Tag: degrowth

Capitalism Can’t Overcome The Laws Of Physics / by Pete Dolack

Demonstration at the end of the 4th International Conference on Degrowth, Leipzig, 2014. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Reposted from Znet

You can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. That should be a commonplace idea. And that inevitably means facing up to the necessity of putting an end to capitalism in favor of an economic system of rationality, sustainability and equity for all the world’s peoples.

It can’t be said too many times that the concept of “green capitalism” is a chimera. Unfortunately, belief in that chimera is not limited to the world’s center-left political parties; it extends to the world’s Green parties. Various “Green New Deal” programs have been floated in recent years, generally revolving around a massive buildout of renewable-energy infrastructure and strengthening the social safety net. On their own, there is no rational argument that such programs, should they materialize, would not provide some benefits. But how transformative are such programs?

Here is where “green capitalism” rapidly falls apart. Liberal assertions that a transition to a green economy will be virtually cost-free are unrealistic. The costs of a transition to a greener economy are much less than the costs will be of continuing business as usual — how much will a three-meter rise in the sea level and massive disruptions to agriculture cost? — but the need to transition millions of employees to new employment, retrofit or replace transportation systems, adjust to new trade patterns and have access to less energy shouldn’t be minimized. And the infrastructure to build solar panels, windmills and all else will use large amounts of resources, including toxic “rare earth” minerals. Renewable energy, although vital if we are to have a future, isn’t a shortcut to reversing global warming.

The power of nature prevails (photo by Hans Kreder)

A fundamental problem is that capitalism is dependent on consumerism. Household consumption (all the things that people buy for personal use from toothbrushes to automobiles) constitutes 60 to 70 percent of a typical advanced capitalist economy’s gross domestic product; it is because of this dependency that so much money and effort is put into advertising and marketing, creating “needs” we didn’t know we had, and the pervasiveness of “planned obsolescence.” Consumerism and over-consumption are not “cultural” or the result of personal characteristics — they are a natural consequence of capitalism and built into the system. Problems like global warming and other aspects of the world environmental crisis can only be solved on a global level through democratic control of the economy, not by individual consumer choices or by national governments. 

Two statistics that provide perspective on the high cost of new and improved: About 40 percent of U.S. landfill waste is discarded packaging and the cost of packaging constitutes 10 percent to 40 percent of a product’s retail price. No rational system would propagate such waste, but capitalism is not rational; the endless pursuit of profit for a small number of people at the expense of everybody else and indifference to environmental cost are the natural consequences. “Green capitalism” is “doomed from the start” because maximizing profit and environmentalism are broadly in conflict; the occasional time when they might be in harmony are rare exceptions and temporary, wrote Richard Smith in his 2014 paper “Green capitalism: the god that failed.” This is because the managers of corporations are answerable to private owners and shareholders, not to society. Profit maximization trumps all else under capitalism and thereby sets the limits to ecological reform.

What has just been discussed is serious enough. But what if the impossibility of capitalism continuing for the foreseeable future is not only its inherent contradictions and destructive tendencies, as discussed above, but also due to physical limits? Endless growth, and a system that needs endless growth to survive, is not only impossible due to the finite nature of natural resources, the repression and exploitation that fuels it eventually reaching a point of explosion, and the inability to expand because the entire globe is now encompassed by it. It is also impossible in the long run because 100 percent recycling and conservation is a physical impossibility.

Laws of thermodynamics versus limitless expansion

An interesting paper just published in the Real-World Economics Review, “How entropy drives us towards degrowth,” lays this out in six succinct pages. Written by Crelis Rammelt, a professor of environmental geography and international development studies at the University of Amsterdam, the author concludes that global capitalism “annihilates its own habitat” and “devours the equivalent of an entire Mount Everest’s worth of resources every 20 months.” 

That’s a whole lot of resources! The number of months will be fewer in the future because, structurally, capitalism must expand. This is the dynamic of the system that is often obscured. The rigors of competition force all capitalists to reduce costs and find new customers to successfully compete; failure to do so means going out of business. With all competitors forced into this endless treadmill, the entire system is dependent on expansion and the creation of new markets. Now that capitalism has conquered virtually every space on Earth, there can be no more geographic expansion. Thus the pressure of competition only becomes more acute, as does the need to extract more natural resources, which will inevitably be more difficult and expensive to obtain as easily reached materials are exhausted.

