Ecosocialism and degrowth

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By JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER*

The current scientific consensus states, with absolute clarity, that technology alone will not save us, and that we need to challenge the current economic-political hegemony on a revolutionary scale.

The question of degrowth

Although the term “degrowth” has only recently become popular, the idea is not new. Since at least May 1974, beginning with Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, Monthly Review has been explicitly insisting on the concrete existence of limits to growth; on the need to control exponential accumulation and establish a steady-state economy at a global level (which does not exclude the need for growth in the poorest economies).

As Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy argued at the time, “Rather than being a universal panacea, growth turns out to be itself a cause of disease.” They argued that to “stop growth” it would be necessary to “restructure existing production” through “social planning.” This was coupled with a systematic critique of ecological and economic waste under monopoly capitalism, as well as the wasteful use of the social surplus.

The analysis of Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy gave great impetus to Marxian ecology in the United States, especially in the areas of environmental sociology and ecological economics, for example, with The Sociology of Survival: Social Problems of Growth (1976) [The Sociology of Survival: Social Problems of Growth], by Charles H. Anderson, and The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity (1980) [The Environment: From Surplus to Shortage], by Allan Schnaiberg. “Degrowth” in this sense is not something new to us; it is part of a long tradition that spans more than half a century. Our edition of “Planned Degrowth” has merely sought to advance the development of this argument under the conditions of deepening contradictions of our time.

However, although the Monthly Review have long insisted on the need for rich countries to migrate to a zero net capital formation economy,[1] This question has become even more urgent today. The term “degrowth” has awakened people to what ecological Marxism has been saying for some time. It has therefore become necessary to provide a more precise answer as to what this actually means.

And the only possible answer is the one that the editors of Monthly Review offered half a century ago. More specifically, there are two sides to this issue. One is the negative side, which consists of stopping unsustainable growth (measured in terms of GDP), and the other is the more positive side, which seeks to promote a planned social response to the regime of capitalist accumulation. Our edition of “Planned Degrowth” seeks to emphasize this more positive response, a response that only ecosocialism can offer.

For ecosocialism, the notion of degrowth, although recognized as something necessary in the most developed economies of our time, where per capita ecological footprints are larger than those that the planet can support as a space for human habitation, has always been seen as part of an ecosocialist transition, and not as the essence of this transition itself. A path of degrowth, to the extent that it is a path of disaccumulation, directly opposes the internal logic of capitalism, that is, the system of capital accumulation.

I even wrote an article called Capitalism and Degrowth: An Impossibility Theorem [Capitalism and Degrowth: An Impossibility Theorem], January 2011. The nature of the struggle demands that we confront the logic of capitalist accumulation, even as we exist within it. This is the historical character of the revolution, now driven by absolute necessity. The struggle for human freedom and the struggle for human existence have today become one and the same struggle.

A more direct formulation of the relationship between degrowth and ecosocialism was presented by Jason Hickel in an article entitled The Double Objective of Democratic Ecosocialism [The Dual Purpose of Democratic Ecosocialism], published in the September 2023 issue of Monthly Review: “Degrowth (…) is best understood as one element within a broader struggle for ecosocialism and anti-imperialism.” It is a necessity, given the current conditions in the rich, imperialist center of the capitalist economy. However, it is not a panacea, nor does it form a basis that, in itself, is sufficient to define ecosocialist change.

A Monthly Review The July-August 2023 issue was about planned degrowth, but the emphasis of the issue was on the application of planning as a way to deal with our ecological problems more comprehensively. Thus, within ecosocialism, degrowth is simply a realistic recognition of contemporary imperatives, centered on rich economies and their enormous ecological footprints, with due emphasis on ecosocialist planning, not on the category of degrowth itself.

In part, the popularity of the term “degrowth” is due to the fact that it offers a straightforwardly anti-capitalist approach and cannot be co-opted by the system, as many other terms can. But the overall approach of ecosocialism should not be articulated solely in negative terms, as if it were merely a simple reversal of capitalist growth. Instead, it should be seen in terms of the transformation of human social relations and the means of production by associated producers.

