Abstract
A series of critical analyses of capitalist economic life have drawn attention to the destructiveness of growth, to the social, economic, and ecological consequences of producing and consuming more and more goods and services. It is in this context that Serge Latouche’s latest intervention on the subject of growth, calling into question fundamental assumptions intrinsic to the capitalist organization of economic life and providing tools for engaging in environmental politics, ultimately belongs. Latouche outlines a compelling argument for ‘de-growth’, or a ‘virtuous circle of serene, convivial, and sustainable contraction’, to be realized through the achievement of ‘eight independent objectives … re-evaluate, reconceptualize, restructure, redistribute, relocalize, reduce, re-use and recycle’ (2009: vii, n1).
To counter ‘the insanity of the growth society’ and provide an effective basis from which ecological issues and limits can be accorded the weight and significance they warrant, Latouche (pp. 3–4) argues that a ‘cultural revolution’ is required to promote the necessary radical reorganization of economic life. The values intrinsic to our way of life have to change. The emphasis on individualism and self-interest, ‘the obsession with work … endless consumerism … productivist efficiency’ and perpetually engineered innovation and obsolescence by design need to be replaced by a promotion of altruism, cooperation, concern for community and social life, craftsmanship and manufacture of genuinely durable goods that will not be subject to premature ‘retirement’ or deliberately engineered ‘death dates’ (p. 34).
The ‘concrete utopia’ outlined by Latouche constitutes a political project, but it is not one that is likely to be embraced by any democratic politician perpetually preoccupied with pursuit of electoral benefit, and here is the difficulty, while there is a good deal of momentum behind the ‘de-growth’ agenda and an accumulating body of scientific evidence to provide support, the transformations required are so wide-ranging and radical in character that current political establishments avoid even addressing them. De-growth is the very antithesis of the restoration and/or maintenance of ‘business as usual’, the default setting for democratic politics oriented towards the generation of more and more production and ever-increasing consumption.
To move towards de-growth, towards the building of an autonomous and genuinely economical society, requires, in Latouche’s view, the creation of a ‘virtuous circle of quiet contraction’, to be realized through the eight interdependent objectives identified earlier. Revaluation, re-conceptualization and restructuring are vital to the radical paradigm change that is required to go beyond a form of economic life that revolves around the unrelenting pursuit of profit, capital accumulation, and growth. Redistribution, a term that is rarely to be found now in the vocabulary of democratic politicians, is essential to the restructuring of social relations, to a reduction of the wealth and income chasm that has opened up between rich and the poor within the wealthier societies, largely located in the Northern hemisphere, and between those societies and the poorer societies largely to be found in the Southern hemisphere. Relocalizing means organizing production locally to meet local needs, and this will contribute to a reduction of the impact of production and consumption on the environment. But reducing involves more, it includes a lowering of consumption, resource use, and waste, a reduction of mass tourism that frequently ‘destroys the environment, culture and social fabric of the target countries’, and a reduction in the speed and pace of life and, more positively, generation of local community initiatives designed to promote ‘ecological self-sustainability’ and enjoyment of a more leisurely orientation to significant aspects of everyday life, as exemplified by the ‘Slow Food Movement’ (pp. 38, 44). Undoubtedly recycling and re-use can make a significant contribution to the level of reduction in consumption required by the de-growth agenda. This involves giving more thought to the production of commodities with readily recyclable components, as well as cultivating a culture of consumption in which possessions are cherished, maintained, and retained, and if necessary repaired, rather than made to break or retired and replaced as a result of technological and aesthetic obsolescence.
Released from the logic of consumerism, relieved of the need to remain on the consumer treadmill, and less burdened by consumer debt, it becomes possible to contemplate reducing the working week, working less and living more, but this, in turn, requires that we are ‘weaned off our addiction to “the job”’ (p. 40) and helped to recognize the other, more positive, possibilities that increased productive capacity has already made practically possible. A reduction in the length of the working week is ‘essential … for fighting unemployment’, but it also opens up the possibility of participating in other forms of work, contributing to what has been termed ‘micro-social activity’ or ‘civil labor’ (p. 40).
In contrast to the preoccupation with globalization and the promotion of global free trade as the primary driver for economic growth, Latouche draws attention to the de-growth potential to retrieve and restore forms of local economic autonomy and the social, economic and environmental benefits that can flow from reversing long-standing processes of delocalization, to which more and more people have been subjected, and promotes instead regionalization and self-sufficiency. Relocalization or regionalization reduces the distance between production and consumption, lowers transportation costs, ‘dependency upon capital flow and multinationals’, while simultaneously increasing the transparency of production processes and the incentive to move towards greater sustainability: Regionalizing the economy and embedding it in local societies protects the environment … facilitates a more democratic approach to the economy, reduces unemployment, increases participation (and therefore integration), [and] encourages solidarity. (p. 50)
De-growth involves ‘doing more and doing better, with less’, but under no circumstances should this be confused with the neo-liberal mantra accompanying calls to roll back the state and institute a neoconservative ‘Big Society’ in which the level of public funding in respect of health, education and welfare provision is to be cut and compensated for by a significant measure of citizen DIY, while economic production and private consumption are encouraged to continue to grow. As Latouche notes, de-growth does not involve the imposition on the public sector of a whole series of top-down ‘modernization’ or ‘rationalization’ measures, misrepresented in political rhetoric as promoting greater efficiency and flexibility, increased choice, performance, and excellence, the underlying economic logic and reality of which have been to deliver budget cuts and savings irrespective of the impact on public sector provision and the social fabric. In contrast, de-growth has at its core consuming less natural resources and is the very antithesis of the neo-liberal vision of continuing growth in production and consumption.
