The word โdegrowthโ was probably coined by an Austro-French philosopher โ words to be thrilled by โ during the eco-panic of the early 1970s, the time of The Population Bomb and all the rest. But the thinking behind the word contains elements that are far older, fantasies of timeless appeal and unchanging stupidity. There is a yearning for a lost Arcadia, a fetishization of โnatureโ (sorry, โNatureโ), and a rejection of modernity. Some on the interwar far right with their faith in โorganicโ food, dislike of the urban, and distrust of free markets would have understood. Make of that what you will.
This nonsense is infinitely more toxic when intertwined with millenarian belief, another ancient failing. Our sins โ overconsumption, greed, and technological overreach โ have led to the โboilingโ of the planet. Punishment is underway, with more to come unless averted by penance and the restoration of a more virtuous order.
And thatโs where degrowth comes in.
I wrote an article about this dispiriting ideology for National Review last year. It comes in various forms, but they all envisage a reorientation of the global (particularly in richer parts of the world) economy away from the pursuit of growth. I noted that in Japan, Capital in the Anthropocene (2020) by Tokyo Universityโs Kohei Saito, a โdegrowth communist,โ has sold 500,000 copies. It would, I added, be published in the U.S. in 2024 as Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. And so it has been.
A review by E. Tammy Kim, writing in the New Yorker was broadly sympathetic, which, after reading its first paragraph, came as no surprise. Describing the dramatic growth of her fatherโs South Korean hometown, Kim concedes that some things have improved:
People are not starving.
Good.
There are cars and extensive public transit.
Good.
But:
Who, though, is patronizing all these seafood restaurants and takeout cafรฉs, indoor golf ranges, dermatology clinics, boutiques, and luxury department stores? So much neon and noise, plastic and profligacy.
Seafood restaurants!
The horror.
The profligacy.
Pointless ascetism has run like a grim gray thread through many cults and creeds throughout the centuries. Climate fundamentalism is no exception.
Climate fundamentalists (or even those leaning that way) insist that much of the world must change the way in which it lives, sometimes profoundly. Such demands are intrinsically political, and politics being what they are, the policy responses to a changing climate that have gained the most traction have been those that would lead to an accumulation of power by those suggesting them.
And politics being what they are, many of these โsolutionsโ strongly resemble the sort of policies their advocates would have recommended even without a climate [crisis/emergency/collapse: Insert scary word of choice]. Saito was a Marxist before he was an advocate of degrowth, and amazingly he argues that โradicalโ egalitarianism is the way out of the โpolycrisisโ (โclimate change, inflation, war, and right-wing populismโ). Never let a polycrisis go to waste.
Where Saito differs from most Marxists is in his โrediscoveryโ of a second, ecologically conscious Marx (in one way or another, the idea had been around for a while, but Saito has probably been its most effective popularizer). According to Saito, this โnew Marx for a new era: the Anthropoceneโ had always been there, in writings that had been overlooked, underrated, or unpublished. The Anthropocene? Naturally, Saito with his eye for the modishly misguided โ Slow Down includes shout-outs to Naomi Klein, Slavoj ลฝiลพek, and Greta Thunberg โ is a believer.
Those who define geological time generally consider that we have been living in the Holocene epoch for a little under 12,000 years. The idea that we have moved into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which man has left a โgeologicalโ impact on the earth is, technically, far from proven and was rejected this year by a panel of the geologists who decide such things. Thatโs unlikely to make much of a difference: The Anthropocene has proved too useful for that. It scares the credulous. It reinforces the sense of drama and self-congratulation that is part of the appeal of climate apocalypticism, as in the case of many millenarian myths, to those who subscribe to it. They are smart enough to realize they are living in the end times, the Anthropocene; call it what you will, it beats the boredom of everyday reality.
