In the run-up to the UK general election, the Labour party’s central offer to the public was a “laser-like” focus on economic growth. Its leader, Keir Starmer, promised to “take the brakes off Britain” and repeatedly said “ensuring economic growth will be fundamental”.
In the weeks since the party was elected, it has regularly been grilled about whether the required growth is possible, or how it could be achieved. But to the dismay of ecological economists and climate experts, there has been almost no debate about what sort of growth it should be, who it would benefit – or even whether the aim of perpetual growth on a planet with finite resources is either possible or desirable in the midst of an escalating climate crisis.
“It is bad economics and it is also anti-scientific,” says Jason Hickel, the author of Less Is More. “People need to understand that ‘growth’ is not the same as social progress.”
Hickel is one of the leading lights in a growing post-growth or degrowth movement. Its proponents argue that economic success cannot be measured through the crude metric of gross domestic product (GDP) and that there needs to be a managed reduction in growth in carbon-intensive countries and industries.
“Growth simply means an increase in aggregate production, as measured in market prices,” says Hickel. “So, according to GDP growth, producing £1m worth of teargas is considered exactly the same as producing £1m worth of affordable housing or healthcare.”
Hickel says that what matters in terms of social progress is not aggregate production but the production of specific goods and services that are necessary for improving people’s lives and achieving ecological goals – and a reduction in overall growth in high-emitting sectors and countries.
“Every time a politician says they want more economic growth, we need to ask: growth of what and for whose benefit?”
Opponents of the post-growth movement counter that a shrinking economy would be socially destructive, leading to a rise in unemployment, a reduction in tax revenue and therefore less money available for public services. This, they argue, would lead to increasing levels of hardship and destitution, which is already hitting marginalised communities the hardest.
However, economists in the post-growth movement say a planned and purposeful reorganisation of the economy would benefit the vast majority of people. According to their vision, this could entail an organised downsizing in production of things such as mansions, SUVs, industrially produced beef, cruise ships, fast fashion and weapons – all of which are profitable to capital but ecologically destructive. At the same time, there should be a massive increase in investment in what would benefit people the most, from healthcare, public transport and renewable energy to affordable housing, nutritious food and regenerative agriculture, which offer less profit but are also less ecologically destructive.
Hickel says: “In high-income countries like the UK, we have absolutely massive aggregate output. But this output is mostly organised around what is profitable to capital – and beneficial to elite consumers – rather than what is necessary for the wellbeing of everyday citizens. So despite high production we still have widespread deprivation … More than 4 million children live in poverty, and you can see the misery on our streets when you walk around. It’s madness.”
He says no high-income country is “even close” to meeting their Paris climate change obligations, with even the best performers on course to take more than 200 years to cut emissions to zero at existing rates of mitigation.
“It is a recipe for disaster. Much faster mitigation is needed. So, we need two things. One: rich countries need to reduce total energy use … Two: we need public investment in renewable energy deployment.”
He says that although renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, there is still less private investment flowing into renewables than is needed because they are not as profitable for big investors as fossil fuel projects.
“We need public investment in renewables, and credit guidance to reduce investment in fossil fuels and redirect it instead to a green transition. This is basic industrial policy and it’s time we embrace it.”
Big questions for post-growth economics
While the degrowth movement has gained a foothold among economists and ecologists in the global north, there has been a degree of scepticism among academics and activists in the global south.
Many thought the idea was all well and good for developed economies, which already had the capacity to meet the basic needs of their populations. In developing countries, they argued, the picture was different, with development and growth still required after centuries of exploitation.
But according to Morena Hanbury Lemos, an ecological economist from Brazil, that has been slowly changing.
Lemos, who is at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, says initially the movement was “very much focused on – and quite insular about” the consequences of growth for Europe and the global north, but that the seeds of a more global outlook were present even then.
“The foundations of anti-imperialism were always there but thanks to the work of many people they have really come to the fore in the last decade … and that means it has attracted more and more interest from those in the global south.”
She says many post-growth advocates now recognise two things: first, that a new form of sustainable non-destructive growth is still required in many areas of the global south to meet people’s basic needs and, second, that expansion in the global north has always been based on the destructive exploitation of people and resources, particularly in the global south.
“We have been using the slogan recently ‘degrowth in the north and delinking in the south’,” she says. “Delinking in the south means moving away from this relationship of dependency, where economies in the global south are subordinated to the interest of economies in the global north, where they must do whatever capital requires.”
But there are other big questions facing the idea of a post-growth economics. Many argue that rewiring the global capitalist system and taking on the vested interests and elites that benefit from it is hardly going to be quick.
The economist James Meadway, who hosts the Macrodose podcast, says the escalating climate crisis means there is not time to plan a utopian vision of a perfect world that can be achieved in 30 years’ time. Instead, we should be arguing for practical measures that can be taken now and are “steps along the way” to more fundamental change.
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“The point we’re at now, the question is how do we build a life raft … not how do you design a future utopia,” he says.
Meadway says the tax system, if resourced properly and underpinned with some degree of global coordination, could start to redress runaway inequality and ecological destruction.
He adds that as the climate crisis worsens, the market system in critical sectors, from food to energy and water, will struggle to cope, making large-scale intervention by public bodies unavoidable to protect society at large.
“Whether people like it or not there is a reality that is going to get forced on us … At that point the question will be, can you build some sort of public authority which starts to redesign those food systems, those energy systems … which starts to make them more resilient to climate shocks, more fit for purpose to create and maintain the kind of society we want.”
Hickel rejects the argument that planned, targeted degrowth is unrealistic: “What is unrealistic is to assume that our existing economy, which is failing in both social and ecological terms, is going to magically solve the crises we face.”
He agrees there must be space for growth in the global south and says economic shrinkage on its own will not be enough to address the crisis we face.
A central plank of his argument is the need for a jobs guarantee linked to “necessary public works to improve people’s lives, reduce emissions” and that creates “work that pays living wages”.
All of this can be afforded in rich, developed countries with monetary sovereignty, such as the UK or the US, he says. “Any government that has sufficient monetary sovereignty can mobilise public production directly, simply by issuing public currency to do it. As Keynes pointed out: anything we can actually do, in terms of productive capacity, we can pay for.”
The risk of inflation can be avoided “by scaling down less-necessary production”, he says.
He also advocates for a new form of radical economic democracy. “Many of us live in democratic political systems where we get to elect public officials from time to time. But when it comes to the economic system, the system of production, not even a pretence of democracy exists.”
Hickel says that what is produced is “controlled overwhelmingly by capital” with major financial firms, commercial banks, large corporations and elites deciding “what we produce, how we use our collective labour and resources, and how the yields of our production shall be distributed”.
If workers and citizens had more say over what is produced, he says things would look very different. “We already know from several empirical studies that under democratic conditions people prioritise social and ecological goals.”
But while growth and ever-rising GDP appear to remain the overwhelming focus of politicians and large investors around the world, what are the chances of instigating a radical economic rewiring in time to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis?
“The good news is that these ideas are incredibly popular among citizens,” says Hickel. “In survey after survey, we see that large majorities of people say they want an economy that’s organised around wellbeing rather than around growth and capital accumulation.”
But he adds that in reality post-growth plans would run up “against the interests of the ruling class, who benefit prodigiously from the status quo”.
The first step is to build alliances between environmentalists and labour unions to build a “working-class environmentalism that can tip the scales in the right direction”.
“We need to build a mass-based movement that is powerful enough … That’s the work that needs to be done.”