The Question of Growth: A review of “Less is More”

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By Andy Douglas

Economic growth, especially as charted by GDP, has long been the conventional measuring stick for the health of an economy, but in recent years the glaring inadequacies and drawbacks of growth for its own sake have become quite clear. One current proposed corrective to this is the concept of degrowth.

 When I first heard about the idea of degrowth, particularly as promoted by Jason Hickel in his book Less is More, I wondered whether it rejected all kinds of growth outright. I felt that some growth,  not extractive and destructive growth, but wise and rational growth, was not only important for any economy, but also unavoidable, as any creation or addition of value through production will mean some growth. But this is an important distinction: not growth for those who already have more than enough, but growth to help the poor reach more parity. Growth that leads to a balanced economy and ecology.

Now that I have read Hickel’s book, I can say that, indeed, Hickel does recognize the need for certain kinds of growth, while reminding us of the destructive nature of growth at any cost.

But let’s look at where the “ideology of growth” has gotten us.

The goal of capitalism isn’t to produce for use or pleasure or consumption, but to make a profit. The only way to generate enough surplus for investors, Hickel writes, is to make  greater profit every year. Natural resources are plundered, air and water fouled, and human needs ignored in this search for ever-more profit. And the measurement of this production is skewed. If you grow your own food or care for your aging parents, Gross Domestic Product doesn’t count that. GDP is only an artificial way to measure profitable growth without factoring in the negatives. The real costs are often hidden.

We all know about the impacts of climate change, especially in the global South, where more drought and rising temps are causing diseases. We’re now pressing up against the limits of our planet’s carrying capacity: biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, chemical pollution and ozone depletion. We’re entering an age of mass extinction, with critical feedback loops and tipping points. So it’s even more important that the ideology of destructive growth be reversed.

I agree with Hickel that new technology will not necessarily save us, if it relies upon the same mindset that got us into trouble in the first place – that the planet is a set of materials to be subdued and exploited at an ever-increasing rate. Smaller, human-scale communities, businesses, and local economies need to be encouraged, stepping back from more and more production and global supply chains.

I especially appreciated the historical perspective Hickel provides. He underscores the underpinnings of capitalism, how Francis Bacon, for example, cast nature and matter as disordered and chaotic, a beast to be restrained. This plays directly into the mindset of exploitation. We humans need to see ourselves as part of an interconnected web, not as dominant extractors.

Capitalism and private property are too often presented as the result of natural evolutionary processes. But Hickel demonstrates in a fascinating prelude how things really evolved. In 1400’s Europe, as feudalism fell apart, free peasants began to build an egalitarian, cooperative society rooted in principles of local self-sufficiency. Wages rose. 

The bourgeoisie, unable to abide this egalitarian movement, forced the peasants off their land in violent evictions. The commons – those collectively managed pastures, forests and rivers that had sustained rural communities – were, for the first time, fenced off and privatized. This process was known as enclosure. Millions were basically forced into the cities. Economists have always recognized that some kind of initial asset accumulation was necessary for the rise of capitalism. Adam Smith claimed it came about because a few people worked hard and saved. Actually, it was a process of plunder. Industrial capitalism took off but at extraordinary human cost.

In other parts of the world, colonization and slavery also created enclosure and capital accumulation, creating a net drain from poor countries to rich countries that continues to today.

Hickel (and others) suggest we decouple GDP from resource use, since GDP does not reflect the resources used in other countries to produce the goods we import and use.

Freed from the ideology of growth, we can focus on innovation to improve wellbeing. Organize the economy around the needs of humans, not the other way around.

He makes a number of suggestions to move us toward such an economy. Invest in social policy to guarantee healthcare, education, water, housing. Land reform so small farmers have access to the resources they need to thrive. Tariffs and subsidies to encourage domestic industries. Decent wages, labor laws, and a progressive distribution of national income. Economies built around renewable energy and ecological restoration. 

These are all good suggestions. However, do they go far enough? A socioeconomic program like the Progressive Utilization Theory (Prout), for example, would go to the root of things and recommend democratically restructuring the entire economy so that workers control their own workplaces. The Prout model clearly lays out a practical, holistic, economic balance, with its  prescription for small-scale private businesses, cooperatives, and government-run levels (the three-tier economy), and a grounding in a spiritual outlook, as expressed by the Neohumanist philosophy which calls for the expression of love and respect for all beings as the root of society.

 Supporters of Proutist, I think, would also agree with Hickel on the need for a cap on wealth, with the surplus to be funneled into truly positive human growth. 

This would be a growth we can all get behind. 

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