Growth and degrowth - revolutionary approaches to saving the planet and making a happier future

Economic growth is central to the ideology of modern capitalism. In capitalist economies, growth is usually related to a measurement known as Gross Domestic Product, GDP, defined as the value of all goods and services purchased in a country over a specified period. Growth is said to occur if this value increases, and most nation states are obsessed that this happens, year by year. But this says nothing about whether spending was necessary, or who did the spending. Consumption of any goods or services, whether needed or not, contributes to growth. Growth and degrowth - revolutionary approaches to saving the planet and making a happier future

ORGANISE! for revolutionary anarchism
Magazine of the Anarchist Federation
Autumn/Winter 2006 - Issue 67

"It is a disquieting reality that even though there has been increased economic growth for many years now in the Western world, a serious proportion of the population is worse off, few are actually benefiting while a tiny number are seriously better off."

This statement was made in 1997 by Green economist Richard Douthwaite and led off his article Good Growth and Bad Growth, which distills points he made in a book The Growth Illusion. But does anything exist that can be described as good growth? This article investigates the idea of growth and in particular looks at the spread of interest amongst both reformists and revolutionaries in France (including the French Anarchist Federation) in the idea of Decroissance that can be translated alternately as `degrowth', `ungrowth', or `retreat'.

Economic growth is central to the ideology of modern capitalism. In capitalist economies, growth is usually related to a measurement known as Gross Domestic Product, GDP, defined as the value of all goods and services purchased in a country over a specified period. Growth is said to occur if this value increases, and most nation states are obsessed that this happens, year by year. But this says nothing about whether spending was necessary, or who did the spending. Consumption of any goods or services, whether needed or not, contributes to growth.

It has never been clearer that growth is at the expense of the well-being of most people on earth and the planet itself. Most of us do not have a say in what is produced from the Earth's resources, because the land and means of production are owned by a minority of individuals. Shareholders of companies do not usually care and are certainly not encouraged to think about the consequences of `getting a good return' on their investments. The idea of the consumer in developed countries also depends on spending being good, whatever it is on, without a care about waste of energy or raw materials, or the working conditions of the people who provide the items or service. Consumer goods pushed by marketing and advertising campaigns all contribute to GDP whether or not they are really needed. Money spent on destroying the environment (like cutting down trees for profit), and even money spent cleaning up oil-spills, all contribute to this insane measure of monetary value since it all makes profit for someone. For the technologically `advanced' nation states, making war abroad is especially good for growth because it involves spending huge amounts money on weapons that quickly become obsolete if they are not used, and especially if they ensure their corporations get the contracts for rebuilding the damage (as is the case for UK and US companies in Iraq). Perceived insecurity at home from the `war on terror' is also a boon for the economy, as this helps companies sell surveillance technologies, fingerprinting machines, ID databases and the like.

The great lie of the free market is that everyone benefits from growth due to the so-called `trickle-down' effect. In fact there is a growing rate of consumption by the rich and middle classes in the developed countries, whilst the rest of us, whether we are the workers (or unemployed) in those countries or part of the poor majority in the `developing' world actually have access to very little of the world's wealth. Ecologists are fond of telling us that for everyone to consume at the same rate as the US, we'd need several Earths just to grow enough food, never mind the energy required and the effect of energy use on global warming. Put another way, the `ecological footprint' of most developed countries, and especially the cities within them, is much much bigger that the size of the land mass of those countries. It is only by poorer countries producing food and through irreversible damage to the environment that average consumption per person in richer countries can be so great. If the rich and middle classes of the rest of the world start to consume at this rate, the damage would only increase (this is the often quoted fear of Chinese and Indian industrial development).

The idea that if countries get richer by increasing GDP everyone will benefit to some degree has been challenged by some economists over the last few decades and some have come up with alternative measures to GDP. Measures such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) attempt to capture the effects of disregard for people and the environment in the endless search for increased profits that contribute to growth. They attempt to include the effects of unemployment caused by companies automating production, for example. What these newer measures show is that whilst globalisation has helped increase growth in the rich economies as indicated by higher and higher GDPs, other measures like the ISEW have gone down very sharply since the 1970s (even in Australia, Germany and the UK) and gaps in average wealth between rich and poor people, and between rich and poor countries, are getting greater.

In France, Decroissance (degrowth) is an idea that has raised considerable interest in the French Anarchist Federation recently. It has its origins in a 1979 book by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen "La Decroissance" which is related to his `bioeconomic' theory. On the more popularist side, there is a bi-monthly paper Decroissance published by Casseurs de Pub which has an anti-consumerist `more is not better' theme that rails against packaging of vegetables, 5-blade Gillette razors, advertising brands in schools and cars (including Formula 1 racing), similar to the Adbusters approach.

The central idea of Decroissance, similar to the one that gives rise to the need for sustainability indices, is that perpetual increase in economic indicators like GDP are not sustainable by the ecosystem of the Earth. It has four principles:

* 1. The current economic system depends on limited resources; but raw material and energy are fundamentally constrained by scientific principles (second law of thermodynamics)
* 2. Economic growth and ecological impacts are tightly coupled.
* 3. The goods and services produced by economies are not the only wealth; quality of life (joie de vivre), social relations, equality and justice are other kinds of wealth.
* 4. Companies do not take into account the poverty of consumer products related to quality of life.

