals are an important first step in initiating this process; however, to realise their potential as elements of a degrowth counterhegemony, they need to be constantly negotiated with a wide variety of social actors who must necessarily concur to their (re)definition. This is why the political economy of degrowth requires that we politicise not just growth but degrowth itself by continuously questioning the power asymmetries embedded, produced, or naturalised in the degrowth imaginaries and practices. In other words, degrowth should be pursued with a particular political subjectivity, what we call nomadic utopianism.

8

Introduction

FROM CONCRETE UTOPIA TO NOMADIC UTOPIANISM From the discussion in the previous section, it becomes evident that the components of a political economy of degrowth, as well as the actions that would help them come into being, cannot be seen as good by definition: their definition is political. Even the most degrowth-compatible practices and the most carefully designed institutions, when enacted, may have unintended consequences, like when their realisation drifts away from the degrowth ideal (see, for example, Islar and Gülbandılar, this volume). Keeping the balance between not transforming the debate into an orthodoxy and not shying away from articulations of the political economy that would be desirable in a degrowth society is a key point of tension within the degrowth debate. This brings us directly into a discussion of what has been considered the main political concept attached to degrowth: that of utopia. Utopia has received attention from scholars in the seemingly most “pragmatic” disciplines—geography, politics, organisation studies, and, indeed, economics (Harvey 2000; Hodgson [1999] 2001; Parker 2002; Bell 2017). Utopia, Geoffrey Hodgson suggests (2001, 5), should not be referred to as something unfeasible and unattainable, but instead as “a description of a desired world to come”, that “fosters a likelihood of change, and points to an unfulfilled future that differs from the present”. It contains both a description and a process, and this is where a connection to degrowth is clear: it is a vision (description) that is also performative (process), as we have articulated earlier in this introduction. While degrowth has previously been referred to as utopia (Fotopoulos 2010; Kallis and March 2015), we also have to acknowledge that utopia can turn into a dystopia, which makes utopianism an important concept for the continuous politicisation—or critical self-reflection—of degrowth. “Concrete utopia” is one way in which degrowth has been spoken about (Latouche 2009). The concept was introduced by Ernst Bloch ([1959] 1986) to give hope to Marx and Engels’s critique of political economy and has since been positioned as a prefigurative critique of political economy (Dinerstein 2016). In relation to degrowth, “concrete” refers to it being “doable”, with concrete steps to bring it closer to actualisation (Kallis 2018, 126). Indeed, the contours of the political economy of degrowth refer to already existing values and practices, while interventions through policymaking can help make them more viable. In this sense, degrowth has also been connected to nowtopia (Carlsson 2008, 2015), which is about living the utopia and “developing alternatives outside present institutions, now” (Demaria et al. 2013, 202). All this resonates with the late Erik Olin Wright’s (2010) notion of “real utopias”, which points to the many examples of social spaces, organisations, and communities that embody, or live according to, democratic and egalitarian principles. Participatory budgeting, Wikipedia and other forms of nonprofit

Introduction

9

collaborative production processes, worker-owned cooperatives and democratically run organisations, and unconditional basic income are but a few examples of real-world utopias that could guide social transformation at a larger scale (Wright 2011). While these conceptualisations of utopia powerfully highlight that radical and subversive action can take place in the present, they have some limitations. Nowtopias, for example, might focus too much on the local, omitting the global socioecological problems that degrowth addresses, or create closures by insisting on unpaid economic activities, thus limiting how work (Barca, this volume) or money (Hornborg, this volume) could function in a degrowth-inspired political economy. Concreteness, moreover, is static, and it risks endorsing a vision with an end, as if it is already known what exactly degrowth should look like. This is potentially dangerous and can lead to an orthodoxy that the degrowth movement has so far managed to avoid. Asara, Profumi, and Kallis (2013) are drawing on the thought of Cornelius Castoriadis when warning against using pseudoconcrete utopias and calling for focusing on autonomy and direct democracy instead. Kallis and March (2015) see “concrete utopia” as an idyllic end-state and avoidance of conflict, which is, however, necessary for transformation to come. For them, a process-based understanding of utopia can help rethink the politics of degrowth. Drawing on the work of David Harvey (2000), they prefer to talk about utopianism, which imagines a future of process and conflict, not a blissful end state; it subverts the hegemonic desires on which capitalism rests; it brings the past into the present and into the production of the future; and it aspires to the production of egalitarian socionatures. (Kallis and March, 2015, 366)

Utopianism, like utopia, contains a description and a process, but puts a particular emphasis on the latter. It is thus a key concept for capturing the open-endedness of degrowth and its political economy. What the concept of utopianism does not capture, however, is the plurality of the vision itself. By emphasising process and action, it does not necessarily suggest dialogue between different worldviews or self-questioning. This, we argue, is an important extra ingredient that helps to articulate the political subjectivity that should accompany degrowth. In other words, we believe the political subjectivity of degrowth must embrace a nomadic approach. David Bell’s notion of nomadic utopianism (Bell 2013) both emphasises the process and helps to keep it open to different worldviews and (self-)critiques. Nomadic utopianism proceeds through nonhierarchical organisation, maximises difference-in-itself, and creates new forms of living as it proceeds, creating nomadic utopias. Utopianism is thus seen as ontologically prior to utopia. Via the political subjectivity of nomadic utopianism, degrowth could seek inspiration from a pluriverse of world-

10

Introduction

views (Escobar 2015; Kothari et al. 2019), without positioning Western/ Northern knowledge as superior, while also staying open to surprises (Chertkovskaya, Johnsen, and Stoborod 2017) and, crucially, sensitive about any possible, even if unwitting, (re)productions of injustice. To summarise, degrowth allows us to envision an alternative political economy and to get a sense of its concrete features, which already exist but can be fostered much more by intervening into the political sphere and state institutions. Adopting nomadic utopianism as the political subjectivity of degrowth helps to maintain its open-endedness and diversity, while acting for change, for example, by being alert to the challenges, closures, exclusions, and unintended consequences that may come from pursuing degrowth in practice. Nomadic utopianism, we argue, encourages informed and reflective action through which degrowth may become counterhegemonic, dismantling “growth realism” and building an alternative political economy. It is now time to offer a short description of how the chapters in this volume contribute towards formulating a nomadic utopian vision of degrowth. THE BOOK’S STRUCTURE AND CONTENT Part 1, “Critical Political Economies”, shows the diversity of political economy itself, while also highlighting how degrowth emerged at the intersection of political economy, ecological economics, and political ecology. The chapters in this section offer a detailed discussion of some of the different theoretical perspectives that have informed degrowth, such as feminism and ecological Marxism, while also delving into these critical fields with retrospective critique, thereby contributing to developing new vistas of inquiry. The section starts by questioning how economic growth emerged as a problem of scientific inquiry in economics after World War II, and how management science contributed to conceptualising and popularising the critique of growth during the following decades. In chapter 1, Alexander Paulsson explores this dual question by zooming in on two key figures in this development, namely, the economist Simon Kuznets and the management scholar Jay W. Forrester. By discussing the epistemic cultures that they were part of, it becomes clear that various forms of systems theory inspired both. By historicising the emergence of growth as a scientific and socioecological problem, Paulsson’s chapter shows how some key insights for a political economy of degrowth can be found within different strands of systems theory and economic thinking itself. Chapter 2, by Hubert Buch-Hansen, follows upon this thread by focusing on the discipline of comparative political economy (CPE), a body of research that sheds light on the institutional configurations characterising various national forms of capitalism. Criticising CPE for turning a

Introduction

11

blind eye to the negative environmental consequences of economic growth, Buch-Hansen outlines the contours of a profoundly reoriented, post-growth CPE. This reorientation would require that “strong sustainability” replaces growth as a key parameter of success and that alternative (sustainable) ways of organising the socio-economic sphere become key objects of study. The following two chapters turn to Marxist political economy and its connections to ecological critiques of capitalism. In chapter 3, Emanuele Leonardi contextualises and elaborates the topicality of André Gorz for both degrowth and eco-Marxism, arguing that Gorz offered a double interpretation of the 1970s crisis: as a crisis of reproduction (based on the progressive transformation of environmental protection into a pure cost for companies) on the one hand and as a crisis of overproduction (based on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) on the other. The chapter ends with a discussion of the original way in which Gorz linked Ivan Illich’s emphasis on conviviality to the post-1968 focus on self-management in the French Left. The connection between Marxist political economy and ecological critique is also the subject of chapter 4, by Max Koch. Questioning the view that degrowth and Marxist political economy are irreconcilable, Koch argues that Marx provides key insights for elaborating a cogent critique of the growth imperative and its societal hegemony. By highlighting the ideological power that capitalist societies invest into ideas of “labour” and “achievement”, “growth” and “profit”, as well as “social position as a result of own achievements”, the chapter argues that Marx’s work, and especially Das Kapital, allows us to criticise the stepladder of mystifications, due to which these categories and relations are reified as natural ways of running “the economy”. Chapter 5, by Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael, concludes part 1 by deconstructing current degrowth genealogies, usually traced back to a handful of key theorists and intellectuals who are predominantly male, white, and European. Going back to the early work by scholar-activists such as Maria Mies and Marilyn Waring, the chapter argues that the original contribution given by ecofeminist thought to degrowth still needs to be fully acknowledged in degrowth intellectual histories and debates. In fact, they argue, the elision of this contribution may have resulted in a mischaracterisation or simplification of what feminist analyses bring to the critique of growth. The chapters in the first section outline how a variety of approaches to critical political economy could inform and be integrated into a political economy of degrowth. Yet these chapters also show how degrowth could contribute to making critical political economies more aware of the social and ecological implications of economic growth. Whereas degrowth offers opportunities to dialectically negate growth-oriented reasoning, concepts and theories originating from different strands of critical political

12

Introduction

economy offer opportunities for a dialogical reasoning with degrowth. In such a combination of dialectical and dialogical ways of reasoning, a political economy of degrowth could start to take shape. This elaboration, however, must also incorporate the perspectives that emerge from research on different spaces and temporalities, which the chapters in part 2 do by exploring degrowth in what is here termed emerging terrains. Since the 2000s, new geographical terrains for discussing degrowth have emerged. The biennial international degrowth conferences, which started in 2008, have been important in visualising as well as settling degrowth debates in new spaces, with Germany, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and now the United Kingdom and Austria being some of the new contexts appearing on the map, with their own emphases and takes on degrowth. Degrowth can be seen as a “European”, or “Global North” concept, though it speaks to other contexts, too, and has been discussed, for example, in relation to India (Gerber and Raina 2018) and China (Xue, Arler, and Naess 2012). However, there is an acknowledgement that it is not and should not be a universal concept, and that degrowthers should focus on building alliances with related ways of acting, thinking, and being. Concepts such as buen vivir, ubuntu, and ecological swaraj (Kothari, Demaria, and Acosta 2014; Ramose 2015) have been identified as alternative ways of expressing similar visions. Taking part in and also promoting this transnational conversation, part 2, “Emerging Terrains”, further zooms in on research set in five so-called emerging economies, namely, Russia, Brazil, China, South Africa, and Turkey, viewing them as also important emerging terrains for a political economy of degrowth. Overall, the section offers new elements for discussing how mutual informing can take place between degrowth and compatible concepts within and across different geographical contexts. In chapter 6, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya brings the discussion on degrowth into the Russian context by tracing the continuing focus on economic growth and its cultural framings throughout the Soviet times and into modern Russia. She then draws on selected theorists from the Russian and Soviet intellectual tradition (such as Kropotkin, Tolstoy, and Chayanov), highlighting a strong connection between their thinking and degrowth and an emphasis on ethics, as well as suggesting how it can inform the degrowth discussion today. In chapter 7, Felipe Milanez describes growth policies in Brazil, focusing on the Amazon region. He stresses that the attempts to boost growth in today’s Brazil are rooted in colonisation and extractivism and are resisted by indigenous peoples and peasant communities, who critique progress and development and strive to live in line with very different worldviews. The author thus argues that degrowth is present in the Brazilian context—even if not named this way—through these already existing modes of living and the struggles of anti-extractivist movements.

Introduction

13

While the first two chapters in this section have given country or regional overviews on growth and degrowth, the remaining contributions focus on a particular concept or phenomenon. In chapter 8, Patrick Bond, informed by Marxist theory, argues that devaluation of overaccumulated capital is key to understanding capitalism and its crises. This complements the problematisation of capital accumulation in the degrowth debates and can help derive strategies for socioecological transformation that would be relevant for the Global South. He illuminates the concept by zooming in on the uneven development in China and South Africa. In chapter 9, Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar focus on how a particular phenomenon—the slow city—unfolds in the Turkish context. Exploring the Anatolian town of Halfeti, they demonstrate problematic consequences and depoliticising effects of the slow city practice. Presented as a win-win, it was used to draw attention away from the controversial Birecik dam and the massive displacements surrounding its construction, altered the social relationships among locals, and created new social and environmental inequalities. In short, by bringing five new terrains into the degrowth discussion, part 2 shows that problems with growth and a search for sustainable and just alternatives are important for these, too, whether they are articulated via degrowth or other vocabularies. It shows that familiar concepts can be enriched in and by new terrains as well as emphasises complexities, suggesting that universally endorsing some idea (out of space and context), no matter how degrowth-like it may sound, is a rocky road. This latter point is key for part 3 of this book, devoted to “Contested Concepts”. It shows how thinking of degrowth in terms of political economy requires a critical examination of the key concepts that inform the growth paradigm, as well as of those that are key to a degrowth conversation, especially as they are connected to political praxis. This part offers an in-depth discussion of five concepts whose rethinking is essential to a political economy of degrowth: labour, money, self-sufficiency, well-being, and the state. Chapter 10, by Stefania Barca, addresses labour as both a key aspect of the growth society (especially via the treadmill of production mechanism) and as a foundational concern for degrowth thought. She shows how the latter has mostly theorised work as something to be liberated from. Noting how waged work remains today the most common form of labour in all economies, the author lays out three dimensions in which a “liberation of work” perspective (i.e., liberation of labour from treadmill metabolism) could also be elaborated. The two forms of liberation, she argues, should be seen as complementary elements of a possible degrowth/labour platform for common action. Another key institution of the growth society, money, is analysed by Alf Hornborg in chapter 11, which points to the need for degrowth to

14

Introduction

transcend the ideological constraints of money fetishism and to overcome the apparently unstoppable inertia of global flows of money that preside to changes in planetary carbon cycles and to increasing global inequalities. He proposes that general-purpose money be redesigned by dividing the market into two separate spheres of exchange, one devoted to local community and biophysical metabolism, the other to global flows of information and high-tech products requiring supralocal specialisation. This proposal directly calls into question another concept that is often connected to degrowth: self-sufficiency. Chapter 12, by Santiago Gorostiza, offers an examination of how self-sufficiency has been mobilised by far-right ideologies and argues that the use of the self-sufficiency notion in environmentalist literature to this day remains ambivalent. It then becomes crucial to understand how the political economy of degrowth can assume the idea of sufficiency, intended as limiting the material throughput of social metabolism, in a liberatory rather than oppressive form. This is a truly fundamental question for degrowth advocates—a question that leads to defining what a good life, or well-being, could look like in an ecologically sustainable and socially just society. This issue is addressed in chapter 13, by Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi. Drawing on the theories of needs and well-being, and particularly on the Finnish sociologist Erik Allardt, they conceptualise well-being as consisting of having, doing, loving, and being, that is, having both material and immaterial dimensions. While material dimensions need to be satisfied in ecologically sustainable and socially just ways, they argue, it is the addition of the doing, loving, and being dimensions that helps to see the beauties of a degrowth life. Chapter 14, by Giacomo D’Alisa, concludes part 3 with a reflection on the state and its necessary inclusion within a political economy of degrowth. He reviews degrowth scholarship in English and French languages, finding that, while the former hints at changes that can be enforced only at the state level, but without ever addressing the state explicitly, the latter does include a detailed analysis of the state, taking a very critical stance towards it. Working with a Gramscian notion of the “integral state”, the chapter suggests, would help think through how states could be transformed in degrowth societies. To conclude: we hope the chapters collected in this book will help the reader to see the political economy of degrowth as a corpus of knowledge capable of building upon heterogeneity and radical critique but also bold and assertive enough to formulate political demands that a large convergence of social subjects can struggle for. What these subjects are and which specific articulations of the degrowth perspective can bring them together is a context-dependent problem that requires diverse answers. It is thus crucial for the political economy of degrowth to remain an openended and self-reflective process—a nomadic utopianism—rather than a coherent and universalising form of knowledge. In fact, nomadic uto-

Introduction

15

pianism is what can grant degrowth the ability of representing diverse social subjects in a pluriverse world—united by their antihegemonic struggle against the tyranny of a singular, growth-oriented political economy. By embodying radically alternative economic practices in different contexts, the political economy of degrowth could be an expression of a multitude of social subjects that are oppressed by growth-centrism and have a vested interest in replacing it with degrowth. In this sense, it would constitute a truly alternative body of knowledge capable of not only rethinking, but transforming “the economy” from below. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter, as well as this book, originate from collaborative work the authors conducted via the degrowth theme at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies of Lund University (2015–2016), and from intellectual exchanges within the degrowth collective at Lund and beyond. We are very grateful to the Pufendorf IAS for making this possible. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to Laura Horn for her insightful comments on this chapter, as well as competent and rigorous feedback, on the entire manuscript, and to the Rowman & Littlefield team for their precious help throughout. REFERENCES Asara, V., E. Profumi, and G. Kallis. 2013. “Degrowth, Democracy and Autonomy”. Environmental Values 22: 217–39. Barca, S. 2011. “Energy, Property and the Industrial Revolution Narrative”. Ecological Economics 70: 1309–15. Barca, S. 2017. “The Labor(s) of Degrowth”. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, September 11, 2017. doi: 10.1080/10455752.2017.1373300. Barca, S. 2018. Reviews of In Defense of Degrowth: Opinions and Minifestos; Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Local Environment 23 (3): 378–81. Bell, D. 2013. “Towards a Nomadic Utopianism: Gilles Deleuze and a Good Place That Is No Place”. PhD thesis, Nottingham University. Bell, D. 2017. Rethinking Utopia: Place, Power, Affect. London: Routledge. Bloch, E. (1959) 1986. The Principle of Hope. Translated by N. Plaice, S. Plaice, and P. Knight. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bookchin, M. 1991. “Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview”. Green Perspectives 24. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/gp/perspectives24.html. Borowy, I., and M. Schmelzer. 2017. History of the Future of Economic Growth. Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth. London: Routledge. Buch-Hansen, H. 2018. “The Prerequisites for a Degrowth Paradigm Shift: Insights from Critical Political Economy”. Ecological Economics 146: 157–63. Carlsson, C. 2008. Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today. London: AK Press. Carlsson, C. 2015. “Nowtopians”. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, 182–84. London: Routledge.

16

Introduction

Chertkovskaya, E., C. G. Johnsen, and K. Stoborod. 2017. “Hosting Emergence with Hospitality”. ephemera 17 (4): 733–49. Chertkovskaya, E., A. Paulsson, G. Kallis, S. Barca, and G. D’Alisa. 2017. “The Vocabulary of Degrowth: A Roundtable Debate”. ephemera 17 (1): 189–208. Cosme, I., R. Santos, and D. W. O’Neill. 2017. “Assessing the Degrowth Discourse: A Review and Analysis of Academic Degrowth Policy Proposals”. Journal of Cleaner Production 149: 321–34. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, eds. 2015. Degrowth. A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Demaria, F., and A. Kothari. 2017. “The Post-Development Dictionary Agenda: Paths to the Pluriverse”. Third World Quarterly. doi: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1350821. Demaria, F., F. Schneider, F. Sekulova, and J. Martinez-Alier. 2013. “What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement”. Environmental Values 22: 191–215. Dinerstein, A. C. 2016. “Denaturalising Society: Concrete Utopia and the Prefigurative Critique of Political Economy”. In Social Sciences for an Other Politics: Women Theorizing without Parachutes, 49–62. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Escobar, A. 2011. “Sustainability: Design for the Pluriverse”. Development 54 (2): 137–40. Escobar, A. 2015. “Degrowth, Postdevelopment, and Transitions: A Preliminary Conversation”. Sustainability Science 10 (3): 451–62. “The EU Needs a Stability and Well-Being Pact, Not More Growth”. 2018. Guardian, September 16, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/16/the-euneeds-a-stability-and-wellbeing-pact-not-more-growth. Fisher, M. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Ropley, UK: Zero Books. Fotopoulos, T. 2010. “The De-Growth Utopia: The Incompatibility of De-Growth within an Internationalised Market Economy”. In Eco-Socialism as Politics: Rebuilding the Basis of Modern Civilisation, edited by Q. Huan, 103–21. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Fournier, V. 2008. “Escaping from the Economy: The Politics of Degrowth”. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 28 (11/12): 528–45. Gerber, J., and R. S. Raina. 2018. Post-Growth Thinking in India: Towards Sustainable Egalitarian Alternative. Telangana, India: Orient Blackswan. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2008. “Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for ‘Other Worlds’”. Progress in Human Geography 32 (5): 613–32. Goodman, J., and A. Salleh. 2013. “The ‘Green Economy’: Class Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony”. Globalizations 10 (3): 411–24. Harvey, D. 2000. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hodgson, G. M. (1999) 2001. Economics and Utopia: Why the Learning Economy Is Not the End of History. London: Routledge. Kallis, G. 2018. Degrowth. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Agenda Publishing. Kallis, G., V. Kostakis, S. Lange, B. Muraca, S. Paulson, and M. Schmelzer. 2018. “Research on Degrowth”. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43: 4.1–4.26. Kallis, G., and H. March. 2015. “Imaginaries of Hope: The Utopianism of Degrowth”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105 (2): 360–68. Kallis, G., and Research & Degrowth. 2015. “Yes, We Can Prosper without Growth: 10 Policy Proposals for the New Left”. Common Dreams, January 28, 2015. https:// www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/28/yes-we-can-prosper-without-growth10-policy-proposals-new-left. Kothari, A., F. Demaria, and A. Acosta. 2014. “Buen Vivir, Degrowth and Ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to Sustainable Development and the Green Economy”. Development 57 (3-4): 362–75. Kothari, A., A. Saleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria, and A. Acosta, eds. 2019. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New York: Columbia University Press.

Introduction

17

Latouche, S. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Liegey, V., S. Madelaine, C. Ondet, and A. Veillot. 2016. “Neither Protectionism nor Neoliberalism but ‘Open Relocalization’, the Basis for a New International”. projetdecroissance.net, January 16, 2016. http://www.projet-decroissance.net/?p=2125. Muraca, B., and M. Schmelzer. 2017. “Sustainable Degrowth: Historical Roots of the Search for Alternatives to Growth in Three Regions”. In History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth, edited by I. Borowy and M. Schmelzer, 174–96. London: Routledge. Parker, M., ed. 2002. Utopia and Organization. Oxford: Blackwell. Paulson, S. 2017. “Degrowth: Culture, Power and Change”. Journal of Political Ecology 24: 425–666. Petridis, P., B. Muraca, and G. Kallis. 2015. “Degrowth: Between a Scientific Concept and a Slogan for a Social Movement”. In Handbook of Ecological Economics, edited by Joan Martínez-Alier and Roldan Muradian, 176–200. Cheltenham and Northampton, UK: Edward Elgar. Ramose, M. B. 2015. “Ubuntu”. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, 212–14. London: Routledge. Raworth, K. 2017. Doughnut Economics. Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. London: Penguin/Random House. Schmelzer, M. 2016. The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sedgwick, E. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Swyngedouw, E. 2014. “Depoliticization (‘the Political’)”. In Degrowth. A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, 90–94. London: Routledge. Weingast, B. R., and Wittman, B. E. 2006. “The Reach of Political Economy”. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, E. O. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso. Wright, E. O. 2011. “Real Utopias”. Contexts 10 (2): 36–42. Xue, J., F. Arler, and P. Naess. 2012. “Is the Degrowth Debate Relevant to China?” Environment Development and Sustainability 14 (1): 85–109.

NOTES 1. This observation, as reported by Giorgos Kallis in a roundtable debate at the Undisciplined Environments conference (Stockholm 2016), comes from the late UK geographer Doreen Massey. See Chertkovskaya et al. 2017; see also Swyngedouw 2014. 2. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Weingast and Wittman 2006, 3), for example, defines it as “the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions”. 3. A pen name for Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham.

Part 1

Critical Political Economies

ONE The Limits of Systems Economics, Management, and the Problematization of Growth during the Golden Age of Capitalism Alexander Paulsson

The history of economic growth as a policy has been studied extensively in several works during the late 2010s. Schmelzer’s (2016) work The Hegemony of Growth focuses on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and how growth emerged there as a dominating paradigm for economic and social policy since 1947. Another brilliant work is Cook’s (2017) The Pricing of Progress, which traces what he terms the investmentality that shaped economic policy as well as business practice during the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. Coming from environmental history, Worster’s (2016) Shrinking the Earth takes a look at the culture of abundance in the United States and how this culture has, on the one hand, substantiated a reliance on the Global South for the provisioning of goods and labour and, on the other hand, jettisoned consumers’ insights about the ecological limits that potentially could put a constraint on their desires. Although limited to the OECD and the United States, these works are important for they enhance the understanding of growth not only as an economic and social policy but also as a nationwide culture, propelling consumption and unequal exchange between the Global North and the Global South. Building upon these works, the purpose of this chapter is to trace the emergence of the concept of growth and the criticism thereof within US academia after World War II until the early 1970s. Rather than investigating growth as an economic and social policy or as a nationwide 21

22

Alexander Paulsson

culture, this chapter unpacks the concept of growth by tracing its origin to the emergence of new fields of inquiry within economics and management science, both of which incorporated ideas of systems theory and systems thinking, albeit at varying degrees over the years. Two key figures in this development were economist Simon Kuznets and management scholar Jay W. Forrester. Kuznets is generally considered to be the originator of the GDP measurement and the father of the theory of “modern economic growth”. Forrester is one of the major contributors to the popularization of the critique of growth, being, as he was, the founder and the leader of the group of scholars who wrote The Limits to Growth. These two persons and their works will here serve as organizing devices for discussing, in abstract terms, the emergence of economic growth as a concept and the criticism thereof. What they have in common, and this is one of the main points of this chapter, is that various shades of systems theory inspired both Kuznets and Forrester, partly as an empirically informed novel way of theorizing, partly a new way of thinking that emerged in the aftermath of World War II. Paying attention to the impact of systems theory upon the emerging notion of economic growth allows us to understand ongoing discussions about measurements of wealth and well-being against their historical background. It also allows us to identify the limits of systems theory as a unifying theory to address the epistemic lock-ins and the fetishization of growth (Latouche 2009; Hamilton 2004). Whilst alternative measurements of wealth and socioecological well-being have been introduced over the years, including biophysical throughput, gross domestic happiness, human development index, and others, few of these question the unit of analysis, that is, the nation-state. Systems theory remains of great relevance for understanding growth’s harmful ecological and social impacts precisely because it goes beyond the nation-state as the unit of analysis, focusing instead on the “the world” and/or “the city”. Yet, systems theory has its own limitations—I argue—insofar as it does not address the cultural preconditions and impacts of growth, or what Hamilton (2004) has called the “the growth fetish”. This chapter thus adds to previous knowledge in degrowth by historicizing the development of the problematization of growth. The chapter has the following structure. First, the conceptualization of growth is discussed with specific regard to its systemic connotations in the works of Kuznets. Second, the origins of the popularization of the critique of growth is traced through the works of Forrester to its roots both in management science and the US military. By comparing the systemic properties of growth as conceptualized by Kuznets and Forrester, this chapter concludes by discussing the epistemic cultures of economics and management science that problematized growth at the beginning and at the end of the period called the golden years of capitalism.

The Limits of Systems

23

THE TRIUMPH OF GROWTH IN ECONOMICS Research focusing on the enigma of economic growth was established during the postwar period through a series of events and key figures, primarily in the United States. One of them was Simon Kuznets, a Russian-born economist and statistician who worked at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) (Fogel et al. 2013, xii). He is perhaps best known for being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971 for his work on “modern economic growth” theory. This theory was built upon the observation that growth is caused by improvements in productivity, which is determined by technological innovations and advancements in work processes. The more substantial contribution to explaining the enigma of economic growth is the term modern here. For modern economic growth theory differs in crucial ways from “pre-modern economic growth” theory. With modern economic growth, the economy became dependent on minerals and fossil fuels. Coal, petroleum, and natural gas emerged as reliable sources of energy since they could be regulated and made into steady flows, suitable for powering the new technology and machinery, which also had implications on the labour process. From this, eventually a new work regime emerged: Fordism. Under pre-modern economic growth, the primary energy sources were wind and water. As energy came in much smaller quantities and was more unstable in its flows, work was comparatively also much less productive (Easterlin 1998). However, before Kuznets could develop his theory of modern economic growth, he first had to define growth and launch it as a scientific problem in economics. In 1948, Kuznets organized a conference called Problems in the Study of Economic Growth that both summarized the knowledge thus far and outlined a future research agenda. The following year, NBER published an anthology with contributions from the conference, bearing the same name (Kuznets 1949c). Besides writing the foreword and the opening chapter, “Suggestions for an Inquiry into the Economic Growth of Nations” (Kuznets 1949d), Kuznets also penned a chapter titled “Notes on the Quantitative Approach to Economic Growth” (Kuznets 1949b). 1 In the foreword to this anthology, Kuznets (1949a) wrote that the study of economic growth was only in its infancy and that more research—and not just research in economics, which will be discussed at greater length in a moment—would be needed in the future. As early as after the Great Depression, Kuznets had been invited by the US government to develop and refine the measurements used for the national accounts. The precursor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Gross National Product (GNP), attracted the attention of politicians in the US government early on. Although Kuznets (1937) refined the national accounts of the US economy after the Great Depression (Fogel et al. 2013, 53–54), it was with the onset of World War II that economic mobilization

24

Alexander Paulsson

became a policy objective in the United States, and for this purpose the GNP was devised to measure how the economy developed and in what ways it could be transformed from a civil to a military economy and then possibly back again (Fogel et al. 2013, 54–59; Kuznets 1941). ECONOMIC GROWTH AS GDP GDP was eventually developed in order for the US government to gain an overview of the economy and its development over time with a particular attention on “increase”. Key concepts in economic policy, such as economic “stability” and “decline”, Kuznets argued, should preferably be substituted by a concept measuring “increase”. Kuznets believed that a simple index, which combined different forms of standardized data into a single aggregated number, a number that would rise when times are good, and decrease when times are bad, would be informative, easy to track and possible to use for developing macroeconomic policies (Kuznets 1941). 2 The research on economic growth took off during the postwar period. Kuznets had already explained the basics of the GDP measurement in a report presented to the US Congress in 1934, when he was investigating measures to prevent another “Great Depression” from unfolding: A cross-section at any stage in the circulation of economic goods— production, distribution or consumption—with results that, if no statistical difficulties are met, should be identical. (Quoted in Fioramonti 2013, 7)

Central to the research on the development of the GDP measurement was the knowledge production that took place within the framework of the NBER. NBER was established in 1920 as a stand-alone think tank by Kuznets’s PhD supervisor, Wesley Clair Mitchell. It aimed at bridging the gap between research and policy, although its policy was that all reports should be free of policy recommendations. “The NBER as an institution had no opinion on social issues”, Fogel et al. (2013, 39) wrote. Nevertheless, NBER succeeded very well in bridging research and policy, partly by developing measurements for national income accounting (Geoffrey 1950; Fogel et al., 2013, 39). Whilst private foundations had funded the NBER early on, government funding was later added as a way to enhance the possibilities to investigate how economic growth could be measured. Funding was also channelled to support research on how economic growth could be enabled and sustained through macroeconomic policies and institutional adjustments (Fogel et al. 2013, 46; see, e.g., Goldsmith 1959). What this amounted to was nothing less than a twofold development, where Kuznets and the NBER were, on the one hand, launching a new field of

The Limits of Systems

25

inquiry on the nature and problems of economic growth and, on the other hand, developing knowledge for the application in economic and social policy. Partly due to this series of events and partly due to Kuznets’s ingenious mind, GDP eventually became the standardized measure of the annual “increase” in economic activity and also of the general conceptions of growth, prosperity, and quality of life. Although GDP is a relatively recent invention, the implications of economic growth had, as stated earlier, been known for a long time, according to Kuznets. GROWTH AND THE LIMITS OF ECONOMICS Whilst low inflation and a balanced budget were considered important policy objectives in the 1950s US economy, these objectives were becoming increasingly important because they were linked to economic growth. Behind the emergence of these policy objectives was the research by Kuznets and other researchers at the NBER that had suggested economic growth to be the policy objectives’ policy objective. Without this overarching objective, the other objectives could not be realized. This is also why Kuznets emphasized early on the importance of having a measure of growth that was quantitative, simple, and preferably accepted. Without a broad consensus on the meaning of the concept of growth, the research could not be brought forward and advance, he stated. 3 Kuznets, moreover, described why economic growth was important to study and which unit should be taken for measuring growth. After having reviewed the pros and cons of different units, for example, social groups, classes, and natural resources, he concluded that the sovereign nation-state was the most appropriate unit. He preferred this unit over others because it was the nation-state that decided economic policy, after all. Besides, it was only the sovereign nation-state that had the capacity to collect more or less comparable data, which would enable both comparative studies and studies over longer time periods (Kuznets 1949d). Surprisingly, Kuznets did not believe that economists were necessarily the most suitable for understanding the puzzle of economic growth. Because of the variety of determining factors that impacted the trajectory of economic growth of highly diverse nations and the capricious pattern that could be observed, the determining factors of economic growth seemed to lie outside of the economic discipline as it was presently understood, Kuznets suggested. Indeed, one is tempted to say that economic growth is not essentially an economic problem, which only means that it appears to be determined by factors and forces that are not ordinarily examined by an institutional group called economists in the pursuit of their professional activity as presently followed. But one can go even further and say that there does not seem to be any single group of scholars or a combi-

26

Alexander Paulsson nation of them that are concerned with the factors determining the growth of large socioeconomic aggregates. (Kuznets 1949d, 16)

Whilst history is singled out as the discipline that comes closest, to Kuznets’s mind, it was not a discipline where large-scale comparative studies were common. Although this has changed over the years with economic history, macrohistory, and more recently with the development of global history, the practice within the history discipline appeared for Kuznets to be primarily concerned with “the detailed and specific succession of major events for a given nation or area, rather than with comparisons designed to distinguish variant from the invariant elements and to measure the relative weight of the determining factors” (Kuznets 1949d, 16). What is striking here is that Kuznets in the late 1940s had already outlined the development that would later emerge as a dominating approach to explaining differences in economic growth, namely, the role of institutions. Kuznets unleashed and contributed to this field of research by studying historical data and thus revealed trends over time by making comparisons between and within different countries. In order to get funding for this research, he partly had to leave NBER in favour of the Social Science Research Council and of funding from the Rockefeller Foundation (Fogel et al. 2013, 67). Kuznets’s doctoral student Robert Fogel, together with economic historian Douglass C. North, were both awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993 for their scientific achievements on the connections between institutions and economic growth. THE BEGINNING OF THE CRITIQUE The critique against economic growth as measured by GDP actually began with its founding father. Kuznets was not unreservedly positive of his own definition of economic growth. Later in life, he even came to criticize the GDP measure. His ambivalence originated from the fact that at the outset he had already pondered on the questions whether there could be good or bad growth—or was all growth simply good? For Kuznets, economic growth was the growth of economic activity as measured by the value of transactions in the economy, plain and simple, but from this followed that certain activities potentially could be more harmful than productive in fulfilling human desires. Using the analogy to organism, can we differentiate between healthy or normal growth and unhealthy or abnormal? To illustrate: if in a given state total activity expands but an increasing proportion is diverted to war or conspicuous waste, can we classify the expansion as economic growth? And if we do, should we not qualify it to distinguish it from expansion that definitely contributes to the satisfaction of human wants? (Kuznets 1949b, 129)

The Limits of Systems

27

As a way to respond to these questions, Herman Daly (1999) has suggested that economic growth after World War II has in fact been uneconomic. The environmental costs associated with economic growth have superseded its benefits. Kuznets did acknowledge “the normative elements in the definition of economic growth” as it was defined by him, that is, as a measure of a change in overall activity output (Kuznets 1949b, 129). But even if economic growth would be associated with some patterns of structural change or ecological costs, the question would remain, Kuznets explained, as to whether “greater growth in one sector than in others is normal, or should be classified as abnormal” (Kuznets 1949b, 129). Whilst such normative assessments were common, he noted, they were often based upon some concept of growth that was much more than a mere change in activity or based on a presumption that growth involves strong elements of feedback loops in the structure of the economy (Kuznets 1949b, 130). Given these reservations, it is not without a doubt that Kuznets proposed GDP as a measure of economic growth. Drawing upon the notion of growth without considering its variegated impact on different sectors of the economy or amongst different social groups could be detrimental, he confessed. Yet Kuznets made a comparison between growth in the economy and in an organism to make his case for a unitary measure that did not favour certain sectors of the economy over others. Just as the growth of an organism would be measured by the increase of its weight, height, number of cells, and so forth, so the growth of a nation would be gauged by additions to its wealth and population. (Kuznets 1949b, 139)

Despite some glimpses of ambivalence, growth was good wherever it occurred, Kuznets suggested. Such a universalizing conceptualization meant that Kuznets easily could propose that the sovereign nation-state and the GDP measure would work as the basis for the diachronic as well as the synchronic study of the underlying factors of economic growth. However aware of the shortcomings of the GDP measure he was, he still developed a strong defence of the idea that economic growth preferably should be studied by comparing the profound and fine-tuned but, nevertheless, simplistic national accounts. Over the years that followed, a new field of research that sought to come to grips with the enigma of growth virtually exploded. When looking back at his own research and at the development of economics at large, Kuznets observed that the repercussions of the 1930s Depression had led to much research on economic stability, whilst the US entry to World War II had led to research on economic mobilization and warfare. These changes meant that neither international transfers and immigration nor the Depression and its aftermath had “been adequately studied or fully understood”, according to Kuznets (1972, 65). After

28

Alexander Paulsson

World War II, emphasis shifted again. When Kuznets (1972, 66) reflected over the developments in economics, his scientific discipline, he argued that focus after World War II shifted to “the problems of economic growth in this country and in other parts of the world, occasioned by inter-system competition and the special situation of the newly independent (and other) less developed countries.” Economic growth as a scientific problem emerged in tandem with it becoming an overarching policy objective and a weapon in the arms race during the Cold War. GROWTH PROBLEMATIZED IN MANAGEMENT SCIENCE In light of the emergence of growth as a scientific problem in economics, it is worth noting that the scientific community at large changed dramatically during the two and a half decades following World War II, called the golden years of capitalism. As has been discussed earlier, in science and technology studies, the development of systems analysis in the 1940s and ’50s was of great importance for the social and natural sciences as it sought to merge the increasingly specialized academic disciplines. Through systems analysis, attempts were made to integrate academic disciplines and couple the human and natural spheres into one interconnected system, assembled by plenty of subsystems (Hammond 2003). Under the leadership of the Macy Foundation, the Macy Conferences were established in New York during the 1940s and 1950s for the purpose of connecting systems analysis to cybernetics and to develop systems analysis so as to integrate different academic disciplines and thereby create a common language to address the world’s great challenges (Leeds-Hurwitz 1994). Whilst attempts were made at integrating different disciplines and subsystems into one cybernetically interconnected and manageable system, what the nature of the overarching system was like was often left out of the equation (e.g., Edwards 2000). During the late 1960s, capitalism was identified as being the nature of the overarching system by the baby boom generation in the United States, the members of which partly turned their back on Western capitalism. Reflecting upon this, Fredric Jameson has suggested that the United States lost its innocence during the Vietnam War, because at no time earlier had its self-image been so severely damaged. Other events certainly added to this. The Pentagon Papers, which unearthed the secret power game behind the war, leaked in 1971, the same year Kuznets was awarded the Nobel Prize. The international currency system Bretton Woods collapsed in 1971. The same year the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (Nasdaq) was founded as a fully electronic stock exchange based in New York. In the midst of these world-shattering events, the book Limits to Growth was published. The Meadows (see below) are often attributed

The Limits of Systems

29

with having shared the leading role in this work, and rightly so, but it was a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was the genuine but unlikely mastermind behind it, namely, Jay W. Forrester. MANAGING GROWING SYSTEMS Jay W. Forrester began working at the Sloan School of Management in 1956. Ideas and concepts resembling systems analysis under the label operations research emerged in the RAND Corporation and at universities throughout the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Fortun and Schweber 1993; Hughes and Hughes, 2000). Engineering schools were particularly susceptible to these ideas, and Stanford and MIT stood out in this regard (Leslie 1993). It was at MIT that Jay W. Forrester, as a newly recruited young scholar, participated in building “an experimental control for a radar to go on an aircraft carrier to direct fighter planes against enemy targets” (Forrester 1989, 3). Soon thereafter, he contributed in developing an analogue computer to be used as a flight simulator for the US Navy. Being trained as an engineer, he researched technical problems informed by theories from electrical engineering and was involved in the early days of computer development. However, Forrester decided to leave engineering and enter management science. At a speech to the society of Systems Dynamics in 1989, Forrester told the audience that by 1956, I felt the pioneering days in digital computers were over. That might seem surprising after the major technical advances of the last 30 years. But, I might point out that the multiple by which computers improved in the decade from 1946 to 1956 in speed, reliability, and storage capacity, was greater than in any decade since. Another reason for moving to management was that I was already in management. We had been running a several billion-dollar operation in which we had complete control of everything. We wrote the contracts between the prime contractors and the Air Force. We designed the computers with full control over what went into production. We had been managing an enterprise that involved the Air Defense Command, the Air Material Command, the Air Research and Development Command, Western Electric, A.T.&T., and I.B.M. So, it was not really a change to go into management. (Forrester 1989, 4)

Besides showing the close proximity between engineering and management as two disciplines focused on solving technical problems (Edwards 2000), this quote also discloses the connections between engineering and business schools, on the one hand, and the US military-industrial complex, or what Leslie (1993) terms the military-industrial-academic complex, on the other.

30

Alexander Paulsson

Systems dynamics is the version of systems analysis and systems theory that Forrester contributed to developing. It took off with an analysis of a Kentucky-based, General Electrics–owned household appliance factory and its inventory control systems, using only a pencil and paper. Describing the system and its feedback-loops, a dynamic model of this manufacturing supply chain was developed and published as “Industrial Dynamics—A Major Breakthrough for Decision Makers”, in the Harvard Business Review in 1958. By that time, Forrester had assistance from a computer programmer, Richard Bennett, whom Forrester had asked to code up the equations so they could run them on their computer. Throughout the 1950s and much of the 1960s, systems dynamics was an applied form of management science, seeking to improve managerial decision-making. LIMITING GROWTH AS A POLICY Before the work on The Limits to Growth had begun, Forrester had written two books, one called Urban Dynamics and another called World Dynamics. In these books, Forrester had applied the systems dynamics model of industrial organizations to the analysis of cities and the globe. The model upon which the World Dynamics system was built was presented and used in a two-week symposium with the executive committee of the Club of Rome at MIT in July 1970. Eduard Pestel, president of the Technical University of Hannover, was a member of the executive committee, and he felt strongly in favour of the dynamic version of systems analysis— including the complex system of feedback-loops—that Forrester had developed (Richardson 1991). As the executive committee decided to support the ongoing research at MIT, Pestel agreed to arrange for the Volkswagen Foundation to support the research that produced The Limits to Growth (Forrester 1989, 11). Forrester’s pessimistic reflections on the reception of the book are worth quoting in their entirety. Nine months after World Dynamics, Limits to Growth was published. The message was essentially the same, although much more work had been done and the book was more popularly written. Even so, after the earlier attention from the media, it seemed that the second book would be an anti-climax. One can be wrong twice in succession in the same way. Public attention seemed to go up another factor of ten after appearance of Limits to Growth. (Forrester 1989, 12)

The results did not lead to the changes that Forrester and his younger colleagues had hoped for. Limiting growth was not a popular policy amongst leading politicians either in the United States or Europe. When looking back at his own research career and the reception of The Limits to Growth, Forrester contended that “old mental models and decision habits are deeply ingrained. They do not change on the basis of only a logical

The Limits of Systems

31

argument” (Forrester 1989, 13). What had been needed was an enhanced understanding of how feedback-loops work in a dynamic system, but that was difficult to diffuse as these feedback-loops often work counterintuitively, for example, by reversing the order of causes and effects, according to Forrester (1989; see also Richardson 1991). Donella H. Meadows, Forrester’s student at MIT and one of the coauthors of The Limits to Growth, has suggested that the power behind systems dynamics is that it helps “practitioners begin to understand complex systems—systems such as the human body or the national economy or the earth's climate.” Systems dynamics is, she has contended, a set of techniques for thinking and computer modelling that maps how the objects and people in a system interact through complex systems of feedback-loops, where a change in one variable affects other variables over time, which in turn affects the original variable, and so on. With this potential, she was dissatisfied with the popular reception of the book, in a similar vein to Forrester. When reflecting on her involvement and the reception of the systems dynamics model of world population growth and economic growth, she made the following comment in 1991: The press saw it as a global crystal ball, in which to foresee the future of everything. What an irresistible attraction! Playboy, of all publications, was the first to do an article about our work. There it was—an analysis of population growth, economic growth, pollution, resource depletion—right there among the naked ladies. A year or so later, when our book, The Limits to Growth, came out, we were given three whole minutes on the Today show to explain the growth, overshoot, and collapse of the world economy, just after a mouthwash commercial and just before a demonstration by the British dart-throwing champion. (Meadows 1991, 2)

Meadows was displeased, but the experience of being exposed to mass media taught her that “there is only one force in the modern world that can cause the entire public to think differently. That force is the mass media” (Meadows 1991, 3). And that was also the reason why she eventually decided to be a columnist and a journalist. Whilst systems dynamics was a powerful worldview that could inform public debate, not only other academics, she continued throughout her career to argue that systems dynamics should be more widespread and taught in schools. Forrester also wrote to address the critique against systems dynamics: ‘“Designing’ social systems or corporations may seem mechanistic or authoritarian[, b]ut all governmental laws and regulations, all corporate policies that are established, all computer systems that are installed, and all organization charts that are drawn up constitute partial designs of social systems.” Since all social systems are designed, he argued, researchers and academics could improve them by small-scale experimenting and by testing different models and scenarios on parts of the system

32

Alexander Paulsson

without changing the entire system. Based on the results, long-term effects could be modelled before implemented at full scale, Forrester (1991, 6) stated. Forrester's entry point to theory and theoretical developments in the burgeoning academic discipline of management science was systems theory. It can be discussed whether systems theory was or is a theory at all. Yet the fact remains that systems theory was established as a multidisciplinary theory that sought to integrate social, technical, and ecological systems. Systems theory became a way of organizing knowledge that had previously not been organized in a coherent and analyzable system. Kenneth Boulding, the author of the influential essay The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth in 1966, was one of the founders of the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory (Hammond 2003). His idea, that the economic system did not take into account Planet Earth’s ecological system and biocapacity, was obviously influencing Jay W. Forrester and his younger colleagues in their work with The Limits to Growth. THE SYSTEMIC PROPERTIES OF GROWTH: KUZNETS AND FORRESTER Kuznets and Forrester represent very different scholarly traditions and academic styles, yet both shared the experience of being moulded by the historical circumstances in which they worked. Whilst Kuznets contributed to understanding the enigma of the Great Depression and how to manage the war economy during World War II, Forrester developed systems analysis for military purposes and later on applied it to industrial organizations and cities, before venturing into studying the entire world as a dynamic system. Both Kuznets and Forrester were exposed to and reproduced an epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina 2003) where knowledge and authoritative strategies were generated through developing objective measurements and ascribing these systemic properties. What they measured differed in the sense that Forrester not only relied on the GDP measurement and demographics but also on pollution and food supply and other measurements. Despite their differences, there are some commonalities. Unlike most scholars, both Kuznets and Forrester produced knowledge that had an impact far outside their own academic disciplines. Kuznets worked closely with government and policymakers and produced knowledge to be applied in economic and social policy. He did not seem to show an interest in being involved in media or being part of public debates. Meadows and Forrester, however, spent more time and attention on media coverage and on how their book was publicly received, but they were also deeply disappointed by its vulgar and distorted reception. Kuznets, too,

The Limits of Systems

33

eventually came to criticize the widespread and far-fetched use of the GDP measurement. Both Kuznets and Forrester were “empirical” scholars, in the sense that they both held data and analysis of data in high esteem (e.g., Fogel et al. 2013, 81). Theoretical innovations were grounded on what the data provided, rather than starting by inference from abstract assumptions. One reason Kuznets was not regarded as a theorist amongst his fellow economists was that he refuted mathematical generalizations but preferred historical and comparative statistical studies (cf. Hodgson 2001). Forrester and his colleagues at MIT were heavily criticized by a variety of economists for not incorporating in their model technological advancements and the price mechanism as ways of overcoming long-term scarcity (see overview in Higgs 2014). Nordhaus (1973) contended that the model and the forecasts used for Limits to Growth lacked data. Yet there were major differences between them. Kuznets and Forrester had diametrically opposing views on population growth and its impact on the economy. Fogel et al. (2013, 64) write, “Kuznets never worried about excessive population growth in the West; indeed, he argued that a condition for modern economic growth was that the rise in per capita income had to be accompanied by an increase in population.” This was one of his key arguments in his 1966 magnum opus Modern Economic Growth (Kuznets 1966) and it was repeated in his Nobel address five years later (Kuznets 1971), Fogel et al. explain. Forrester did include population growth, but it was not a paramount variable in the model used in the World Dynamics book. Like Forrester, Kuznets developed an interest in dynamic models during the 1960s. The systemic properties of economic growth led Kuznets to incorporate in his theoretical model of modern growth “complex feedback systems that produced unintended and sometimes undesirable consequences, such as high levels of unemployment in low-tech industries or immigration from the countryside to the cities, which led to overcrowding and severe pressure on urban water supplies and sewage disposal systems” (Fogel et al. 2013, 73–74). Neither Kuznets nor Forrester built their models on cyclical patterns but on exponential linear economic systems with complex feedbackloops (Kuznets 1947). Again, this suggests that they shared an epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina 2003) built on applied military operations research and “empirical” analysis, not on mathematically deduced theorizing (Weintraub 2002). Unlike Forrester, who had moved from studying industrial systems to cities to studying the world as a dynamic system, Kuznets continued to think that the sovereign nation-state was the most appropriate unit of analysis. Whilst recognizing that an economy is “a system of different but interrelated parts, a system that is a unit despite the differences in its component elements and its partial dependence on other such units in

34

Alexander Paulsson

the world” (Kuznets 1972, 2), Kuznets did not consider separate national economies to be part of a unified system. The world was not a proper unit of analysis as “one can hardly argue that the national economies are integral parts of a unified system”, Kuznets argued (1972, 3) when writing about the need for policy-relevant economic research. For Forrester, it was obvious that the world was one unit consisting of different interrelated parts and should subsequently be studied as such (Forrester 1971; Edwards 2000). Even though trade occurred between independent and/or interdependent nation-states, the world was the unit of analysis as long as enough reliable data could be gathered. Kuznets’s objection to this global view can be traced to his notion that economic research should be close to and relevant for economic policy, and since economic policy was and still is decided by national governments, that was also the rationale for using the nation-states as the unit of analysis. The epistemic culture that both Kuznets and Forrester were part of and reproduced was a culture dominated by white males. Donella Meadows was an exception, obviously, but she decided to leave academia after a couple of years. This suggests that she did not feel entirely at home there. That both economics and management science during these years drew upon systems thinking not only meant that an epistemic culture dominated by white males emerged but it also meant that the issue of whether GDP impacted women and men differently was barely discussed. Our understanding of economic growth has since been genderbiased (see chapter 5, by Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael, in this volume). CONCLUSIONS This chapter has unpacked the concept of growth by tracing its origin to the emergence of new fields of inquiry within institutionalist economics, and it has identified the critique of growth as it emerged in management science during the golden years of capitalism. Kuznets and Forrester have been analyzed and compared for this purpose. Both of them were “empirical” scholars who tried to solve practical problems yet in different ways and in different disciplines. Kuznets has here been discussed as a representative of the discipline of economics although he was not part of the burgeoning mainstream that theorized economic problems through the means of mathematization. Instead, Kuznets represented an older tradition of institutional economics that was accused of developing “measurements without theory” by the new generation of scholars who equated mathematization with theory (Weintraub 2002, 120). Indeed, Kuznets did try to solve economic problems of and for the government (the Depression, war mobilization, etc.) by developing the GDP measurement, amongst other things.

The Limits of Systems

35

Forrester has here been used as an organizing device to illustrate the knowledge production that defined the emerging discipline of management science in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. Like many practitioners of management science at that time, Forrester gained his legitimacy not by developing and using theory but by solving practical problems through the application of empirically grounded models and quantitative methods (Porter 1996). Yet Forrester was not a typical management scholar since he moved beyond the traditional unit of analysis, the for-profit organization, to study cities and the world as systems. Having said that, Forrester did follow the zeitgeist of his time by developing and applying his models to solve both urban and global problems as they appeared in policy debates and public discourse. By using Kuznets and Forrester as organizing devices for discussing, on the one hand, how growth emerged as a problem in the empirically oriented institutionalist tradition in economics and, on the other hand, how growth eventually became a problem in the peripheral branches of management science, the result is inevitably a limited narrative. It is limited as it excludes a myriad of scholars who were involved in these two developments. Nevertheless, it has laid out the epistemic culture that shaped the research that provided the groundwork for the development of the GDP measurement as well as the critique of growth more generally. This epistemic culture had its limits. Neither Kuznets nor Forrester related their work to the consumerist culture that the golden years of capitalism enabled and which cemented economic growth as an uneconomic endeavor. Neither of them engaged with the unequal exchange that underpinned, and continues to underpin, growth. Neither the epistemic effects of growth nor the entropy of capitalist production was brought into the discussion until a new generation of critics of growth emerged in the 1970s with the publication of The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, by Georgescu-Roegen in 1971; The Social Limits to Growth, by Hirsch in 1977; and the collection of essays by André Gorz in Ecology as Politics, in 1980. Whilst these and many other scholars’ works paved the way for a second generation of critiques of growth, which eventually turned into what is now termed degrowth, this chapter has centered on economic growth as a boundary concept, attracting the attention, and leading to controversies, from a variety of scholars and policymakers. By analyzing the development of the problematization of economic growth in US academia, more specifically in economics and management science during the golden years of capitalism, this chapter has added knowledge and broadened ongoing debates within degrowth scholarship about the emergence of the hegemony of growth, which hitherto has focused on the OECD (e.g., Schmelzer 2016), economic policy and business practice in

36

Alexander Paulsson

the United States (Cook 2017), as well as consumer culture in the United States (Worster 2016). REFERENCES Boulding, K. 1966. “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”. In Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, edited by H. Jarrett, 3–14. Baltimore, MD: Resources for the Future/Johns Hopkins University Press. First presented by Kenneth E. Boulding at the Sixth Resources for the Future Forum on Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy in Washington, DC, on March 8, 1966. Clark, J. M. 1949. “Common and Disparate Elements in National Growth and Decline”. In Problems in the Study of Economic Growth, edited by S. Kuznets, 21–44. New York. NBER. Cook, E. 2017. The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Daly, H. 1999. “Uneconomic Growth and the Built Environment: In Theory and in Fact”. In Reshaping the Built Environment: Ecology, Ethics, and Economics, edited by C. J. Kibert, 73–86. Washington, DC: Island Press. Easterlin, R. 1998. Growth Triumphant: The Twenty-First Century in Historical Perspective. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Edwards, P. E. 2000. “The World in a Machine: Origins and Impacts of Early Computerized Global Systems Models”. In Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After, edited by Thomas P. Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes, 221–54. Cambridge: MIT Press. Fioramonti, L. 2013. Gross Domestic Problem: The Politics behind the World’s Most Powerful Number. London: Zed Books. Fogel, R. W., E. M. Fogel, M. Guglielmo, and N. Grotte. 2013. Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Forrester, J. W. 1958. “Industrial Dynamics: A Major Breakthrough for Decision Makers”. Harvard Business Review 36 (4): 37–66. Forrester, J. W. 1969. Urban Dynamics. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications. Forrester, J. W. 1971. World Dynamics. Waltham, MA: Pegasus Communications. Forrester, J. W. 1989. “The Beginning of System Dynamics”. Banquet talk at the international meeting of the System Dynamics Society, Stuttgart, Germany, July 13, l989. http://web.mit.edu/sysdyn/sd-intro/D-4165-1.pdf. Forrester J. W. 1991. “System Dynamics and the Lessons of 35 Years”. In A SystemsBased Approach to Policymaking, edited by K. B. De Greene, 199–240. New York: Springer Science and Business Media. Fortun, M., and S. S. Schweber. 1993. “Scientists and the Legacy of World War II: The Case of Operations Research (OR)”. Social Studies of Science 23 (4): 595–642. Geoffrey, H. M. 1950. “The National Bureau of Economic Research”. American Statistician 4 (3): 13–15. Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Goldsmith, R. W. 1959. The Comparative Study of Economic Growth and Structure: Suggestions on Research Objectives and Organization. New York: NBER. Gorz, A. [1975, 1977] 1980. Ecology as Politics. Montreal and New York: Black Rose Books. Hamilton, C. 2004. Growth Fetish. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Hammond, D. 2003. The Science of Synthesis: Exploring the Social Implications of General Systems Theory. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Higgs, K. 2014. Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Limits of Systems

37

Hirsch, F. 1977. The Social Limits to Growth. London: Routledge & Kegan. Hodgson, G. M. 2001. How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science. London and New York: Routledge. Hoover, E. M., and J. L. Fisher. 1949. “Research in Regional Economic Growth”. In Problems in the Study of Economic Growth, edited by S. Kuznets, 173–250. New York: NBER. Hughes, A. C., and T. P. Hughes, eds. 2000. Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Knorr Cetina, K. 2003. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kuznets, S. 1937. National Income and Capital Formation, 1919–1935. New York. NBER. Kuznets, S. 1947. “Measurement of Economic Growth”. Journal of Economic History 7 (S1): 10–34. doi:10.1017/S0022050700065190. Kuznets, S. 1949a. “Foreword”. In Problems in the Study of Economic Growth, i–iii. New York: NBER. Kuznets, S. 1949b. “Notes on the Quantitative Approach to Economic Growth”. In Problems in the Study of Economic Growth, 115–72. New York: NBER. Kuznets, S., ed. 1949c. Problems in the Study of Economic Growth. New York. NBER. Kuznets, S. 1949d. “Suggestions for an Inquiry into the Economic Growth of Nations”. In Problems in the Study of Economic Growth, 1–20. New York: NBER. Kuznets, S. 1966. Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kuznets, S. 1972. Economic Research: Retrospect and Prospect, Volume 7, Quantitative Economic Research: Trends and Problems. New York: NBER. Kuznets, S. 1973. “Modern Economic Growth: Findings and Reflections”. Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 11, 1971. American Economic Review 63, no. 3 (June): 247–58. Kuznets, S., assisted by L. Epstein and E. Jenks. 1941. National Income and Its Composition, 1919–1938, Volume I. New York. NBER. Latouche, S. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Leeds-Hurwitz, W. 1994. “Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: The Macy Foundation Conferences on Cybernetics as a Case Study in Multidisciplinary Communication”. Cybernetica: Journal of the International Association for Cybernetics 3/4, 349–69. Leslie, S. 1993. Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. New York: Columbia University Press. Meadows, D. 1991. The Global Citizen. Washington, DC: Island Press. Meadows, D. H., D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, and W. W. Behrens III. 1972. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. Nordhaus, W. 1973. “World Dynamics: Measurement without Data”. Economic Journal 83 (332): 1156–83. doi:10.2307/2230846. Porter, M. 1996. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Richardson, G. P. 1991. Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schmelzer, M. 2016. The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spengler, J. J. 1949. “Theories of Socioeconomic Growth”. In Problems in the Study of Economic Growth, edited by S. Kuznets, 45–114. New York: NBER. Weintraub, R. E. 2002. How Economics Became a Mathematical Science. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Worster, D. 2016. Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

38

Alexander Paulsson

NOTES 1. Other contributions included a chapter by John Maurice Clark (1949) titled “Common and Disparate Elements in National Growth and Decline”. Joseph J. Spengler (1949) had a chapter titled “Theories of Socioeconomic Growth”, and Edgar M. Hoover and Joseph L. Fisher (1949) had a chapter on “Research in Regional Economic Growth”. 2. Even though the Net Domestic Product would be more correct, as it includes the wear and tear of tools and machinery used in production, the depreciation of capital coming from the wear and tear is difficult to estimate, which makes NDP a cumbersome process to calculate. Gross Domestic Product, however, is both quicker to calculate and easier to disseminate to the hungry markets and media outlets. 3. Kuznets writes, “First, admitting the importance of taking qualitative factors into account, we must consider the quantitative aspects of economic growth as basic; and measurement of economic growth of nations must be pushed forward so that the record of that experience is available in a form in which it can be accepted by and added to by students in the field. Second, the analysis of factors determining economic growth requires further exploration, antecedent to the possibility of measurement. The first assumption delimits the scope of inquiry in so far as it relates to observation and recording of economic growth as it actually occurred; the second directs attention to the need for a great deal of exploratory work which, at first, can be concentrated so that it bears most directly upon the quantitative aspects of the inquiry” (Kuznets 1949d, 6).

TWO Reorienting Comparative Political Economy From Economic Growth to Sustainable Alternatives Hubert Buch-Hansen

With the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the sweeping enlargement of the capitalist system that followed, academic interest in differences between Western market economies and Eastern planned economies (e.g., Eckstein 1971) gave way to a wave of scholarship focusing on differences within the capitalist system. In effect, the discipline of ‘comparative political economy’ (CPE) became a discipline of ‘comparative capitalisms’. 1 The titles of seminal works from this period, such as EspingAndersen’s The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), Hart’s Rival Capitalists (1992), and Albert’s Capitalism against Capitalism (1993), are telling in this respect—as is the title of Hall and Soskice’s Varieties of Capitalism (2001). This latter book introduced the world to the so-called varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach that has subsequently had a tremendous impact on CPE scholarship. Almost three decades of extensive CPE research have resulted in an impressive body of literature on the evolving institutional configurations that characterise various forms of capitalism at the national level. For all its merits, however, CPE scholarship has some blatant blind spots. The biggest of these is the widespread practice of ignoring that the societies in the rich parts of the world are grossly environmentally unsustainable and that they will increasingly be so as long as they form part of a capitalist system that needs to grow endlessly. In this chapter, I first briefly review the place occupied by economic growth in CPE scholar39

40

Hubert Buch-Hansen

ship. I then draw on insights from growth-critical scholarship—that is, steady-state/degrowth economics—to highlight the downsides of economic growth and provide a critique of CPE. I argue that if this knowledge field is to retain its relevance in the decades to come, its practitioners need to reorient it fundamentally. Specifically, this would involve a break with the current practice of considering a high growth rate the most important parameter of a country’s success. Outlining the contours of a post-growth CPE, I suggest that ‘strong sustainability’ could take growth’s place as a key parameter of success and that alternative (sustainable) ways of organising the socio-economic sphere be made key objects of study. Reoriented along such lines, CPE could come to play an important role in the transition towards sustainable societies. ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CONTEMPORARY CPE Nothing is monitored more meticulously in contemporary capitalist societies than the state of economic growth. Hardly a single day goes by where the corporate media does not report (or speculate) about the growth performances of countries or companies, and no issue seems to be of greater concern to Western policymakers, commentators, think tanks, economists, and the like than how growth rates can be sustained or increased. The prevalence of this pro-growth discourse arises from the fact that capitalism is structurally reliant on constant expansion for its stability (Speth 2008, 14). It depends ‘on the hunger for growing profits, enforced through competitive pressure, to motivate the business investment that drives the whole system’, and consequently ‘capitalism and growth are two sides of the same coin’ (Stanford 2008, 182). As long as an economy is growing fast and is expected to continue doing so, capital owners are willing to invest, people buy goods and services, new jobs are created, and credit is made available. However, as soon as growth slows down, comes to a halt, or is expected to do so, the reverse happens: consumers spend less, capital owners withhold productive investments, people lose their jobs, credit dries up, and companies go out of business. A fundamental insight of CPE is that different types of institutional setups can facilitate economic growth. For instance, at the heart of the aforementioned VoC approach, which was developed for the analysis of ‘developed economies’, one finds various institutional spheres in which firms ‘must develop relationships to resolve coordination problems central to their core competencies’ (Hall and Soskice 2001, 6–7). On this basis, Hall and Soskice famously identify two ideal-typical varieties that constitute the opposite poles of a spectrum: liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs) (2001, 8–9). While Hall and Soskice recognise that many political economies do not resemble either of the two ideal types, the underlying idea is that the more coherent a mar-

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

41

ket economy is—that is, the closer it is to being either an LME or a CME—the better it will perform economically. As a consequence of the advantages associated with being either an LME or a CME, the VoC approach expects that countries tend to cluster ‘along the dimensions that divide liberal from coordinated market economies, as nations converge on complementary practices across different spheres’ (2001, 18). While there is a group of scholars who largely accept the VoC approach in its original formulation and extend its application to new cases and countries (e.g., Feldmann 2006), most comparative political economists relate critically to the approach. For instance, studies frequently fault the approach for being unable to account for endogenous institutional change (e.g., Crouch 2005; Deeg and Jackson 2007) and/or propose additional/different taxonomic categories (Amable 2003; Nölke and Taylor 2010). 2 Scholars advancing a critical political economy approach informed by historical materialism question the VoC approach’s perspective on capitalism at a more fundamental level and offer various alternative perspectives (e.g., Ebenau, Bruff, and May 2015). Yet what is rarely questioned in extant scholarship is the assumption embedded in the VoC approach that economic growth is desirable. This is hardly surprising, given that CPE scholarship generally incorporates what has been referred to as the mainstream economic view on institutions, which is the view that ‘good’ institutions are ‘those that deliver a “good” economic performance: e.g., high gross domestic product and productivity growth rates, low unemployment and high labour market participation, balanced current and foreign trade accounts, etc. The “bad” institutions deliver exactly the opposite’ (Amable and Palombarini 2009, 123–24). Of the various measures of economic performance, CPE scholars generally see economic growth as the best and most important one (Hall and Gingerich 2009, 466), and institutional arrangements are thus often ‘understood as system parameters, with differing degrees of ability to trigger high rates of economic growth’ (Coates 2005, 17). Economic growth is thus used as a, and often the, key parameter for measuring the ‘success’ of different countries. Against this background it seems logical that it has recently been suggested that CPE should revolve around the comparison of the demand drivers of growth in different ‘growth models’ (Baccaro and Pontusson 2016). The bulk of CPE research is silent on the natural environment, including the environmental impacts of economic growth. There are, to be sure, examples of CPE-type research that considers the environment (Koch 2012; Mikler and Harrison 2012) and that even takes a growth-critical stance (Buch-Hansen 2014; Gough and Meadowcroft 2011; Koch and Fritz 2014). Yet the general picture is that comparative political economists analyse the social world as if it was completely detached from the natural environment. The main theories and debates in CPE do nothing to bring into focus the environmental downsides of growth and of the ways in

42

Hubert Buch-Hansen

which the economic system functions more generally. Taken as a whole, CPE contributes to reproduce and reinforce the prevailing pro-growth discourse. THE ENVIRONMENTAL DOWNSIDES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH As mentioned in the previous section, capitalism as an economic system needs economic growth for its stability. Historically speaking, capitalism has indeed delivered considerable growth. Maddison’s seminal work, The World Economy, shows that the annual average compound world growth rate was 2.21 percent from 1820 to 1998 (2001, 28). As one would expect, growth rates have fluctuated considerably over time and differed significantly from one country or region to the next. For instance, whereas the Western European annual average compound growth rate was merely 0.76 percent in the 1913–1950 period, it was 4.08 percent in the 1950–1973 period (the so-called Golden Age of capitalism) (2001, 265). As noted by Maddison, the pace of economic growth was much higher in the second half of the twentieth century than at any time in the past: ‘World GDP increased six–fold from 1950 to 1998 with an average growth of 3.9 per cent a year compared with 1.6 from 1820 to 1950, and 0.3 per cent from 1500 to 1820’ (2001, 125). 3 Several factors—such as developments in technology, increased availability of labour power, and institutional synergies—contribute to explain the high economic growth rates in the second half of the twentieth century. Latouche (2009, 17–20), a leading degrowth scholar, identifies three main ways in which contemporary consumer societies contribute to facilitating economic growth. First, a massive advertising system creates a demand for unnecessary products. That is, it ‘makes us want what we do not have and despise what we already have. It creates and re-creates the dissatisfaction and tension of frustrated desire’ (2009, 17). This helps to reproduce and enhance what others have identified as a deeply embedded consumer culture that ties social status and identity to consumption (Jackson 2009, 98–102; Speth 2008, 133–34; Veblen 2007). Second, various credit instruments allow consumers to spend money they do not have or would not have otherwise spent. This has particularly been the case in the past few decades, when neoliberal policies have facilitated an explosion in the levels of private debt (e.g., Kotz 2008). 4 Finally, many products, such as computers, cell phones, and light bulbs, are deliberately designed to become outdated or wear out prematurely. This artificial obsolescence ‘gives the growth society the ultimate weapon of consumerism. Appliances and equipment, from electric lamps to spectacles, break more and more quickly because some part is designed to fail’ (Latouche 2009, 19).

