"The Future Is Degrowth" - 2. Economic Growth
Growth, as interconnected ideas, is today almost ubiquitous and largely unchallenged. In the book, growth is analyzed as core feature of capitalism.
Growth: materialization of dynamic of accumulation.
Three interlinked processes:
Growth as an idea: belief that it's natural, necessary and good. Linked to progress and emancipation.
Growth as a social process: Set of social relations resulting from and driving capitalist accumulation.
Growth as a material process: ever expanding use of land, resources and energy.
But these dynamics of expansion are reaching their limits because they undermine ecological, social and political foundation on which they're based.
Growth as an idea
The term "economic growth" has been used only since middle of 20th century (GDP invented in 1930's). Since then, growth = "desirable, necessary and infinite" has become "common sense". How do the growth paradigm build on growth as a social and a material processes, going back at least to colonization and early capitalism?
The invention of "the economy"
GDP created in 1930's: technical object that crystallizes "the economy". This became a much-used measure of prosperity. But GDP has been criticized: it only measures the monetary value of goods and services produced through gainful employments.
- It does not distinguish between the positive/negative effects of these products/services on well-being of society.
- This makes what's not paid for invisible: housework, care, voluntary work and not included.
Economists criticized GDP as single metric but the UN and the OECD governments needed to streamline and to manage membership and aid payments, so they unified / standardized GDP.
The growth paradigm
In the 1950's, growth is at the forefront of government goals. It's used to compare productivity of economics (US vs USSR economies). Hegemony of growth transformed state's tasks, its purpose (ie. to facilitate the economy) and legitimacy (ie. linked to growth of economy).
Growth helped to overcome the political focus on equality and redistribution, depoliticizing the economy. "As long as there is growth, there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable" (it's presented not as a zero-sum game, but as a win-win situation):
- It justifies contemporary relations of power and hierarchy.
- By linking ideas of emancipation and progress to economic growth, the growth paradigm became normative ideal of modernity.
Growth as a social process
Growth is a more than GDP increase. It's also a set of social relations resulting from capitalist accumulation.
Unleashing capital: the dynamics of accumulation
Analysis of capitalism that has shaped the degrowth debate:
- starts with rise of capitalist enterprises in the context of colonialism.
- centers other processes related to commodification and appropriation of nature and care, processes of devaluation, cheapening and externalization, and to the dynamic stabilization of capitalist society through growth.
A bit of history
Practical treatment of all things and livings being as comparable, interchangeable and tradable, as well as the mechanistic understanding of nature based on linear thinking, were consolidated in colonialism:
- 17th century: these ideas were reformulated: linear narrative of progress divided people into "civilized" and "primitive" based on racist metrics. Legitimized colonial expansions.
- 20th century: linear narrative was economized, as general social progress conflated with expansion of production.
Growth as dynamic stabilization
Sustained dynamics of growth enabled successful social and political struggles. Standards of living better. Material prosperity. But the promise of future growth made inequalities seem acceptable.
Emancipation movements went hand-in-hand with the dynamics of fossil fuel-powered growth: increasing production created surpluses and thus facilitated struggles for the distribution of wealth, the shortening of working hours. Within the growth paradigm, societal progress became conflated with GDP growth, and this has laid foundation for a powerful "common sense", based on lived experience, that social improvements do indeed require economic growth and the development of the productive forces (this has shaped outlook of part of the left).
As long as continuous growth has the capacity to mediate contradictions between capital and labor through the redistribution of production and surplus, then this "common sense" will last, but it will eventually erode, as contradictions are visibly displaced towards the South.
Growth as a material process
It's about the accelerating movement and use of more and more resources, energy, land, consumable goods and resulting waste.
Accumulation as biophysical growth
Growth is also experienced as the accumulation of stuff, ever larger cities (urban sprawl), etc. Growth needs to sustain infrastructures and material artifacts that humans have built (which require energy, etc).
This means that growth requires continuous throughput of energy and matter. It's hard to escape the necessary materiality of economic growth.
The great acceleration and ecological crises
Famous "great acceleration" graphs show that sustained growth is a relatively new phenomenon. "Anthropocene" was therefore coined, but some people prefer "capitalocene" or "growthocene" (ie. mode of (re)production is based on growth). But these trajectory of growth cannot continue (see 1972's "Limits to growth" + reviews that confirm findings).
In 2009, nine planetary boundaries are defined. They're the thresholds beyond which there's unpredictable ecological breakdown. Five have already been crossed: we've exceeded the "safe operating space for humanity". Significance of these boundaries are sometimes contested as people around the world are affected differently. They're still good indicators.
This means that GHG emissions need to be reduced to zero in less than three decades (and even so, tipping points could still be reached then).
But there's a clear evidence now that process of material expansion is running up against multiple limits today (one sign is rising social resistance against the ideology of growth).
The end of growth?
To keep 3% growth per year (what's considered "normal" in economics and public discourse) forever is impossible. It's impossible because of ecological, social and material limits imposed on growth.
Material dimension of growth is interwoven with the social process of accumulation. "Green growth" (decoupling) claims otherwise, but there's a lack of evidence that it can be a thing: it's not enough, and growth is sending us over the cliff.
For a transition to a degrowth society, all three dimensions of growth must be addressed.