Thus, Dr. Rammelt wrote, the search for short-term fixes intensifies. “This system demands continued accumulation of capital and falters when hindered in this process,” he wrote. “The typical response to the ecological crisis is therefore not to restrict economic growth but to pin all hope on efficiency, circularity, dematerialization, decarbonization, and other profit-driven green innovations within capitalism. In this exposition, I argue that this hope is false because entropy always looms. Entropy serves as a physical measure of disorder, and we observe its inexorable increase all around us: everything decays, rots, disintegrates, and falls into disorder.”

Photosynthesis in action (photo by Rcaravit)

Energy changes form but does not disappear, he notes, but the second law of thermodynamics states that thermal energy (heat) flows from the hotter body or location to the cooler. In parallel with this law of entropy, energy flows from a place of high concentration (such as a battery) to a place of low concentration (such as a toy), thus resulting in a loss of energy for the battery. Entropy also shows itself in the degradation of everyday objects: food spoilage, metal erosion and clothing wear and tear. Something external has to provide supplemental energy to keep a system from complete degradation. For the Earth’s natural system, that external is the Sun. “The biosphere taps into solar power to perform ‘useful work,’ namely concentrating dispersed energy and matter into” new forms. “A healthy and well-functioning biosphere thus stands as the only force on Earth capable of counterbalancing the rise in entropy.”

Nature, however, cannot regenerate without limits. Although new food sources are created, sufficient for a natural biosphere and the life that inhabits it, “the metabolism of the destructive beast called capitalism expands too fast for the biosphere to keep up.” The metabolism of capitalism outstrips the ability of nature to regenerate itself. (Humanity is using nature 1.7 times faster than Earth’s biocapacity can regenerate). “Ecosystems have evolved over millions of years to optimize energy consumption in ecological food webs and to delay and reduce entropy through biodiversity,” Dr. Rammelt wrote. “Tragically, growth-oriented economies do the exact opposite by pushing against this natural order and increasing entropy at a devastating rate.”

It’s a physical world no matter what we wish

Substituting one-crop monocultures for more varied agriculture, irrigation, more intensive use of fertilizers and finally genetically engineering crops are among the ways that capitalism attempts to evade limits. But soil degradation, the creation of dust bowls, chopping down forests and pollution persist and become more dangerous. “Capitalism, in its pursuit of relentless growth, damages the very biosphere it relies on to mitigate its entropy-amplifying activities.” It is not a physical possibility to overcome environmental stresses by becoming more efficient or devising more ways to recycle more. Nature has its limits, Dr. Rammelt writes:

“Can we not combat entropy through frugal and circular production? The typical response to the ecological crisis isn’t to slow down growth but to rely on dematerialization and circularity. However, ‘green capitalism’ cannot maintain itself, let alone grow, by merely reusing its own waste and byproducts. Just as monkeys require fresh bananas from the forest and can’t survive on their own feces, production systems require new input of low-entropy matter and energy to function. The same goes for a forest that depends on solar energy from space and can’t survive solely on falling leaves. Shifting to biomass as a raw material for production also won’t save green growth as it will intensify pressure on land, water, and soil.”

At first glance, the fact that the global economy recovers less than 10 percent of waste materials and retains only 28 percent of global primary energy consumption after conversion would seem to indicate a vast potential for improvements in the efficiency of resource usage. But a closed system that loses nothing is simply impossible, because not everything is recyclable and because transmission losses are inevitable:

“[E]ven though we are far from achieving 100% circularity and efficiency, the laws of nature will always obstruct us from attaining such a goal. To counteract all unavoidable losses and inefficiencies, we require a constant influx of fresh, low-entropy matter and energy. This requirement holds true for circular economies and other green growth models as well. The encouraging news is that the biosphere can convert certain types and quantities of waste back into raw materials. However, we should not anticipate the biosphere to sustain this service at the same accelerating pace at which our economies increase entropy.”

Socialism or Barbarism? (Image by Michael Coghlan via Flickr)

That humanity can dominate nature “is an illusion.” The laws of thermodynamics remain in place. “Consequently, a growth-centered capitalist economy finds itself trapped in futile attempts to completely decouple itself from nature — aiming for a 100% circular, service-oriented and zero-waste existence. This obsession stems from an incapacity to imagine an economy that does not grow, where both the quantity and quality of its metabolism remain within secure ecological and planetary boundaries.”