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

43

At a more fundamental level, contemporary consumer societies (and thus economic growth) are premised on a massive consumption of natural resources such as oil, coal, natural gas, fresh water, fisheries, forests, land, and metals and other minerals. Some of these resources are renewable; others are not. Most economic activities result in waste that is dumped back into nature—a problem that is aggravated by consumer societies, population growth (the world’s population has doubled since 1950), and the unfortunate incentive capitalism gives companies to reduce their production costs by releasing pollutants. 5 Moreover, the burning of fossil fuels results in carbon dioxide emissions, which are in turn the main cause of climate change. Studies have found a clear correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and GDP growth. For instance, a study using data on 114 countries found that there was a significant correlation between GDP growth and emissions in the 1992–2004 period and that this correlation was stronger than the one between population growth and emissions (Pani and Mukhopadhyay 2010). Similarly, a study of 100 countries, focusing on the 1960–1996 period, concluded that the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions per capita and GDP per capita was stable, meaning that ‘[o]n the whole, the economic development process always results in increased CO2 emissions’ (Azomahou, Laisney, and Nguyen Van 2006, 1360). According to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities ‘have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004’ (IPCC 2007, 36). The IPCC has warned that continuing on the current path is likely to damage many ecosystems due to ‘an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification) and other global change drivers (e.g., land use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, overexploitation of resources)’ (2007, 48). Indeed, as a result of its exponential growth, capitalism is now ‘impacting much larger spaces more intensively than ever before’, and, as such, ‘its tensions with nature have increased massively’ (Antonio 2009, 4). Half the temperate and tropical forests of the earth no longer exist, and the rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at a rate of one acre per second; approximately half of the world’s wetlands are gone; 75 percent of marine fisheries are either overfished or fished to capacity; and species are disappearing at an accelerating rate (Magdoff and Foster 2011, 17–21; Speth 2008, 30–38). The health and general well-being of millions of people (especially in the poorer parts of the world) and other species have already been negatively affected by these and other changes in the environment, and, unfortunately, the situation will change for the worse in the decades to come. Many academics and politicians believe that climate change and the destruction of the environment are problems that can be solved by means of growth in renewable energy supply and green technologies coupled

44

Hubert Buch-Hansen

with various forms of regulation. In fact, they hope that the innovation of new sustainable technologies will not only fix the climate crisis but also contribute to boost economic growth. As such, they see the very same ecological crisis that has been brought about by growth and consumption as an exciting opportunity for profit-making and growth. It is hoped that technological solutions will bring about greater efficiency in the way resources are used and a general dematerialisation of the economy and that in this way economic growth can be decoupled from the negative impact it currently has on the environment. The promise of decoupling is, in other words, that the ‘[r]apid degradation of ecology and conditions for human life attributed to present levels and patterns of production and consumption can be prevented without radical changes to the basic and essential economic and social structures’ (Xue 2014, 37). If technological fixes and decoupling constituted a genuine solution to the problem of climate change and environmental degradation, then it would be entirely justified for CPE scholarship to retain (at least some forms of) economic growth as a key parameter of success. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of decoupling taking place on the necessary scale. To be sure, energy intensities have declined significantly in OECD countries over the past three decades—and this has led to declining carbon emission intensities (see, however, Heinberg 2011, 164–73 for some important qualifications). Jackson distinguishes between absolute and relative decoupling, the latter referring to ‘a decline in ecological intensity per unit of economic output’ (Jackson 2009). He notes that global resource intensities, ‘far from declining, have increased significantly across a range of non-fuel minerals. Resource efficiency is going in the wrong direction. Even relative decoupling just isn’t happening’ (Jackson 2009, 75). To make things worse, even if relative decoupling was happening, it would not solve the problem in an economic system that keeps growing (and needs to do so)—at best, it slows down the speed of environmental destruction. Only absolute decoupling, involving an actual decline in resource use (also when economic output increases), would constitute a solution. Nothing whatsoever indicates that this is going to happen. Jackson’s conclusion is clear: ‘Those who promote decoupling as an escape route from the dilemma of growth need to take a closer look at the historical evidence . . . it is entirely fanciful to suppose that “deep” emission and resource cuts can be achieved without confronting the structure of market economies’ (2009, 86). The ‘Jevons Paradox’ explains the major reason why technology cannot solve the problem by increasing efficiency in the use of resources. William Stanley Jevons, a nineteenth-century economist, observed that although every new steam engine that was produced was more efficient in terms of coal use than the already existing steam engines, the production of an increasing number of steam engines meant that coal usage increased instead of declining (Jevons 1865). In other words, as technolo-

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

45

gy becomes more resource efficient, production tends to expand. Applying this insight more generally, Magdoff and Foster (2011, 110–11) note that ‘increased efficiency in the use of energy and resources tends . . . to result in the expansion of the capitalist economic system as a whole, negating any reductions in energy and resource use per unit of output’. Further to this, Sayre makes the important observation that while piecemeal technological fixes to specific ecological problems may seem like a viable solution, the pervasive magnitude and complexity of the ecological problems confronting humankind today means that ‘they cannot be resolved by technology designed to lessen their impact in specific circumstances. Attempting to solve ecological problems of this dimension with specialized technological fixes is like trying to cure lung cancer by giving up a particular brand of cigarettes’ (Sayre 2010, 142–43). Herman Daly, a prominent growth-critical scholar, has noted that the ‘preanalytic’ vision of standard (neoclassical) economics ‘is that the economy is an isolated system in which exchange value circulates between firms and households. Nothing enters from the environment, nothing exits to the environment. It does not matter how big the economy is relative to its environment’ (Daly 1991, xiii). As pointed out by the editors in the introductory chapter, this wrong and dangerous pro-growth vision is ‘not only at odds with the preservation of life on this planet, but fundamentally in contradiction with human well-being and social justice’. Unfortunately, the vision, which continues to underpin economics as it is taught in most schools and universities, has been adopted by most comparative political economists. Climate change, environmental degradation, and resource depletion will, however, increasingly have negative impacts on the rich countries of the world too. If CPE is to retain its relevance in the decades to come, it cannot afford the luxury of turning a blind eye to the environment and the downsides of economic growth. In the next section, I outline the possible contours of a ‘post-growth CPE’ that is oriented towards alternative and sustainable ways of organising economic life. THE CONTOURS OF A REORIENTED CPE The notion of sustainability can be used in both a weak and a strong sense (Speth 2008). In its weak sense, practices can be considered sustainable if they contribute to slow down the overall drift towards ecological collapse. This version of sustainability does not entail a break with economic growth and can indeed serve to legitimize business as usual. In its strong sense, environmental sustainability entails that the ecosystems of the earth are not impaired as a consequence of human activities. According to this view, economic growth is, by definition, unsustainable because the physical dimension of the economy is a subsystem of the non-

46

Hubert Buch-Hansen

growing ecosystem (Daly 1991). In a reoriented CPE strong environmental sustainability—as opposed to high economic growth rates—could be a main parameter of national success. One way of thinking about moving from grossly unsustainable societies to strongly sustainable ones is in terms of a degrowth transition to a ‘steady-state economy’ (SSE). Aiming for a ‘voluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society’ (Degrowth Declaration 2010), degrowth is oriented towards shrinking the economies of the rich countries. Many—not all—degrowth advocates consider the end goal of this process to be an SSE, which is ‘an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance “throughput”’ (Daly 1991, 17, italics removed). Throughput refers to the ‘flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production (depletion of low-entropy materials from the environment) to the last stage of consumption (pollution of the environment with high-entropy wastes and exotic materials)’ (ibid., 17). By keeping throughput at a low level, an SSE is strongly sustainable. Daly has suggested that three institutions are particularly important for maintaining the SSE: government-auctioned physical depletion quotas, which serve to keep the stock of physical artifacts constant and the matterenergy throughput at sustainable levels; an institution that serves to keep the ‘stock of people’ within ecological limits; and a distributist institution, which reduces inequality by defining minimum and maximum limits on income and maximum limits on wealth (1991, 50–75; on the latter institution, see also Buch-Hansen and Koch 2019). Subsequently, growth-critical scholars and activists have advocated a wide variety of additional instruments, including the promotion of work sharing, social enterprises, localised production, eco-communities, community currencies, debt audit, time banks, and job guarantees, to mention but some of the most important (see, e.g., D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015; Dietz and O’Neill 2013; Latouche 2009). As argued elsewhere, if degrowth transitions were initiated—and that is indeed still a very big if—they would start out from the different existing institutional arrangements and then recalibrate these arrangements by combining existing practices and principles with new ones (BuchHansen 2014). Because of this, and because institutions are formed by open-ended political struggles, France and the United States would be as unlikely to follow the same degrowth transition path as China and Sweden would be unlikely to end up with identical SSEs systems (BuchHansen, Pissin, and Kennedy 2016). In other words, there would be a variety of degrowth trajectories leading to a variety of SSEs. This variety would be a natural focus for a reoriented CPE. Measuring progress towards an SSE—for instance, using separate biophysical and social indicators (O’Neill 2012)—in different countries could be an important aspect of such research.

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

47

As little progress towards initiating degrowth transitions on a societal (country-level) scale has so far been accomplished, it may seem as if there are currently not enough concrete phenomena out there to study for a reoriented CPE. However, this would be to jump to unwarranted conclusions: over the past few decades, a large number of communities that experiment with alternative sustainable ways of living have appeared at the local level in most parts of the world (see, e.g., Dawson 2006). 6 Cases in point are the thousands of ecovillages and Transition initiatives that inter alia experiment with home-based production, micro-enterprises, food cooperatives, community gardens, car sharing, farmers’ markets, long-term energy reduction plans, and local currency systems. In the words of Jackson (2004), an ecovillage ‘is, ideally speaking, a microcosm of the macrocosm, as it represents in a very small area— typically with 50–400 people—all the elements and all the problems present in the greater society, while providing visible solutions to these problems, whether it be living sustainably, resolving conflicts peacefully, creating jobs, raising children, providing relevant education, or simply enjoying and celebrating life’. Ecovillages aim to integrate human activities harmlessly into the natural world, and their inhabitants do this by, for instance, using state-of-the-art ecological technologies to produce renewable energy, composting waste, using locally available materials to build their settlements, producing local foods, creating work and recreational activities where people live, and consciously living more simply. Ecovillages exist throughout the world in both developed and developing countries. The Auroville in India, the Mbam and Faoune in Senegal, Crystal Waters in Australia, Sieben Linden in Germany, the Ecovillage at Ithaca in the United States, and Findhorn in Scotland are but a few examples (see, e.g., Dawson 2006 for details). The notion of the ecovillage is in fact a bit of a misnomer inasmuch as it seems to imply a strictly rural setting. Many ecovillages exist in suburbs and cities, an example being the Beddington Zero Energy Development, also known as BedZED, which is probably the best-known ecovillage in the UK. Located in the south of London, it comprises one hundred homes, workspaces for approximately one hundred people, several green spaces, water-saving features, recycling facilities, and a green transport plan. It seeks to be a carbon-neutral community that only uses energy generated on site, for instance, via solar panels (Bioregional 2009). Another type of sustainable community that has gained considerable momentum over the past few years involves so-called Transition initiatives (mentioned above). The Transition movement is, in the words of its co-founder Rob Hopkins, ‘a social experiment on a massive scale’ (2011, 16). It was established in 2006 in Totnes, an English town with approximately eight thousand inhabitants, and has spread like wildfire to several parts of the world (‘Transition near Me’ 2016). The core purpose of the Transition movement is to address the twin issues of climate change and

48

Hubert Buch-Hansen

peak oil by building community resilience. With a view to reduce carbon emissions and oil dependence significantly, those involved in Transition initiatives seek to move towards a situation where their communities become self-reliant, for instance, in relation to food and energy production, building, waste, and transport. Like ecovillages, Transition initiatives differ significantly from one place to another, owing to varying local circumstances and the fact that they build on community experience and knowledge instead of relying on external experts or ready-made onesize-fits-all recipes. For instance, there are Transition initiatives in villages, towns, cities, universities, neighbourhoods and districts, and everywhere they are found, they are rooted in local cultures. Consequently, ‘Transition in Brazil, emerging with a distinctly Brazilian flavour, will look very different from Transition in Edinburgh or in New Zealand’ (Hopkins 2011, 74). The point is not to suggest that sustainable communities constitute a full-blown solution to all the major problems that cannot be solved within the current social order. A sustainable social order will involve more than local solutions: for instance, not all products can meaningfully be produced locally, and close international collaboration will undoubtedly also be a feature of a sustainable system. Moreover, only a small proportion of the populations in the rich countries live in sustainable communities, meaning that these communities are no more than tiny islands in an almost endless ocean of unsustainability. The bulk of those living in sustainable communities thus take part in the wider capitalist economy, with the result that such communities can rightly be argued to not be a fully developed and functioning alternative to capitalism. A report on the aforementioned ecovillage, BedZED, presents some thought-provoking findings in this context. The report finds that if everyone in the world left the same ecological footprints that the total British population does, three planets would be needed to support this lifestyle. In other words, the goal is to reduce the footprint by two-thirds, which, among other things, entails a reduction in carbon emissions of 90 percent. Despite all of the green technologies and lifestyle features introduced with BedZED, the lowest impact its inhabitants are able to achieve would require 1.9 planets, and the actual average impact is significantly higher at 2.6 planets. According to the report, residents cannot lead a one-planet lifestyle because ‘the minute they step off site they are participating in the “three planet” higher impact world and using the facilities we all share, such as the health service, roads, shops and government services’ (Bioregional 2009, 8). While studies of other ecovillages have shown a far greater reduction in the ecological footprint, these findings still indicate the enormity of the challenge it will be to make our unsustainable societies strongly sustainable. The point is rather that, for all of their limitations, these communities are establishing the very foundations of a social order that point beyond

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

49

consumer societies and consumer culture, that is not driven by profit motives and the quest for endless growth, and that aspires to be genuinely sustainable. In sum, by involving ‘radical new conceptions of livelihood and economy that directly cut against the logic of growth-based capitalist economic strategies’ (North 2010, 586), sustainable communities can provide us with important insights into how humanity could cope with the multiple crises confronting us. CPE scholars could contribute to the generation of knowledge about these communities—knowledge that could turn out to be crucial in the transition to a sustainable social order. A reoriented CPE discipline could study sustainable communities in a variety of ways. One research agenda could be to develop the conceptual tools that can aid comparisons of sustainable communities and sustainability initiatives. Another agenda would be to empirically compare political economy–related aspects of sustainable communities. That could be aspects related to (food) production, work, banking/money, energy consumption, transportation, housing, and governance. The purpose would be to generate knowledge about what works in different contexts. How do different types of communities attempt to reduce their ecological footprints, and what works where? How successful are different types of ecovillages in creating jobs for their inhabitants? How can basic human needs be satisfied in a sustainable way in different settings? (On the latter question, cf. Koch and Buch-Hansen 2016; Koch, Buch-Hansen, and Fritz 2017.) Under such a research agenda it would also be relevant to compare specific aspects of sustainable communities to their specific, and generally unsustainable, mainstream ‘counterparts’ in the countries in which they exist. For instance, this could involve comparing the way a specific ‘community supported agriculture’ enterprise in the United States produces and distributes agricultural goods with the unsustainable way mainstream American agriculture functions. As this suggests, a reoriented CPE discipline would by no means need to focus only on the local or micro level. This brings us to a third research agenda, which would be to study the context in which sustainable communities are located, namely, national political economies (which in turn form part of the transnational capitalist system). This would be relevant inasmuch as this context greatly impacts whether or not specific communities flourish. On the basis of interviews with dozens of people involved in the process of forming new ecovillages, Christian (2003, 5) found that only one in ten communities was actually built. There are several reasons why many sustainable communities do not succeed or are not even built, an important one being that ‘almost everything in the current system is a barrier’ (Jackson 2004, 7). Dawson (2006, 68) notes that in the advanced capitalist countries of the North, ‘the job of creating and maintaining an ecovillage has become substantially more difficult over the last couple of decades’. For instance, regulatory frameworks have been tightened, making the situation more

50

Hubert Buch-Hansen

difficult for citizen-led communities. As an example, Dawson mentions how the costs incurred by the Scottish ecovillage Findhorn in the process of gaining permission to erect a couple of windmills in 2006 exceeded the subsequent costs of acquiring, transporting, and installing those new turbines. Banking regulations have also made it much more difficult to establish local currencies and community banks, while regulations on food processing make this economic activity unfeasible for small-scale ecobusinesses in many cases (Dawson 2006, 68–69). The specific nature of such external barriers differs from country to country, and they are thus amenable to comparative study (see also Buch-Hansen 2018). CONCLUSION In this chapter I have noted how the knowledge field of CPE has so far contributed to sustain the prevailing pro-growth discourse and turned a blind eye to the environmental downsides of contemporary capitalism— and I have argued that, as a result, the continued relevance of the CPE field in the decades to come is at stake. By never considering the negative effects of economic growth, CPE scholars are arguably simply analysing the system on its own terms. Comparative political economists may not feel that it is their job to question the effects of growth but that it is to explain similarities in, differences between, and the economic consequences of institutional arrangements in different countries. Unfortunately, the climate and biodiversity crises are far too important issues to justify such an attitude. Against this background, it was suggested to make strong sustainability a main parameter of success in CPE analyses while sustainable ways of organising economic life are made key objects of study. The result would be a discipline that, while engaging in the activity of comparing various aspects of political economies, would look very different from CPE as it is currently practised. The fundamental reorientation of CPE that is called for in this chapter thus constitutes a huge challenge to the practitioners in this field. The downsides of leaving the comfort zone of doing business as usual are, however, considerably outweighed by the rewards of producing knowledge that has the potential to play an important role in the transitions towards sustainable societies. REFERENCES Albert, M. 1993. Capitalism against Capitalism. London: Whurr Publishers. Amable, B. 2003. The Diversity of Modern Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Amable, B., and S. Palombarini. 2009. ‘A Neorealist Approach to Institutional Change and the Diversity of Capitalism’. Socio-Economic Review 7 (1): 123. Antonio, Robert J. 2009. ‘Climate Change, the Resource Crunch, and the Global Growth Imperative’. Current Perspectives in Social Theory 26: 3–73.

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

51

Azomahou, T., F. Laisney, and P. Nguyen Van. 2006. ‘Economic Development and CO2 Emissions: A Nonparametric Panel Approach’. Journal of Public Economics 90: 1347–63. Baccaro, L., and J. Pontusson. 2016. ‘Rethinking Comparative Political Economy: The Growth Model Perspective’. Politics & Society 44, no. 2, 175–207. Bioregional. 2009. BedZED Seven Years On. Surrey, UK: Bioregional Development Group. Buch-Hansen, H. 2014. ‘Capitalist Diversity and De-Growth Trajectories to SteadyState Economies’. Ecological Economics 106:173–79. Buch-Hansen, H. 2018. ‘The Prerequisites for a Degrowth Paradigm Shift: Insights from Critical Political Economy’. Ecological Economics 146:157–63. Buch-Hansen, H., and M. Koch. 2019. ‘Degrowth through Income and Wealth Caps?’ Ecological Economics 160: 264–71. Buch-Hansen, H., A. Pissin, and E. Kennedy. 2016. ‘Transitions towards Degrowth and Sustainable Welfare: Carbon Emission Reduction and Wealth and Income Distribution in France, the US and China’. In Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare, edited by M. Koch and O. Mont, 143–57. London: Routledge. Christian, D. L. 2003. Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers. Coates, D. 2005. ‘Paradigms of Explanation’. In Varieties of Capitalism, Varieties of Approaches, edited by D. Coates, 1–25. New York: Palgrave. Crouch, C. 2005. Capitalist Diversity and Change: Recombinant Governance and Institutional Entrepreneurs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, eds. 2015. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Daly, H. E. 1991. Steady-State Economics. Washington, DC: Island Press. Dawson, D. 2006. Ecovillages: New Frontiers for Sustainability. Totnes, UK: Green Books. Deeg, R., and G. Jackson. 2007. ‘Towards a More Dynamic Theory of Capitalist Variety’. Socio-Economic Review 5 (1): 149–79. DegrowthDeclaration. 2010. ‘Degrowth Declaration of the Paris 2008 Conference’. Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (6): 523–24. Dietz, R., and D. O’Neill. 2013. Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Ebenau, M., I. Bruff, and C. May, eds. 2015. New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research Critical and Global Perspectives. New York: Palgrave. Eckstein, A., ed. 1971. Comparison of Economic Systems: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. Berkeley: University of California Press. Emmenegger, P., J. Kvist, P. Marx, and K. Petersen. 2015. ‘Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism: The Making of a Classic’. Journal of European Social Policy 25 (1): 3–13. Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Feldmann, M. 2006. ‘Emerging Varieties of Capitalism in Transition Countries: Industrial Relations and Wage Bargaining in Estonia and Slovenia’. Comparative Political Studies 39 (7): 829–54. Gough, I., and J. Meadowcroft. 2011. ‘Decarbonizing the Welfare State’. In The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, edited by J. S. Dryzek, R. B. Nørgaard, and D. Schlosberg, 1–11. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, P. A., and D. W. Gingerich. 2009. ‘Varieties of Capitalism and Institutional Complementarities in the Political Economy: An Empirical Analysis’. British Journal of Political Science 39 (3): 449–82. Hall, P. A., and D. Soskice. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hart, J. A. 1992. Rival Capitalists: International Competitiveness in the United States, Japan and Western Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Harvey, D. 2011. ‘Nice Day for a Revolution’. Independent, April 29, 2011.

52

Hubert Buch-Hansen

Heinberg, R. 2011. The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. New Society Publishers. Hopkins, R. 2011. The Transition Companion. Devon, UK: Green Books. IPCC. 2007. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R. K., and A. Reisinger, eds.]. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC. Jackson, R. 2004. ‘The Ecovillage Movement’. Permaculture 40: 1–7. Jackson, T. 2009. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. London: Earthscan. Jevons, W. S. 1865. ‘The Coal Question: Can Britain Survive?’ In The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, edited by A. W. Flux. New York: Augustus M. Kelley. Koch, M. 2012. Capitalism and Climate Change. New York: Palgrave. Koch, M., and H. Buch-Hansen. 2016. ‘Human Needs, Steady-State Economics and Sustainable Welfare’. In Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare, edited by M. Koch and O. Mont, 29–43. London: Routledge. Koch, M., H. Buch-Hansen, and M. Fritz. 2017. ‘Shifting Priorities in Degrowth Research: An Argument for the Centrality of Human Needs’. Ecological Economics 138: 74–81. Koch, M., and M. Fritz. 2014. ‘Building the Eco-Social State: Do Welfare Regimes Matter?’ Journal of Social Policy 43 (4): 679–703. Kotz, D. M. 2008. ‘Contradictions of Economic Growth in the Neoliberal Era: Accumulation and Crisis in the Contemporary US Economy’. Review of Radical Political Economics 40 (2): 174–88. Latouche, S. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Loomis, T. 2011. ‘Sustainable Community Movements: A Brief Overview’. http:// www.achievingsustainablecommunities.com/. Maddison, A. 2001. The World Economy. A Millennial Perspective. Paris: OECD. Magdoff, F., and J. B. Foster. 2011. What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Mikler, J., and N. E. Harrison. 2012. ‘Varieties of Capitalism and Technological Innovation for Climate Change Mitigation’. New Political Economy (September 2012): 37–41. Nölke, A., and H. Taylor. 2010. ‘Non-Triad Multinationals and Global Governance’. In Business and Global Governance, edited by M. Ougaard and A. Leander, 156–77. London and New York: Routledge. North, P. 2010. ‘Eco-Localisation as a Progressive Response to Peak Oil and Climate Change: A Sympathetic Critique’. Geoforum 41 (4): 585–94. O’Neill, D. W. 2012. ‘Measuring Progress in the Degrowth Transition to a Steady State Economy’. Ecological Economics 84: 221–31. Pani, R., and U. Mukhopadhyay. 2010. ‘Identifying the Major Players behind Increasing Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions: A Decomposition Analysis’. Environmentalist 30 (2): 183–205. Sayre, K. M. 2010. Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Shonfield, A. 1965. Modern Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Speth, G. 2008. The Bridge at the Edge of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stanford, J. 2008. Economics for Everyone. London: Pluto Press. ‘Transition near Me’. 2016. Transition Network. https://transitionnetwork.org/ transition-near-me/. Veblen, T. 2007. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Xue, J. 2014. Economic Growth and Sustainable Housing. London: Routledge.

Reorienting Comparative Political Economy

53

NOTES I am grateful to my colleagues at the—unfortunately now former—Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, for their helpful input. 1. Of course, this is not to deny that important works contrasting different models of capitalism were published prior to the breakdown of the Soviet Union. A case in point is Shonfield’s seminal Modern Capitalism (1965). 2. Esping-Andersen’s groundbreaking work on welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990) has given rise to similar discussions of the number of needed taxonomies. See, for example, Emmenegger et al. (2015). 3. According to Jackson’s calculations, the world economy will be eighty times as large in 2100 as it was in 1950 if it continues to grow at the same rate as it has done since the mid-twentieth century (Jackson 2009, 13). Taking into consideration that the planet’s resources are finite and that a continuation of the current level of economic activity is well on its way to bring about large-scale ecological collapse, this scenario is—as Jackson also states—not even remotely conceivable. 4. Furthermore, public debt levels have grown considerably in OECD countries since the 1970s, except in the late 1990s. The accompanying growth in public consumption is arguably also an aspect of capitalist consumer societies. 5. As Harvey (2011) notes, capitalism would go out of business if it were to internalise all the social and environmental costs it generates. 6. Following Loomis (2011), we can define sustainable communities as ‘neighborhoods, towns, villages and rural communities who have decided to collectively explore alternative ways of living and developing that reduce natural resource use, protect the environment and meet essential human needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own essential needs’.

THREE The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology Rethinking Écologie et liberté (1977) to (Re)Connect Marxism and Degrowth Emanuele Leonardi

More than ten years after his death, which occurred in 2007, André Gorz is not discussed nearly as much as he deserves to be in the debates of political ecologists, who today represent a thoroughly global community of scholar-activists. With the partial exception of Letter to D. ([2006] 2009)—a remarkable editorial success that has allowed a new generation of militants and academics to discover his thought—the name of Gorz does not often pop up in intellectual as well as political analyses at a transnational level. This is a rather curious occurrence given his multifarious international connections, amongst which of particular importance were those with German and Swedish metalworkers unions, with American critics of mass consumption, and with the Italian New Left (Gianinazzi 2016). Quite understandably, in France the situation is different: there have been conferences on his intellectual legacy as well as publications on specific issues about which he contributed analyses (Gollain 2000, 2018; Münster 2008; Lesourt 2011; Caillé and Fourel 2013; Fourel 2013). Moreover, his political vision is still relatively influential, in particular in the écolo circles such as peasant movements, anti-nuclear formations, and the party Europe Écologie Les Verts.

55

56

Emanuele Leonardi

The main aim of this chapter is to present some features of Gorz’s original account of socio-environmental crises—mainly developed during his politico-ecological phase—so that a collective debate may be relaunched. Such discussion might be of particular interest for degrowth and eco-socialism alike, given the key role assigned to Gorz as a precursor of both movements (Muraca 2013; Leonardi 2015). In fact, the recent transformation of its essential character from reducing social metabolism (Schneider, Kallis, and Martínez-Alier 2010) to creating a new productive system—“our emphasis here is on different, not only less” (Kallis, Demaria, and D’Alisa 2015, 4)—make a mutual recognition (even an alliance) between degrowthers and eco-socialists all the more possible and desirable. From this perspective, Gorz’s simultaneous account of labor and ecology—as well as his relentless critique of state socialism—may prove invaluable. A solid perspective on labor, in fact, is the missing link between Marxism and degrowth. As Stefania Barca recently argued, if the problem we are dealing with is the predominance of the growth imperative—with consequent continuous increase of social metabolism—in both really existing socialism and capitalism, then we need to clearly identify what the two systems have in common to be able to envision a meaningful way-out. I believe that what the two systems have in common is, basically, alienation: i.e. the lack of control over the labor process and product on the part of the workers. My hypothesis, in other words, is that alienation is what leads to unsustainable ways of producing and reallocating the surplus. (Barca 2017b) 1

It is against this theoretical and political framework that I propose to reinterpret some of the key elements of Gorz’s legacy. THE GENERAL DEVELOPMENT OF GORZ’S THOUGHT I have referred above to a politico-ecological phase of Gorz’s reflection, whose theoretical effects were long-lasting despite its relatively brief temporal span. However, such an expression requires further explanation to avoid possible misunderstandings. It is fair to say that, from the 1960s onwards, Gorz’s thought revolved around the relationships amongst environmental crises, labor transformations, and capitalist development. Yet this set of themes needs to be carefully articulated against the background of his changing interests and analytical focuses—especially starting from the controversial Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism ([1980] 1987). Beyond the manifest—and yet quite generic— intellectual continuity that Gorz himself highlighted ([2008] 2010), 2 his trajectory and its legacy show a distinctive intermittent, varying feature due to the standpoints interpreters chose to privilege in emphasizing one element over the remaining two, and the specific character of their interrelation.

The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology

57

From this perspective Gorz’s politico-ecological phase—best expressed in the long essay Ecology as Freedom ([1977] 1980) 3—can be understood both as a thematic interest circumscribed to an approximate period and as the general framework from which different and apparently unrelated issues will be approached later on in his intellectual journey. Thus, in very general terms—and for purely heuristic purposes—I propose the following sequence: a first, fundamental encounter with Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism in the 1950s 4 led to a period (1960s) of renewed interest for classical Marxist questions, such as the tensions between reform and revolution and the political role of unions. 5 The long wave of May 1968 opens up the politico-ecological phase proper (1973–1978), on which I will shortly elaborate, while from 1980 onwards, Gorz critically engages the issue of labor in extremely innovative ways, both at the theoretical and empirical levels. 6 Later on, Gorz embarks on some of the most refined and pioneering research on cognitive capitalism and the unprecedented opportunities for liberation created by the global development of the internet. 7 Let me underline once again that such subdivision is meaningful only insofar as it clarifies some turning points that are worth exploring—in fact, even the borders between phases are not that clear cut and to a certain degree arbitrary. In particular, this periodization allows me to focus on the centrality of the 1973–1978 period by highlighting its two most important aspects: on one hand, the originality with regard to the left of Gorz’s time and, on the other hand, the founding function it performed for his future research. In fact, Gorz represents one of the very few leftist influential thinkers who actually understood the epoch-changing character of the ecological crisis and immediately grasped the challenge it posed in social terms. 8 In turn, such deep relation with ecology played a crucial role in his putting into question some traditional pillars of Marxism. After all, the civilization of liberated time, lived in full autonomy by individuals and collectives alike—that is to say, the Gorzian ecosocialist utopia par excellence—is nothing else than a conscious self-limitation with regard to biophysical limits coupled with the automation of productive process (namely, the reduction of socially necessary labor). THE POLITICO-ECOLOGICAL PHASE Gorz’s politico-ecological phase begins in 1973 with the publication of two books that, albeit in very different ways—one is theoretically more thorough; the other adopts a journalistic style 9—assume the emerging ecological crisis as a crucial challenge for rethinking a technically feasible and politically desirable socialist strategy. Such texts are the collection Critique de la division du travail (The Division of Labor [1973] 1976) and Critique du capitalisme quotidien (Capitalism in Crisis and Everyday Life

58

Emanuele Leonardi

[1973] 1977). Although it is fairly simple to detect within them an echo of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report, which had a significant impact on European public opinions, it should be stressed that Gorz postulated the centrality of environmental deterioration autonomously, as shown by a letter written in 1971 and addressed to the West German metalworkers’ union, IG Metall. 10 The main argument is that since economic crises are increasingly due to “rising costs of reproduction” (Gorz [1978] 1980, 70)—for example, environmental safeguard (ex ante) or clean up (ex post)—the union should firmly engage in a civilizational project grounded more on “extra-economic, ‘qualitative’ claims” (ibid., 72) than on wage-centered collective bargaining. In 1975 Écologie et politique is published; it is a collection of articles written in the two previous years for Le Sauvage and Le Nouvel Observateur. The book reworks and refines the specific Gorzian approach to the ecological crisis, namely a sociopolitical interpretation of environmental destruction. Assessing the 1973 oil shock, he writes in the preface to the Italian edition of the volume: Physical, ecological limits to growth have not been the main cause of the crisis. But they have accelerated it and made it worse from an economic perspective. Furthermore, they highlighted the absurdity of a system in which the growth of production goes hand in hand with that of inequality and unhappiness. The key importance of physical limits to growth does not lie in the new constraints they impose to capitalism—such system has outlived bigger threats—but in the civilizational choices they pose as inevitable: democracy of associate producers or planetary blockage; socialism or ecofascism. (1978b, 15–16, my translation)

In 1977 Gorz publishes Écologie et liberté, undoubtedly the fundamental moment of his politico-ecological phase, a long essay that allows him to focus on a number of theoretical questions beyond the structural limits of journalistic articles. The book represents an effort of systematization, a sort of conceptual balance sheet that will provide solid ground for the subsequent development of an original take on the crucial issue of wagelabor—its meaning, its function, its limits—that will subsequently develop into an original perspective on the nexus between basic income and individual as well as collective autonomy—their necessary co-presence and their articulation through liberated time. With a longer reprint of Écologie et politique in 1978—which includes Écologie et liberté—the politico-ecological phase can be considered concluded, although it is sufficient to recall the title of the postface to Farewell to the Working Class (1980)— “Destructive Growth and Productive Shrinking” 11—or the essays in Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology ([1991] 2013) to realize once again how a particular attention towards environmental issues plays a fundamental role also in the following phases of Gorz’s research.

The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology

59

THE TOPICALITY OF ÉCOLOGIE ET LIBERTÉ Let us now go back to Ecology as Freedom. Reading it in the 2010s, one cannot help feeling a bit disoriented towards a text that is at the same time extraordinarily pioneering and irremediably antiquated—antiquated, or outdated, because it does not refrain from the environmentalist gesture of dark foretelling. Here is one example: “We know that our present mode of life is without future; that the children we will bring into the world will use neither oil nor a number of now-familiar metals during their adult lives; that if current nuclear programs are implemented, uranium reserves will be exhausted by then” ([1977] 1980, 12). From the perspective of 2019—the point at which those hypothetical children would be approximately forty years old—we see the collapse of oil prices due to the converging pressures of a global crisis (reduced demand), significant investments in new extractive technologies (e.g., fracking), explorations of previously unreachable reservoirs (e.g., tar sands and shale gas), and unprecedented geopolitical tensions (e.g., wars in Libya and Syria). However, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. A mistaken prophecy alone does not invalidate an otherwise careful analytical procedure, for three reasons: first, because many believe peak oil has already been reached, so that a possible post-crisis scenario would present the same issue in an aggravated form; second, because nowadays the environmental crisis expresses itself in such multifarious modalities that possible past imprecisions are more than compensated by the emergence of new instances of noxiousness; third, because in Gorz the analysis of an environmentally dramatic situation is often necessary yet never sufficient for defining the political strategy that intends to face it. Here lies the anticipatory dimension of the book: the crisis of nature is not external to the economy, to society, or to politics. Rather, it is their extreme instance, their unavoidable symptom, the injunction in front of which procrastination is no option. Thus, Gorz is amongst the first to consider the ecological crisis in its non–self-sufficiency, in its impossibility to explain itself by itself. Such epochal challenge, in fact, opens up a deep crisis of Western productivism and of industrial capitalism that possesses a historical origin and requires a political solution. Moreover, the social desirability of this solution cannot be guaranteed in advance. Gorz warns several times about a possible techno-fascist outcome, namely, an authoritarian management of ecological issues: Ecology, as a purely scientific discipline, does not necessarily imply the rejection of authoritarian, technofascist solutions. The rejection of technofascism does not arise from a scientific understanding of the balances of nature, but from a political and cultural choice. Environmentalists use ecology as the lever to push forward a radical critique of our civilization and our society. But ecological arguments can also be used

60

Emanuele Leonardi to justify the application of biological engineering to human systems. (Ibid., 17)

The deterioration of biophysical equilibria creates a profoundly polarized scenario. In fact, only a comprehensive civilizational project—based on the tight linking of sustainability and autonomy—can effectively face the threat of despotism. Thus, the nexus between ecology and freedom is not a natural given, a state of affairs to be taken for granted. To the contrary, it must be produced, cared for, and eventually defended. As Catherine Larrère correctly noted, it is with Gorz that “ecology” becomes properly political (2014); before his interventions, the word used to indicate either a natural science—focused on the relationship between living beings and their environments—or a specific sector of the interplays between human beings and their surroundings, in particular, nature conservation or risk prevention. Quite differently, Gorz made ecology political and turned it into a global project for the transformation of society, able at the same time to overcome capitalism and redefine socialism beyond its productivist limits. In short, Gorz’s political ecology is a form of anti-capitalism, an activist-framed analysis of potential cracks within the logic of capital, a utopian effort to actualize—here and now—practices that unhinge the system of techno-economic compatibilities. About this key point, Gorz will never change his mind. In 2005, reflecting on climate change almost thirty years after Ecology as Freedom, he wrote, Mention of looming climate catastrophe generally leads to envisaging a necessary “change of mindset”, but the nature of that change, its conditions of possibility, and the obstacles to be overcome seem to defy all imagining. To envisage a different economy, different social relations, different modes and means of production, and different ways of life is regarded as “unrealistic”, as though the society based on commodities, wages, and money could not be surpassed. In reality, a whole host of convergent indices suggest that the surpassing of that society is already under way, and that the chances of a civilized exit from capitalism depend primarily on our capacity to discern the trends and practices that herald its possibility. (Gorz [2005] 2010, 8)

Thus, Gorz’s political ecology is the practical imagination of a future freed from the capitalist imperative to maximize profits at all costs. Its topicality is embodied precisely in this critical potential. ECOLOGY AND MARXISM I just argued that Gorz’s analyses of the ecological crisis tend to privilege its social dimension over its environmental side. That does not mean, however, that this latter is to be considered unimportant. Quite simply, Gorz believes that the best way to face the unavoidable issue of physical limits to growth is not to worship nature as a divine entity, to enact its

The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology

61

conceptualization as immediately normative, but to develop a theory of the relationship between the capitalist mode of production and its surrounding environment: Nature is not untouchable. The “promethean” project of “mastering” or “domesticating” nature is not necessarily incompatible with a concern for the environment. All culture encroaches upon nature and modifies the biosphere. The fundamental issue raised by ecology is simply that of knowing: • whether the exchanges, which human activity imposes upon or extorts from nature, preserve or carefully manage the stock of nonrenewable resources; and • whether the destructive effects of production do not exceed the productive ones by depleting renewable resources more quickly than they can regenerate themselves. (Gorz [1980] 1987, 21)

From this perspective, ecology and Marxism are perfectly compatible: while the latter focuses and criticizes the internal limits to productive activities, the former deals with its external limits and denounces their crossing when that is the case. On this basis Gorz can elaborate a twofold theory of the capitalist crisis in the 1970s—the first to openly put to question the growth paradigm elaborated from the 1930s to the 1950s and implemented in the following decade (Schmelzer 2016; Paulsson, this volume). On one hand, starting from the Marxist approach of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall—namely, the impossibility over the long run to substitute the valorizing function of living labor with dead labor crystallized in machinery—there is a situation of overproduction to which capital reacts through a number of counter-tendencies, amongst which are commodities’ planned obsolescence and the creation of artificial needs that are disentangled from their own use-values. On the other hand, Gorz sees a crisis of reproduction due to the ever-increasing costs capital has to bear to regenerate the environment (up to that point used as a free landfill) so that it can be polluted again—an operation whose consequence is a higher price of final products. In a fundamental passage of Ecology as Freedom, Gorz writes: This forward flight [planned obsolescence and artificial needs] which was in any event bound to culminate in economic crisis, came to a stop with the so-called oil crisis. The latter did not cause the economic recession; it merely revealed and aggravated the recessionary tendencies which had been brewing for several years. Above all, the oil crisis revealed the fact that capitalist development had created absolute scarcities: in trying to overcome the economic obstacles to growth, capitalist development had given rise to physical obstacles. (Ibid., 24)

Here we can clearly appreciate the complementarity between Marx’s critique of political economy and Georgescu-Roegen’s bioeconomy—and

62

Emanuele Leonardi

also between Marxism and degrowth. It is not by chance that Kallis, Demaria, and D’Alisa chose to open the introduction to their influential Degrowth: Vocabulary for a New Era with the following quote—with a modified translation—from Ecology as Freedom: Only one economist, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, has had the common sense to point out that, even at zero growth, the continued consumption of scarce resources will inevitably result in exhausting them completely. The point is not to refrain from consuming more and more, but to consume less and less—there is no other way of conserving the available reserves for future generations. This is what ecological realism is about. . . . Radicals who refuse to examine the question of equality without growth merely demonstrate that “socialism”, for them, is nothing but the continuation of capitalism by other means—an extension of middle class values, lifestyles, and social patterns. . . . Today a lack of realism no longer consists in advocating greater well-being through the degrowth and the subversion of the prevailing way of life. Lack of realism consists in imagining that economic growth can still bring about increased human welfare, and indeed that it is still physically possible. (2015, 13)

At least two remarks, however, seem necessary at this point. First, such a scheme works in the Gorzian framework only insofar as Marxism is devoid of any prophetic element: since the 1950s, in fact, Gorz has been skeptical towards the philosophy of history, and especially critical of the historicist tendencies of dialectical materialism (Gorz 1959). After all— and so we shift to the second remark—it is precisely to a linear, automatic, progressive interpretation of the succession of modes of production (feudal to capitalist to communist) that one can ascribe the elective affinity between the “official” labor movement (large unions and communist parties) and the productivist paradigm. Gorz masterfully shows how socialism, to be truly emancipatory, needs to break capital’s hegemony on economic policies and productive tools (Koch, this volume). By promoting growth as an all-encompassing panacea, such policies not only betray their mystificatory character (since class polarization has never ceased to get deeper and deeper) but also stick political imagination onto the surreptitiously neutral terrain of quantity. ILLICH’S INFLUENCE AND THE UTOPIA OF SELF-MANAGEMENT (AUTOGESTION) In order to break free from this only apparent neutrality of the quantitative, Gorz turns to Ivan Illich—an iconoclastic and eclectic thinker, another key precursor of degrowth (Kallis, Demaria, and D’Alisa 2015)— and in particular to his concept of conviviality as a qualitative critique of productivism and as an autonomous political perspective on the link

The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology

63

between society (individuals and collectives alike) and technical tools. By conviviality Illich means the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. . . . Present institutional purposes, which hallow industrial productivity at the expense of convivial effectiveness, are a major factor in the amorphousness and meaninglessness that plague contemporary society. (Illich [1973] 2001, 17–18)

Furthermore, Gorz borrows from Illich the crucial analysis of counterproductivity, namely, the tendency of modern institutions to cross a threshold beyond which they not only fail to achieve their goals but also make such achievement utterly impossible. In this way, beyond a certain degree of intensity, medicine produces disease, education disseminates ignorance, private cars lead to traffic jams, and so forth (Illich 1974). Similarly, Gorz stresses how, in the post–World War II era, capitalist development justified its thrust for accumulation through the necessity to satisfy populations’ basic needs but actually ended up producing new poverty (relative scarcity), on one hand, and an irreversible deterioration of the biosphere (absolute scarcity), on the other hand. Thus, for Gorz, ecology is not only the cold science of the external limits of economic activities but also and more importantly a form of life that encompasses individual autonomy both within communities’ lived world (monde vécu) (as threatened by the colonizing rationality of capital) and in connection with the surrounding environment (as menaced by ever-expanding processes of commodification). It is to be acknowledged, as Catherine Larrère (2014) suggests, that the link between autonomy as a guiding principle of political ecology and interdependence as the fundamental logic of scientific ecology remains problematic and needs to be ceaselessly revisited. All this, however, is not inconsistent with Gorz’s perspective. To the contrary, he maintains that the ecological crisis depends on the nefarious combination between capital’s economistic mindset and states’ administrative rationality, that is to say, on a simultaneous compression of communitarian autonomy and systemic interdependence. To prevent such a dark horizon from developing, it is thus necessary to build a comprehensive political project—self-management—and a practico-communicative tool to enact it—utopia. By self-management Gorz means the reappropriation of those creative capacities that have been subsumed by capital and atrophied by the state. As such, it is not a refusal of historical dynamics that sealed the coupling of capitalism and sovereignty; rather, it has been the process of redirect-

64

Emanuele Leonardi

ing it towards a convivial society. This point is clearly argued in the following passage: In short, self-management presupposes tools capable of being selfmanaged. The creation of these tools is technically feasible. It is not a question of reverting to cottage industry, to the village economy, or the Middle Ages, but of subordinating industrial technologies to the continuing extension of individual and collective autonomy, instead of subordinating this autonomy to the continuing extension of industrial technologies. (Gorz [1980] 1987, 40)

Quite evident in these words is an echo of Gorz’s critique of most European unions in terms of their attitude and in particular of their exclusive focus on wage-related demands—hence of the quantitative distribution of value—at the expense of what should be an equally important struggle, namely, the qualitative definition of the composition of production—hence of what should be produced and why, where, when, and by whom. In order to make the idea of self-management concretely visualizable and politically empowering, Gorz mobilizes the concept of utopia— despite a widespread skepticism within the Marxist tradition. 12 In fact, the last pages of Ecology as Freedom are titled “Possible Utopia” [Une utopie possible parmi d’autres]. The title is significant as it immediately evokes the practical dimension of the utopian process: the point is not to imagine an abstract future to which reality should conform sooner or later, to write down an aseptic list of prescriptions to be rigorously implemented. Quite the opposite: Gorz invites the multifarious galaxy of the left to share the attempt of shaping the contours of desirable society around a few fundamental claims. Being an open-ended and self-reflective process, his utopianism can be seen as nomadic (Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson, this volume). Quite significantly, he believes that such contours can already be perceived in the interstices of a decaying capitalist system. In the Gorzian utopia the president of the French republic proposes three policies to be immediately implemented: “We shall work less”; “We must consume better”; “We must re-integrate culture into the everyday life of all” (ibid., 44–45). It is this incompatible feasibility—namely, the astonishing juxtaposition of the political reasonability of self-management to the institutional violence of capitalistic states—that rips up the veil of ideological mystification and highlights the twofold character of Gorz’s utopia: immanent critique of the present state of affairs and material prefiguration of a new possible social structure. In temporal terms, the reference to a desirable future enacts already existing critical potentials in such a way that an opposition to the status quo immediately activates the construction of a new form of social organization previously unimaginable. Moreover, the link between utopia’s deconstructive and creative dimensions materializes into new forms of sociality that, at the very same time, ratify the obsolete nature of capitalist

The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology

65

relations of production and prefigure a new model of inclusive self-management. PROVISIONAL CONCLUSIONS I hope this critical assessment of Gorz’s political ecology fosters new dialogue between degrowthers and eco-socialists (Bond, this volume). The topicality of his thought, in fact, is not inscribed in his writings—no matter how insightful. Rather, it must be politically enacted. Common research agendas and practical alliances would make his legacy extremely useful, whereas the continuation of mutual disregard would amount to yet another missed opportunity. Stefania Barca is right in pointing out that an ecologically minded analysis of labor is the key to connecting degrowth and eco-socialism (2017a; 2017b). Gorz is fundamental for exploring such a connection, but his reflection obviously does not exhaust the issue (Barca, this volume) and, moreover, key shortcomings should be openly addressed—especially his lack of substantial engagement with feminism (Gregoratti and Raphael, this volume) and state theory (D’Alisa, this volume). As possible inspirations for further research, at least two points should be highlighted. First, the above-mentioned complementarity between Marx’s critique of political economy and Georgescu-Roegen’s bioeconomy is probably more problematic than it seems at first sight. To put it briefly, the bone of contention is the following: whereas the former assumes the environment as a secondary contradiction of capitalism, the latter sees it as the key constraint for every kind of economic system. From this specific standpoint, Gorz belongs to the Marxist tradition (Gollain 2014, 2018) and leaves open to us the task of thinking a deeper relationship between crises of overproduction and crises of reproduction. A promising starting point is to grasp growth not only as a capitalist imperative but also as an instance of the broader productivist logic (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson 2016). Here a fruitful contamination between Marxist analyses of accumulation as a capital’s strategy and Foucauldian critiques of growth as a biopolitical dispositif of subjectification becomes possible and may be worth further exploring (Leonardi 2017). 13 The second element I would like to propose concerns a historicization of the value-nature nexus against the background of recent phenomena such as the becoming-productive of the sphere of social reproduction (by means of a distinctive feminization of work), the rise of cognitive capitalism (through the digital revolution), and global financialization (as a key instance of contemporary governmentality). The basic premise of such an analysis is that whereas in the 1970s and 1980s economic thought posited the environment in terms of a constraint to valorization—think of the first wave of ecological industrial issues, that is, air and water pollution, nu-

66

Emanuele Leonardi

clear waste, and the depletion of natural resources, amongst others— neoliberal capitalism turns the environment into a driver of economic competition, a political surface upon which to produce new commodities (and value)—consider the second wave of environmental issues, that is, climate change, post-industrial biotechnologies, renewable energy, and the like. In other words, neoliberal economics is presently trying to transform environmental crises into profitable business opportunities, that is, to overcome the crisis of reproduction. The governmental device whereby capital internalizes nature as an element of valorization is the green economy paradigm, namely a neoliberal attempt to overcome the spectre of resource exhaustion on the basis of a further incorporation of the environmental limit as a new terrain for accumulation. Through the rhetoric of sustainability, and in full synergy with capital’s need for profit-making, this process is supposed to governmentally harmonize two elements once considered mutually exclusive: economic growth and environmental protection (Leonardi 2019). Although a critique of the green economy is a shared necessity in ecosocialist and degrowth circles alike—mostly because it has not concretely worked so far—the specific modality of such critique requires further attention. Here again, Gorz’s thought may prove fundamental. In his very last article—sent to the EcoRev’ journal in January 2007—he concludes an illuminating analysis of free software movements by stressing their potential ecological relevance: “High-tech self-providing equipment is rendering the industrial mega-machine virtually obsolete. Claudio Prado speaks of the ‘appropriation of technologies’, because the key that is common to all of them—information technology—can be appropriated by everyone” (Gorz [2007] 2010, 12). Gorz was overly optimistic, to be sure: such potential has not yet been actualized. But things do not happen by themselves: our collective goal should be making it a reality. And perhaps this may be the basis for a much-needed alliance between degrowthers and eco-socialists, towards an alternative system, “one not geared on economic growth” (Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson, this volume). REFERENCES Barca, S. 2014. “Laboring the Earth: Transnational Reflections on the Environmental History of Work”. Environmental History 19 (1): 3–27. Barca, S. 2017a. “The Labor(s) of Degrowth”. Capitalism Nature Socialism, September 11, 2017. doi: 10.1080/10455752.2017.1373300. Barca, S. 2017b. “The Labor(s) of Degrowth”. Entitle (blog), January 31, 2017. https:// entitleblog.org/2017/01/31/the-labors-of-degrowth/. Barca, S. 2017c. “Labour and the Ecological Crisis: The Eco-Modernist Dilemma in Western Marxism(s) (1980s–2010s)”. Geoforum 83, 91–100. Bloch, E. 1995. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology

67

Caillé, A., and C. Fourel, eds. 2013. Sortir du capitalisme: Le scénario Gorz. Lormont, France: Le Borde de L’eau. Chertkovskaya, E., and A. Paulsson. 2016. “The Growthocene: Thinking through What Degrowth Is Criticising”. Entitle (blog), February 19, 2016. https://entitleblog.org/ 2016/02/19/the-growthocene-thinking-through-what-degrowth-is-criticising/. Fourel, C., ed. 2013. André Gorz: Un penseur pour le XXI siècle. Paris: La Découverte. Gianinazzi, W. 2016. André Gorz: Une vie. Paris: La Découverte. Gollain, F. 2000. Une critique du travail: Entre écologie et socialisme. Paris: La Découverte. Gollain, F. 2014. André Gorz: Pour une pensée de l’écosocialisme. Paris: Le Passeger Clandestin. Gollain, F. 2018. André Gorz, une philosophie de l’émancipation. Paris: L’Harmattan. Gorz, A. (1958) 1989. The Traitor. London: Verso. Gorz, A. 1959. La morale de l’histoire. Paris: Seuil. Gorz, A. (1964) 1967. Strategy for Labor. Boston: Beacon. Gorz, A. 1969. Réforme et révolution. Paris: Seuil. Gorz, A., ed. (1973) 1976. The Division of Labor. Brighton, UK: Harvester. Gorz, A. (1973) 1977. Capitalism in Crisis and Everyday Life. Brighton, UK: Harvester. Gorz, A. 1978a. “Movimento operaio e progetto di civiltà”. In Ecologia e politica. Bologna: Cappelli. Gorz, A. 1978b. “Prefazione”. In Ecologia e politica. Bologna: Cappelli. Gorz, A. (1978) 1980. Ecology as Politics. Boston: South End Press. Gorz, A. (1980) 1987. Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism. London: Pluto Press. Gorz, A. (1988) 1989. Critique of Economic Reason. London: Verso. Gorz, A. (1991) 2013. Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology. London: Verso. Gorz, A. (1997) 1999. Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-based Society. London: Polity Press. Gorz, A. (2003) 2010. The Immaterial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gorz, A. (2007) 2010. “The Exit from Capitalism Has Already Begun”. Cultural Politics 6 (1): 5–14. Gorz, A. (2006) 2009. Letter to D.: A Love Story. London: Polity Press. Gorz, A. (2008) 2010. Ecologica. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Illich, I. (1973) 2001. Tools for Conviviality. London: Boyars. Illich, I. 1974. Medical Nemesis. London: Calder & Boyars. Kallis, G. 2017. In Defense of Degrowth: Opinions and Minifestos. Open Commons. https:// www.academia.edu/32949817/In_defense_of_degrowth_-_Giorgos_Kallis.pdf. Kallis, G., F. Demaria, and G. D’Alisa. 2015. “Introduction: Degrowth”. In Degrowth: Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by F. Demaria, G. D’Alisa, and G. Kallis, 1–17. London: Routledge. Larrère, C. 2014. “André Gorz (1923–2007)”. Histoire de l'écologie (blog), Fondation de l’Ecologie Politique, January 27, 2014. http://www.fondationecolo.org/blog/AndreGorz-%281923-2007%29. Leonardi, E. 2015. “Introduzione: L’ecologia politica di André Gorz”. In Ecologia e libertà, edited by A. Gorz and M. Bosquet, 9–25. Naples and Salerno, Italy: Orthotes Editrice. Leonardi, E. 2017. “For a Critique of the Green Economy: A Foucauldian Perspective on Ecological Crisis and Biomimicry”. Soft Power: Revista euro-americana de teoría e historia de la política 5 (1): 169–85. Leonardi, E. 2019. “Bringing Class Analysis Back In: Assessing the Transformation of the Value-Nature Nexus to Strengthen the Connection between Degrowth and Environmental Justice”. Ecological Economics 156: 83–90. Lesourt, E. 2011. André Gorz: Portrait du philosophe en contrebandier. Paris: L’Harmattan. Münster, A. 2008. André Gorz ou le socialisme difficile. Paris: Lignes. Muraca, B. 2013. “Décroissance: A Project for a Radical Transformation of Society”. Environmental Values 22 (2): 147–69. Schmelzer, M. 2016. The Hegemony of Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

68

Emanuele Leonardi

Schneider, F., G. Kallis, and J. Martínez-Alier. 2010. “Crisis or Opportunity? Economic Degrowth for Social Equity and Ecological Sustainability”. Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (6): 511–18.

NOTES 1. For an extended analysis see also Barca (2017a). 2. In a 2005 interview in EcoRev’ journal, Gorz states that he never abandoned Sartre’s approach to the notion of subjectivity. Said approach stems from the moral necessity to oppose the autonomy of each individual to the domination performed by social mega-machines. This is why Gorz saw both political ecology and hackers’ ethics as agents of liberation. 3. Écologie et liberté was published in French in 1977. It was then collected in the second edition of Écologie et politique, published in French in 1978, and subsequently translated into English in 1980. 4. See, for example, The Traitor ([1958] 1989) and La morale de l’histoire (1959). 5. See, for example, Strategy for Labor ([1964] 1967) and Réforme et révolution (1969). 6. See, for example, Farewell to the Working Class ([1980] 1987) and Critique of Economic Reason ([1988] 1989). 7. See, for example, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society ([1997] 1999) and The Immaterial ([2003] 2010). 8. There were, of course, notable exceptions, amongst which need to be mentioned Rudolf Bahro, Murray Bookchin, Barry Commoner, and Laura Conti. For a thorough investigation on these issues, see Barca (2014, 2017c). 9. The distinction between theoretical inquiry and journalistic investigation is relevant since the author (born in Austria, 1923, under the name Gerhart Hirsch, which in 1930 was modified to Gérard Horst following his father’s conversion to Catholicism, most probably due to a profoundly anti-Semitic context) chose the pseudonym André Gorz to sign theoretical works, while Michel Bosquet was used for journalistic articles. It is not by chance that Ecology as Freedom was the first book with a double signature. 10. The letter is not included in the French edition of Ecology as Politics and is not translated into English. However, it is included in the Italian edition of the book. 11. “Shrinking” here translates the French décroissance, which is literally “degrowth”. 12. Again, there are notable exceptions, especially Bloch (1995). 13. In a recent piece, Giorgos Kallis calls for a clearer distinction amongst concepts often used interchangeably: “growth”; “economic growth, that is, growth in GDP”; “capital accumulation”; and “‘Capitalism’” (2017, 84–85). I agree, and it is my conviction that applying a Foucauldian perspective to this issue may help in producing such clarification.

FOUR Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy Max Koch

Capitalist growth is neither socially inclusive nor ecologically sustainable. While in the rich countries the unequal distribution of wealth has reached the levels of the nineteenth century (Piketty 2014), the earth’s carrying capacity is being exceeded in relation to at least three planetary boundaries: climate change, the nitrogen cycle, and biodiversity loss (Rockström et al. 2009). The corollary is that economy and society and the associated production and consumption norms can no longer be considered as a system operating in a theoretical vacuum. Significant theoretical and empirical efforts have been made to demonstrate how socially inclusive development could evolve within ecological limits and beyond growth (Daly 1991; D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2014; Koch and Mont 2016). Against this background, ‘degrowth’ has been defined as ‘voluntary transition towards a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society’, with the ‘objective’ to ‘meet basic human needs and ensure a high quality of life’ (Research and Degrowth 2010, 523). Given the fact that two hundred years of capitalist growth have produced next to disastrous ecological and social results, one may indeed wonder why this model is being upheld at all. Increasing our knowledge about how this paradigm is inscribed into the basic social structures of economy and society as well as in people’s minds may help researchers and activists eventually overcome it. Particularly in relation to understanding and analyzing the structural obstacles to degrowth, this chapter argues that growth-critical scholarship could benefit from a deepening of exchanges with Marx’s critique of political economy. This chapter sets 69

70

Max Koch

out to analyze the continuing hegemony of the growth paradigm from this perspective. Its point of departure is the assumption that the hegemony of a discourse such as that of growth increases with the extent to which its social genesis is hidden and perceived as natural. It scrutinizes Marx’s argument in relation to the extent to which economic growth and the corresponding ideas of meritocracy as well as wealth, property, and social position as result of actors’ own achievements and work efforts are inherent to the social structures of the capitalist economy and how this is reflected in the actors’ minds. Emphasis is placed on how Marx explains the huge amounts of ideological power that ideas such as ‘labour and achievement’, ‘growth’, and ‘profit’, as well as ‘social position as result of own achievements’ possess—even among social strata that may ‘objectively’ be regarded as not benefiting from the continuation of capitalist growth. Hence, this chapter does not refer to various Marxisms and related more or less critical recent approaches (for such critical overviews, see the chapters from Buch-Hansen, Barca, and Leonardi in this volume), but reconstructs the argument in Marx’s original work. 1 How does Marx explain the reification and naturalization of capitalist economic categories and social relations as a result of which people feel it is worthwhile to display a strong work ethic and corresponding self-discipline? What makes people think a growing economy is the best context for their individual talents to thrive? The chapter proceeds as follows: The next section addresses the links between economic growth, meritocracy, and the work ethic. The second and third sections are dedicated to the hegemony of the growth paradigm by revisiting Marx’s critique of political economy, while the fourth section identifies areas for integration of the degrowth agenda and Marxinspired critical political economy. The conclusion summarizes the argument. GROWTH, MERITOCRACY, AND THE WORK ETHIC According to environmental historian McNeill (2000. 236) the ‘overarching priority of economic growth was easily the most important idea of the twentieth century’. And today, in the early twenty-first century, what Herman Daly (1972) first called the ‘growth paradigm’ is almost universally accepted. This paradigm presupposes that economic growth is ‘good, imperative, essentially limitless, and the principal remedy for a litany of social problems’ (Dale 2012b). The predominant approach in economics, the neoclassical perspective, tends to identify prosperity with not merely wealth but growing wealth (Soper and Emmelin 2016). It views economics as a repetitive cycle linking money and commodities as well as households and companies. A ‘return to capital’ basically means that the original capital spent, augmented by a surplus, returns to its

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

71

owner, and the process of capital valorization starts over again on a greater scale. In neoclassical theory, the production of goods and services is analyzed from the standpoint of the growth of monetary value, which is seen as indefinite, while the roles played by energy and natural resources in this production are not usually mentioned. Hence, the economy is conceptualized as if it were a closed system, within which flows of services and goods are compensated by financial flows in the opposite direction and whose coherence is guaranteed by the link of exchange alone, while use values, matter, energy, and nature in general are treated as if they were infinite and/or irrelevant. However, economics has not always been regarded as synonymous with a science of prices, economic value, and monetary growth. Angus Maddison (2007) empirically demonstrates that before the 1820s, when economic growth accelerated in the context of the Industrial Revolution, economic activity around the world had been characterized by periodic swings but expanded by an average of 0.05 percent annually only, and this was largely due to slow increase in populations (see, for more details, Büchs and Koch 2017, chapter 2). Though ancient civilizations and feudal societies knew commitments to accumulation of wealth, especially the expansion of territory and riches earmarked for particular purposes such as the building of palaces or pyramids, the pursuit of profit for its own sake tended to be seen as deviating from the norm. In medieval Europe, for example, economic interests tended to be subordinate to what Weber (1958) referred to as ‘salvation’. While political economists of the preindustrial period did not conceive growth in abstract, quantifiable terms (Dale 2012a and b), or as a principal policy goal for governments, this changed in the course of the nineteenth century, when the reduction of concrete use values, matter, and energy to abstract numbers and monetary magnitudes had begun to become a salient feature of economic life. In the first half of the twentieth century, this development reached a new level when, in 1932, the US Congress commissioned the economist Simon Kuznets to devise a means by which to measure the nation’s output. This resulted in the Gross National Product (GNP) and later the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure that estimated the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country per year, including the costs of government services (for further details, see Paulsson, in this volume). Hence, economic production data were collapsed ‘into a single number that would go up in the good times, and down in the bad’ (O’Neill 2013, 103). The regulation approach refers to the predominant growth strategy of the post-war period—sometimes referred to as the ‘golden age’ of capitalism—as ‘Fordism’ (Boyer and Saillard 2002), a ‘growth model’ characterized by a parallel restructuring of both the technological and organizational basis of the production process and the lifestyles and consumption patterns of the wage-earners. It took the form of a compromise or ex-

72

Max Koch

change between management and organized labour: Wage-earners could participate from productivity gains via wage increases, shortening of labour hours, and the establishment and expansion of welfare services, and accepted in return Taylorist management principles. These included a drastic separation between skills and control resources, which were largely monopolized by engineers and management, and simple and repetitive functions, to which the bulk of the labour force found itself reduced. The Fordist ‘class compromise’ was the political and economic background for fast growth rates in GDP and real wages as well as full employment of the male workforce (Koch [2006] 2017). The collective experience of a relatively high degree of social inclusion in combination with substantial gains in the consumption of mass-produced use values partially explains why so many people find the provision of welfare and the satisfaction of human needs in the absence of economic growth hard to imagine. In the circumstances of the post-war years, upward occupational mobility was indeed comparatively easy to achieve so that, more than before or after Fordism, one’s position in the societal hierarchy appeared to reflect one’s investments in education and workspace. This was also the view held by the then mainstream sociology of stratification. Davis and Moore (1945), among many others in the structural-functionalist perspective, claimed that an unequal distribution of incomes and rewards would in fact ensure that the most functionally important jobs would be filled by the best-qualified people. From this perspective, it makes perfect sense that the CEO of a company, whose position is seen as more important functionally, earns a far greater wage than simple manual workers of the same company. Yet the meritocratic idea is a constant feature of people’s day-to-day consciousness in all societies structured by the capitalist mode of production, that is, beyond the relatively short period of Fordism. Much of contemporary social life is guided by people’s belief that the more one invests into his or her career, the greater one’s rewards will be in terms of financial remuneration and the corresponding consumption of material goods during ‘leisure’. In the next sections I reconstruct the contribution of Marx’s critique of political economy to an understanding of the growth paradigm, the popularity of the work ethic, and the meritocratic idea— and how this is reflected in the economic agents’ minds. GROWTH IN MARX’S CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Unlike his classical political economy predecessors, Karl Marx (1990) witnessed a largely industrialized economy, where most labour products had taken the form of commodities and were produced for the purpose of exchanging them on markets. For Marx, the origin of the structural imperative of capitalist economies to expand in scale and grow, lies in the

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

73

logic of exchange relations, especially the money form. He compares and contrasts two kinds of exchange or ‘metamorphoses’ of commodity and money. In the first one—commodity-money-commodity—the purpose of the exchange is qualitative. Commodities are exchanged for their value equivalent in money, whereupon this money equivalent is exchanged for another commodity of use for the commodity proprietor. The role of money is that of a measure and store of value as well as that of a legal tender. By contrast, the purpose of the second metamorphosis—moneycommodity-money—is quantitative, since there is no qualitative difference between its origin and result: the production of more money compared to the original amount. Profits are due to the historically unique fact that a commodity is available for sale that has the use value of creating exchange value and can be used longer than the time period that represents the cost of its own reproduction: labour power. In the capitalist mode of production, wage earners are largely separated from their means of subsistence and production and have no alternative but to offer the only commodity at their disposal on ‘labour markets’. Likewise, the other ‘factors of production’—land, raw materials, fuels, auxiliaries, and so on—can be purchased on separate markets as ‘fictitious commodities’ (Polanyi 1944), and it is only through the intermediation of employers, who hold the necessary capital, that the various elements of the production process come together. Marx was aware of the structural tensions that exist in an economy geared to the growth of exchange value measured as money as a homogenous material entity, and the general principles of the work process based on heterogeneity of its natural and material ingredients, the combination of which is bound up with rearrangements of energy and matter (Burkett 1999; Koch 2012). While money and valorization are quantitatively unlimited and, hence, reversible, the earth’s stock of fossil fuels, in particular, is confined, and the existing stock can only be burnt once. It is irreversible. However, due to the subjugation of the work process by the valorization process, the recognition of the external, natural limits of production in general is severely complicated in capitalism and tends to take the form of rising costs on the supply side. It is ultimately due to the commodity form of labour products and to the corresponding separation of human producers from the means and objects of production that the economic system tends towards indifference with respect to its spatiotemporal and matter-energy specificities. The undermining of the material and ecological preconditions of the work process by the structural imperative towards valorization and growth is expressed in the application and defiance of natural laws. While this led to the unleashing of productive forces, especially in the early stages of capitalist development, the capitalist mode of production has increasingly been confronted with its external limits, which in more recent development stages have mani-

74

Max Koch

fested themselves in environmental imbalance, including potential ecological disasters such as climate change. Marx (1990, 429–38) explains the tendency of capitalist economies to expand in scale and grow in monetary terms through the production of ‘relative surplus value’. The profit rate can be improved not only by increasing the working hours of the wage-earners (‘absolute surplus value’) but also by shortening the part of their working day that is the equivalent to the workers’ physical and social reproduction. Yet the production of relative surplus value is caught up in an immanent contradiction: capital holders are permanently motivated to improve the technological and organizational basis of the work process in order to gain an advantage vis-à-vis their competitors. Normally this is done via a substitution of workers by machinery or by an improved organization of the internal division of labour. If employers achieve an above-average productivity level, they realize an extra profit, as they are capable of selling their commodities at prices below the normal level. However, such an improvement of production methods tends to be emulated by competitors, and the extra profit disappears. To the extent to which the new productivity level becomes the new standard, a given quantity of commodities is now produced with less labour effort than previously so that the price of a single commodity decreases. While the rate of surplus of the employed workers increases, the absolute volume of profit decreases since fewer workers are needed to produce a given number of commodities than before. To keep the volume of profit stable in these circumstances, the overall scale of production must be expanded through a reinvestment of previous profit or ‘accumulation’ of capital. Subsequently, Marx (1990, part IV) considers the development of the division of labour under capitalist auspices, that is, how, through the application of natural forces and the natural sciences, work processes became independent from individual crafts and qualifications. The Industrial Revolution introduced tools and machinery that reduced the role of many individual workers to that of an ‘appendage’. The expansion of production and economic growth went hand in hand with increases in the throughput of raw materials and auxiliary substances, especially fossil fuels. However, greater efficiency in the use of a fossil energy source leads to an increase in demand—not to a decrease—and in fact constitutes a necessary precondition for further capital expansion and economic growth (see Paulsson on the ‘Jevons Paradox’, in this volume). This expansion has affected the carbon cycle in calamitous ways, since ‘existing barriers, both social and natural (such as operating within the regulative laws of natural cycles)’ are constantly being transcended, while at the same time ‘new barriers (such as natural limits and rifts in metabolic cycles)’ (Clark and York 2005, 407) are being created in the continuous search for profit and growth.

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

75

The second and third volumes of Capital are dedicated to the fact that capital does not only exist in its productive, that is, industrial, form but also as money and commodity capital. Competition forces individual companies to reduce the two unproductive functions of the capital cycle and, hence, to speed up the overall turnover process as much as possible. While the matter and energy transformation processes associated with all work processes have an irreversible and linear character, the structural imperative towards increasingly rapid turnover cycles is characterized by ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey 1990) and a tendency towards temporal and geographic ‘simultaneity’. To summarize Marx’s perspective on the growth imperative vis-à-vis the earth system’s guiding principles, capitalism is oriented towards unlimited and short-term valorization, quantitative and geographic expansion, and circularity and reversibility, while the principles that steer the ecological system involve stable and sustainable matter and energy transformations and throughputs as well as irreversibility. Though capitalist development cannot and does not get rid of the use-value element and of the material and energy side of production altogether, it nevertheless tends to negate and dispel them as much as possible. From the standpoint of individual capital, costs arising from the degradation of the environment are faux frais of production, which are, whenever possible, carried over to the general public—the taxpayer. THE CONVERSION OF SPECIFICALLY SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND STRUCTURES INTO NATURAL PHENOMENA In what ways do the social relations and ways in which the actors interpret them correspond to the economic forms and structural imperatives that result in expanded capital valorization and, hence, economic growth? In order to bring hidden socio-economic structures to light, Marx advocates a successive rise from abstract to concrete economic categories, social relations, and modes of consciousness. During the research process, one would move towards increasingly simpler and thinner abstractions. Having arrived at the ‘simplest determinations’ possible, ‘the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of the whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations’ (Marx 1973, 147). To the various levels of abstraction in which Marx’s critique of political economy enfolds there correspond particular social relations and forms of consciousness through which people make sense of these categories and relations—their daily work practice. Since these forms are increasingly distorted, we may, following Herkommer (1985), refer to the process of conversion of social relations into features of things and nature as a ‘stepladder of mystifications’.