There was a time when most Marxists would not have been worried about the thought of the Anthropocene. In Literature and Revolution (1924), Trotsky wrote approvingly of a future in which man had โrebuilt the earth, if not in his own image, at least according to his own taste.โ Marx was widely understood as believing that the flowering of human potential he anticipated under communism would include great leaps in productivity. To that end, Earth was mankindโs to exploit.
Saito rejects this โPrometheanโ Marx. In doing so, he has examined writings in which Marx appeared to be taken by aspects of premodern communalism such as the Russian mir (a traditional form of peasant self-government), growth-free (โsteady-stateโ) arrangements not normally seen, it must be said, as models of human flowering. This was complemented by a period of intense study of the natural sciences. The latter, maintains Saito, drew Marxโs attention to the importance of sustainability. The former (described by Marx as a form of communism of the most โarchaicโ type), suitably updated to reflect technological advance, offered a rough draft of the steady state, egalitarian society that both Saito and โhisโ Marx wanted to see.
While Marxโs writings are, with one or two brilliant exceptions, little more than steampunk millenarian claptrap of mainly psychiatric or historical interest, they do matter when they once again reenter the wider political debate. And their latter-day reinterpretation as eco-prophecy may be doing that, both as part of a broader fusion of red and green, and, more narrowly, when it comes to degrowth.
As I noted in my original article, degrowth has made inroads into the thinking of a significant cohort of scientists, economists, NGOs, activists, and writers. Signs of interest in it, if only at the periphery, can be detected in both bureaucratic and political circles, including the European Union and the United Nationโs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I quoted former Obama energy secretary (and Nobel laureate) Steven Chu. He has argued for โan economy based on no growth or even shrinking growth.โ
And Saitoโs success (despite, incidentally, some heavy criticism of his work from the Marxist or Marxian left or those close to it) is contributing to rising interest in degrowth. As can be seen from Thomas Pikettyโs Capital in the Twenty-First Century (its title a nod to Marxโs Capital), a book can make a major impact, even if more bought than read, if it fits in with a narrative popular at the time it appears. Pikettyโs tome played a notable part in the onslaught on โcapitalismโ that followed a financial crisis widely, if inaccurately, seen as the product of the market economy.
Similarly, at a time when climate doom is relentlessly being promoted, the attention Saitoโs work has attracted is helping move the Overton Window in the direction of far more extreme climate policies. He dismisses what he refers to as โgreen Keynesianismโ as a way to head off environmental disaster. The Great Reset will not do the trick either, nor will ESG or the UNโs Sustainable Development Goals. Saito regards green growth as a contradiction in terms. If catastrophe is to be avoided, the brake needs to be applied hard: โIt is โฆ far too late for an incremental approach to reform.โ
So, to quote Lenin, โWhat is to be done?โ According to Saito, sweeping away capitalism, thatโs what. โWith its demands for constant unlimited growth,โ capitalism is, he wrote in Slow Down, โthe devil destroying the global environment.โ And the communism that replaces it must be an engine of deceleration, matching production with โthe cycles of natureโ and aimed at a truly sustainable economy.
Slow Downโs purpose, Saito wrote, is โto contribute to dialogue and social movements for the transition to a better, more just world,โ which sounds relatively (relatively) benign.
But then there is that reference in Slow Down to the figure โ3.5 percent.โ This, Saito explains, โis the number that Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth came up with in the course of her research into protest strategies as the percentage of a population that must rise up sincerely and nonviolently to bring about a major change to society.โ Three and a half percent is not 51 percent, and a certain impatience with conventional democratic politics runs through Slow Down.
Saito disdains what he refers to as โpoliticalismโ (in this context an unflattering reference to normal democratic mechanisms) as inadequate to deal with the climate crisis โin timeโ, although โ say it ainโt so โ โsome top-down measuresโ will be required. But:
[A]ny politics that attempt to take on climate change must also challenge the power of capital. The immense power of social movements will be indispensable in the effort to bring about such politics.