Kohei Saito and historical materialism

Kohei Saito's first book, Karl Marx's ecosocialism, was a valuable work. However, his most recent work, which includes Slow down e Capital in the Anthropocene (2022), is wrong about the main theses presented about Marx – even though, observed in more general terms, the idea of ​​degrowth communism is an important idea.

It is true that Kohei Saito has raised some fundamental issues. Yet there is very little new in his argument. Marxian ecology has been emphasizing Marx’s theory of the metabolic rift for 25 years. That Marx advocated what has come to be called “sustainable human development” has been argued for all that time by Paul Burkett, myself, and many others.

Furthermore, it has also long been emphasized that the mature basis in Marx's work in this regard can be found in Critique of the Gotha Program and in letters (and drafts of letters) to Vera Zasulich—precisely the sources Saito relies on almost exclusively to claim that Marx embraced degrowth communism. In this sense, even Marxist ecology’s focus on the contributions of György Lukács and István Mészáros is at least a decade old.

What may be considered new in Kohei Saito's latest work is not the content but the form, as well as the exaggerated character of the argument he now defends, which requires the rejection of much of his own previous analysis in Karl Marx's ecosocialism. In his new works, Kohei Saito introduces the notion that Marx completely abandoned the productivism/Prometheanism that supposedly dominated his thought, at least in a latent form, until 1867, with the publication of The capital.

Kohei Saito characterizes The capital Marx’s Theory as a transitional work that embodies an ecosocialist critique, although it does not yet completely overcome historical materialism, which Saito himself identifies with productivism, technological determinism, and Eurocentrism. Only in 1868, we are told, did Marx make an epistemological break, rejecting entirely the expansion of productive forces and historical materialism, thus becoming a “degrowth communist.”

There are two basic problems with this. First, Kohei Saito cannot provide a single piece of evidence that Marx in his later years became a degrowth communist, in the sense of rejecting the expansion of the productive forces. Saito is also unable to provide evidence that Marx was Promethean and Eurocentric in his mature work in the 1860s (or even earlier), assuming that Prometheanism is understood as production as an end in itself, and Eurocentrism as the notion that European culture is the only universal one. There is absolutely no basis for such claims.

The well-known fact that Marx saw collectivist/egalitarian possibilities in the Russian peasant commune (chrism) is consistent with his general vision of sustainable human development. However, there is no justification for interpreting him as believing that a revolution in Tsarist Russia – a still very poor, underdeveloped and predominantly peasant country – could occur without the expansion of the productive forces.

Second, portraying Marx as a degrowth communist is a historical anachronism. Marx wrote at a time when industrial capitalism existed only in a small corner of the world, and even then, transportation in London, the center of the system, was still in the horse-and-buggy phase (not to mention the early railroads). There was no way Marx could have foreseen today’s full-world economy.[2] nor the meaning that “degrowth” would assume in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Thus, Kohei Saito’s analysis of his recent work is useful primarily because of the controversy it has generated, and because of the renewed focus on these issues that his work has provided. In the process, he indirectly helps us move forward. Still, it is important to apply Marx’s method in analyzing the changed historical conditions of the present, and in this sense, Saito’s dismissal of historical materialism does not help.

“Degrowth” and “decumulation”

 “Degrowth” is an evasive term, as is “growth” itself. The latter reflects the (often irrational) way in which GDP is calculated under capitalism, expanding traditional capitalist accounting, based on a system of exploitation, to the national or even global level. The real problem is zero net capital formation, that is, the establishment of a process of disaccumulation.

This has long been understood by Marxist ecological economists, as well as by non-Marxist ecological economists such as the late Herman Daly.[3] Growth, as demonstrated by Marx's reproduction schemes, is based on net capital formation. To recognize this is to underline that the problem lies in the system of capital accumulation.