Therefore, the conclusion is inescapable that an economy that requires continual growth must reach a physical limit; reaching such a limit is nothing less than global environmental collapse. Dr. Rammelt advocates a “radically different pathway”: degrowth. He defines degrowth as “a socio-economic transformation aimed at reducing and redistributing material and energy flows, with the goal of respecting planetary boundaries and promoting social justice.” Although he does not give a name to a post-capitalist system other than one of “degrowth,” such a sustainable system would have to be one that not only stays within the planet’s physical limits but provides enough for everybody. The material basis for everybody to have enough to eat and a place to live comfortably already exists; such a distribution is impossible under capitalism, where, again, production is performed for a small number of people to accumulate massive amounts of money with little left for everybody else.

Once again, Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis that either socialism or barbarism is our future stares us in the face.

Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet, and photographer. He has been involved in various activist organizations, including Trade Justice New York Metro, National People’s Campaign, and New York Workers Against Fascism, among others. He has authored the books “It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment,” which examines attempts to create societies outside of capitalism and explores their relevance to the present world while seeking a path to a better future and “What Do We Need Bosses For: Toward Economic Democracy,” which analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis. He authored the book “It’s Not Over: Learning from the Socialist Experiment,” which examines attempts to create societies outside of capitalism and explores their relevance to the present world while seeking a path to a better future.

Marx: Humans ‘In and Against’ Nature / by Sanjay Roy

Image via: EPW

Reposted from People’s Democracy

USE values are created by labour and nature. But capital relations attach value to products that are being produced for the purpose of creating surplus. Production in capitalism is production of surplus value and this involves a process of appropriating labour and nature. The ecological imbalance as climate change, pollution, depletion of natural resources, extinction of species, destruction of wilderness or population growth are crucial issues for the survival of living bodies present and future.

But capitalism is a system that can only sense ‘eternal present’ a drive towards immediate gains in the form of profit. It is a system in which exchange values dominate use values. It is not only important to produce something useful but also marketable. It should be useful for others and when the society is driven by commodity production it is important to define the terms of exchange between commodities. Terms of exchange requires comparable quantities, that is the concreteness of the product should be convertible through equal measures of quantities. This is done by abstracting the concreteness of each different forms of labour into what Marx called ‘abstract labour’. This ‘abstract’ does not imply any cognitive abstraction as some speculative idea devoid of any material existence, but a process which is very much real and we experience in our day to day life. It makes different things that we buy and sell comparable in terms of quantities. Essentially it captures the interdependence of human beings although reified as a relationship between buyers and sellers of commodities.This is the ‘abstract socially necessary labour’ required to produce a particular commodity that defines the value of the product which is always a creation of labour. The values get expression through the universal medium money and prices are attached to every commodity.

The unending thirst for profit is essentially a process of appropriation of unpaid labour on the one hand and on the other by appropriating nature, a ‘free gift’, through private property. The destruction of forest to capitalism is a destruction of wealth but not of value because it is not being created by human labour and if it is not propertied, it doesn’t have a price either. Therefore, it doesn’t impact the calculus of profit as it had not entered into the cost conditions of production.

NATURE AND

CIRCULATING CAPITAL

Expropriation of nature is intrinsically ‘rational’ in capitalism. The process of profit making involves a chain of phases which is the circuit of capital beginning with money or investment, then raw materials or inputs are bought, workers are being hired, production takes place which is the phase of the production of surplus value through exploiting labour and then it has to be sold involving advertisers, merchants, salespersons to realise surplus value as profits. Marx showed that with rising machines and technology driven by competition, the organic composition of capital increases, but as surplus value is only generated by exploiting labour, retaining the same level of profit every time requires infusion of higher doses of capital. This leads to declining rate of profitability.

