Progressive Degrowth

Degrowth is a conservative perspective on humanity’s future and thus always runs into serious  acceptance problems when dealing with progressive proposals of “limitless” developments. What is needed is a reframing of these proposals as conservative and limiting our future while degrowth is presented as a “new progressivism”.

If you are an optimist regarding your life, technological opportunities and the general scheme of things, degrowth is hardly an attractive political-economical idea – less a philosophy you’d like to call your own. And if you are a pessimist and distrust the willingness of people to change fundamental habits without an imminent and/or violent crisis, chances are that you might have sympathies for some degrowth ideas but cannot believe in them unfolding in reality. Degrowth, understood as a transformation towards an ecological sustainable and socially just society that is not based on economic expansion anymore, from the perspective of the optimist and the pessimist just doesn’t appear to be a progressive vision for humanity’s future.

Maybe the terms ‘progressive’ and ‘humanity’ are more part of the problem than the solution as they stem from a certain western universalism that brought imperialism and other atrocities to the planet. Yet still, progress for all of humankind in the form of an absence of poverty, hunger, war, illiteracy and the provision of basic healthcare, education and economic opportunities might still count as something we all can agree on as being ‘good’ and desirable — at least on an abstract level. Lets stick to this idea of progress and see how degrowth in its many facettes does compete with other political-economic concepts.

You can distinguish different notions and views on the future of our world along the limitational nature of the economy, ecology, society and technology. The first three dimensions are taken from the triple bottom line view on sustainability; technology is added because humanity today is a technological society with potentially severe impacts on all aspects of our lifes. The original conservative viewpoint on these dimensions would be that all have limitations that are beyond human reach – and should be beyond human reach. All dimensions can at best be stabilized and maintained with only little possibility to rearrange them. The traditional progressive viewpoint in contrast would view the world in its entirety as changeable and principally limitless. Only human imagination and industry limit possible changes. Once tackled, there are no real or absolute limits.

The progressive viewpoint can further be differentiated. There is the social-democratic perspective that sees only temporary limits in technology and society, with special emphasis on how to overcome social limits through reorganizing society and redistributing power and resources. Similar to this is the market-liberal perspective that places more emphasis on creating and freeing markets as redistribution and innovation mechanisms while reorganizing society. You can argue that in the early-industrialized countries there is some form of consensual synthesis between the social-democratic and market-liberal perspectives on progress, with the (new) neoclassical synthesis as its underpinning economic theory, combining various forms of Keynesianism with the neoclassical approach. The eco-modernist perspective is a newer form within the progressive project, picking certain aspects from the social-liberal consensus and focusing more on bringing down environmental impacts through reorganizing society in order to foster technological innovations aka “eco-innovations”. Although there are differences on the extent and direction of societal reorganization (radical change vs. reform, market vs. state etc.), all of the progressive perspectives share a more or less limitless view on what technology can achieve in the long-term. Even if some forms of eco-modernism accept natural limitations, technology will allow us to work around somehow and continue to expand and grow.

The conservative viewpoint is also not monolithical, but exhibits some commonalities. In general, ecology is perceived to set hard limits that are non-negotiable by neither societal reorganization nor technology development. Contractionist perspectives like degrowth entail the belief that planned adaptation is possible and that society can be reorganized in a way that moves our behaviors and institutions beyond expansion: that conservation by democratic design is really possible. You can also distinguish a collapse perspective within the conservation idea, that degrowth will happen more violently and unplanned – and that only after such a crash society can truly be reorganized in a sustainable manner. Sometimes it is not so easy to distinguish the proponents of each view. Dennis Meadows appears to be more in the collapse camp now than in the contractionist camp. Richard Heinberg and Paul Gilding, though very negative in their outlook concerning the natural environment, see a window of opportunity of active policy measures just before the crash. However both perspectives have this “gloom and doom” outlook as a default future if nothing changes. All measures are then deduced from this rather unpleasant projection as a form of sheer necessity. People within the degrowth community should be aware that they often sound as if “there is no alternative”. There might be another offspring of the collapse perspective that you might call delayed collapse and focuses not exclusively on ecological limitations but on economic limitations. Robert Gordon and his research on productivity and limits to innovation are part of this view. Delayed collapse means that there is no big shattering of our economic, political and social systems but a continued decline in economic growth due to economic reasons rather than “just” ecological reasons. The decline in productivity growth, the lessening of the innovation engine despite all the talk about “singularities”, the changed global demographics, declining investments and “secular stagnation”, growing inequality and other developments will lead, in this view, to a grimmer and dimmer economic development that will also bear heavy on societies around the globe.

All in all, the conservative viewpoint limits the future and asks for a more inward looking adaptation, whereas the progressive viewpoints limits the present and asks for a more outward looking innovation.

It is hardly a surprise that the progressive viewpoint has more adherents, especially in politics and business, but also probably within the vast majority of societies – regardless if you ask someone in the global north or in the global south. What I am wondering is if degrowth, the contractionist view on voluntarily and democratically steering society away from the growth paradigm, can be formulated in a progressive manner that is more attractive to more people. Can we e.g. formulate the present with its exclusive focus on expansion as a severe limitation for our possible futures? Can growth be framed as a barrier for human development? If growth can be framed as a limitation, overcoming this limitation would then be seen as progress from a lower state of human development to a higher state. Leaving growth behind, abandoning it, would then open up new futures that are blocked by the status-quo progressivists. It all boils down to language and our ability to call the emerging social-liberal-eco-modernist consensus on progress a conservative project that cements existing structures and restrains opportunities for our future. And rebrand degrowth as a progressive movement enabling and enhancing freedom and opportunities for all.

Obviously the term “progressive degrowth” sounds oxymoronic and we probably have to abandon “degrowth” completely. I am not sure what might follow it – conviviality or others might be just as hard to “get across” – but framing the idea of getting beyond the limitations imposed by the classical progressive movements as a “new progressivism” might be what is needed to get the upper hand in the battle of paradigms we witness today.