Degrowth, and sustainable human development more generally, cannot occur without planning, which allows us to focus on genuinely human needs and opens up all sorts of new possibilities previously blocked by the capitalist system. Capitalism works ex post [after the fact], through the mediation of the market; planning is former before [prior to the fact], allowing a direct approach to the satisfaction of needs, aligning with what Marx called the “hierarchy of (…) needs” in Notes on Adolph Wagner.[4]

Integrated democratic planning, operating at all levels of society, is the only path to a society of substantive equality and ecological sustainability, as well as to human survival. Markets will still exist, but the path forward will ultimately require planning in the areas of production and investment controlled by the associated producers.

This is particularly the case in a planetary emergency such as the one we are experiencing today. As I mentioned earlier, Magdoff and Sweezy had been arguing since May 1974 that it was crucial to halt growth in the rich economies, given the planetary ecological crisis, but that this would need to be approached in a more positive way, in terms of a planned restructuring of production as a whole.

A critique of degrowth

Cédric Durand, in his article Living together,[5] and Branko Milanovic, in Degrowth: Solving the Impasse by Magical Thinking [Degrowth: Resolving the Impasse Through Magical Thinking] would have a point if the issue were “capitalist degrowth,” which, as I have said, represents an impossibility theorem. However, the very changes needed to address the environmental and social crises of our time are related to changes in the parameters that define capitalism. Thus, attempts to criticize degrowth by insisting that it would reduce the increase in “productivity” (measured strictly in terms of capitalist value added) simply express circular reasoning.[6]

The real questions have always been: to increase productivity for what purpose, for whom, at what cost, requiring what level of exploitation, and measured by what criteria? What is the point of increasing the productivity of fossil fuel extraction if it points to the end of life on Earth as we know it? How many lives, William Morris asked in the 19th century, have been rendered useless by being compelled to produce useless and destructive goods at ever higher levels of “efficiency”?

Furthermore, it is simply not true that economic growth is necessary to improve productivity when considered in terms of real growth, i.e., growth in output per hour of work, rather than growth in “productivity” measured simply as growth in value added to GDP, which is a very narrow and misleading—or even circular—conception. It is perfectly possible to generate unceasing qualitative improvements in production, reduce labor time per unit of output, and thus increase efficiency in a scenario of zero net capital formation, particularly in a socialist-oriented society.

In this case, improvements in productivity would be used to satisfy a wider range of social needs, rather than serving economic expansion for the enrichment of a few. They would be oriented primarily toward use value. Working hours could be reduced, so that the benefits of productivity would be shared, and human capabilities in general would increase.

Jacobin Magazine's Position quality Matt Huber

A Jacobin is currently the leading magazine of the social democratic left in the United States, and Matt Huber’s argument is along the same lines. Social democracy, unlike socialism, has always presented itself as a “third way,” in which the irreconcilable conflicts between capital and labor (and also between capitalism and the Earth today) could supposedly be reconciled through new technologies, increased productivity, market regulation, formal labor organization, and a capitalist welfare (or environmental) state. But the basic structure of the system would remain intact.

The idea is that social democracy can organize capitalism better than liberalism, not that it will challenge the fundamental logic of the system. Huber, in his book, adds to this mix capitalist ecological modernization, in a way that is not very different from liberal ecological modernization as represented by the Breakthrough Institute, but in his case he includes organized electrical workers.

This perspective has consistently defined the approach to Jacobin on environmental issues, generally opposing ecosocialism and, more broadly, environmentalism. In November 2017, I wrote an article entitled The Long Ecological Revolution [The Long Ecological Revolution] in Monthly Review, where I questioned the strongly ecomodernist approach of Jacobin in this regard, including excerpts from the author Leigh Phillips, who, in his book Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts (2015) [Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn Addicts], went so far as to suggest that “the planet can sustain 282 billion people (…) using all the land(!)”, among other similar absurdities.

In the article co-written by Huber and Phillips for the Jacobin in March this year, Kohei Saito's 'Start from Scratch' Degrowth Communism [Kohei Saito’s “Zero-Level” Degrowth Communism], the authors reject the planetary boundaries framework presented by the current scientific consensus, which seeks to demarcate the biophysical limits of the Earth as a safe place for humanity. In the planetary boundaries/Earth System framework, climate change represents only one of nine boundaries,[8] and the transgression of any of them puts human existence at risk.