76

Max Koch

Marx’s point of departure is, again, the ‘twofold character’ of the commodity as having exchange value and use value. However, as Marx demonstrates in the section on the fetish character of the commodity (Marx 1990, chapter 1), it is far from to be taken for granted that labour products are made for exchange purposes on markets. But to the economic agents the commodity’s characteristic of abstractly embodying exchange value appears just as natural as its concrete use value. This is obvious in the case of metals such as gold and silver that were historically used as money: On top of their other use values, they seem to have the natural quality to define societal wealth as ‘general equivalent’. Marx characterizes the exchange of commodities and money as a ‘simple’ version of the total valorization process of capital insofar as these merely mediate the productive processes that lie beyond them. From the perspective of the simple circulation of commodities, the only supposition available to an individual commodity holder, which is consonant with the equivalence principle of exchange, of how an economic agent originally became possessed of his or her commodity is by ‘his [or her, MK] own labour and that of his [or her, MK] forefathers’ (Marx 1990, 728). Since current possessions of wealth in the form of commodities and money appear to presuppose previous own work, a disciplined work ethic seems to be a rational individual strategy in order to participate in societal wealth—and the more one works the greater will be his or her yield in this wealth. In the production process the intermediation of employers combines labour power with the land, raw materials, fuels, and the like. Increasing productivity seems to be a natural feature of capital and not an outcome of the socialized character of work. This ‘capital fetish’ is amplified by the wage form according to which all work appears to be compensated (Marx 1990, chapter 19). In any monetary amount of wage, the difference between necessary and surplus labour has disappeared so that all labour that the worker carried out seems to have been remunerated. Marx regards this ‘wage fetish’ as the structural basis for all further mystifications: industrial profit as well as its subcategories (rents and interests) must then have other sources than surplus labour and seem to naturally originate from different functional roles in ‘the’ economy. In the ‘trinitary formula’, where capital generates profit, land generates rent, and labour generates wage, the reification and naturalization of specifically social processes is taken to extremes. The specifically capitalist social world is transformed into an ‘enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time as mere things’ (Marx 2006, chapter 48). When analyzing the valorization process of capital over time (‘accumulation’), Marx (1990, 728) observes that there is ‘not one single atom of its value that does not owe its existence to unpaid labour’. Hence, instead

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

77

of resulting from previous own work, the ‘ownership of past unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increasing scale’ (Marx 1990, 729) so that the ‘laws of appropriation or of private property . . . become by their own inner and inexorable dialectic changed into their very opposite’. The original ‘exchange of equivalents’ turns out to be a ‘mere semblance belonging only to the process of circulation’, a ‘mere form, which is alien to the content of the transaction itself, and merely mystifies it’ (Marx 1990, 729–30). This formal relationship between capital and labour in fact merely introduces their actual interaction in the production process, resulting in the ‘constant appropriation by the capitalist, without equivalent, of a portion of the labour of others’ (Marx 1990, 330). Hence, the focus on markets and exchange operations, which characterizes much of neoclassic reasoning, suggests equivalence of commodity values and equality of exchange partners. And as commodity rights and wealth appear to stem from own work, an optimal individual contribution towards GDP growth via own work efforts must be perceived as a rational strategy. Yet when also considering the sphere of production and accumulation, ‘property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and the impossibility, on the part of the worker, of appropriating his [or her, MK] own product. The separation of property from labour thus becomes the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity’ (Marx 1990, 730). This transfer of surplus labour, however, is hidden through the continuing distortion of specifically capitalist economic categories and social relations into objects and natural features along the stepladder of mystifications. As a corollary, all labour seems to be paid and profit results from other sources than surplus labour, while the capitalist mode of production and its inherent growth paradigm appears to be the natural way of running ‘the’ economy per se. POTENTIALS FOR A RAPPROCHEMENT OF DEGROWTH AND MARX’S CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY The above discussion of the growth paradigm in the context of Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production and its perception as a natural phenomenon may suffice as indication that a deeper engagement with the critique of political economy within growth-critical scholarship is worthwhile. Marx’s emphasis on the role of productive forces in historical economic development does not need to be interpreted in a ‘Promethean’ way, despite the fact that several growth-critical researchers have tabled the view that Marx would have advocated the unfettered development of these forces regardless of the environmental costs involved. This view is largely based on O’Connor’s assertion that Marx and Engels

78

Max Koch

would have ‘underestimated the extent to which the historical development of capitalism has been based on the exhaustion of resources and degradation of nature’ (O’Connor 1998, 124). For Marx and Engels, labour is the connecting link between nature and human beings, who, in order to survive, must interact with it and transfer natural raw materials into use values. By analogy with the work of Justus Liebig and other German physiologists during the 1830s and 1840s who had employed the concept of ‘metabolism’ in relation to tissue degradation (Burkett and Foster 2006), Marx (1990) characterized the interaction between human beings and nature in the labour process as an anthropological constant, the ‘everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence’. Hence, while Marx and ecological economists in the Georgescu-Roegen (1971) tradition could easily have agreed on the fact that this metabolism constitutes the universal condition upon which human life is sustained, the latter may have parted company when the former asserted that the notion of ‘production in general’ is no more than ‘a rational abstraction in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element’ (Marx 1973, 320). Marx emphasizes that beyond this ‘common element’ of all work processes, real production processes and the associated relationships between the economic agents and nature take place in specific social forms that have hitherto included patterns of exploitation and inequality—a fact that is hidden in the capitalist case and perceived as natural. A certain development of what Marx (1875) elsewhere calls the ‘division of labour’ is the necessary precondition for the ‘all-round development of individuals’ and their ‘productive powers’. An advanced division of labour is also necessary for ‘all the wellsprings of co-operative wealth’ to ‘flow more strongly’ and for society to ‘inscribe on its banner: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. In fact, the centrality of human needs may serve as common denominator that has the potential of uniting the Marxian and degrowth traditions (Koch, Buch-Hansen, and Fritz 2017; Büchs and Koch 2019; Helne and Hirvilammi, in this volume). Far from viewing economic growth as an ahistorical and quasi-eternal goal of economic action and policymaking, Marx regarded economic expansion as a temporary and historically specific necessity to reach a development stage in which basic needs can be satisfied relatively easily and where social actors are able to devote more time to purposes other than economic ones. This is especially obvious in his distinction between the ‘realm of freedom’, which ‘lies beyond the sphere of actual material production’, and the ‘realm of physical necessity’ of material production, which is not totally terminable but temporarily reducible. Consequently, and similar to several degrowth researchers, Marx viewed the ‘shortening of the working-day’ as the basic prerequisite for the realm of freedom to ‘blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis’ (Marx 2006, chapter 48). By contrast, without a certain development of productivity, human beings cannot freely and in associated ways deter-

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

79

mine the quantity and quality of use values necessary to satisfy their needs. In relation to the ‘great’ social and ecological transition necessary to embark on degrowth trajectories, the Marxian tradition could make an important contribution, particularly through its capability of analyzing the social structures of contemporary capitalism, its regulation and energy regimes, and the ideological forms that correspond to it, as well as through the identification of political strategies to overcome it (Ougaard 2016). However, in order to play a useful role within degrowth theorizing, Marx-inspired social, economic, and ecological thought would need to rid itself completely of the ‘growth mania’ (Daly 1991) that has been, as demonstrated above, undeservedly attributed to Marx himself but that nevertheless dominated twentieth-century Marxist approaches. In this situation, it is encouraging that there are contemporary Marxists who unequivocally state that ‘policies based on growth have no future, whether or not they are implemented by socialist-inspired states’ (Alvarez Lozano 2012, 77; see Li 2013). This is an important insight on the basis of which a productive dialogue between degrowth research and Marx-inspired scholarship can evolve (Buch-Hansen 2018). However, there are also likely to be disagreements between the two research traditions that should be articulated in respectful and constructive ways. These include the issue of the division of labour of property forms. Steady-state economists and many degrowth approaches do not seem to problematize the link between the dominance of markets and private property in contemporary societies, on the one hand, and the generation of profit and economic growth, on the other. By contrast, any analysis of the social structures of transnational and finance-driven capitalism in the Marxian tradition is likely to result in a more substantial critique of the dominance of private property over other property forms and of ‘market solutions’ to social and ecological issues in particular. Though the acceptance of a plurality of property forms in any postgrowth society may be a common denominator, overcoming the fossilfuel basis of capitalist development and addressing global inequality would necessitate much narrower limitations of the market as a steering and allocation instrument than currently is the case. Marx-inspired scholarship in general and critical political economy in particular are also likely to be aware of the fact that reaching an agreement on a global degrowth trajectory will be far from easy (Buch-Hansen, in this volume). The extraordinary high structural obstacles for such a transition include the hegemony of the capital valorization and growth discourse and the ensuing lack of political will; the widespread and deeply ingrained consumer culture in the overdeveloped countries, which is ‘successfully’ exported to the rest of the world; and a massive concentration of economic resources and power in the hands of organizations and individuals who profit from a continuation of the current growth model. Yet, since such a

80

Max Koch

transition to a global steady-state economy would serve the interest of the large majority of this planet’s people—not to mention the unborn generations—there is some ground for hope that degrowth ideas will eventually become hegemonic. CONCLUSION Based on Marx’s critique of political economy, this chapter has pointed to some of the difficulties in overcoming the ‘growth paradigm’ through a degrowth transition. Not only are core economic categories and growthrelated social structures, such as the use of commodities and money, the growth imperative as well as the work ethic, and the meritocratic illusion, deeply inscribed into key features of the capitalist mode of production but they are also perceived as the natural state of things. Indeed, given the enormous structural power and robustness of this paradigm, it is not coincidental that burnout experiences are not infrequent among environmental activists. However, if bringing hidden social structures to light can help eventually overcome them, it is here where the significance of Marx can hardly be overestimated. We initially revisited the post-war era in which economic growth could become associated with the solution of a range of societal issues from poverty to the arms race. Three decades of Fordist upswing facilitated individual upward mobility so that ideas of ‘achievement’, that is, wealth and social position as resulting from own work and investments, could become especially prevalent. Yet our discussion of Marx’s critique of political economy demonstrated that the idea that economic growth and the corresponding work ethic is beneficial to all goes beyond the specific post-war circumstances and is deeply rooted in the economic categories and social structures of the capitalist mode of production. In fact, from the common perspective of market transactions, the only way in which one can become a property owner in the first place appears to be through previous own labour. The corollary is that the more one works, the greater one’s share in societal wealth seems to be. However, when also considering the spheres of production and accumulation, it turns out that property ownership normally presupposes the appropriation of the unpaid labour of others. And by always considering not only economic categories but also the associated social relations and modes of consciousness, Marx succeeds in demonstrating that this transfer of surplus labour is hidden by what we referred to as a stepladder of mystifications. As a corollary, all labour seems to be paid, so that profit in its various forms appears to arise from other sources than (surplus) labour. Given the conversion of specifically social relationships and structures into natural phenomena, degrowth activists would be well advised to consider the fact that most people feel totally at home in what Marx called the ‘topsy-turvy world’ of the ‘trinitary form’, where wage

Growth and Degrowth in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

81

labour contributes to national product on the same footing and in natural harmony with profits and rents—and conclude from this that it is worthwhile to contribute to economic growth, especially through hard work. REFERENCES Alvarez Lozano, L. J. 2012. ‘Withdrawal from Growth: The Environmental Challenge for Twenty-First-Century Socialism’. International Critical Thought 2 (1): 71–82. Boyer, R., and Y. Saillard, eds. 2002. Régulation Theory: The State of the Art. London: Taylor & Francis. Buch-Hansen, H. 2018. ‘The Prerequisites for a Degrowth Paradigm Shift: Insights from Critical Political Economy’. Ecological Economics 146: 157–63. Büchs, M., and M. Koch. 2017. Postgrowth and Wellbeing: Challenges to Sustainable Welfare. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Büchs, M., and M. Koch. 2019. ‘Challenges for the Degrowth Transition: The Debate about Wellbeing’. Futures 105: 155–65. Burkett, P. 1999. Marx and Nature. A Red and Green Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Burkett, P., and J. B. Foster. 2006. ‘Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: Beyond the Podolinsky Myth’. Theory and Society 35 (1): 109–56. Clark, B., and R. York. 2005. ‘Carbon Metabolism: Global Capitalism, Climate Change, and the Biospheric Rift’. Theory and Society 34 (4): 391–428. Dale, G. 2012a. ‘Critiques of Growth in Classical Political Economy: Mill’s Stationary State and a Marxian Response’. New Political Economy 18 (3): 431–57. Dale, G. 2012b. ‘The Growth Paradigm: A Critique’. International Socialism, no. 134. http://isj.org.uk/the-growth-paradigm-a-critique/. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, eds. 2014. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Daly, H. E. 1972. ‘In Defense of a Steady-State Economy’. American Journal of Agricultural Economy 54: 945–54. Daly, H. E. 1991. Steady-State Economics. Washington, DC: Island Press. Davis, R., and W. E. Moore. 1945. ‘Some Principles of Stratification’. American Sociological Review 10 (2): 242–49. Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge: Blackwell. Herkommer, S. 1985. Einführung Ideologie. Hamburg, Germany: VSA. Koch, M. (2006) 2017. Roads to Post-Fordism: Labour Markets and Social Structures in Europe. London: Routledge. Koch, M. 2012. Capitalism and Climate Change: Theoretical Discussion, Historical Development and Policy Responses. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Koch, M. 2018. ‘The Naturalisation of Growth: Marx, the Regulation Approach and Bourdieu’. Environmental Values 27 (1): 9–27. Koch, M., H. Buch-Hansen, and M. Fritz. 2017. ‘Shifting Priorities in Degrowth Research: An Argument for the Centrality of Human Needs’. Ecological Economics 138: 174–81. Koch, M., and O. Mont, eds. 2016. Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare. London: Routledge. Li, M. 2013. ‘The 21st Century: Is There an Alternative (to Socialism)?’ Science and Society 77 (1): 10–43. Maddison, A. 2007. Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

82

Max Koch

Marx, K. 1875. Critique of the Gotha Programme. Marxists. https://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/. Marx, K. 1973. Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Marx, K. 1990. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. London: Penguin Classics. Marx, K. 2006. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 3. London: Penguin Classics. McNeill, J. R. 2000. Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. O’Connor, J. 1998. Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York: Guilford Press. O’Neill, D. 2013. ‘Gross Domestic Product’. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria, and G. Kallis. London: Routledge. Ougaard, M. 2016. ‘The Reconfiguration of the Transnational Power Bloc in the Crisis’. European Journal of International Relations. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/ 1354066115589616. Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Polanyi, K. 1944. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press. Research and Degrowth. 2010. ‘Degrowth Declaration of the Paris 2008 Conference’. Journal of Cleaner Production 18: 573–82. Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. S. Chapin, E. Lambin, T. M. Lenton, et al. 2009. ‘Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity’. Ecology and Society 14 (2): 32. Soper, K., and M. Emmelin. 2016. ‘Reconceptualising Prosperity: Some Reflections on the Impact of Globalisation on Health and Welfare’. In Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare, edited by M. Koch and O. Mont, 44–58. London: Routledge. Weber, M. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.

NOTE 1. While this chapter focuses on Marx and the naturalization of growth in capitalist production relations, Koch (2018) also considers the regulation approach as well as Bourdieu and the social mechanisms due to which consumption-related structures of inequality are perceived as natural differences of taste.

FIVE The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’ Maria Mies’s and Marilyn Waring’s Critiques of Growth Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

Amongst a number of feminist researchers, scholars, and activists, there seems to be little or no doubt that, despite the claims to inclusivity and transformative ethos that animates it, the degrowth debate has been for the larger part uninterested in feminism (Wichterich 2015). Christine Löw notes that important texts in the degrowth literature have steadily ignored issues of ‘gender, gender relations, women or feminism’ (Löw 2015, 5). Marxist feminist Antonella Picchio (2015, 210) argues that degrowth extensively discusses production and consumption but overlooks the ‘sex and class body-politics of social reproduction’. Likewise, for Christine Bauhardt (2014, 60–69) gender blindness is manifest in a consistent reluctance to consider gender hierarchies as constitutive of the capitalist mode of production and gender equality as an aim in the organization of transition to a post-growth economy. While such critiques signal a feminist politicisation of debates on degrowth (see Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson, this volume), they come at a time in which degrowth scholars/activists ostensibly appear to be reaching out to feminism. The volume Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, for instance (probably the most representative publication of the last few years, featuring more than fifty authors and translated into several languages), includes ‘care’ and ‘feminist economics’ as two out of its fifty-one entries and places feminist economics alongside Buen Vivir, Ubuntu, and Economics of Permanence as one of the allies of degrowth 83

84

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

(D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015; cf. also Kallis, Kerschner, and Martínez-Alier 2012, 179). Feminist perspectives are also progressively gaining visibility and recognition in degrowth conferences. A count of feminist papers appearing on all of the degrowth conference programmes since 2008 suggests that a major turning point occurred in conjunction with the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014. Gravitating towards a dialogue with degrowth are feminist interventions centred on care, the commons, and a sufficiency-based economy (Wichterich 2014; Akbulut 2017). In early 2017, the launch of ‘FaDa’—the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance—marked yet another step in the direction of a more consolidated dialogue between degrowth and one of its possible ‘allies’. While these are certainly timely and welcome developments, we believe that a solid feminism-degrowth alliance can only be built upon a different narrative of degrowth and a deeper understanding of what (eco)feminist 1 critique(s) can bring to degrowth debates and practices. Like Christine Löw (2015), we are concerned that most review essays and anthologies on degrowth either ignore feminism and gender altogether (e.g., Kallis et al. 2018) or engage with it scantly. In the first part of the chapter we closely scrutinise these texts and note (1) how the intellectual history of degrowth continues to be narrated turning a blind eye to ecofeminist authors and (2) that feminism is conflated with a handful of concepts and approaches. Christa Wichterich, on the other hand, firmly situates an ecofeminist critique of ‘neo-colonial patterns of overproduction and overconsumption’ as part of the second-wave critique of growth developed in the 1980s and emerging around the 1990s (Wichterich 2014). Taking this cue forward, and as a way to recentre ecofeminist thought within degrowth debates, the subsequent parts of the chapter engage with the past and more recent writings of Maria Mies’s and Marilyn Waring’s critiques of growth. From the 1980s onwards, both have situated such a critique at the nexus between patriarchy, capitalism, and ecological degradation, from the global to local level. Yet they also substantially differ in their proposals for socio-economic change. The chapter argues that at times when an alliance with feminism is sought, the degrowth conversation ought to not only recognize ecofeminist critics of growth in its intellectual history/ies but also engage with the distinct theoretical contributions, strategies, and proposals for change emanating from them. If, as mentioned before, care and feminist economics have become part of degrowth’s conceptual milieu, Mies’s ‘subsistence perspective’ and Waring’s ‘feminist accounting’ should, amongst others, also feature in deeper and more historicised feminist-degrowth dialogues.

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

85

NARRATING DEGROWTH AS IF FEMINISTS AND FEMINISM MATTERED In the 2010s, degrowth has enjoyed the publication of a number of review essays (Demaria et al. 2013; Petridis, Muraca, and Kallis 2015; D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015; Martínez-Alier 2012; Muraca 2013, Kallis et al. 2018), which offer largely converging visions of where the degrowth idea comes from and the key intellectual figures contributing to its development. This intellectual history is usually narrated in two acts featuring a number of intellectual performers and sources. In the first act, the story commences in the 1970s with debates on resource limits. It is around that decade that Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen publishes The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, French intellectual André Gorz coins the term décroissance (see Leonardi, this volume), and Herman Daly proposes a steadystate economy. The second act of the intellectual history is one in which degrowth is said to dovetail with post-developmentalist critiques of sustainable development—notably associated with Serge Latouche—to then expand its conceptual and methodological reach to the economics of happiness and voluntary simplicity, democracy and justice (Demaria et al. 2013; Petridis, Muraca, and Kallis 2015). Barbara Muraca and Matthias Schmelzer (2017) have taken a slightly different approach to the history of degrowth by charting its precursor and roots geographically, identifying an English-speaking critique of growth, a Southern European degrowth perspective, and a German discussion on alternatives to growth. While these historical narratives are often introduced with a number of caveats such as the impossibility of associating degrowth with a single author, text, or region of the world, their mere repetition runs the danger of becoming a disciplining and exclusionary canon that converges towards a handful of mostly male, mostly white intellectuals while consistently eluding feminist sources and authors. To be sure, these have not completely ignored feminists. Occasional references to anarco-feminist Emma Goldman as well as ecofeminists such as Françoise d’Eaubonne, Marilyn Waring, and those associated with the so-called Bielefeld School do exist (Martínez-Alier 2012; Demaria et al. 2013; D’Alisa, Deriu, and Demaria 2015, 9; Muraca and Schmelzer 2017) but a systematic engagement with these or an acknowledgement that ecofeminism may be a substantive source of knowledge for degrowth are strikingly absent. For example, an article titled ‘What Is Degrowth?’ (Demaria et al. 2013) identifies six sources of the degrowth imaginary, none of which acknowledges the contributions forwarded by ecofeminist scholars with their critique of Western science and cultural dualisms, of ‘development’, of homo economicus, and of capitalism itself (Merchant 1980; Mies 1998, 2005; Plumwood 1993; Nelson and Ferber 1993; Nelson 1996; GibsonGraham 1996; Mellor 1997; Salleh 1997). In so doing, the article misses the opportunity of mentioning a number of original concepts that ecofemin-

86

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

ist authors have put forth in the past two decades, all relevant to the six sources of degrowth: ‘earthcare’ or ‘partnership ethic’ (Merchant 1996), ‘caring economy’ (Jochimsen and Knobloch 1997), ‘subsistence perspective’ (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999), ‘community economy’ (Gibson-Graham 2006), ‘eco-sufficiency’ (Salleh 2009), ‘(re)productivity’ (Biesecker and Hofmeister 2010). 2 The authors do admit that their intellectual history is not exhaustive and that various sources, including feminism and the gender aspects of degrowth, should be ‘further elaborated’ (Demaria et al. 2013, 205–6). But the absence of ecofeminism amongst degrowth sources remains a puzzling issue, all the more so considering the crucial importance that this latest wave of degrowth scholarship accords to care. A similarly reductive rendition of the richness and variety of feminist scholarship is reflected in the above-mentioned degrowth Vocabulary. In their ‘Introduction’, Kallis, Demaria, and D’Alisa claim that ‘care’ is one of two pillars—together with ‘commoning’—upon which the degrowth imaginary is centred (2015, 3), they also write that ‘growth is unjust . . . because it is subsidized and sustained by invisible reproductive work in the household’ (2015, 6) attributing to feminist economics the insight that this work is largely performed by women. Finally, they locate care amongst a list of anti-utilitarian social relations that are being commodified in order to increase GDP. Yet they fail to acknowledge how all three ideas—the social value of reproductive work, its invisibility in the economic discourse, and, more recently, its subsumption in the sphere of capitalist value—come from the feminist critique of political economy, which has raised and extensively debated them since the early 1970s. Surprisingly, the reference list of their introduction does not include any feminist author. The Vocabulary does, however, feature an entry on care (as a gendered practice and ethics), written by two of the book editors (D’Alisa and Demaria) together with Marco Deriu, which alludes to ecofeminism but does not engage with any concepts of ecofeminist thought listed above. Meanwhile the entry on ‘feminist economics’ by Antonella Picchio acts as a powerful reminder that degrowth is neither piercing enough in its critique of capitalism nor ‘deep enough to reveal the complexities of real lives and the use of women’s activities to make it sustainable’ (Picchio 2015, 210). So why does a reluctance to acknowledge and engage with the depth and breadth of ecofeminist knowledge continue to linger on? For Ariel Salleh (2009, 9–10), this lack of recognition is ‘not at all surprising’ since environmental and economic analyses are still marred by masculine ontologies and epistemologies that displace and erase the materiality of and gendered embodiment in nature. To a large extent, within degrowth, the reproduction of androcentric habits of might also reside in the fact that degrowth’s alleged ‘founding fathers’ (particularly Serge Latouche, but also Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, André Gorz and Jacques Ellul) did not

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

87

in fact consider how economic growth is predicated on intersecting forms of oppression—of class, race, and gender. This is a perspective that some feminist scholars were developing in the late 1980s, mostly inspired by two seminal works: Maria Mies’s Patriarchy and Accumulation on the World Scale (1986) and Marilyn Waring’s Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth (1988). Though in different ways, both authors were concerned with the theoretical and practical connection between growth, the oppression of women, and ecological degradation, hence their work was foundational to the ecofeminist critique of political economy and to the related field of feminist political ecology (McMahon 1997; Salleh 2009; Harcourt and Nelson 2015). So far the chapter has signaled that a rapprochement or an alliance between degrowth and feminism has still quite some way to go. What may be needed—we contend—is not to recast existing intellectual histories by ‘stirring feminists in’ (cf. Perkins 2010) but to critically engage with this early scholarship, appreciating its historical significance and unique contributions to contemporary degrowth debates. Though converging towards a reckless critique of the growth paradigm, these two currents of thought have remained separate for too long. This reflection is needed not only in order to form a solid basis for a degrowth-ecofeminism alliance but also in order to help the degrowth scholarship to overcome some internal limitations, such as the portrayal of ‘care’ as the overarching concern of feminism and the lack of consideration for the sexual division of labour as constitutive of capitalist growth and its socioecological costs (Picchio 2015; Barca 2019). In what follows, we offer our contribution to the revision of degrowth’s conceptual foundations by focusing on the work of Mies and Waring. Both are feminist scholars, activists, and public intellectuals broadly associated with ecofeminism (McMahon 1997) and both continue to be important referents for feminists of different theoretical persuasions speaking to, with, and about degrowth (Perkins 2010; Brownhill, Turner, and Kaara 2012; Bauhardt 2014; Wichterich 2015). We offer a review of their major scholarly works and critically interrogate how they inform and add to themes emerging in the degrowth literature. To some extent, the remainder of this chapter may also provide a partial answer to a question circulated by FaDa in conjunction with its launch: ‘Imagine you were to give a course about FaDa, which would be the essential readings?’ We identified Mies and Waring as essential readings for this hypothetical course.

88

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

MARIA MIES: PATRIARCHY, ACCUMULATION AND THE SUBSISTENCE PERSPECTIVE One of the most influential writers within ecofeminism is Maria Mies. Mies’s contribution cannot only be summed up through her books and intellectual engagement within academia alone but needs to be situated within her larger involvement within feminist activism and collaborative works (i.e., Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999, 10; Mies 2010; Mies 2014). 3 Since the 1970s Mies and her colleagues have successfully combined scholarly work and activism within what has come to be known as the ‘subsistence perspective’ or the ‘Bielefeld approach’ (Mies 2014). In her writings, Mies follows the feminist practice of writing oneself within the text, acknowledging her own positionality, while exploring the indepth relationship between patriarchy and capitalism (Mies 1998; 2012; 2014; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999; Barca 2019). What she offers, however, is not only a robust theoretical framework through which growth can be understood and critiqued but also a set of alternative praxis, known as the ‘subsistence perspective’, that, we argue, resonates very clearly with degrowth (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999). Mies’s critique of growth is articulated most prominently in the opening of her 1986 book Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Addressing feminists around the world, she urges them to give up on the belief that capitalism, through never-ending accumulation or growth, can pave the way for women’s liberation. At the time, she argued, ‘It is more than evident that the accumulation process itself destroys the core of the human essence everywhere, because it is based on the destruction of women’s autarky over their lives and bodies’ (Mies 1998, 2). Twenty years later, she puts forth an even more encompassing critique suggesting that ‘“unlimited growth” or capital accumulation are necessarily at the expense of some “others”, so that “progress” or “development” can no longer be conceived as an evolutionary, upward, linear movement but as a polarizing process, following a dualistic worldview’ (Mies 1997, 474). Mies situates her critique of growth within a wider and more complex attempt to unearth the workings of capitalist patriarchy on a world scale. Building on Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital (1913) she deploys the concept of colonies to theorise how ‘free’, non-capitalist milieus— women, nature, developing countries—are necessary to keep growth going, as part of processes of ongoing primitive accumulation based on direct structural violence (Mies 1998). According to Mies, violence is directed towards women and it is unlikely to wane through gender equality policies, as capital accumulation is entwined with the maintenance and re-creation of patriarchal relations. A sexual division of labour is consolidated from the household up to the global level: women working within the private household and men occupying the public space as primary ‘breadwinners’ (Mies 1998; Mies 1997, 476; Mies 2014, 212–18). Pa-

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

89

triarchal capitalism is thus made possible and can only continue through the exploitation of free and invisible ‘colonies’: housework that reproduces labour power, the ‘free’ work of subsistence farmers and people working in the so-called informal economy, and ‘free’ goods provided by nature and developing countries. These theoretical arguments are the result of prolonged ethnographic research. Mies’s writing is set against the backdrop of neoliberal restructuring and the emergence of a new international division of labour resulting from the relocation of labour-intensive industries from the Global North to the Global South. The Lace Makers of Narsapur, originally written in 1982, provides a meticulous account of the experiences of women’s home-based outwork in the lacemaking industry in India. Here, Mies shows how the exploitation of low-paid lacemakers was dependent on an invisible, underground economy secured through the ideology of ‘housewifisation’ (Mies 2012, 60–62). In particular, the construction of women as ‘housewives’ ensured not only the free reproduction of labour power but also served to construct them internationally as cheap and flexible workers. In the contemporary phase of neoliberalism—one marked by intense commodification and a profound crisis of employment—‘housewifisation’ has become the model for the exploitation of labour in general (Mies 2014, 218–23). So far we have indicated how much Mies’s scholarship has been invested in developing a critique of patriarchal capitalism and its violence—relations which, as noted before, remain strikingly absent in degrowth’s engagement with feminism. Her collaborative work—with Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Claudia von Werlhof—has not stopped at a critique of the dominant system but has also asked what an alternative to capitalism may be. In The Subsistence Perspective, Mies and BennholdtThomsen argue that subsistence production—housework, the work of peasants and informal workers—is not only the precondition for all forms of production but represents a vision for a different economy and society (see also Barca, this volume). Subsistence production radically breaks with capitalist growth because, rather than being oriented towards the accumulation of capital, it has no purpose other than the satisfaction of direct human needs, or the production of life in its widest sense (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999, 6; Mies 2012, 4; Mies 2005). The subsistence perspective thus delinks subsistence from its common association with hardship and wretched lives 4 and defines it in terms of ‘a new orientation, a new way of looking at the economy’ based on the collective creation and maintenance of life—a good life with others (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999, 21–22; Mies 2005). Practices of subsistence include a wide range of activities such as small-scale farming, farmer’s markets, and urban gardening (Mies 2010). Historically, these have taken place through neighbours and communities sustaining the principles of mutual aid and reciprocity. Despite

90

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

having come under attack through policies aiming to introduce mass production and consumption, subsistence has proven to be remarkably resilient; it continues to be central to struggles against the expropriation of common resources (e.g., water, land, forests, and other means of subsistence) while its principles can be seen at work ‘here and now’ across numerous alternative economies developed both in the Global North and South. In recent writings, Mies has illustrated the subsistence perspective recounting experiences ranging from a Bangladeshi women-led peasant movement practising organic and ecological agriculture to community and intercultural gardens established throughout the United States and Europe (Mies 2005; 2010). Despite their different histories and geographical locations, what these alternative economies and movements towards new commons (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999; cf. also Federici 2012) share is the presence of moral principles—subsistence principles— in which the dichotomies, hierarchies, and antagonistic dualisms created by capitalism are recomposed. Such principles may be seen at work where the satisfaction of human needs is attained through self-provisioning rather than the consumption of commodities; where work is primarily non-waged; where production and reproduction are carried out in common and property is ‘commons’; and where new relations between sexes, cultures, generations, humans, and nature are nurtured (Mies 2010). Mies is, however, adamant that the subsistence perspective should not be conflated with the small and the local. Similarly to degrowth, subsistence can be scaled up, potentially to the global economy (Mies 2005; 2014). Such an economy would be a moral economy in which the good life would not be centred on individualism, the relentless accumulation of money or frivolous consumption. Rather, a good life would be rooted in values and social relations that make the production of life possible. In more concrete terms, a global subsistence perspective would valorise all forms of work that are not considered productive, including housework (Mies 1997). It would be an ecological economy—one that doesn’t deplete or destroy the foundations upon which life depends—fostering close relations between producers and consumers through rural-urban links, cooperatives as well as eco-region (Mies 1997). Moreover, it would encourage international trade that, in the absence of wage differences, is fair and only for goods that are produced over and beyond one’s needs (Mies 2010). In this section we have briefly traced some of the key theoretical and empirical contributions of Maria Mies’s feminist, anti-capitalist critique of growth. This is foregrounded by a theoretical understanding of how growth is entwined with processes of colonisation, patriarchal relations, and ideologies of housewifisation. While her scholarship continues to resonate in ecofeminist and Marxist feminist circles, to the best of our knowledge, it has not received any attention in mainstream intellectual

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

91

histories of degrowth. Interestingly, whenever raising the question of why life-producing work is not accounted for in official calculations, Mies has often paid homage to Marilyn Waring’s feminist critique of GDP (Mies 1997, 476; Mies 2007; 2014). This is what we now turn to. MARILYN WARING: COUNTING THE INVISIBLE AND ACCOUNTING FOR WELL-BEING In 1975, at the age of 23, Waring became one of the youngest persons elected in the New Zealand Parliament. She entered politics as a feminist activist affiliated with the Women’s Electoral Lobby and with a history of sustained engagement in campaigns against South Africa’s apartheid and homosexual law reforms in New Zealand. She was also a public intellectual who spent much of her time engaging with and closely listening to life stories of women in her home constituency and abroad. Everywhere she went she observed and recorded stories of women engaged in hard, extenuating, and invisible work. With anthropological sensibility and extreme attention to detail, in her writings she conveys all the daily activity performed by young women in developing countries and those of housewives in North America (Waring 1988, 15–16). It was through her work in the Public Expenditure Select Committee—at a time in which New Zealand was adjusting its system of national accounts according to changes directed by the United Nations—that Waring came to the realisation that neither the work carried out by women nor the unscathed natural resources that make life possible and pleasurable (i.e., the pines in a forest, fresh air, lakes, and beaches) were made visible in national accounts. In other words, both women and nature counted as totally unproductive—or rather, they counted for nothing. Given the importance of accounting systems in determining public policies, there was simply ‘no value’ on policies associated with lessening the burden of women’s work or the preservation of the environment (Waring 1988, 1–2). There was, she notes, a simple equation at work: ‘If you are invisible as a producer in a nation’s economy, you are invisible in the distribution of benefits (unless they label you as a welfare ‘problem’ or a burden)’ (Waring 2003, 35). What made these erasures possible were the questions that animated her research and activism after her abrupt withdrawal from government in 1984. Answers to these questions came after a deep investigation into the rules of the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA). Set up in 1953, UNSNA is a standard that prescribes how to compile comparable measures of economic activity of all the goods and services that enter the market. Waring’s painstaking process of translating and ‘breathing life’ into UNSNA’s regulations culminated in the 1988 publication of Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, which

92

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

outside New Zealand was retitled as If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. Building on a long tradition of feminist economics and feminist theory, 5 the book provides a piercing critique of UNSNA and its most important statistical indicator—the GDP. The core argument is that far from being scientific, objective, or neutral, UNSNA’s rules to determine what should be defined as economic activity needed to be understood as an expression of patriarchal power that valued militarism, environmental destruction, and tools of colonisation while deeming peace, environmental resources, and social reproduction worthless (Waring 1988, 44, 49). Despite UNSNA’s revisions of production boundaries and the inclusion of ‘add on’ satellite accounts to measure environmental impacts and unpaid work in the household, Waring’s demystification continues to have purchase as well as wide resonance in contemporary feminist economics and political economy (Rai, Budlender, and Grapard 2015; Saunders and Dalziel 2017). While the degrowth literature has often acknowledged Waring’s pioneering critique of an economic indicator ‘utterly unrelated’ to the wellbeing of a community and the multiple dimensions of people’s lives, the key point in her critique of economic accounting—its devaluing of both women’s and nature’s contribution to wealth—has not been incorporated within the degrowth narrative. Recently, Waring (2012) has been deeply troubled by contemporary debates on care and the care economy as descriptors for all unpaid work—a trend that is palatable in the degrowth literature. Care does feature as a dedicated chapter in Degrowth: A Vocabulary, is a prominent theme debated amongst feminists participating in degrowth conferences, and is also briefly discussed amongst degrowth policy proposals (Kallis 2015). What care means, however, is more ambiguous. In a narrow sense, it is taken to mean a fundamental but deeply gendered and time-consuming activity performed to support the bodily, emotional, and relational integrity of human beings (D’Alisa, Deriu, and Demaria 2015, 63). In a wider sense, care is also employed as an ethicopolitical concept that responds to ideas of gender equity, well-being, and other-regardedness (D’Alisa, Deriu, and Demaria 2015, 65). Pushing us to consider the invisibility and devaluation of care but also to look beyond it, Waring invites us to consider indigenous people’s preparation and construction of the fale—the home in the Pacific—as work that cannot be subsumed under care or be considered as performed exclusively by women. The term care, she argues, is not only deeply associated with the work that women are socialised to perform but more fundamentally is also a term that fails to capture all the unpaid work on which the commodified economy relies upon. For degrowth to become a meaningful interlocutor with feminism, it needs to pay sustained attention to the gendered nature of all work—paid and unpaid, formal and informal, ‘deviant’ (or ‘illegal’), and care work (Waring 1988, 25–27; Murphy 2013; see also Barca, this volume).

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

93

Of particular relevance for degrowth is also Waring’s research on the gendered effects of the financial crisis in the Pacific Islands. The report finds that alongside a rising class of care migrants and migrant workers, cuts in public spending have shifted the burden of social provisioning to households and communities, while women’s employment opportunities have diminished across a wide range of formal and informal, public and private sectors (Waring and Sumeo 2010). Waring’s latest research begs the question of what traction, if any, calls by degrowth proponents for work-sharing and reduction in paid work, or even a reduction in consumption, may have in the context of the Pacific Islands: What would it mean to the insecure livelihoods of sex workers, chambermaids, and handicraft and migrant workers in crisis-ridden Samoa? This query forces us not only to dislodge degrowth from the perspective of the Global North but also to consider what specific mechanisms for redistribution would be needed to address material inequalities in the context of shrinking welfare states and the absence of growth (cf. Perkins 2010). Like other ecofeminists such as Mies, Waring has never talked about or advocated for either degrowth or post-growth (Wichterich 2015), yet her writings and public speeches are animated by a relentless search for tools and spaces where socio-ecological transformation can occur. In the final chapter of the 1995 documentary Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics, Waring spoke about possibilities for change residing in the development of qualitative environmental indicators and time-use surveys to show policymakers where crises lie and where services may be needed, concluding her remarks with a reminder that just as there is no one feminism, there is not a single political strategy for change. In time, she has grown increasingly sceptical of indicators of well-being (i.e., the Sustainable Welfare Index or various instantiations of Genuine Progress Indicator) that internalise externalities placing a pricetag on nature and housework. The problems with most of these topdown ‘alternatives to GDP’, or rather ‘modelling exercises’, is not only that they rely on market estimates, thus erasing the texture needed for policy purposes, but also that they do not break away from the testosterone-fuelled logic of comparison and competition (Waring 2003, 2012). Feminists speaking to the degrowth community (Perkins 2010) have urged gathering information to develop alternative indicators of wellbeing. Waring has always been adamant that data is essential to inform public policies and suggests two methodological pointers on how such data could be collected and handled. First, she proposes that people themselves should be asked what indicators of well-being matter in their lives. Democratising discussions on what counts as well-being would render visible everything that has a value in specific communities. Second, she insists that data should be expressed in terms of their own integrity, not in money terms (Waring 2003, 40). Such considerations fed into the well-being circle developed by Mark Anielski as part of the Al-

94

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

berta Genuine Progress Indicator (Anielski 2007). Waring quickly became a champion of its open architecture, which allows for the addition (or removal) of non-commodified indicators determined by communities themselves, and its accessible visualisation of trade-offs between ecological, social, cultural, and economic indicators. If UNSNA is a tool that narrowly defines the global economy as chrematistics (i.e., wealth as money), the well-being circles open up our understanding of what has value as we manage our households and our planet. CONCLUSION Daniel Bendix has noted how the ecofeminist critique of growth represents a unique contribution to degrowth thought, insofar as it ‘considers capitalism’s distinction between the productive and reproductive sphere and thus its disregard for the material basis of life as fundamental for exploitation not only of nature but also of women and people in the Global South’ (Bendix 2017, 5). It is the relevance of this perspective that degrowth scholarship has so far failed to recognize, particularly in attempts to delineate the intellectual roots of contemporary degrowth debates. Taking a cue from Christa Wichterich (2014), this chapter has looked back in history and revisited the scholarship of two early ecofeminists critics of growth, Maria Mies and Marylin Waring. Mies situates her critique of growth at the intersection between capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal structures, Waring, on the other hand, identifies how the main indicator of growth—GDP—can be conceived as an expression of patriarchal power. Both have critiqued mainstream economic discourses for failing to account for and value the non-monetary economy, which includes unpaid work and nature (Waring 1988; Mies and BennholdtThomsen 1999). Dovetailing with contemporary degrowth debates, these early ecofeminist critics have also been animated by a quest for transformations leading up to the good life or well-being. For Mies, the most promising structural break with patriarchal capitalism lies with the ‘subsistence perspective’ whereas Waring has championed democratic methodologies to account for well-being. In revisiting the scholarship of Mies and Waring, there are some key messages that can be distilled for the degrowth community. As we argued throughout the chapter, ecofeminist scholarship must become more explicitly acknowledged in degrowth intellectual histories. Not doing so may imperil the sought-after alliance with the ecofeminist community. Ecofeminists may continue to dispute the historical roots and sources of degrowth, drifting (further) apart from degrowth rather than seeking an alliance with it, while others may even come to ask what, if anything, degrowth offers to them. Moreover, we have argued that the elision of ecofeminist authors and concepts may result (or already have

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

95

resulted) in a mischaracterisation or simplification of what feminist analyses bring to the critique of growth. In the chapter, we have suggested that going back to the seminal scholarship of Mies and Waring enables us to appreciate that care work or care ethics are not the only or most important contribution that ecofeminists bring to the degrowth debates. Rather, early ecofeminist critiques of growth are by and large structural, focusing on patriarchy and, particularly in Mies’s case, on how patriarchy entwines with violent processes of capitalist accumulation. For both Mies and Waring, growth is possible and can be accounted for only at the expense of ‘others’: women working in households, the work of subsistence, nature, colonised or developing countries. Engaging substantively with seminal feminist critiques of growth could open space for new feminist-degrowth dialogues on gender-based violence, gendered work other than carework (e.g., subsistence), and also on feminist alternatives that bear striking similarities to degrowth but are not labelled as such. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This chapter is the result of a collective feminist collaboration commenced in 2015 as part of the degrowth research theme hosted by the Pufendorf Institute, Lund University. Writing this chapter would not have been possible without the immense intellectual support of Stefania Barca. At many stages in the writing of this chapter, she provided us with relevant critiques and indispensable words of encouragement. We are also grateful to the panellists and participants of the ‘Feminism and Degrowth’ panel at the Sixth International Degrowth Conference, in Malmö, for their generous comments on an earlier version of this chapter. REFERENCES Akbulut, Bengi. 2017. ‘Carework as Commons: Towards a Feminist Degrowth Agenda’. degrowth.info. https://www.degrowth.de/en/2017/02/carework-as-commonstowards-a-feminist-degrowth-agenda/. Anielski, Mark. 2007. The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth. British Columbia, Canada: New Society Publishers. Barca, Stefania. 2019. ‘Labour and the Ecological Crisis: The Ecomodernist Dilemma in Western Marxism(s)’. Geoforum 98 (January 2019): 226–35. Bauhardt, Christine. 2014. ‘Solutions to the Crisis? The Green New Deal, Degrowth and the Solidarity Economy: Alternatives to the Capitalist Growth Economy from an Ecofeminist Economics Perspective’. Ecological Economics 102: 60–68. Bendix, Daniel. 2017. ‘Reflecting the Post-Development Gaze: The Degrowth Debate in Germany’. Third World Quarterly 38 (12): 2617–33. Biesecker, Adelheid, and Sabine Hofmeister. 2010. ‘Focus: (Re)Productivity: Sustainable Relations Both between Society and Nature and between Genders’. Ecological Economics 69 (8): 1703–11. Brownhill, Leigh, Terisa E. Turner, and Wahu Kaara. 2012. ‘Degrowth? How About Some “De-alienation”?’ Capitalism Nature Socialism 23 (1): 93–104.

96

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

D’Alisa, Giacomo, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis, eds. 2015. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. D’Alisa, Giacomo, Marco Deriu, and Federico Demaria. 2015. ‘Care’. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis, 63–66. London: Routledge. Demaria, Federico, François Schneider, Filka Sekulova, and Joan Martínez-Alier. 2013. ‘What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement’. Environmental Values 22: 191–215. Federici, Silvia. 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 1996, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Harcourt, Wendy, and Ingrid L. Nelson, eds. 2015. Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving beyond the Green Economy. London: Zed Books. Jochimsen, Maren, and Ulrike Knobloch. 1997. ‘Making the Hidden Visible: The Importance of Caring Activities and Their Principles for Any Economy’. Ecological Economics 20 (2): 107–12. Kallis, Giorgos. 2015. ‘Yes, We Can Prosper without Growth: 10 Policy Proposals for the New Left’. Research & Degrowth, May 15, 2015. https://degrowth.org/2015/05/ 15/yes-we-can-prosper-without-growth/. Kallis, Giorgos, Christian Kerschner, and Joan Martínez-Alier. 2012. ‘The Economics of Degrowth’. Ecological Economics 84: 172–180. Kallis, Giorgos, Federico Demaria, and D’Alisa Giacomo. 2015. ‘Introduction: Degrowth’. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis, 1–19. London: Routledge. Kallis, Giorgos, Vasilis Kostakis, Steffen Lange, Barbara Muraca, Susan Paulson, and Matthias Schmelzer. 2018. ‘Research on Degrowth’. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43: 4.1–4.26. Löw, Christine. 2015. ‘From Postcolonial to Post-Growth and Back: Which Ways for a Feminist Materialist Critique of Capitalism?’ Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften, June 2015. www.kolleg-postwachstum.de/sozwgmedia/dokumente/Thesenpapiere+ und+Materialien/Christine+L%C3%B6w+_+From+postcolonial+to+post_growth+ and+back.pdf. Martínez-Alier, J. 2012. ‘Environmental Justice and Economic Degrowth: An Alliance between Two Movements’. Capitalism Nature Socialism 23 (1): 51–73. McMahon, Martha. 1997. ‘From the Ground Up: Ecofeminism and Ecological Economics’. Ecological Economics 20 (2): 163–73. Mellor, Mary. 1997. ‘Women, Nature and the Social Construction of “Economic Man”’. Ecological Economics 20 (2): 129–40. Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Merchant, Carolyn. 1996. Earthcare: Women and the Environment. New York: Routledge. Mies, Maria. 1997. ‘Women and Work in a Sustainable Society’. CrossCurrents 47 (4): 473–92. Mies, Maria. 1998. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books. Mies, Maria. 2005. The Subsistence Perspective. Transcription of a video by O. Ressler, Cologne, Germany. http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/mies01_en.htm. Mies, Maria. 2007. ‘Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale—Revisited’. International Journal Green Economics 1 (3/4): 268–75. Mies, Maria. 2010. The Village and the World: My Life, Our Times. Victoria, Australia: Spinifex Press. Mies, Maria. 2012. The Lace Makers of Narsapur. Chicago: Spinifex Press.

The Historical Roots of a Feminist ‘Degrowth’

97

Mies, Maria. 2014. ‘Housewifisation—Globalization—Subsistence Perspective’. In Beyond Marx: Theorising the Global Labour Relations of the Twenty First Century, edited by Marcel van der Linden and Karl Heinz Roth, 209–37. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Mies, Maria, and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen. 1999. The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. London: Zed Books. Muraca, Barbara. 2013. ‘Décroissance: A Project for a Radical Transformation of Society’. Environmental Values 22 (2): 147–69. Muraca, Barbara, and Matthias Schmelzer. 2017. ‘Sustainable Degrowth: Historical Roots of the Search for Alternatives to Growth in Three Regions’. In History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of the Current Debates on Sustainable Development, edited by Iris Borowy and Matthias Schmelzer, 174–97. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Murphy, Mary. 2013. ‘Translating Degrowth into Contemporary Policy Challenges: A Symbiotic Social Transformation Strategy’. Irish Journal of Sociology 21 (2): 76–79. Nelson, Julie A. 1996. Feminism, Objectivity and Economics. London and New York: Routledge. Nelson, Julie A., and Marianne Ferber. 1993. Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Perkins, Patricia E. 2010. ‘Equitable, Ecological Degrowth: Feminist Contributions’. Keynote presented at the Second Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, Barcelona, Spain. March 2010. https://www. degrowth.de/en/catalogue-entry/equitable-ecological-degrowth-feministcontributions/. Petridis, Panos, Barbara Muraca, and Giorgos Kallis. 2015. ‘Degrowth: Between a Scientific Concept and a Slogan for a Social Movement. In Handbook of Ecological Economics, edited by Joan Martínez-Alier and Roldan Muradian, 176–200. Northampton, UK: Edward Elgar. Picchio, Antonella. 2015. ‘Feminist Economics’. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis, 208–11. London: Routledge. Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge. Rai, Shirin, Debbie Budlender, and Ulla Grapard. 2015. ‘Feminist Classics/Many Voices: Marilyn Waring. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics’. International Feminist Journal of Politics 16 (3): 523–29. Salleh, Ariel. 1997. Ecofeminism as Politics. London: Zed Books. Salleh, Ariel, ed. 2009. Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology. London: Pluto Press. Saunders, Caroline, and Paul Dalziel. 2017. ‘Twenty-Five Years of Counting for Nothing: Waring’s Critique of National Accounts’. Feminist Economics 23 (2): 200–218. Waring, Marilyn. 1988. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. New York: HarperCollins. Waring, Marilyn. 2003. ‘Counting for Something! Recognising Women’s Contribution to the Global Economy through Alternative Accounting Systems’. Gender and Development 11 (1): 35–43. Waring, Marilyn. 2012. ‘Feminists Transforming Economic Power’. Development 55 (3): 269–72. Waring, Marilyn, and Karanina Sumeo. 2010. Economic Crisis and Unpaid Care Work in the Pacific. United Nations Development Programme: Gender Team. http://www. ipp.aut.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/124269/Economic-Crisis-and-UnpaidCare-Work-in-the-Pacific.pdf. Wichterich, Christa. 2014. ‘Searching for Socio-Ecological and Socio-Economic Transformations: A Feminist Perspective on the 4th Degrowth Conference in Leipzig’. WIDE+ Feminist Transforming Economic Development. https://wideplusnetwork. files.wordpress.com/2014/11/degrowth_leipzig.pdf.

98

Catia Gregoratti and Riya Raphael

Wichterich, Christa. 2015. ‘Contesting Green Growth, Connecting Care, Commons and Enough’. In Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the Green Economy, edited by Wendy Harcourt and Ingrid L. Nelson, 67–100. London: Zed Books.

NOTES 1. Inspired by Martha McMahon (1997), we use the term ecofeminism broadly to denote diverse attempts to integrate feminist and ecological analysis. 2. While in the chapter we do engage directly with all of these concepts, it is worth nothing that many of these ecofeminist authors explicitly draw on Marilyn Waring (e.g., Merchant 1996; Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006) or Maria Mies (e.g., Jochimsen and Knobloch 1997; Salleh 2009). 3. When referring to Maria Mies, we refer to a wider collectivity of collaborators, particularly Claudia von Werlholf and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, which she also often refers to and acknowledges in her writings, public speeches, and interviews. 4. Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen (1999, 20) argue that the negative connotations ascribed to subsistence stem primarily, if not exclusively, from the standpoint of those who profit from the war of subsistence. 5. Amongst the feminist theorists she engages with, we find Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Reid, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Ester Boserup, Lourdes Beneria, Christine Delphy, Hazel Henderson, and Hilkka Pietilä, to mention a few.

Part 2

Emerging Terrains

SIX Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action Exploring the Russian and Soviet Contexts Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

Degrowth may be broadly understood as an umbrella term that critiques the centrality of economic growth in contemporary societies and embraces various alternatives for ecological sustainability, social justice, and human flourishing that are not tied to it (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson 2016, see also D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015). Notably, there are at least three kinds of growth that can be seen as problematic: growth of biophysical throughput, capital accumulation/productivism, and the perpetual expansion of GDP and national economies (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson 2016). The literature on degrowth criticises these types of growth based on ecological-economic, cultural, and social grounds (Kallis, Demaria, and D’Alisa 2015). Even though there has been a rising interest in degrowth since the 2000s and especially since the 2008 economic crisis (which is also when the first biennial international degrowth conference took place in Paris), in certain contexts it is almost unheard of. This holds for Russia, the largest country in the world with a significant geopolitical position, able to influence world affairs and often seen as a counterpower to the United States and the European Union. With vast reserves in non-renewable natural resources, which its economy highly relies upon, it is also one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. In this chapter, I start the discussion of degrowth in the Russian context. I trace economic growth from the early days of the Revolution till today and mobilise a rich intellectual 101

102

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

history of Russian and Soviet social thought, which can help inform degrowth agendas both in present-day Russia and beyond. The discussion of degrowth is almost completely absent from academic, public, or activist spaces in Russia, apart from some notable exceptions (Zhvirblis 2014, Emelyanenko 2016). Even within these scarce sources, as well as on the Wikipedia page devoted to degrowth in Russian, the word degrowth (‘дерост’) has been wrongly translated as ‘anti-growth’ (‘антирост’). This might reproduce the common misconceptions about degrowth, for example, that it strives for negative economic growth or is the same as austerity (Demaria et al. 2013). On the other hand, it is acknowledged that the Soviet Union—the legacy of which has a continuity in today’s Russia—was important in the making of the Western growth paradigm and including growth in the socialist agenda (Dale 2012; Schmelzer 2016). Critical scholarly and public discussion of ecological sustainability and social justice are arguably not receiving much attention in the Russian context either. The issue of climate change, for example, does not have a high level of acknowledgement among the Russian public, while the goals that Russia as a country sets itself in the world climate negotiations are not ambitious (Davydova 2014b, 2015). At the same time, even for critical voices in Russia, degrowth might seem irrelevant or, to put it more mildly, that its time has not come yet. The problems with representative democracy, corruption, limited freedoms (of speech, peaceful demonstrations, etc) would usually be considered as more urgent. It was the demand for fair elections that stimulated the mass anti-governmental protests of 2011–2012, and the topic of corruption by state officials keeps sparking outbursts of public discontent. However, people often mobilise locally against environmental injustices surrounding them, and 2018 saw some protests getting attention beyond their geographical spaces. The critique of the organisation of society and the understanding of good life via economic growth is as relevant in Russia as in spaces where degrowth has deserved more attention. Unequal distribution of wealth and the strive for accumulation by some groups of people at the expense of others, the central role of consumerism as a sign of good life, waves of privatisation and neoliberalisation, the reliance on non-renewable natural resources and underestimation of ecological problems—all these are part and parcel of modern Russia. Singling out some problems as more important creates the risk of seeing the growth-centric path as the ideal to strive for by the Russian society. This chapter, therefore, opens the discussion of degrowth in Russia and will proceed as follows. First, a story of growth throughout Soviet times and post-Soviet Russia will be told, highlighting the key ways in which economic growth features in policy and popular culture of different epochs. Second, degrowth-related thinking in Russian and Soviet social thought will be discussed, showing a strong connection between the

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

103

two. Finally, I will conclude, reflecting on the relevance of the notion of degrowth in the Russian context and suggesting paths for further research. A STORY OF GROWTH FROM THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION TILL TODAY Before the Russian Revolution, the hundredth anniversary of which was commemorated at the time of writing this chapter, the Russian Empire was an agrarian country, largely relying on peasant (and earlier serf) labour, controlled by landowners. Even though industrialisation had already started during this time, the economy and growth were still not central to the life of the Russian Empire, and it is after the Russian Revolution that it came to the forefront, hence this is the period from then till today that I will cover in this section. From a Plethora of Ideas to ‘Catch Up and Overtake’ The first Soviet Decrees, published between 1917 and 1924 covered a range of issues such as working conditions, peace, cultural heritage, and the economy. The latter was arguably key on the agenda, aimed at transition from the imperial to the Soviet economy, with the decrees focusing mainly on nationalisation of different industries. At this time the country was still experiencing the aftermath of the Revolution, the First World War, and the Civil War. Industrialisation, nevertheless, was also in the plans of the Soviet power, and was started with massive electrification. The GOELRO (ГОЭЛРО) electrification plan was the basis for Soviet industrialisation. Accepted by the Soviet government in 1921, it was to be completed over a period of ten to fifteen years, but expectations as to power output were already surpassed by 1931. As Lenin famously said, ‘Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country, since industry cannot be developed without electrification’ (1920). Lenin saw the economic success of the country as possible only once electrification was achieved. The focus on electrification and development of the economy was important but at the same time was not closing off the multiple other visions of the new Soviet society. Overall, the 1920s can be seen not only as a period of turbulence in and the transformation of Soviet society but also as one in which different areas of cultural life flourished in Soviet Russia—a period that, despite the dramatic changes that had taken and were taking place, was also opening spaces for multiple potentialities. It is common to associate it with the rise of art, film, theatre, and architecture, manifested in the Russian avant-garde and constructivism, with the never-built Tatlin’s Tower symbolising these potentialities of the new country. From the insightful

104

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

work of Arran Gare (1993), it is possible to say that there were also spaces for pioneering research in Soviet ecology and science. 1 According to him, this was a time of progressive thinking on ecology and environment, with sixty-one zapoveniki established by 1929, which were places of conservation, but also scientific inquiry, that fostered the development of ecology. This, however, dramatically changed under Stalin’s power, with the economic and industrial growth agenda coming to the forefront. The first Five-Year Plan (1928–1932), which pursued the acceleration of industrialisation and collectivisation, can be seen as the time when economic growth became central to Soviet politics. Known as the ‘Great Turn’ (coined by Stalin 1929), it substituted the earlier NEP (New Economic Policy) that allowed for small-scale and private enterprises. During this first Five-Year Plan and throughout the thirties, the core aim for the ‘new Soviet people’ was to work for the economy, and the assumption that economy was the centre rather than the means for achieving good life became dominant. Notably, the accelerated growth of production was coupled with growth as a military power (Harrison and Davies 1997), with growth taking place mainly in military and producer industries rather than consumer goods industries (Dale 2017). The aim to boost economic growth is clearly depicted in the poster from that time titled ‘To Catch Up and Overtake’ (Догнать и перегнать), with thirty thousand copies in print (Figure 6.1). Quoting Lenin, it posits the question of economic catching up and overtaking as the question of survival: Either to die or to catch up with advanced countries and also overtake them economically. Either to die or to rush forward at full steam. This is the question framed by history.

Quoting Stalin, it is stated in the poster that the Five-Year Plan gives higher rates of growth than are available to capitalism, and that ‘our socialist industry, in particular, is catching up and overtaking the development of capitalist countries’. Apart from these quotes, the poster contains six graphs that show much higher rates of growth in the Soviet Union in comparison to France, Germany, the United States, England, and the rest of the world, according to the Five-Year Plan. The graphs are shown for coal, steel, cotton, transport, oil, and electro-provision industries. In a more poetic way, this idea of catching up and overtaking was also captured by Vladimir Mayakovskiy in his poem “The Americans Are Amazed” [Американцы удивляются] (1929, in Sivachev and Yakovlev 1979, 93): You bourgeois, go ahead and marvel at the communist shore we will not only overtake but will surpass your fleet-footed celebrated America, at work, in the air, in the railway coach.

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

105

Figure 6.1. Kto kogo? Dognat’ i peregnat’ [Who will (beat) whom? To catch up and overtake]. Soviet poster, 1919–1930. Source: National Library of Scotland.

106

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

The ideological raising up of the population for the creation of a new Soviet society, which this poem is an example of, was part of the cultural agenda of the young Soviet country. This included stressing the importance of industrialisation via popular culture, which at the time engaged only a small percentage of the Soviet population, the majority of which were still peasants and were illiterate. Notably, the Revolution Theatre— now Mayakovskiy Theatre—started its ‘social theatre’ plays from a play called Growth by Anatoliy Glebov, which premiered on January 27, 1927. While the play itself was about the ‘new Soviet person’ and the conflict between communist factory management and the workers not affiliated to the Party, ‘growth’ was the undoubtable background to it (see Lunacharsky 1927). Industrialisation in culture also transferred to people’s daily lives and practices. During the thirties, Soviet registers even recorded names derived from the ‘catch up and overtake’ slogan—namely, Dognat and Peregnat [Догнат and Перегнат] (Guseinov 2007). Over this period, the rates of growth were successfully achieved and overachieved, including by massive use of forced labour. The Great Patriotic War and the threat of the Nazis taking over disrupted the rates of growth. The questions of surviving and fighting the Nazi threat and later rebuilding the wrecked country, the forces of its diminished population weakened by the war—which left 26.6 million people dead—were key. Since the late 1940s, however, the agenda of industrial growth made a comeback and was merged with the idea of the transformation of nature. After the years of drought and famine in 1946–1947, the transformation of nature was seen as key to boosting the economy. It was manifested in the ‘Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature’ introduced by Stalin in the late 1940s and was to last from 1949 to 1965, but it was abandoned with Stalin’s death in 1953 (Brain 2010). Growth remained on the agenda very explicitly during Khrushchev’s times, with him using exactly the same ‘catch up and overtake’ language. He first did this in 1957 when addressing the agricultural workers of Leningrad. Now it was ‘America’ that was the main target for catching up with and overtaking. During his time in power, which included the sixth and seventh five-year plans, heavy industry was the key area of growth and acceleration, with oil extraction having increased twice in comparison with the earlier period (Gökay 2001). The energy and other oil-dependent sectors, such as transport, were expanding, as was the military, with the Cold War in the background. There was also a priority for the expansion of the chemical industry, with the production of polymers having been lagging behind in the USSR (Nove 1992). Indeed, a plastic bag remained an exclusive product, a symbol of Western life, until the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the same time, higher levels of growth were expected in agriculture, including corn and cotton, though the country was importing agricultural production in the 1960s. The pursuit of the expansion of cotton

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

107

production, including for export, was also done at the expense of the environment. The most vivid example is probably the desiccation of the Aral Sea (Mickin 1988). Consumptive withdrawal of water from the sea took place by diverting the Amu Darya and Syr Darya Rivers for irrigation, via the irrigation canals that had already been built or started in the 1940s. Erosion of soils is another example; it was the result of the ‘virgin lands’ campaign that started in 1953 under Khrushchev and focused on intensive cultivation of monocultures in virgin lands of the Soviet Union (Obertreis 2017). In pro-state ‘official’ ecological science at the time, attempts to transform nature continued to be promoted—for example, techniques such as vernalisation and hybridisation, that would stimulate faster plant growth and greater productivity in agriculture—while other voices, despite their existence, were not influential and were seen as barriers for the growth of production (see Bellamy Foster 2015). Nevertheless, these voices were there, including the early work on climate science (Oldfield 2018). Despite such sacrifices, the levels of ‘development’ in the USSR were far from what had been achieved in the United States and other Western countries. The failures of collectivisation of Soviet peasantry became more and more visible in Khrushchev’s times, which is when there were shortages of food. This was especially the case in 1963, a year of poor harvest, when many products of daily use became deficit and the Soviet Union ultimately needed to import grain (Dronin and Bellinger 2005). Anecdotes from this time period even conveyed the message that it would be good to only catch up with but not overtake America, so that no ‘bare asses will be seen’. The Rise and Fall of Ecology and the Baton of Growth The problems with food shortages under Khrushchev persisted in late Soviet times and were ultimately one of the important reasons for the Soviet Union’s collapse. Before this happened, however, a substantial victory took place, when the environment was not compromised for the sake of growth. The dangerous Siberian river reversal project was abolished in 1986 under public pressure. This was emblematic of a general rise of environmentalism in the country, which saw several mass environmental protests in the 1980s, ranging from collective letters to rallies and demonstrations (Josephson et al. 2013). As a result of these events, the State Committee on Nature Protection (Госкомприрода) was created in 1988, in a way institutionalising the demands of Soviet environmentalists. The 1990s, like the 1920s, were again a period of dramatic change— this time manifested in massive privatisation, enrichment of a few at the expense of most of the population, economic crises, but also opening the window to Europe and the West, both in terms of people being able to

108

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

travel abroad and the multinational companies making their way into Russia. This time, known as ‘the dashing ’90s’ in Russia, is known for its economic instability, characterised by a fall in GDP, skyrocketing inflation, and a fight for appropriating resources. In the 2000s the economy started to recover, stimulated by the rising oil prices, with the success for these years often attributed to Putin’s presidency. This is exactly the time when economic growth came to the agenda again. Putin announced doubling the GDP within a ten-year period as an ambitious but viable goal for Russia at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in 2003. He referred to this goal multiple times in the years following the summit. In the early years of ‘doubling the GDP’, when the Russian state television was not yet under full control of the government, this goal was often ironically spoken of in the media and popular culture. For example, in a popular satirical programme at the time, Turn Off the Light! [Тушите свет!], an episode was devoted to this goal of doubling GDP, highlighting the corruption inherent in the Russian economy and the very different agendas behind this popular slogan though not questioning the goal of doubling GDP itself. It is also notable that the abbreviation of Putin’s surname and initials reads as GDP (ВВП) in Russian, which has been the subject of many jokes. In practice, rates of economic growth were never doubled during this time, and the goal of doubling the GDP was abolished in 2009 (Baranovskaya 2009). When it comes to the ecological side, Putin’s time in power started with the abolition of the State Committee on Ecological Protection (Госкомэкология)—a successor of the aforementioned structure created in 1988—on June 20, 2000, thus compromising what had been achieved by environmentalists of the late Soviet era. During the first five or six years of Putin’s power, according to Igor Chestin, the founder of WWF Russia (Pozner 2015), economists were driving the destruction of environmental legislation. According to the late Alexei Yablokov, a distinguished environmentalist and founder of the Green Russia faction within the liberal Yabloko Party, this was part of a general de-ecologisation in Russia (Davydova 2014a). The other parts of it were a decrease of expenses on ecological protection from 2002 till 2013 (the time of the interview) as well as a weakening of environmental protection legislation and state environmental control, expertise, and monitoring. Later rhetoric of growth seems to have been substituted by ‘innovations’ under Medvedev as president and Putin as prime minister (2008–2012), while more recently the protests of 2011–2012, annexation of Crimea, involvement in Ukrainian affairs, and deterioration of relations with the West have all been used to fuel a rise of patriotic rhetoric in the country. Since 2014, Russia has also been under economic sanctions from the EU, United States, and a range of other countries. Though doubling the GDP agenda has been coming up every now and then, it has overall

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

109

been sidelined by the need to love and protect the country, which includes not questioning what is done by those in power. With growth no longer central to popular political rhetoric, this notion has since been factoring into the language of the Russian opposition or those presenting themselves as such. 2 In 2016, a new party was formed, the ‘Party of Growth’ (‘Партия роста’), which presents itself as ‘constructive opposition’. The party has adopted an agenda that a lot of people unhappy with the political situation in Russia would support: freedoms of speech, internet, private life; a contract army; better relations with the West. In addition, it puts emphasis on initiatives related to business and stimulating growth via lower interest rates for small- and medium-sized business, lower taxes for growth; tax exemptions for new businesses, and non-intervention by the government. There is no discussion of which businesses/organisations should be promoted and no discussion of ecological and social issues. For example, the party stresses the importance of agro-production but does not articulate its vision for it. However, the party does not feature much in the broader Russian opposition, and its activities are largely invisible. On the other hand, Alexei Navalniy, a key figure in the Russian nonsystemic opposition today, primarily addresses the issues of corruption and illegal wealth creation by the Russian state officials and oligarchs. The question of economic growth is not key in his attack on Putin and the system built under him, but it does feature there nevertheless. In October 2017, in his first video after a fifteen-day arrest—part of his presidency campaign—Navalniy precisely addressed the lack of economic growth during Putin’s times, calling this the main graph for the country. He used the figure of −1.3 percent as the growth rate between 2007 and 2016 and compared it to the figures of 88.5 percent for India, 201.2 percent for Uzbekistan, 27.4 percent for Kazakhstan, 215.2 percent for China, 143.3 percent for Nigeria, and 30.3 percent for the world average (Navalniy 2017a). In a later video addressing his supporters during his nomination for presidency, the empty promise of Putin to make Russia one of the world’s five largest economies was also picked up on (Navalniy 2017b). Navalniy undoubtedly has a point and these numbers are telling—that is, the economic system is based on the embezzlement of the vast resources of the country without much investment into or maintenance of them. At the same time, this indicates how not questioning growth is part of the language of the Russian opposition, even that which can be considered promising and worthy of support by many. While Navalniy raises injustices within the Russian context, ecological problems in general and climate change in particular are largely ignored, which demonstrates the general and alarming public ignorance of these issues in Russia. At the same time, it is worth mentioning that the discussion of ecology has been picked up by the state, with Putin’s outspokenness about it at the Seventieth UN summit in 2015, for example, and with 2017 having

110

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

been the ‘year of ecology’ in Russia. However, the year consisted mostly of the promotion of romantic and pristine images of Russia, such as the invitation to visit zapovedniki by means of Aeroflot flights, with business as usual going side by side. Russia’s intended nationally determined contributions to tackling climate change, unsurprisingly, are not ambitious, mainly pointing to the country’s emphasis on efficiency and the importance of boreal forests for climate change mitigation. However, Russia is not doing so well when it comes to the latter, with some of the forests being endangered by intensive logging activity involving multinationals (Greenpeace 2017). One major action that is to be noted, though, is the ban on the production and import of GMOs in Russia in 2016, something that is very rare on state levels. Apart from this, the focus on growth and forsaking ecology for economic demands has dominated Soviet and Russian practice. Thought, unsurprisingly, has been much more advanced, with a lot of degrowth-compatible thinking in Russian and Soviet social thought, which the next section will be devoted to. FOR AN ECONOMY PREMISED ON ETHICS: DEGROWTH THINKING IN RUSSIAN AND SOVIET SOCIAL THOUGHT When it comes to social thought, there is a whole plethora of authors that could be connected to degrowth, from both the pre-Soviet times and the Soviet era, from different theoretical and ideological traditions. Unlike in the previous section, the time period starts much earlier, as the problems of the centrality of the economy in industrialised societies and of capitalism, as well as other themes connected to degrowth, were addressed before Soviet industrialisation started. Sergey Podolinskiy (1850–1891): Energy Economics and Socialism The work of Ukrainian thinker Sergey Podolinskiy is familiar to many in degrowth and ecological economics circles. Joan Martínez-Alier and Jose Manuel Naredo (1982) see him as a Marxist precursor to energy economics and one of the first figures recognising the limits to growth. According to Podolinskiy, not only human labour but also energy should be included into the general theory of value (Podolinskiy [1880] 1991). Furthermore, he acknowledged that human beings, too, were getting their energy from the sun and transforming it into the products of their labour. Though the novelty of his thought was not recognised by Marx and Engels at the time (Martínez-Alier and Naredo 1982), it speaks to the key starting points of both ecological economics and ecological Marxism, with both having a strong connection to degrowth. For Podolinskiy (1881), the energy available on the planet should be accumulated rather than dissipated, and he had a preferable system for

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

111

this—socialism—while in capitalism a substantial amount of labour is used for the production of luxury, that is, the dissipation of energy. Under capitalism, he argues, every improvement in the industry takes away the labour from workers, while under socialist production improvements would result in the reduction of working time for all workers and give them free time for new activities such as education and art. While Podolinskiy’s work can be framed as a contribution to broadening the theory of value and recognising the limits to growth, his broader vision for socialism is to distribute the energy available in a just way, while releasing people’s time for activities beyond production and value creation—a vision that speaks to degrowth. Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900): The Principles of Ethical Economics This latter point connects to the work of the spiritual philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. In Justification of the Good ([1897] 1990), he brings the category of ethics into the discussion of economy. He does not exclude the possibility of the relationships in organising material production being ethical and, in fact, sees this ethical part as something that should be central to them. For this to be the case, he argued, two conditions need to be satisfied. The first is that the economy should not be an independent and self-referential area. This relates to what André Gorz, an inspirational figure for degrowthers who also coined the term (as décroissance), would refer to as the domination of economic rationality ([1991] 2012; see also Leonardi, this volume). Solovyov sees the ‘root of evil’ in transforming the material interest from ‘subordinate to dominant, from dependent into independent, from a means to an end’ (1990, 437). He argues that if this is the case for socialism, too, then it is not that different from a ‘bourgeois economy’. The second condition for an ethically organised economy is that production does not take place at the expense of human dignity of producers, so that nobody becomes just a tool for production, and that everyone has material means for a dignified living and development. He critiqued orthodox political economists for separating the questions of organising the economy from ethical questions and socialists for conflating the two, as if just organising would necessarily be ethical. For him, bringing a more just economic system built on socialist values would not be enough. For example, being part of cooperative organisational structures or having more time for non-monetary activities does not necessarily mean being caring or not abusing power. While problematising the centrality of the economy is already central to degrowth, the second point, I believe, is extremely important to take into account in degrowth praxis.