Decroissance then is about moving from unsustainable economic growth to a reduction of growth in money terms, whilst increasing quality of life and other kinds of `wealth'. It is about simple living and localisation of production and consumption, in opposition to a globalised economy. It also fits well with the anti-development views of many greens like Edward Golding, founder of the Ecologist magazine, who argues that economic development of the third world countries actually creates poverty for most of the people who live in them. Capitalists see poverty reduction coming from increased spending power, but this says nothing about who in developing countries gets to do the spending of money made by the brokers of deals with multinationals, IMF loans, or bilateral trade agreements with rich nations like the US, which always come with heavy strings attached. Even the notion of `sustainable development' is debunked by ecologists, especially as this has become so twisted by governments and multinational companies, who want us to believe they can solve the world's environmental problems by developing `greener' technologies like hybrid cars, or by increasing use of nuclear power instead of fossil fuels, without affecting economic growth.

Anti-growth views are challenging to social-democrats and marxists who argue that growth is only bad in the wrong hands, that people are only starving and disease-ridden because of unfair distribution. All it needs is a restructuring of society and the problem is solved! On the other hand, the idea of Decroissance seems to side with a much more negative and even catastrophist outlook about the world, supported by other contemporary theories like `Peak Oil' which predicts that a slow down in the rate of global oil production is inevitable in the next couple of decades which will have a huge effect on the world economy. James Lovelock, the somewhat crazed British scientist of `Gaia' fame, also sees the need for `sustainable retreat' but warns that its already gone so bad that `civilisation' will have to plan to defend itself against the disasters and scarcity created by global meltdown, which he thinks will result in `tribal' warfare. The logic of this is we'd better get ready to deny entry to flooded-out Bangladeshi refugees unless they have something useful to offer `our' European democracies, because that will be the only hope of maintaining stability in the face of environmental collapse.

It all seems a bit gloomy. So why are social anarchists in France interested in this kind of theory now? In Britain, ecological ideas and environmental activism have been around for long time on the radical agenda and crossed over significantly into anarchist circles in the 1990s before predictions of global catastrophe really hit the mainstream (at least, wildlife TV presenter David Attenborough admitted he was only recently convinced that global warming was a real phenomenon). It is probably true to say that environmentalism has influenced anarchism less quickly in France, and it has emerged at a time when global warming and fuel crises are becoming discussed more widely. More generally, anti-globalisation sentiment in France is in part a response to threats to the domestic economy such as pressure by the World Trade Organisation to remove farming subsidies that support local production of food (WTO talks failed to reach agreement because neither US nor France want to remove there own). It is therefore no surprise that Jose Bove, the farmer who became a media icon over his anti-McDonalds and WTO activism, is also a supporter of Decroissance.

On the other hand, much of the British environmental movement has not yet realised the need for non-statist solutions and can be quite individualist and moralistic. One important aspect of French anarchist views on Decroissance is that living `lightly' does not have to equate to austerity and overpowering morality and libertarians "do not want to see totalitarian management of Decroissance driven by new Green Khmers", a reference to overbearing communist control in Cambodia. From the "habit of a nun we could make a hell of a lot of g-strings", they say! They also make the point that although individuals taking the initiative to live a greener lifestyle is laudable e.g. buying goods that don't have to travel so far (French wine springs to mind!), this is not a solution to over-consumption and energy waste because so much of this comes directly as a result of government policies on military spending, transportation and agriculture which are all materials and energy intensive. Governments who create public campaigns to get us to save electricity and water are complete hypocrites, and the middle class desire for a more eco-friendly and ethical, but still market-led, economic system is a dead-end.

The French anarchists are also fiercely anti-work - work being not only the driver for much of the wasteful consumption in our society, but also part and parcel of our class-divided society. Anarchist communists, although we are not anti-technology, are in favour of creating simpler devices and tools that do not leave power in the hands of experts. We also want to show how cities and transportation have arisen to support capitalist economies based on industry and trade, and how a future anarchist society could be so much better. These are good reasons to be against complex technological so-called solutions to global warming. It is also clear that a move away from intensive animal rearing is the only way that food can be produced sustainably, since meat-eating requires huge amounts of land, plus food and water for the animals. And we have no desire for workers to self-manage mobile phone factories if we don't need mobile phones. Taking all these ideas together, the logic of revolutionary Decroissance, if such exists, is not about a slow retreat, but about destruction of both work and economies as we know them, including industrial factories and agri-business. In this sense there really isn't anything that could be described as `good' growth. Class struggle must be central to revolutionary Decroissance because without it, we might forget to see that we have common interests with workers and peasants in developing countries like India and China, and instead be taken in by bogus arguments about over-population or perhaps feel threatened or even morally outraged by the effects of their rapid industrialisation. Instead we need to concentrate on forcing degrowth at home, by refusal of work and attacking the basis of capitalism - ownership of land and resources, and the powers that result from this - and create solidarity with workers who are struggling for better lives abroad.

Read the AF's pamphlet on Ecology and class struggle: Where there's Brass, there's Muck, available from our usual address.

http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue67/decroissance_growth_and_degrowth.html