Business as usual, or positive degrowth: part two, degrowth

When discussing the ‘success’ of any organism on Earth, biologists may refer to the concept of its ‘evolutionarily stable strategy’, or ESS. This is an indication of for how long any particular species has survived in harmony and equilibrium with its chosen environment. Amongst the leaders would be sharks, who have existed more or less unchanged for about 450 million years, whereas crocodiles, for example, are relative newcomers at about 95 million years.

By contrast, the human genus ‘Homo’ has been on Earth for less than three million years and our own ‘sapiens’ species for around one-tenth of that, and as ‘civilised humans’ a mere 1% or so of our own species’ existence. Global capitalism, as described above, took off in a big way only about four to five hundred years ago, and already we humans find ourselves facing a number of severe existential crises.

We are a very long way from achieving any sort of ESS, and this is not a mere scientific whimsy; unless we do find a stable relationship with our one and only planet, our expectations of a long and lasting occupation of it may prove to be seriously premature. It may seem an obvious statement to make, but if humanity is to survive in the long term and to exist harmoniously with the Earth, then all forms of warfare, military activity and wasteful consumption must cease. It is recognised that we are a very long way from achieving this basic goal.

Decommodification, deaccumulation and decolonisation

Degrowth, as an economic and political philosophy, has been around for a few decades, and one of its principal advocates would be Professor Jason Hickel who is associated academically with a number of universities worldwide. He has written extensively on the subject, in particular: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. The topic has also been pursued in numerous articles by the American journal, ‘Monthly Review’, (the July/August 2023 issue is devoted exclusively to it) from which it may be inferred that what follows is merely the most condensed of outlines.

Three essential prerequisites will need to be negotiated internationally. These are:

• . Decommodification
• . Deaccumulation
• . Decolonisation.

The first asks for the essentials of civilised existence for all humans to be taken out of the marketplace; to be provided as rights and not as sources of profit.

The second argues against the accumulation of private wealth for its own sake; the world now has record numbers of millionaires and billionaires.

The third requires any nation with ambitions to extend its hegemony to other nations to cease to do so, and to recognise the right of each group of people to self-determination.

part one when published

The aims of degrowth

Jason Hickel’s own description of the aims of degrowth, as he defines in his ‘Sustainable Development Index: Measuring the Ecological Efficiency of Human development in the Anthropocene’ are as follows:

1. “Degrowth is a planned coherent policy to reduce ecological impact, reduce inequality and improve well-being.
2. “Degrowth has a discriminating approach to reducing economic activity. It seeks to scale down ecologically destructive and socially less necessary production, while expanding socially important sectors like healthcare, education, care and conviviality.
3. “Degrowth introduces policies to prevent unemployment, and indeed even to improve employment, such as by shortening the working week, introducing a job guarantee with a living wage, and rolling out retraining programmes to shift people out of sunset sectors.
4. “Degrowth seeks to reduce inequality and share national and global income more fairly, such as with progressive taxation and living wage policies.
5. “Degrowth seeks to expand universal public goods and services, such as health, education, transportation and housing, in order to decommodify the foundational goods that people need in order to lead flourishing lives.
6. “Degrowth is part of a plan to achieve a rapid transition to renewable energy, restore soils and biodiversity, and reverse ecological breakdown.”

The objectives of degrowth

To rephrase those theoretical concepts into practical policies, we could write a list of objectives for degrowth, which would include the following:

1. To secure control of industrial production with the aim of getting rid of planned obsolescence; that is, goods which are designed to degrade rapidly or subject to regular changes of fashion. Uncontrolled consumption of any variety is incompatible with degrowth.
2. Industrial production also needs to be planned to break up monopolies and to favour more localisation and more cooperative models of manufacture.
3. Working hours need drastically to be reduced, while ensuring fair wages and the elimination of the enormous discrepancies of income across the globe.
4. In order to achieve universal fairness of recompense for workers performing the same or equivalent task worldwide, there will need to be allocated significant resources, which must come from the extravagant accumulations acquired by the very few.
5. Urban planning is vital to ensure that local labour forces can exist and a fair balance achieved between rural and urban communities; again this is a global objective.

Degrowth has been described as impossibly idealistic and unattainable. Under current global conditions, this may now be the case. But the need for an ESS is clear, and unless humanity starts to consider how it might achieve this and begin the debate with itself, then the future, and our current trajectory, may continue to look very bleak indeed.