This is because, in his view, โelectoral politics always reaches its limits when faced with the power of capital.โ Subtext: Votes that support a โcapitalistโ society are not entirely valid. The New Yorkerโs Kim stresses that โSaito is careful to emphasize participatory democracy.โ Nice try, but Saitoโs supposed attachment to democracy seems dependent on the right people doing the participating.
Thus he approves of โcitizensโ assemblies,โ noting that they are favored by, among others, Extinction Rebellion, an organization of climate fundamentalists with little obvious fondness for democracy. The members of a citizensโ assembly are chosen by lottery, rather than secret ballot. โOf course,โ Saito explains:
[T]his lottery system isnโt completely randomโthe makeup of each assembly is meant to reflect the makeup of its community as closely as possible in terms of age, gender identity, educational background, residency, and so on. Experts give lectures addressed to these assemblies, after which debates take place between members, and in the end, consensus across the membership is measured by vote.
Of course.
โExperts.โ
As Saito relates, Franceโs President Emmanuel Macron convened a citizensโ assembly, the Citizens Convention for Climate in response to the protests by the gilets jaunesโ (Yellow Vests). Needless to say, it was rigged, even if many of its predictably oppressive proposals were rejected by the French parliament. Nevertheless, Saito regards this squalid exercise in post-democracy as an example of how โsocial movements can renovate democratic processes,โ an example of doublespeak in which โrenovateโ is more properly interpreted as โdemolish.โ
Saito claims he wishes to avoid โclimate Maoismโ, and doubtless he would indeed prefer it if this latest โrevolutionary, complete political transformationโ is more genteel than the blood-drenched authoritarianism of 20th century communism. Despite his obvious (and telling) admiration for the thuggish Extinction Rebellion, some of the movement-building he depicts (โyou might start a citizen-run electric company with your neighborsโ) can sound almost endearingly Quixotic were it not for its ultimate objective, a society organized around โthe commons,โ a notion that fits neatly with Saitoโs reconsideration of Marx.
As he explains, โthe commons is a term for forms of wealth that should be managed and shared by every member of a society.โ Saito regards this concept as underpinning a โthird way that would represent an alternative to the opposing extremes symbolized by US-style neoliberalism and Soviet-style nationalization.โ Under such a system, โthings like water, electricity, shelter, healthcare, and educationโ would eventually be treated as โpublic goods and manage[d] democratically.โ
Democratically, naturally.
Among those public goods would be intellectual property rights. โThe radical abundance of know-howโ would be restored. This would eliminate much of the incentive to innovate, but perhaps thatโs the idea.
And under this regime, the production of goods and services:
โ[W]ould no longer be organized around creating value but rather around producing use-value as determined through social planning. Put a different way, fulfilling peopleโs basic needs would be prioritized over increasing the GDP. This is the grounding principle of degrowth.โ
Drawing a distinction between what something can be sold for and what it is really worth (its use-value) is borrowed from Marx, and, as I discussed in my earlier piece, is found in the work of other advocates of degrowth. But, with market mechanisms either eliminated or restricted, the choice of what to produce will still have to be decided somehow. Saito wants โpeopleโs basic needsโ to be put first. The decision as to what these are and how they will be met is to be left to โsocial planners,โ an arrangement that looks more than a little authoritarian.
And the additional layer of controls that would arise out of Saitoโs environmental agenda looks more totalitarian than authoritarian. Tellingly, these include the banning of โmarketing, advertising, and packaging whose only purpose is to needlessly stimulate peopleโs desire for things they donโt need.โ This dislike of advertising reflects a view that people (by implication, lesser people) might believe they need the wrong things, succumbing to what Saito, channeling some angry cleric speaking from a pulpit, labels โbase desiresโ such as, uh, โall-you-can-eat buffetsโ (puritanism would not be puritanism without the pettiness). โThe realm of freedom,โ on the other hand, begins once we โ weak and helpless โ break ourselves from โconsumption practicesโ to which we are โaddicted,โ and practice โself-restraint.โ
Self-restraint? I wonder.