Above all, de-growth is a radical political project and must involve what Latouche (pp. 53, 57–8) describes as a ‘decolonization of the imaginary’, a recognition that ways of life across the planet need to be transformed and alternatives to growth conceived and cultivated. Moreover, it is not simply a matter of the wealthier countries, predominantly in the Northern hemisphere, who need to set aside the goal of economic growth, but also that the poorer countries in the Southern hemisphere should not make the mistake of attempting to play catch-up by belatedly emulating the ‘growth society’ model, a route that would ‘prevent them from realizing their full potential’. The difficulties are considerable because the global diffusion of communications media presenting persuasive images of materially acquisitive lifestyles to people networked around the world, along with the ‘design for disposal’ consumer culture of the wealthier countries, which has led to commodities being made to be obsolescent or no longer fashionable – ‘battered old cars, broken mobile phones and computers undergoing repairs’ – being dumped in poorer countries, have in tandem proven to be compellingly seductive and to have eaten ‘away at … [the] ability to resist’ (p. 60). Even damaged and degraded consumer goods have proven to be irresistible to those excluded from the consumerist mainstream, provoking desires and promoting aspirations to find a place on the consumer treadmill.
The achievement of a de-growth society requires not simply political will but also a transformed cultural imaginary, a new ordering of social and economic life, involving recognition of the necessity of going beyond the logic of capitalism, overturning the equation of increasing production and consumption promoting rising capital accumulation and profit with enhanced individual and communal wellbeing. The political program presented calls for ‘a critique of development, growth, progress, technology, and, ultimately, modernity’ and requires that the economy and the institutions it has annexed are re-embedded in social relations and subject to a social rather than an economic logic (pp. 92, 99).
The prospect of a de-growth society lies ‘beyond capitalism’ and ‘beyond modernity’ and constitutes a ‘post-development’ form of society. It will require resolution and resistance to counter globalization and economic neo-liberalism and it will be necessary to accord ecological matters priority within a radically reconstituted, decentralized or localized, democratic political programme if we are ‘to put an end to the pillaging of nature … [and] the massacre of other species’ (p. 94). Following a line of criticism developed by André Gorz in a number of works, Latouche cautions that a revitalization of radical democratic politics is essential if restrictions to our liberties to deal with environmental crises such as ‘epidemics, nuclear accidents, pollution peaks and climate change’, rationalized as necessary within ‘eco-fascism and eco-totalitarianism’, are to be avoided. While there are promising signs of modest movement in the direction required, with some pockets of downsizing and downscaling of consumption, calls for reductions in working hours and a ‘qualitative transformation of work’, as well as the development of local eco-communes and transition towns, there are also substantial grounds for continuing concern.
Nation states, whose economic sovereignty has been eroded through exposure to the turbulence of global financial flows and algorithmic trading in general and high frequency trading in particular, are increasingly vulnerable to the pressures exerted by ‘the market’ and its self-interested agencies, including ‘the big three’ internationally recognized credit-rating organizations, Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, and the Fitch Group. In the midst of the first global economic crisis of the twenty-first century, nation states came under increasing pressure from unelected financial agencies to introduce economic policies that were considered to enhance the prospect of a restoration of business as usual and promote a return to increasing economic growth, even if this occurred at the cost of radical reductions in public expenditure and provision, increases in unemployment and inequality, and to the detriment of the social fabric and the environment.
Early in the twentieth century, Max Weber reflected on the logic of economic growth, markets, and the pursuit of economic interests and commented that they operated ‘without regard for persons’. A century later individuals, communities, and the environment continue, to a very significant, if not even greater, degree, to be subject to the logic of economic growth and ‘the dictatorship of financial markets’ (p. 103). The lives of individuals and communities continue to be powerfully shaped by ‘the market’ and unelected agencies, which calculate the creditworthiness of national economies, determine the parameters within which ‘sovereign’ states are able to formulate economic policy and set priorities, and promote short-term economic interest in increasing capital accumulation over essential medium- and long-term ecological concerns about sustainability.
There is now a rapidly accumulating body of scientific research which effectively demonstrates that the logic of growth driving the global economy is simply unsustainable. A number of analysts have identified what needs to change and Latouche’s compelling analysis lends considerable further weight to the argument, but how the transformations required are to be achieved, beyond general reference to the necessity for a ‘cultural revolution’, is another matter entirely. As Latouche acknowledges, it is not a lack of incentives that will ‘put both manufacturers and consumers on the “virtuous path”’ that constitutes the main obstacle, it is the ‘lack [of] political will to implement them’ (p. 41). In the early 1960s, Hannah Arendt commented that ‘economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good’, Latouche’s Farewell to Growth makes a significant contribution to the growing body of scientific work that suggests that time has arrived.