112

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910): Non-Violence as a Key Ethical Principle The reasoning of Solovyov is complemented by Lev Tolstoy, a great Russian writer who is also known for his later ethico-political texts that can be characterised as Christian anarchist. Most of the work of the last thirty years of his life is devoted to his political interpretation of Jesus’s teaching, which goes together with strong critiques of the state, the church, the prison system, militarisation, patriotism, and, indeed, science as institutions that justify oppression, promote divisions, and maintain hierarchies (Tolstoy 2012). If one is to attempt to derive a key principle of Tolstoy’s ethico-political writing, it would be non-violence, based on his interpretation of Sermon on the Mount (Christoyannopoulos 2014). It includes not responding to evil by violence and insists that all human beings should be equal. This principle, and Tolstoy’s work more generally, inspired Mahatma Gandhi (see Murthy 1987) and connects to the non-violent, even if disobedient, stance of degrowth (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Cattaneo 2013). For Tolstoy, non-violence applies not only to political action but is a principle that should permeate through all human relations, including with nature and non-human beings. In his writings, Tolstoy does not explicitly address questions of economic organisation and speaks first and foremost from moral grounds. However, when asked which economic form he would endorse, Tolstoy—in the very last text written by him, titled ‘About Socialism’ ([1910] 1994)—rejects answering this question. There he points to the divisions that socialism often creates between people who are, in principle, the same. According to him, workers’ means of production are taken from them by capitalists and the state, but this is done by police or the military, which consists of the same people as the workers. They are deceived and the power is based on deceit, ‘as a result of which people are exercising violence on themselves at the will of those people who have power at that moment’ (ibid.). Building a society that benefits the workers (or any other groups) would thus not be enough to eliminate this deceit and violence. His suggestion is to get rid of superstitions—which I read as to think critically—including the superstition of knowing exactly which form the society should take (see Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson, this volume). Pyotr Kropotkin (1842–1921): Mutual Aid and Cooperation as Factors of Evolution Pyotr Kropotkin, one of the founding fathers of anarchism, came from the same area of Moscow as Tolstoy. The two men were sympathetic to each other, even if they never met, and can be seen as drawing compatible conclusions in some respects, despite coming from different stances, with Tolstoy being a Christian and Kropotkin an atheist. Kropotkin was also

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

113

putting ethical criteria, in particular mutual aid and non-hierarchy, at the centre of organising and relationships of human beings more generally (Kropotkin [1902] 2006). Nevertheless, he did have concrete suggestions for desirable organisational forms. These would be small- and mediumscale organisations of cooperative forms (Kropotkin [1898] 1998). In the case of degrowth, in tune with Kropotkin, certain organisational forms that are more compatible with it can also be identified, such as cooperatives and commons (see D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015). However, in line with Tolstoy’s point raised above, keeping certain openness to various forms and possibilities, including other ways of knowing and experiencing the world (Escobar 2010) as long as these are not built on hierarchies, violence and oppression, should be an important point of reflection for degrowth too. Apart from mutual aid and non-hierarchy, Kropotkin saw the importance of not creating a split between so-called brain work and manual work and was arguing for the integrity and wholeness of work, including in science, with these being key to both fulfilling work and great scientific discoveries (Kropotkin 1998). The liberation of work (Barca, this volume) is thus not only a question of relations of production but a question of how work itself is organised. Kropotkin was problematising any attempts to measure the value of labour in monetary terms, with the argument that needs should be put beyond the works, and was thus critical of any systems of labour cheques promoted by socialists at the time (Kropotkin 1998). The ‘Putting needs beyond the works’ principle echoes degrowth discussions, which question the centrality of work in today’s societies and could be fostered by, for example, generous basic income schemes discussed in degrowth (see Chertkovskaya and Stoborod 2018). Tolstoian Communes, Chayanov (1888–1937), and the Tragedies of Collectivisation While Tolstoy did not advocate a particular form of organising, his teaching gave rise to Tolstoian communes and farms in Russia and internationally, including the Tolstoy farm in South Africa set up by Gandhi (see Murthy 1987). Non-violence and acting in line with the principles of consciousness and morality were central for these organisational settings (Meleshko [1996] 2015). Tolstoian communes were characterised by equality and equal distribution of labour, with everyone in them having to contribute to physical labour. At the same time, communes were not confined to agricultural activities and had schools, libraries, orchestras, and other such institutions. Many communes were formed during the years following the Russian Revolution and were recognised legal entities in the young Soviet country, with their heyday between 1917 and 1927; 3 this, however, changed with collectivisation, and, unsurprisingly, was resisted by Tolstoians in a non-violent way (ibid.).

114

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

What was practiced in Tolstoian communes speaks to the vision of peasant economy articulated by Alexander Chayanov. In a fictional utopia written by him under a pseudonym, small-scale family farms were seen as the centre of an ideal and ethical economy (Kerblay 1966 4). Though his economic works are less explicit about it, there Chayanov was meticulously showing that the logic of growth was alien to peasant economies, which were operating based on the principle of subsistence (Chayanov [1927] 1991). This logic was not in line with the growth agendas that came under Stalin, which resulted in Chayanov being among those killed during the Great Purge. According to Kerblay (1966), Chayanov continues the tradition that was earlier set by Kropotkin and others. While degrowth would probably have a broad interpretation of what ‘family’ is—and I believe Chayanov’s reference to family allows for it— the idea that agricultural organising of small-scale farming works on the principle of ‘subsistence’ and not ‘growth’ is a strong point of support for degrowth. It is no surprise, then, that Chayanov’s work inspired Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (Martínez-Alier 1997), whose work has informed degrowth. Moreover, what Chayanov argued in relation to the peasant economy of the Soviet Union, has been shown to be the case today for many farmers across the world (Johanisova 2005, Mies and BennholdtThomsen 1999). Questioning Growth and the Ecology of Culture Economic growth more generally was also explicitly problematised within the late Soviet ecology (Bellamy Foster 2015). Pavel Oldak (1985) wrote on the topic along the lines of the limits-to-growth writing from the 1970s (Meadows et al. 1972), that is he commented on the ecological limits to growth. He was arguing for the economy to be understood as a biosocial system and, in view of environmental problems being global, for global decisions to be made on its protection. He was also arguing against compartmentalisation of science and the myopia that comes with it, as well as multidisciplinary work (ibid.). While Oldak was using economic terminology in his work to problematise growth, his language dramatically changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when he argued for building new moral and spiritual grounds of social organisation (Oldak 1993). Thus, even if ecological sustainability is recognised, the starting point for all Russian/Soviet theorists is ethical—that is, committed to organising an economy that is a means of a good life for all rather than an end in itself. According to Teodor Shanin—a prominent scholar on peasant economy who has drawn inspiration from Chayanov’s work—the idea of limitless growth (as well as development and progress) blinded societies to the complexity of the social worlds and economies existing within them (1997). Thus, it is important to sustain not only the environment but also these social worlds, with their colours and differences, to be able to

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

115

live in the pluriverse that is advocated in degrowth discussions (Escobar 2010). Dmitriy Likhachyov’s (1906–1999) notion of the ‘ecology of culture’ captures exactly that, denoting the importance of the continuity of culture. For Likhachyov, the ecology of culture is as important for people’s moral life as environment in a biological sense for the sustainability of physical life, with the two being inseparable (Likhachyov [1984] 2014). He critiqued the understanding of progress stemming from industrial expansion and the not only environmental but also cultural destruction that often came with it. This highlights an important dimension of many struggles against growth and development, as what is ultimately challenged is not just the physical life but also culture. However, it is important to understand ecology of culture as an open concept, with spaces sustained in a cultural way being inviting to others and open to being enriched and transformed. Table 6.1 recaps the social theorists and their ideas as described above. DEGROWTH DISCUSSION IN RUSSIA: NOT TO BE POSTPONED Bringing degrowth into the Russian context should not be postponed for two reasons. First, as socio-ecological transformation requires global solutions, the engagement in them from within a large and geopolitically significant space 5 such as Russia is necessary. Second, starting the discussion on degrowth in Russia could help bring the awareness of the problems of growth-centric visions of good life and a more nuanced understanding of the latter. This chapter has been an attempt to start this discussion. It shows that the struggle for growth is not only a problem of capitalism and elaborates on how it was at the heart of the Soviet experience, despite the environmental and social costs it came with, thus complementing the already rich literature addressing the growth paradigm in the histories of capitalism (Dale 2012, Schmelzer 2016). Today, the agenda of growth is mobilised across political spectrums—by those in power and those in systemic as well as non-systemic opposition—and is thus to be challenged. Though the state’s emphasis on growth is far from being realised in practice, there is a risk of a growth-centric path becoming key in any transformations that might happen to the Russian context. There are, however, a lot of connections to degrowth that can be drawn from Russian/Soviet social thought, where non-hierarchy, mutual aid, non-violence, and open ecology of culture are some of the key concepts for social organisation. The conceptual and theoretical language coming from the Russian/Soviet contexts would help to think through degrowth and socio-ecological transformation in these spaces, arguably being more intuitive and familiar for people living there. At the same time, some of this thought has informed degrowth and related areas

116

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

Table 6.1. Overview of Social Theorists and Their Ideas. Name

Idea/Concept

Relation to Degrowth

Sergey Podolinskiy (1850–1891) Marxist

Energy theory of value, human labour requiring energy, socialism as a way to accumulate energy and release time for life beyond production

Inspired ecological economists / relates to ecological Marxism, e.g., Martínez-Alier and Naredo

Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) Spiritual philosopher

That economy should not be central to society – a critique of both capitalism and socialists

Relates to Gorz’s problematisation of the domination of economic rationality

Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910) Christian anarchist

Non-violence, antimilitarism, being close to the land

Inspired Gandhi and relates to civil/uncivil society discussion in degrowth

Pyotr Kropotkin (1842–1921) Anarchist

Mutual aid, non-hierarchy and critique of division between ‘brain’/‘manual’ work

Central principle of degrowth and forms of organising it supports, similar approach to education and science

Alexander Chayanov (1888–1937) Marxist/ peasant economist

Non-capitalist logic of peasant economy, based on the principle of subsistence

Inspired GeorgescuRoegen, also Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen, Johanisova

Dmitriy Likhachyov (1906–1999) Literary scholar

Ecology of culture

Highlights the cultural side of struggles against growth/development, speaks to Escobar’s ‘pluriverse’

Pavel Oldak (b. 1923) Soviet ecologist

Problematisation of economic growth, for global decisions on environment, against myopic science; biosocial system

Speaks to the concept of degrowth, its critiques of GDP and the multidisciplinarity embraced by degrowth

Teodor Shanin (b. 1930) Peasant economist

Problematisation of ‘progress’ and other words used to denote it (including ‘growth’)

Speaks to Escobar’s ‘pluriverse’ and alternatives to development discussion in degrowth

Source: Author.

already and can further enrich the discussion. In the Russian context, there is also a problem of continuity of thought, with particular ways of telling history in different times, as well as absences and silences generat-

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

117

ed. Bringing the different theorists together by highlighting their connection to degrowth can help reconstruct this continuity of thought. This chapter has focused only on the problematics of the growth agenda and social thought, while degrowth-related contemporary praxes are unfortunately outside its scope. I can already identify some manifestations that could potentially be put under the degrowth umbrella, such as the struggles against environmental injustices (e.g., against dumps, construction of polluting factories, and appropriation of nature), struggles against urban capital accumulation and for architectural protection, attempts to resist neoliberalism, the persistent connection of many people to the land, the rise in local and organic agriculture, and interest in selfgovernance. These are undoubtedly to be studied further in relation to degrowth, while I hope that this chapter gives an informative overview to relate to while doing so. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Gareth Dale, Santiago Gorostiza, Laura Horn, Alexander Paulsson, and Stefan Tramer for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter, as well as Nadia Johanisova for bringing the work of Chayanov to my attention. REFERENCES Baranovskaya, M. 2009. ‘Russian Government Has Abandoned the Plan to Double GDP within 10 Years’. DW, November, 10, 2009*. 6 http://www.dw.com/ru/ правительство-россии-отказалось-от-удвоения-ввп-за-10-лет/a-4879703. Bellamy Foster, J. 2015. ‘Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis’. Monthly Review 67 (2).https://monthlyreview.org/2015/06/01/late-soviet-ecology-and-the-planetarycrisis/. Brain, S. 2010. ‘The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature’. Environmental History 15: 670–700. Chayanov, A. V. (1927) 1991. The Theory of Peasant Co-Operatives. Translated by D. W. Benn. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Chertkovskaya, E., and A. Paulsson. 2016. ‘The Growthocene: Thinking through What Degrowth Is Criticising’. Entitle (blog), February 19, 2016. https://entitleblog.org/ 2016/02/19/the-growthocene-thinking-through-what-degrowth-is-criticising/. Chertkovskaya, E., and K. Stoborod. 2018. ‘Work’. In Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach, edited by B. Franks, L. Williams, and N. Jun, 188–202. London: Routledge. Christoyannopoulos, A. 2014. ‘The Golden Rule on the Green Stick: Leo Tolstoy’s Postsecular International Thought’. In Towards a Postsecular International Politics: New Forms of Community, Identity, and Power, edited by L. Mavelli and F. Petito, 81–102. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dale, G. 2012. ‘The Growth Paradigm: A Critique’. International Socialism 134. http://isj. org.uk/the-growth-paradigm-a-critique/. Dale, G. 2017. ‘After 1917: Civil War and “Modernising Counter-Revolution”’. rs21, October 26, 2017. https://www.rs21.org.uk/2017/10/26/revolutonary-reflectionsafter-1917-civil-war-and-modernising-counter-revolution/.

118

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and C. Cattaneo. 2013. ‘Civil and Uncivil Actors for a Degrowth Society’. Journal of Civil Society 9 (2): 212–24. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis. 2015. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Davydova, A. 2014a. ‘Alexei Yablokov: “Russia Needs a Transition to Ecology Oriented State Governance”’. Bellona, May 29, 2014.http://bellona.ru/2014/05/29/aleksejyablokov-rossii-neobhodim-pe/*. Davydova, A. 2014b. ‘The Problems of Environmental Activism in Russia’. openDemocracy, November 17, 2014.https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/problems-ofenvironmental-activism-in-russia/. Davydova, A. 2015. ‘Russia’s Silence on Climate Change Helps No One’. Conversation, November 25, 2015.http://theconversation.com/russias-silence-on-climatechange-helps-no-one-20661. Demaria, F., F. Schneider, F. Sekulova, and J. Martínez-Alier. 2013. ‘What Is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement’. Environmental Values 22 (2): 191–215. Dronin, N. M., and E. G. Bellinger. 2005. Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia 1900–1990: The Interaction of Climate and Agricultural Policy and Their Effect on Food Problems. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press. Emelyanenko, V. 2016. ‘The New Kulaks Will Save Russia’. LavkaLavka, April 8, 2016.https://lavkagazeta.com/otvetstvennost/novye-kulaki-spasut-rossiyu/*. Escobar, A. 2010. ‘Sustainability: Design for the Pluriverse’. Development 54 (2): 137–40. Gare, A. 1993. ‘Soviet Environmentalism: The Path Not Taken’. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 4 (4): 69–88. Gökay, B. 2001. ‘The Background: History and Political Change’. In The Politics of Caspian Oil, edited by B. Gökay, 1–19. New York: Palgrave. Gorelik, A. 1922. ‘Anarchists in the Russian Revolution’, Workers Publishing Group in the Republic of Argentina.http://socialist.memo.ru/books/html/gorelik.html*. Gorz, A. (1991) 2012. Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology. London: Verso. Greenpeace. 2017. ‘Eye on the Taiga: How Industry’s Claimed “Sustainable Forestry” in Russia Is Destroying the Great Northern Forest’. March 6, 2017.http://www. greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/forests/2017/ Eye%20on%20the%20Taiga_Greenpeace_full_report.pdf. Guseinov, G. 2007. ‘Names and renaming, Soviet’. In Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Russian, edited by T. Smorodinskaya, K. Evans-Romaine, and H. Goscilo, 411. London: Routledge. Harrison, M., and R. W. Davies. 1997. ‘The Soviet Military-Economic Effort during the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–1937)’. Europe-Asia Studies 49 (3): 369–406. Johanisova, N. 2005. Living in the Cracks: A Look at Rural Social Enterprises in Britain and the Czech Republic. Dublin: FEASTA. Josephson, P., N. Dronin, R. Mnatsakanian, A. Cherp, D. Efremenko, and V. Larin. 2013. An Environmental History of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kallis, G., F. Demaria, and G. D’Alisa. 2015. ‘Degrowth’. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier. Kerblay, B. 1966. ‘A. V. Chayanov: Life, Career, Works’. In A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy, edited by D. Thorner, B. Kerblay, and R. E. F. Smith, xxv–lxxv. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin Inc. Kropotkin, P. A. (1898) 1998. Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow. Edited by Colin Ward. London: Freedom Press. Kropotkin, P. (1902) 2006. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: Dover Publications. Lenin, V. I. 1920. ‘Our Foreign and Domestic Position and Party Tasks. Speech Delivered to the Moscow Gubernia Conference of the R.C.P.(B.)’. In Lenin’s Collected Works, 31: 408–26. 4th English edition. Translated by J. Katzer. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/nov/21.htm#fw01.

Degrowth in Theory, Pursuit of Growth in Action

119

Likhachyov, D. S. (1984) 2014. ‘The Ecology of Culture’. In Notes on the Russian, 88–100. Moscow: Azbuka-Attikus/Kolibri.* Lunacharsky, A.V. 1927. ‘The Growth of Social Theatre’. Izvestiya CEC USSR and ACEC 33, February 10, 1927.http://lunacharsky.newgod.su/lib/ss-tom-3/rost-socialnogoteatra*. Martínez-Alier, J. 1997. ‘Some Issues in Agrarian and Ecological Economics, in Memory of Georgescu-Roegen’. Ecological Economics 22: 225–38. Martínez-Alier, J., and J. M. Naredo. 1982. ‘A Marxist Precursor of Energy Economics: Podolinsky’. Journal of Peasant Studies 9 (2): 207–24. Meadows, D., D. Meadows, J. Randers, and W. Behrens. 1972. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. Meleshko, E. D. (1996) 2014. ‘Tolstoyans’, in Anarchy Works: Examples from the History of Russia, 75–86. Moscow: common place.* Mickin, P. P. 1988. ‘Desiccation of the Aral Sea: A Water Management Disaster in the Soviet Union’. Science 241: 1170–76. Mies, M., and V. Bennholdt-Thomsen. 1999. The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. London: Zed Books. Murthy, B. S. 1987. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Publications. Navalniy, A. 2017a. ‘Navalny Is Free. First Video’. Alexei Navalniy’s YouTube channel, October 22, 2017.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz2xuMFT2YQ.* Navalniy, A. 2017b. ‘Nomination of Alexei Navalniy’. Alexei Navalniy’s YouTube channel, December 25, 2017.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szh-L13GCMQ.* Nove, A. 1992. An Economic History of the USSR : 1917–1991. London: Penguin. Obertreis, J. 2017. Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860–1991. Göttingen, Germany: V&R Unipress. Oldak, P. G. 1985. ‘Balanced Natural Resource Utilization and Economic Growth’. Problems in Economics 28 (3): 3–17. Oldak, P. G. 1993. Discovering the World at the Brink of the Third Millennium: Searches for the Formula Uniting Science and Spirit. Novosibirsk, Russia: Novosibirsk State University.* Oldfield, J. D. 2018. ‘Imagining Climates Past, Present and Future: Soviet Contributions to the Science of Anthropogenic Climate Change, 1953–1991’. Journal of Historical Geography 60: 41–51. Podolinskiy, S. (1880) 1991. Human Labour and the Unity of Energy. Moscow: Noosfera.* Podolinskiy, S. 1881. ‘Socialism and the Unity of the Forces of Nature’, lib.ru, originally published in La Plebe, nos. 3 and 4. http://az.lib.ru/p/podolinskij_s_a/text_1881_ sotzializm.shtml*. Pozner, V. V. 2015. ‘Interview with Igor Chestin, director of WWF Russia’. Pozner, 1st Channel, March 30, 2015.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6sTVUqSoKQ. Schmelzer, M. 2016. The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shanin, T. 1997. ‘The Idea of Progress’. In The Post-Development Reader, edited by M. Rahnema and V. Bawtree, 65–71. London: Zed Books. Sivachev, N. V., and N. N. Yakovlev. 1979. Russia and the United States: U.S.-Soviet Relations from the Soviet Point of View. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Solovyov, V. S. (1897) 1990. Justification of the Good. Collected Works in 2 Volumes. Moscow: Misl’.* Stalin, J. V. 1929. ‘A Year of Great Change: On the Occasion of the Twelfth Anniversary of the October Revolution’. In Works, volume 12, April 1929–June 1930, 124–41. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954. https://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/stalin/works/1929/11/03.htm. Tolstoy, L. N. (1910) 1994. ‘About Socialism’. Tolstovskiy Listok Journal, 5. Moscow: Press-Solo.* Tolstoy, L. N. 2012. Russian World. Moscow: Labirint.*

120

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya

Zhvirblis, A. 2014. ‘Real Power in the Hands of World Economic Oligarchy’ (interview with S. Latouche). Russkaya Planeta, August 10, 2014. http://rusplt.ru/world/nastoyaschaya-vlast-u-vsemirnoy-ekonomicheskoy-oligarhii-11908.html.*

NOTES 1. However, we also know of the ‘philosophical ship’—two ships in 1923 that deported 123 representatives of the intelligentsia whose work was seen as not fitting into the Soviet visions. 2. In Russia the term opposition is quite broad. Groups that make up the opposition in the State Duma or are presented as opposition in the pro-state media would not be considered as opposition by many. Hence a distinction is often made between ‘systemic’ and ‘non-systemic’ opposition. 3. However, there were repressions and executions of Tolstoians too during this time (Gorelik 1922). 4. Ironically, the author of this text thanks Simon Kuznets, the father of GDP and growth as we know it today (see also Paulsson, this volume), for providing him with his personal library of Chayanov’s work. 5. I am intentionally not referring to ‘state’ here so as to keep an openness in terms of where socio-ecological transformation would be coming from and not to confine it to state actions. 6. References to literature in Russian are translated into English and are marked with *.

SEVEN Countering the Order of Progress Colonialism, Extractivism, and Re-Existence in the Brazilian Amazon Felipe Milanez

The capitalist, modernizing project of economic growth via resource extraction (Walsh 2017) is a long-term feature of Latin American political economy; historically speaking, in fact, extractivism is part of the way in which the dogma of the nation-state has materialized in this part of the world. During the past decade, and before the rise of right-wing governments in various countries, this project has run side by side with attempts to achieve a better distribution of wealth and with the fight against extreme poverty and inequality: a model that has been termed “neo-extractivism” (Gudynas 2009). In Brazilian economic history, for example, the ideology of “catching-up development” (Mies and Shiva 1993) has dogmatically transited both through the left and the right (Viveiros de Castro and Danowski 2014). It gained momentum under the dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici (1969–1974), who launched a military campaign for the conquest of Amazonia, leading to the genocide of around 8,350 Amerindians and the deforestation of around 18 percent of the region in the long term. 1 It was then reiterated by projects from the neoliberal right such as the Advance Brazil (Avança Brasil) program by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2003). Under the progressive governments of Lula and Roussef, catching-up development took the form of the Growth Acceleration Program (Plano de Aceleração do Crescimento [PAC]), aiming towards exponential growth rates, rapidly expanding and doubling in strength. First launched in 2007, then again in 2011 and 2015, the PACs turned the 121

122

Felipe Milanez

extraction of natural resources for export into a cornerstone for economic plans whose “engine of development” was located in the Amazon, “the current frontier of expansion for mining”. After the coup d’état of 2016, the age-old motto of the national flag, Order and Progress 2 (Ordem e Progresso), a quasi-religious doctrine of positivism, became the slogan of the conservative government of Michel Temer, the symbol of his government and of his Bridge to the Future (Ponte para o futuro) program. The election of the extreme right-winger Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, reclaiming the slogan “Brazil above everything, God above everyone”, has further deepened the deadly threat that such an extractive-based growth model represents for the Amazon region and the large majority of its inhabitants. Due to Bolsonaro’s nostalgic apology of the military conquest of the Amazon, including its practices of torture and racial extermination, and his threats to demolish the rights of indigenous and traditional populations and all environmental regulations, it is foreseeable that the pursue of economic growth and extreme extraction will become even more violent (Milanez 2018b; Menton and Milanez 2018). This chapter starts from the assumption that it is through the perspective of a counter-colonial plurality of worlds and of cosmovisions that Latin American political ecology can meet European degrowth (Kothari et al., forthcoming; see also Milanez 2018a). Building upon Latin American decolonial political ecology, as well as original research on sustainable agroforestry in the Amazon region, this chapter discusses the extractivist path of Brazil from a post-development perspective. It describes the emergence of a “theology of extractivism” (Gudynas 2016), that is, a sacred narrative directly associated with the ideology of economic growth as a “civilizing enterprise” (Svampa 2016), by showing how this materialized through colonization, genocide, and extractivism in Amazonia. It then zooms into the Great Carajás region, a “perennial frontier” (Little 2001) for the extraction of natural resources for export, seeing it as a contested space between worldviews—that of the Western dogmatic faith in growth and progress and that of radically different epistemes and life-projects (Blaser 2004). Finally, the chapter highlights the counter-narrative of extractivism represented by peasant and indigenous movements in the Amazon region, which, much like global environmental justice and post-development movements, are opposing extractivist plans that would turn them into “sacrifice zones”. Overall, I offer a view of economic growth in Brazil as a violent process of never-ending colonization and resource extraction, and, at the same time, I make visible the already existing plurality of life-projects defended by the colonized and their visions for the future of Amazonia.

Countering the Order of Progress

123

LAND, RACE, AND BLOOD: BRAZIL’S WHITE/MALE THEOLOGY OF PROGRESS Following Gudynas (2016) but also in dialogue with studies on the dynamics of conflicts and cosmologies in the Amazon (Little 2001; Viveiros de Castro 2015), I understand the ideology of growth in Brazil as a quasitheology in which faith in progress is socially construed as a sacred narrative, that is, incontestable and salvationist, pledging to usher in a better world through the promise of a “place under construction”, and a “nation of the future” (Zweig 1941). Started with the construction of a national idea forged after independence (1822), this founding myth of the “fatherland” (pátria) has been redefined and rearticulated by the internal elites since the republic (1889), under the influence of positivism with the continuing presence of the theme of economic progress in a civilizing sense. Forming the cornerstone of the dogma of progress, extractivism has operated in a universalistic manner within the global system originated by the expansion of Western capitalism/colonialism. Following this historical pattern, today’s concept of economic growth in Brazil is directly connected to the North American march of “manifest destiny”, that is, the evolutionary perspective of a universal forward direction for humanity, in pursuit of a mythical place moulded on a white male fantasy of material abundance and resulting from the “improvement” of nature via modern technology and private property (Barca 2011). Modern economic growth is thus a whitewashed place, the result of a process of racial/ colonial constructions for the interference with/domestication of nature and the Other. In the case of Brazil, the colonial and progressive narrative of economic development has mostly materialized through the colonization of the Amazon region, a process that—since the early twentieth century—took the form of territorial penetration accompanied by the enslavement and genocide of indigenous peoples (Hecht 2013). The writer Euclides da Cunha, a contemporary observer of the rubber boom, that is, the earliest economic drive in Amazonian history (Santos 1980), produced one of the most poignant critiques of the industrial exploitation of Amazonia: On entering through the two portals that lead to the diabolical paradise of the rubber tracts, man abdicates the highest of the qualities with which he is born and laughing condemns himself with that formidable irony. In fact, within the exuberant climes of the rubber-producing trees there awaits him the most heinous organization of labour ever conjured up by human egotism unbound. (Cunha 2000, 127, translated by author)

Assassinated in 1909, Cunha never lived to see the end of the rubber boom when, in 1913, Asian rubber arrived on the global markets. However, the precision of his description of the domination of the seringais (rub-

124

Felipe Milanez

ber plantations) remained up to date until the struggles of the seringueiros (rubber tappers) movement in the 1980s (see below). In this “most heinous organization of labour”, Cunha wrote, “it is man who toils in order to enslave himself”; in other words, “with the intention of reaching paradise, man goes to hell”. Assuming a positivist perspective, typical of his time, Cunha saw nature as hostile and separate from society. But it is in his analysis of the relation between the exploitation of nature and the enslavement of workers, the “terror” of the rubber boom (Taussig 1987), and particularly in his comments about the greed of individualism and the belief in extractivism as salvation that we find the key elements of a “political ecology of the Amazon” (Hecht 2013). Seven decades later, sociologist Octavio Ianni could still describe this region as a capitalist frontier, whose colonization was still occurring through a “generally broad and intense process of expansion of capitalist connections to the region” (Ianni 1978, 55), including the dispossession of squatters and of indigenous peoples in order to give way to large-scale mining and the creation of extensive estates (latifúndios) and of agricultural and cattle-breeding enterprises. This was a project of internal colonialism (Casanova 1965), serving not only the expansion of capitalism and territorial control but also civilizational whitewashing. Most importantly, racism was a constitutive element in expansionist ideology. In fact, those who possessed a nondichotomous connection to nature, akin to the relational ontologies described above, were seen as uncivilized and inferior, and compared to “wild animals”. The land that they inhabited was seen as “abandoned” or “empty”. In the words of a railroad engineer: Before 1970 this whole great region, covering half the surface of Brazil, was practically abandoned, being at the hands of just Indians, wild animals, rubber tappers, and Brazil-nut harvesters. 3

Consequently, domesticating and controlling the land implied whitewashing settlement. Potential white settlers were described as men, a marker that established the relationship between patriarchy and colonialism. In a popular slogan by dictator Médici, Amazonia was said to be a “land without men for men without land” [terra sem homens, para homens sem terra]. In such a heterogeneously occupied country like Brazil, this slogan expressed the Brazilian elites’ search for the nearest available Western-centric standard. Accordingly, a great diaspora of white males would embark on a crusade to the Amazon to bring faith in development and the domestication of the land. The dictatorship’s geopolitical and economic plans for the Amazon were put into practice during the regime’s most repressive and violent period under the command of Médici—who now again inspires Jair Bolsonaro’s plans for the region. Physical repression was paired with defamation and other forms of epistemic violence as a way of intimidating any rebellion or peasant movement. Since

Countering the Order of Progress

125

the beginning, however, this project encountered both material and cultural resistance. In 1971, the same year that Médici expanded the “plan for integration” of Amazonian lands for cattle-breeding enterprises, Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga published the pastoral letter An Amazonian Church in Conflict with Latifundia and Social Marginalization (Casaldáliga 1971), which soon became a manifesto for a “church of the oppressed”, serving as a counterbelief to extractivist theology. The territory of the Prelature of Araguaia, to which Casaldáliga still belongs today, is situated within the region called Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal) and was under the jurisdiction of the Office of Amazonian Development (SUDAM), the agency that issued fiscal incentives for export-based, extractivist cattle-breeding enterprises. The examples described in the pastoral denunciation show the sovereign power of business in the region, where “the region’s concern is cattle” and capital “does what it wants. Everything and everyone belongs to it” (ibid., 13). In Casaldáliga’s letter, the violence of capital is interlocked with the colonial project, and above all with the “aggressive acculturation” of indigenous peoples: “The indigenous problem”, he wrote, “exceeds the question of land”, and involves a change of “mentality”, of becoming “entrepreneurial” and “integrated” (or assimilated). The Letter marked the starting of a liberation theology in the Brazilian Amazon. It was followed by the creation of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) in 1973, with the publication of the document Y-Juca-Pirama (CIMI 1973), and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in 1975, positioning the Catholic Church in defense of the oppressed and the poorest, the wretched of the earth. This opened an internal conflict within the Church, which provoked a change in its position towards the dictatorship. Their constant denunciation of the violence of the colonial/capitalist/patriarchal project turned liberation theologians into enemies of developmentalism/ extractivism: they were dubbed as “subversives” in a sense that was close to heresy, which led to the persecution, torture, and assassination of many of them. It is within this context of governmental ordinances for the construction of the “nation of the future”, via mega-extractive activities, that the Great Carajás Project came into being in the southeast region of the state of Pará. Mineral reserves were discovered in 1967 on an expedition by United States Steel (USS), nationalized by the military government with the creation of Amazônia Mineração (AMZA) in 1970, and purchased in 1977 by the Vale mining company. 4 In 1986, the aim was to extract 15m tons of iron annually, which became 25m tons in 1987. After three decades, the new S11D exploitation project, inaugurated in December 2016 and described as the “largest mining project in the world”, with the estimated capacity of 90m tons of iron production a year and 66.7 percent pure iron content, represents the “deepening of the country’s own neoextractivist trajectory” (Coelho 2015, 24 [my translation]). Together with

126

Felipe Milanez

four iron mines in Carajás, Vale still controls the Salobo (copper), Azul (manganese) and Sossego (copper) mines in this region (Coelho 2015, 54). The Great Carajás Project was the genesis of the mega-extractivism piloted by Vale and associated from the onset with other infrastructural mega-projects for exportation. Notable among them was the construction of a giant hydroelectric plant, UHE Tucuruí. The latter would serve the Albras and Alunorte aluminum manufacturing plants alongside the Mineração Rio do Norte mining company (MRN), a complex railway network (the Carajás Railroad), two metallurgical parks designed to produce pig iron by burning native rainforest charcoal, and also cattle-farming projects funded by tax incentives. Since the beginning of the new century, this complex extractivist organization was expanded by the “growth acceleration” programs leading to the duplication of the railway network linking Carajás with the port at Ponto de Madeira (an extension of 892 km), the repowering of the Tucuruí dam, the opening of the S11D mine, 5 the building of eight mega meat-producing plants for exporting beef, and financial support of large-scale farming (Milanez 2015). To make sense of the massive transformations brought about by the abovementioned projects, it is important to consider how the current developmentalist/extractivist growth dogma was formed and became dominant at the time of dictatorship. The idea of an “another planet” was not just a metaphor but an ideology often repeated by authorities. This creation myth, according to which Amazonia’s history itself starts with the arrival of Vale and the (authoritarian) developmentalism of the civilmilitary regime, was then updated with a neo-extractivist version of “sustainable development”, aimed at legitimizing the opening of S11D. In the inauguration of the first blast furnace in 1990 (one of more than thirty planned for installation in the following years in the Marabá region alone), the then governor of Pará, Hélio Gueiros, used his inauguration speech to respond to criticisms about environmental impacts. 6 The mill furnaces were to consume charcoal to transform iron ore, to be extracted from the native forest in gargantuan quantities, into pig iron. As calculated by the environmental agency Ibama, half a million hectares were deforested in the year 2004 alone in order to provide for this production (IBAMA 2005). In Carajás, mineral extraction was related from the start to logging extraction and forest exploitation (Greenpeace 2012). Deforestation was the manifest destiny of developmentalism. In his infamous speech, in Portuguese, the governor suggested that no one would “intimidate the current government saying it should not touch” the forest or that “this forest should remain virginal, not violated”, and that “yes, the governor will touch it”. 7 By suggesting the rape of nature as an imperative of developmentalism led by the state associated with private companies, the latter sentence sounded like a de facto justification for violence against the environment as well as indigenous and peasant populations standing in the way of “development”. 8

Countering the Order of Progress

127

This discourse has accompanied the development of extractivism in the past decade. In order to justify the exploitation of the S11D block, Vale commissioned studies that stressed how population growth would have caused a rise in demand and a consequent need for investments. In one of these reports, commissioned in 2007 in order to evaluate the impact of a projected new steel plant, Pará Laminated Steel (Aços Laminados do Pará, ALPA), Vale estimated the need for BRL 1.6bn in investments, which could only come from the exploitation of the new mine (Milanez 2015), with a projected tax revenue of BRL 15.5bn—ten times the estimate for the “development” of Marabá. In other words, extracting and exporting minerals became the only possibility for acquiring basic infrastructure for the Marabá population. Extractivism was positioned as the only possibility to grant the region water and sewage infrastructures, education, health, and security. Just as the Great Carajás Program of 1980 was accompanied by other extractivist projects such as cattle-breeding and energy production, so the S11D mega-mining project was combined with the construction of a new steel mill, ALPA. The latter would exhibit mining as the flagship for an imagined industry of auto parts and assemblages, a fantasized industrial centre that would be followed by the expansion of energy production with the construction of the hydroelectric plant of Marabá, of new industrial meat-production plants, and of the expansion of soy plantations. Marabá would become a metallurgical hub through which mining would function as a bridge for the installation of transformative industry— understood as the utmost achievement of the development dream. This broad economic growth system, which impacts a large geographical area and diverse socio-environmental systems, encountered resistance from popular movements that not only produced important amendments to its initial plans but also managed to halt the installation of some of these projects, such as the HUE hydroelectric plant, proposing a different model of territorial relations beyond growth. FIGHTING THE ORDER OF PROGRESS: INDIGENOUS AND PEASANT MOVEMENTS IN AMAZONIA Throughout the past century, the implementation of extraction projects in the Amazon has experienced resistance from local movements and collectives, such as indigenous peoples and landless farmworkers as well as caboclos, riverine, maroon, and other communities traditionally inhabiting the same territories. Material and symbolic drivers are deeply imbricated in these struggles, which originate from radically different epistemes and visions of well-being. As a consequence, to understand the opposition to the “order of progress” in Amazonia, it is essential to start with the indigenous cosmologies, that is, with those visions that were

128

Felipe Milanez

first and most violently impacted by it. In fact, that history could not be understood without considering a less well-known history of “countercolonization” by the African Amerindian population. According to quilombola intellectual Antonio Bispo dos Santos (2015), counter-colonization must be understood as all those struggles by which indigenous and local communities have defended not only their territories but also the symbols, meanings, and livelihood practiced in them. Unlike the colonizer’s cosmology, which is built upon a deterritorialized God and conceiving only one mode of existence—Bispo argues—the African Amerindian polytheist cosmovision sees gods and goddesses as materialized in nature and thus territorialized, producing a pluralist epistemology. The latter concept recalls what Arturo Escobar (2014), based on his research with black communities in Colombia, has called the “pluriverse” perspective, that is, a cosmovision that finds expression in embodied and territorialized ways of relating to nonhuman nature, or else a political ontology of sentipensar con la tierra (“feeling-thinking with the earth”). In contrast to the neoliberal globalizing project of the construction of “one” world, Escobar suggests analyzing the resistances of peasant and indigenous communities, as well as those of African descendants, as ontological struggles, which Mario Blaser (2004) defines as the “defense of other lifeprojects”. These “territories of difference”, I argue, resonate with the counter-colonial epistemologies of Andinian Quechua and Aimara buen vivir (Sumak Kawsay and Suma Qamana) or the lowlands Guarani philosophy tekó porá, all different expressions of a unique Latin-American decolonial thought in its historical struggle against the growth monoculture. More specifically, the extractivist/developmentalist project would not be understandable without considering what Ramon Grosfoguel (2016, 126) has termed as “epistemic” and “ontological” extractivism, that is, the imposition of the Enlightenment’s idea of nature as separate from culture. According to Grosfoguel, this Western cultural dichotomy, which isolated nature from humans, also operated within society by separating individuals from their communities and from their place of existence/ subsistence, thus also functioning as a prerequisite of primitive accumulation. Extractivism was premised on this Eurocentric concept of nature as separate from society. “The problem with the concept of ‘nature,’” Grosfoguel writes, “is that it is still a colonial concept, because the word is inscribed in the civilising project of humanity” (2016, 129). This idea of nature was violently imposed upon the colonized people, whose epistemologies were based on the opposite vision: that of a wholeness between humans and nonhuman nature. If, as the indigenous intellectual Ailton Krenak (2017) suggests, people, places, and the way of being form a whole; the violence of dichotomous constructions surrounds the commons, deterritorializing them. This disturbance in ontological relationships liberates a condition that Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman, terms xawara, or imbalance and illness. In a balanced place, this power/

Countering the Order of Progress

129

illness is contained, but once liberated, such as through violent capital/ colonial intervention, it emanates a diseased state that manifests in the bodies of people like a malady. In the Yanomami perception, ecology is “us” in “the forest”: In the forest, we human beings are the “ecology”. But it is equally the xapiri, the game, the trees, the rivers, the fish, the sky, the rain, the wind, and the sun! It is everything that came into being in the forest, far from the white people: everything that isn’t surrounded by fences yet. The words of “ecology” are our ancient words, those Omama gave our ancestors at the beginning of time. The xapiri have defended the forest since it first came into being. Our ancestors have never devastated it because they kept the spirits by their side. . . . We are inhabitants of the forest. We were born in the middle of the “ecology” and we grew up in it. (Kopenawa and Albert 2015, 393)

In Kopenawa’s words, nature is all that is far from white people and that has no fences. As Frantz Fanon (2011) observed, the violence of the colonial expansion of capital separates collective subjects from their place of existence operating in multiple dimensions: it drains away the substance of the past; it imposes a daily routine of suffering, the xawara described by Yanomami; it destroys the perspective of a future; and it organizes the world in asymmetrical relationships of power. This separation of subject from place/ecosystem for the appropriation/fencing of nature constructs a place of the other and a nonplace of looting, that is, Fanon's “zone of nonbeing”. The collective subject belonging to the place is in ontological opposition to the capitalist/colonial idea that a place belongs to the individual. They are “territories of difference”. One of the “territories of difference” in this ontological opposition to neoliberal globalization is the struggle of the Kaiowa and Guarani peoples against agribusiness in their sacred lands, the tekohá. In a UN report, this region was considered the most violent against indigenous people in Brazil, and the special rapporteur for indigenous people, Victoria Tauli Corpuz, talked about the “potential risk of ethnocidal effects” in the pursuit of economic interests. 9 In that struggle, the Kaiowa and Guarani eat dirt as an act of protest and as political performance of their sense of belonging. 10 It is different, they argue, for someone who can move to another place: for them, there is no other place. Seeing themselves as people who belong to the earth, the Kaiowa and Guarani confront the plundering of their co-existence with nature. As their leader Anastácio Peralta stated in an interview, We will return to that land because we belong to that land. It’s very different for them. They believe that the land belongs to them. We’re different. 11

130

Felipe Milanez

In indigenous thinking, this epistemic sense of connection is also ontological: to exist is to be together, and this generates the knowledge that (re)produces existence. The colonial dichotomy between nature and culture, which translates into the positivist motto of order and progress as inscribed on the national flag, gains traction by being implanted through racial dispositifs onto indigenous territories. This process of ordering things according to the notion of “progress” seeks to individualize people while separating them from the land in order to turn them into a proletarian workforce, be it slavery or other forms of degrading, forced, and exhaustive labour. At the same time, the “order of progress” implies the exacerbation of two fundamental contradictions of capitalism: the overexploitation of labour and the infinite extraction of nature in a finite world (O’Connor 1998). The latter point takes us to consider the struggles of so-called traditional populations, that is, all those communities whose life-projects are based on the sustainable use of renewable forest products and are thus radically incompatible with the extractivist order of progress. Throughout the history of colonization and development of Amazonia, daily resistance by rubber tappers and Brazil-nut harvesters has been governed with extreme brutality by gunmen of the oligarchy that had established itself along the Araguaia and Tocatins Rivers (Emmi 1999). But though the Mutran family, the primary controllers of the Brazil-nut export system until the 1970s, managed for years to suppress harvesters’ rebellions through violence and terror, starting from the 1990s, settlers and peasant workers organized to fight back, opposing the increase in land ownership by the Mutran descendants and occupying a number of cattle farms that were transformed into settlements run by the Landless movement or MST (Milanez and Trocate 2015). In these settlements, built on deforested areas of ancient Brazil-nut forests, small peasant agriculture produced a profound transformation in the landscape, replacing the cattle farms with agroecology and agroforestry (De’ Carli 2013; Milanez 2015). A typical example is the “April 17th” settlement, named after workers assassinated by the military police on that day in 1996: the Eldorado of Carajás Massacre. The Macaxeira Complex is a vast area of pasture occupied by landless farmers, survivors of the massacre, who were then able to obtain legal occupancy following the immense international repercussions of the case. In this settlement, the MST encouraged an agroecological model that proved more efficient for settler families than cattle-breeding, which had been sponsored by government bodies as the foundation of economic growth in rural areas, even when it made more sense in discourse than in practice (De’ Carli 2013). In order to challenge the “growth acceleration” plans, which brought subsidy to cattle and soy producers, the agroecology implemented in settler projects, as well as the collective management of Brazil-nut forests, the extractive reserves, and the demarcation of indigenous lands consti-

Countering the Order of Progress

131

tute spaces of common usage that materially confront the enclosures and the expansion of latifúndios and the narrative of economic growth. At the same time, they emerge as counter-practices to the agribusiness developmental model. As Boccato-Franco and Nascimento suggest (2013), the spread of agroecology in the Amazon can be seen as a Southern interpretation of the perspective of degrowth. These counter-movements that emerged from the struggles of rural people against mega-projects and agribusiness not only oppose old-style land grabbing but also the more recent neo-extractivism represented by the expansion of mega-mining and soy plantations (Milanez and Trocate 2015). For Chico Mendes, leader of the rural workers’ union of Xapuri, in the same state of Acre, and founder of the National Council of Seringueiros, assassinated in 1988, agrarian reform in the forest should not aspire to the assignment of private plots of land but to the autonomy of labour and to communitarian access to and control over natural resources. Opposing not only the rubber plantation owners but also cattle breeders and loggers, Mendes defended the protection of the rainforest as a commons associated with labour’s autonomy: the protection of the forest was essential to the life and reproduction of “the forest peoples” as well as for the economic autonomy of seringueiros. As noted by Krenak, who was at the time Mendes’s ally in the creation of the Rainforest Peoples’ Union, the proposal of “extractive reserves”, that is, areas to be protected through sustainable communitarian use, converged with the indigenous cosmology in designating a space “far from the fences” and away from the “order of progress”. “Nature”, Krenak writes, “is a common place where these people can live”, and alongside the communalization of work, a coalition between Acre Indians and seringueiros came about through the fight to regain their territories against rubber barons. As Krenak recounts, When these indigenous communities regained control of their areas, and in some cases succeeded in removing the barons from the region, they showed the tappers that they were on the other side of the river, that between the rubber tappers and the Indians there was the baron. (2015, 57, my translation)

The “Forest Peoples Alliance” of Mendes and Krenak came to represent the political possibility of a life-project different from the developmentalist/extractivist dogma. Such alternative life-project was perceived by the civil-military dictatorship as the Other to be conquered amid the expansion of the inner “frontier”. Implemented after the death of Mendes, the extractive reserves (RESEX), in which the term extractive assumes the meaning of sustainable traditional extraction of non-timber forest products such as wild fruits, Brazil nuts, and rubber, constitute an important alternative to the monocultural model. According to Stefania Barca (2014), the RESEX represents a form of working-class environmentalism, that is, a counter-movement

132

Felipe Milanez

that rubber tappers put into practice to defend diversity in response to the monocultural privatization of the commons and the alienation of labour by regaining control of both the forest and the labour process. In the Carajás region, for example, peasant activists were able to implement the Praialta Piranheira agro-extractive settler project in the town of Nova Ipixuna, crossed by the Carajás Railroad, inaugurated in 1985. This agroextractive settlement introduced the possibility of accepting migrant peasants, who would otherwise be attracted by monocultural cattleranching farms, as long as they were willing to make a living in sustainable coexistence with the diverse rainforest. In the words of community leaders José Cláudio Ribeiro and Maria do Espírito Santo, the agro-extractive settlement represents a possibility for “re-existence”, that is, both resisting the fast and violent economic growth represented by developmentalist extraction and building an alternative mode of “existence with the forest”. The “order of progress” reacted violently. Illegal cuttings and encroachments on the reserve’s allotments led to the accelerated dismantling of the Praialta Piranheira project from 2005, which culminated in the assassination of Ribeiro and Espírito Santo in 2011 (Milanez 2015). Followed by international outrage, their death symbolizes the extent to which autonomous life-projects (or “re-existence”) that stem from a rejection of extractivism represent a real threat to the continuation of growthacceleration programs. Another example of re-existence is the Movement for Popular Sovereignty over Mining (MAM) that emerged in southeastern Pará in 2012, following the militant experience of the MST in the region (Trocate, Zanon, and Vieira 2015), in opposition to the expansion of S11D and of mining on settlements occupied by peasant families. A national movement emerging from land struggles in the Amazon, MAM “seeks structural changes in society to curb the free actions of capital towards minerals” (ibid., 16, my translation). With the implementation of the Carajás mining project and the expansion of S11D, Vale began to negotiate individually with small tenants in impacted communities, breaking community bonds and bringing down compensation values (Coelho 2015) while simultaneously constructing a narrative of progress and full employment with the support of local politicians as a way to demobilize the population and gather support from the jobless or underemployed in the region. The fight against the arrival of Vale in the region, however, originated specifically with the miners of the Serra Pelada mine in the 1980s, who were situated in an area disputed by the company. In 1987, in the São Bonifácio Massacre, dozens (the exact number is unknown) of gold prospectors were killed by military police during a protest on the Vale railroad tracks on a bridge over the Tocantins River. The closure of Serra Pelada at the beginning of the 1990s coincided with the reorganization of the Pará MST, and many ex-miners joined in the land conflict. Several amongst the 19 MST militants killed in the Eldorado of Carajás Massacre

Countering the Order of Progress

133

in 1996 were miners, and many of the survivors reside today in the Palmares settlement beside the Vale lands, through which the railroad passes (Coelho 2015). Shortly before the MAM was created, a Movement of Mining Workers (MTM) emerged in this region to organize miners in a dispute over the Serra Pelada quarry in 2008. These movements in Pará were followed by other parallel movements in groupings that appeared along the Carajás Railroad, in the neighbouring state of Maranhão, such as the Fórum Carajás (Centre for the Rights of the Population of the Carajás Region) and Justice on the Rails (Justiça nos Trilhos), founded in 2007 as an international campaign articulating different social movements, and the First International Meeting of Those Affected by Vale, in 2010, with thirty different social organization, social movements, and academic institutions (Entidades Participantes 2010). Alongside the rural worker unions, the MST and indigenous peoples (Xikrin-Mebengokrê, Guarany and Gavião Parkatejê, Kykatejê and Akrãtikatejê) organized independent protests to disrupt the transport of minerals for export, in the midst of specific negotiations or gestures of solidarity with other movements. In the case of protests organized by indigenous peoples, they have been very often related to the lack of compensation by companies for the negative impacts caused by the railroad. 12 In Maranhão, movements linked to the Justice on the Rails network involved maroon communities; the indigenous groups TeneteharaGuajajara, Awa-Guaja, and Tenetehara-Tembé; peasant workers; coconut shellers; and other traditional collectives that, joined by activist researchers from public universities and pastoral agents, have been adopting alternative propositions such as that of Guarani-inspired tekó porã, or bem viver (living well), which was the main theme of the 2018 meeting of the Pastoral Land Commission. 13 These popular resistance movements begin locally and eventually also extend themselves to the global stage in international struggles, as environmental justice movements against the extraction and transportation of natural resources (Martínez-Alier et al. 2016). CONCLUSION This chapter has shown how, rather than a recent concept in social science, decoloniality has been a historical practice of counter-colonial populations (Bispo dos Santos 2015). The chapter has also shown how, in the experience of the Brazilian Amazon, social movements acting side by side with indigenous, Quilombo, and other traditional communities have long challenged the monocultural idea of progress and growth. Resisting genocide via re-existence (or the defense of alternative life-projects and territorial difference), these movements oppose the civilizing project of economic growth as implemented by both progressive and authoritarian

134

Felipe Milanez

governments. The ideology of growth—monocultural, universal—is thus both ontologically and materially challenged by the opposition represented by territorialized collectives in the Amazon (Amerindians, Forest People Alliances, agro-ecological peasant communities) not only resisting the material plundering of resources but also reacting epistemically and ontologically in envisioning possibilities for re-existence. Going beyond the motto “Another world is possible”, these other worlds that already exist also resist and revive (Walsh 2017). And by resisting and reviving they contradict the theology of extractivism and its “manifest destiny”. REFERENCES Barca, S. 2011. “Energy, Property and the Industrial Revolution Narrative”. Ecological Economics 70: 1309–15. Barca, S. 2014. “Laboring the Earth: Transnational Reflections on the Environmental History of Work”. Environmental History 19 (1): 3–27. Bispo dos Santos, A. 2015. Colonização, Quilombos: modos e significações. Brasília: INCTI, UNB. Blaser, M. 2004. “Life Projects: Indigenous Peoples’ Agency and Development”. In The Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization, edited by M. Blaser, H. Feit, and G. McRae, 26–45. London: Zed Books. Boccato-Franco, A., and E. Nascimento. 2013. “Decrescimento, agroecologia e economia solidária no Brasil: em busca de convergências”. Revista Iberoamericana de Economía Ecológica 21: 43–56. Casaldáliga, P. 1971. Uma Igreja da Amazônia em conflito com o latifúndio e a marginalização social. São Felix do Araguaia, Brazil: Carta Pastoral. Casanova, P. 1965. “Internal Colonialism and National Development”. Studies in Comparative International Development 1, no. 4 (April): 27–37. CIMI. 1973. Y-Juca-Pirama: O Í ndio: Aquele que deve morrer: Documento de urgê ncia de bispos e missioná rios. CNBB. Coelho, T. P. 2015. Projeto Grande Carajás: Trinta anos de desenvolvimento frustrado. Marabá, Brazil: Ed. Iguana. Cunha, E. 2000. Um paraíso perdido: ensaios Amazônicos. Brasília: Senado Federal. Danowski, D., and Viveiros de Castro, E. 2014. Há mundo por vir? Ensaio sobre os medos e os fins. Florianópolis, Brazil: Cultura e Barbárie. De’ Carli, C. 2013. “O discurso político da agroecologia no MST: O caso do Assentamento 17 de Abril em Eldorado dos Carajás, Pará”. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 100: 105–29. Emmi, M. 1999. A Oligarquia do Tocantins e o Domínio dos Castanhais. Belém, Brazil: UFPA/NAEA. Entidades Participantes. 2010. Dossiê dos impactos e violações da Vale no mundo. Rio de Janeiro: Organizaç õ es Integrantes do I Encontro Internacional dos Atingidos pela Vale. Escobar, A. 2014. Sentipensar con la tierra: nuevas lecturas sobre desarrollo, territorio y diferencia. Medellín, Colombia: Ed. UNAULA. Fanon, F. 2011. Frantz Fanon Ouevres. Paris: La Découverte. Greenpeace. 2012. Carvoaria Amazônia. São Paulo: Greenpeace Brasil. Grosfoguel, R. 2016. “Del ‘extractivismo económico’ al ‘extractivismo epistémico’ y al ‘extractivismo ontológico’: una forma destructiva de conocer, ser y estar en el mundo”. Tabula Rasa, no. 24, 123–43. Gudynas, E. 2009. “Diez tesis urgentes sobre el nuevo extractivismo”. In Extractivismo, política y sociedad, edited by the Centro Andino de Acción Popular and the Centro

Countering the Order of Progress

135

Latino Americano de Ecología Social, 187–225. Quito: Centro Andino de Acció n Popular. Gudynas, E. 2016. “Teología de los extractivismos”. Tabula Rasa 24: 11–23. Hecht, S. 2013. The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ianni, O. 1979. A luta pela terra. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes. IBAMA. 2005. Diagnóstico do setor siderúrgico nos estados do Pará e do Maranhão: relatório técnico. Brasília. Kopenawa, D., and B. Albert. 2013. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kothari, A., A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria, and A. Acosta. Forthcoming. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New Delhi: Tulika Books. Krenak, A. 2015. Encontros. Rio de Janeiro: Azougue. Krenak, A. 2017. Tembeta: Ailton Krenak. Rio de Janeiro: Azougue. Little, Paul. 2001. Amazonia: Territorial Struggles on Perennial Frontiers. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Martínez-Alier, J., L. Temper, D. Del Bene, and A. Scheidel. 2016. “Is There a Global Environmental Justice Movement?” Journal of Peasant Studies 43 (3): 731–55. Menton, M., and F. Milanez. 2018. “Brazil’s Next President Threatens the People and Forests of the Amazon”. NewScientist, November 7, 2018. https://www.newscientist. com/article/mg24032034-500-brazils-next-president-threatens-the-people-andforests-of-the-amazon/. Mies, M., and V. Shiva. 1993. Ecofeminismo. Lisbon: Instituto Piaget. Milanez, F. 2015. “‘A Ousadia de Conviver com a Floresta’: Uma Ecologia Política do Extrativismo na Amazônia”. PhD diss., Universidade de Coimbra. Milanez, F. 2018a. “A aceleração do crescimento e a resistência decolonial no Brasil”. In Pensamiento critico, diferencia latino-americana y rearticulación epistémica. Vol. 1 of Ecología Política Latinoamericana, edited by H. Alimonda, C. Toro Perez, and F. Martin, 287–301. Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLACSO. Milanez, F. 2018b. “Bolsonaro Calls for Carnage and Environmental Holocaust in Brazil”. Entitleblog, October 23, 2018. https://entitleblog.org/2018/10/23/bolsonaro-callsfor-carnage-and-environmental-holocaust-in-brazil. Milanez, F., and C. Trocate. 2015. “La búsqueda de la soberanía entre laneoextracción y el viejo acaparamiento de tierras”. Ecologia Política 49: 42–50. O’Connor, J. 1998. Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York: Guilford Press. Sant’Ana Jr., H. A., D. Bossi, J. J. Borges da Silva, M. Santos, R. A. Santos. 2014. Anais do Seminá rio Internacional Carajá s 30 anos: Resistê ncias e mobilizaç õ es frente a projetos de desenvolvimento na Amazô nia oriental. Sã o Luí s, Brazil: EDUFMA. Santos, R. 1980. História Econômica da Amazônia (1800–1920). São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz. Svampa, M. 2016. Extrativismo neodesenvolvimentista e movimentos sociais: um giro ecoterritorial rumo a novas alternativas? In Descolonizar o imginário: debates sobre pósextrativismo e alternativas ao desenvolvimento, edited by G. Dilger, M. Lang, and J. Pereira Filho. São Paulo: Fundação Rosa Luxemburgo. Taussig, M. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Trocate, C., M. J. Zanon, and J. Vieira. 2015. Elementos constitutivos do MAM: Movimento pela Soberania Popular na Mineração. Marabá, Brazil: Ed. Iguana. Viveiros de Castro, E. 2015. Metafísicas canibais: Elementos para uma antropologia pósestrutural. São Paulo: Cosac Naify. Walsh, C. 2017. Pedagogias decoloniales: Prácticas insurgentes de resistir, (re)existir y (re)vivir. Vol. II. Quito: Abya Yala. Zweig, S. 1941. Brasil, país do futuro. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Guanabara.

136

Felipe Milanez

NOTES 1. According to the public report of the National Commission of Truth, 2015. 2. Taken from the motto of Augusto Comte: “Love as a principle, order as a basis, progress as a goal” (Amor por princípio, Ordem por base e o Progresso por fim). Love, which was the ideal principle of all things, was removed from the flag. 3. Testimony of engineer Deutemar Kovalzuck, National Department of Roads, in Flávio Alcaraz Gomes, Transamazônica, a Redescoberta do Brasil (São Paulo: Livraria Cultura Editora, 1972), 46 (apud Ianni 1978, 202). 4. Companhia Vale do Rio Doce was a state-owned mining company created by populist president Getúlio Vargas in 1942 to extract iron ore in the state of Minas Gerais. The military dictatorship (1964–1985) expanded Vale to extract iron ore in the Amazon region after the discovery of a vast mineral province in 1967. In 1996, Cia Vale do Rio Doce was privatized by the neoliberal government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In 2007, the name was changed to Vale in a marketing campaign to appear as a Brazilian national company (although with international capital). Vale is directly connected to two major dam disasters: the one occurred in Mariana on November 5, 2015, killing nineteen and destroying the entire basin of the Rio Doce river; the other occurred in Brumadinho on January 25, 2019, killing more than three hundred and provoking ecocide in a vast area of the state of Minas Gerais. 5. According to the information on mining available on the project homepage, it was also named “the largest project in the history of mining”: http://www.vale.com/ hotsite/PT/Paginas/Home.aspx. 6. Discourse recorded by documentary maker Adrian Cowell (dir.), Montanhas de Ouro, 52 min., 1990. 7. “Forest” is a feminine word in Portuguese. 8. Also in discourse with Gueiros mentioned in note 6. 9. Statement of Victoria Tauli Corpuz, made on June 22, 2016, following the assassination of Clodiodi Aquileu Rodriguez de Souza. Full statement available at https:// nacoesunidas.org/brasil-especialista-da-onu-condena-assassinatos-de-indigenas-epede-fim-da-violencia/. 10. I witnessed this act during my fieldwork in November 2011, in the tekoha of Guaiviry, and recorded it on video. It is included in the film The Guarani Struggle (dir. Felipe Milanez, 2012), available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= OoyaR5KZGvM. 11. Testimony from the documentary The Guarani Struggle (dir. Felipe Milanez, 2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoyaR5KZGvM. 12. See Felipe Milanez, “Vale suspende recursos a indígenas e causa reviravolta em comunidades”, CartaCapital, April 18, 2015, https://www.cartacapital.com.br/ sociedade/vale-suspende-recursos-a-indigenas-e-causa-reviravolta-em-comunidades6892.html. 13. In 2014, there was a seminar about the thirtieth anniversary of the Carajás Project (Sant’Ana Jr. et al. 2014), and in 2018 a new meeting was held around the subject of well-living: “O Bem Viver a partir dos nossos saberes: ‘Saberes sabidos’”. Available at http://www.seminariocarajas30anos.org/ and https://goo.gl/AkT7wr.

EIGHT Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South Patrick Bond

INTRODUCTION: LIMITS OF GROWTH AND DEGROWTH ADVOCACY Consider two ways of conceptualising the period of economic upheaval lying immediately ahead. First, from the worried enlightened-establishment perch of The Guardian in London, Larry Elliott (2018) is concerned about the futility of his favoured strategy, global Keynesianism: The threat posed by global warming means the current crisis of capitalism is more acute than that of the 1930s, because all that was really required then was a boost to growth, provided by the New Deal, cheap money, tougher controls on finance and rearmament. In today’s context, a plain vanilla go-for-growth strategy would be suicidal.

Yet typical of capitalist reformers, Elliott (2015) has no conception of (or support for) an alternative degrowth political agenda, claiming in a frontal attack on the field that “the economics of happiness can make for sad reading”. Nor does he apparently understand that during the 1920s, vast overcapacity in world industrial output compared to the ability of consumers to purchase the product—that is, the “overaccumulation of capital”—had piled up in the industrial centres. A substantial share of that was then destroyed in the subsequent fifteen years by the 1929–1931 financial meltdowns, Great Depression, and World War II, and hence it was a process of devaluation that set the stage for the post-war boom. Second, in contrast, David Harvey (2018, 52) has always insisted on 137

138

Patrick Bond a theory of devaluation of capital as an answer to overaccumulation. Surplus capital and labor may be absorbed by investments in infrastructures and the built environment but the result may be the creation of excess productive capacity. The result is devaluation.