It is not much of a stretch from that to argue that people must be shielded from incorrect points of view, especially as dissent is likely to increase as the hardship resulting from degrowth starts to bite. A government committed to degrowth is highly unlikely to come to power democratically, but if it does it will not endure without censorship. And degrowth โ a prescription for a straitjacketed society and stagnant (at best) society, buttressed by countless edicts against individual autonomy, private and public pleasure, and, in many respects, self-fulfillment โ will not endure without de-democracy. Saito reassures his readers, that โaccording to Marx, the true essence of human freedom lies in collective cultural activities.โ I doubt if the citizens of his green Gilead would see it that way.
Those who enforce the repression necessary to sustain such a regime will justify what they are doing with arguments rooted in the notion, already gaining ground today, that without degrowth humanity will exhaust the capacity of this world to sustain it. As so often in the history of religious or quasi-religious faith, the apocalyptic script has shifted. The interplay between human ingenuity and market mechanisms paid to the fears of scarcity that ran through the eco-panic of the 1970s. It didnโt take long before the source of the existential threat said to be looming over us switched from scarcity to abundance, a change of emphasis helped on its way by its appeal to asceticism.
We were (and are) supposedly crossing certain โplanetary boundariesโ (an idea first systematized by a team of scientists in 2009). These are not confined to the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but included, for doomsayers, a satisfying list of constraints that must be respected, essentially for all time. This is an argument that could only convince an audience so blinkered by apocalypticism, guilt or self-righteousness that historyโs lessons about our speciesโ extraordinary ingenuity are ignored. Saito is a fan.
This is not to deny โ to use an unfortunate word โ that scientists defining planetary boundaries are focused on challenges that should be taken seriously (scientific reality is what it is), but it is to disagree with the conclusions that humanityโs only option is to retreat into degrowth. We ought to be able to do better than that, and, given the opportunity, thereโs a very good chance that we will.
The Capital Record
We released the latest of our series of podcasts, the Capital Record. Follow the link to see how to subscribe (itโs free!). The Capital Record, which appears weekly, is designed to make use of another medium to deliver Capital Mattersโ defense of free markets. Financier and National Review Institute trustee, David L. Bahnsen hosts discussions on economics and finance in this National Review Capital Matters podcast, sponsored by the National Review Institute. Episodes feature interviews with the nationโs top business leaders, entrepreneurs, investment professionals, and financial commentators.
In the 174th episode, David is joined by Dr. Hunter Baker for a real walk through the kind of society we want to be and the things that are most likely to facilitate such a society. Their discussion delves deeply into what the state can and cannot do in the formation of character, and how markets reflect the character of the people. Their prescriptions for a free and virtuous people call for more freedom and more virtue, and the way we get there is the subject of this talk. A not-to-be-missed conversation.
The Capital Matters week that was . . .
The SEC
One of my brotherโs favorite books as a child was Judith Viorstโs classic, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Iโm reminded of the bookโs recitations of injustices visited on Alexander โ ranging from gum in his hair to lima beans at dinner โ whenever I hear a chain of events where nothing is going the main characterโs way. Well, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, just had an Alexander sort of monthโฆ
ESG
Move over โE,โ because itโs โSโ time: In fact, โsocialโ campaigns are now vastly outpacing โenvironmentalโ efforts when it comes to activity on the โshareholder rightsโ front, a favorite battleground for leftist causes trying to cow public companies. A new analysis by Diligent Markey Intelligent reports that Big Labor โ whose funds hold massive amounts of stocks โ has increased and focused shareholder efforts to promote โWorkersโ rights initiativesโโฆ
Antitrust
As the Department of Justice moves ahead with its lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company is violating antitrust laws by keeping Americans locked into purchasing iPhones and other Apple products, a peculiarity sticks out. Even though the State of New Jersey is a co-plaintiff, why was the suit filed in the Garden State and not in either California or D.C., Appleโs and the DOJโs respective home turfs?
