Why degrowth eco-socialism?

The case for a better future

“Growth” under capitalism is a bit of a misnomer: it’s the correct word, just not the correct usage. Capitalist growth is better understood as “a growth,” that is to say, “an abnormal proliferation of tissue (such as a tumor),” rather than the implied meaning, “progressive development.” That is because capitalism has a single, completely amoral value: profit maximization. It is incapable of caring about anything else, and it does not pause even if the consequences of capitalist growth threaten capitalism itself, such as in the case of climate collapse.

As a result, capitalist growth and human needs only align incidentally: if capitalism creates things that humans require—food, clothing, shelter—this is not because humans need them, but because they offer the highest possible return on capital invested under specific circumstances (all investment options are not available to all capitalists, so while higher returns may be possible elsewhere, they are not accessible to all; this is a key reason why “the rich get richer.”) As a consequence, there is no inherent alignment between capital’s lone priority—maximizing profit—and human priorities: subsistence, joy, a viable biosphere, etc.

The result is immense, unnecessary suffering and degradation: billions starve because preserving their lives is not more profitable than investing in guns; water is made undrinkable because doing so improves stock prices; our air is poisoned to keep industrial firms afloat; our lives are made meaningless and empty in pursuit of someone else's profits. Ultimately, capitalism is a doomsday machine, the architect of its own destruction and ours, too. Like a tumor, it never stops growing, robotically creating unneeded tissue that eventually kills its host and itself. This is our fate if we do not stop capitalism.

“Progressive development” means the continual improvement of the human condition, and that is what we are really after. Post-capitalist “growth” (meaning the expansion of human activity) is necessary to an extent to support progressive development in some instances—medicine, education, and recreation, to name a few—but not in others. Capitalism has underdeveloped various spheres of human activity because of the distortions of the profit motive, and that is a failure we must correct. But capitalism has also dramatically overdeveloped some sectors for the same reason, and that has led us to surpass the limits of our planetary ecosystem. Our economy, as it exists today, cannot be sustained.

The only way to fix this is to reduce economic activity overall, even as we grow underdeveloped sectors. This is called degrowth. The word may sound austere until you consider that much of our activity under capitalism is useless or destructive or both. We will not be impoverished by having less busy work or toxic garbage or weapons of war or advertising or planned obsolescence; we will be enriched by it. Having fewer managers and lawyers and mortgage brokers and insurance adjusters and health care administrators and HR specialists will be a relief, both for them and for the rest of us. People do not actually enjoy producing bullshit—they feel the emptiness of their work strongly, in fact—but they need to sell their labor to survive under capitalism.

Despite the overall reduction in economic activity called for by degrowth, it paradoxically offers us much more than capitalism. It does this because it is oriented towards human need, rather than profit and productivity. If a good life could be measured by the quantity of energy and resources used by the economy, then capitalism might indeed triumph. But the two issues raised above—the vacuous, precarious nature of life under capitalism, and its inability to stay within planetary boundaries—mean that is incapable of offering a good life even to the most privileged among us.

One of the reasons for this is that unequal societies necessarily limit human potential and lead to ecological degradation. If there are structural boundaries to living a thriving life for some, then everyone—both the oppressed and the privileged—are denied the full richness of life. And if some do not have unfettered access to the means of subsistence and joy, then one can hardly be surprised or upset when they cut down a forest in pursuit of that goal. This is why shrinking the economy is not enough: we must also create an egalitarian human community by redistributing wealth and instituting socialism.

Socialism, of course, comes in many flavors, and creating a socialism that does not repeat the mistakes of the past is our task today. One of those mistakes is called “productivism,” and it’s the result of socialists internalizing the values of capitalism rather than critiquing them. This was largely a result of geopolitical jockeying between the USSR—which desperately sought to defend itself from capitalist aggression by rapidly industrializing in order to support a competitive war machine—and the capitalist West, which chose to crush communism via military might and mass consumerism.

Some socialists have clung to productivism, assuring us that we can continue the consumer orgy and the industrial steamroller even after we redistribute wealth. This is a lie. Any successful socialism must be an eco-socialism: a political economy that accounts for the inextricable link between human welfare and ecosystem health. Productivism, which continues capitalism's zombie-like obsession with growth, cannot deliver that. It is a doomsday machine with a thin coat of red paint.

Degrowth eco-socialism means an abundance of life's best features: public goods, healthy environments, free time, good food, relationships, meaningful work, education, artistic expression, medicine, recreation. In short, it is for the efficient production of joy, not GDP. It is a political economy that serves us and our ecosystem, not the other way around.

It is also our only path out of this mess, and there's still time to make it happen.