Like Elliott, most socially and environmentally minded scholars and activists have not investigated this tension between overaccumulation and devaluation, and the differing viewpoints about how to handle it, from North and South. For example, in one recent high-profile debate between leading intellectuals representing the left-Keynesian (Dean Baker) and degrowth (Jason Hickel) standpoints, it did not arise, notwithstanding massive economic turbulence and International Monetary Fund (IMF) warnings of imminent debt crisis (Hickel and Baker 2018). Nor have Marxists with a grounding in capitalist crisis formation considered how devaluation could be managed using a degrowth philosophy or how degrowth could lessen the scourge of uneven capitalist development that appears to become more intense each year. Likewise, reflecting the uneven development of social movements, nearly all degrowth advocates have worked from the more privileged Global North sites of sustainability campaigning, attempting to pull a moderate, reformist narrative to the left. From this vantage point, thinkers and activists engaged in red-green political struggles have offered diverse and often inspiring principles, analyses, strategies, tactics, and alliances. But they have often worked in this space without a holistic critique of capitalism, one attentive to crisis tendencies and uneven global development. Here, far less ambitious thinkers (not within the degrowth community) have long promoted a “green capitalism” strategy based on arguments by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins (1999). Even degrowth cofounder Serge Latouche (2006) once claimed that such internalising environmental externalities and other reformist measures, whose principles were outlined in the early twentieth century by the liberal economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, would bring about a revolution. The reason for this is the scale of the disincentive that these measures would represent for any business adhering to capitalist logic. Is such a gradualist revolution feasible? In any such strategy, argues Ariel Salleh (2010), a comprehensive approach to externalised costs should necessarily include various kinds of economic, thermodynamic, and geopolitical surplus extractions that are typically not incorporated by reformers. The three most obvious forms of devaluation that can be characterised as “debt” are (1) the social debt to inadequately paid workers, (2) an embodied debt to women family caregivers, and (3) an ecological debt drawn on nature at large. Salleh (2018) subsequently added three others: (4) the postcolonial debt which would, if repaid to peasants and indigenes (via decolonial movement demands), allow them to “reclaim livelihoods”; (5) the intergenerational debt owed to the current crop of

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

139

youth so that they can simply “aim to survive” the hot decades ahead; and (6) the species debt advocated by animal rights movements, so as “to extend human sensibility”. To make such calculations stick, much less to force the Global North to begin repaying these debts, would be an extremely radical activity. One technical route is “well-being” accounting that takes us far beyond GDP (Fioramonti 2014). If done rigorously, the implications should indeed threaten the status quo. One facet of this would be counting nonrenewable natural resources (sometimes termed “natural capital” by ecological modernisers), not for the purpose of sending them to market within a “neoliberal nature” agenda. On the contrary, the point is to make a more effective case against their extraction. This is especially evident in Africa, where $150 billion worth of non-renewable resource depletion—uncompensated by reinvestment of revenues—occurs annually (Bond 2018). Nearly all African countries are victims, as measured by their net negative “Adjusted Net Savings” following calculations of extractivist economic damage, as even the World Bank (2014) concedes. But merely correcting such externalities is insufficient. Radicals have also foregrounded more disruptive concepts: distributional equity, nonmaterialist values, and a critique (and transcendence) of the capitalist mode of production. The view from the Global South—a term used here not geographically but in terms of deprivation and super-exploitation—is different from that of Northern environmentalists. Some such social struggles, based on an environmental justice vision, were recorded by African American activists in rural North Carolina and urban ghettos of the United States during the 1980s, given the racial bias in pollution (Bullard 2000). The next generation of “anti-extractivism” struggles were promoted by, amongst others, Andean and Amazonian indigenous peoples’ and feminists’ versions of buen vivir (living well) (Colectivo Miradas 2014; Terreblanche 2019). In that tradition, Ecuadorian and Bolivian activists integrated the “rights of nature” into their national laws and constitutions (Council of Canadians, Global Exchange, and Fundación Pachamama 2011) even if not yet far enough into concrete policy and projects (and the danger of taming these narratives in the courts is always serious). Two other explicitly anti-capitalist concepts utilised in struggles against those promoting orthodox GDP growth include “the commons” (Linebaugh 2008) and eco-socialism (Kovel 2007). Short of an eco-socialist revolution, perhaps the most audacious conceptual attack on capitalist unsustainability is the idea of degrowth (décroissance, first coined by Gorz, 1972). The roots can be located in John Stuart Mill’s 1840s and Lewis Mumford’s 1940s idea of “stationary state” economics, revived in the Club of Rome’s 1970s “Limits to Growth” analysis by Donella Meadows, Dennis H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens (1972). The first major scholarly statements explicitly addressing degrowth came from André Gorz (1972, see also Leonardi,

140

Patrick Bond

this volume), Herman Daly (1973), Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1979), and Serge Latouche (2004). Other major Northern books critical of growth are within the field of ecological macroeconomics, by Peter Victor (Managing without Growth, 2008) and Tim Jackson (Prosperity without Growth, 2009). Ecofeminist scholar-activists have made powerful inputs, led by Ariel Salleh (1997), Maria Mies (1997), and Vandana Shiva (2008; Mies and Shiva 1993), amongst others. The first movement-building statement to these ends was the 2010 Barcelona “Degrowth Declaration,” followed by other well-attended conferences in Europe and, belatedly for the first time in the South, in 2018 in Mexico. Indeed, in a 2016 political ecology conference in Stockholm, one commentator suggested a shift to degrowth framing itself as a movement for global justice, because that’s what it’s eventually about. To me it’s of course an ecological question—we can’t consume as many resources as we consume—but the reason why we can’t do that is that 80 percent of humanity can’t. (Chertkovskaya et al. 2017, 206–7)

To which the movement’s most prolific strategist, Giorgos Kallis, replied, “Good point. Indeed, this is the way we should be framing degrowth” (Chertkovskaya et al. 2017, 206–7). Hence uneven global development is on the degrowth horizon, but capitalist crisis tendencies should be too. NORTH-SOUTH CONTRADICTIONS UNVEILED IN POLLUTION DISPLACEMENT AND CAPITALIST CRISIS The efforts at reimagining political economy through political ecology discussed above have so far suffered from bifurcations. The main contradictions addressed below are between Northern movements struggling for degrowth and Southern movements often fighting to meet constituents’ basic survival needs, which are sometimes termed “development”, sometimes “post-development”, sometimes “environmental justice”, depending upon circumstances. Another division occurs in the mode of economic rethinking: first, accounting in the physical economy with attention to energy, material flows, and virtual water; and second, prioritising social aspects of the economy in the form of dematerialised relational goods and services. Yet another division is between technicist and activist approaches. Bringing these frictions together in a manner that creates heat, light, and forward momentum is a dialectical challenge—for example, in the ongoing debate over whether degrowth movements in the North can fuse with environmental justice advocates of the South (Rodríguez-Labajos et al. 2019). Likewise, the North’s displacement of environmental destruction to the South through “outsourced emissions” and pollution grew during

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

141

the 1980s–2010s, the era of intensifiying globalisation (Bond 2012). As the North’s ecological footprint of material extraction and consumption expanded (Schandl et al. 2018) thanks to the outsourcing of production to the South, this should give pause to environmentalists who since the 1970s fought hard, often successfully, for cleaner air, water, and land (and cheaper commodities) in the United States and Europe. The question must be posed with regard to Northern environmentalists: Did they provide the requisite internationalist solidarity with those fighting not only pollution in the South but also the accompanying imperialist power relations and unequal ecological exchange between the North and South? The east coast of China plays an outsized role in this process, but now that the world’s most populous country and largest economy also suffers extreme overaccumulation of capital, as argued below, Beijing seeks “spatial fixes” for its own capital and pollution and is very much part of the problem of subimperial expansion of the growth logic, even while at home some of China’s renewable energy generation, air pollution control, and capacityshrinkage strategies deserve closer consideration (Garcia and Bond 2018, Harvey 2018). Perhaps the most critical challenge for degrowth advocates is ending bifurcations that artificially delink economic and environmental activism. Unfortunately, that silo-style process has widened during the last two decades of revived global-scale social movements. The 2008–2009 world crisis was a chance to both introduce anti-capitalist versions of degrowth politics and a more forceful decarbonisation agenda, but the movements were far too fragile. Elites still promoted “growth”, whether neoliberalparasitic accumulation (especially in the financial sector) or globalKeynesian (advocated by IMF managing director Dominique StraussKahn from 2009 to 2011) and—in the process—climate-destroying accumulation. The Brazilian turn leftwards in 2003 and the even stronger Latin American “Pink Tide” countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador were by then fading and were ultimately of little use to the global justice movement, given their carbon addictions and economic export orientation, which proved fatal once the commodity super-cycle peaked in 2011 and crashed in 2015 (e.g., oil’s fall from $120/barrel to a low of $26/barrel in that period). Rhetorical opposition to Western dominance over multilateralism was posed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) starting in 2009 but also proved illusory when it came to BRICS practices, which were not ultimately anti-imperial but instead sub-imperial (Garcia and Bond 2018). Ultimately, according to Latouche (2004), the North-South discrepancy in framing degrowth must be overcome: Degrowth must apply to the South as much as to the North. . . . Where there is still time, they should aim not for development but for disen-

142

Patrick Bond tanglement—removing the obstacles that prevent them from developing differently.

On the other hand, environmental economist Herman Daly (1991, 148) is acutely aware of the ethical conundrum: “It is absolutely a waste of time as well as morally backward to preach steady-state doctrines to underdeveloped countries before the overdeveloped countries have taken any measure to reduce either their own population growth or the growth of their per-capita resource consumption”. The worst of all worlds is when devaluation is associated with NorthSouth power and capitalist crises, as witnessed repeatedly since the Volcker Shock in 1979, when austerity is imposed on poor countries’ poorest peoples (Bond 2003). Might things be different at the next conjuncture, as pressures towards another world economic meltdown become obvious enough to evoke concern by even IMF economists (Inman 2018)? To avoid another repeat of bailouts for the rich—paid for by worse austerity for the poor—will require more forcefully addressing devaluation of overaccumulated capital as part of the degrowth agenda. Two sites combining Global North and Global South are China and South Africa. Campaigning and conceptual work are instructive in these countries, respectively the fastest-growing society in modern times and the most unequal society on earth. The next three sections of this chapter briefly consider the two areas of dispute on several terrains: conceptual (devaluation and North-South fusions) and concrete (globally and in China and South Africa). Such exploration allows us to draw together the arguments for a degrowth politics better informed by devaluation and uneven development, leading to an eco-socialist approach to degrowth that can build on—rather than be derailed by—capitalist crisis. DEGROWTH IN RESPONSE TO DEVALUATION: “CONTRADICTIONS ARE OUR HOPE!” In recent correspondence with Emanuele Leonardi (2018), I asked whether the main strands of Marxian political-economic theory could assist in framing the next round of degrowth realpolitik. His reply: “I agree that devaluation caused by classical capitalist crisis tendencies of overaccumulation is a missing point in the degrowth literature”. He distinguished between the visions of Daly and Latouche, in which Marxism “would be difficult to incorporate”, but agreed the Marxian crisis-theoretic approach “could be a useful improvement for Kallis’s vision (or more broadly for what I call the Catalan way to degrowth)” (original emphasis). 1 However, in discussion with Kallis (2017), my sense of degrowth advocacy is that until it grapples properly with devaluation—not just “recession”, which is seen in one degrowth caricature (figure 8.1) as “less of the same”—it misses the political opportunity provided by capitalist crisis.

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

143

As Bertolt Brecht (1974, 47) said, “Contradictions are our hope!” But in one of his otherwise generous engagements with what he terms the better, “open” version of Marxism, Kallis (2015) does not identify existing and future opportunities presented by the main capitalist contradiction, which is its internal tendency to crisis. 2 Thus while perhaps implicitly recalling the damage done by capitalism close at hand (in his native Greece and adopted home of Spain), Kallis (2015) remarks, “Capital accumulation can well continue without growth, and the current crisis is an example”. This is because of elite management, Kallis confirms: “In the absence of growth, austerity is the best option for them, squeezing out more for the rich from the diminishing pie”, presumably measured in terms of income (Chertkovskaya et al. 2017, 204). Indeed this is also correct from the Marxian standpoint, for even if there is no growth in output of goods and services (in the case of a formal GDP-enumerated recession), there can still be net positive capital accumulation; the latter comes from reinvested profits, and such accumulation assumes a longer view of profitability as return on sunk fixed capital. Also in a recession, forms of accumulation usually associated with desperation-privatisations or mergers and acquisitions continue, as the leading firms buy out state assets or bankrupt firms at far below their replacement costs. These are all ways that “accumulation can continue without growth”, though not for long before declining incomes also affect net accumulation. But what degrowth analysts should now forthrightly grapple with is how a full-blown capitalist crisis emerges when various forms of displacement have reached their limits. The result is a period of net negative accumulation, that is, devaluation. This is different from what Kallis dismisses: “Negative GDP growth, which is an oxymoron, and also bad English, since growth cannot be negative” (Chertkovskaya et al. 2017,

Figure 8.1. Degrowth Advocacy Caricatures Devaluation (‘recession’). Source: Bàrbara Castro Urío (originally in D’Alisa et al. 2015)

144

Patrick Bond

190). Nevertheless, most recessions (technically defined as at least a halfyearlong period of declining GDP) do involve net devaluation, not just lower levels of economic growth. At that point, there arise various ways that not just shrinking income but especially devalued wealth can be witnessed and measured—for instance, in rusting machinery mothballed due to insufficient demand, in vast reserves of labour capacity that sit idle, or in a local currency that faces collapse (either in relation to international rates or in terms of inflation). This is a time of both declining growth and accumulation, that is, a period of widespread devaluation of overaccumulated capital. Devaluation is a term Marxists adopted to explain the process by which crisis breaks out, leaving various forms of overaccumulated capital—including variable capital, that is, workers—exposed to a sudden lack of demand for their product, or for the price-valuation of assets to collapse (Bond 1998). Explaining Marx’s sense of value added and then destroyed in 1929 just prior to the twentieth century’s major world crash, Henryk Grossmann’s (1992) Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System observed how: The scale of operations is reduced or they shut down completely. Many firms declare bankruptcy and are devalued. Huge amounts of capital are written off as losses. Unemployment grows. . . . However much devaluation of capital may devastate the individual capitalist in periods of crisis, they are a safety valve for the capitalist class as a whole.

Indeed this form of partial devaluation represents a partial crisis resolution, short of a full-fledged depression or even a breakdown in which devaluation becomes potentially catastrophic for capitalism. Most economic crises entail such partial, localised versions of devaluation, and it is high time for degrowth advocates to acknowledge these and specify how they relate to the broader socio-economic strategy, especially because of dangers following conventional green-capitalist logic. Since “the capitalist system is prone to periodic crises of overaccumulation of capital”, as Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster (2011, 87–88) report, “major recessions—although causing great harm to many people—are actually a benefit, since lower production leads to less pollution of the atmosphere, water, and land”. Hence, as German degrowth scholar Joachim Spangenberg (2014, 3) worries, there arises the “suspicion” that degrowth means collapse because without a growth perspective, companies would refrain from investing, and their share values would plummet. Banks would stop lending, and their share values would go up in smoke. The whole financial system, based on the stock exchange, would collapse, with all stocks devalued—and with it the pensions of millions of workers in particular in the affluent countries.

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

145

For Spangenberg (2014, 3), “That is what the conventional wisdom of neo-classical economics says. As usual, it is nonsense”. Yet perhaps there is indeed a logic linking collapse to opportunities for degrowth that is worth exploring: the devaluation of overaccumulated capital. As explained by Harvey (2014, 323), “Capital is not only about the production and circulation of value. It is also about the destruction or devaluation of capital”. How deep the devaluation goes depends in part upon whether the system is ripe, after a round of extreme overaccumulation: “A certain proportion of capital is destroyed in the normal course of capital circulation as new and cheaper machinery and fixed capital become available”. But what is vital is when capitalist crisis is more widespread, with “mass devaluations of commodities, of hitherto productive plant and equipment, of money and of labour” (Harvey 2014, 323). At this point, the geographical scale and economic extent of the devaluation are both crucial, according to Simon Clarke (2001, 90): The fact that capitalist accumulation always and everywhere takes the form of the overaccumulation and uneven development of capital implies that capitalist accumulation will always be interrupted by crises marked by the devaluation of capital and the destruction of productive capital.

Clarke (2001, 90) notes how ‘the spectre of a global crash’ during crisis episodes can be addressed by capital in a manner that localises the contradictions: A brief period of soul-searching, with calls for the development of new modes of financial regulation, particularly at the international level, was soon forgotten as the locus of speculation moved on, leaving devastation of the real economy in its wake.

The same epithet—"soon forgotten”—could be offered of the 2008–2009 financial meltdown, although it is sure to be repeated soon enough. Yet degrowth advocates have not yet conceptualised this devastation of the real economy, even though in many respects the devaluation we have so far witnessed during crisis-management periods qualifies as localised degrowth (e.g., Southern Europe, the more exposed parts of Africa and Latin America, and even deindustrialised parts of the richer countries). In contrast, world capitalist managers (e.g., in the IMF and various central banks) have so far managed to prevent full-fledged contagion and globalscale meltdown, mainly through ultra-loose 2008–2015 monetary “regrowth” policies. Transcending the local is, we all recognise, central to degrowth advocacy. But the spatial fix to overaccumulation remains undertheorised in degrowth circuits, and hence insufficient attention is paid to the forms of international solidarity required as political antidotes, in times of rampant xenophobia, particularly in linking up the

146

Patrick Bond

organisations (no matter how repressed) of working-class people. One very obvious case is China. DEVALUATION OF CHINESE OVERACCUMULATION The most important single site of devaluation is China. Since at least 2015, the world’s largest economy (using Purchasing Power Parity measures) has suffered the impact of overproduction in basic industries. Overcapacity in steel and coal is now being actively managed by the state as a form of devaluation (albeit not as degrowth). However, it is vital to see not only the national-level winding down of excess capacity but also the displacement of the overproduction into international markets, leading to much more chaotic forms of devaluation. And because coal and steel are environmentally hazardous at local and global scales due to ambient pollution and carbon intensity, the management of devaluation with a “Just Transition” sensitivity is all the more vital. Overproduction and ecological destruction are most evident in the country considered to be the most successful example of growth. According to Ho-fung Hung (2015), “Capital accumulation in China follows the same logic and suffers from the same contradictions of capitalist development in other parts of the world . . . [including] a typical overaccumulation crisis, epitomised by the ghost towns and shuttered factories across the country”. China’s confirmed overcapacity levels had reached more than 30 percent in coal, non-ferrous metals, cement, and chemicals by 2015 (in each, China is responsible for 45 to 60 percent of the world market). The subsequent need for overcapacity shrinkage was the central reason for the subsequent crash of raw materials prices. One result, according to Xia Zhang (2017, 321–22), is Chinese capitalism’s restructuring as the result of overaccumulation. Often jointly with various representatives of Chinese capital, the Chinese state is compelled to reconfigure Chinese capitalism on a much larger spatial dimension so as to sustain the capital accumulation and expansion. Hence it must engage in a “spatial fix” on an unprecedented scale.

Indeed, throughout capitalist history, the first of two main strategies to combat overaccumulation is typically a spatial fix: trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and cross-border financial flows, as well as labour migration. However, in recent years the ebb and flow of capital across the world has not been merely one of spatial extension but also of contraction—including of overextended mega-projects (as the Belt and Road Initiative is revealing) and BRICS corporations. In 2018, for example, the level of new FDI fell by nearly 20 percent to $1.2 trillion, after three successive years of decline from the 2015 peak of just over $2 trillion,

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

147

according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (2019, 1). From peak levels in 2007, FDI profitability, trade/GDP ratios, and even cross-border financial flows all dropped markedly (Garcia and Bond 2018). As a result, China’s internal contradictions associated with devaluation are becoming more acute, in part because the national debt doubled from 150 percent of GDP in 2007 to more than 300 percent by 2018. In addition, the Chinese “elite who control the state sector seek capital flight, encroach on the private sector and foreign companies, and intensify their fights with one another”, explains Hung (2018, 162): The post-2008 boom was driven by reckless investment expansion funded by a state-bank financial stimulus. This created a gigantic debt bubble no longer matched by commensurate expansion of the foreignexchange reserve . . . the many redundant construction projects and infrastructure resulting from the debt-fueled economic rebound are not going to be profitable, at least not any time soon. The repayment and servicing of the debt is going to be challenging, and a major ticking time bomb of debt has formed. This overaccumulation crisis in the Chinese economy is the origin of the stock market meltdown and beginning of capital flight that drove the sharp devaluation of Chinese currency in 2015–16.

From late 2015, the Chinese strategy was tighter exchange controls not only to prevent financial capital flight but also to confront overaccumulation with so-called Supply-Side Structural Reforms, so as to “guide the economy to a new normal”. Managed devaluations included five components, namely, capacity reduction, housing inventory destocking, corporate deleveraging, reduction of corporate costs, and industrial upgrading with new infrastructure investment. The “three cuts, one reduction, and one improvement” was, according to a favourable World Bank staff review in 2018, “a departure from China’s traditional demand-side stimulus policies” (Chen and Chuanhao, 2018). The dilemma in coming years is whether the other contradictions in the Chinese economy, especially rising debt and the on-and-off trade war with the United States (potentially spilling into other economies trying to resist devaluation), will turn a managed process into the kind of capitalist anarchy that causes overaccumulation in the first place. If so, it will be ever more important to coordinate worker and community resistance to the devaluation process with international solidarity. What are currently tit-for-tat protectionist responses (often accompanied by right-wing xenophobic politics) must be transformed into a genuine globalisation of people, with the common objective of degrowth for the sake of socio-ecological sanity. The place where such solidarity was perhaps best accomplished, during the 1980s when an international economic sanctions campaign was

148

Patrick Bond

called by oppressed black people against white, overaccumulating capital, was South Africa. SOUTH AFRICAN DEGROWTH, FUSING GLOBAL NORTH AND GLOBAL SOUTH Since liberation from apartheid in 1994, the economy’s failure to grow amidst periodic capitalist crises has made South Africa an extremely uncomfortable place for the majority. Uneven development is acute, devaluation wrecks the society, and the degrowth narrative is barely on the political agenda. South African capitalism had suffered intense bouts of overaccumulation starting in the 1970s, with the exception of an artificial demand boost when gold rose from its $35-per-ounce Bretton Woods System level to a peak of $850 per ounce in 1981. The Volcker Shock restored power to the US dollar, and it soon fell to $250 per ounce. The resulting mid-1980s crisis, amplified by international sanctions catalysed by solidarity activists, created sufficient pressure on the apartheid regime that Nelson Mandela was released from jail and his African National Congress unbanned. However, capitalist power relations were not disrupted, so in the mid-1990s the new democratic government was pressured to adopt a programme of economic liberalisation. The democratisation process from 1985–1994 can be read in part as a means by which white capital split from the white racist regime in Pretoria (mainly during the 1985 foreign debt crisis). But after 1994, the leading fractions escaped their condition of falling profitability at home partly by shifting surpluses abroad (Bond 2014). With political liberation came economic liberalisation: several of the “Faustian Pacts” agreed to by Mandela and his leadership in the 1990s were redolent of spatio-temporal fixes for overaccumulation. These compromises involved borrowing more from foreign financial markets (especially from the IMF in 1993) in part to repay older apartheid-era debt; relaxing exchange controls so wealthy individuals and the largest companies could spirit their capital abroad, a process that in turn was facilitated through more state foreign debt required to acquire the hard currency entailed in capital flight; agreeing to onerous World Trade Organization conditions that deindustrialised urban light manufacturing (clothing, textiles, footwear, appliances, electronics, etc); and demutualisation of the main insurance companies along with an end to the “prescribed assets” that had previously directed institutional investors into state assets (Kasrils 2017). Results included classic symptoms of capitalist crisis: financialisation and extreme economic volatility. For example, in the main stock market, the Buffett Indicator (share value over GDP) soared to 350 percent by 2018, the highest of any country in world history. Another was a real

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

149

estate market speculative bubble whose 1997–2008 rise in value was 389 percent, more than double that of second-highest Ireland and third-highest Spain. A third indicator of the over-capacity problem was in mining, once the commodity super-cycle peaked in 2011, leaving prices of coal, platinum, iron ore, and gold to plateau and then crash by more than 50 percent in 2015. That decline left most of the major firms that were active in South Africa (e.g., Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Glencore, and Lonmin) with more than an 85 percent devaluation of their market capitalisation in 2015. A fourth indicator was idle capacity in the labour market, including a 37 percent effective unemployment rate (the industrial world’s highest) and a workforce that in annual World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Reports from 2012–2017 was rated the most “confrontational” of the 140 countries surveyed. A fifth sign of overaccumulation being displaced into financialisation was the massive increase in consumer debt from 2004 to 2009, leading to a “credit impairment” rate (i.e., when the borrower is behind three months or more in repayments) of nearly 50 percent at peak and still 40 percent in 2018. This was in part due to the extremely high interest rates paid by consumers: amongst sixty countries offering ten-year state bonds for sale in international markets, only Turkey had to pay a consistently higher rate than South Africa (Bond 2019b). In spite of spending inordinate amounts on financing costs, South African corporations nevertheless enjoyed amongst the five top profit rates in the world, as did their local banks. One reason is that South African firms regularly engaged in quite primitive forms of accumulation by dispossession. PricewaterhouseCoopers (2018) published regular “Economic Crime” surveys that repeatedly found that “8 out of 10 economic managers commit crime”; South Africa leads not only the world in general in this category but also specifically in “moneylaundering, bribery and corruption, procurement fraud, asset misappropriation and cybercrime”. Of $45 billion in annual procurement contracts, the SA Treasury estimated 35 percent was artificially inflated by overcharging. Large parts of the South African state—especially its two largest parastatal agencies Eskom and Transnet—were ‘captured’ by a criminal syndicate led by three immigrant brothers from India, the Guptas. Their exploits were first uncovered in 2013 and only quashed in 2018 when their patron, Jacob Zuma, was expelled from the presidency. Their accomplices included London public relations firm Bell Pottinger and the local operations of McKinsey, KPMG, large German software firms, and Chinese transport suppliers (Bond 2019b). South Africa now has the world’s highest level of inequality, with the share of national income taken by the top 1 percent rising from 10 percent in 1990 to more than 20 percent in 2008. This continues during a sustained stagnation punctuated by occasional mild recessions (Figure 8.2). GDP measurement in global terms is misleading, what with the local

150

Patrick Bond

currency plunging from R6.3/$ in 2011 to a low of R17.99/$ in 2016, subsequently finding a brief equilibrium at R14/$ (though inflation remained in the 5–7 percent annual range during this period). The country’s real annual GDP per person measured by Purchasing Power Parity has not moved from a band of $11,800–12,400 over the decade since the crash of 2008. But all the while, the major challenges of extreme uneven development are becoming more acute. Devaluations of large parts of the economy proceed, such as mining as noted above, but also the manufacturing sector, which shrunk by half during the 1990s due to import liberalisation (Bond 2019). In this context, the progressive movements advocating for environmental justice, human rights, and economic justice—that is, the networks that would be considered ripe to promote a degrowth approach—were distracted by the need for more equitable and efficient delivery of state services and for redistribution within the existing system. There is always hope for a fusion of these movements internally and solidarity with degrowth forces internationally. After all, Rodríguez-Labajos et al. (2019, 157) suggest it is now “the turn of the degrowth movements—particularly after the 2014 International Degrowth Conference held in Leipzig, Germany—to explicitly search for alliances with other critical currents and initiatives around the globe”. However, the first priorities for the South African activists are to ensure the very basis of life. This means much more of a Polanyian double movement than a degrowth agenda, in seeking and winning decommod-

Figure 8.2. GDP per capita (Purchasing Power Parity, 2017 US$); income share taken by top 1 percent. Source: World Bank (2018).

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

151

Figure 8.3. GDP per capita (Purchasing Power Parity, 2017 US$); income share taken by top 1 percent.

ification of what had been excessively expensive AIDS medicines and tertiary education as well as over free municipal water and electricity supplies. Through these struggles, grassroots feminists especially have fought to lower the burden of social reproduction in one of the world’s most exploitative sites (Bond 2014). Occasionally, breakthroughs against devaluation of society occur, as mass-based organising compels a shift in social policy or as micro-struggles achieve at least some degree of community sovereignty against capital. Many such struggles evince the mutual-aid slogan of Ubuntu, in which “we are who we are through each other”. This organic African precapitalist philosophy can be cited as Africa’s answer to a Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir approach to living simply, well, and in harmony with local community (Terreblanche 2018). That it can be, for example, in the famous case of Xolobeni on the Wild Coast, which has successfully resisted a massive shoreline titanium mining operation on grounds that ecotourism and collective agriculture present more hopeful strategies for sustainable livelihoods (Amadiba Crisis Committee 2016; Bennie 2017). In sum, resisting devaluation occurs when demanding free medicines, water and

152

Patrick Bond

electricity, and even tertiary education (Bond 2019b). Like many sites in the Global South, the South African terrain is one on which, as Rosa Luxemburg observed in 1913, capitalist/non-capitalist relations associated with migrant labour and accumulation-by-dispossession strategies generated “growth” from what was, in reality, imposed deprivation (Bond 2019a). Hence South Africa brings underconsumption (by black people), overconsumption (by whites), and overproduction into sharp focus as areas in which degrowth activists can not only critique corruption, hedonism, and an accumulation model that has run out of steam but can also explore what a post-capitalist mode of production would entail. CONCLUSION: TO AND THROUGH DEGROWTH TO ECOSOCIALISM, NORTH AND SOUTH TOGETHER Degrowth is a superb entry point to question capital accumulation, especially the ways that the GDP fetish distorts society and environment. This occurs along North-South lines through uneven development in a manner worthy of more concern within degrowth advocacy. Moreover, during capitalist crisis, there exists (so far unrealised) potential for economic-justice campaigners to understand overaccumulated capital’s devaluation, whether partially state-managed, as in China or more chaotic, as in South Africa. Even if Chinese capitalism is still displacing its overcapacity to other markets, there remains internal capacity to devalue systematically. In a South Africa facing periodic bouts of devaluation, there are important vehicles for resistance, particularly in areas of decommodification of (increased supplies of) basic goods and services—to meet unmet social needs—which degrowth advocates must take into account so as to lessen global uneven development. In lieu of the failure of the early 2000s Global Justice and early 2010s Occupy movements to generalise the struggles, what might be the optimal strategic approach for this linkage to work, when degrowth advocates more forcefully unite with social, environmental, and some advanced labour movements? Many activists are now campaigning for a genuinely Just Transition (or, in the United States, Green New Deal) to an economy and society that aim not to globalise and valorise capital but— as a “transitional demand”—to turn deglobalisation and devaluation towards an utterly different logic. If a worsening overaccumulation crisis leads to devalorisation in a way that should now better inform the degrowth movement, and if degrowth offers a critique of the kind of growth that Keynesian reformers posit as the antidote to overaccumulation and devaluation, then a different logic is vital. Such a logic, ecosocialism, includes the foregrounding of capitalist crises caused both by overaccumulation crisis—hence grappling with the complex problem de-

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

153

valuation—and ecological overreach by an ever more desperate, predatory capitalist machine. Degrowth advocates have begun to find common cause with sympathetic Marxists (Koch, this volume; Leonardi, this volume). For example, Kallis (2015) agrees that degrowth, or in Marxist terms, “reducing the ubiquity of capital accumulation and surplus value—the M-C-M’ circuit—(or eliminating it altogether?) is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for socialism”, a point echoed by Michael Löwy (2018): Attuned to the links between the exploitation of labor and the exploitation of the environment, ecosocialism stands against both reformist “market ecology” and “productivist socialism”. By embracing a new model of robustly democratic planning, society can take control of the means of production and its own destiny. Shorter work hours and a focus on authentic needs over consumerism can facilitate the elevation of “being” over “having”, and the achievement of a deeper sense of freedom for all.

In that sense, argues John Bellamy Foster (2011): The ecological struggle must aim not merely for degrowth in the abstract but more concretely for deaccumulation—a transition away from a system geared to the accumulation of capital without end. In its place we need to construct a new co-revolutionary society, dedicated to the common needs of humanity and the earth.

Capitalist crisis tendencies of overaccumulation and devaluation are necessary steps along that road, ones that degrowth advocates cannot afford to ignore but should instead take with confidence. REFERENCES Amadiba Crisis Committee. 2016. “About the Amadiba Crisis Community and the Region”. Unpublished report, Xolobeni, South Africa. http://www.bench-marks. org.za/press/amendments_accepted_in_annexure_a.doc. Bennie, A. 2017. “Resistance Is Fertile”. Daily Maverick, July, 20, 2017. https://www. dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-07-20-op-ed-resistance-is-0fertile-amadibaagriculture-challenges-elite-mining-agenda/#.Wl7usHlx3Z4. Bond, P. 1998. Uneven Zimbabwe. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ———. 2003. Against Global Apartheid. London: Zed Books. ———. 2012. Politics of Climate Justice. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. ———. 2014. Elite Transition. London: Pluto Press. ———. 2018. “Ecological-Economic Narratives for Resisting Extractive Industries in Africa.” Research in Political Economy 33. https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/ 10.1108/S0161-723020180000033004. ———. 2019a. “Luxemburg’s Critique of Capital Accumulation, Applied Again in Africa”. Journal für Entwicklungspolitik 35, no. 1, 92–118. ———. 2019b. “Under New Management, South Africa Suffers Capitalist Crisis Déjà Vu”. Monthly Review 70. https://monthlyreview.org/2019/01/01/south-africa-sufferscapitalist-crisis-deja-vu/.

154

Patrick Bond

Brecht, B. 1974. Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen. Bullard, R. 2000. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. New York: Westview Press. Chen, M., and L. Chuanhao. 2018. “Foreign Investment across the Belt and Road”. Policy Research Working Paper 8607. Washington, DC: World Bank. Chertkovskaya, E., A. Paulsson, G. Kallis, S. Barca, and G. D’Alisa. 2017. “The Vocabulary of Degrowth”. Ephemera 17 (1): 189–208. http://www.ephemerajournal.org/ contribution/vocabulary-degrowth-roundtable-debate-0. Clarke, Simon 2001. “Class Struggle and the Global Overaccumulation of Capital”, in Phases of Capitalist Development, edited by R. Albritton, M. Itoh, R. Westra, and A. Zeuge. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10. 1057/9781403900081_5. Colectivo Miradas Críticas del Territorio desde el Feminismo. 2014. “La vida en el centro y el crudo bajo tierra: El Yasuní en clave feminist.” Acción Ecológica. http:// www.accionecologica.org/component/content/article/1754. Council of Canadians, Global Exchange, and Fundación Pachamama. 2011. The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. Ottawa. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, eds. 2014. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Daly, H., ed. 1973. Toward a Steady State Economy. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co. Ltd. ———. 1991. Steady State Economics. Washington, DC: Island Press. Elliott, L. 2015. “The Economics of Happiness Can Make for Sad Reading”. Guardian, January 11, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2015/jan/ 11/economics-of-happiness-can-make-sad-reading. ———. 2018. “Climate Change Will Make the Next Global Crash the Worst”. Guardian, October 11, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/11/ climate-change-next-global-crash-world-economies-1929. Fioramonti, L. 2014. How Numbers Rule the World. London: Zed Books. Foster, J. B. 2011. “Capitalism and Degrowth: An Impossibility Theorem”. Monthly Review, January 2011. https://monthlyreview.org/2011/01/01/capitalism-anddegrowth-an-impossibility-theorem/. Garcia, A., and P. Bond. 2018. “Amplifying the Contradictions: The Centrifugal BRICS”. Socialist Register 55, 2019: A World Upside Down? https://socialistregister. com/index.php/srv/article/view/30948. Georgescu-Roegen, N . 1 979 . “Energy Analysis and Economic Valuation”. Southern Economic Journal 45: 1023–58. Gorz, A. 1972. “Proceedings from a Public Debate”. Le Nouvel Observateur, no. 397. Grossmann, H. 1992. The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System. London: Pluto Press. www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/1929/breakdown/ch03. htm. Harvey, D. 2014. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. “Abstract from the Concrete”. In Western Capitalism in Transition, edited by A. Andreotti, D. Benassi, and Y. Kazepov, 45–60. Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press. https://www.manchesterhive.com/abstract/9781526122407/ 9781526122407.00012.xml. Hawken, P., A. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. 1999. Natural Capitalism. Boston: Little, Brown. Hickel, J., and D. Baker. 2018. “Debating Degrowth”. Beat the Press (blog), Center for Economic and Policy Research. December 2018. http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-thepress/hickel-response-on-degrowth. Hung, H. 2015. “China Fantasies.” Jacobin, December 10, 2015. https://www. jacobinmag.com/2015/12/china-new-global-order-imperialism-communist-partyglobalization.

Degrowth, Devaluation, and Uneven Development from North to South

155

———. 2018. “Xi Jinping’s Absolutist Turn”. Catalyst 2. https://catalyst-journal.com/ vol2/no1/xi-jinpings-absolutist-turn. Inman, P. 2018. “World Economy at Risk of Another Financial Crash, Say IMF”. Guardian , October 3, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/03/worldeconomy-at-risk-of-another-financial-crash-says-imf. Jackson, T. 2009. Prosperity without Growth. London: Earthscan. Kallis, G. 2015. “Commentary on Marxism and Ecology”. Great Transition Initiative, October 2015. www.greattransition.org/commentary/giorgos-kallis-marxism-andecology-john-bellamy-foster. ———. 2017. “Socialism Without Growth”. Capitalism Nature Socialism . doi: 10.1080/ 10455752.2017.1386695. Kasrils, R. 2017. A Simple Man. Johannesburg, South Africa: Jacana Media. Kovel, J. 2007. The Enemy of Nature . London: Zed Books. Latouche, S. 2004. Degrowth Economics. Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2004. https://mondediplo.com/2004/11/14latouche. ———. 2006. “How Do We Learn to Want Less?” Le Monde Diplomatique, January. https://mondediplo.com/2006/01/13degrowth. Leonardi, E. 2018. Email correspondence with author, September 16, 2018. Linebaugh, P. 2008. The Magna Carta Manifesto. Berkeley: University of California Press. Löwy, M. 2018. “Why Ecosocialism”. Great Transition Initiative, December 2018. https://www.greattransition.org/publication/why-ecosocialism-red-green-future. Magdoff, F., and J. B. Foster. 2011. What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Meadows, D., D. Meadows, J. Randers, and W. Behrens. 1972. Limits to Growth. New York: New American Library. Mies, M. 1997. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London: Zed Books. Mies, M., and V. Shiva. 1993. Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books. PricewaterhouseCoopers. 2018. Pulling Fraud Out of the Shadows: Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey. www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/advisory/forensics/economiccrime-survey.html. Rodríguez-Labajos, B., I. Yánez, P. Bond, L. Grey, S. Munguti, G. Uyi Ojo, and W. Overbeek. 2019. “Not So Natural an Alliance”. Ecological Economics 157: 175–84. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800918307626. Salleh, Ariel. 1997. Ecofeminism as Politics. London: Zed Books. ———. 2010. “From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value”. Organization and Environment 23 (2): 205–19. ———. 2018. “Ecofeminism as Politics: Talk to the Women in Mining”. WoMin network, Johannesburg, September 28, 2018. PowerPoint slides available from author. Samson, M. 2015. “Accumulation by Dispossession and the Informal Economy”. Society and Space 33 (5): 813–30. Schandl, H., M. Fischer-Kowalski, J. West, S. Giljum, M. Dittrich, N. Eisenmenger, A. Geschke, et al. 2018. “Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity”. Journal of Industrial Ecology 22 (4): 827–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12626. Shiva, Vandana. 2008. Soil not Oil. Boston: South End Press. Spangenberg, J. 2014. “Degrowth and the Financial System.” Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, Leipzig, Germany, September 2014. Halle, Germany: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. http://www.academia.edu/8134631/Degrowth_and_ the_financial_system. Terreblanche, C. 2018. “Ubuntu and the Struggle for an African Eco-socialist Alternative”. In The Climate Crisis, edited by V. Satgar, 168–89. Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University Press. ———. 2019. “Ecofeminism”. In The Post-Development Dictionary, edited by A. Kothari, A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria, and A. Acosta. Delhi: Authors Up Front and Tulika.

156

Patrick Bond

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. 2019. “Global FDI Flows Continue Their Slide in 2018”. Investment Trends Monitor, January 2019. https://unctad. org/en/PublicationsLibrary/diaeiainf2019d1_en.pdf?user=46. Victor, P. 2008. Managing without Growth. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. World Bank. 2014. Little Green Data Book. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 2018. “Gross Fixed Capital Formation (Current US$)”. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.GDI.FTOT.CD. Zhang, X. 2017. “Chinese Capitalism and the Maritime Silk Road”, Geopolitics 22, no. 2, 310–31. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2017.1289371.

NOTES 1. Leonardi (2018) also endorses work in the Catalan school by D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis (2014), specifically the idea that accumulation by contamination is, he suggests, “somehow—implicitly—a gesture towards devaluation” (Leonardi 2018). But in its classical application to ship-breaking, this concept is much better considered a “revalorisation” strategy in which the human body is devalued to a degree, but the reutilisation of waste through recycling adds more value to a product—a rusty ship (usually fully amortised against its original debt) that would otherwise simply be sunk in the ocean. For more on revalorisation following devaluation, see Samson 2015. 2. This failure is perhaps attributable to the extreme uneven development in 2010s Greece and Spain. Devaluation occurred for the mass of people but was combined with ongoing parasitical wealth for a tiny fraction of the population in those two countries, in recent years of economic depression and real estate market crises.

NINE Degrowth in Practice? Unraveling the Post-Political Effects of Slow City (Cittaslow) Movement in the Anatolian Town of HalfetiXalfetî Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

In his seminal work, In Praise of Slow, Carl Honoré (2004, 24) describes the invasion of human lives by fastness: Urbanization, another feature of the industrial era, helped quicken the pace. Cities have always attracted energetic and dynamic people, but urban life itself acts as a giant particle accelerator.

As the pace of life accelerated, slowness became associated with irrationality and loss of time, and the modern subjects have increasingly felt themselves obliged to conform to the fast way of living. Manuel Castells, similarly, has emphasized the loss of meaning in space and time by the advances in communication technologies starting at the end of the twentieth century. Fundamental dimensions of human life, that is, time and space, have disappeared and localities have become substituted by a new culture based on the space of flows and timeless time (Castells 2010, 2011). In this context, the overarching ambition of the slow philosophy is a consequence of growing dissatisfaction with the fast life introduced by modernity. Having emerged as a protest against modernity and the process of acceleration, the slow philosophy advocates restructuring and reclaiming the temporality for calmer, stable lifestyles with leisure. Some of the movements that are inspired by the slow philosophy are “wellness 157

158

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

revolution” (Kickbusch and Payne 2003), “voluntary simplicity” (Alexander and Ussher 2012), “slow media” (Barranquero-Carretero 2013) and “slow tourism” (Timms and Conway 2012). Among these, the Slow City movement aims to address social, environmental and economic problems of small towns by revitalizing local economy and reorganizing urban life and ecology (Slow City 2017). In this regard, Slow City represents “a novel approach” to local sustainability (Pink 2007, 2008). However, since locality is at the center, the success of its prescriptions is highly dependent on specific contexts, namely existing governance structures, economic activities, social relations, and cultural assets of a particular locality. According to critics, by focusing on the local scale and promoting a local town’s development, the Slow City status risks representing the interests of a particular spatial-cultural constituency and localized form of capital, which might hinder social transformation on a larger scale (Tomlinson 2007). There is a significant amount of literature on the positive experiences of the slow city in Europe and the active participation of citizens in the social, environmental and economic affairs of their local towns, based on a large diversity of scholarly studies. However, there are almost none conducted in the Middle East. Moreover, little has been said about the Slow City cases that have not fulfilled the principles of the movement and pursue different goals than originally planned. This chapter contributes to the literature by exploring a Slow City case in the Middle East through the case of the Anatolian town of Halfeti, and highlighting the problematic dynamics in the way it has unfolded. Slow City is a relatively new phenomenon in the Turkish context. So is degrowth—the focus of this book. The few studies on degrowth that exist have explored degrowth in relation to “growth fetishism” in Turkish history, dating back to Ottoman Empire’s ambition to catch up with the Western technology and lifestyles. The potential contribution of degrowth for building an alternative economy has also been discussed in Turkish academic circles (Adaman and Akbulut 2017). Although the very term degrowth has not been taken up by activists or practiced in alternative circles under this label, some of its principles, such as solidarity economy, environmental justice, and commoning, are widespread. Due to its decentralized character, focus on local economy and emphasis on slowing down, the Slow City movement may also seem connected to practices of degrowth (e.g., Latouche 2009). However, while ecological sustainability and social justice are central pillars of degrowth, not every slow city lives up to them, as this chapter will demonstrate. In Turkey, the first Slow City status was given to Seferihisar, an old town in the western part of the country in 2009. Since then, nine more towns including Halfeti have been granted this status. The town of Halfeti is a unique case since it is known as the single Slow City in the eastern region of Turkey and also in the Middle East. Halfeti is also home to the

Degrowth in Practice?

159

Birecik Dam, which was constructed in the 2000s as the sub-project of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). However, the construction of Birecik Dam led to a massive increase in the water level of Euphrates, and 80 percent of the town was submerged, together with the agricultural lands and villages alongside the river. The effect of inundation has been dramatic. As a result, the town has lost the unique microclimate that existed along the Euphrates and its income from agriculture, and many people were displaced due to the rising water level. In this article, we argue that Slow City processes in Halfeti are used as a strategy to preclude the uncertainty in its development path, especially in view of the effects of Birecik Dam on the town. By using Swyngedouw’s post-political critique, we further argue that Slow City’s goals to ensure sustainability in the context of Halfeti serve to depoliticize the problems related to infrastructure, environmental degradation, and lost income sources after the Birecik Dam construction as well as the political conflicts between Kurdish and Turkish municipalities. In addition to that, we aim to question the adequacy of Slow City ideals in pursuing sustainability. This article is structured as follows. The first part explores the goals and experiences of the Slow City network and positions Slow City as post-political. In the second part, we detail the emergence of the Slow City network in Turkey and our case in Halfeti. The third part discusses Slow City in Halfeti as a mechanism of depoliticization by showing empirical evidence. Finally, we conclude the article by summarizing our points, discussing further challenges in implementing Slow City projects, and reflecting on their implications for the ways in which degrowth is understood. SLOW CITY AS A POST-POLITICAL PRACTICE Motivations behind Slow City certification vary across different places. If there are serious environmental challenges that impede the agricultural production in a town, the town can attribute a greater importance to the criteria of agricultural policies or focus on the purification of sewage disposal, water and air quality conservation, and industrial and domestic composting. There are several differences in policy choices according to the comparative study of the Italian, German, and British Slow City towns (Mayer and Knox 2006). For instance, Italian towns prioritize environmental aspects such as managing waste, eliminating light pollution, and promoting local economic development through tourism. Most German towns, in contrast, aim to promote local products, food and nutritional education, and alternative energy systems. The slow city Ludlow, in the United Kingdom, is focusing more on farmers’ markets, while the

160

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

slow city Orvieto, in Italy, puts effort into a sustainable transportation system (Mayer and Knox 2006, 2010). Municipalities are the key governance mechanisms in the application process to obtain the Slow City status and the realization of the Slow City requirements. It is noteworthy to mention that Slow City emerges as “a top-down process, led by Slow City activists who work in concordance with the Town Council” (Pink 2009, 456). In this regard, it is also important to note that compared to the slow food movement, Slow City projects are more institutionally organized and operate at a city-policy level (Radstrom 2011, Slow Food 2015). However, achieving Slow City status is not an end; rather, the memberships can be decertified, as happened in the cases of previous Slow City towns of Jangheung and Shinan. Slow City towns are responsible for preparing annual reports to the international assembly of Slow City network about the achievements and their planned projects for the future. Furthermore, the internationally elected assembly consists of people from ten Slow City towns and national assemblies of the countries have a right to visit the towns without informing in advance in order to make decisions about the status of the town. As some case studies have shown, the implementation of Slow City can be contested. The application of a standardized philosophy in a variety of contexts containing various cultures and different perceptions is a point that the Slow City philosophy has undermined in its implementation. Semmens and Freeman, in their case study on Slow City towns in New Zealand, found out that “[s]low city only works for towns of particular type and style: Eurocentric, affluent communities that are already ‘slow’ and embrace sustainability culture, but these are scarce in New Zealand where planners are tackling extensive cultural and socio-economic divisions” (2012, 372). The locals in some Slow City towns consider Slow City as a top-down process that imposes an excessive regulatory approach that in turn undermines community support and hinders the effective functioning of communities. These concerns are also raised by local people from Falköping, the only Slow City town of Sweden, and in towns of Poland. Local people who disapprove the Slow City status of Falköping started a campaign on Facebook named “Ogilla [Dislike] Cittaslow Falköping”. Erik Swyngedouw (2007) argues that the political “framing” of the ecological issues provides the making and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition, one that actually excludes the discussion of a real politics of the environment. In a post-political condition, “the political—understood as a space of contestation and agonistic engagement—is colonized by politics—understood as technocratic mechanisms and consensual procedures that operate within an unquestioned framework of representative democracy, free market economics and cosmopolitan liberalism” (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2014, 6). This theoretical framing has been used to illuminate the politics of sustainability and

Degrowth in Practice?

161

development. For example, in her research on Indian democratic discourse, Kamat (2014) shows how post-politics is constitutive of the new development architecture driven by sustainability goals in the Global South. According to that, the politics of consensus between NGOs and government produces development policies that operate with impunity with regard to increasing levels of poverty, inequality, and violence. Similarly, in such architecture, administration of social and ecological matters remains within the scope of the possible, and their political linkages are excluded from the realm of the possible. Or, in her research of development programmes in Indonesia, Murray Li (2007) argues that development agenda is guided by the expert knowledge that takes a political problem, removes it from its political realm, and recasts it in a neutral language of science. Similar processes can be observed in the case of slow cities. Emphasizing sustainability and localization, and being institutionalized via municipalities, they may sideline other—and more controversial—political issues from being addressed. This is why they can also be positioned as a post-political phenomenon. EMERGENCE OF SLOW CITY IN TURKEY AND THE CASE OF HALFETI When I was a staff of Gökçeada municipality, I had a presentation on the fourth floor of the Seferihisar municipality for our town’s application to Slow City network and I was late. I was climbing the stairs in a hurry with the projector in my hands. Someone stopped me and asked, “What you are doing? This is against the Slow City philosophy! Now you that you are in a hurry, you will be exhausted when you come to the room. Then you will have to take a rest for 10 minutes to set up the projector. No deal! Climb the stairs slowly and set up your projector straight away”. He was right! This tells everything about the Slow City: “right deceleration”. Then I realized that the guy who stopped me is the head of the Turkish Slow City network. 1

This story is told by an interviewee of ours who is a former member of the Slow City network in Gökçeada, as a way to illustrate the normative aspects of the term slowness. In the Turkish culture, slowness has a negative and pejorative meaning. Therefore, the translation of Slow City into Turkish as Sakin Şehir, “tranquil city”, is not a coincidence. In the Turkish context, slowness signifies backwardness, anti-industrialization, underdevelopment, and laziness. Despite such cultural understanding of slowness, the Turkish national network of Slow City was set up in two years. 2 The national network of Slow City is the executive body that consists of one national network representative per town and has the duties of electing the national coordinator. It organizes the association’s activities by several projects, reports the progress of the towns to the International

162

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

Coordinating Committee in Italy, arranges the budget, verifies the application of candidate towns, and directs these applications to the International Coordinating Committee (Slow City 2014, 18–19). Turkey has nine Slow City towns, 3 most of which are located in the western regions of Turkey. Most studies within a Turkish context have focused on the case of Seferihisar, which is the first Slow City of Turkey. Locals in Seferihisar are satisfied with the implementation of Slow City in terms of quality of life, physical environment, and economy. Yurtseven and Kaya (2011, 94), in their quantitative research on profiles of tourists and their travel behaviors, point out that these tourists can be categorized as the slow tourists who are educated, open to slow experiences/philosophy, and enjoying eco-gastronomic and culinary assets of Seferihisar. As a result of increasing quality of life and economy, Seferihisar has begun to experience a rapid increase in population, which has led to alterations in social relations. Instances include a decrease in solidarity among locals, emergence of a capitalistic and calculative mentality among people, and an increase in rent, traffic jams, noise pollution, and prices in general (Sünnetçioğlu, Korkmaz, and Özkök 2014). In particular, the increase in housing prices and rent is a result of rising tourism activities that attracted investors from metropolitan cities to Seferihisar (Andarabi, Altunöz, and Hassan 2014, 83). Another case of Slow City in Turkey is investigated by Ergüven (2011), who points out the risk of transforming local towns into pseudo-metropolitan cities as a result of advertising and marketing perspectives that dominate the local Slow City agenda. Despite the satisfaction of the locals, Hatipoglu (2014) also warns that if not carefully examined, the development of unsustainable tourism can hinder the long-term realization of Slow City ideals in Vize. In the case of Turkey, assessments for Slow City candidacy favored the western towns of Turkey. Baldemir, Kaya, and Şahin (2013) conducted a quantitative research on seven candidate Slow City towns in Turkey to assess to what extent these towns are in line with the Slow City requirements. The shared feature is that most recommended towns are located on the western coast of Turkey and reside in a different socioeconomic and political context compared to Anatolian towns in general. As Ekinci (2014) mentions, the candidate cities in Anatolia, especially those in the eastern portion of Turkey, have financial problems in covering the costs of purification facilities, systems for controlling pollution, and environmental management systems. They also lack the expertise and qualified labor that are necessary to follow the required procedures for Slow City membership. Despite these challenges, some scholars nevertheless consider Slow City as an opportunity for the local economy: “We could foresee and understand the advantages of Slow City movements in the process of becoming a good brand” (Karabağ, Yucel, and Inal 2012, 72; see also Sirim 2012). Although Keskin (2012) advocates for the Slow City’s transformative power and the possibility of opening up

Degrowth in Practice?

163

the Anatolian towns to the world without compromising their peculiarities, the discourse on tourism is still more dominant than other goals of Slow City, such as protecting the environment and providing healthy lifestyles. The Case of Halfeti: The Only Slow City Town in the Middle East The town of Halfeti (Kurdish, Xalfetî) is located in Southeast Anatolia, which is the only predominantly Kurdish region in contemporary Turkey (Harris 2012). It is situated along the Euphrates River and is part of the Şanlıurfa Province. Halfeti has a history that goes back to 2000 BCE, and it was home for civilizations of Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Mongols, and Ottomans in the past (Halfeti Municipality 2015). Therefore, the town has invaluable archeological sites and historical remnants (churches and mosques) as well as caves, palaces, and castles that also serve as tourist attractions. Approximately thirty-five thousand Turkish and Kurdish people live in the town. Only one-fourth of the population lives at the center of the town, while the rest lives in the villages. The construction of Birecik Dam in 2000, as the sub-project of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP), was a historic moment for Halfeti. As stated above, it led to a massive increase in the water level of Euphrates, which flooded 80 percent of the town and the agricultural lands and villages alongside the river. Before inundation, horticulture was one of the main economic activities of the locals in the town, and it was practiced on the lands near the river. Approximately nine village settlements and farmlands of thirty-one villages were affected by the dam. According to the census of 1997, more than 30,000 people were influenced and 850 households were resettled (Acma 2005). Today, most of the population live in new settlements, where they have better access to housing, education, infrastructure, and health opportunities. Meanwhile, the old center became a tourist spot and showcase of the region, as the sunken parts of the city are now labeled as a “hidden paradise”. Although the municipalities are the key governance mechanisms in the realization of Slow City requirements, Halfeti town municipality’s enforcing capacity is limited. Turkey’s local government reform (Act No. 6360) limited the administrative boundaries of Halfeti town municipality when the nearby town Şanlıurfa gained metropolitan city status in 2012. According to this act, by gaining greater metropolitan status, upper-tier municipalities got more financial, administrative, and political power while low-tier municipalities lost their autonomy in several matters regarding local planning, urban renewal, and construction. Instead, the responsibilities of Halfeti’s municipality are reduced to waste management, disposal, and preservation of parks and recreational areas. In this

164

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

context, international projects, such as getting Slow City status, may help low-tier municipalities to gain funding and some degree of autonomy. Furthermore, the ethnic and political conflicts in Southeast Anatolia between the Turkish state and the Kurdish authorities also show their face in Halfeti. The fact that the municipality of Halfeti is governed by the pro-Kurdish and strong opposition party HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) and the metropolitan municipality of Şanlıurfa is governed by the Justice and Development Party, the ruling party, creates political conflicts and constitutes the main reason for dissidences. An old man in Halfeti put it this way: We are like a stepchild of Şanlıurfa Municipality. Since we voted for Peoples’ Democratic Party, the metropolitan municipality now neglects the needs of Halfeti.

SLOW CITY AS A DEPOLITICIZING MECHANISM IN HALFETI Murray Li (2007) argues that there are two processes that could lead to depoliticization in development schemes: problematization and rendering technical. In the context of her research, the role of experts and policymakers is central in development programmes. Rendering the technical refers to situations where experts tend to limit the scope of the problems and create an “intelligible field” limited to their expertise. In some cases, this could lead to a depoliticized approach through excluding the structure of political-economic relations from problem formulation. The implementation of Slow City ideals in Halfeti shows similar processes. Since the acquisition of the Slow City status depends on partial fulfillment of the criteria, the officials tend to frame the problems in a limited manner and prioritize economic perspective while undermining the environmental and social problems derived from the Birecik Dam. According to that, the discourse of Slow City is shaped as an opportunity to overcome the economic problems of the town. The following statement of the Slow City representative of Halfeti is an illustration of this: Slow City is a development approach . . . we consider it like that . . . there is also something like slow tourism. There are a lot of slow phenomena and tourism is one of these . . . we are making a bid for appropriate tourism development in the town.

The Slow City’s national network coordinator of Turkey also frames diverse problems of small towns into one main problem, which is the lack of economic opportunities: Small towns are rapidly disappearing. The population of the towns is declining. After a while, there will be no such a thing as small town if the way things stand does not change! People are migrating to bigger cities. People turn to be subcontracted workers in big cities and earn

Degrowth in Practice?

165

little there! All the income they earn is spent on the housing and food provision. If we don’t revitalize the local economy and provide people new income earning opportunities, all the small towns like Gökçeada and Halfeti are doomed to disappear!

Tourism is thus expected to deal with the problem of economic backwardness of Halfeti. It is portrayed as a panacea for income-related problems although the problem is foremost derived from the Birecik Dam. To show this commitment to tourism as a solution, Halfeti municipality set up billboards advertising its involvement with the Slow City network and started a tourism office. Although emigration can be a challenge for many towns due to the attractive income opportunities in big cities, in the case of Halfeti, the loss of income sources is highly linked to the dam construction. Before Halfeti submerged, the locals were practicing horticulture along the riverside. From nuts to banana—everything was produced here. . . . We were both consuming these products and selling the rest in the bazaar. These old days. . . . A lot of people migrated out of town due to this unfortunate event. Now we cultivate tourism here with those who did not leave!

According to Harris’s (2012, 12) extensive study in Southeast Anatolia, people in Halfeti have a distant relationship with the Turkish state. Her fieldwork notes explain people’s reaction after the inundation as follows: Hanim (i.e., “lady” in Turkish) immediately tells us about her profound sadness, that the town has “lost its life” and that they did not understand that their half of the town would be “left behind”. As she explained tearfully, the town has been torn apart (literally), she can no longer visit her neighbors now that they are in the resettled area ten kilometers up the hill without public transport to connect them. “The state” came and explained to the villagers what would happen, but no one ever imagined that this could happen. (Ibid.)

Slow City is an instrument for the locals to protect the unique characteristics of their town as well its environment, social life, and local economy as embedded in a specific locality. Knox and Mayer (2013) also suggest that the emphasis on local economy by appropriating local assets is a great challenge to corporate-centered economic development models of world cities. In that sense, the Slow City’s promotion of local economic activities, such as a craft peculiar to a specific town or cultivation of local autochthonous agricultural produce, is one of the ways to challenge the dominant corporate-centered development models. However, in the case of Halfeti, we have observed that the ideals of Slow City, such as the development of local economy were adopted at the cost of subordinating the local culture and the environment. The revitalization of the local economy is perceived as a “need” both by the locals and stakeholders.

166

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

The localness in Halfeti is predicated on exhibiting the existing architectural, natural, and cultural assets of the town instead of emphasizing the protection of them. One of the Slow City representatives of Halfeti explains as follows: Halfeti has a unique architectural style among other Slow City towns. There is no architectural deterioration in Halfeti. We have unique and classical village houses here. Today it is still possible to see the effects of past civilizations on the architectural style of Halfeti. The culinary culture is older than one thousand years in Halfeti. We also have natural beauties and endangered species living only in this region of Turkey. Halfeti is an important case for the international Slow City network. Our presence as a Slow City town affects the image of Slow City positively worldwide.

This positive image, told through fantasies of tourism and localness, leaves aside the environmental and social concerns of Slow City. It also facilitates corporate actors to see the opportunities in Halfeti. The construction of the first five-star hotel of Halfeti commenced only a few meters away from the protected historical sites. Although everyone in the town is aware of the fact that the hotel does not fit with the local architectural culture of the town, many are glad of its presence. A woman explained the necessity of a five-star hotel for the town: It is true that this hotel is totally unsightly! It is very different from our traditional houses. However, there are not enough traditional hostels in the town. In the summer, a lot of visitors cannot find a place to stay so they come only for a one-day excursion. This hotel is obligatory for the town! We only earn money out of tourism. Visitors should find a place to stay and spend more money in the town.

The environmental problems are perceived to increase as a result of touristic activities reinforced by being a Slow City town. Some locals and municipality/Slow City staff, however, want to believe in the Slow City despite being well aware of the detrimental effects of the current economic activities and the rapid growth of tourism on the environment and social relations in their town. According to a municipality worker in Halfeti, The existing tourism is not the desired tourism in Halfeti. We only have “garbage tourism” here. Without any regulation and awareness raising activities, people of Halfeti met with tourism. But in order to gain more money, those who have enough economic capital prefer either to open a boat-restaurant or buy a new boat. The tourism is revolving around these two activities. People are not aware that all these boats and boatrestaurants will cause unrecoverable damages to nature. Now they are earning twice as much money. However, people will realize, when they will not be able to earn money out of tourism as wrong tourism

Degrowth in Practice?

167

brings its own end! In order to avoid this, we need a tourism control desk.

In addition to the impacts of tourism-related activities, there are administrative and political challenges that perpetuate environmental problems. One of the disputed matters is the discharging of the municipality sewage into Euphrates River, although it is forbidden according to inland water legislation of Turkey (Coskun 2003). However, the town lacks a sustainable solid waste recycling system and has to deal with the leakage of the fuel from boats to the river, contamination from boat-restaurants, as well as air pollution from cars, boats, and burning coal for heat. According to municipality staff and the Slow City representative, the municipality does not possess a sanctuary power to stop these activities, as they are under the administrative power of the metropolitan municipality of Urfa (Akıllı and Akıllı 2014). Halfeti municipality is only responsible for managing household waste. In addition to the lack of enforcing power of the Slow City network and municipality, we have also observed the absence of grassroots activism or environmental NGOs that could act as external control. This is different from the cases of Slow City in Europe, where grassroots environmental activism plays a key role as an external control mechanism for the actions taken by municipalities in their towns. Although agriculture is no longer the main economic activity after the inundation, more than half of the arable land is covered by pistachio, vineyards, and olive trees in the town and only 2 percent of the agricultural land is suitable for irrigated farming (Halfeti Municipality 2015). In this context, the local economy is currently dependent on tourism activities in the region. A young shopkeeper in Halfeti explains the situation as follows: Before the inundation, we used to earn money from agriculture and horticulture. Youth of the town used to be more interested in getting a degree from schools. After the dam, they give up as restaurant and shop owners earn more money than those who studied. Nothing good came with this dam.

Unequal distribution of tourism revenues among the locals in Halfeti has also altered social relationships among locals. Since the main economic activity has been centered on tourism, the only income door for the locals are the incoming visitors to the town, which results in a clash of economic interests and competition among the locals. Many of our respondents pointed to their weakening neighborhood ties as everybody started to pursue maximization of economic interests. An old woman in Halfeti who has a desperate longing for the old neighborhood relations in the town said this:

168

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar When nobody knew Halfeti, in the past, we never went out of our neighbors’ houses. We were eating together, going to the picnic. . . . These kinds of activities disappeared. Now everybody is working, working and working. . . . I feel lucky now if I see my neighbors once a week!

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUDING REMARKS This study pointed out the issues regarding the operation of Slow City in Halfeti town by exploring the real-life implications of Slow City prescriptions. In Halfeti, Slow City is being used as an instrument to depoliticize the aftermath effects of the controversial Birecik Dam, which have included displacement and loss of livelihoods due to inundation. We have also showed that despite the fact that slowness is a normative philosophy reclaiming and restructuring temporality, the implementation of Slow City in Halfeti has first and foremost prioritized boosting the local economy through tourism after the Birecik Dam controversy. In turn, the rapid increase in tourism activities and unequal distribution of tourism revenues among the locals in Halfeti has altered social relationships among locals and created new environmental problems. Practices of Slow City in Halfeti function from what Žižek ([1989] 2008) calls a cynical distance that “limits a questioning of political failings that all know are present” (Davidson 2010, 395). In the context of Turkey, these political failings correspond to the decades-long political conflicts between Kurdish and Turkish municipalities, inefficient agricultural and husbandry policies, and local governance structure that serves to benefit economic growth within the current neoliberal agenda. Under the dominant economic interpretations of sustainability, implementation of Slow City in Halfeti neglects its role in serving the public good and turns into a mechanism that furthers the depletion of environment and social equity. Our study shows that some of the concepts that are often associated with the degrowth philosophy, such as “local economy” and “slowing down” came at the cost of excluding other elements essential to it, namely “environmental sustainability” and “social equity”, from the narrative. This exclusion, ironically, also contradicts the principles of Slow City. Similar to development discourses, global claims of Slow City have clashed with the local context of Halfeti and depoliticized the deeply political questions. Through Slow City processes, municipalities mask environmental as well as social and political problems of the town by presenting Halfeti as a “hidden paradise” or a “pearl of the East”. In this case, like in other cases, Slow City helps to construct an ideological vision of what “constitutes an enjoyable and satisfying city in order to hide the dysfunctions and unpredictabilities that are inevitable in all social spheres” (Gunder and Hillier 2009, 55).

Degrowth in Practice?

169

To sum up, by engaging with the example of a slow city in Anatolia in this chapter, we have shown that practices related to degrowth may have different outcomes depending on the contexts and power relations in which they exist (see also Barca et al., this volume). In that sense, proponents of degrowth should be careful with assuming that such practices are automatically in tune with ecological integrity and social justice. REFERENCES Acma, B. 2005. “Promoting Sustainable Human Settlements and Eco-City Planning Approach: Southeastern Anatolia Region and Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) in Turkey as a Case Study”. UNISCI. https://www.ucm.es/data/cont/media/www/ pag-72534/Acma.pdf. Akbulut, B., and F. Adaman. 2017. “The Unbearable Charm of Modernization: Growth Fetishism and the Making of State in Turkey”. Perspectives: Political Analysis and Commentary from Turkey 5 (13). https://tr.boell.org/sites/default/files/perspectives_5_ toplu_eng.pdf. Akıllı, H., and H. S. Akıllı. 2014. “Decentralization and Recentralization of Local Governments in Turkey”. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 140: 682–86. Alexander, S., and S. Ussher. 2012. “The Voluntary Simplicity Movement: A MultiNational Survey Analysis in Theoretical Context”. Journal of Consumer Culture 12 (1): 66–86. Andarabi, F. F., Ö. Altunöz, and A. Hassan. 2014. “CittaSlow Şehirlerde Yerel Halkın Turizme Yaklaşımı: Seferihisar Örneği”. Eko-Gastronomi Dergisi 1 (1): 69–86. Baldemir, E., F. Kaya, and T. K. Şahin. 2013. “A Management Strategy within Sustainable City Context: CittaSlow”. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 99: 75–84. Barranquero-Carretero, A. 2013. “Slow Media. Communication, Social Change and Sustainability in the Era of Media Streaming”. Palabra Clave 16 (2): 419–48. Castells, M., 2010. The Rise of the Network Society. Vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Castells, M., 2011. “Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age”. In The City Reader, edited by R. T. Legates and F. Stout, 572–82. New York: Routledge. Coskun, A. A. 2003. “Water Law. The Current State of Regulation in Turkey”. Water International 28 (1): 70–78. Davidson, M. 2010. “Sustainability as Ideological Praxis: The Acting out of Planning’s Master-Signifier”. City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 14 (4): 390–405. Ekinci, M. B. 2014. “The CittaSlow Philosophy in the Context of Sustainable Tourism Development: The Case of Turkey”. Tourism Management 41: 178–89. Ergüven, M. H. 2011. “CittaSlow—Yaşamaya Değer Şehirlerin Uluslararası Birliği: Vize Örneği”. Organizasyon ve Yönetim Bilimleri Dergisi 3 (2): 201–10. Gunder, M., and J. Hillier. 2009. Planning in Ten Words or Less. A Lacanian Entanglement with Spatial Planning. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Halfeti Municipality. 2015. “Halfeti”. http://www.halfetibelediyesi.com. Harris, L. M. 2012. “State as Socionatural Effect: Variable and Emergent Geographies of the State in Southeastern Turkey”. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32 (1): 25–39. Hatipoglu, B. 2014. “‘CittaSlow’: Quality of Life and Visitor Experiences”. Tourism Planning & Development 12 (1): 20–36. Honoré, C. 2004. In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. London: Orion.

170

Mine Islar and Gökhan Gülbandılar

Kamat, S. 2014. “The New Development Architecture and the Post-Political in the Global South”. In The Post-Political and Its Discontents, edited by J. Wilson and E. Swyngedouw, 67–86. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Karabağ, O., F. Yucel, and M. Inal. 2012. “Cittaslow Movement: An Opportunity for Branding Small Towns and Economic Development in Turkey.” International Journal of Economics and Research 313: 64–75. Keskin, E. B. 2012. “Sürdürülebilir Kent Kavramına Farklı Bir Bakış: Yavaş Şehirler (CittaSlow)”. Paradoks Ekonomi, Sosyoloji ve Politika Dergisi 8 (1): 81–99. Kickbusch, I., and L. Payne 2003. “Twenty-First Century Health Promotion: The Public Health Revolution Meets the Wellness Revolution”. Health Promotion International 18 (4): 275–78. Knox, P. L., and H. Mayer. 2013. Small Town Sustainability. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser. Latouche, S. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mayer, H., and P. L. Knox. 2006. “Slow Cities: Sustainable Places in a Fast World”. Journal of Urban Affairs 28 (4): 321–34. Mayer, H., and P. L. Knox. 2010. “Small-Town Sustainability: Prospects in the Second Modernity”. European Planning Studies 18 (10): 1545–65. Murray Li, T. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pink, S. 2007. “Sensing CittaSlow: Slow Living and the Constitution of the Sensory City”. Senses & Society 2 (1): 59–78. Pink, S. 2008. “Re-thinking Contemporary Activism: From Community to Emplaced Sociality”. Ethnos 73 (2): 163–88. Pink, S. 2009. “Urban Social Movements and Small Places”. City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 13 (4): 451–65. Radstrom, S. 2011. “A Place-Sustaining Framework for Local Urban Identity: An Introduction and History of CittaSlow”. Italian Journal of Planning Practice 1 (1): 90–113. Semmens, J., and C. Freeman. 2012. “The Value of Cittaslow as an Approach to Local Sustainable Development: A New Zealand Perspective”. International Planning Studies 17 (4): 353–75. Sırım, V. 2012. “Çevreye Bütünleşmiş Bir Yerel Yönetim Örneği Olarak ‘Sakin Şehir’ Hareketi ve Türkiye’nin Potansiyeli”. Tarih Kültür ve Sanat Araştırmaları Dergisi 1 (4): 119–31. Slow City (CittaSlow). 2017. “International CittaSlow Charter”. http://www.cittaslow. org/sites/default/files/content/page/files/257/charter_cittaslow_en_05_18.pdf. Slow Food. 2015. Main Page. http://www.slowfood.com/. Sünnetçioğlu, S., H. Korkmaz, and F. Özkök. 2014. “Yerel Halkın Sürdürülebilir Yerel Kalkınma Açısından Sakin Şehir Değerlendirmesi: Seferihisar Örneği”. Eko-Gastronomi Dergisi 1 (1): 143–61. Swyngedouw, E. 2007. “Impossible Sustainability and Post-Political Condition.” In The Sustainable Development Paradox, edited by David Gibbs and Rob Krueger, 13–40. New York: Guilford Press. Timms, B. F., and D. Conway. 2012. “Slow Tourism at the Caribbean’s Geographical Margins”. Tourism Geographies 14 (3): 396–418. Tomlinson, J. 2007. The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy. Los Angeles: Sage. Wilson, J., and E. Swyngedouw, eds. 2014. The Post-Political and Its Discontents: Spaces of Depoliticisation, Spectres of Radical Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Yurtseven, R., and O. Kaya. 2011. “Slow Tourists: A Comparative Research Based on CittaSlow Principles”. American International Journal of Contemporary Research 1 (2): 91–98. Žižek, S. (1989) 2008. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

Degrowth in Practice?

171

NOTES 1. Our empirical evidence is derived from fieldwork over a period of one month in Halfeti with twenty-two semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and focus groups. As all the interviews were conducted in Turkish, we use our own translations in the text. 2. According to Article 26 of the International Slow City Charter, “If within the National and/or Territorial area meet at least three member cities, a National or Territorial Organizational Structure is established, which is the reference for the Coordinating Committee, called National Branch” (Slow City 2014, 18). After Seferihisar was officially recognized as the first slow city in Turkey in 2009, the number of Slow City towns reached four by 2011 and the National Network was launched. 3. Seferihisar created a showcase for another nine towns in the country, which are: Akyaka, Gökçeada, Halfeti, Perşembe, Seferihisar, Taraklı, Vize, Yalvaç, and Yenipazar.