In the opposite direction, Huber and Phillips adopt a position virtually identical to that of the neoclassical economist Julian Simon, author of The Ultimate Resource (1981) [The Final Appeal], a pioneer in propagating the idea of total human exceptionalism, according to which there are no real environmental limits to the quantitative expansion of the human economy that cannot be overcome by technology; that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. On this basis, Simon was recognized as the most prominent anti-environmental apologist for capitalism of his time.

According to this view, technology would be capable of solving all problems, regardless of social relations. In much the same way, “the only true and permanently insurmountable limits we face,” Huber and Phillips claim in a reductionist way, “are the laws of physics and logic” – as if the biophysical limits of life on the planet were not relevant. Climate change, according to this view, is just a temporary problem to be solved technologically, and not a problem involving social relations (or even ecological relations).

For Marxists, however, social relations and technology, although distinguishable from each other, are intertwined in an indissoluble and dialectical way. A vision that denies the planetary crisis, resorting to the promise of a two ex machina technological and at the same time ignoring historical and ecological limits, is in conflict with historical materialism, ecosocialism and contemporary science – all three.

The current scientific consensus, as represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – specifically by the position of scientists, not by the governments involved in the process – states quite clearly that technology alone will not save us, and that we need to challenge the current political and economic hegemony on a revolutionary scale. We are currently on the threshold of a 1,5°C increase in global average temperature, and a 2°C increase is not far off if we do not act quickly.

Today, six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been crossed, with even more likely to be crossed. This trajectory, however, can be changed. We already have all the technologies needed to address the planetary crisis, provided that the necessary changes are made to existing social relations. But therein lies the problem.

Controversially, Huber and Phillips reject degrowth as a retrograde strategy, even when organized on a planned ecosocialist basis. Instead, they argue that net capital accumulation can continue indefinitely if it is ‘greened’ and reconciled between capital and labor, and between capital and the Earth, along ecomodernist lines. At best, this can be seen as the Green New Deal approach or as ecological Keynesianism.

However, their general thrust goes further, and in fact represents total human exceptionalism, in which all permanent environmental limits associated with the Earth’s biogeophysical cycles are denied. The main flaw I see in this analysis is that it is willing to give up scientific realism and dialectical critique for political expediency, resulting in a kind of techno-utopian reformism that in reality leads nowhere, since it steers clear of any serious confrontation with the capitalist system. This can hardly be considered rational when the problem is a social system that is now threatening—not in a matter of centuries but in a matter of decades or years—to violate the conditions that keep the planet a safe place for humanity. There is nothing socialist or ecological about such views.

What to do?

Current science states that we need changes in our socioeconomic system, in applied technology and in our entire relationship with the Earth System, if humanity does not want to lay the foundations for its own complete destruction within this century. If the urgent and necessary transformations in the mode of production (including social relations) are not implemented, we will see the death and displacement of hundreds of millions of people – possibly billions – due to climate change this century.

Furthermore, climate change is only part of the problem. We currently dump 370 different synthetic chemicals into the environment, most of which have not even been tested and many of which are toxic: carcinogenic, teratogenic and mutagenic. Plastics, another new entity in the categorization of planetary boundaries, are now out of control, with microplastics proliferating globally and even nanoplastics (small enough to pass through cell walls) in the human body. Billions of plastic packaging is being sold by multinational corporations, especially in the Global South. Global water shortages are increasing, forests and land cover in general are disappearing, and we are facing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet.

With six of the nine planetary boundaries crossed, we are facing an unprecedented threat to human existence. The common cause of all planetary crises is the system of capital accumulation, and all immediate solutions require confronting this logic of accumulation. The struggle will naturally take place within the current system, but at every moment of this struggle we are faced with the urgency of putting people and the planet ahead of profit. There is no other way. Capitalism is dead for humanity.