One of the counteracting forces of this declining profit rate is reducing costs of raw materials which can be done by intensive use of natural resources. Now if efficient production implies deriving higher return with a given set of inputs then intensive use of energy and natural resources would increase profitability and would turn the production to be efficient. Hence by capitalist logic expropriation of natural resources is a rational act of the economic agent. Therefore, private interests with a profit motive would not be able to protect environment and resolve the climate change issue. Capitalism tries to address this issue by taxing the polluters or by fixing a cost to ecological beds. But exchange value or its monetary expression entails a process of exchange that necessitates a price expression on the basis of equivalence of value. Buyers and sellers in a market come as owners and sellers of their product but the gifts of nature, air or water, wind or mountains are not products of labour and hardly anyone can claim to own them.

True, that some price can be ascertained for land by comparing with similar patches of land or by establishing property rights on land and water or on a park may fetch rents because of the privileged access to propertied resources, but ecology and environment are too large for capitalism to handle through the metrics of price and so the logic of capital actually creates a metabolic rift as the rule of profit facilitates ecological destruction. Capitalism can realise the danger of climate change and ecological crisis but its intrinsic motive of profit maximisation does not allow it to restrict the pace of using natural resources or energy nor does it have the appropriate tool to measuring the value of ecological goods.

IS DE-GROWTH

THE ANSWER?

The ecological challenge is sometimes viewed from a perspective that idealises a pristine form of nature and a referent ecological balance of an unknown distant past. The underlying assumption is there had been an ideal ecological balance which is being distorted by the growth centric economic development and therefore ‘de-growth’ seems to be the answer. But human beings not only exist in nature they consciously change their surroundings; they act upon nature by understanding and assimilating the processes.

Marx defined nature as the ‘inorganic body’ and addressed the engagement of human beings with nature as a dialectical process. Humans are both ‘in and against’ nature. Other beings couldn’t change their habitation because they couldn’t act upon their surroundings consciously and they take it as it is. Therefore, acting upon nature and consciously changing it in their favour by human labour had been the distinctive feature of humans which could put them far ahead of other animals. Idealising a scenario where humans would be worshiping nature and not acting upon it to enhance productivity and well-being of human beings along with their inorganic body is not only an absurd proposition but also suicidal.

Augmenting productive forces and mutually constitutive production relations defines the progress of history. But the notion of ‘progress’ has never been static neither it is trans-historical. In capitalism, progress as development of productive forces is primarily driven by the interest of making profit. Natural processes are analysed, assimilated and appropriated to serve the purpose of capital accumulation.

The rule of capital facilitates an unending thirst of accumulation for the producers and a corresponding greed for commodities as consumers. Wealth and possession of commodities defines the status of human beings in capitalism. But this is not the only way to understand life and engage with nature. Progress and development can be defined as a means to achieve better life for all the people of the current and future generations. Mastery of nature in that case would not mean colonising nature by human beings where they are seen as separated from each other but a radically different engagement when humans consider nature as part of their extended existence.

Loot and plunder of natural resources would be replaced by a responsible and sustainable use of such resources, a path of human progress more dependent on renewables. The idea of better life and progress changes so also the priorities of technological development and research. Development of productive forces assumes a different meaning with the changed purpose.  This is possible only in a society where the society as a whole owns and controls the means of production, in which social concerns prevail over private profit motives and there are adequate institutional mechanisms in place that ensure actual control of the direct producers. This is the idea of socialism which Marx defined as the society of freely ‘associated producers’ and their communities.

People’s Democracy is the English weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Why climate change action requires “degrowth” to make our planet sustainable : An Interview with Kohei Saito / by Matthew Rozsa

Industrial Wasteland VS Natural Green Field (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

Salon spoke with Japanese philosophy professor Kohei Saito about his new book, “Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto”

Reposted from Salon

Climate change truly is a major existential threat, one we’re clearly not addressing fast enough. But as individuals, there’s little we can do to stop it on a grand scale — it will require global cooperation to overcome. Nonetheless, the accompanying feelings of helplessness when faced with such a daunting crisis can make many feel paralyzed with despair. So what can be done?

Astra House, 2024

“Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto,” a new book from University of Tokyo philosophy professor Kohei Saito, offers more than a diagnosis of the systemic problems that brought us to this moment; it lays out, in clear and well-researched language, how those problems can be thoroughly addressed. In 2020, when “Slow Down” was originally published in Japan, it went by the far more fitting title “Capital in the Anthropocene” — with “Anthropocene” being the proposed geological era that began when human activity started radically altering natural conditions on the planet.