Part 3

Contested Concepts

TEN “An Alternative Worth Fighting For” Degrowth and the Liberation of Work Stefania Barca

This chapter discusses the place of labour in the political economy of degrowth. The first section reviews a number of critical social theories that have variously contributed to what is currently the main degrowth approach to labour—namely, the “liberation from work” perspective. This emphasizes the need for reducing as much as possible production work in waged form while at the same time expanding autonomous reproduction and care work as key dimensions of a degrowth society. The second section argues that, since (in the current configuration of global capitalism) wage work is not going to go away anytime soon, and it is actually increasing, a “liberation of work” perspective must also be elaborated within degrowth. The latter, I argue, could encompass three dimensions: labour and working-class environmentalism, an eco-socialist Just Transition, and workers’ control at the point of production. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the two approaches (liberation of and from work) be understood as complementary elements of a possible degrowth/labour platform for common action, to be built through a broad process of dialogue and convergence between advocates, activists, representatives, and organizations on both sides. DEGROWTH AS LIBERATION FROM (WAGED) WORK If we understand the political economy of degrowth as based on ecosufficiency, autonomy, and commoning, then degrowth is clearly at odds 175

176

Stefania Barca

with waged work. This oddness, I argue, manifests in both capitalist and centrally planned economies, since both systems have shown an innate tendency not only towards an unsustainable social metabolism but also towards the alienation of labour (Barca 2017). A degrowth society, it seems, would be best reached if people could be liberated from waged work as much as possible, for example, via a reduced workweek, work sharing, and a universal basic income (Kallis 2017, 23). In this respect, the degrowth movement has largely adopted André Gorz’s vision of work, as expressed in his most popular book, Adieux au prolétariat (Farewell to the Working Class, Gorz [1980] 1982), where he had envisioned the end of the age of full employment and Keynesian welfare, to be replaced by a society of “freed time” based on the autonomous production of use values (see also Leonardi, this volume). The “Refusal of Work” Approach Gorz’s vision of a post-work society was largely based on the concept of “refusal of work” developed in the late 1960s by the Italian so-called autonomist Marxists (Leonardi 2019) as a provocation against orthodox Marxist obsessions with the work ethic and the progressive power of “the development of the forces of production” (Weeks 2011, 82). Resembling a central degrowth tenet, the “right to be lazy” (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2014, 217), the “refusal of work” must be intended as a twofold concept: as a rejection of the work-centred society but also as a precondition for realizing alternative work practices—or else, as an exit and reinvention strategy (Weeks 2011, 100). A key concept here was that of self-valorization, defined as not just resistance to processes of capitalist valorization but as “a creative project of ‘self-constitution,’ of autonomous agency vis-à-vis capital” (ibid., 95). Autonomist Marxism inspired Gorz to subtract political agency from the traditional labour organizations and diffuse it throughout the social body via the agency of what Antonio Negri called the “social worker” (Negri 1979)—or “non-worker,” in Gorz’s terms. But once wage labour—that is, the working class, traditionally understood as (mostly male) industrial workers—was relativized as the key agent of social change, it became necessary to conceptualize and expand the political agency of non-wage labour. This is why autonomist Marxism defined labour not by its productive capacity but by its antagonism to capital—by its being a working class, albeit composed of social strata not necessarily subjected to wage relations. Even if the composition of this working class is, of course, variable and depends on the specific phase of capitalist development, its social antagonism, much broader than that of labour versus capital, was considered the primary engine of social change. In other words, autonomist Marxism fundamentally questioned orthodox concepts of class, labour, strike, and even unionism, opening them up to a constant redefinition.

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

177

Along the past three decades, several concepts and political praxes from autonomist Marxism have been adopted by alter-globalization movements and social practices engaged in transforming society from “outside and against” capitalist wage relations; they are thus highly resonant with a degrowth perspective, which posits itself as a convergence of these social mobilizations. The common trait that links autonomist Marxism, alter-globalization, and degrowth is their privileging political subjectivities other than the traditional labour movement. In autonomist Marxism, since the political organization of the “social worker” (including students, the unemployed, migrants, domestics, and non-wage labour) cannot be the trade union, it finds expression in “social unionism,” that is, forms of mass protest that consist in abstaining from whichever activity one is socially engaged with, as a form of disruption of the capitalist social order. One of the most enduring political proposals of this tradition is that of taking the strike out of the workplace and the confinement of struggles at the point of production, mostly concerning wages and labour relations, and turning it into a tool of struggle for social reproduction (access to housing, abortion, public services, etc.), via the “general strike,” or “social strike.” The end of such practice is not primarily that of obtaining, improving, or defending one’s job but that of obtaining more freedom from it. This vision of work as something that goes beyond wage labour and the point of production leads us to consider the politics of social reproduction, which is central to both autonomist Marxism and degrowth. Here it becomes necessary to turn to feminist political economy, probably the body of scholarship that has contributed more than any other to demythologizing production and to showing how reproductive labours matter (Barca 2019). In fact, a key contribution to the “liberation from work” approach has come from the debate on domestic labour that, intersecting with autonomist Marxist thought, originated the “wages for housework” campaign of the 1970s. Sharing the same spirit of the “refusal of work,” this was also a provocative concept, whose aim was that of contesting the naturalization of domestic work so that women could finally choose not to do it (Weeks 2011, 124–36). Demanding wages for housework, in fact, was only a small part in a much larger debate on the family as a “social factory,” and on reproduction work as part and parcel with production work, both subjected to capitalist exploitation and control: in this sense, it was best understood as a campaign for wages against housework (Federici 1975). This campaign speaks to some core concepts in the political economy of degrowth the way it is being currently formulated, that is, as centred on reproduction and care activities as key dimensions of the good life, thus giving them predominance over production (Kallis 2017, 21). As argued in Social Reproduction theory (Bhattacharya 2017), seeing reproduction and care also as forms of socially necessary work to be liberated from, in order to allow for the full development of human potentials and

178

Stefania Barca

freedom, is a precious antidote to romanticizing this work as an end in itself. Materialist Ecofeminism Since the mid-1980s, feminist political economy has intersected with the ecological critique of capitalism, thus giving shape to an original articulation of the labour/value/nature nexus that is of fundamental relevance to the degrowth debate (see also Gregoratti and Raphael, this volume). The building block for this shift came with the feminist critique of GDP elaborated by Australian politician and public intellectual Marilyn Waring. This critique of GDP accounting differed from previous critiques of social costs (including, for example, those by William Kapp and Vassily Leontief) because it hinted at the nexus between the unpaid labour of domestic and environmental “services” as a prerequisite for capital accumulation. Although the author did not fully develop the theoretical implications of such a nexus, this was nonetheless clearly highlighted for the first time, forming the ground for the rise of two new bodies of literature in the 1990s, namely, feminist ecological economics and feminist political ecology (Perkins and Kuiper 2005; Bauhardt 2014). It must be noted, however, that degrowth advocates—starting from Gorz himself—did not follow this thread, 1 thus missing the opportunity to further elaborate on the role of (non-wage) labour in a degrowth society. During the 1980s and 1990s, ecofeminism consolidated as a transnational network of women scholars and activists that ran parallel to the UN women conferences and the two Rio earth summits, as well as a number of peace and antinuclear movements/conferences (Merchant 1996), whose key contribution to the degrowth debate was the “subsistence perspective” (Mies and Shiva 1993; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999). This originated from a critical appraisal of Marxist theories of labour and value, based on empirical research on unwaged and informal work (farming, domestic, and manufacturing) done by women in postcolonial contexts, and demonstrating how this was organically related to the production of exchange value on a global scale. While most of the modernization debate, including mainstream feminist economics, was advocating for bringing this work under a formalized capitalist wage system (and, later, under a financialized global trade system), ecofeminists were pointing to its promise as a potentially autonomous sphere of social activity that could be organized and regulated in non-capitalist form, being directed to the “production of life” rather than profit and accumulation. A striking case for the ecofeminist approach to labour was the Green Belt movement of Kenya and its successful reforestation program, aimed at food sovereignty and soil conservation rather than timber harvesting, which was led by peasant women autonomously from, and even against, the government. 2 The ecofeminist movement, in other

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

179

words, would struggle for recognition of the relevance of subsistence work as intrinsically different from waged work in the growth society and potentially conducive to a degrowth society. One major accomplishment of materialist ecofeminism has been that of challenging rigid distinctions (and hierarchies) between production and reproduction. Since the late 1990s, feminist ecological economics has pointed to “labour as a whole,” meaning that “the processes involved in the regeneration and restoration of human and nonhuman life are intrinsic to each and every process involving the production of goods and services” (Biesecker and Hofmeister 2010, 1707). In a similar vein, Ariel Salleh (2010) has argued that, rather than reproduction, subsistence work was to be understood as “metaindustrial,” that is, that which underpins industrial work in the wage system and makes it productive. Most importantly, the concept of metaindustrial work signifies how labour is not exclusively a producer of metabolic rift: being mostly about the production of life (both human and nonhuman), metaindustrial work tends towards the enhancement of what she calls “metabolic value.” The latter emerges from resisting the degradation of both the soil and the labourer as brought about by capitalist wage relations, thus mobilizing the rifthealing capacities that manifest not only on the individual bodily scale but also on that of local and potentially more-than-local ecosystems. A striking example of this metabolic value of subsistence work comes from the so-called extractive reserves of the Amazon region, that is, areas that are (legally) protected from deforestation via peasant occupancy and whose resources are regenerated via sustainable use of nontimber forest products (Hecht 2011). Overall, the point in materialist ecofeminism is not that of romanticizing subsistence and reproductive work but that of pointing to how modern economic growth has been premised upon their devaluation and annihilation, which in turn have produced a global crisis of social and natural reproduction—a point towards which Social Reproduction theory has also converged (Fraser 2017). Consequently, a political economy of degrowth needs to include gender in a twofold sense: first, acknowledging the sexual division of labour as a primary mechanism of socioecological crisis; second, “valuing” metaindustrial work by recognizing its active contribution in counteracting the overwhelming metabolic rift of a growth-oriented political economy. The unpaid work of “women, nature and colonies”—as originally theorized by Maria Mies and the materialist ecofeminist Bielefeld school— has now become a foundational concept in “world-ecology” theory. In the words of Jason Moore, “a radical politics of sustainability must recognize—and seek to mobilize through—a tripartite division of work under capitalism: labour-power, unpaid human work and the work of nature as a whole” (Moore 2017, 1). This approach invokes a diffusion of labour’s social agency not only beyond industrial work and organized labour but

180

Stefania Barca

also beyond human agency itself or, rather, in a hybrid interaction with it—as theorized by some feminist scholars as well (Battistoni 2017). This would certainly go hand in hand with current efforts at decolonizing degrowth by developing a convergence with indigenous and peasant cosmologies (see also Milanez, this volume). To be taken seriously, however, this perspective would need to translate into radically new forms of labour organizing—the seeds of which have already been sown in those radical labour organizations, such as La Via Campesina, that work with sustainable agroforestry and agroecology as viable alternatives to extractivist political economies, in Latin America and elsewhere. 3 Extending this hybrid labour perspective to industrial and waged work is, of course, a more challenging endeavour. The Community/Class Dialectic An interesting combination of non-orthodox Marxism, feminist political economy, and post-humanism is represented by the “community economies” (CE) approach, which laid out the theoretical premises for reframing “the economy” by understanding class and work as not only opposed to but potentially autonomous from capitalism (see also Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson, this volume). In its most recent development, the CE perspective on work is laid out as one of reducing wage labour and consumption while expanding the unpaid work of caring for others and for the environment (Gibson-Graham, Cameron, and Healy 2013, 17–48). The basic concept is that income from paid work is only one among several factors of well-being, in which unpaid work (human and nonhuman) plays a key role as well: what is crucial is the interdependency between the various forms of work, based on an assessment of how each contributes to individual, community, and planetary well-being. While Gibson-Graham’s previous works had theorized the need for rethinking labour and the language of class in a post-structuralist perspective (Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff 2000), more recently the CE approach has abandoned class and social antagonism altogether, pointing towards a collective and more-than-human ethics of care. Such ethical perspective does include political campaigning—for example, for living wages or against sweatshops—and social policies such as public health, education, and transport, among others, but these are not to be achieved via social struggle. Rather than to social movements, the book seems to be addressed to “communities” made of a wide variety of actors, including policymakers and entrepreneurs, who share a common interest towards “differently politicizing the economy.” This ethical and social cohesion approach—it must be noted—resonates well with large sectors of the degrowth movement. The current global crisis of capitalism, however, has renewed interest towards Marxist analysis in both social science research and political writing, with an

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

181

inevitable impact upon the degrowth debate as well. Public awareness of widening inequalities has revived discussions of the problem of social/ distributive justice and the need for challenging the structural constraints of capitalist political economy. In this context, it has become more urgent than ever to theorize new mechanisms for labour politics that are capable of connecting different types of workers and levels of struggle—or else, to see “community economies” as potentially part of a renewed concept of class struggle. In fact, as Tithi Bhattacharya (2017, 18) aptly puts it: “While it is easy to state that workers have an existence outside of the circuit of commodity production or point of production, the challenge . . . is to clarify the relationship between this existence and that of their productive lives under the direct domination of capital, for that relation between spheres has the potential to chart the path of class struggle” (emphasis added). Seen from this background dialectic, a recent attempt at “bringing class analysis back in” the degrowth debate (Leonardi 2019) seems to be pointing in the right direction. Building on what is now referred to as neo-workerism, Italian scholar Emanuele Leonardi (2017, 2019), offers important elements for rethinking the nexus between labour, nature, and value in the light of the current phase of capitalist/ecological crisis— which is fundamentally different from the one in which the early “refusal of work” had been elaborated. The most relevant novelty of the past two decades, Leonardi writes, is the emergence of green capitalism, consisting in the direct valorization of the ecological/reproduction crisis via cognitive/digital labour (e.g., the carbon trading market, patented seeds, geoengineering, in vitro procreation). What was once the sphere of reproduction—nonhuman nature, domestic labour, knowledge, the body—has now become “productive” by being directly subsumed within the circuits of capitalist value. This subsumption, however, must be understood as a tendency to which new struggles are resisting and within which new political subjectivations are emerging, carrying with them potentialities for social change. New struggles reflect a new class composition: the working class is not what it used to be—Leonardi tells us—because exploitation has now directly embraced reproductive, care, and cognitive work. Consequently, class struggle is now also feminist and ecological: it aims at replacing exploitation with “eco-autonomy” (Bertell 2016), that is, to reduce as much as possible the waged (or commodified) form of cognitive/affective/reproductive work, and consequently its metabolism, while expanding its autonomous and commoning form—thus liberating its negentropic potential. While similar to the CE vision of work as comprising multiple forms of “value” and “wealth,” this approach differs substantially in that it adopts a class perspective: change can only come from a new cycle of social struggles demanding radically redistributive policies, such as a universal basic income (a classic workerist claim 4) directly aimed at making waged work less necessary to social well-being.

182

Stefania Barca

Overall, a value of this new convergence between autonomous Marxism and degrowth is that it advances workerist thought in ways that allow for better articulating it alongside both ecological and feminist thought (which includes long-time autonomist Marxist scholars such as Silvia Federici and M. Rosa Dalla Costa). Nevertheless, this approach remains within the logic of the “refusal of work,” or else of the liberation from waged work, as the key political horizon of a degrowth strategy. In order to fully incorporate a global labour politics, I contend, the degrowth movement desperately needs to reach out to and mobilize waged workers and their organizations by elaborating a vision for their possible liberation (from the treadmill of production) within the wage relation. The next section will be devoted to develop this argument. DEGROWTH AND THE LIBERATION OF (WAGED) WORK The relevance of wage labour to degrowth can be appreciated in three ways. First, as a critique of capitalist political economy, degrowth cannot but consider waged work as “the standpoint from which capitalism's mysteries can be uncovered and its logics laid bare” (Weeks 2011, 6). In most countries around the world, waged work is the main way for people to get access to food, clothing, and shelter, as well as healthcare and retirement. Neoliberal ideologies of the “end of work” notwithstanding, people cannot but aspire to be included in the work society. This, however, is not the result of individual choices, but a governmental dispositif that is instrumental to capitalist political economy. As Kathi Weeks writes, “Enforcing work, as the other side of defending property rights, is . . . a particular preoccupation of the postwelfare, neoliberal state” (ibid., 7). In a more recent assessment of labour politics worldwide, Verity Burgmann has noted how “the trajectory of capitalist development is to draw more and more people into waged work” (Burgmann 2016, 6). Since the 1980s, this long-term trend has been accompanied by a decisive move towards lowering labour’s share of income and labour standards, in order to fuel increased global competition—a process known as “race to the bottom” (Newell 2012). Increasing working hours, precariousness, and casualization of jobs; decreasing wages and occupational safety; recurrence of old and new forms of unpaid and slave labour; and the deregulation of labour markets and the legitimation of anti-union politics as necessary to global competitiveness are all ways in which globalized capitalism is intensifying the exploitation of labour on the world scale. It is worth noting that, at the same time, the global rate of waged work has been increasing—not diminishing—as more and more people have been deprived of access to a means of subsistence via both dispossession and the

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

183

degradation of natural resources (Federici 2012) and have become proletarians. In short, the growth society is the same as the work society. A political economy of degrowth thus needs, primarily, to expose, denaturalize, and politicize the social organization of work as a key mechanism of capitalist political economy (see also Koch, this volume). Second, as a political ecology concept, degrowth signifies sustainable forms of social metabolism that make the enhancement of human potential compatible with, or even dependent upon, the health of the biophysical environment. Such an ambitious aim cannot but involve waged work as a core agency in social metabolism. In its essence, the key problem with the relationship between labour and degrowth resides in the fact that the growth society has developed in the opposite direction: it has made human development and social welfare dependent upon the degradation of the biophysical environment, thus turning wage labour more and more into an agent of “metabolic rift” (Foster 1999). This process has ended up locking labour in the “treadmill of production” first described by Allan Schnaiberg for the US society of the 1970s, in which an unprecedented expansion of social welfare was strictly dependent on everincreasing levels of production and consequent material throughput: the secret of the treadmill’s functioning was its resting upon a social pact among capital, labour, and the state (Islam and Hossain 2015), thus creating a powerful mechanism for dividing labour from environmental politics (Russell 2017). The paradox of the treadmill is that, while technology has seemingly reached levels of productivity capable of liberating humanity from scarcity, freeing more and more natural resources and time from socially necessary work, the exploitation of both labour and nonhuman nature has intensified, and new extractive and commodity frontiers have been opened for exploitation. At the same time, the progressive reduction of public expense in social welfare has determined an exponential increase in the pace of the treadmill, as people need to work more and in more unsustainable ways in order to get the same wages and social benefits as before. In short, since wage labour is, in all societies and politico-economic contexts, a key mediator of social metabolism, a political economy of degrowth needs to elaborate the policy instruments that are needed to disentangle wage labour and social welfare from treadmill metabolism. Third, as a call for the liberation of society from the constraints of growth-mania, the degrowth movement needs to find ways of appealing to organized labour, intended here as not only the confederate trade unions but also various kinds of workers’ organizations (social/community and rank-and-file unions, digital labour platforms, international labour movements, etc.). Even though, globally speaking, the contractual power and representativeness of organized labour has declined, this by no means implies that labour has become irrelevant as a politico-economic

184

Stefania Barca

force. In the past four decades, trade unions have been the main target of neoliberal globalization and are undergoing a painful transformation of social organization and political strategy (Burgmann 2016). This transition phase opens up spaces for redefining labour’s environmental politics as well, as the emerging field of environmental labour studies has been showing (Stevis, Uzzell, and Räthzel 2018). It is in this historical process that a convergence of labour with degrowth and other alter-globalization, counter-hegemonic movements (e.g., ecofeminist, decolonial, environmental/climate justice, peasant, commoning) can be envisioned. To this aim, the degrowth movement must take seriously workers’ conditions and needs, as well as labour movements’ concerns and dilemmas vis-àvis ecology and the climate, so that new ideas might be formulated for a political economy of degrowth that firmly include labour’s perspectives and subjectivities. In short, the degrowth movement must see itself as a potential ally of labour movements in a common path towards environmental and climate justice. A vision for the liberation of waged work (from treadmill metabolism) is still to be elaborated within the degrowth perspective. Three paths can be foreseen here: first is the struggle against job blackmail, that is, the trade-off between employment and environmental/public health (working-class environmentalism); second is the struggle against “green” capitalism and to reclaim Just Transition as a strategy for a truly equitable green economy (eco-socialist transition); third is the struggle against alienation and for workers’ control at the point of production (occupy production). Working-Class Environmentalism Struggles against the hazards of production have been conducted all along the history of industrial labour and its organizations (including unions in industrialized farming and fishing), under different political and regulative regimes, and can be described under the label of “labour environmentalism” (Barca 2014). Fought from within the wage system, they went against the logic that sustains the system itself: by demanding that industrial hazards be reduced to a minimum acceptable standard starting from the point of production, they rejected the monetization of risk and thus put a limit to the commodification of labour and, indirectly, of the environment. While leading to important regulations against the hazards of production, however, the partial success of the politics of labour environmentalism that took place in industrial societies during the Fordist era also had perverse effects: most importantly, it ultimately contributed to the relocation of many industries towards the new peripheries of the industrial order. This global job blackmail, in turn, has greatly reduced the space for trade unions to negotiate over environmental and public health issues (Newell 2012). Overall, the historical trajectory of

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

185

labour environmentalism shows the limits of these kinds of struggles within a growth-oriented global political economy. This is why the times are ripe for a degrowth-oriented political economy capable of opening a new political space for labour environmentalism, a space where workers and community struggles can converge towards a common platform for reframing the economy from below. We can call this space “workingclass environmentalism.” There is no better way of illustrating this point than telling the story of Taranto, an Italian working-class community dominated by Europe’s biggest steel plant (Ilva) and by a cluster of related energy and waste infrastructures. Here, a decades-long social consensus towards the industrial growth model has been recently fractured along the dividing line of environmental justice (Barca and Leonardi 2018). Once the environmental impact of steel-making has become clearly associated with unacceptable rates of cancer incidence, especially in children, the possibility has finally emerged for a convergence between labour and community organizations around a new political platform demanding to radically reframe the local economy. Put together by a local “citizens and workers committee,” a detailed economic plan was officially launched in September 2018, demanding a gradual shutdown of the steel plant and a massive program of public investments towards jobs creation in clean-up operations and the “green/circular economy” sector. 5 Constrained within a growth-oriented national political economy, however, this plan could not compete against the concurrent offer of the Arcelor Mittal group to take over Ilva and make its operation more profitable by increasing the plant’s production capacity from six to eight million tons per year, an investment made possible by the judicial immunity that the Italian government has granted the group against the foreseeable increase of the plant’s environmental and public health impact. 6 Unfortunately, owing to the lack of governmental backup towards any alternative plan, the main trade unions representing the plant’s roughly ten thousand workers have chosen to endorse the acquisition. 7 This choice may have completely foreclosed the possibility of bridging labour and community politics by radically reframing Taranto’s economy around a green/environmental justice platform. Clearly, in cases such as these, a degrowth-oriented political economy could make the difference by allowing labour organizations to develop a new language of bargaining and to fight for those “revolutionary reforms” that are not compatible with GDP growth. This makes it truly essential for the degrowth movement to seriously engage with labour relations and trade-union politics in order to create a politico-economic space where the struggles for environmental justice of working-class communities can be appropriately represented and supported.

186

Stefania Barca

An Eco-Socialist Just Transition An indeed crucial terrain for degrowth to encounter labour politics is that of the Just Transition (JT) strategy (Barca 2015). This is a vision for a postcarbon transition that takes into account the stakes of labour. Originally put forward by trade unions in various countries, the JT was then incorporated by the global labour confederations and is now officially sanctioned by the Earth Summit of Rio 2012 (United Nations 2012). In its mainstreamed version, the discourse of JT is reduced to a call for linking the Sustainable Development Goals of “decent work” (SDG 8) and of “climate action” (SDG 13) by making sure that global climate agreements promote “green growth.” The JT slogan, however, remains a powerful call for a politics of sustainability geared on (rather than against) wage labour (Räthzel and Uzzell 2013). In the words of a UK union’s report, “experience shows it is not enough, in fact is often counterproductive, to protest outside a workplace without attempting a genuine dialogue with the workers and putting forward an alternative worth fighting for” 8 (emphasis added). In this spirit, a number of labour organizations in different countries have joined the Climate Justice movement through a Global Climate Jobs (GCJ) campaign, that is, a detailed plan for massive public investments in energy and infrastructure activities that effectively replace fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating new, and decent, industrial jobs. 9 Driven by an eco-socialist perspective and criticizing official climate negotiations for being entrenched with a business logic, the campaign advocates for urgent government commitment to creating climate jobs, while also ending the arms trade, and “rationalizing and localizing production, distribution and consumption lines based on human needs rather than profit.” 10 In addition, the campaign posits a strong emphasis on energy democracy, that is, public and democratic control over the production and distribution of energy. The GCJ Campaign is part of a broader constellation of grassroots JT initiatives that share an emphasis on public intervention and economic democracy to counteract the destructive drivers of capitalist political economy. While GDP growth is rarely questioned and partly endorsed in the form of “green Keynesianism” (Felli 2014), some features of the JT strategy seem to point towards a possible convergence with the degrowth movement. This convergence could take advantage of the structural/organizational commonality between the two strategies, since they are mostly supported by social movement coalitions, rather than sectoral organizations: the GCJ campaign, for example, is based on what is known as “social movement unionism,” that is, coalitions of trade-union and civil-society, community-based organizations. This has allowed for a greater degree of discursive freedom from growth realism and a greater ability to envision creative ways of responding to economic/social/envi-

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

187

ronmental problems. Not by chance, compared to the mainstream JT strategy, the campaign makes no mention of GDP growth as a key goal; in fact, it only mentions growth as related to increasing greenhouse gas emissions. This makes it an ideal terrain for a possible convergence with degrowth. In short, the challenge for a degrowth/JT strategy is to envision mechanisms through which it would be possible to effectively let go of GDP growth while building a more solid nexus between decent employment, sustainability, and global climate justice. As in the case of working-class environmentalism, a political economy of degrowth could offer invaluable support to those sectors of the labour movement that are struggling to liberate waged work from the treadmill metabolism of global capitalism. Occupy Production A third pathway for the liberation of waged work could be that of occupying production via a number of different initiatives: from reclamation of abandoned factories to struggles for workers’ self-management on the shop-floor (workers’ councils); from cooperative and social enterprises to digital commoning. These forms of de-alienation should be intended as a struggle for altering power relations within the wage system by enlarging the space of workers’ control over production—and consequently, over social metabolism—and redirecting it towards the satisfaction of social needs (including the need for a healthy environment). Such struggles require strong and antagonist labour organizations and are typically (though not always) developed in times of crisis or revolution. A source of inspiration here comes from the workers’ councils of the Spanish revolutionary period (1936–1939), described by Murray Bookchin as a successful example of “libertarian socialism.” Coordinated by the CNT-FAI (the Iberian Anarchist Federation), these councils came to control three-quarters of the country’s economy (Biehl 1999, 158–63). Some public utilities, for example, the water service of Barcelona, were entirely controlled by the unions: according to a more recent study, “workers’ management during this period not only improved efficiency and rationality, but to a large extent did so also procuring equity and fairness in the provision of water to the citizens of Barcelona despite the harsh conditions brought about by the war” (Gorostiza, March, and Sauri 2013, 908). Another historical example comes from the UK’s Lucas Plan— a detailed plan for diversification from weapons into socially useful production, put forward by a workers committee as an alternative to corporate and governmental plans for restructuring of the Lucas Aerospace group in 1976. This can be seen as a prefigurative example of how wage labour could meet degrowth: connecting the crisis faced by their sector with prospects of a broader economic and ecological crisis (as related to the two oil shocks of that decade), the committee foresaw the need for “a

188

Stefania Barca

re-examination of economic aims” through which “the pursuit of growth will give way to a search for ‘quality of life’ for social justice and solidarity.” 11 More recently, great interest has been raised by the experience of the Workers’ Recuperated Companies (WRCs) of Argentina and elsewhere (Azzellini 2016). Premised upon the failure of capitalist management and legally formalized as workers’ cooperatives (when they are legally formalized at all), WRCs have shown a tendency to act in networks and constellations that best serve the scope of showing how “another economy is possible” (ibid., 11). As shown by the Italian RiMaflow case—a recuperated factory ruled according to the “Re-use, re-cycle, re-appropriate” motto 12 —WRCs testify to the possibility of articulating waged work with the reduction of throughput metabolism. They should be thus acknowledged as a key resource within the political economy of degrowth. CONCLUSIONS This chapter has argued that the “liberation from work” perspective suffers from an important limitation: it comes at the price of alienating wage labour and its organizations, keeping them apart from, or considering them irrelevant to, the project of reinventing work. The degrowth movement cannot afford to follow on this path. In fact, in the past three decades, while “decent work” has almost disappeared, people have become more (and not less) dependent on waged work for making a living, and national economies have become more (and not less) dependent on GDP growth for maintaining their fiscal balance. As a consequence, although degrowth is at odds with traditional labour politics, it cannot just ignore it nor consider it socially and politically irrelevant. While the degrowth imaginary has been largely built upon a “liberation from work” perspective, it is in the liberation of waged work from treadmill metabolism that a political economy of degrowth still needs to be developed. The struggle for making waged work sustainable and compatible with human and nonhuman reproduction, that is, the struggle against exploitation and alienation from within the wage system, is instrumental to a degrowth strategy. In fact, this struggle would ultimately lead to contest GDP growth as an undisputable driving principle of political economy. Not only capitalist valorization but unlimited production would be questioned as a legitimate pathway towards social welfare. For this to happen, though, we need the degrowth movement to elaborate a strategy for the liberation of waged work that encompasses the three dimensions highlighted in the second section of this chapter, that is, working-class environmentalism, eco-socialism, and workers’ control. Overall, in its counter-hegemonic endeavour, the political economy of degrowth will need to offer the theoretical and analytical instruments to

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

189

link struggles at the point of production with those at the point of reproduction, and to make space for an alliance between waged and unwaged, industrial and metaindustrial workers, with the aim of countering ecological degradation and enhancing social reproduction. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An early version of this chapter was presented at the Degrowth Conference in Malmo (August 2018), thanks to financial support from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Projeto Estratégico (UID/ SOC/50012/2019). The author wishes to thank participants in the conference session for their precious feedback. REFERENCES Azzellini, Dario. 2016. “Labour as a Commons: The Example of Worker-Recuperated Companies.” Critical Sociology. doi: 10.1177/0896920516661856 . Barca, Stefania. 2014. “Labouring the Earth. Transnational Reflections on the Environmental History of Work.” Environmental History 19 (1): 3–27. Barca, Stefania. 2015. “Greening the Job: Trade Unions, Climate Change and the Political Ecology of Labour.” In The International Handbook of Political Ecology, edited by Raymond Bryant, 387–400. London: Edward Elgar. Barca, Stefania. 2017. “The Labour(s) of Degrowth.” Capitalism Nature Socialism (online first). doi: 10.1080/10455752.2017.1373300 . Barca, Stefania. 2019. “Labour and the Ecological Crisis: The Eco-Modernist Dilemma in Western Marxism(s) (1970s–2000s).” Geoforum 98: 226–35. Barca, Stefania, and Emanuele Leonardi. 2018. “Working-Class Ecology and Union Politics: A Conceptual Topology.” Globalizations 15 (4): 487–503. Battistoni, Alyssa. 2017. “Bringing in the Work of Nature: From Natural Capital to Hybrid Labour.” Political Theory 45 (1): 5–31. Bauhardt, Christine. 2014. “Solutions to the Crisis? The Green New Deal, Degrowth, and the Solidarity Economy: Alternatives to the Capitalist Growth Economy from an Ecofeminist Economics Perspective.” Ecological Economics 102: 60–68. Bertell, Lucia. 2016. Lavoro eco-autonomo. Milan, Italy: Elèuthera. Bhattacharya, Tithi. 2017. “Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory.” In Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, 1–20. London: Pluto Press. Biehl, Janet. 1999. The Murray Bookchin Reader. Montreal: Black Rose Book. Biesecker, Adelheid, and Sabine Hofmeister. 2010. “Focus: (Re)productivity: Sustainable Relations Both between Society and Nature and between the Genders.” Ecological Economics 69: 1703–11. Burgmann, Verity. 2016. Globalization and Labour in the 21st Century. London: Routledge. D’Alisa, Giacomo, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis, eds. 2014. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Federici, Silvia. 1975. Wages against Housework. Bristol, UK: Power of Women Collective and Falling Wall Press. https://caringlabour.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/silviafederici-wages-against-housework/. Federici, Silvia. 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland, CA: PM Press.

190

Stefania Barca

Felli, Romain. 2014. “An Alternative Socio-Ecological Strategy? International Trade Unions’ Engagement with Climate Change.” Review of International Political Economy 21 (2): 372–98. Foster, John Bellamy. 1999. “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology.” American Journal of Sociology 105 (2): 366–405. Fraser, Nancy. 2017. “Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism.” In Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, edited by Tithi Bhattacharya, 21–36. London: Pluto Press. Gibson-Graham, Julie-Katherine, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy. 2013. Take Back the Economy. An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, Julie-Katherine, Stephen R. Resnick, and Richard D. Wolff, eds. 2000. Class and Its Others. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gorostiza, Santiago, Hugh March, and David Sauri. 2013. “Servicing Customers in Revolutionary Times: The Experience of the Collectivized Barcelona Water Company during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).” Antipode 45 (4): 908–25. Gorz, André. (1980) 1982. Farewell to the Working Class. An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism. Translated by Michael Sonenscher. London: Pluto Press. Originally published as Adieux au prolétariat (Paris: Galilée). Hecht, Susanna. 2011. Fate of the Forest: Destroyers, Developers and Defenders of the Amazon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Islam, Saidul, and Ismail Hossain. 2015. Social Justice in the Globalization of Production: Labour, Gender, and the Environment Nexus. Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Kallis, Giorgos. 2017. In Defense of Degrowth. Opinions and Minifestos. https:// indefenseofdegrowth.com/ . Leonardi, Emanuele. 2017. Lavoro Natura Valore: André Gorz tra Marxismo e Decrescita. Salerno, Italy: Orthotes. Leonardi, Emanuele. 2019. “Bringing Class Analysis Back In: Assessing the Transformation of the Value-Nature Nexus to Strengthen the Connection between Degrowth and Environmental Justice.” Ecological Economics 156 (1): 83–90. Martinez-Alier, Joan. 2003. The Environmentalism of the Poor. London: Edward Elgar. Merchant, Carolyn. 1996. Earthcare: Women and the Environment. New York: Routledge. Mies, Maria, and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen. 1999. The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. London: Zed Books. Mies, Maria, and Vandana Shiva. 1993. Ecofeminism. London: Zed Books. Moore, Jason W. 2017. “The Capitalocene Part II: Accumulation by Appropriation and the Centrality of Unpaid Work/Energy.” Journal of Peasant Studies. doi: 10.1080/ 03066150.2016.1272587 . Negri, Antonio. 1979. Dall’Operaio Massa all’Operaio Sociale. Milan: Multhipla. Newell, Peter. 2012. Globalization and the Environment: Capitalism, Ecology and Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Perkins, Ellie, and Edith Kuiper, eds. 2005. “Explorations: Feminist Ecological Economics.” Feminist Economics 11 (3): 107–50. Räthzel, Nora, and David Uzzell. 2013. “Mending the Breach between Labour and Nature: A Case for Environmental Labour Studies.” In Trade Unions in the Green Economy, edited by N. Räthzel and D. Uzzell, 1–12. London: Routledge. Russell, Ellen D. 2017. “Resisting Divide and Conquer: Worker/Environmental Alliances and the Problem of Economic Growth.” Capitalism Nature Socialism. doi: 10. 1080/10455752.2017.1360924 . Salleh, Ariel. 2010. “From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement.” Organization and Environment 23 (2): 205–19. Stevis, Dimitris, David Uzzell, and Nora Räthzel. 2018. “The Labour–Nature Relationship: Varieties of Labour Environmentalism.” Globalizations 15 (4): 439–53.

“An Alternative Worth Fighting For”

191

United Nations. 2012. The Future We Want. Outcome Document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 20–22, 2012. https:/ /sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/733FutureWeWant.pdf. Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

NOTES 1. A notable exception is Joan Martinez-Alier, who mentions Waring and feminist economics in his The Environmentalism of the Poor (Martinez-Alier 2003, 26). 2. See http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/ . 3. See viacampesina.org/en/la-via-campesina-organisational-brochure-edition2016/ . 4. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is defined as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement”; see https://basicincome.org/ . 5. See Piano Taranto, available from https://www.scribd.com/document/ 377272266/PIANO-TARANTO-Presentazione . 6. See https://www.huffingtonpost.it/angelo-bonelli/a-taranto-limmunita-penalee-garantita-per-legge-agli-acquirent_a_22113809/. 7. See https://www.adnkronos.com/soldi/economia/2018/09/13/referendum-ilvavalanga_ajnctgSacUwv9Vzcwb54NO.html. 8. See Just Transition and Energy Democracy: A Civil Service Trade Union Perspective, https://www.pcs.org.uk/resources/green-workplaces/new-pamphlet-just-transitionand-energy-democracy-a-civil-service-trade. 9. See http://www.globalclimatejobs.org/. 10. See http://www.globalclimatejobs.org/climate-summit-katowice-wont-workersmust-mobilize-demand-just-transition/ . 11. See Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Steward Committee, Corporate Plan. A Contingency Strategy as a Positive Alternative to Recession and Redundancies, 1976, 10. http:// lucasplan.org.uk/story-of-the-lucas-plan/ . 12. See https://rimaflow.it/index.php/le-nostre-attivita/ .

ELEVEN The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth Alf Hornborg

Paradoxically, the observation that money is the root of all evil was hegemonic in Christian Europe throughout a millennium and a half of commercial expansion, and it continues to feature as a recurrent critique of modern capitalism. 1 In modern contexts, however, critique tends to focus not on the underlying idea of money—the assumption of generalized commensurability—but on its production and management. Countless critics of business-as-usual have challenged mainstream economic policies, for instance, regarding issues such as government intervention, pegging currencies to gold or some other material standard, the virtues of full reserve banking, the consequences of interest, and the prospects of community currencies. These debates have occurred at very different levels in terms of how radical a challenge they pose to money. To discuss adequate interest rates, for example, is not the same as discussing whether the phenomenon of interest as a whole should be abandoned. Similarly, to endorse a measure of societal regulation of market exchange is not equivalent to proposing that market capitalism should be completely overturned. Seemingly radical proposals—such as positive money, local currencies, or universal basic income—ultimately do not challenge the assumption of generalized commensurability that is the hallmark of the modern market. The target of critique in all these proposals and experiments tends to be the control and distribution of money rather than its design. In this chapter, I will argue that the only way to curb the economic inertia that Herman Daly calls “growthism”—and that generates both increasing inequalities and ecological degradation—is to confront the in193

194

Alf Hornborg

herent logic of general-purpose money. 2 This means challenging money at a more fundamental level than in terms of how it is produced, controlled, and distributed. Although the regulation of how money is issued and controlled is indeed an essential political problem, this discussion has deflected attention away from the question of what money does. Regardless of how it is produced and controlled—and even regardless of whether it yields interest—the idea of general-purpose money generates regularities in human social behavior that are at the root of our contemporary problems of escalating inequalities and unsustainability. These insidious repercussions of economic logic were at least intuitively apparent to early critics of money, such as Aristotle, Saint Paul, and Thomas Aquinas, and systematically explored by Karl Marx, whose monumental analysis of capitalism should be seen in this light. 3 In the eighteenth century, however, Mandeville and Smith reassessed money greed as beneficial to human society. This ideological transformation of avarice from vice to virtue paved the way for increasingly uncompromising versions of liberalism. A fundamental faith in the market is the sine qua non of economics and ultimately a codification of the societal inertia implicit in the idea of general-purpose money. Karl Polanyi ([1944] 1957) recognized the imperative of tempering the commodifying logic of the market so as to restrain it from relentlessly devaluing and impoverishing labor and land. Much twentieth-century debate on economic policy focused on the extent to which national political authorities should intervene in and cushion this logic. Toward the end of the century, it became increasingly obvious that the globalization of the market was externalizing its detrimental logic beyond the nationstate and generating severe asymmetries on a world scale. Various international agreements notwithstanding, the escalating inequalities and ecological contradictions of the global market have proven impossible to curb. The prospect of a global government or a worldwide socialist revolution seems less likely than ever. At this juncture, it is imperative to reflect on what is ultimately driving these economically and ecologically destructive processes. We need to understand not only how money in its present form compels us to inadvertently inflict harm on impoverished people and ecosystems in the Global South but also how it constrains our thinking about the essence of these problems of distribution and sustainability—and thus our capacity to deal with them. We need to see that money is not just a tool for managing human exchange relations but an artifact that operates as an active force in generating such relations. Visions of degrowth are based on acute awareness about the deleterious consequences of what mainstream economists conceptualize as growth and development (Latouche 2009; D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2014; Kallis 2018). Giorgos Kallis (2018, 4–8) has shown how Serge Latouche’s concept of degrowth in 1972 represented the convergence of

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

195

perspectives from several sources, including the economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the philosophers André Gorz and Ivan Illich, and the economic anthropologists Karl Polanyi, Marcel Mauss, and Marshall Sahlins. It is not a coincidence that the emergence of this concept combined radical critiques of modern economics with anthropological insights on the extent to which the assumptions of economics are cultural constructions. It is almost half a century since the concept was launched, but its fundamental message has never been more urgent. Given proper preparations informed by the discourse on degrowth, a reduction in economic growth in many nations could be a change for the better in several respects. There is thus every reason to organize such preparations, including public information on the long-term benefits of reduced growth for sustainability, global justice, and the vitalization of resilient human communities. Most importantly, we need to grasp the extent to which our commitment to growth, although seemingly inexorable, is a compulsion generated by artifacts of our own making—and that, to curb that compulsion, we must redesign money. We cannot hope to domesticate growth without transforming the “agency” (to use the idiom of Actor-Network theory) of the money sign. THE GROWTH FETISH AND THE MYOPIA OF ECONOMICS The generally unanticipated financial crisis of 2008 allows us to conclude that the task of assessing the probability of economic decline ought not to be left to conventional economists. It poses an interdisciplinary challenge extending far beyond the discourse of mainstream economics. As Tim Jackson (2009, 185) concludes, “the clearest message from the financial crisis of 2008 is that our current model of economic success is fundamentally flawed.” Although entire libraries can be filled with publications debating economic theory and policy, virtually all of this discourse is conducted within the constraints established by the nineteenth-century assumption of modern money. This means that the entire range of modern economic thought is restricted to conditions set by a specific—and historically recent—human artifact. Over the past century, we have seen the logic of money inflate and explode various kinds of financial bubbles, but the most fundamental bubble of them all is the belief in money itself. As many commentators have observed regarding the exponentially expanding debt of the United States and several other affluent nations, the end of the current trajectory appears calamitous, to say the least. Even if financial crises can be temporarily averted by gaining access to expanding credit, this will only inflate the bubble even more and postpone an inevitable and ever more disastrous collapse. Considering how detached conventional economic models are from the physical reality in which the economy is embedded, it seems unwar-

196

Alf Hornborg

ranted to expect economists to provide adequate accounts of the causes of economic crises, let alone feasible remedies. The complex social logic generated by the artifact of modern money is obviously intricate enough to preoccupy millions of hard-working, meticulously trained, and finely wired minds around the world, but precisely because they are thus wired, these minds are not likely to adopt a detached perspective on how this peculiar human artifact is responsible for the disastrous course of global society. Very few economists have given a thought to how maladapted the idea of general-purpose money actually is to the physical conditions of the biosphere, which it increasingly dominates. GeorgescuRoegen (1971) and Daly (1996) have observed that an expanding production of exchange-values will accelerate the production of entropy, but neither of them has discussed general-purpose money—the very engine of such expansion—as an arbitrary cultural construction that can, in principle, be redesigned. Critics of business-as-usual tend to remain confined within a worldview for which the idea of money itself is unassailable. To understand this societal preoccupation with the operation of money, we need to consider the general phenomenon of fetishism. The concept was first applied to political economy in the mid-nineteenth century by Karl Marx, who observed that the Europeans of his time were as enthralled by their own artifacts—commodities and money—as were the worshippers of idols encountered by Portuguese merchants along the west coast of Africa. This detached view of everyday economy as a peculiar cultural game, largely determined by the properties attributed to particular human artifacts, represents a paradigm shift in our understanding not only of the organization of human societies but also of its implications for the ecological systems with which they are entwined. The phenomenon of economic growth is a socioecological process that requires a detached perspective on taken-for-granted elements of everyday life, most essentially money itself, as well as a truly interdisciplinary approach to the conditions for capital accumulation. Mainstream, neoclassical economic theory has shown no interest in such cross-cultural defamiliarization or other forms of interdisciplinarity but continues to present itself as the primary authority not only on growth but also on everything else pertaining to the operation of human economies. 4 Its models are complex and inaccessible to the layperson but are so entrenched in the fetishized logic of the money artifact that, predictably, they provide scant guidance on how to deal with the global problems of sustainability generated by that very artifact. Not only are concerns with ecology and global justice regularly dispelled beyond the horizons of economics but even the conditions of financial resilience remain a mystery for the field. Interdisciplinary attempts to understand how and why the world economy is generating planetary crises, escalating inequalities, and ominous financial instability are systematically barred from official knowledge production and decision-making by the guardians of the dis-

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

197

cipline of economics, which regards the operation of money as its own privileged territory and any external critique of its fetishized models as indicative of ignorance. It is no exaggeration to assert that the global future of humankind hinges on its capacity to transcend the ideological constraints of such money fetishism. No other species could have conceived of money. In its “generalpurpose” variant, its foundation is the idea that almost all things and services are interchangeable. This means that previously unthinkable conversions and transformations are made possible, bringing together materials and designs from around the globe. Money and global trade are thus sources of unprecedented creativity, as is most prominently evident in the development of technology over the past three centuries. A paradigmatic example is the Industrial Revolution itself. The early industrial districts of England in the late eighteenth century were able to combine cotton fiber from America, iron from Sweden, domestic coal, and several other inputs—extracted, transported, and transformed by vast armies of commodified labor—into textiles and other merchandise destined for the same globalized market, thus recursively providing access to increasing quantities of such inputs and other commodities. The idea and artifact of money has catalyzed global socioecological processes of economic growth that, by and large, have been celebrated as progress. However justified, the various kinds of criticism that have been directed at the cataclysmic ecological, political, social, and cultural repercussions of these processes have never seriously threatened their continuation. The inertia of money and economic globalization has proven impossible to restrain, no matter which national or local policies have been launched to curb it. Even international attempts to control its impacts on planetary carbon cycles have been futile. This futility of all reservations against economic growth and its global consequences is not fortuitous, for reservations very rarely address the peculiar character of the money artifact itself. Of the many far-reaching implications of money for social life, ecology, politics, and culture, its most insidious feature is its capacity to equate, in terms of exchange-value, commodities that have quite different qualities, embody very different quantities of resources, and possess highly divergent productive potential. The seemingly objective representation of very different goods and services as equivalent makes it possible to systematically appropriate increasing quantities of resources through the market without violating the appearance of reciprocity. For Karl Marx and his followers, this is a prerequisite of capitalism, which obscures the discrepancy between the exchange-value and “use-value” of labor-power. Although the productive resource that most concerned Marx was laborpower, perspectives from ecological economics have illuminated how other biophysical resources, such as embodied nonhuman energy, matter, and land, may also be asymmetrically transferred through seemingly

198

Alf Hornborg

reciprocal market transactions (Dorninger and Hornborg 2015; Hornborg 2018). Such asymmetric market transfers make it possible to accumulate productive infrastructure like the textile factories that inaugurated the Industrial Revolution. Capital accumulation is an emergent property of money, as the market will reward resource dissipation with more resources to dissipate. This is not to say that the asymmetrically transferred resources have an objectively higher “value” than their market price but that the infrastructure in which they are incorporated can be used to produce increasing volumes of exchange-values—in other words, monetary profits—that are thus contingent on the asymmetric transfers of biophysical resources. The artifact of money generates profit incentives and an increasingly globalized trade of embodied labor, energy, materials, and land. Among the ecological consequences of economic globalization is an accelerating resource use, in part because of the expansion of long-distance transports and the additional production and consumption that they permit, in part because globalization both obstructs and discourages recycling. A primary incentive driving globalization is the urge to exploit international differences in wages—that is, the cost of labor—and the market prices of other resources. The lowering of costs made possible by shifting production to low-wage areas of the world economy increases demand and consumption in wealthier areas. Rather than employ high-wage labor in recycling, it is more rational for wealthy countries to consume increasing amounts of fresh resources from low-wage countries. Nor is it feasible for resources to be returned to distant zones of extraction, illustrating what John Bellamy Foster (2000) has identified as the “metabolic rift” that is part and parcel of capitalism. Even climate change must be viewed as largely a consequence of accelerating resource use, in transports, production, and consumption, and thus geared to globalization and ultimately the logic of money. However, these ecological dilemmas have not discouraged the proponents of free trade from asserting that the world market is the best road to sustainability. Globalization continues to generate not only increases in inequality and global ecological degradation but also mounting sociopolitical and cultural tensions. While mainstream neoliberalism advocates economic policies that dismantle social welfare, outsource employment opportunities to countries with lower wages, and exacerbate inequalities within and between nations, these policies tend to produce nationalist and xenophobic sentiments particularly among the economically disadvantaged. Reflecting over the thirty-year period between 1914 and 1944, Karl Polanyi ([1944] 1957) interpreted the intensity of international and ethnic conflict in these decades as representing a reaction to the expansion of the world market in the nineteenth century. This could also be expressed as a widespread urge to mobilize abstract social identities that seemed to offer more collective substance than market niches and that appeared more

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

199

impervious to the dissolvent logic of what Polanyi called the “disembedded” economy. Ethnic conflict, nationalism, and fascism can thus be viewed as reactions to liberal, globalized modernity. Such counter-reactions to globalization are not difficult to identify also in our own time (cf. Goodhart 2017). Given the options defined by the logic of money, the political left is faced with the difficult choice between siding with the liberals in support of free trade or with the nationalists in advocating protectionism. A third and more promising option would be to envisage ways of redesigning money so as to transcend this impasse, admitting particular forms of market exchange that would not tend to dissolve social community, exacerbate inequalities, or undermine sustainability. If the movement advocating degrowth is to represent a step beyond the conventional left, it will have to reconsider the implications of the money artifact, which currently seems to constrain our options. BEYOND THE GLOBAL VERSUS THE NATIONAL In November 2016, after the American presidential election, the French philosopher Bruno Latour (2016) concluded that the era of globalization was over. Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump indicated that the majority of people in the very countries that once launched the global market now wanted to withdraw from it and resurrect their nations. Latour observed that the utopia of the globe is as unrealistic as the utopia of the nation. Indeed, as the Ecological Footprint Network and other organizations have reminded us, to believe that the lifestyle of modern consumerism can be extended to include the whole world is as illusory as to deny climate change. Latour suggests that the situation would not have been much better if Hillary Clinton had won the election. However, he is finally unable to offer a third option alongside the nation and the globe. Does this bring us back to the predicament of 1914? Are we once again forced, by the imperatives of money, to choose between the nation and the world? Those who think the choice is simple and obvious appear not to have understood the gravity of our dilemma. A conspicuous problem, for instance, is that democratically adopted, twentieth-century policies to enhance social justice and environmental protection have generally been national projects, which are now frequently being curtailed or undermined by globalization. The relation between the two utopias—the nation and the globe—is complex. In the days of the British Empire, the two were ideologically fused in concepts such as the British Commonwealth and the sentiments expressed by Britons collectively singing “Rule Britannia.” British patriotism was strongly connected to colonialism. Meanwhile, however, there emerged an understanding of world trade as emancipatory for all the participants, regardless of their economic position. Most conspicuously

200

Alf Hornborg

since the inauguration of neoliberal policies in the 1980s, free international trade has been represented as antithetical to nationalism, while the latter has been identified with regressive inclinations such as xenophobia and economic protectionism. The ideological bottom line of this shift has been to redefine imperialism as globalization. To open world trade to increasingly asymmetric but unacknowledged resource flows benefiting capital accumulation in core nations is thus currently represented as global emancipation. In terms of net transfers of resources, neoliberalism can be viewed as a mystifying argument for the aggrandizement of core nations through neocolonialism. It has become more evident than ever, however, that this means the aggrandizement of their elites, leaving most of the national population far behind. In the wake of financial crises, rising inequalities, and climate change, it is not only the neoliberal worldview that reveals itself to be flawed but also the socialist vision of a just and affluent global welfare society. The progressive and democratic values that have propelled the labor movement, the environmental movement, and the human rights movement are simply not compatible with the logic of general-purpose money and free trade. It no longer seems credible when affluent socialists or liberals in the Global North present themselves as proponents of greater global solidarity and sustainability, since the very economic logic that generates their own material standard of living inexorably increases inequalities and environmental degradation. Bastioned behind their national borders, Europeans and Americans would not be able to consume such vast quantities of embodied labor and natural resources were it not for the huge global differences in wages and commodity prices. The crucial political issue is ultimately not a person’s verbal adherence to this or that ideology or moral code but his or her real material impact on impoverished people and ecosystems in the Global South. To emphatically affirm one’s solidarity with the global poor does not necessarily correlate with a lifestyle that avoids contributing to the impoverishment of the South. 5 The dilemma of being compelled to choose between impoverishing the planet through free trade and barricading us behind national borders is generated by the conceptual prison house of money. It is notable, however, that the most explicit critics of growth tend to have little to say about money. Herman Daly (1996, 38, 180–85) follows Karl Marx and Frederick Soddy in exposing the illusions of money fetishism but appears to view the design of money as something about which we do not have a choice. The recipes for a sustainable nongrowth society offered by Daly (1996), Hamilton (2003), Victor (2008), Jackson (2009), and Raworth (2017) are all based on extensive modifications of the worldview of economics, but none suggests a modification of the money artifact on which the discipline is based. They represent a significant consensus regarding some fundamental criticisms of standard economics, agreeing, for instance, that (1) there are biophysical limits to growth, (2) the North’s

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

201

affluence cannot be universalized but is largely achieved at the expense of the South, (3) there is a threshold beyond which growth is irrational and not correlated with happiness, and (4) an absolute decoupling of growth from inputs of matter and energy is an illusion. Their solutions for building a post-growth society, however, do not radically confront the logic defined by the artifact of general-purpose money. This is not difficult to understand, given how fundamental such money is to our way of thinking and organizing society, yet nothing short of redesigning money will remedy the havoc it is playing with human society, the biosphere, and the climate. It is widely acknowledged that the operation of general-purpose money and its inherent imperative of economic growth—what many would call “capitalism”—tends to generate increasing global inequalities (Piketty 2014; Alvaredo et al. 2017). According to alarming reports from several international authorities, the same imperative of growth is simultaneously degrading the biophysical conditions of human life (Rockström et al. 2009; WWF 2016; Schandl et al. 2016). Moreover, the growth imperative inscribed in conventional money generates increasing risks of a major financial collapse (World Economic Forum 2014). As if these three deleterious trajectories of conventional economies were not enough to make us reconsider our reliance on general-purpose money and a globalized market, we have recently experienced major political turmoil in the form of a widespread resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia. This should prompt us to conduct creative thought experiments on how the economy could be organized in an alternative way, which might alleviate the systemic logic that is currently promoting rising inequality, ecological degradation, vulnerability, and intolerance. It is significant, however, that even the most creative, systematic, and well-informed efforts to conduct such thought experiments tend to be constrained by certain unquestionable assumptions about money. To illustrate this epistemological predicament of economic thought, I will briefly review Mary Mellor’s (2015, 2017) widely cited socialist proposal on how we could transform the way money is created and used. As I shall show, although Mellor’s proposal appears to represent the current limits of credible discourse on how money could be transformed, it does not address the essential problem of generalized commensurability. As a complement to her proposal for public creation and control of money, I will thus suggest that such a reform—in order to achieve its explicit goals with regard to sustainability and social justice—would also need to consider the very design of money. WILL IT SUFFICE TO MAKE MONEY PUBLIC? Mellor (2017) recognizes better than most economists that money is both a social construct and an active force with inherent political and ecologi-

202

Alf Hornborg

cal repercussions. She proposes that the creation of money should be democratically controlled through the state, rather than private banks, and that this would make it possible not only to liberate people from the exigencies of debt and the compulsion to achieve economic growth but also, for instance, to provide all the inhabitants of a nation with a basic income. By reclaiming the creation and allocation of money for the public, she suggests, the state can provide all its citizens with economic security and sustainable livelihoods. Although I agree with Mellor’s conviction that a central authority will be essential to administer and monitor a sustainable and just economy, and although I certainly share her enthusiasm about the idea of a basic income for all, I would like to complement her vision with a somewhat more radical view of the very idea of money—and a proposal for how it would need to be transformed. Mellor (2017, 1) asserts that “it is not money itself that is the source of the imbalance in our relationship to one another and nature, but rather the way money is created and circulated in modern market economies.” I hold that this conviction is a central illusion of the proposal and one that it shares with similar, socialist visions of a just and sustainable future economy. As long as we are referring to what in economic anthropology is called general-purpose money—that is, money that can be used to purchase virtually anything—money itself does indeed encourage exploitation and environmental destruction. If there are no constraints on what we can buy with our money, we shall naturally be looking for the best deals, which usually means the lowest-paid labor and the lowest-priced resources. The globalized capitalist market is thus an expression of the inherent logic of general-purpose money. This logic is the same regardless of whether such money is created by banks or states, whether it is earned through unsustainable jobs or basic income, and even regardless of the existence of interest. Not even the much-publicized experiments with community currencies—such as the Bristol Pound—will curb that globalizing logic, as long as commodities purchased in Bristol can derive from any corner of the globe. There is not much point in providing us all with a basic income as long as it would simply keep us buying the products of the lowest-paid labor and the most degraded landscapes of the planet. It would continue to promote low wages and lax environmental legislation as comparative advantages in world trade. 6 Mellor’s proposal—like positive money, the Bristol Pound, and a host of other schemes to “transform money”—illustrates how we tend to be prepared to modify every conceivable aspect of how money is used but not the idea of money itself. Part of the problem appears to be that Mellor and mainstream economists have a simplistic idea about the history and cultural context of money. Mellor (ibid.) writes that “some form of money has been around in almost all human societies.” This depends on what we mean by money. There is something particularly destructive about the general-purpose

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

203

money that developed in colonial Europe. This was evident to critics of market economies from Marx to Polanyi. 7 The logic of such money is distinctly different from the special-purpose money that was identified, for example, among the Tiv people of Nigeria. Precolonial Tiv, like most traditional cultures, recognized more than one sphere of value. 8 Whatever kind of money that existed, it could not readily buy everything. When Mellor writes that it is difficult to envisage societies without “some mechanism to facilitate comparisons of value,” (2017, 1) she does not reckon with the possibility of recognizing such cultural limitations of commensurability. But this is precisely what the disastrous trajectory of generalpurpose money now prompts us to consider. Mellor’s point that money is a social construct means that it is potentially possible to democratically design a money system that recognizes limits to commensurability. To take a couple of conspicuous examples, it would be possible to decide that rainforests are not exchangeable on the same market as Coca-Cola or that food in the Global South is not purchased with the same kind of money as is used for financial speculation on Wall Street. A system of separate currencies for basic needs versus global markets would insulate resources pertaining to sustainability and survival from the abstract capital flows of the world system. It could thus serve to check exploitation and environmental destruction. Although Mellor (2009, 36) has elsewhere endorsed the insulation of “democratically controlled local flows of money from global capital,” she does not seem to recognize that this requires an imposition of limits to commensurability—that is, a transformation in the fundamental idea of money. The design of such limits is in itself a possibility opened by the shift to public, democratically controlled money that Mellor advocates. Another analytical impasse that we shall have to transcend is the notion that money represents some kind of objective value. I find it problematic to speak, as does Mellor (2017, 1), of things with “use value,” “social value,” or “little or no value.” Value is always in the eye of the beholder. We need to clearly distinguish between the biophysical properties of a given item, on the one hand, and how it is valued by specific humans, on the other. There is no universal standard for judging whether a particular item has “use value,” “social value,” or no value at all. Value is a thoroughly cultural and contextual phenomenon. This means that we need to think about economy and ecology as analytically separate even though we know that they interact in practice. In doing so, for example, we can see that we tend to value things higher the less of the original energy that is left in a set of resources transformed in production. 9 Moreover, we realize that there can be no theory of value that claims to be based on objective, biophysical phenomena such as embodied labor or energy. This means that many heterodox economic arguments about the exploitation of “unpaid” or “underpaid” labor and nature are analytically flawed and need to be reconceived. To demonstrate the occurrence of

204

Alf Hornborg

asymmetric transfers of embodied labor and resources on the world market (Dorninger and Hornborg 2015), we do not require a theory of value (Hornborg 2018). In which ways would these considerations prompt me to complement Mellor’s proposal for a just and sustainable economy? I have elsewhere (Hornborg 2017) suggested that the localization of the economy frequently advocated in the degrowth literature can be accomplished by dividing the market into two separate spheres of exchange, one devoted to values pertaining primarily to local community and biophysical metabolism, the other to global flows of information and high-tech products requiring supra-local specialization. Such a division would serve to insulate local subsistence and identity from global financial speculation and thus mitigate the harmful consequences of conventional policies for economic growth. It would curb current tendencies toward economic polarization, environmental deterioration, financial risk, and the politicization of identity. In safeguarding the capacity of households and communities to provision themselves, the relocalization of substantial parts of the economy would counteract their absorption into world markets that exploit and exacerbate global inequalities, but without implying a resurgence of nationalism or national protectionism. It would promote ecologically embedded and resilient communities as a consequence of rational everyday practice rather than as social strategies antagonistically opposed to the rest of the world. The logic of economics would be fundamentally transformed by the existence of two distinct currencies geared to separate geographical scales of economic exchange. This can be achieved if each national authority issues a new complementary currency, one that can only be used to buy transport-certified goods and services originating within a particular radius from the point of purchase, and distributes specific amounts of it as a basic monthly income to its citizens. 10 The basic income should thus not be paid in regular money but in a special-purpose, complementary currency that can only be used to buy locally produced goods and services. This is not “local money” in the sense of geographically restricted currencies, but one single, national currency—issued by the state—that is only for local use. It would grant consumers affordable access to local food resources, preventing consumers from being prompted to buy inexpensive foodstuffs from distant continents. It would also grant them access, for instance, to local repairs of slightly worn clothes or shoes, so consumers would not feel the need to replace such items with inexpensive imports from countries with lower wages. Low wages and lax environmental legislation would no longer represent competitive advantages in global trade, the demand for long-distance transports and finite natural resources would decrease, and local economic diversity and cooperation would flourish. Much of the structural rationale for huge income disparities, escalating resource use, environ-

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

205

mental degradation, carbon dioxide emissions, and economically specialized monocultures would diminish. At the same time, access to a basic income sufficient for physical survival would amount to nothing less than a dissolution of the proletarian condition identified by Karl Marx as the sine qua non of capitalist exploitation, liberating people to pursue more creative lifestyles in the interest of their own self-fulfillment as well as sustainability. A fairly simple shift of parameters, generated by the design of the artifacts used as media of exchange, could thus conceivably serve to simultaneously enhance the integrity of ecosystems, communities, and human identities. The shift would not be a matter of political coercion but of granting consumers additional options, encouraging and facilitating more sustainable lifestyles. Whatever the practical details, the argument primarily illustrates the potential malleability of money artifacts as an insufficiently explored road to sustainability. Considering the alarming planetary prospects that are currently predicted, we must mobilize all the imagination we can muster in search of solutions to our global predicament. The rules of the economic game can be rewritten. To acknowledge the extent to which the destiny of human society and the biosphere has been delegated to the mindless cybernetics of our fetishized artifacts is like snapping out of a delusion. To fathom the implications of this delusion should make us more receptive to the idea of a fundamentally reorganized economy. REFERENCES Alvaredo, Facundo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. 2017. World Inequality Report 2018. Paris: World Inequality Lab. Bohannan, Paul. 1955. “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv.” American Anthropologist 57: 60–70. D’Alisa, Giacomo, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis. 2014. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. Daly, Herman E. 1996. Beyond Growth. Boston: Beacon Press. Dorninger, Christian, and Alf Hornborg. 2015. “Can EEMRIO Analyses Establish the Occurrence of Ecologically Unequal Exchange?” Ecological Economics 119: 414–18. Foster, John Bellamy. 2000. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goodhart, David. 2017. The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics. London: Penguin. Hamilton, Clive. 2003. Growth Fetish. London: Pluto Press. Hornborg, Alf. 2017. “How to Turn an Ocean Liner: A Proposal for Voluntary Degrowth by Redesigning Money for Sustainability, Justice, and Resilience.” Journal of Political Ecology 24: 623–32. Hornborg, Alf. 2018. “The Money-Energy-Technology Complex and Ecological Marxism: Rethinking the Concept of ‘Use-Value’ to Extend Our Understanding of Unequal Exchange, Part 2.” Capitalism Nature Socialism. doi: 10.1080/10455752.2018. 1440614.

206

Alf Hornborg

Jackson, Tim. 2009. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. London: Earthscan. Kallis, Giorgos. 2018. Degrowth. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Agenda Publishing. Latouche, Serge. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Latour, Bruno. 2016. “How Not to Be Too Mistaken about Trump?” Le Monde, November 2016, 12–13. Translated by Clara Soudan and Jaeyoon Park. Mellor, Mary. 2009. “The Financial Crisis.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 20 (1): 34–36. Mellor, Mary. 2015. Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice. London: Pluto Press. Mellor, Mary. 2017. “Money for the People.” Great Transition Initiative, August 2017. https://www.greattransition.org/publication/money-for-the-people. North, Peter. 2007. Money and Liberation: The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Polanyi, Karl. (1944) 1957. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon. Raworth, Kate. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a 21st Century Economist. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin III, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, et al. 2009. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461, September 24, 2009. Schandl, H., M. Fischer-Kowalski, J. West, S. Giljum, M. Dittrich, N. Eisenmenger, A. Geschke et al. 2016. Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity: An Assessment Study of the UNEP International Resource Panel. Paris: United Nations Environment Programme. Victor, Peter A. 2008. Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. World Economic Forum. 2014. Global Risks 2014. Geneva: World Economic Forum. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). 2016. Living Planet Report 2016. Gland, Switzerland: WWF.

NOTES Parts of this text overlap with chapter 5 in my book Nature, Society and Justice in the Anthropocene (2019) and with my contribution to an exchange on Mary Mellor’s paper “Money for the People,” published online by the Great Transition Initiative in August 2017. 1. Written evidence of such critique of money can be traced to Aristotle’s deliberations on chrematistics, which occurred more than two millennia before it was apotheosized by European economists. 2. Economic anthropologists refer to “general-purpose money” as money that is used to mediate exchanges of virtually all kinds of goods and services. Prior to its expansion in the nineteenth century, various “special-purpose” currencies had been in use for millennia in most parts of the world. Special-purpose money is used for exchanges within specific, culturally defined spheres that are not perceived as commensurable with each other. A classic example is Paul Bohannan’s (1955) account of the economy of the Tiv of Nigeria, who in the 1940s were inclined to distinguish, for example, between food and prestige goods as incommensurable spheres of value. 3. Marx’s succinct formula M-C-M1 presupposes the universal commensurability of general-purpose money. 4. An example of this conceit is the ambition to deal with ecological degradation through the lenses of ”environmental economics,” a subfield of neoclassical economics focusing on people’s willingness to pay for ecological considerations, but requiring no

The Imperative of Redesigning Money to Achieve Degrowth

207

competence in ecology or other natural science. As Tim Jackson (2009, 123) has observed, economics is “ecologically illiterate.” 5. Paradoxically, to the extent that liberal and progressive values are more prevalent in middle- than in lower-class segments of the population, the correlation may actually be negative. This suggests that, from a sociological perspective, the main significance of the ideological convictions that distinguish affluent middle-class progressives from so-called populists may be their function as markers of class identity. Given the history of globalization since the nineteenth century, the conflation of progressive moral codes with neoliberal economic policies is a highly dubious ideological contrivance. 6. In choosing the least expensive products, consumers inadvertently encourage production processes that not only employ the lowest-paid labor but that also show the least concern for the environment, which often means the most lax environmental legislation. 7. In his book The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi ( [1944] 1957) argued that the idea of the self-regulating market, unless checked by society, would logically lead to increasing exploitation, environmental degradation, and economic instability. As we have seen, decades of neoliberalism have proven him right. 8. The economic anthropologist Paul Bohannan (1955) in the 1950s showed that the Tiv economy was organized around three separate “spheres of exchange” and that some conversions between separate spheres of value were morally discouraged. 9. This is a logical deduction from Georgescu-Roegen’s (1971) observation that economic processes simultaneously increase exchange-value and entropy. 10. The complementary currency proposed here is very different from anything that has previously been tested, as it would be issued by the authorities as a single national currency for local use, valid only for purchases of products and services originating from within a given geographical range. For a more elaborate sketch of the practicalities of such a bicentric economic system, see Hornborg 2017. Previous experiments with complementary currencies, such as LETS (cf. North 2007), have not generated the systematic logic that would follow from this proposal.