Labor
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain and three other members of the unionโs executive board are under investigation by a court-appointed monitor after allegations of financial improprieties and workplace retaliation. The union also stands accused of slow-walking and failing to fulfill requests for documents necessary to conduct the investigationsโฆ
The Budget
One of the most recent decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court is also one of the most disastrous for democratic self-government. The Courtโs ruling in CFPB v. CFSA (2024) sends a message to Congress that itโs acceptable to hand federal agencies a blank check to do whatever regulators want. This decision does not just apply to the CFPB but also authorizes almost any kind of agency funding that passes Congressโฆ
Inflation
Todayโs consumer price index report (CPI) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed headline inflation of 3.3 percent year-over-year. The index was flat in the month of May. Core inflation, excluding food and energy, was 3.4 percent year-over-year.
The press is jubilant, as this reading was below expectations. The Federal Reserve will also announce an interest-rate decision later today. It needs to hold interest rates where they areโฆ
Energy
The Biden administration boasts that U.S. oil production โis breaking the previous U.S. and global record.โ This is the same administration that has adopted some 200 actions to limit oil and gas production as part of its climate-change agenda of a โgreat transitionโ intended to end all fossil-fuel production in the years ahead. Remember, one of Bidenโs first actions as president was to kill the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Yes, todayโs production (about 13 million barrels daily) slightly exceeds previous levels. But it remains well behind the capabilities of an industry spurred by high world oil prices and a history of galloping past old milestones. I estimate that 2.4 billion barrels of oil, and a commensurate amount of natural gas, went untapped over the first 1,000 days of Bidenโs presidencyโฆ
Argentina
It was quite something to listen to Javier Milei last night at a conference here in Buenos Aires co-sponsored by the Cato Institute and Libertad y Progreso. And it was not too shabby that the president of Argentina was preceded by Elon Musk (speaking remotely) who made it clear that he is supporting what Milei is trying to do in Argentina, and, as a bonus, gave his views on many topics, including the role of government in the economy. Not a fan, it is fair to say, of the idea that the state should take the kind of activist role long advocated on the left and, regrettably, some sections these days of the right.
As for Milei, I think itโs fair to say that I have never heard a speech quite like itโฆ
Climate Policy
One of the policies that an incoming Labour government in Britain will be putting forward is a ban on all new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea, a policy that will do nothing of any significance for the climate but will make the U.K.โs economic problems even worse than they already are. Seventy-five percent of Britainโs energy still comes from oil and gas, and half of that comes from the North Seaโฆ
United Nations secretary-general Antรณnio Guterres has proclaimed fossil-fuel companies โgodfathers of climate chaos,โ but many Europeans, Africans, and Americans clearly disagree. They have recently shown what they think of the green agenda of costly renewables and instead supported politicians that will let them keep their cars.
Tax
Donald Trump has made waves by talking about eliminating the individual income tax in favor of a system of tariffs for federal revenue. This proposal โ if one can even call it that, as there is no detailed plan of how it would actually happen โ is, to use one of politiciansโ favorite euphemisms, aspirationalโฆ
Adam Smith
Today is Adam Smithโs 301st birthday. Last year, for the tercentenary, we hosted the Adam Smith 300 series for Capital Matters. We got one essay each month from different writers looking at Smithโs life and thought from different perspectives.
I encourage you to celebrate Smithโs birthday today by giving one of those essays a readโฆ
Electric Vehicles
North Americaโs integrated auto sector is in the midst of a significant transformation driven by the United Statesโ and Canadaโs ambitious climate goals. Their decision to go all in on electric vehicles (EVs) risks triggering one of the most significant economic-policy blunders since the Great Depressionโฆ
To sign up for The Capital Letter, please follow this link.
Comments