There is a growing interest in “degrowth” and no growth, stemming from an awareness of the natural and social limits to growth. But, abstracted from social relations of production and how these constrain the forces of production, the idea of no/degrowth is of dubious value. Not only does it fail to get to the source of the problem, the endless growth of the capital system, it takes us away from potentialities for healthy growth.
The concern with ‘limits to growth’ comes directly from the capital system and its systemic imperative to accumulate. That expansionary dynamic will, sooner or later, come into conflict with limits. The capital system is a system of infinite quantitative growth on a planet of finite resources.
To be radical is to get to the roots, and the crisis in the climate system is causing us to look at who we are and where we are in the most radical of ways. How we relate to each other and to the planet is a radical question indeed - right relationships. I think we are having to rethink the entire social metabolism. I've seen the articles showing that it's a handful of emitters and polluters who are closing the door on the future. But there still remains the expansionary, accumulative dynamic of the capital system. This isn't "greed", it's a systemic imperative, capital must expand its monetary values or else the economic system goes bust. On a planet of finite resources, that won't end well. The conundrum is for those who know there is a climate crisis and yet think they can make the capital system sustainable. I think it's worth remembering that the best of the nineteenth century liberal political economists, John Stuart Mill, looked forward to the "stationary state". If we want degrowth or nogrowth, then we have to uproot systemic imperatives to accumulate.
Capital is based on the self-expansion of values, without that, there is crisis. That's the accumulative dynamic. "Accumulate! accumulate! That is Moses and all the prophets!" said Karl Marx. Put very simply, if you are a gambler, and you put five pound down, you want more than five pounds back, or you won't do it. The systemic imperative to accumulate is precisely what drives an exponential growth. Which is why, when I see arguments in favour of degrowth or dematerialism, I look for them to be backed by a critique of political economy. It's a question that goes right into the entire social metabolism, much more than title deeds on property, but the whole way we transact our business, the division of labour, all of that. And that's big. The worst thing that happened in twentieth century politics is that socialism got sent up the cul-de-sac of state control and nationalisation, changing nothing in underlying social relations. I have been an ecosocialist since the late eighties. I shall cite an article here which affirms collective political power in influencing 'objective' trends and tendencies - whether this is the economic determinism of the capital system and its accumulative dynamic or an environmental determinism that sees everything as active on the planet except human agency. The Anamorphic Politics of Climate Change, Jodi Dean
http://www.e-flux.com/…/the-anamorphic-politics-of-climate…/
My bottom line is that the capital system is not a public domain open to moral persuasion and democratic influence but a private regime of capital accumulation. The state's power is secondary and derivative. The state simply must facilitate the process of private accumulation or face crisis. Accumulation is a non-negotiable. That's a hard line. But I find it interesting that pluralists from the 1950s and 1960s like Dahl and Lindblom, who argued for the state as neutral between competing interests of equal weight, effectively conceded the point in the 1970s and 1980s. In the the old 1950s pluralism, change is a matter of bringing pressure to bear on public institutions rather than the struggle to restructure social relations. Critical Pluralism has long since moved beyond this position. Here is Charles Lindblom: "Because public functions in the market system rest in the hands of businessmen, it follows that jobs, prices, production, growth, the standard of living, and the economic security of everyone all rest in their hands. Consequently government officials cannot be indifferent to how well business performs its functions. Depression, inflation, or other economic disasters can bring down a government. A major function of government, therefore, is to see to it that businessmen perform their tasks." (Lindblom, 1977: 122-3).
If that seems obvious, then just change growth and profit into the marxist idiom of capital accumulation, surplus value, valorisation ... at that point, economics gets very radical. No wonder we had the marginalist revolution that looked at price rather than value.
This is an important issue and there is a pertinent distinction to be made between quantity and quality. I’ll give you the view I’m developing in my current research, under the heading of “Being and Place”. In this work, I refer to the new productive forces (npf’s) making for a qualitative development, a ‘real’ growth that concerns healthy potentialities, as distinct from an economic growth that is the endless accumulation of material quantities (the expansion of capital). I argue for an ecological transformation of the economic that taps into the potentials for healthy growth or flourishing contained in these new productive forces. This points to the possibility of healthy economic activity, one that breaks with the view that sees all human activity as ecologically destructive. The problem is that, within prevailing social relations, these forces are subordinated to a narrow purpose as means for the accumulation of capital.
That’s the simple version of the thesis I’m developing. It possesses a cultural dimension, one that allows us to break with an economic determinism.
At the heart of these new productive forces is a creative role for human agency, meaning and purpose, bringing about a new relation between the economy and the nature-culture within which it is set. Once we consider the human subjective factor integral to their composition, these new productive forces demand to be treated as ends in themselves. Realising this demand with respect to the environing nature-culture which encompasses all defines the nature of political and social activism in the contemporary world. It’s difficult to develop the idea within the constraints of FB, and I’ve plenty heavy work to do with the philosophy and economics. But, yes, “growth” is a term I’m trying to define as healthy, as a developmental conception concerned with the realisation of healthy potentialities within living organisms.
Here, I pick up on the Old English origins of the word ‘wealth’ as ‘the conditions of well-being.’ This idea of real wealth as well-being incorporates a qualitative dimension and has major practical implications for an ecological economics. I see ‘real’ wealth and ‘real’ growth to be at the core of the new productive forces. This means that we come to the natural relations that enfold and sustain us with social relations that establish a special role for culture and creativity. Real growth as qualitative growth entails an ecology of person and place, not just a social and natural ecology but a moral ecology, an ecology of mind, body and soul.
An economy based upon new productive forces of qualitative development is based on new drivers and values quite different from the quantitative ones like money, capital, profit and commodities. From here, I go on to examine the significance of ecological design to the creation of a green economy that is knowledge-based, humanly scaled, arranges the local and the global on a continuum, is concerned with qualitative growth and service, and engages in socially useful production. It may sound ideal or even vague in outline, but I aim to show that this ecological service economy is well within our institutional, financial and psychological capacities. Ecology is integrated with economics to become a productive force. Human culture and creativity are brought in line with nature’s processes to further ecological restoration and qualitative development with the result that more culturally defined social movements — green, feminist, peace, indigenous peoples, etc — join those based on class and economics to demand a holistic transformation.
It is from this angle that I define a true or a real growth as a positive qualitative development, one that integrates all human faculties and links all aspects of the environment. I call it ‘sustainable living’ rather than ‘sustainable development’.
Changing the dynamics in the way that social labour is supplied is critical in making the transition from an economy that measures success in terms of quantitative growth to an economy that makes qualitative development central.
Here's a paper I wrote on quantity, quality and "real" wealth and growth, which elaborates further.
Aspects of Green Economics
https://www.academia.edu/746450/ASPECTS_OF_GREEN_ECONOMICS