TWELVE Problematising Self-Sufficiency A Historical Exploration of the “Autarky” Concept Santiago Gorostiza

In September 2012, during a protest against the withdrawal of national subsidies to coal mining in Italy, a hundred members of the neo-fascist Italian organization CasaPound momentarily occupied the headquarters of the European Commission in Rome. CasaPound affiliates held a banner that read “Defend Italian Coal—European Autarky”. 1 The defense of national subsidies was in line with their discourse advocating for national self-sufficiency as a response to the economic crisis. However, it came combined with a reference to a continental-scale claim for self-sufficiency policies. The use of the word autarky was an explicit reference to the 1930s fascist socio-economic projects (on CasaPound, see Castelli Gattinara, Froio, and Albanese 2013). The example of CasaPound introduces the two issues that are explored in this chapter: first, how both current neo-fascist movements and historical fascist regimes have mobilised the concepts of self-sufficiency and autarky and often used them interchangeably; second, how fascist discourses and practices of the idea of self-sufficiency have involved changing scales—local, national, and continental. Starting from these premises, I argue that a critical exploration of the notion of self-sufficiency is relevant to ongoing debates on degrowth and wider socio-environmental discussions in several ways. First, it can illuminate how right-wing proponents of degrowth such as Alain de Benoist (2009)— representative of the French Nouvelle Droite—make use of self-sufficiency to articulate their views. The idea of self-sufficiency triggers a connection 209

210

Santiago Gorostiza

between community and nature that is linked to the ideals of the European New Right of the 1970s, which inspired part of CasaPound’s discourses and practices (Castelli Gattinara, Froio, and Albanese 2013). Along these lines, De Benoist combines a plea for relocalisation and localism with an ethnic-identitarian vision involving closed, homogeneous communities (Muraca 2013). This reductionist critique against growth has been unambiguously exposed in degrowth literature as xenophobic and right-wing environmentalism (Demaria et al. 2013, 209). However, this example of right-wing engagements with degrowth helps to highlight the contested nature of some of the concepts associated with it. Thus, the main aim of this chapter is to call attention towards the need of a critical use of the notion of “self-sufficiency” in connection to degrowth. Though some authors seem to assume that self-sufficiency is a value in line with relocalisation and degrowth (Xue 2014), this assertion is far from unquestioned. Self-sufficiency is not among the suggested words forming a vocabulary mobilised by degrowth proponents (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015). However, several research articles about degrowth do refer to self-sufficiency in passing, setting a basis for an acceptance of the connection between the two concepts (see, for instance, Cattaneo and Gavaldà 2010, 588; Trainer 2012, 594; Alexander 2013, 289). Moreover, self-sufficiency has been a central concept used by back-to-the-landers or neo-rurals since the 1960s (Brown 2011; Calvário and Otero 2015; Jacob 1997). These apparent ambivalences in the use of the concept deserve further attention. In addition, endorsing self-sufficiency and autarky may come across as rejecting trade, which is not the vision of degrowth proponents (Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson 2019, this volume). Discussions about relocalisation and trade periodically reemerge in the environmental literature. As recently as October 2016, researchers on industrial ecology advanced the idea of “autarkic islands” as a way to tackle present-day ecological challenges (see Busch and Sakhel 2016; and a critical reply by Van Den Bergh 2016). Similarly, one of the critiques leveraged against the Ecological Footprint (EF) indicator in the late 1990s was that it implicitly regarded as desirable “some form of self-sufficiency (autarky)” and thus was biased against trade (Van Den Bergh and Verbruggen 1999, 67). While EF proponents did not explicitly champion self-sufficiency or autarky, the indicator compared available productive land with the ecological footprint and introduced the resulting “ecological deficit” as an indicator of unsustainability (Van Den Bergh and Verbruggen 1999). In view of the interest of degrowth proponents in concepts such as relocalisation, and their emphasis on the potential of organising trade in a sustainable and non-exploitative way (Barca et al. 2019), a more nuanced discussion of what we understand by self-sufficiency may prove fruitful. Finally, while the notions of sufficiency or eco-sufficiency are gaining momentum (Kanschik 2016), no explicit differentiation between them

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

211

and the concept of self-sufficiency has been discussed so far (Princen 2005; Salleh 2009). This leaves room for different political understandings of the term self-sufficiency. The present chapter aims at exploring this space, scrutinising the fascist uses of the concepts of self-sufficiency and autarky and how they can be used by radical-right or new-right proponents to articulate closures. By making explicit the high political charge of these concepts, a historical perspective can prove insightful and contribute to a more critical use of these terms. The chapter is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces the parallels between the use of the words autarky and self-sufficiency throughout the twentieth century. Section 2 problematises the “self” in “self-sufficiency”, emphasising the importance of the notions of scale and identity in its interpretation. Section 3 stresses the importance of an ecofeminist perspective for a critique of the concepts of self-sufficiency and autarky as masculinist values. Insights from a political analysis of fascism and those of ecofeminist authors concur on their view of self-sufficiency and autarky as masculinist qualities that fare high among the features of fascism. The final section sums up the arguments presented and underlines that both self-sufficiency and, particularly, autarky have been successfully mobilised in fascist political projects. The historical significance of the fascist uses of self-sufficiency does not preclude any other uses but calls for a careful and critical assessment of its employment. I suggest that autonomy and sufficiency or eco-sufficiency are values more in line with degrowth. AUTARKY AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In November 1938 Rome was the setting of a massive event celebrating fascist autarkic policies. On the Circus Maximus, Mussolini opened the Autarkic Mineral Fair (“Mostra Autarchica del Minerale Italiano”). 2 On one side of the Circus, several pavilions were devoted to different national mining activities, starting with coal. On the other, they presented the results of autarkic policies, where the “National Defense” pavilion stood out. The coal pavilion reproduced the interior of a mine and narrated in detail the regime’s efforts to develop coal mining in the island of Sardinia. 3 In fact, just a couple of weeks after opening the fair, the Duce travelled to the island to inaugurate a new city designed to house the working force of the coal mines: Carbonia, coming from the Italian word for coal. The enthusiastic adoption of self-sufficiency policies by the Italian regime had come during the second half of the 1930s. After the 1929 crash and during the Great Depression, protectionist trade regulations spread throughout the world, and trade shrank. The discussion of these econom-

212

Santiago Gorostiza

Figure 12.1. Use of the Italian term autarchia throughout the twentieth century. Source: Google Ngram Viewer (Michel et al. 2011).

ic trends and political options was widespread during this period. At a conference in Dublin in June 1933, John Maynard Keynes addressed the topic and acknowledged the promising possibilities that self-sufficiency policies entailed. However, he also warned against three dangers in the implementation of economic nationalist reforms, namely, rigidity (“the silliness of the doctrinaire”), haste, and the climate of social repression (“intolerance and the stifling of instructed criticism”) that surrounded its enactment in some countries (Keynes 1933; Nolan 2013). These admonishments were explicitly directed toward some of the regimes that were pushing forward self-sufficiency policies at the time, such as the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany—where Hitler had accessed power a few months earlier. It was in the context of these debates that the word autarky (or autarchy), understood as national economic self-sufficiency, “emerged from dictionaries” (Heilperin 1947, 155, cited in Nolan 2013). Figure 12.1 depicts the rise and fall of the word autarchia in Italian during the twentieth century, based on the analysis of a significant corpus of digitalised printed literature from the period. Particularly adopted in fascist-oriented countries, autarky soon turned into more than a word—it became a battle cry. Although import substitution and self-sufficiency policies had been discussed in Italy since the 1920s, they rose to prominence with the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the subsequent sanctions endorsed by the Society of Nations (Saraiva and Wise 2010). In Germany during the early 1930s, the growing National-Socialist party (NSDAP) supported autarkic ideals, but famed members of the big industry were sceptical about self-sufficiency and protectionist policies. In 1932, the industrialist Gustav Krupp referred to autarky, condemning “the spread of this catchword as extraordinarily objectionable and dangerous” (cited in Overy 1992, 126, emphasis mine). A few months later, the director of the external trade division in the NSDAP Foreign Policy Office, defined autarky

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

213

as the vital right of every people and every nation to set up their economy in such a manner, so that she may be a fort [Burg] to them, so that they may not starve and thirst because of trade or monetary politics, or even in the case of war. The extent of [what we mean by] autarky should emerge out of this image. (Cited in Barbieri 2015, 120)

The Nazi access to power in 1933 was followed by the implementation of self-sufficiency policies and, especially after 1936, the development of ambitious autarkic programmes under the “Four Year Plan”, intimately connected with war preparations (Overy 1992; Tooze 2006). In countries governed by fascist regimes, aside from substituting for foreign imports, autarkic projects researched the production of synthetic goods, pushed industrialization, and required increased agricultural production, which usually involved the reclamation and colonization of new lands (Román and Sudrià 2003; Armiero and Graf von Hardenberg 2013). Drawing from conservative sources, several fascist regimes shared an anti-urban rhetoric and a mystified vision of the traditional peasant as morally superior to the inhabitants of cities. In Spain, supporters of General Franco saw embodied in cities many of the moral values they despised, and they represented urban spaces as “material and moral predators of the products produced in a virtuous rural land” (Alares López 2010, 66). In fascist Italy, rural ideology configured a narrative that blended in nature and people (Armiero and Graf von Hardenberg 2013; Armiero 2014) and the idealisation of the rural world played a key role in the promotion of Bonifica Integrale, a vision that involved the reclamation of swamplands and the construction of new cities (Alares López 2010, 2011). Most of all, in Germany a Blut and Boden (“blood and soil”) racialist ideology celebrated the relation of peasants with their land and exalted the link between German blood and earth. Walther Darré, the German Minister of Agriculture, played a significant role in its popularisation. He argued that cities were not appropriate for German communities and underlined the necessity of colonising eastern lands to create a new society of smallholding peasantry (Alares López 2010). However, as fascist Italy or Nazi Germany put it forward, autarky meant much more than national self-sufficiency. Historians Tiago Saraiva and Norton M. Wise (2010) have argued that European fascist states shared a generic characteristic: the close relation between autarchy and autarky. These two words, often used interchangeably, actually have different roots and meanings. Despite this, both in English and in several Romanic languages, the terms autarchy (referring to absolute rule, from Greek autarchia) and autarky (referring to economic self-sufficiency, from Greek autarkeia) have become conflated. Saraiva and Wise advance the idea that this conflation “may serve as a marker of the history of fascism, of the ways in which authoritarian rule in the 1920s and ’30s came to be bound up with the pursuit of economic independence” (ibid., 424). This

214

Santiago Gorostiza

approach allows for combining the study of self-sufficiency policies, interweaving emphasis on social reorganization and repression from a top-down perspective (see, e.g., Gorostiza and Ortega Cerdà 2016; Gorostiza 2018). Leaving their conflation aside, the jump of the catchword autarky/ autarchy from the dictionaries to the streets is a phenomenon characteristic of the 1930s and 1940s, connected to discussions on economic nationalism and the history of fascist regimes. Figure 12.2 follows the trends of the use of the English words autarky, autarchy, and self-sufficiency throughout the twentieth century, taking advantage of the mass digitalisation of printed sources (Michel et al. 2011). While the rise in the use of the three words follows a closely similar pattern during the 1930s and peaks around 1940–1942—coinciding with the Nazi’s height of power—it significantly decreases afterwards. In the case of self-sufficiency, however, its use increased once again during the 1960s and especially during the 1970s. This surge could be partly attributed to the blossoming of the back-to-the-land movement, popularly associated with the “1960s counterculture and experimental lifestyles based on self-sufficiency or communal living in rural areas” (Wilbur 2013, 152). In the United States, communal back-to-the-land projects multiplied fivefold between 1965 and 1970, while in France it is estimated that one hundred thousand people returned to rural lands between the 1960s and 1970s (Wilbur 2013). The popular guides on selfsufficiency by John Seymour were published during the 1970s and rapidly translated to several languages (Seymour 1976; Seymour and Seymour 1973). During the 1970s, this coincided with a renewed interest in national energetic independence in connection with the oil crisis, which constitutes another factor that helps explain the increase in the use of the term self-sufficiency.

Figure 12.2. Use of the English terms self-sufficiency, autarky, and autarchy throughout the twentieth century. Source: Google Ngram Viewer (Michel et al. 2011).

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

215

However, in all its diversity, the thousands of back-to-the-landers who abandoned cities across industrial and post-industrial nations during these years were part of a countercultural movement searching for distance from the state and capitalist relations and certainly not a ruralist option aiming at contributing to a national goal pursued and set by the state. Crucially, their mobilisation of self-sufficiency practices involved the local scale, while the 1930s autarkic practices encompassed self-sufficiency into national and continental perspectives and political projects. SELF-SUFFICIENCY FOR WHOM AND FOR WHAT? AUTARKY, SCALE AND CLOSURE “Defend European Autarky”, read the banners of CasaPound activists protesting in Rome in 2012. This reference to the continental organization of self-sufficiency echoes the work of New Right intellectuals such as Guillaume Faye and others who have defended the reorganization of economies into large autarkic blocks (Faye 2008). But it also resonates with the discourses of the 1940s. During World War II, Axis propaganda agitated the idea of a unified Europe, especially when the tide turned against the German-led forces. Continental autarky, particularly self-sufficiency in food production, was the goal (Mazower 2008). In Francoist Spain, when the German Chamber of Commerce organised an art contest to illustrate the concept “Our New Continental Europe”, it was the painting European Autarky that received the first prize and was later widely disseminated in the press. 4 As continental references to self-sufficiency make clear, the fact that national territories could not sustain complete self-sufficiency is no reason to play down the importance that the idea of autarky had during these years. To the contrary, these very limitations were explicitly referred to by fascist leaders as a justification for territorial expansion (Saraiva and Wise 2010). The idea of “vital space” was not unique to Germany but also present in fascist Italy’s expansion in the Mediterranean (Rodogno 2006) and central in the Spanish defence of its territorial ambitions in Africa (Reguera 1991). The notion of autarky was intimately linked with war and could thus be mobilised both as a means to prepare for it or as an end guiding geopolitical strategy. The raw materials extracted from occupied territories were to complete the needs of the national community. Similarly, colonies were regarded as complements fulfilling the needs that could not be accomplished in the national land. Paradoxically, the idea of autarky thus accommodated a more intense use of the raw materials from the colonies, as part of an expansive political project in the form of an empire. Be it as they may—continental, national, or local—fascist uses of selfsufficiency carry within them an identitarian characterisation. In the re-

216

Santiago Gorostiza

flexive self of self-sufficiency resides a community, an implicit “we” and therefore a closure. The definition of this self articulates an exclusion, an “othering” that—depending on the scale used—splits locals from foreigners, Italians from non-Italians, or Europeans from non-Europeans. This helps explain the role that the concept can play in articulating extreme right-wing discourses that endorse relocalisation while at the same time erecting barriers for the exclusion of migrants from the community. Instead of national autarky, in the work of the New Right intellectual Alain de Benoist the pleas for local and regional self-sufficiency are combined with an ethnocultural understanding of citizenship and a call for the adoption of “community protection measures” at the European scale (de Benoist 2009). Behind the New Right’s embrace of European regionalism lies a logic that conceives the ethnic region as the “natural” framework within which the civic notion of citizenship could be transformed into an ethnocultural one (Spektorowski 2000). Along these lines, the basis for a “new Europe” would be a federation of these European ethnicities, forming a political entity “autarkic and free of immigrants” (Spektorowski 2000, 353). This pan-European aspiration of the New Right connects it to historical fascism (Bar-On 2008). The mobile scale attached to fascist uses of self-sufficiency, intimately linked with the definition of identity, clearly emerges as the other key component located in the reflexive self. Fascist regimes of the 1930s mobilised self-sufficiency at a national scale to pursue the “political independence” of the nation in the international arena. However, while ruralist discourses in fascist regimes cherished the closeness of the peasants to their land—with self-sufficiency enacting here a quasi-mystic connection between the local communities and their land—the local and regional practices of these peasants were of course to be embedded into the nation and subordinated to the political aims of the state. The change to continental scales, as previously presented, does not necessarily imply a major openness, since community continues to be defined in ethnic terms and therefore closed (e.g., ethnic Europeans instead of ethnic Italians). The “European autarky” of the 1940s was German-centred and conceived as an antidote to Bolshevism. Therefore, the emphasis that National-Socialist definitions of autarky from the 1930s put on closure proves timely here: autarky as a fort represented by the (ethnically homogeneous) village, nation, or continent. In contrast, as mobilised by the majority of back-to-the-landers in the 1960s and 1970s, self-sufficiency was first and foremost about stepping out from the system. In the context of countercultural practices, selfsufficiency was seen as a desirable path to reduce dependency and break from capitalist relations of production. Thus, the emphasis was evidently at the local and regional scales, focused on the reinforcement of autonomy from the capitalist system. This move toward self-sufficiency was not seen as an absolute and final goal, as reminded by E. F. Schumacher in

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

217

the prologue of John Seymour’s widely disseminated Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency (1976). In fact, several authors rang alarm bells about the uncritical and ahistorical appraisal of small-scale communities and the idea of self-sufficiency. In his blunt blow against Deep Ecology currents of thought, Murray Bookchin (1987) pointed it out as follows: Decentralism, small-scale communities, local autonomy, even mutual aid and communalism are not intrinsically ecological or emancipatory. Few societies were more decentralized than European feudalism, which in fact was structured around small-scale communities, mutual aid and the communal use of land. Local autonomy was highly prized and autarchy formed the economic key to feudal communities. Yet few societies were more hierarchical. . . . The manorial economy of the Middle Ages placed a high premium on autarchy or “self-sufficiency” and spirituality. Yet oppression was often intolerable. (Bookchin 1987)

Therefore any discussion of self-sufficiency first requires asking for whom and for what self-sufficiency is claimed, since certain understandings of this self involve dangerous closures, as André Gorz (1987) already warned about. Gorz, acknowledged as an important intellectual source of degrowth (Muraca 2013; Leonardi 2019, also this volume), rejected “a return to household economy and village autarky” as well as total planning as alternatives to the capitalist system (Gorz 1987, 124). Instead, he advocated for increasing as much as possible all collective and/or individual autonomous activity while decreasing “what has necessarily to be done . . . to a minimum of each person’s lifetime” (ibid., 124). In the path toward this scenario, he acknowledged that “decentralisation and a certain level of local self-sufficiency” was required, because only small and medium-sized units of production could be controlled by the population and managed by its workers, favouring better working conditions and environmental impacts (Gorz 1987). Nonetheless, Gorz explicitly warned against “a drift towards autarky” and underlined the importance of the openness of local communities: For communal autarky always has an impoverishing effect: the more self-sufficient and numerically limited a community is, the smaller the range of activities and choices it can offer to its members. If it has no opening to an area of exogenous activity, knowledge and production, the community becomes a prison—exploitation by the family amounts to exploitation of the family. Only constantly renewed possibilities for discovery, insight, experiment and communication can prevent communal life from becoming impoverished and eventually suffocating. (Gorz 1987, 102)

Gorz understood economic activity as embedded in ecological systems but rejected any mystification or attribution of spiritual values to nature. It is not self-sufficiency, but autonomy, that emerges as the central element in his thought, understood as self-limitation (Muraca 2013). At the

218

Santiago Gorostiza

same time, Gorz’s critique unveils the key role that self-sufficiency can play in articulating neo-fascist discourses such as de Benoist’s (2009), which may endorse relocalisation and reconnection with “natural” rhythms and limits while excluding specific communities. In conclusion, “self-sufficiency” stands as an apparently neutral concept, but its uses involve specific—and often implicit—scales and communities that must be problematised. The definition of scale and community plays a pivotal role in fascist uses of self-sufficiency. The national scale was key in the historical experiences of fascist regimes of the 1930s. During World War II, the discourse of continental self-sufficiency under the grip of Nazi Germany also gained strength, at least in propaganda efforts that portrayed a “New Europe”. Specific parts of both experiences are selectively chosen by current neo-fascist movements such as CasaPound as pillars of their “fascism à la carte” (Castelli Gattinara, Froio, and Albanese 2013, 256). Quite differently, the radical local practices of back-to-the-landers in the 1960s, escaping from the system of capitalist economic relations, were not integrated in any national or continental plan. “MALE AUTARKY”: SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND VIRILITY IN FASCISM The previous section has shown how a critical approach to self-sufficiency entails problematising both the identities and the scales contained in the “self”. But this critique can go further. The very possibility of personal self-sufficiency can also be questioned as an imposed ideal that, in the words of Amaia Pérez-Orozco (2014, 112), “rejects vulnerability, interdependence of human lives and ecodependence”. In this regard, both ecofeminist literature connected to degrowth (Gregoratti and Raphael 2019, this volume) and research on the political features of fascism may provide valuable insights. The existence of the homo economicus—male, rational, individual, and self-sufficient—is one of the central assumptions of neoclassical economic theory. Research on ecological economics and feminist economics has shown how the economic system based on these premises is sustained on the appropriation of care work and natural resources at the same time that obscures their very presence (Gartor 2015). By negating vulnerability and ecodependence as the central conditions of existence, the system “imposes an anthropocentric ideal of self-sufficiency that cannot be universalized, because it can only be reached managing interdependence in terms of exploitation” (Pérez Orozco 2014, 53). The ideal of self-sufficiency thus emerges as a masculinised value, opposed to dependence and vulnerability. Although these critiques to the notion of self-sufficiency mostly take place in the sphere of the theoretical discussions about the homo economicus and speak to the interpersonal

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

219

scale and gender relations, its insights can be also transferred to other domains. These perspectives encourage conceiving the economy from the standpoint of interdependence, thus bringing to question the division between self-sufficient subjects (Pérez Orozco 2014). Coming from another perspective, the description of self-sufficiency as a masculinist value has also been underlined in the political analysis of fascist ideology. The defence of virility and hypermasculinity is a central component of fascist political culture (Woodley 2010). Here, the obsession with self-sufficiency emerges as a building block of the masculinist identity of fascism. Along these lines, in her analysis of the literary work of Italian futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Barbara Spackman (1996) draws a parallel between the “fantasy of economic autarky” and that of a “male autarky” where autarkic reproduction could take place without the intervention of women. Examining Marinetti’s novel Mafarka le futuriste (where Mafarka’s son is conceived through male parthenogenesis) Spackman suggests that both fantasies share an ideological structure: Marinetti’s fantasy of male autarky is built upon misogyny, threatened with bankruptcy by same-sex relations, and therefore requires the reintroduction of the other in the form of the woman (to be raped). The fantasy of national autarky, I argue, is similarly structured: built upon nationalist xenophobia, it is threatened by the erasure of difference within and therefore requires the reintroduction of the other in the form of the colony (to be raped). (Spackman 1996, xiii–xiv)

Fascist self-sufficiency is about interdependence managed as exploitation. The paradox produced by the political autarkic imperative and the failure of the national territories to provide for all raw materials needed is resolved with expansion. The nation mutates into empire—where the former can potentially achieve its autarkic goals with the “contributions” (imports) extracted from the colonies. The idea of autarky is accommodated through this change in scale, where colonies in the “vital space” of the nation become part of the empire, but are not incorporated into the national community. Nationalist and imperial discourses interweave, incorporating or excluding the colonies according to their needs (Spackman 1996). In summary, from this perspective self-sufficiency emerges as a masculinist value, much more akin to the catastrophist scenarios of survivalism than to emancipatory movements such as degrowth. As discussed in the previous section, the use of the notion of self-sufficiency risks closures and—following Pérez Orozco—neglects the ideas of dependence and cooperation across different groups and locations. Contrary to the masculinist self-sufficiency and the closure coming with autarky, degrowth emphasises the importance of care, cooperation, interdependence, and ecodependence.

220

Santiago Gorostiza

CONCLUSIONS Historically, the notion of self-sufficiency, often referred to as autarky, has been successfully mobilised by fascist movements. Emerging from the debates on the pros and cons of protectionism, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, autarky rapidly jumped from dictionaries to the printed press and radio broadcasts and became a powerful catchword, closely associated with the achievements of fascist political economy in Italy and Germany. Political independence of the nation was to be pursued through enhanced economic self-sufficiency. However, as political projects, autarkic regimes were never only economic. They involved topdown social control and repression as well as cultural closures. On the basis of national resources, autarkic political economies embraced growth and showed a tendency to shift toward expansive political and ecological projects. In order to achieve its national self-sufficiency goals, autarkic regimes ripped the autonomy of people to fully incorporate them into the national project, which often spread out of the state borders. The potential paradoxes of national self-sufficiency were to be resolved with expansion and self-sufficiency achieved through the conversion of the nation into an empire. Today, calls for enhanced self-sufficiency and self-reliance often go hand in hand with the argument for improving the resilience of communities as part of the neoliberal discourse. In any case, historical analysis shows that the concept of self-sufficiency requires a critical approach that carefully scrutinises the values, scale, and openness upon which it is predicated. Generic uses of the concept do not necessarily make explicit for whom and for what self-sufficiency is claimed and thus may inadvertently advance the privileged status of specific communities. In other words, the concept has historically encompassed crucial social aspects regarding inclusion and exclusion. Having said this, it is evident that the historical significance of the fascist uses of self-sufficiency does not invalidate any other uses but may serve as a reminder of the need to apply a careful and critical assessment of its employment. In the past, self-sufficiency policies have of course been applied in non-fascist political regimes. The import substitution policies in Latin America during the 1950s–1970s is a case in point (Hirschman 1968). Perhaps most importantly, an understanding of degrowth that fully acknowledges its feminist intellectual sources (Gregoratti and Raphael 2019) is key for conceiving alternatives to the concept of self-sufficiency. Autonomy, for instance, emerges as a central value, understood as selflimitation (Muraca 2013) and directly concerned with democracy (Asara, Profumi, and Kallis 2013). The ideas of sufficiency (Princen 2005) or ecosufficiency (Salleh 2009) could be alternatives to self-sufficiency that are more in line with degrowth and emphasise ideas of care and ecodependence. But a full discussion involving other contributions, such as the

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

221

concept of “caring economy” (Jochimsen and Knobloch 1997), “community economy” (Gibson-Graham 2006), or “subsistence perspective” (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999) is yet to take place. Exploring these concepts further while refraining from uncritical references to self-sufficiency could thus contribute to formulating a degrowth vocabulary that would be free from xenophobic co-optation and other closures. Finally, the current mobilisations of the concept of self-sufficiency or other environmental values, be it by the New Right, survivalist groups, or openly neo-fascist movements, offer opportunities to examine the ideological role that they play in the articulation of their worldview. History and literature evidently constitute crucial sources for these radical imaginaries. As remarkably pointed out by Wilbur (2013) in his analysis of the back-to-the-land movement, there is a significant bias in the current research toward left-leaning projects, but certainly not all farmers fit in that political profile. Future research efforts might also adopt this perspective and examine the motivations of individuals in communities predicating and practicing self-sufficiency as well as other local environmental practices. The ethnographies of CasaPound militants (Castelli Gattinara, Froio, and Albanese 2013) or of survivalist groups in the United States (Mitchell 2002) constitute good examples of the potential and relevance of such research. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A first version of this chapter was discussed at the writing support group of the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE) and presented at the seminars of the Theme Degrowth, at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University in October 2015. I am thankful to all the participants for their comments and criticisms. I am also grateful to Viviana Asara, Iago Otero, Diego Andreucci, Stefania Barca, Marco Armiero, Ethemcan Turhan, Emanuele Leonardi, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya and Laura Horn for their suggestions on earlier versions of this chapter. The author acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the “María de Maeztu” program for Units of Excellence (MDM-2015-0552). REFERENCES Alares López, G. 2010. “El vivero eterno de la esencia española: Colonización y discurso agrarista en la España de Franco”. In Colonos, territorio y Estado: Los pueblos del agua de Bárdenas, edited by Alberto Sabio Alcuté n, 57–80. Zaragoza, Spain: Institució n “Fernando el Cató lico”. Alares López, G. 2011. “Ruralismo, fascismo y regeneración: Italia y España en perspectiva comparada”. Ayer 83 (3): 127–47.

222

Santiago Gorostiza

Alexander, S. 2013. “Voluntary Simplicity and the Social Reconstruction of Law: Degrowth from the Grassroots Up”. Environmental Values 22 (2): 287–308. Armiero, M. 2014. “Making Italians Out of Rocks: Mussolini’s Shadows on Italian Mountains”. Modern Italy 19 (3): 261–74. Armiero, M., and W. Graf von Hardenberg. 2013. “Green Rhetoric in Blackshirts: Italian Fascism and the Environment”. Environment and History 19 (3): 283–311. Asara, V., E. Profumi, and G. Kallis. 2013. “Degrowth, Democracy and Autonomy”. Environmental Values 22 (2): 217–39. Barbieri, P. 2015. Hitler’s Shadow Empire: Nazi Economics and the Spanish Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barca, S., E. Chertkovskaya, and A. Paulsson. 2019. “Introduction”. In Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth, edited by E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, and S. Barca. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Bar-On, T. 2008. “Fascism to the Nouvelle Droite: The Dream of Pan-European Empire”. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 16 (3): 327–45. Bookchin, M. 1987. “Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology : A Challenge for the Ecology Movement”. Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project, 4–5. Brown, D. 2011. Back to the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency in Modern America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Busch, T., and A. Sakhel. 2016. “The Island Logic: Scaling Up the Concept of SelfPreserving Autarky”. Journal of Industrial Ecology 20 (5): 1008–9. Calvário, R., and I. Otero. 2015. “Back-to-the-Landers”. In Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, edited by G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, 143–45. London: Routledge. Castelli Gattinara, P., C. Froio, and M. Albanese. 2013. “The Appeal of Neo-Fascism in Times of Crisis: The Experience of CasaPound Italia”. Fascism 2: 234–58. Cattaneo, C., and M. Gavaldà. 2010. “The Experience of Rurban Squats in Collserola, Barcelona: What Kind of Degrowth?” Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (6): 581–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.01.010. Creus Vidal, L. 1939a. “La Feria Mineral de la Autarquía, de Roma”. DYNA 14 (5): 197–99. Creus Vidal, L. 1939b. “La Feria Mineral de la Autarquía, de Roma (II)”. DYNA 14 (6): 225–30. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis. 2015. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge. De Benoist, A. 2009. Mañana, el decrecimiento. Valencia, Spain: Ediciones Identidad. Demaria, F., F. Schneider, F. Sekulova, and Joan Martínez-Alier. 2013. “What Is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement”. Environmental Values 22 (2): 191–215. Faye, G. 2008. El Arqueofuturismo. Barcelona: Titania. Gartor, M. 2015. “Apuntes para un diálogo entre economía ecológica y economía feminista”. Ecología Política 50: 39–44. Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gorostiza, S. 2018. “‘There Are the Pyrenees!’ Fortifying the Nation in Francoist Spain”. Environmental History 23 (4): 797–823. https://academic.oup.com/envhis/ advance-article/doi/10.1093/envhis/emy051/5091299. Gorostiza, S., and M. Ortega Cerdà. 2016. “The ‘Unclaimed Latifundium’: The Configuration of the Spanish Fishing Sector under Francoist Autarky, 1939–1951”. Journal of Historical Geography 52: 26–35. Gorz, A. 1987. Farewell to the Working Class. An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism. London and Sydney: Pluto Press. Gregoratti, C., and R. Raphael. 2019. “The Historical Roots of Feminist ‘Degrowth’: Maria Mies’s and Marilyn Waring’s Critiques of Growth. In Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth, edited by E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, and S. Barca. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Problematising Self-Sufficiency

223

Heilperin, M. A. 1947. The Trade of Nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hirschman, A. O. 1968. “The Political Economy of Import-Substituting Industrialization in Latin America”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 82 (1): 1–32. Jacob, J. 1997. New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Jochimsen, M., and U. Knobloch. 1997. “Making the Hidden Visible: The Importance of Caring Activities and Their Principles for Any Economy”. Ecological Economics 20 (2): 107–12. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0921800995000992. Kanschik, P. 2016. “Eco-Sufficiency and Distributive Sufficientarianism: Friends or Foes?” Environmental Values 25 (5): 553–71. Keynes, J. M. 1933. “National Self-Sufficiency”. Irish Quarterly Review 22 (86): 177–93. Leonardi, E. 2019. “The Topicality of André Gorz’s Political Ecology: Rethinking Écologie et libertè (1977) to (Re-)Connect Marxism and Degrowth”. In Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth, edited by E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson, and S. Barca. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Mazower, M. 2008. Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. London: Penguin. Michel, J.-B., Y. K. Shen, A. P. Aiden, A. Veres, M. K. Gray, Google Books Team, J. P. Pickett, D. Hoiberg, D. Clancy, P. Norvig, et al. 2011. “Quantitative Analysis of Culture using Millions of Digitized Books”. Science 331, no. 6014, 176–82. Mies, M., and V. Bennholdt-Thomsen. 1999. The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy. London: Zed Books. Mitchell, R. G. 2002. Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times. Chicago: Univerisity of Chicago Press. Muraca, B. 2013. “Décroissance: A Project for a Radical Transformation of Society”. Environmental Values 22 (2): 147–69. Nolan, M. C. 2013. “The Original 1933 ‘National Self-Sufficiency’ Lecture by John Maynard Keynes: Its Political Economic Context and Purpose”. In Documents Related to John Maynard Keynes, Institutionalism at Chicago & Frank H. Knight. Vol. 31B of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Overy, R. 1992. War and Economy in the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pérez Orozco, A. 2014. Subversión feminista de la economía. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños. Princen, T. 2005. The Logic of Sufficiency. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Reguera, A. 1991. “Fascismo y geopolítica en España”. Geocrítica. http://www.ub.edu/ geocrit/geo94.htm. Rodogno, D. 2006. Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War. New York: Cambridge University Press. Román, E. S., and C. Sudrià. 2003. “Synthetic Fuels in Spain, 1942–66: The Failure of Franco’s Autarkic Dream”. Business History 45 (4): 73–88. http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076790312331270229. Salleh, A. 2009. Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology. London: Pluto Press. Saraiva, T., and M. N. Wise. 2010. “Autarky/Autarchy: Genetics, Food Production, and the Building of Fascism”. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40 (4). Seymour, J. 1976. The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. London: Faber and Faber. Seymour, J., and S. Seymour. 1973. Farming for Self-Sufficiency: Independence on a 5-Acre Farm. New York: Schocken Books. Spackman, B. 1996. Fascist Virilities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spektorowski, A. 2000. “Regionalism and the Right: The Case of France”. Political Quarterly 71 (3): 352–61. Tooze, A., 2006. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. London: Allen Lane. Trainer, T. 2012. “De-Growth: Do You Realise What It Means?” Futures 44 (6): 590–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2012.03.020.

224

Santiago Gorostiza

Van Den Bergh, J. C. J. 2016. “Spatial Inequity of Resources Impedes Autarky, Comment on ‘The Island Logic’”. Journal of Industrial Ecology 20 (5): 1212–13. Van Den Bergh, J. C. J., and H. Verbruggen. 1999. “Spatial Sustainability,Trade and Indicators: An Evaluation of the “Ecological Footprint”. Ecological Economics 29 (1): 61–72. Wilbur, A. 2013. “Growing a Radical Ruralism: Back-to-the-Land as Practice and Ideal”. Geography Compass 7 (2): 149–60. Woodley, D. 2010. Fascism and Political Theory. London: Routledge. Xue, J., 2014. “Is Eco-Village/Urban Village the Future of a Degrowth Society? An Urban Planner’s Perspective”. Ecological Economics 105: 130–38.

NOTES 1. The banner can be seen at “CasaPound: Blitz a sede Parlamento Europeo in solidarietà minatori Sulcis”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JhcHCTy35c. 2. See the video of the inauguration at “Mussolini inaugura a Circo Massimo la mostra autarchica del minerale italiano”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ns3XLNcEY. 3. For an enthusiastic chronicle of the event, signed by a Spanish Francoist engineer, see Creus Vidal 1939a and Creus Vidal 1939b. 4. La Vanguardia Española, July 18, 1941, 8; Heraldo de Zamora, October 9, 1941, 1. During 1942, the painting was published at least in the daily newspaper ABC and the periodicals Nueva Economía Nacional and Y, among many others.

THIRTEEN Having, Doing, Loving, Being Sustainable Well-Being for a Post-Growth Society Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

In the long term—if there is to be one—an awareness of the delicacy of the biosphere must go hand in hand with any feasible commitment to the optimisation of needs-satisfaction. —Len Doyal and Ian Gough, A Theory of Human Need

The opponents of degrowth share the view that it will be impossible to maintain let alone improve well-being without GDP growth. Degrowth research has usually responded to these concerns with optimistic statements about how equitable downscaling of production and consumption will increase well-being (Schneider, Kallis, and Martínez-Alier 2010, 512) and how redistribution of income and investments in public services can have greater impacts on well-being than generalized growth can (Kallis, Kerschner, and Martínez-Alier 2012, 174; see also Büchs and Koch 2017, 67–73). It has also been assured that well-being will lie at the heart of the degrowth transformation 1 (e.g., Andreoni and Galmarini 2014). However, the main argument of the degrowth research—that ultimately human well-being can only be guaranteed by abandoning business as usual and by a shift towards a new kind of economy (e.g., Kallis, Kerschner, and Martínez-Alier 2012; Asara et al. 2015)—has not been very apt at convincing those wary towards the whole idea of degrowth. Admittedly, the degrowth discussion has partly skipped over the magnitude of policy-level challenges and has perhaps therefore underestimated the tasks ahead for the welfare states whose institutions have been developed side by side with capitalist accumulation and economic 225

226

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

growth. Social policy has been a faithful servant of the growth paradigm and a useful catalyst for capitalist reproduction (e.g. Büchs and Koch 2017; Kloo 2015). Welfare states have combined competitive and growthoriented economies with a high level of social protection and education (Kangas and Palme 2009), which in part explains why the public support for welfare states has been so strong in many countries. Emphasis on the beneficial outcomes of welfare state development has, however, until these days made it possible for the citizens of these countries to close their eyes to the downside of this development—namely, that the ecological footprint of the affluent welfare states exceeds a sustainable level and that the high standard of living has been achieved at the expense of future generations, other species, and the global poor. This contradiction generates a challenging starting point for building sustainable welfare systems independent of economic growth. For the degrowth transformation to be successful, the question of what welfare, well-being, and sustainable well-being actually mean is essential. Even though unanimity on the meaning of these concepts may never be reached, well-being can be understood as a positive personal experience or, more broadly, as “a positive and sustainable state that allows individuals, groups or nations to thrive and flourish” (Huppert, Baylis, and Keverne 2004, 1331), whereas welfare refers to collective measures for promoting social security. The concept of welfare has also been reduced to refer primarily to material “well-being” (McGregor and Pouw 2017, 1134). The two concepts are, however, commonly used as synonyms, and in public and policy discourse, well-being is also often narrowly interpreted in economic terms (Hämäläinen and Michaelson 2014). This confusion between well-being and the standard of living or consumption is a major explanation of why it is so difficult, if not impossible, for the protagonists of growth to come to terms with the idea that wellbeing without growth could be an option. Another problem of the mainstream discussion is an insufficient comprehension of well-being as the gratification of a variety of human needs. Alternatively, the concept of needs can be routinely used either without much thought given to its meaning or with the focus almost entirely on material needs (Gough 2017, 56). This economistic bias is turning out to be catastrophic for the natural world and human well-being in the long run. Clearly, it is urgent to adopt a broader understanding of well-being. Along with many other scholars (e.g., Rauschmayer, Omann, and Frühmann 2011; O’Neill 2011; Koch 2013; Koch, Buch-Hansen, and Fritz 2017; Gough 2015, 2017), we argue that the ongoing debate about degrowth and sustainable well-being could greatly benefit from need theories. We propose a broad, relational, holistic, and needs-based approach to well-being—namely, the Having-Doing-Loving-Being approach. Since both needs and well-being are “essentially contested concepts” (Gallie 1955−1956), we first explain why needs matter especially in the transfor-

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

227

mation towards post-growth societies and why our approach to wellbeing is based on needs. Second, we argue why a positive, holistic, and relational outlook on well-being could promote the degrowth transformation. Third, we present our approach to well-being, with a specific focus on its potential benefits in the degrowth context. Fourth, we briefly discuss how our approach could be helpful in envisioning ecosocial policies for post-growth societies. WHY NEEDS MATTER IN THE DEGROWTH TRANSFORMATION The concept of need is a contested one (see Gasper 2007; Doyal and Gough 1991). It is contested particularly by mainstream economists, who often do not even include the notion in their vocabulary. Others may use the concept but in an unclear fashion. Major befuddlement arises when the difference between needs and their satisfiers (Max-Neef, Elizalde, and Hopenhayn 1991) is not comprehended, for instance, when food or social security is called a need and not a satisfier of need, or when the difference between needs and wants or desires is not realized. Careless use of language can be found even in degrowth literature. For example, Andreoni and Galmarini (2014, 78−79) rightly criticize neoclassical economics for reducing well-being to income and GDP, and they emphasize the wider understanding of well-being in degrowth theories. However, they also argue that in degrowth theories, well-being is determined by both “satisfaction of basic human needs, generally quantified by objective indicators”, and by “satisfaction of desires strictly related to individual preferences”. Since the satisfaction of desires is a major cause of ecological devastation, the statement is unfortunate. These misunderstandings give cause for an overview of what need theories have to say about needs, 2 why needs matter specifically in the degrowth context, and why they provide the natural starting point for our own approach. First, need theories separate needs from wants (or necessities from luxuries), thus refuting the emphasis on preferences and wants that dominates mainstream economics and economic thinking (Jackson 2005; Jackson, Jager, and Stagl 2004). This is most befitting in the context of sustainable well-being and degrowth transformation, as meeting needs will arguably have less harmful environmental impacts than meeting unfettered consumer preferences (Gough 2017, 13). An often heard assertion is that the distinction between needs and wants may be difficult to make in practice. There are, however, guidelines for coping with the task. Needs are the ultimate reasons for actions that require no explanation. In other words, they are goals in their own right (Doyal and Gough 1991, 40) and purposes or ends that are always considered good (Allardt and Uusitalo 1972, 11). According to Doyal and Gough (1991, 42), needs are extensional, because their existence is not

228

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

dependent on the workings of one’s mind: a person can need something without knowing it. Wants, in contrast, are intentional as they refer to something one tries to get. Needs can therefore be distinguished from wants by emphasizing that they are innate and objective, whereas wants are externally imposed and subjective. 3 Not satisfying one’s wants therefore causes no harm, unless feeling frustrated can be counted as such, whereas serious harm follows if one cannot gratify one’s needs. The existence of needs thus establishes a strong normative claim for meeting them (see Gasper 2007, 55). Second, needs are universal and non-substitutable. This means that they come with claims of justice and equity in tow (Gough 2017, 3). In a situation where the economy shrinks, the issue of just distribution is particularly relevant, and a needs approach might assist in resolving it because it is related to a principle of sufficiency: the ethics of enough (Gough 2017, 60; see Barry 2012). Third, needs are plural: some are tangible and material, some less so. As mentioned above, this plurality is often ignored due to the domination of economistic thinking in capitalist societies. One might add that already Abraham Maslow ([1971] 1993, 310), an influential theorist of human needs, criticized economics for representing “the skilled, exact, technological application of a totally false theory of human needs and values, a theory which recognizes only the existence of lower needs or material needs”. As we will show, the wide scale of needs is of primary importance for furthering the degrowth agenda. Fourth, contrary to the capitalist tenet of endless satisfaction of wants, need theories claim that (material) needs are satiable (e.g. Gough 2017, 46). Once a need for adequate nutrition, for example, has been sufficiently satisfied, no further gains in this respect are possible (Lamb and Steinberger 2017, 7). Furthermore, the satiability of material needs means that it is possible to identify thresholds for sustainable consumption, that is, for reducing consumption that does not contribute to need satisfaction. Fifth, the above-mentioned distinction between needs and needs satisfiers (Max-Neef, Elizalde, and Hopenhayn 1991; Doyal and Gough 1991) that is emphasized in need theories is crucial specifically in the degrowth context. Human needs always remain the same, but the ways of meeting them vary over time and in different cultures and societies. On the journey to post-growth societies, it will be necessary to change the satisfiers of needs and not needs as such (which would be impossible anyway). Even though needs are non-substitutable, unsustainable satisfiers can be replaced with better alternatives. Meat, for example, can be substituted with plant-based protein sources, or private cars can give way to collaborative car sharing (see, e.g., Jackson and Marks 1999, 428; Cruz 2011, 115). The distinction between needs and their satisfiers highlights that different ways of actualizing needs have different social and ecological consequences. Needs can be gratified in a way that either increases or mini-

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

229

mizes harmful social and environmental impacts. Distinguishing between needs and satisfiers could also help in clarifying what kinds of roles different institutions, goods, and services play in society and how these roles relate to needs and well-being. Need theories thus serve the normative task of structuring and rationalizing policy prioritization (Gasper 2007, 66). Sixth, need theories are (or should be) based on a relational foundation that acknowledges the insurmountable neediness and dependency of human existence: the well-being of individuals is inextricably linked to the well-being of other humans, other species, and the social-ecological system. Hence, in line with the degrowth approach (see Barca, Chertkovskaya, and Paulsson, this volume), the concept of needs is in stark opposition to the dominant conception of the human being as homo economicus, in which humans are perceived as mainly rational and selfinterested creatures and in which the fundamental human dependency on nature is overlooked. This widespread conception is one of the root causes of the ecological destruction that now threatens the earth and all living organisms. It also “increases policy support for GDP growth at the societal level, income growth at the individual level, and profit maximization at the organizational level” (Pirson 2017, 13), thereby reproducing the false identification of material wealth with well-being. By contrast, the needs approach entails abandoning the idea of homo economicus in favour of a conception of “homo iunctus” (Helne and Hirvilammi 2017), a holistic view of the human being in a harmonious relationship with both the outer and the inner world (i.e., in touch with his or her needs). Need theories thus have a role in critiquing income measures as utterly insufficient and misleading, “humanizing” policy prioritization and extending evaluative repertoires beyond economic criteria (Gasper 2007, 66−67). Needs are also relational in the sense that they are cross-generational: the needs of the future generations will be the same as those of present ones (Gough 2017, 46). The relationality of needs thus demonstrates the nature and seriousness of the ethical obligations we owe to the current and future generations, as well as to the non-human world (see O’Neill 2011). Seventh, because needs can be seen as the drivers of human action (e.g., Maslow 1954), they are related to agency, one of the critical factors in the degrowth transformation. Ultimately, we trust that it will be the necessity to safeguard the fulfilment of our needs that will make us rise in opposition to the current politico-economic system, oriented more towards economic growth than to protecting our fragile planet and all it has to offer to us.

230

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

TOWARDS A RELATIONAL AND EMPOWERING THEORY OF WELL-BEING The theories of human need are usually associated with the eudaimonic strand of well-being research. They take their distance from radical hedonic accounts of well-being in which well-being is equated with maximum pleasure and the satisfaction of any desire one may have (Jackson and Marks 1999, 426; Fromm [1976] 1997, 2−5). The hedonist notion sits well with the strivings of the growth economy in which the good life is synonymous with material affluence. From the perspective of sustainability, the hedonic approach is, by contrast, clearly problematic (BrandCorrea and Steinberger 2017; Lamb and Steinberger 2017). First, the approach rejects universal values and needs and instead promotes a relativistic view on human well-being (Ryan and Deci 2001). Consequently, the approach will likely not have much to say about the well-being of future generations (see O’Neill 2006). Second, the idea of a society in which individuals maximize their own happiness is the opposite of the relational idea that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as individual well-being: “my” well-being always depends on other beings and the natural world. Third, the hedonic approach is also problematic from an environmental perspective, because wants are always relative and insatiable (Büchs and Koch 2017, 60). To sum up, there are strong reasons for adopting the eudaimonic approach instead of the hedonic approach (see also Kjell 2011; Helne and Hirvilammi 2017). Drawing on Aristotelian thought, the eudaimonic theories of well-being view well-being as “doing and living well” and living in truth to one’s daimon, or the true self (Forgeard et al. 2011; Aristotle 2016). This is usually most gratifying and also beneficial to one’s health (Ryff and Singer 2008). In this “perfectionist” (Haybron 2007) vision, attaining the highest well-being means realizing one’s potential to the fullest. Eudaimonic well-being thus equals flourishing and happiness, and in its utmost form, it will also mean “transcending the prison of one’s isolated ego” (see Fromm [ 1976] 1997, 72). However, not all need theories contain such a sweeping vision. In their Theory of Human Need, Doyal and Gough (1991, 170−71) define the universal goal of human action as “avoidance of serious harm”, by which they refer to “fundamental and sustained impairment of social participation”. They argue that there are two kinds of “basic needs”, physical survival and personal autonomy, that “must be satisfied to some degree before actors can effectively participate in their form of life to achieve any other valued goals” (ibid., 54). The Doyal-Gough theory has recently been topical in the sustainability and the degrowth literature (Koch and Buch-Hansen 2016; Büchs and Koch 2017; Koch, Buch-Hansen, and Fritz 2017; Gough 2017; O’Neill et al. 2018). Our approach differs in some respects from this theory. 4 We be-

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

231

lieve, first of all, that the degrowth transformation could be better fuelled by a positive, empowering, and forward-looking vision of well-being than by mere avoidance of “serious harm”. The transformation could find sources of inspiration in theories in which the universal goal of human existence is defined with positive concepts like flourishing, balanced living, or prosperity, and in which the scale of human needs is wider and deeper than in the Doyal-Gough theory (see also Soper 1993, 119). In the tradition of humanist psychology—notably, the writings of Maslow (e.g., [1962] 2011)—being, becoming, or self-actualization (the concepts are largely synonymous) are considered to be essential, innate human needs and the ultimate goal of human development. This approach is highly relevant for degrowth, because it shifts the focus from maximal economic growth to personal growth, paving way for the liberation from the yoke of capitalism towards enlightened living. Maslow also distinguishes “growth needs” from “deficiency needs”. At the level of the former, the concept of gratification is transcended because satisfactions can be endless (Maslow [1971] 1993, 324). The logical and encouraging conclusion is that even though the level of material need satisfaction will have to be reduced to attain sustainability, overall well-being can be enhanced by fostering the fulfilment of growth needs. Our approach includes an idea of a “relational self” constituted by relations and connections. Akin to Naess’s (1995) “ecological self”, the concept refers to a broadened experience of a self no longer confused with the narrow ego, a self that can identify with all living beings. When speaking about self-actualization, we are referring to this big self. We therefore do not think that the concept of autonomy fully covers the scale of self-actualization. We also tend to think that the aim of individual autonomy is not totally congruent with sustainability and relationality (e.g., Gergen 2009). How can an individual be autonomous in the full meaning of the word if the principle of interconnectedness is seriously acknowledged? Are there even such things as “individuals”? (The word itself derives from indivisible). It is also appropriate to add that our conception of relationality differs essentially from Ian Gough’s (2017, 40) interpretation, since he associates the perspective of relational well-being with post-modernism, post-colonialism, and post-structuralism and their vision of human well-being as “discursively constructed, local and incomparable”. The degrowth transformation requires taking distance from the predominant “human exemptionalism” paradigm that views humans as separated from nature and superior to other species (Catton and Dunlap 1980; Hirvilammi and Helne 2014). Our relational approach is thus less anthropocentric than the Doyal-Gough theory, which does not acknowledge relationships with animals and the intrinsic value of nature (see Gough 2014; Gough 2017, 57−58).

232

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

Doyal and Gough (1991, 157−58) separate “basic needs” from “intermediate needs”, such as protective housing, healthcare, and education. However, we see intermediate needs as satisfiers of needs (as Doyal and Gough also do when stating that “intermediate needs” refer to “universal satisfiers”). “Intermediate needs” thus refer more to provisioning systems or the context of well-being than to needs as such. Moreover, we find no grounds for setting up hierarchies between different kinds of needs, because fulfilling all needs to some extent is a precondition for well-being. In consequence we do not use the concept “basic needs”; if something is a need, it is by definition “basic”. An often posed question in degrowth and post-growth discussions is to what extent other things over and above the “basic needs” can be provided for in the future if the economy is to be embedded into the environment (Koch, Buch-Hansen, and Fritz 2017, 80). Milena Büchs and Max Koch (2017, 106, 119), for example, find it “unlikely that ‘wellbeing’ for all and for future generations can for the time being mean much more than the satisfaction of basic human needs”. 5 What about the deep-seated urge to love and to be loved, or the need for self-actualization? The view that the degrowth transformation will jeopardize the fulfilment of some human needs is not very attractive. This is true also due to “loss aversion”: people tend to respond more strongly to losses than to gains (Büchs and Koch 2017, 74). We therefore propose an alternative view involving infinite potentials for human flourishing. FOUR CATEGORIES OF NEEDS: HAVING, DOING, LOVING, AND BEING Our conceptualization of well-being (Helne, Hirvilammi, and Laatu 2012; Hirvilammi and Helne 2014; Helne and Hirvilammi 2015; Helne and Hirvilammi 2017; Helne 2019) has its inspiration in the well-being theory of the Finnish sociologist Erik Allardt. He was one of the pioneering figures calling for a reorientation of social science research due to the substantial impact human activities have had on the living environment and the earth system and in turn on humankind. Allardt was, consequently, a forerunner in advocating a new, broader content for “welfare” that includes environmental concerns (1990, 9–10). He also demanded considerably increased co-operation between natural and social scientists (ibid.). Allardt (1993, 89) emphasized that there are both material and nonmaterial needs and that both types of need have to be considered when gauging the level of welfare in a society. He defined human well-being by dividing it into dimensions that describe the existential qualities of different needs, conceptualizing “the central necessary conditions of human development and existence” with three catchwords: Having, Loving, and Being (Allardt 1993, 89). 6 Allardt (1976, 231) originally defined

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

233

Having as “needs related to material and impersonal resources”, Loving as “needs related to love, companionship and solidarity” and Being as “needs denoting self-actualization and the obverse of alienation”. Allardt’s theory was elaborated in the context of a comparative Scandinavian welfare study (see Allardt 1976). Although Allardt (1990, 13) himself later wrote that the study was one of the first of its kind to consider environmental factors and needs related to them in the assessment of a society’s level of welfare, he also expressed his criticism of how this was done. As if anticipating the currently topical research on thresholds and planetary boundaries (e.g., Steffen et al. 2015; O’Neill et al. 2018), he then introduced indicators for biological and physical environments for describing the level of human welfare in a society (e.g., the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air) and discussed limits that “polluting compounds” should not transgress (Allardt 1990, 16). Allardt (1993, 91) also revised his definition of Being to stand for “the need for integration into society and to live in harmony with nature”. The indicators of the latter aspect of Being included the “opportunities to enjoy nature, either by contemplation or through activities such as walking, gardening and fishing” (Allardt 1993, 91; cf. Allardt 1976, 232). In his theory, Allardt (1993, 91) mentions Doing, but he defines it narrowly as “opportunities for leisure-time activities” and places it in the category of Being. For us, Doing is a much wider concept that comprises all kinds of human doings. Because of this and the significant social and ecological impacts of human activities, as well as the central role of agency in human existence, we find Doing worthy of being elevated into the position of a fourth dimension of well-being. Accordingly, our approach comprises four categories of needs: Having, Doing, Loving, and Being. When defining these dimensions, we continue from where Allardt left off and embed these dimensions in their ecological foundation, which makes our approach relational not only in a social but also in an ecological sense. This is also the main difference between our conceptualization and most other ways of depicting the dimensions of well-being (e.g., Diener and Seligman 2004; Ryff 1989), and what we count among the most important contributions of our approach. With this strongly relational—or non-dualist (Helne 2019)—approach, we wish to avoid the anthropocentric bias that dominates most well-being theories. For us, the ecological embeddedness of well-being means that the dimension of Having—the need for basic sustenance—is firmly anchored in the material resources provided by ecosystems. This “existential having” has to be distinguished from excessive having, or having as hoarding. The latter relates to wants, whereas the former refers to the requirement to “have, keep, take care of, and use certain things in order to survive” (Fromm [1976] 1997, 69–70).

234

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

Since our approach has to do with sustainable well-being, Doing does not refer to any kind of activities. After all, the blame for the deplorable state of the world in the Anthropocene lies with human actions. Consequently, in our framework, the conception of Doing denotes ethically sustainable activities and responsibility towards other beings and to future generations. Since we agree with the view that human beings have an inherent sense of morality and “a sense of sustainability” (Holden et al. 2018), we assume that responsible Doing will also bring meaning to one’s life—that is, ethically sustainable Doing will be meaningful Doing. Next, due to the ecological embeddedness of our approach, the conception of Loving includes connective and compassionate relations not only with other humans but also with non-human animals and nature. The latter two types of relationships are often disregarded in well-being research, but they form an integral part of our approach. Last but not least, Being may be characterized with concepts such as presence, wholeness, a sense of interconnectedness, and self-actualization in its largest sense, even though all words fail before the experience itself. Although we speak of four dimensions, this is but an analytical convenience. In practice, needs overlap. Many activities satisfy several needs simultaneously; one can then speak of “synergic satisfiers” (Max-Neef, Elizalde, and Hopenhayn 1991, 30). Human needs thus constitute a relational system in which needs are interconnected and interactive. At the same time, needs are non-substitutable in the sense that well-being requires the actualization of each of these needs to some extent. With the exception of the need to remain alive, there is no rigid order of precedence for this (Max-Neef, Elizalde, and Hopenhayn 1991; Max-Neef 2010; see also Ryan and Sapp 2007). Put another way, the dimensions depict the totality that is necessary for well-being. Ideally, well-being manifests itself as a balanced and synergic relationship between the fulfilment of different needs (Sirgy and Wu 2007; Fisher 2011; Gough 2017, 98). Highlighting this balance is of pivotal importance in the degrowth transformation, because the ecological devastation on our planet is a direct consequence of the obsession of Having, or the “affluenza” (Hamilton and Denniss 2005). The Having-Doing-Loving-Being approach consequently falls into the category of needs-based critiques of consumerist society (e.g., Jackson, Jager, and Stagl 2004; Soper 2017). One of the obvious benefits of this multidimensional approach is that it weakens the present emphasis on Having, which, together with the tenet that people cannot and must not ever be satisfied, forms the core element of materialism (e.g., Saunders and Munro 2000). A life excessively oriented to Having and material wants is bound to be a dissatisfied life, always failing to bring about individual and social well-being—a fact also demonstrated by solid empirical evidence (e.g., Kashdan and Breen 2007; Kasser 2002). By shifting the focus of human attention and activities from Having to the less material-intensive Doing, Loving and Being can

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

235

thus have significant socioecological consequences. Importantly, the Having-Loving-Doing-Being approach illuminates that economic growth is not a precondition of well-being, because it highlights the fact that income and material resources cannot act as a proxy for the other dimensions of well-being. Minimizing the harmful impacts of needs-satisfaction is an overarching target in the shift towards sustainability. Not only technology but also well-being should be eco-efficient (see Dietz, Rosa, and York 2009), which means that human needs should be met with a minimal load on the environment. This does not, however, rule out the many positive changes the degrowth transformation will bring about. MEETING NEEDS IN THE POST-GROWTH SOCIETY Conceptualizing well-being in its relational and multidimensional sense and setting well-being as the primary goal of economic activities constitute a crucial step in distancing welfare states from the growth paradigm. The broader conceptualization of well-being that we propose could help to liberate our imagination to envision more holistic ecosocial policies for post-growth societies. It might also provide a widely acceptable overarching goal for designing a new kind of economy and new kinds of welfare institutions and give coherence to the numerous initiatives for building a post-growth society introduced in the degrowth research (e.g., Kallis et al. 2013; Mellor 2012; Dietz and O’Neill 2013; D’Alisa et al. 2015; Koch and Mont 2016; Gough 2017; see also Hirvilammi and Helne 2014; Helne and Salonen 2016). It could do this by showing in what way the proposed policies could address the totality of human needs. To name but one example, basic income could fulfil not only the need of subsistence (Having), but also provide opportunities for childcare or informal care (Loving and Doing) and other meaningful activities (Doing and Being). The concept of limits often emerges in the degrowth discussion, and rightly so. We would, however, like to remind that limits and restrictions should refer to modifying need satisfiers, not needs as such. From now on, needs will have to be satisfied by using less material throughput. This requirement does not concern only the satisfiers related to the Having dimension. It is important to realize that various goods and services are also satisfiers of Doing, Loving, and Being. Flying to meet one’s relatives, for example, is a resource-demanding satisfier of the need of Loving. We are not demanding that trips like this be forbidden but pointing out that the aim of reducing environmental impacts requires policy solutions, such as the aviation tax recently introduced in Sweden, that can touch upon all categories of needs in various ways.

236

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

When the focus is on Having, the main question of the sustainability transformation is How much? or How much is enough?, whereas for Doing, Loving, and Being, the issue is How?—that is, in what manner are these needs to be actualized? The task is to avoid the following: “pseudosatisfiers”, which generate a false sense of satisfaction; “inhibiting satisfiers”, which while satisfying one need curtail the satisfaction of other needs; and “violators”, which actually impair the satisfaction of needs (Max-Neef, Elizalde, and Hopenhayn 1991, 30, 34). This task is evidently gargantuan and closely connected to one of the core reasons of the current ecologically, socially, and psychologically unsustainable way of life: people living in the capitalist and growth-obsessed societies have been led to engage in futile attempts to satisfy their needs of Doing, Loving, and Being by consumption and by continuous efforts to gain monetary or other rewards. As far as the actual needs of Doing, Loving, and Being are concerned, the notion of “limits” does not really apply. On the contrary, ecosocial policies should enhance the possibilities of actualizing these needs. The aim to balance the realization of the four categories of needs thus leads to differentiated policies: some would aim at cutting overconsumption (while securing a decent level of Having), whereas other policies would aim at higher levels of need satisfaction and more balanced well-being. Focusing the limelight on the policies that aim to increase well-being may help in mustering support for the degrowth transformation. This might (but just might) make it possible for those who fear that this leap is only about restrictions to discern that the question is actually about gains. It could likewise help to refute the claim that subjective well-being should be deprioritized in degrowth research (see Koch, Buch-Hansen, and Fritz 2017, 80). All of us will be winners if the degrowth transformation can be successfully combined with a balanced way of actualizing needs. The most significant gain will certainly be saving the planet for our offspring. Moreover, limiting the overconsumption of the world’s richest people in order to enable a good life within planetary boundaries for all (O’Neill et al. 2018), is surely a small price to pay compared with the devastating effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. CONCLUSIONS Until now humankind has excelled at forgetting that all human activities are subordinate to the laws of thermodynamics and ecological processes (see Daly 1996; Daly and Farley 2010), which in the end set the limits for social institutions (including economy) and for human well-being, that is, the balanced actualization of needs. In this chapter, we have presented an approach to well-being that takes these ecological limitations seriously.

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

237

Only after truly recognizing the ecological embeddedness of human wellbeing will societies be able to design sustainable welfare institutions and an economy that serves human needs (instead of preferences and wants) and the needs of other living beings within planetary boundaries. Future generations will also need to have, do, love, and be. To ensure this, it will be necessary to adjust the balance of these dimensions of existence and to substitute unsustainable need satisfiers with satisfiers that better respect planetary boundaries and that can be accessed by all. Since the goal of endless economic growth is an integral part of capitalism, the likelihood of the degrowth transformation may not seem very high. In the Nordic countries, for example, all political parties and labour unions support economic growth and justify this with the need to maintain a high level of welfare and employment. This setting forms a true challenge for a paradigm change. Citizens on whose minds this line of argumentation has been inculcated may not be able to fathom how the growth paradigm could be abandoned: surely, they believe, GDP growth is a precondition for well-being. We hope that with the support of a more holistic view of well-being, such fears will dissipate. We have, to this effect, presented the Having-Doing-Loving-Being approach, proposing a change of perspective from negativity and deprivation to positivity and plenitude. Our overall goal is to contribute to the degrowth transformation by offering a hopefully inspiring vision of how living in harmony with one’s deepest needs (one’s true nature) can also be harmonious with the nature around us. It remains to be seen whether humanity has the time to begin to actualize visions like this before the “ultimate serious harm” (Gough 2017, 205) caused by an ecological crisis dashes these intentions. Even many degrowth authors are not convinced of the prospects of a paradigm shift. They hence pin their hopes on the possibility that “at some point, enough people will become sufficiently discontent with the existing economic system and push for something radically different”, suggesting that this disenchantment could be prompted by the system’s failure to satisfy human needs (Buch-Hansen 2018, 157, 161). For this to happen, people will have to have an idea of what these needs are. It is here that the intuitively understandable Having-Loving-Doing-Being framework could come into play. REFERENCES Allardt, E. 1976. “Dimensions of Welfare in a Comparative Scandinavian Study”. Acta Sociologica 19 (3): 227–39. Allardt, E. 1990. “Human Welfare and Non-Waste Technology”. In Technology and Environment: Facing the Future, edited by A. Johansson, 9–22. Helsinki: Finnish Academies of Technology.

238

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

Allardt, E. 1993. “Having, Loving, Being: An Alternative to the Swedish Model of Welfare Research”. In The Quality of Life, edited by M. C. Nussbaum and A. Sen, 88–94. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Allardt, E., and H. Uusitalo. 1972. “Dimensions of Welfare in a Comparative Study of the Scandinavian Societies”. Scandinavian Political Studies 7: 9–26. Andreoni, V., and S. Galmarini. 2014. “How to Increase Well-Being in a Context of Degrowth”. Futures 55: 78−89. Aristotle. 2016. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Overland Park, KS: Digireads Publishing. Asara, V., I. Otero, F. Demaria, and E. Corbera. 2015. “Socially Sustainable Degrowth as a Social-Ecological Transformation: Repoliticizing Sustainability”. Sustainability Science 10 (3): 375–84. Barry, J. 2012. The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brand-Correa, L., and J. Steinberger. 2017. “A Framework for Decoupling Human Need Satisfaction from Energy Use”. Ecological Economics 141: 43−52. Buch-Hansen, H. 2018. “The Prerequisites for a Degrowth Paradigm Shift: Insights from Critical Political Economy”. Ecological Economics 146: 157–63. Büchs, M., and M. Koch. 2017. Postgrowth and Wellbeing: Challenges to Sustainable Welfare. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Catton, W., and R. Dunlap. 1980. “A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology”. American Behavioral Scientist 24 (1): 15−47. Cruz, I. 2011. “Human Needs Frameworks and Their Contribution as Analytical Instruments in Sustainable Development Policymaking”. In Sustainable Development: Capabilities, Needs, and Well-Being, edited by F. Rauschmayer, I. Omann, and J. Frühmann, 104–20. New York: Routledge. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, eds. 2015. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. New York and London: Routledge. Daly, H. E. 1996. Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Boston: Beacon Press. Daly, H. E., and J. Farley. 2010. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. Washington, DC: Island Press. Diener, E., and M. Seligman. 2004. “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of WellBeing”. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (1): 1–31. Dietz, R., and D. O’Neill. 2013. Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Dietz, R., E. A. Rosa, and R. York. 2009. “Environmentally Efficient Well-Being: Rethinking Sustainability as the Relationship between Human Well-being and Environmental Impacts”. Human Ecology Review 16 (1): 114−23. Doyal, L., and I. Gough. 1991. A Theory of Human Need. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Fisher, J. 2011. “The Four Domains Model: Connecting Spirituality, Health and Wellbeing”. Religions 2 (1): 17–28. Forgeard, M. J. C., E. Jayawickreme, M. Kern, and M. E. Seligman. 2011. “Doing the Right Thing: Measuring Wellbeing for Public Policy”. International Journal of Wellbeing 1 (1): 79–106. https://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/ article/view/15/0. Fromm, E. (1976) 1997. To Have or to Be? New York: Continuum. Gallie, W. B. 1955−1956. “Essentially Contested Concepts”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55: 167−98. Gasper, D. 2007. “Conceptualising Human Needs and Wellbeing”. In Wellbeing in Developing Countries. From Theory to Research, edited by I Gough and A. McGregor, 47–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gergen, K. J. 2009. Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gough, I. 2014. “Lists and Thresholds: Comparing the Doyal-Gough Theory of Human Need with Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach”. In Capabilities, Gender, Equality.

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

239

Towards Fundamental Elements, edited by F. Comim and M. Nussbaum, 357–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gough, I. 2015. “Climate Change and Sustainable Welfare: The Centrality of Human Needs”. Cambridge Journal of Economics 39 (5): 1191−1214. Gough, I. 2017. Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Hämäläinen, T., and J. Michaelson. 2014. Well-Being and Beyond. Broadening the Public and Policy Discourse. Cheltenham and Northampton, UK: Edward Elgar. Hamilton, C., and R. Denniss. 2005. Affluenza: When Too Much Is Never Enough. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Haybron, D. 2007. “Well-Being and Virtue”. Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 2 (2): 1–28. Helne, T. 2019. “Being Matters: A Holistic Conception of Wellbeing in the Shift towards Strongly Sustainable Societies”. In Strongly Sustainable Societies, edited by K. J. Bonnedahl and P. Heikkurinen, 229–46. London: Routledge. Helne, T., and T. Hirvilammi. 2015. “Wellbeing and Sustainability: A Relational Approach”. Sustainable Development 23 (3): 167−75. Helne, T., and T. Hirvilammi. 2017. “The Relational Conception of Wellbeing as a Catalyst for the Ecosocial Transition”. In The Ecosocial Transition of Societies: The Contribution of Social Work and Social Policy, edited by A. Matthies and K. Närhi, 36–53. London: Routledge. Helne, T., T. Hirvilammi, and M. Laatu. 2012. Sosiaalipolitiikka rajallisella maapallolla. [Social policy on a finite planet]. Helsinki: Kela. Helne, T., and A. Salonen. 2016. “Ecosocial Food Policy: Improving Human, Animal, and Planetary Well-Being”. Sustainability 12 (2): 1–11. Hirvilammi, T., and T. Helne. 2014. “Changing Paradigms: A Sketch for Sustainable Wellbeing and Ecosocial Policy”. Sustainability 6 (4): 2160−75. Holden, E., K. Linnerud, D. Banister, V. J. Schwanitz, and A. Wierling. 2018. The Imperatives of Sustainable Development: Needs, Justice, Limits. London and New York: Earthscan, Routledge. Huppert, F. A., N. Baylis, and B. Keverne. 2004. “Introduction: Why Do We Need a Science of Well-Being?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 359: 1331–32. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2004.1519. Jackson, T. 2005. “Live Better by Consuming Less? Is There a ‘Double Dividend’ in Sustainable Consumption?” Journal of Industrial Ecology 9 (1–2): 19–36. Jackson, T., W. Jager, and S. Stagl. 2004. “Beyond Insatiability: Needs Theory, Consumption and Sustainability”. In Consumption: Perspectives from Ecological Economics, edited by L. Reisch and I. Røpke. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. http://www.rug. nl/about-us/who-are-we/sustainability/greenoffice/cursus/myth3/jackson_jager_ stagl_2004.pdf. Jackson, T., and N. Marks. 1999. “Consumption, Sustainable Welfare and Human Needs—With Reference to UK Expenditure Patterns between 1954 and 1994”. Ecological Economics 28: 421–41. Kallis, G., M. Kalush, H. O. Flynn, J. Rossiter, and N. Ashford. 2013. “‘Friday Off’: Reducing Working Hours in Europe”. Sustainability 5: 1545–67. Kallis, G., C. Kerschner, and J. Martínez-Alier. 2012. “The Economics of Degrowth”. Ecological Economics 84: 172–80. Kangas, O., and J. Palme. 2009. “Making Social Policy Work for Economic Development: The Nordic Experience”. International Journal of Social Welfare 18 (1): S62−S72. Kashdan, T. B., and W. E. Breen. 2007. “Materialism and Diminished Well-Being: Experiential Avoidance as a Mediating Mechanism”. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 26 (5): 521–39. Kasser, T. 2002. The High Price of Materialism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kjell, O. 2011. “Sustainable Well-Being: A Potential Synergy between Sustainability and Well-Being Research”. Review of General Psychology 15 (3): 255–66.