The scale of the change required must be measured in terms of both time and space. Today, our relationship to both must necessarily be revolutionary and extend throughout the world. Whether we will succeed or not is something we cannot know at the present time. What we do know is that this will be the greatest struggle of humanity. In this situation, there is no “lesser evil”. As Marx said, on a scale much reduced to the Ireland of his day, it is “ruin or revolution”.

Opportunities are everywhere. So are obstacles, largely created by the current system. As Naomi Klein said of climate change: “This changes everything.”[9] Nothing can and will never remain the same. And that is the very definition of a revolutionary situation.

The most concrete and comprehensive study of what could be done, practically and in the current circumstances, is found in the book by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams released in 2017, Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation [Creating an Ecological Society: Towards Revolutionary Transformation]. As Noam Chomsky said of this book, it demonstrates “that the ‘systematic revolutionary change’ needed to avert catastrophe is within our reach.”

*John Bellamy Foster and iseditor of Monthly Review and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon.

Text established from the interview of John Bellamy Foster to Arman Spéth, in Monthly Review, Vol. 76, no 2.

Translation: Ricardo d'Arêde.

Translator's notes


[1] Roughly speaking, it is an economic indicator that results from the deduction of depreciation from the total volume of investments, with depreciation being the compensation for the cost of replacing worn-out or obsolete fixed equipment. In this case, in a stationary economy, net capital formation tends to zero, expressing the attempt to avoid the continuous accumulation of capital.

 [2] Full-world economy, commonly translated as “full-world economy”. The notion of “full world” contrasts with that of “empty world”, according to which “the environment is not scarce, and the opportunity cost of economic expansion is negligible. However, continued growth of the physical economy in a finite and non-growing ecosystem will lead us to the 'full-world economy', in which the opportunity cost of growth will be significant” (cf. DALY, H.; FARLEY, J. Ecological Economy. São Paulo: Annablume, 2016. p. 51).

[3] Herman Daly (1938-2022), co-founder of the International Society for Ecological Economics/ISEE, Herman proposed a steady-state economy, “first described in detail in the pioneering Toward a Steady State Economy, and defined as ‘an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at desired and sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance ‘production’, that is, by the lowest possible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption’”. He also had some involvement with Brazil, “both in his personal life – his lifelong companion was the Brazilian Márcia Damasceno (…) – and in academia, having been a visiting professor at the Federal University of Ceará and an active participant in Rio-92 and in the international workshop Environment, Development and Government Policy”, held in Olinda and Recife, in April 1996. cf. Brazilian Society of Ecological Economics, in http://ecoeco.org.br/2022/11/16/celebrando-a-vida-de-herman-daly-1938-2022/

 [4] Notes on Adolph Wagner, found in a Brazilian publication as “Marginal glosses on the Manual of political economy by Adolph Wagner”, cf. Online Journal of Philosophy and Human Sciences. Year XII . Nov./2017 v. 23, n. 2, at https://www.marxists.org/portugues/marx/1880/11/glosas.pdf

[5] Living Together, a CEPAT translation of the aforementioned article, can be read at https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/632541-viver-juntos-artigo-de-cedric-durand

[6] Beg the question, a logical fallacy, circular reasoning, begging the question, i.e., a logical error in which the conclusion of an argument is taken as premises that justify the conclusion.

 [7] The article in question probably refers to the “The Problem With Degrowth”, translated by Priscila Marques for Jacobin Brasil in https://jacobin.com.br/2024/10/o-problema-do-decrescimento/

[8] Planetary boundaries or frontiers designate the global limits that the planet can withstand in environmental, economic and/or social terms, which are 1) climate change, 2) ocean acidification, 3) stratospheric ozone depletion, 4) biogeochemical fluxes of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, 5) freshwater use, 6) land use change, 7) loss of biosphere integrity, 8) atmospheric aerosol load, and 9) the incorporation of new entities, such as synthetic elements and nuclear waste.

 [9] Reference to the author's book, entitled This changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate (2014). In 2015, a documentary was produced based on the book, which can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsXTJihL7Ac


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