Degrowth vs. Talk nice and vague about the collapse
Editors note: This article is part of our Thematic Focus “Degrowth, the word”.
The Brundtland Commission issued their famous report Our Common Future in 1987 with which they popularized the idea of sustainable development. The report sold over 1 million copies. Sustainable development was supposed to be an inspiring concept for governments and economic leaders to find ways to make capitalism compatible with the environment. 38 years later the idea of sustainable development is as dead as a fried fish because not only development has not spread fair and square to all nations, but humans have managed to breach 7 of the 9 planetary boundaries, including ocean acidification. We are in a much worse situation than four decades ago.
This is what happens when positive-sounding concepts are used to attempt solutions to hard problems. Many other concepts have been invented ever since. Just to name a few: green growth, ecomodernism, circular economy, wellbeing economics, doughnut economics. Some of these concepts contain the seeds of some challenges to capitalism, but they do not make it obvious at the first glance, and maybe not even at the second glance.
This is why the concept of degrowth was created. To finally tell it like it is, loud and clear. Degrowth says that the levels of production and consumption must be reduced so human activity comes back within planetary boundaries. This reduction has to be done carefully, selectively, democratically, fairly in the spirit of justice for all humans. The end goal of degrowth is to create a good standard of living for everyone.
Cognitive dissonance
Like any new concept that highlights a hard problem instead of flashing a vague vision, degrowth is still a tough concept to swallow because it messes with our cognitive dissonance which happens when we try to hold conflicting ideas in our mind such as being an animal lover and eating meat, voting for a politician with whom you don’t agree, or smoking while knowing it’s bad. That is what degrowth does to the brain of many.
Some may ask: What do you mean degrowth? You don’t want personal development? You don’t want progress and abundance? You want poverty? Again, degrowth is about a reduction in production and consumption with a specific goal: to bring back economies within planetary boundaries. It is the opposite of austerity. This reduction will affect some standards of living of high-consuming humans (read: rich) but not towards poverty but towards a higher quality of living that is compatible with the regeneration capacity of the environment. Yes, this means eliminating material excesses of both consumption and production.
Value systems and change
Nice and vague concepts such as sustainable development have the wonderful quality (I am being ironic here) that they may allow readers to take away an understanding of the concept that is compatible with their value systems. Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney really took the notion to heart and wanted to make Canada a global champion of sustainable development after the Brundtland report was published. Good intentions, no meaningful change in government policy. Canada has a much worse environmental record today than 40 years ago.
This happened precisely because the concept was vague and did not allow systemic change. There was too much at stake for the ruling elites and business-as-usual. But, complex societies can collapse all the time. They can decay on their own (think the Roman Empire) with some external pressure from outside, or they are changed intentionally from within (think the collapse of the Soviet Union). Not talking clearly about the need to change the system implies we are okay with keeping business-as-usual.
Capitalism vs the ecosystem
To repeat loud and clear, the catastrophic predicament we are in (climate crises, biodiversity loss, migrations, inequality, poverty, wars) is caused by capitalism. And to be even clearer I will repeat what I mean by capitalism, because capitalism is also a vague concept that is understood and misunderstood in many ways.
Capitalism is the economic system where the regime of power is linked to regime of property through the doctrine of proportionality, the regime of property is linked to the regime of capital through the doctrine of dispossession, and the regime of capital is linked to the regime of power through the doctrine of hierarchies, while the entire mechanism is pushed to expand without limit for the purpose of capital accumulation.
The more property you have the more power you yield in society. An example: one share equals one vote in all capitalist corporations. Property is taken with our without consent to be turned into productive capital. Examples: indigenous lands, personal data. Capital is controlled only by those with power. Examples: unelected executive hierarchies in all corporations.
Being a cancer-like economic system, capitalism cannot stop until it devours the entire organism. It needs compound growth of profit to be stable and leads to overproduction.This is why billionaires want to take this model into the solar system because Earth is depleted.
It’s all about clear policies
Folks who may not be able to overcome their cognitive dissonance about the word degrowth can think about the idea of reduction of production and consumption. If the word reduction is still difficult to accept then they may think about economic diet. If economic diet is still a problem, they may try a healthy social metabolism.
Do you notice that the more vague the concept the more distant it becomes from the actual problem? Should we define cancer as “overambitious cells going above and beyond their job description”? We could think of degrowth as capitalism in remission, because that’s what we want to do to it: shrink it to restore the health of society.
How do we separate wheat from the chaff? By demanding clear policies that can be implemented by governments, and behaviors that can be adopted by citizens. Here is a starter package: (1) limits on wealth, and limits on production and consumption, for example having maximum wealth at around 5 million dollars, phasing out SUVs, fast fashion, industrial beef, frequent flying and so on; (2) a Universal Basic Income that would give immediately all humans a sufficient level of income, guaranteed for a minimum decent standard of living; (3) Universal Basic Services that would guarantee all humans free access to basic health care, free access to clean water, free access to quality education; and (4) a Job Guarantee that will offer good paying jobs for anyone interested with the aim to build resilient communities that live within planetary boundaries.
David Suzuki was a fierce critic of the Brundtland Report because it allowed co-optation by business-as-usual and was ineffective at bringing change. The David Suzuki Foundation has sponsored the creation of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Canada for which I have consulted a few times. It was a great experience! I learned the importance of words and how difficult it is to navigate cognitive dissonance. I realized how incredibly difficult it is for many Canadians to accept they live a life of material privilege. It is also difficult for those who have been robbed by the system not to think they will be robbed again even more by whatever new fancy economic theory, including degrowth. We must plow through these confusions and difficulties. Business-as-usual cannot continue. We need degrowth to survive this century.
Photo credit: Vlad Bunea. Partially sourced from explore.degrowth.net