240

Tuula Helne and Tuuli Hirvilammi

Kloo, D. E. 2015. “The Sustainability of Welfare Capitalism. Redefining Institutions and Agency”. In The Politics of Ecosocialism: Transforming Welfare, edited by K. Borgnäs, T. Eskelinen, J. Perkiö, and R. Warlenius, 34–52. London: Routledge. Koch, M. 2013. “Welfare after Growth: Theoretical Discussion and Policy Implications”. International Journal of Social Quality 3 (1): 4−20. Koch, M., and H. Buch-Hansen. 2016. “Human Needs, Steady State Economics and Sustainable Welfare”. In Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare, edited by M. Koch and O. Mont, 29–43. London: Routledge. Koch, M., H. Buch-Hansen, and M. Fritz. 2017. “Shifting Priorities in Degrowth Research: An Argument for the Centrality of Human Needs”. Ecological Economics 138: 74−81. Koch, M., and O. Mont, eds. 2016. Sustainability and the Political Economy of Welfare. London: Routledge. Lamb, W. F., and J. K. Steinberger. 2017. “Human Well-Being and Climate Change Mitigation”. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8 (6): e485. Maslow, A. H. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. Maslow, A. H. (1971) 1993. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. London: Penguin. Maslow, A. H. (1962) 2011. Toward a Psychology of Being. Blacksburg, VA: Wilder. Max-Neef, M. 2010. “The World on a Collision Course and the Need for a New Economy”. Ambio 39: 200–210. Max-Neef, M., A. Elizalde, and M. Hopenhayn. 1991. “Development and Human Needs”. In Human Scale Development: Conception, Application and Further Reflections, edited by M. Max-Neef, A. Elizalde, and M. Hopenhayn, 13–54. New York: Apex. McGregor, J. A., and N. Pouw. 2017. “Towards an Economics of Well-Being”. Cambridge Journal of Economics 41 (4): 1123–42. Mellor, M. 2012. “Money as a Public Resource for Development”. Development 55 (1): 45−53. Naess, A. 1995. “Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World”. In Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, edited by G. Sessions, 225–45. Boston: Shambhala. O’Neill, D. W., A. L. Fanning, W. F. Lamb, and J. K. Steinberger. 2018. “A Good Life for All within Planetary Boundaries”. Nature Sustainability 1. O’Neill, J. 2006. “Citizenship, Well-Being and Sustainability: Epicurus or Aristotle?” Analyse & Kritik 28: 158−72. O’Neill, J. 2011. “The Overshadowing of Needs”. In Sustainable Development: Capabilities, Needs, and Well-Being, edited by F. Rauschmayer, I. Omann, and J. Frühmann, 25–42. New York: Routledge. Pirson, M. 2017. Humanistic Management: Protecting Dignity and Promoting Well-Being. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rauschmayer, F., I. Omann, and J. Frühmann. 2011. “Needs, Capabilities and Quality of Life: Refocusing Sustainable Development”. In Sustainable Development: Capabilities, Needs, and Well-Being, edited by F. Rauschmayer, I. Omann, and J. Frühmann, 1–24. New York: Routledge. Ryan, R. M., and E. L. Deci. 2001. “On Happiness and Human Potentials. A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being”. Annual Review of Psychology 52: 141–66. Ryan, R. M., and A. R. Sapp. 2007. “Basic Psychological Needs: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on the Promotion of Wellness across Development and Cultures”. In Wellbeing in Developing Countries: From Theory to Research, edited by I. Gough and A. McGregor, 71–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryff, C. 1989. “Happiness Is Everything, or Is It? Explorations on the Meaning of Psychological Well-Being”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57 (6): 1069–81. Ryff, C., and B. Singer. 2008. “Know Thyself and Become What You Are: A Eudaimonic Approach to Psychological Well-Being”. Journal of Happiness Studies 9: 13–39.

Having, Doing, Loving, Being

241

Saunders, S., and D. Munro. 2000. “The Construction and Validation of a Consumer Orientation Questionnaire (SCOI) Designed to Measure Fromm’s (1955) ‘Marketing Character’ in Australia”. Social Behavior and Personality 28 (3): 219–40. Schneider, F., G. Kallis, and J. Martínez-Alier. 2010. “Crisis or Opportunity? Economic Degrowth for Social Equity and Ecological Sustainability: Introduction to This Special Issue”. Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (6): 511−18. Sirgy, M. J., and J. Wu. 2007. “The Pleasant Life, the Engaged Life, and the Meaningful Life: What about the Balanced Life?” Journal of Happiness Studies 10: 183–96. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-007-9074-1. Soper, K. 1993. “A Theory of Human Need”. New Left Review 197: 113−28. Soper, K. 2017. A New Hedonism: A Post-Consumerism Vision. The Next System Project. https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/new-hedonism-post-consumerism-vision. Steffen, W., K. Richardson, J. Rockström, S. E. Cornell, I. Fetzer, E. M. Bennett, R. Biggs, et al. 2015. “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development on a Changing Planet”. Science 347 (6223): 1259855.

NOTES 1. We use the word post-growth to denote the goal and the word degrowth as the path towards it (see also Gough 2017, 171). 2. Because we are discussing needs in the context of degrowth transformation, the overview is quite rough, and we do not pretend to cover the different modes of needs discourse (see Gasper 2007). 3. Needs and wants can, however, coincide. One can need what one wants or want what one needs (Doyal and Gough 1991, 42). 4. We are very much aware that within the limits of this chapter, we cannot do justice to the many insights and merits of the Doyal-Gough theory. 5. Büchs and Koch’s understanding of basic needs is based on the Doyal-Gough theory. 6. This classification of needs roughly corresponds to Maslow’s need theory (Allardt and Uusitalo 1972, 12).

FOURTEEN The State of Degrowth Giacomo D’Alisa

Increasingly, degrowth scholars and activists are interested in stepping into the political arena, in sensu stricto. Several events have been organized to discuss degrowth in the parliaments. 1 In 2017, a deputy of the Catalan Parliament presented degrowth as part of the future Catalan republic’s political horizon. 2 In September 2018 the European Parliament in Brussels hosted a post-growth conference. Just before the conference, more than two hundred scientists launched a petition calling for European and member state representatives and officers to abandon growth as the main objective of their policies. To date this petition has been signed by almost ninety thousand people. 3 These events should be of no surprise. Indeed, degrowthers have proposed several policies (e.g., Kallis 2015) addressing deputies and governors of national parliaments. However, in the degrowth milieu, discussions about the state could be considered taboo. It is not by chance that, if one excludes the French “growth objectors” (Ariès 2015), the mounting literature on degrowth has given little attention to “the state”. An explanation for degrowthers’ indifference towards the state’s genealogy, evolution, and functioning may be found in the anarchist humus in which many degrowth practices flourish. The willingness of degrowthers to enter “the (winter) palace” without reflecting on the state’s configurations and articulations is probably one of the main conundrums in degrowth scholarship. However, if the ultimate aim of the degrowth movement is to transform the “growth society” (Asara et al. 2015), the question of how to transform the state, as it is experienced in the Westernized world, cannot be overlooked; indeed, a theory of change and transformation cannot but deal with the state 243

244

Giacomo D’Alisa

(Wright 2009). Thus, it is fundamental to delineate how degrowthers intend to undo the state while transforming the society they are part of. In this chapter I present a state of the art on “state” in degrowth scholarship cum the theoretical proposal to contribute to a possible degrowth theory of transformation. To do so, I first present a synopsis of the current state of the art in the degrowth literature, examining the ways degrowthers have (not) thought about the state. Erik Olin Wright’s models of transformation inform the synopsis. I start with a brief excursus of the most recent degrowth literature of the anglophone world. Then I contrast it with the more elaborate debate in France, where steps towards clarifying existing and conflicting perspectives on the state have been made. Later, I present a Gramscian approach to the state (Gramsci 2007) and expose why it is a useful framework for degrowth scholars interested in developing hypotheses of societal transformation. Indeed, I maintain that a Gramscian theory can make sense of not only those practices degrowthers foster in their daily engagement with alternative economies and social organizations but also of those pluralities of degrowth policies that need political institutions in order to be put in force. I contend that the Gramscian theory of change allows us to articulate coherently both approaches that are currently bringing life into the degrowth camp: the one dedicated to practice and the other that promotes policies and their enforcement. In the fourth section, I sustain my argument that the Gramscian ideas of “integral state” would be a powerful theoretical tool for demystifying the naïve separation between civil society (the space of the degrowth practices) and political society (the space for enforcing the degrowth policies). Furthermore, I show how the integral state framework provides a lens and tools to visualize a possible path to rearticulate a counter-hegemonic degrowth project. AN INCONVENIENT OBJECT OF STUDY The selection and the reading of the literature in this section is informed by Wright’s (2009) three models of transformation beyond capitalism: ruptural, interstitial metamorphosis, and symbiotic metamorphosis. These three models employ three strategic logics in relation to the state. The ruptural model is characterized by a frontal attack on the state. In the interstitial metamorphosis model, any kind of relation with state forms is avoided, and alternatives outside the state are built instead. Finally, in the symbiotic metamorphosis model, struggling for building popular power within the state takes place. The papers reviewed were each categorized into one of these models. The ones that could not be clearly related to them were excluded, even if, for example, they were part of the same special issue as those selected.

The State of Degrowth

245

The State (or Lack Thereof) in the Anglophone Degrowth Literature It is easy to verify how reluctant degrowthers are to think about the state. Indeed, in the degrowth vocabulary, at least in its English original version (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015), where a vast variety of contributions describe the roots, the core, the actions, and the alliances necessary to transform growth-led societies, the topic of the state does not appear. Moreover, recent reviews of degrowth scholarship (Weiss and Cattaneo 2017; Kallis et al. 2018) show that the blooming literature in this field stays almost silent about the possible state configurations in a degrowth society. Investigating the content of ninety-one papers, for example, Weiss and Cattaneo (2017) identify three main domains of research: (1) conceptual essays, (2) models and empirical analysis, and (3) assessment of concrete implementations of the degrowth proposals. In all three of these domains, it is possible to find policy proposals whose locus of implementation is the political space, that is, the state sensu stricto. However, none of the ninety-one papers seems to tackle states-led predicaments of the current societal arrangement of industrial Westernized society. Kallis et al. (2018) look at the macroeconomic models that are able to depict economic stability in societies that do not grow. Then they present a series of ethnographic works about communities and society whose main goals do not relate to economic growth and whose presumed human drivers are not selfishness, greed, or utility maximization. Later on, the authors move to technological concerns, citing recent studies that show degrowthers are critically engaging with technological advancements and evolutions. Finally, they discuss the politics and democracy of degrowth, while alluding to the fact that a neoliberal logic is infiltrating the state and that there is a risk that the new normal of the political realm could be a constant state of emergency. However, there are still no references to possible theories of the state that might help degrowthers to theorize how these changes make neoliberal hegemony stronger and stronger. The special issue titled “Degrowth Future and Democracy”, published in 2012 in the journal Futures (Cattaneo et al. 2012), digs into important issues such as (1) the political dimensions of degrowth beyond its reductive use as a slogan of radical socioecological movements in Europe, (2) the politics to be implemented for reorienting the growth-led societies, and (3) the strengths and limits of social and political actors that are taking steps toward a degrowth society. However, it does not offer any framework for engaging with the modern liberal democratic state apparatus or for imagining a new way to steer the political space towards fairer and more sustainable paths. The emphasis is on imagining a more democratic society and economy with more inclusive and participative political organizations, and on the effort to (re)found democracy at hu-

246

Giacomo D’Alisa

man scale (Bonaiuti 2012; Garcia 2012; Johanisova and Wolf 2012; Trainer 2012). All of the above-quoted authors who focus on the democratization of many institutions in the society implicitly embrace an interstitial strategy with respect to the state. Two authors of the analysed special issue—namely, Onofrio Romano and Marco Deriu—offer a symbiotic strategy to the state. Romano (2012) stressed that the state is not only a terrain of struggle but is the main actor for transforming society. He promotes a partisan state (not a neutral one), that is, an ensemble of political authorities that actively stir the collective political path and effectively contribute to determinations about the features of the social life. In turn, Deriu (2012) reflects on the possible reconstruction of the electoral models more in line with degrowth, and on the fact that possible new deliberative arenas could emerge once ecological issues are seriously considered. But he uses much less emphasis than Romano on the role of the state and envisions a much more articulate and plural configuration of political institutions. He also admits that in Westernized liberal democracy, the threat of despotism no longer comes from political powers but from economic powers. THE STATE IN THE FRANCOPHONE DEGROWTH LITERATURE In comparison with their anglophone counterparts, francophone objectors to growth have been more interested in the state as an object of study. Paul Ariès (2015), in his entry for the French version of Degrowth: A Vocabulary (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015), points out that degrowthers should be keen on not only thinking about the role of the state in promoting the growth society but also on reflecting whether there are other institutional ways for the members of a society to “stand up” together. 4 He notes the existing asymmetry in degrowth scholarship between the developed criticism of political economy and technoscience, and the stagnant reflections on the state. Ariès presents four clusters of criticisms of the state that exist in the francophone degrowth literature. The first looks at the state as a repressive apparatus for the conservation of economic hegemony. The second considers it as the main engine that fosters the reproduction of the growth ideology. The third defines the state as a fundamental productivity-focused agent. Last but not least, the state is discussed as the most heteronomous and segregative institution. The French author also suggests that the nation-state cannot be the institutional framework within which degrowth is promoted and that what is needed are re-localizations and confederations of small-scale institutions. These proposals hint at symbiotic transformation of the state and to the possibility of instituting a state at human scale. The French objectors to growth have discussed many approaches to the state. Issue 13 of Entropia, for example, is entirely dedicated to the

The State of Degrowth

247

state. Three sections compose the issue, titled respectively (1) “Critical Looks at the Modern State”, (2) “Transformation of the Modern State”, and (3) “Breaking with the Modern State”. Each section is made up of four papers. In the brief introduction to the issue, Besson-Girard (2012a) underlines the fact that several authors recognize some sacred traits of the state: the solemnity of its rituals and the protocols that bond its citizens together. He also underpins that among French growth objectors, greater disagreement exists when the discussion involves what to do with the actual state of liberal democracy. The authors of the first section offer diagnoses of the emergence of the modern state. The state is the outcome of techno-industrial modernization (Jarrige 2012), a totalitarian articulation correlated with the centralization of technical and economic power (Morillon-Briere 2012). As the epitome and political foundation of the national community (Neyrat 2012), the state cannot be suppressed, but its prerogative needs to be limited and its size made smaller (Gruca 2012; Morillon-Briere 2012). The modest size should serve the state functioning as a conflict moderator among federate communities and regions. Neyrat (2012) suggests infiltrating the “body” of the state with a principle of anarchy in order to debunk the growth imaginary the state perpetuates. All of the abovequoted authors embrace the symbiotic metamorphic model of approach to the state. The second section gathers contributions that reflect on how to transform the modern state, where again a symbiotic model for changing the state prevails. Cochet (2012) recalls the small-scale nature of the state in a degrowth society. However, he does not associate the small with the peaceful. Indeed, Cochet maintains that the main problem of the plurality of these small-scale states would be the containment of violence. To avoid the return of private violence, he envisions all citizens participating in police service successively, in turn substituting the current professional police. Latouche (2012) also supports a small-scale state, because according to him democracy can be effective and rooted only if it is applied at a bioregional scale where the republic is built on a specific harmonious ecosystem. Furthermore, he suggests that a form of minimal arbitrage among those sovereign republics should be instituted at a global level. As a consequence, he also evokes a neutralitarian articulation of the emergent sovereign polities. As do other growth objectors (Jarrige 2012; Morillon-Briere 2012), Charbonneau (2012) connects the expansion of state and market institutions to the development of technoscience. He clarifies how technological innovations imply the creation of new state organisms (e.g., the agency for the nuclear security, etc.). The proliferation of state organisms increases the opacity of political structures as well as the powerlessness of politicians to steer this ever-expanding complex machine. However, after recognizing the politicians’ impotence he ends up suggesting to oppose political power (sic!) through vote abstention and acquisition of

248

Giacomo D’Alisa

specific rights, such as the right to ask for a moratorium on major collective risk. The third and last section of Entropia issue 13 hosts those authors who want to give up the state tout court. These are expressions of explicit anarchist ideology and of those with sympathy towards anarchist principles. According to these authors, the nation-states have capitulated in front of the puissance of capital and subordinated their actions to the criteria of profitability and cost-effectiveness; the contemporary state shapes social relationships in order to valorize capital (Luquet and Luquet 2012; Homs 2012). Since the state is tangled up in the evolution of capitalism, it is not possible anymore to preserve the state without preserving capitalism. The state has lost its function as the reproducer of society (justice, school, redistribution, social protection, etc.) and therefore it has been reduced to functioning repressively. In this context, objectors to growth should place high priority on the construction of their own economic autonomy without counting anymore on the state to affect the evolution of society in the direction they want; thus, it is no longer relevant to use violence to occupy or reform institutions (Luquet and Luquet 2012; Homs 2012). These authors are indeed in line with Wright’s categorizations, where anarchist political tradition is associated with interstitial metamorphosis of the state, with the focus on building alternatives outside the state apparatus. On the other hand, Rackham (2012) contrasts the idea of fostering small-scale organizations because, he maintains, these small degrowth (or anarchist) islands cannot avoid meeting their exchange or purchasing needs through capitalist markets; they cannot solve environmental problems caused by capitalist businesses; and they cannot avoid the state’s overimposition of laws, regulations, and polices. Furthermore, he underlines, if these degrowth islands really would start to challenge the capitalist system, they would be repressed with the use of force. This is why, for Rackham, the only possible change comes through a process of revolutionary and radical rupture with the current society. Rackham is a clear expression of the rupturist strategy of revolutionary attack to the state, in Wright’s terms. Finally, Besson-Girard (2012b) underlines the importance of overcoming the notion of state sovereignty, because the biosphere has nothing to do with the territorial frontiers of the nation-state. For him, degrowth is not only about a change of scale but also about rethinking the way human beings relate amongst themselves and the non-human world. It is about an ethical and political obligation to the symbolic and material domain over the organization of life in common everywhere on earth. Due to its anti-authoritarian spirit, degrowth is a communalist attempt at going beyond the state and re-founding society. From this point of view, and in many facets, Besson-Girard’s degrowth resembles very much the

The State of Degrowth

249

anti-authoritarianism of eco-socialism and is close to the symbiotic strategy with respect to the state. In the following section, I maintain that the Gramscian theory of the state offers a method for undoing the state and a framework for its substantiated analysis. BEYOND THE STATE: THE “INTEGRAL STATE” In the Marxist tradition, the state is a specific organizational form of the political, and its articulations and structures are geographically and historically determined. The state in its modern capitalist form serves the dominant class by performing two specific functions: (1) it assures the reciprocal guarantee of the dominant class’s property and interests; (2) it controls and represses subaltern claims for change (Losurdo 1997). Arguments in favour of the state’s abolition very often hinge on the repressive characteristic of the state apparatus; historically, anarchist thinkers were very much influenced by this position (Bakunin [1873] 2013). However, according to Losurdo (1997), it was not only anarchist ideology but also historical events during the French Second Republic (1848–1851) and then the tragic outcome of World War I that very much influenced the eschatological position towards the state in Marxist-Leninist thought. The condensed version of the eschatological views found in this tradition goes as follows: in a communist society, the state’s repressive apparatus disappears, and only its administrative functions endure. On the contrary, the idea that the state would eventually be extinct never influenced Gramsci; thus, he is the Marxist thinker who offers the best insights for those thinking about a post-capitalist state (Losurdo 1997). A neo-Gramscian approach to understanding the state is mounting in political theory, critical geography, international studies, and political ecology (Ekers, Loftus, and Mann 2009; Brand et al. 2008; Painter 2006; Jessop 2016; Andreucci 2017). Some scholars working within a Gramscian framework as elaborated by Marxist political sociologist Nicos Poulantzas have been recently discussing the intrinsic authoritarian tendency of neoliberal states and its disciplining character (Tansel 2017). Neo-Gramscian scholars have also been working hard to debunk narratives that reify the state. Using different variants of the “Strategic Relational Approach” (SRA) developed by Jessop (2016), they oppose those discourses that would understand and create a narrative regarding the state as a “thing”, that is, a definable and monolithic actor that acts upon and (always) against the people it rules. For SRA scholarship, the state is not a rational and independent subject with an indisputable purpose; rather, it expresses heterogeneous forms of organization that operate, more often than not, against each other or as the result of conflicting social relations and ideological struggles (Brand et al. 2008). Thus, first

250

Giacomo D’Alisa

and foremost, a Gramscian approach helps to overcome the dichotomy found in the proposition that places the state in opposition to society because the two would consist of diverging logics. This binary conception also contributes to reinforcing the common sense that places the state as the locus of violence, subjugation and abuse of power as opposed to (civil) society, understood as the place of horizontalism, harmony, and freedom (Losurdo 1997). In Prison Notebooks (2007) 5 Gramsci exposed his theory of the state. He proposed the concept of the integral state (IS), that is, a unified state form composed of both civil society and political society, the two camps being organically interpenetrated and mutually reinforcing. In both societal camps, different groups struggle to fulfil their divergent political visions (Thomas 2009). The IS is the dialectical unity of political society and civil society; Gramsci distinguished between the two only for methodological reasons, that is, to better study their prevalent but not exclusive logic and their specific configurations and evolutions. Only along these lines did it become meaningful for Gramsci to characterize the state, that is, political society, as the locus of enforcement and legitimate use of coercive power, and civil society as the arena where different groups struggle to gain consent based on ideology. Nonetheless, for Gramsci, coercion is exercised in civil society, too, in the same way that consent is gained in the political arena. Thus, even if the state is abolished, the abolition of domination and oppression is not guaranteed (Losurdo 1997). Domination can be still alive and active in the civil society arena, which is permeated by power relations and coercive forces as well (Brand et al. 2008). Domination is not the same as hegemony in the Gramscian lexicon. Domination relates to the enforcement of coercive means over people, while hegemony implies the gaining of consent of people. The hegemony shows up in institutions, procedures, practices, values, and beliefs, which respond effectively to commonsensical demands and claims of people. Thus, the concept of common sense is also critical for understanding the Gramscian theoretical framework for societal change. Common sense refers to the “uncritical and largely unconscious way of perceiving and understanding the world that has become ‘common’ in any given epoch” (Hoare and Smith 1971, 322). But common sense is not a unique, clear, static, and closed conception of the world for Gramsci. People use a plurality of common senses to make sense of their life and adhere to a certain hegemonic vision of why the world is as it is and functions as it functions. A hegemonic discourse articulates and prioritizes some common senses to the detriment of others (D’Alisa and Kallis 2016); those common senses are reordered prevalently via consent (and only if need be via coercion) to guarantee the interests of the ruling elite. At the same time, counterhegemonic groups can mobilise new and/or dormant common sense to reinterpret, reorder, and change social reality. Reordering or creating new common senses is a matter of discourses and material performativity

The State of Degrowth

251

of everyday practices (Garcia López, Velicu, and D’Alisa 2017). Social changes are then possible only if there is a change in ideas, everyday practices eventually enforced at institutional level. The integral state approach allows for coherently analysis of the reciprocal interaction and mutual reinforcement between common senses, everyday performances, orders and executions. As a consequence, hegemony has to be understood as the everyday performativity of the everyday ordering and articulation of existing common senses through consent and coercion throughout the IS (Garcia López, Velicu, and D’Alisa 2017; D’Alisa and Kallis 2016). Thus, a counter-hegemony cannot be fulfilled by going beyond the state (read: abolishing it) but only from within the IS. If one wants to fit the Gramscian theory of state I am proposing for envisioning transformative paths for degrowth into the corset of Wright’s models of transformation, it connects most to a symbiotic metamorphosis but with some pinch of interstitial logic, with the latter being especially important when building counter-hegemonic institutions in society at large. The next section connects the concept of integral state to degrowth. THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE: WHAT KIND OF INTEGRAL STATE FOR A DEGROWTH SOCIETY In a recent review of the degrowth literature, Cosme, Santos, and O’Neill (2017) argue that, even if the degrowth discourse appeals mostly to grassroots initiatives and practices, degrowth proposals have a national focus, and the authors implicitly agree upon the idea that any way towards a degrowth transition requires the “heavy hand” of the state or government. As a consequence, I argue, the normative positions presented in the francophone literature, which aim to go beyond the state (Besson-Girard 2012b; Rackham 2012; Homs 2012; Luquet and Luquet 2012) and adopt an interstitial approach to the state, are not in tune with recent developments in degrowth literature, even though they remain legitimate from a prescriptive point of view. Furthermore, Cosme, Santos, and O’Neill (2017) highlighted the following conundrum: on the one hand, degrowthers put much embellishment into the transformative potential of the bottom-up initiatives; on the other, degrowth scholarship implicitly admits that the degrowth transition necessitates the favouring of top-down governmental actions (read: policies). All of the normative essays that discuss the state and focus on the articulation of the state’s apparatus and its scale and functioning (Trainer 2012; Deriu 2012; Cochet 2012), or those that see the state as a power that has to be controlled (Latouche 2012; Charbonneau 2012) or leaked in with the logic of anarchy (Neyrat 2012) will not help solve the paradox presented above. Also falling short for this purpose is the appeal to a powerful state in the context of favouring the meeting of basic needs

252

Giacomo D’Alisa

of large parts of the population (Romano 2012). Finally, diagnosing the evolution of the modern industrial liberal state (Jarrige 2012; MorillonBrière 2012; Gruca 2012), while necessary, is not sufficient to articulate a theoretical framework that might help degrowth scholarship to overcome the following impasse: The degrowth vision seems to build mainly upon grassroots initiatives that contrast authoritarian, hetero-patriarchal, racist, classist, and capitalist values; however, many degrowth scholars implicitly admit that in order to debunk the inequality and unsustainability of the socio-metabolic configurations of the Westernized economy, the implementation of governmental policies is urgent. Interstitial metamorphosis proposals for societal changes are not sufficient, nor are symbiotic models of transformation alone. I maintain that the above discussed paradox can be overcome if degrowthers use a theory of state that does not support the dichotomy of state versus civil society, or top-down polices versus bottom-up initiatives. The Gramscian framework of the integral state that is expounded on above is useful because it elucidates the dynamics and possible coherence that might exist between grassroots (re)productive practices of selfgoverning and those policies whose locus of implementation is the state. Cosme, Santos, and O’Neill (2017) recognize that the terms top-down and bottom-up are fuzzy; and I suggest that the way out of this fuzziness is the Gramscian theory of the integral state, which strongly connects to the idea of hegemony and thus to a possible counter-hegemonic strategy for degrowth. The IS theory allows us to avoid underestimating the interactions and mutual reinforcement that exist between common senses and the values produced in the economic and social sphere, on the one hand, and those reproduced through the production of laws and enforced by the juridical and police forces, on the other. Common senses are realized as socially shared understandings of daily life. These same common senses provide a solid basis for consent to reproduce and sustain certain of those economic, social, and ecological hegemonic forms that arrange Westernized lives. Those that pay too much emphasis on the coercive power of the state underestimate the power of IS to generalise, normalise, and universalise needs and desires, all of which are accomplished and made possible by certain institutional arrangements and productive forces. To reverse the process that consolidates the values and beliefs of the “growth society”, degrowthers cannot simply enter the (winter) palace and implement the policies they think are in line with the degrowth vision. On the contrary, they first must reproduce social relationships and economically sound activities that produce common senses that prioritize equality, fairness, and sustainability. Degrowthers, then, should push for the implementation of policies that reflect those common senses and pave the way to fairer, more egalitarian, and more sustainable societies.

The State of Degrowth

253

In order to illustrate how this should work, I will use as an example a policy that degrowthers promote for implementing a fairer society, that is, the maximum and minimum income (D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis 2015; Kallis 2015). A maximum income consists of capping a person’s income. For degrowthers there has to be a limit to the amount an individual can gain in a year. This limit is as important as the necessity to guarantee a minimum income. As the minimum income has begun to resonate more and more with the citizens of all political ranges in current Westernized societies, I will focus on the maximum income. The implementation of a maximum income is normally the prerogative of a national parliament. However, within civil society there would probably be great opposition if a majority of representatives voted for taxing 100 percent of every euro over a certain amount X. Indeed, the sentiment that opposes taxation is so widespread that the refrain Why should I give my money to the state? is commonsensical and emerges almost every time a discussion about taxation starts. This is why, for gaining consent on this policy, the main focus has to be on grassroots initiatives where alternative economies proliferate. Indeed, those very values of solidarity, dignity, and cooperation that are the fundaments of the alternative economy reinforce the commonsense rationale that enough is enough (Dietz and O’Neill 2012). In the context of the social and solidarity economy, very often a proportion between the earnings of the highest salaried worker, reserved for those occupying the most important position in an organization, and the earnings of the lowest salaried worker, responsible for the simplest tasks, already exists. In many cooperatives, this kind of fair ratio is the norm. (For example, when I was a member of the bank cooperative Banca Etica [“ethical bank” in English] in 2010, the CEO’s salary, the highest salary earned in the Italian Banca Etica, could not exceed more than 6.5 times the lowest salary earned by a worker of the same bank.) The fair-ratio norm guarantees the reproduction of the commonsense limit to how much an individual earns when compared to the minimum. Only by reproducing this rationale in all grassroots economic initiatives can degrowthers be sure that the idea would make sense to people working in different sectors. One strategy for degrowth scholars could be to bring this logic into the (public) university where they work: Why not set a maximum salary for the dean in relation to the salary of, let’s say, the university janitors? Once the logic of reciprocity is set up in multiple public branches, the possibility for social support for issuing a law that establishes a maximum income for the society as a whole becomes much more plausible. Indeed, the diffusion of such practices guarantees that the majority of people will not oppose the law. Putting into force the maximum and minimum income presupposes the spread of this rationality in society at large for gaining the consent. Doing so, a counterhegemonic narrative would pass throughout the social body of the IS and

254

Giacomo D’Alisa

the idea of maximum income would not be perceived by most as an illiberal policy imposed with the force of the state. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have presented the state of the art on “the state” in degrowth scholarship. In doing so, I have shown that degrowth scholars are very far away from a systematic discussion about the state and how it can be transformed for a degrowth future. They promote transformations of current socio-metabolic patterns (patterns with capitalist foundations that underpin the current trend of increasing inequality and ecological decline) but without a clear theory of state in mind. This theoretical gap is particularly problematic, especially given the fact that a recent extensive analysis of degrowth discourse has shown that degrowth proposals address national governments rather than grassroots practitioners. That is, this analysis seems to suggest that “the state” is an important driver of the societal transformation degrowthers aspire to. In order to fill the gap, I have proposed a Gramscian theory of state. It offers a model of transformation that combines symbiotic metamorphosis of the society with interstitial metamorphosis that, together, are useful for the emergence of new common senses. In particular, I have shown how the concept of the “integral state” is extremely useful for making coherent sense of both the grassroots initiatives that put into practice degrowth values and beliefs in their everyday activities, and the policies governments need to implement to combat the ill-fated consequences of the growth society while boosting degrowth goals. I have done this showing how a Gramscian approach to the (integral) state would allow for articulating the promotion of the maximum (and minimum) income in our Westernized society. Indeed, it clarifies that actions and practices from the bottom up are necessary for (re)ordering common senses about the state’s roles and functioning. It is this (re)ordering of common senses that can steer state evolution towards a configuration that is less hampering and (why not?) more favourable to the re-foundation of the modern industrial growth-led society on a degrowth imaginary. The (re)ordering of common senses and the performativity of common senses and their (re)ordering are necessary to build a counter-hegemonic narrative that effectively can permeate the social body and change the current capitalist integral state. Offering an exhaustive theory of change is a task that cannot be completed in a book chapter and very probably not by a single person in his or her life. Thus, the reader should receive this first attempt of mine as a theoretical effort aiming to draw a line of investigation to be broadened and enriched with other theoretical contributions. Indeed, a long series of

The State of Degrowth

255

empirical studies should follow to test the explanatory and performative capacity of the theory of state I have proposed. The integral state theory does not have to become a universally valid framework, but I maintain that it can be an important step towards decolonising the European states and all the other (integral) states in the world whose imaginary is built on “economism” and the fetishization of growth. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Mladen Domazet for his support during the drafting of this chapter. I really appreciate the comments and criticisms of the editors of this book; the chapter improved substantially thanks to their insights. Valerie McGuire’s final editing was fundamental. I also very much appreciate the painstaking support of Ekaterina Chertkovskaya. However, even if it is the result of a collective effort, I am the only one responsible for any mistakes in the text. This research was supported by the Senior Fellowship Programme (2017) of the Institute for Political Ecology, Zagreb, Croatia. REFERENCES Andreucci, D. 2017. “Resources, Regulation and the State: Struggles over Gas Extraction and Passive Revolution in Evo Morales’s Bolivia”. Political Geography 61: 170–80. Ariès, P. 2015. “État”. In Décroissance. Vocabulaire pour une nouvelle ère, edited by G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria, and G. Kallis, 231–38. Paris: Le Passager Clandestine. Asara, V., I. Otero, F. Demaria, and E. Corbera. 2015. “Socially Sustainable Degrowth as a Social-Ecological Transformation: Repoliticizing Sustainability”. Sustainability Science 10 (3): 375–84. Bakunin, M. A. (1873) 2013. Stato e Anarchia. Milan: Feltrinelli. Besson-Girard, J-C. 2012a. “L’État, débat tabou”. Entropia, no. 13, 3–4. Besson-Girard, J-C. 2012b. “Par-delà l’État?” Entropia, no. 13, 140–49. Bonaiuti, M. 2012. “Growth and Democracy: Trade-offs and Paradoxes”. Futures 44 (6): 524–34. Brand U., C. Görg, J. Hirsch, and M. Wissen. 2008. Conflicts in Environmental Regulation and the Internationalisation of the State Contested Terrains. Ripe Series, Studies in Global Political Economy. London: Routledge. Cattaneo, C., G. D’ Alisa, G. Kallis, and C. Zografos. 2012. “Degrowth, Futures and Democracy”. Futures 44: 515–23. Charbonneau, S. 2012. “Entre nécessité et aliénation, pour un pouvoir politique sous contrôle”. Entropia, no. 13, 101–12. Cochet, Y. 2012. “États simples locaux”. Entropia, no. 13, 63–73. Cosme, I., R. Santos, and D. W. O’Neill. 2017. “Assessing the Degrowth Discourse: A Review and Analysis of Academic Degrowth Policy Proposals”. Journal of Cleaner Production 149: 321–34. D’Alisa, G., F. Demaria, and G. Kallis. 2015. Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. London: Routledge.

256

Giacomo D’Alisa

D’Alisa, G., and G. Kallis. 2016. “A Political Ecology of Maladaptation Insights from a Gramscian Theory of the State”. Global Environmental Change 38: 230–42. Deriu, M. 2012. “Democracies with a Future: Degrowth and the Democratic Tradition”. Futures 44 (6): 553–61. Dietz, R., and D. O’Neill. 2012. Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Ekers, M., A. Loftus, and G. Mann. 2009. “Gramsci Lives!” Geoforum 40: 287–91. Garcia, E. 2012. “Degrowth, the Past, the Future, and the Human Nature”. Futures 44 (6): 546–52. Garcia López, G., I. Velicu, and G. D’Alisa. 2017. “Performing Counter-Hegemonic Common(s) Senses: Rearticulating Democracy, Community and Forests in Puerto Rico”. Capitalism, Nature and Socialism 28 (3): 88–107. Gramsci, A. 2007. Quaderni del carcere. In Edizione critica dell’istituto Gramsci, edited by V. Gerratana. Turin, Italy: Einaudi. Gruca, P. 2012. “L’État de la question”. Entropia, no. 13, 32–47. Hoare, Q., and N. G. Smith. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Homs, C. 2012. “Pour une théorie de l’État dans la modernité capitaliste”. Entropia, no. 13, 125–39. Jarrige, F. 2012. “L’État moderne, sa genèse et ses critiques”. Entropia, no. 13, 7–17. Jessop, B. 2016. The State: Past, Present, Future. Cambridge: Polity Press. Johanisova, N., and S. Wolf. 2012. “Economic Democracy: A Path for the Future?” Futures 44 (6): 562–70. Kallis, G. 2015. “Can We Prosper without Growth? 10 Policy Proposals.” Green European Journal, September 1, 2015. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/can-weprosper-without-growth-10-policy-proposals/ . Kallis, G., V. Kostakis, S. Lange, B. Muraca, S. Paulson, and M. Schmelzer. 2018. “The Degrowth Hypothesis”. Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources 43: 291–316. Latouche, S. 2012. “L’État et la révolution (de la décroissance)”. Entropia, no. 13, 74–86. Losurdo, D. 1997. Antonio Gramsci dal liberalismo al “comunismo critico”. Rome: Gamberetti Editrice. Luquet, J-M., and G. Luquet. 2012. “La société décroissante contre l’État?” Entropia, no. 13, 115–24. Morillon-Brière, S. 2012. “Prométhée et le Léviathan”. Entropia, no. 13, 18–31. Neyrat, F. 2012. “Disarchie: État, dette et objection de croissance”. Entropia, no. 13, 48–60. Painter, J. 2006. “Prosaic Geographies of Stateness”. Political Geography 25: 752–74. Rackham, J. 2012. “Pour une décroissance libertaire”. Entropia, no. 13, 140–49. Romano, O. 2012. “How to Rebuild Democracy, Re-Thinking Degrowth”. Futures 44 (6): 582–89. Tansel, C. B., ed. 2017. States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Thomas, P. D. 2009. The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden, Netherlands; Boston: Brill. Trainer, T. 2012. “De-Growth: Do you Realise What It Means?” Futures 44 (6): 590–99. Weiss, M., and C. Cattaneo. 2017. “Degrowth: Taking Stock and Reviewing an Emerging Academic Paradigm”. Ecological Economics 137: 220–30. Wright, E. O. 2009. Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso.

NOTES 1. For example, at the Fifth International Conference on Degrowth, hosted in Budapest in 2016, a crowded panel session titled “Degrowth in the Parliaments” took place. In 2017, degrowth scholars participated in an evening debate in the House of Commons of the UK, titled “The End of Growth?”

The State of Degrowth

257

2. It was the period during which the referendum for declaring Catalonia independent from the Spanish constitutional monarchy was being planned. 3. See the petition’s website: https://you.wemove.eu/campaigns/europe-it-s-timeto-end-the-growth-dependency, accessed February 1, 2019 . 4. Ariès noted that the word state comes from the Latin word status, which means “standing upright”. 5. Gramsci wrote Prison Notebooks during his imprisonment between 1929 and 1935. In this chapter I refer to the 2007 Italian edition.

Index

accounting, 3, 24, 84, 91–92, 139, 140, 178. See also Waring, Marilyn accumulation, 12, 63, 65, 68n13, 71, 74–75, 77, 80, 86, 88–90, 95, 101, 102, 117, 128, 143–144, 149, 151, 153, 156n1, 178, 196, 198, 199, 225; overaccumulation, 137–153 Actor-Network theory, 195 African descendants, 128 agency, 176, 179, 180, 183, 195, 229, 233 agroecology, 122, 130, 180 Allardt, Erik, 232–233 Amazonia, 121–134, 139, 179 anarchism, 112, 112–113, 187, 243, 247, 248, 249, 252. See also Kropotkin, Pyotr; Tolstoy, Lev Anielski, Mark, 93. See also Genuine Progress Indicator animals, 124, 231, 234; rights movements, 139 anthropocentrism, 218, 231, 233 anthropology, 194, 202, 206n2, 207n8 anti-capitalism, 60, 90, 139, 141 apartheid, 91, 148 Aquinas, Thomas, 194 ArcelorMittal, 185 Aristotle, 194, 206n1, 230 autarky, 211–215; and closure, 210, 215–218, 219, 220; fascist, 209, 210–215, 215–218; as a masculinist value, 211, 218–219, 219; and scale, 209, 211, 215–218, 219, 220. See also self-sufficiency autonomy, 4, 8, 57, 58, 60, 63–64, 68n2, 131, 175, 211, 216–217, 217, 220, 231, 248; eco-, 181 back-to-the-land movement, 214–215, 216, 218, 221

balance, human/natural, 59, 74, 128, 202, 234, 236 Barca, Stefania, 13, 56, 65, 68n1, 68n8, 95, 132, 221 Barcelona, 140, 187 basic income, 8, 58, 113, 176, 181, 193, 201, 202, 204, 205, 235. See also maximum and minimum income Bauhardt, Christine, 83 Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED), UK, 47 being, 232, 233–234 Bell, David, 9. See also utopianism, nomadic Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, 89, 98n3, 98n4, 114, 116 Bhattacharya, Tithi, 181 Bielefeld School, 85, 88, 179. See also Mies, Maria Bispo dos Santos, António, 128 Blaser, Mario, 128 Bloch, Ernest, 8 Boccato Franco, Alan Ainer, 130 Bohannan, Paul, 206n2, 207n8 Bolsonaro, Jair, 122, 124 Bookchin, Murray, 68n8, 187, 216–217 Brazil, 12, 121–134, 141 Brazil Russia India China South Africa (BRICS), 141, 146 Brecht, Bertolt, 143 Brexit, 199 BRICS. See Brazil Russia India China South Africa Bristol Pound, 202 British Empire, 199 Buch-Hansen, Hubert, 5. See also degrowth, as political project Buen Vivir, 11, 83, 128, 133, 139, 151 Buffet Indicator, 148 Burgman, Verity, 182 259

260

Index

capital accumulation, 88, 89, 94, 196, 197, 199, 225 capitalism, 1, 3, 8, 10, 12, 22, 28, 35, 39–50, 53n1, 53n5, 56, 57–58, 60, 62, 68n13, 73, 75, 79, 85, 87, 88, 89, 104, 111, 115, 116, 138, 143, 144, 148, 175, 179, 180, 182, 197, 198, 201, 215, 216, 217, 218, 228, 236, 237, 244, 248, 249; Chinese, 146, 152; cognitive, 57, 65; crisis of, 137, 138–145, 147–148, 152–154, 180; critique of, 138, 178, 193–194; global, 182, 187; golden age of, 71; green, 138, 181, 184; industrial, 59; liberation from, 231; metabolism, 13, 254; neoliberal, 65; and patriarchy, 89, 94; post, 249; reproduction of, 226; second contradiction of, 63, 78, 130; state, 254; western, 28, 123, 124, 130 Carajás: massacre (Eldorado do), 130, 132; project (Projeto Grande Carajás), 125–127, 132, 136n13; railroad, 131, 132 care, 4, 83–87, 92, 94–95, 175, 177, 180, 218, 219, 220, 235; economy, 85, 92; migrant care-workers, 92, 93 Casaldáliga, Pedro (bishop), 125 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 8 catch up and overtake, 104–106, 106–107. See also development, catching up Chayanov, Alexander, 114. See also subsistence China, 12, 146–147 chrematistics, 93, 206n1 church, 112, 125 class. See working class climate, 31, 43–45, 47, 50, 60, 66, 69, 74, 102, 106, 109, 141, 184, 186–187, 198, 199, 200, 212, 236 Climate Jobs Campaign, 186 Clinton, Hillary, 199 CNT-FAI. See Iberian Anarchist Federation Coca-Cola, 203 colonies, 88; colonization, colonialism, 91, 121–134, 200; countercolonization, 128. See also Bispo dos Santos, António

common sense, 250–251, 252–253, 254. See also hegemony commoning, 86, 157, 158, 175, 181, 184, 187 commons, the, 4, 84, 90, 113, 128, 131, 139, 256n1 communal living, 113–114, 214, 217 Community Economies, 85, 180–181. See also Gibson-Graham, J. K. consumption, 9, 21, 24, 42, 43, 44, 46, 53n4, 55, 62, 69, 71–72, 82n1, 89, 141, 180, 186, 198, 225–226, 228, 236; energy, 49; resource, 142 cooperation, 4, 108, 204, 219, 253 cooperatives, 8, 90, 112–113, 187, 188, 253 . See also Kropotkin, Pyotr cultural construction, 89, 123, 128, 129, 131, 168, 195, 196, 201–203, 231 culture, 21–22, 61, 64, 114–115, 116, 128, 130, 157, 197; consumer, 42, 49, 79; epistemic, 32, 33, 34, 35–36; local, 165–166; political, 219; popular, 102, 106, 108; scientific, 4; sustainability, 160; Turkish, 161 currency : alternative (community, local, complementary), 47, 144, 202, 204, 207n10; Chinese, 147; international, 148, 149, 205 d’Eaubonne, Franç oise, 85 Da Cunha, Euclydes, 123, 124 Dalla Costa, Maria Rosa, 182 Daly, Herman, 194, 195, 200 décroissance, 85 deep ecology, 216 deglobalisation, 152 degrowth, 56, 61–62, 62, 65, 66; definition of, 1, 101; multiplicity of, 4, 5; as political project, 5–6; political subjectivity of, 6, 9; and right-wing politics, 209–210, 210; and Russia, 102; transitions, 46–47. See also utopianism, nomadic; Paulson, Susan; Russia, and degrowth desire, 4, 8, 21, 26, 42, 227, 230, 252 devaluation, 137–138, 142–154 development, 69, 78, 124, 130; capitalist, 56, 61, 63, 73, 75, 79;

Index catching up, 104–106, 106–107, 121, 158; critique of, 85, 88, 114; economic, 1, 12, 24, 43, 77–78, 103, 123; human, 22; OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), 21; post-, 85, 122; sustainable, 85, 126; of technology, 42; uneven, 12, 138, 142, 145, 148, 149, 152, 156; and wellbeing, indicators, 6, 46, 92–94, 227, 233. See also Buffet Indicator; Genuine Progress Indicator developmentalism, 125–126, 128, 131, 132 diverse economies (diverse-economy approach), 3–4. See also GibsonGraham, J. K. doing, 233–234 Doyal, Len, 230 earthcare, 86 Ecodependence, 218, 219, 220 ecofeminism, 83, 84, 85, 87, 94, 98n1, 98n2, 178–179, 211, 218 ecological embeddedness, 233–234, 236 Ecological Footprint: Indicator, 210; Network, 199, 210 ecology, 44, 129, 158, 184, 196, 197, 203, 206n4; of culture, 114, 116; deep, 217; industrial, 216; political, 10, 35, 56–66, 87, 122, 124, 140, 183, 249; and Russia, 102, 109; and the Soviet Union, 103, 106; world, 179. See also Likhachyov, Dmitriy; Russia, and ecology; Soviet Union, and ecology economic anthropology, 194, 202, 206n2, 207n8. See also anthropology economics, 2, 8, 10, 17n2, 22, 23–28, 32, 34–35, 71, 160, 194, 195–201, 204; ecological, 10, 110, 139, 178, 179, 197, 218; energy, 110; environmental, 206n4; feminist, 83, 84, 86, 91, 178, 191n1, 218; and growth, 24; of happiness, 85, 137; neoclassical, 45, 70, 145, 206n4, 227, 228; neoliberal, 66. See also Podolinskiy, Sergei economy, 2–6, 23, 33, 40–41, 43, 45, 59, 60, 69, 71, 73, 76, 89, 91, 103, 116,

261

140, 145, 152, 162, 195–196, 201, 202, 206n2, 207n8, 213, 219, 225, 228, 230, 232, 235, 236–237, 246; alternative, 158, 188, 253; bio, 61, 65; capitalist, 48, 69; of care (“caring economy”), 86, 92, 221; Chinese, 141, 146–147; disembedded, 199; diverse. See Community Economies; GibsonGraham, J. K.; and ecology, 203; and ethics, 111, 114; green, 66, 185; industrialized, 72, 102; informal, 89; just and sustainable, 201–205; local, 158, 162, 165, 167, 168, 185; moral, non-monetary, 90, 94; of peasantry, 114; politicisation of, 4, 180; postgrowth, 83; Russian, 101, 108; and socialism, 110; solidarity, 158; South African, 148–152; Soviet, 103–104, 106; Steady State (Stationary State), 46, 80, 85, 139; sufficiency-based, 84; US, 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 31; village, 64, 217; war, 32; westernized, 252; world, global, 31, 42, 53n3, 90, 94, 196, 198. See also ethics; GeorgescuRoegen, Nicholas; Mellor, Mary; Solovyov, Vladimir ecosocialism, 57, 66, 152–153, 175, 184, 186–187 ecosocial policy, 235 eco-sufficiency, 85, 86, 210–211, 220 ecovillages, 47, 48, 49–50 ego, 230, 231 Elliott, Larry, 137–138 Engels, Friedrich. See Marx, Karl entropy, 35, 46, 85, 196, 207n9 Escobar, Arturo, 114, 116, 128 Espírito Santo da Silva, Maria do, 132 ethics, 11, 68n2, 86, 95, 111, 112, 228; more-than-human, 180 eudaimonic wellbeing, 230 Europe, 4, 30, 42, 58, 71, 90, 107, 140, 158, 167, 185, 193, 196, 200, 203, 206n1; and degrowth, 140, 245, 257n3; Eastern, 11; Southern, 85, 145. See also Russia; Soviet Union European : Commission, 209; Fascism, 210–216, 218; Feudalism, 217; Union, 6, 101; Parliament, 6, 224n1, 243

262

Index

extractive: frontier, 183; reserve (RESEX), Brazil, 125, 130–132, 179; technology, 59 extractivism, 12, 121–134, 139 FaDa. See Feminism and Degrowth Alliance Fanon, Frantz, 129 far-right, 13 Federici, Silvia, 182 feminism, 10, 65, 84, 91, 94. See also ecofeminism Feminism and Degrowth Alliance (FaDa), 83, 87 feminist ecological economics, 178, 179 feminist political ecology, 86, 178 feminist political economy, 3, 11, 86, 91, 177, 178. See also social reproduction fetish (character of capitalist production relations), fetishism, fetishization, 15, 22, 75–76, 196, 205; GDP, 152; growth, 22, 158, 195–199, 255; money, 13, 200 financial: Chinese system, 147; crisis, meltdown, 1, 93, 137, 145, 195, 200, 201; flows, 70, 146; regulation, 145; remuneration, 72; sector, system, 141, 144, 147, 148, 178, 195–196, 203–204 financialization, 65, 148 Fisher, Mark, 1. See also realism, capitalist flourishing, 101, 230, 230–231 Fordism, 2, 23, 71–72, 81, 184 Forrester, Jay W., 29–30 Foster, John Bellamy, 144, 154, 198. See also metabolic rift France, 215, 244 GDP, 1, 3, 90, 91, 94, 178, 185, 186–187, 188, 225; alternatives to, 93; feminist critique of, 90; goal, 108; in popular culture, 108; and Russia, 108, 109; as a topic of inquiry in economics, 24; and wellbeing, 237. See also Russia, and GDP Genuine Progress Indicator, 93. See also development, indicators

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, 35, 85, 86, 194, 195, 207n9 Germany, 211–212, 213, 215, 216, 220 Gibson-Graham, J. K., 3–4, 180. See also Community Economies; diverse economies globalisation, 194, 197, 198, 199, 207n5 Global North, 89 Global South, 89, 94, 139 Goldman, Emma, 85 good life, 4, 13, 89, 90, 94, 102, 104, 114, 115, 177, 230, 236 Gorz, André, 55–66, 85, 86, 111, 116, 176, 178, 194, 217 Gough, Ian, 230, 231 Gramsci, Antonio, 5, 6, 14, 244, 249, 249–251, 252, 254; gramscian theory of the state, 249, 252, 256. See also integral state Great Depression, 211, 220 Green Belt movement of Kenya, 178 Green New Deal, 152 Grosfoguel, Ramon, 128 Grossmann, Heinrich, 144 growth, economic (GDP), 1–14, 40–50, 101–117, 121, 140–141, 168, 179, 185, 187, 188, 204, 220; Acceleration Programme, Brasil. See Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC); and Amazonia, 121–134; and China, 146; critiques of, 62, 65–66, 68n13, 69–81, 137, 139–140, 195, 210, 225, 235; discourse, notion of, 21–36, 40–41, 122, 123, 127, 130, 132, 194; and the environment, 42–45; feminist critique of, 84, 90, 94, 140; fetish, 75–76, 158, 195–199; green (decoupling), 186, 201; imperative, mania, 56, 72–75, 183, 188, 201, 229, 237; industrial, 185; limits to, 1, 28, 58, 60, 61, 110, 114, 195; needs, 231; paradigm, naturalization of, 13, 21, 61, 70, 72, 76, 77, 80, 87, 102, 115, 226, 237; personal, 231; post-, 24, 83, 93, 188, 201, 225, 227, 232, 235, 241n1; realism, 1, 2, 5, 9, 186; and Russia, 103–107; society, 179, 183; and South Africa, 151; in Soviet culture, 104–106; and the Soviet

Index

263

Union, 107–109; and systems theory, 30; of tourism, 166; and Turkey, 158; zero or low, 62, 143–144. See also hegemony, of growth; Maslow, Abraham; Russia, and growth; Soviet Union, and growth Gudynas, Eduardo, 123

interest, 193, 202 Italy, 160, 162, 209, 211–212, 213, 215, 220

Hamilton, Clive, 28, 200 Harvey, David, 8, 53n5, 137, 145 having, 232, 233, 234, 236 hedonism, 152, 230 hegemony : of capital, 62, 79; economic, 246; Gramsci’s notion of, 250, 251, 252; of growth, 9, 21, 35, 70, 79; neoliberal, 245. See also common sense homo iunctus, 229 homo oeconomicus, 85, 218, 229 homosexual law reform, 91. See also Waring, Marilyn household : gendered, 94; unpaid, 91, 92, 94; work, 86, 88, 91 housewifisation, 89, 90 human exemptionalism, 231 humanist psychology, 231

Kallis, Giorgos, 5, 8, 62, 68n13, 86, 140, 142, 143, 153, 156n1, 194 Kapp, William, 178 Kenya. See Green Belt movement of Kenya Keynes, John Maynard, 211 Kopenawa, Davi, 128–129 Krenak, Ailton, 128, 131 Kropotkin, Pyotr, 112–113. See also cooperatives; mutual aid; nonhierarchy; work Kuznets, Simon, 10, 23–24, 120n4

Ianni, Octavio, 124 Iberian Anarchist Federation (CNTFAI), 187 ideology, 69–82, 200, 250; anarchist. See anarchism; of colonial expansion, 124, 126; fascist, 219; of growth, 122, 123, 134, 246; racialist, 213. See also race, racism Illich, Ivan, 62–63, 195 Ilva, 185. See also ArcelorMittal import-substitution policies, 212, 220 indigenous: cosmologies, 128; people, 92, 121–134. See also pluriverse Industrial Revolution, 197 inequalities: environmental, 12; global, 13, 193–205; socio-economic, 1, 46, 58, 77, 79, 82n1, 93, 121, 149, 161, 181, 193–205, 251 integral state, 6, 14, 244, 249–251, 252, 254, 255. See also Gramsci, Antonio interconnectedness, 231, 234

Jackson, Tim, 195, 200, 206n4 Jameson, Frederic, 1 Just Transition, 146, 184, 186–187, 191n8, 191n10

labour: alienation of, 176; cognitive/ digital, 181; environmentalism, 184–185; force (exploitation of), 130, 182, 183; ideas of, 10, 176, 180; as mediator of social metabolism, 183; nature/labour/value nexus, 65, 178, 181; organized, 175, 179–180, 183–184, 185–186, 187; political subjectivity of, 176–177, 184; politics, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188; reproductive, domestic, unpaid L., 91, 92, 94, 177, 178–180, 181; sexual division of, 87, 88, 179. See also work landless workers movement, Brazil. See MST Latouche, Serge, 8, 22, 42, 46, 85, 86, 138, 139, 142, 194, 247 Latour, Bruno, 199 Leonardi, Emanuele, 181 Leontieff, Vassily, 178 LETS, 207n10 liberalism, 194 liberation theology, 125 libertarian socialism, 187 Likhachyov, Dmitriy, 114. See also ecology, of culture limits, 235–236

264

Index

localization, 204 loving, 232, 233, 234 Löw, Christine, 84 Löwy, Michael, 154 Lucas Plan, 187–188 Lula, Luíz Inácio da Silva, 121 Luxemburg, Rosa, 88, 151 MAM. See Movimento Atingidos por Mineração, Brazil Mandela, Nelson, 148 Mandeville, Bernard, 194 Marx, Karl, 69–82, 194, 196, 197, 200, 202, 205, 206n3; and Engels, 8, 77, 78, 110 Marxism, 56, 57, 60, 61, 61–62, 110, 116; autonomist, 176–177, 182 Marxist feminism, 83, 90, 177. See also Social Reproduction Theory Maslow, Abraham, 228, 231 Mauss, Marcel, 194 maximum and minimum income, 253, 254. See also basic income Meadows, Donella H., 31, 139 Mellor, Mary, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206 Mendes, Francisco ‘Chico’, 131 meritocracy, 72 metabolic rift, 198 metabolic value, 179. See also Salleh, Ariel metabolism, social, 13, 56, 78, 176, 181, 183–184, 187–188, 204 Mies, Maria, 11, 85, 86, 87–91, 94–95, 98n2–98n5, 114, 116, 140, 179. See also Bielefeld School migrants, 93, 132, 151 model of transformation, 244, 254. See also Olin Wright, Erik money, 8, 13, 60; general-purpose, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201, 202, 206n2, 206n3; special-purpose, 202, 204 Moore, Jason, 179 morality, 112, 113, 114 Movimento Atingidos por Mineração, Brazil (MAM), 132–133 Movimento Trabalhadores Sem Terra, Brazil (MST), 130, 132–133 Muraca, Barbara, 85

mutual aid, 112. See also Kropotkin, Pyotr mystification (stepladder of), 75–76 Nascimento, Elimar Pinheiro de, 130 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), 23, 24 national economy, 91; and comparative analysis, 26; as unit of analysis, 25, 33 nationalism, 198, 201, 204, 219 natural capital, 139 naturalization (of capitalist growth), 75–76 nature, 59–60, 60–61, 64–65, 65 NBER. See National Bureau of Economic Research need: basic, 230, 232; categories of, 232–235; concept of, 227; intermediate, 232; satisfiers, 227, 228–229, 232, 234, 235–236 Negri, Antonio, 176 neoclassical economic theory, 196, 206n4 neocolonial, 84 neo-fascism, 209, 217–218, 221 neoliberalism, 198, 200, 207n5, 207n7 New Right, 209, 210, 215, 221. See also Nouvelle Droite non-dualism, 233 non-hierarchy, 112. See also Kropotkin, Pyotr nonviolence, 112, 113. See also Tolstoy, Lev; violence Nouvelle Droite, 209, 210, 215, 221 Oldak, Pavel, 114. See also growth, limits to Olin Wright, Erik, 8, 244, 248, 250. See also model of transformation other, 88, 92, 94 overconsumption, 151, 236 PAC. See Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento paradigm shift, 5, 231 partnership ethic, 85 Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), 125. See also liberation theology; church

Index patriarchy, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 124; and capitalism, 89, 94. See also sexual division of labour Paul, Saint, 194 Paulson, Susan, 4, 5. See also degrowth, multiplicity of peasant economy, 114. See also economy, of peasantry Picchio, Antonella, 83, 86 planetary boundaries, 233, 236 pluriverse, 4, 114, 116, 128. See also Escobar, Arturo Podolinskiy, Sergei, 110 Polanyi, Karl, 149, 194, 198, 202, 207n7 political ecology, 56, 60, 63, 65, 68n2 political economy, 1–2, 3; comparative, 10, 40–41, 49; critical, 10–11; of degrowth, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14; Marxist, 10–11, 138, 142, 143, 144, 153. See also feminist political eocnomy post-political, 158, 160 preferences, 227 primitive accumulation, 88 production, 2, 24, 29, 35, 38n2, 44, 45, 46, 58, 61, 64, 71–72, 72–75, 76–78, 80, 82n1, 89, 90, 104, 107, 111, 116, 144, 145, 177, 178–179, 181, 183, 186, 187, 188, 196, 198, 203, 207n6, 217; agriculture, 106, 109, 159, 213; collaborative, 8; costs of, 43; downscaling of, 225; energy, 48, 127, 186; factors of, 72; food, 49, 215; forces of, 176; hazards, 184; homebased, 47; import substitution, 213; iron, 125–126; of life, 89, 90, 178–179; limits of, 73, 92; localized, 4, 46; means of, 60, 73, 112, 147; meat, 127; modes of, 61, 62, 72, 73, 76–77, 80, 83, 139, 146; outsourcing, 141; overproduction, 10, 61, 84, 146, 152; point of, 175, 177, 183, 184, 188; relations of, 65, 113, 216; treadmill of, 2, 13, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188; work, 175, 177. See also Mies, Maria; social reproduction; subsistence Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC), 121, 126, 130, 131

265

progress, critique of, 114, 121–134 protectionism, 198, 199, 204 race, racism, 86, 123–127 Raworth, Kate, 200 realism: capitalist, 1; growth, 1–2, 5, 9, 62, 186. See also Fisher, Mark relational self, 231 relationality, 229, 231 religion, 111, 112. See also Solovyov, Vladimir; Tolstoy, Lev relocalisation, 209–210, 215, 217 reproduction, 57, 61, 65, 225. See also social reproduction Ribeiro da Silva, José Claudio, 132 RiMaFlow. See Workers’ Recuperated Companies Roussef, Dilma Vana, 121 ruralism, 213, 214, 215, 216 Russia, 11; and degrowth 102, 115, 117; and ecology, 102, 108, 109; and GDP, 108, 109; and growth, 103–107. See also degrowth, and Russia; GDP, and Russia; growth, and Russia Sahlins, Marshall, 194 Salleh, Ariel, 86, 138, 139 Schnaiberg, Allan, 183 Sedgwick, Eve. See weak theorising self-actualization, 231, 234 self-sufficiency, 13, 211–215; and closure, 210, 215–218, 219, 220; and fascism, 209, 210–218; as a masculinist value, 211, 218–219, 219; and scale, 209, 211, 215–218, 219, 220. See also autarky sexual division of labour, 87, 88 Seymour, John, 214, 216 Shanin, Teodor, 114 slow city, 158, 160 Smith, Adam, 194 social reproduction, 83, 85, 91, 177, 189 Social Reproduction Theory, 177, 179 socialism, 110, 139, 142, 152–154, 200, 201, 202; critique of, 111, 112 Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, 32 Soddy, Frederick, 200

266

Index

Solovyov, Vladimir, 111. See also economics; ethics; religion South Africa, 12, 113, 148–151 Soviet Union, 11, 211; demise of, 3; and ecology, 103, 106; and growth, 107–109. See also ecology, and the Soviet Union; growth and the Soviet Union Spain, 213, 215 Spangenberg, Joachim, 144 special-purpose money. See money state, 14, 243–255. See also integral state steady-state economy, 46, 85 subsistence, 114, 116; perspective, 84, 85, 88, 90, 94. See also BennholdtThomsen, Veronika; Chayanov, Alexander; Mies, Maria sufficiency, 210, 220, 228 survivalism, 219, 221 sustainability strong and weak, 45 sustainable communities, 47–49 Sustainable Welfare Index, 93 sustainable wellbeing, 226 systems: dynamics, 30–31; limits to, 35; theory, 22 Taranto, 185 technology, 42, 197; information, 66; and Jevons paradox, 44 thresholds, 231, 233 Tiv, 202 Tolstoy, Lev, 112 tourism, 158, 166 trade, 4, 210, 211 trade unions, 55, 57, 62, 64, 133, 183–184, 184, 185, 186, 187, 237. See also labour transition initiatives, 47 treadmill of production, 183. See also Schnaiberg, Allan Trinitary formula, 76 Trump, Donald, 199 Turkey, 12, 158 ubuntu, 83 United Nations (UN), 91, 129; UN Systems of National Accounts (UNSNA), 91 United States, 214, 221

United States Steel (USS), 125 UNSNA. See UN Systems of National Accounts USS. See United States Steel utopia, 7–8, 57, 60, 62, 63, 64; concrete, 8; critique of, 8; real utopias, 8 utopianism, 8–9; nomadic, 6, 9, 14. See also Bell, David Vale (Companhia Vale do Rio Doce), 125–127, 132–133, 136n4, 136n5, 136n12 value, 110, 113, 116, 197, 202, 203, 206n2, 207n8 La Via Campesina, 180 Victor, Peter, 200 violence: gender-based, 94. See also nonviolence wage, 58, 64 Wall Street, 203 wants, 227–228, 230 Waring, Marilyn, 84, 85, 90–93, 94, 98n2, 178 weak theorising, 3, 4 Weels, Kathi, 182 welfare, 91, 93, 226 welfare state, 225–226, 235 well-being, 13, 78, 93, 94; concept of, 226; multidimensional, 234, 235; relational, 230. See also Buen Vivir whitewashing, 123, 124. See also race, racism Wichterich, Christa, 84, 94 work, 8, 13, 110, 113; care, 92; ethic, 70–72, 176; gendered, 94; household, 86, 88, 91; informal, 89, 92; metaindustrial, 179, 189; migrant, 93; refusal of, 176–178; sexual division of labour, 87, 88; unpaid, 91, 92, 94; unwaged (nonwage labour), 176–177, 178; waged, 175, 176, 179, 180, 181, 182–189 Workers’ Recuperated Companies (WRC), 188 working class, 176, 181; environmentalism, 132, 184–185; community, 180 World Bank, 139, 147

Index WRC. See Workers’ Recuperated Companies

267

xenophobia, 145, 198, 199, 201, 209, 220

About the Contributors

Stefania Barca is Senior Researcher at the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. She holds a PhD in Economic History (1997) and has been a visiting scholar at Yale University (2005–2006), postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (2006–2008), and guest professor at Lund University (2015–2016). Her book Enclosing Water: Nature and Political Economy in a Mediterranean Valley, 1796–1916 (2010) won the Turku Environmental History Prize. Patrick Bond is Distinguished Professor of Political Economy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. His books include Elite Transition, Looting Africa, Against Global Apartheid, Uneven Zimbabwe, Talk Left Walk Right, Fanon’s Warning, Unsustainable South Africa and The Politics of Climate Justice. His geography doctorate was at Johns Hopkins University under David Harvey’s supervision. Hubert Buch-Hansen is a Political Economist who works as Associate Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research inter alia cross-fertilizes insights from critical political economy and growth-critical scholarship. His research on degrowth has, for instance, been published in Ecological Economics. Ekaterina Chertkovskaya is a Researcher in degrowth and critical organisation studies based at the Environmental and Energy Systems Studies Division at Lund University. She is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera – an independent open-access journal. She is also involved in the Institute for Degrowth Studies and co-organised the 6th International Degrowth Conference in Malmö in 2018. Giacomo D’Alisa is an Ecological Economist and Political Ecologist. His research interests range from waste management to environmental justice, from illegal waste trafficking to environmental crime. He promotes degrowth visions and is interested in exploring what a degrowth society centred on care and commons would look like. He is currently a Post-Doc at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra. When he drafted the chapter he wrote for this book, he was Senior Fellow at the Institute of Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia. 269

270

About the Contributors

Santiago Gorostiza is an Environmental Historian working on modern and early modern Spanish history, with training as a historian, environmental scientist and political ecologist. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Catia Gregoratti is a Lecturer in Politics and Development at Lund University. Her research is situated in the field of feminist international political economy. In recent years, she has conducted research and published on the neoliberalisation of feminism, particularly on the corporate-driven business case for gender equality and its contestation. Gökhan Gülbandılar is a Sociologist with a focus on sustainability and livelihoods. He conducted extensive socioeconomic research in Albania, Greece, Turkey, Denmark and Sweden. He currently works in Danish Refugee Council in Turkey, training practitioners on refugee livelihoods. Tuula Helne (PhD, social policy) is Senior Researcher and Editor-inChief of Research Publications at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela). Her publications in her current area of interest – well-being within planetary boundaries – include four books on sustainable wellbeing and ecosocial policy (in Finnish) and several articles on these topics in national and international journals. Tuuli Hirvilammi is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Policy and Sustainability Science based at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tampere University, Finland. Her research interests include sustainable well-being, eco-welfare state, ecosocial policies, degrowth and ecological economics. In addition to published journal articles, she has coauthored books on post-growth economy and sustainable well-being in Finnish. Alf Hornborg is Anthropologist and Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University. His research connects economic anthropology, environmental history, ecological economics, and political ecology, focusing on global justice and sustainability. He is the author of The Power of the Machine (2001), Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange (2011), Global Magic (2016) and Nature, Society and Justice in the Anthropocene (2019). Mine Islar is Senior Lecturer at Lund University Center for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). Her research interests are political ecology of energy and water, environmental justice, social movements and degrowth. Her recent publications are on cooperativism and municipal movements in Europe. She also acts as a scientific expert for the UN Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

About the Contributors

271

Max Koch is Sociologist and Professor in Social Policy at Lund University. His research addresses issues of capitalist restructuring and how these impact on social structures, welfare institutions and the environment. His articles on degrowth have appeared in journals such as Ecological Economics, Global Environmental Change, Futures, Journal of Social Policy, Environmental Values and the Real-World Economics Review. Emanuele Leonardi is a Researcher in Sociology and Political Ecology based at the Centre for Social Studies at Coimbra University. He is interested in environmental labor studies, climate justice movements and working-class environmentalism. His articles on these issues have appeared in journals such as Ecological Economics, ephemera, Globalizations, Sociologia del lavoro and Variations - revue international de théorie critique. Felipe Milanez is Associate Professor at the Institute for Humanities, Arts and Science ‘Professor Milton Santos’, at the Federal University of Bahia, and Member of the Multidisciplinary Graduate Program of Culture and Society. He is a political ecologist, activist and researcher with a background in journalism and documentary filmmaking. His research interests are decolonization, commons and Latin American political ecology. Alexander Paulsson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics and Management at Lund University. Being trained in history, political science and business studies, his research interests are interdisciplinary, spanning organization studies, science and technology studies, as well as ecological economics. In his work, he has contributed to the critique of economic growth as a policy objective, not least through his involvement in the Institute for Degrowth Studies. Riya Raphael is currently a PhD student in the Department of Gender Studies at Lund University. Her doctoral thesis revolves around the changing notions of value within the context of informal economy in India. Her research interests include political economy, feminist economics, Marxist theory, postcolonial theory and queer theory.

About the Editors

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya is a Researcher in Degrowth and Critical Organisation Studies based at Lund University and a member of the editorial collective of ephemera journal. Alexander Paulsson is Senior Lecturer at Lund University School of Economics and Management. Stefania Barca is an Environmental Historian and Senior Researcher in the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra.

273