I’m saying something ultra-blasphemous
Relative to the traditional viewpoint of the traditional Left, the advocacy of degrowth is somewhat blasphemous. Most leftists until very recently maintained that generalized abundance must be the goal. Socialism could only be built on the basis of a high level of development.
High level of development: Capitalism was progressive early on in this respect. But it would eventually fetter the productive potential of advancing technology. Socialism could and would produce: More.
Degrowthers have generally said: The big problem is the over-production and over-consumption of the over-developed “First World” sector. Degrowth primarily applies to that sector. Of course we must allow the underdeveloped “Third World” sector to increase its material standard of living.
Well, I adhere to a deeper blasphemy.
LIMITS AND BALANCES
Degrowthers agree that many of the things that Marx valued — industrial development, centralization, concentration — are severely stressing people and the planet. And degrowthers know that if you point this out as a conundrum at a leftist conference or on a Marxist-oriented online discussion forum — and if you assert that living more lightly can yield a higher quality of life — accusations of reaction, or even “eco-fascism,” are quick to emerge. “You’re advocating austerity for the multitudes!”
Almost all leftists — but even many degrowthers — won’t countenance any attitude that doesn’t uphold a vision of material advancement for those who have been impoverished and disadvantaged due to the historic colonialist legacy of hyper-exploitation, those living in capitalism’s sacrifice zones. “We must not consign them to underdevelopment!”
I see that as an understandable but problematic vision of billions ascending, based on an egalitarian-modernist standard of material sufficiency. It’s a dubious standard — individualistic, technocratic, and dependent upon a dauntingly complex, highly developed socio-economic infrastructure. I think we should admit that the vision is delusional. It’s neither possible nor advisable. For the sake of “the planet” — but also for the sake of the general welfare — humans, altogether, must transition toward living more lightly. I think that peoples in the core affluent West and those at the systemic periphery actually are facing a similar challenge: that of weaning ourselves from dependency upon that unsustainable socio-economic-technological infrastructure.
If the Left thinks it can offer a progressive program centered on globalized redistributive justice, it needs to come to terms with the fact that there’s no “world community” that “we” can apply policy to; “we” can’t spread the wealth to get everyone everywhere above our poverty-line metric. The United States can’t, the Western powers can’t, the “international working class” can’t. Such a bogus vision makes the Left look idealistic in the worst sense of the word.
Peoples in all places and all circumstances will be needing to focus on finding their own path toward lifeways that recognize and are in conformance with limits and balances. This is not an edict; this is an inevitable absolute of ecological reality. If humanity fails to move in that direction the ecological imperative will impose that reality. Where peoples have been impoverished by the horror of the expansionist imperialism of the last five millennia, they’ll have to re-create for themselves local sustainability.
Overshoot means overshoot. And it will be a breathtaking phenomenon during the coming decades and centuries as realization sets in regarding the extent of the industrial-era overshoot.
Re: POPULATION REDUCTION
The accusations of “eco-fascism” get strident if you broach the need for human population reduction. Leftists tend to be modernist-progressivists; and it’s been a characteristic of modernity to equate population growth with progress. It’s been considered an economic tonic.
That’s nothing but a sign of how we’ve lost our bearings. Degrowth means degrowth in all aspects. For most tribal groups in most places at most times population control was a vital priority; and population numbers were essentially stable. Such a social praxis was intuitive and endemic — and communitarian. The value system of the community influenced and encouraged (even enforced) it.
Cyclicality, minimal growth, was a characteristic of the original lifeways. That was lost with the radical transformation to developmentalism five thousand years ago. Sensibility regarding limits and balances waned with the increasing predominance of mass society, states, and empires, with their valuation of expansionism and wealth accumulation. Local community life withered. Over time, communitarian norms, mores, covenants, and strictures were lost. Then the facility and productive powers of industrialism accelerated the problematic civilizational trajectories. “More, bigger, farther, faster” became cultural touchstones. The resultant condition of hypertrophy in all aspects of life should not be surprising. But it surely has now become unsustainable.
As well as sociologically insane, as Erich Fromm asserted.