Saito’s argument, as translated by Brian Bergstrom, is that climate change exists because humans as a species prioritize economic growth instead of economic sustainability. Capitalism itself, Saito asserts, is unsustainable. Even though well-meaning liberal politicians like to push for Green New Deals in the hope of continuing non-stop economic growth without the consequent ecological harm, Saito argues capitalist societies need to perpetually consume resources to remain prosperous.

As a result, capitalism itself inevitably brings about planet-wide problems like climate change, habitat destruction, plastic pollution and other environmental issues. The only solution is for humanity as a whole to slow down our obsession with work, productivity and materialism. Notably, Saito stresses that the bulk of the burden to consume less falls on the wealthiest among us.

Saito doesn’t take credit for these observations. Philosopher Karl Marx developed a philosophy in the 1860s that Saito describes as “eco-Marxist” (particularly in Saito’s previous work, “Karl Marx’s Eco-Socialism”). While the German philosopher’s early works like “The Communist Manifesto” urged the working class to insist on receiving its fair share of the benefits of industrialism, Marx’s later writings praised Indigenous peoples in the Americas, India and Algeria for living in communes that stressed sustainable environmental practices.

As such, “Slow Down” is that rare hybrid among ideological manifestos: It opens new insights into an existing ideology while uplifting something distinct of its own. Salon spoke with Saito about “Slow Down” and the relationship climate change has to economics.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

For those who are totally unfamiliar with the works of Karl Marx, can you please explain how one must distinguish between his early works and the later works that you describe as “eco-Marxism”? 

Marxism is known for socialism, and socialism is often described as the exploitation of the working class. Capitalism has a tendency to increase technologies and promote innovations because of market competition. But Marx thought that once the workers take over power and kick out the capitalists, they can utilize the development of productive forces for the sake of themselves — more wealth, more well-being.

But there is one problem: Sustainability. Because as Marx started to study natural sciences later in the 1850s and 1860s, he came to realize the development of technologies in capitalism actually don’t create a condition for emancipation of the working class. Because not only do those technologies control the workers more efficiently, they destabilize the old system of jobs and make more precarious, low skilled jobs. At the same time those technologies exploit from nature more efficiently and create various problems such as exhaustion of the soil, massive deforestation, and the exhaustion of the fuels, and so on.

Marx came to realize that this kind of technology undermines material conditions for sustainable development of human beings. And the central concept for Mark at that time in the sixties is metabolism. He thinks that this metabolic interaction between humans and nature is quite essential for any kind of society, but the problem of capitalism is it really transforms and organizes this entire metabolism between humans and nature for the sake of profit-making. Technologies are also used for this purpose. So technologies are not for the purpose of creating better life, free time and sustainable production, but rather it exploits workers and nature at the same time for the sake of more growth, more profit, and so on.

My point is basically Marx was quite optimistic when he was young in terms of the development of technologies, but later he came to realize actually technologies have more damaging impact on both humans and nature. So he became more critical of that possibility of solving those problems of poverty and ecological problems using technology. That’s how the issue of degrowth and eco-socialist ideas came to be central for his ideas.

There’s another distortion in Marxist thought, what you described as “the monster known as Stalinism.” What ideological corrections do you offer to the Marxist model to avoid a repetition of history? 

So I advocate for a kind of eco-socialism, that kind of socialism that is more sustainable, that is not based on exploitation of nature. Because in the 20th century, Stalinism and other kinds of socialist experiments was a disaster. It was un-democratic. It was a dictatorship of the Communist Party, but at the same time it was also destruction of the environment.

I think their ideas were rather based on the development of progress through technology, and productive force is the condition for the working class emancipation. And the most efficient way of developing these technologies and productive forces is the monopoly of the means of production by the bureaucrats and the party. It just created a kind of the central planning, which is very top-down and authoritarian and anti-democracy. At the same time, they didn’t care about the environment, so it basically destroyed nature.

In Marx’s later works, he quite intensively studied natural sciences. He also studied at the same time other societies, non-Western societies, that were more sustainable. He came to realize that these societies were not driven toward endless growth. They were communally managing land. They were also democratically redistributing wealth. So he came to realize that more of a kind of bottom-up management of the commonwealth is good for people and creates a more equal society. It’s also good for the environment. It was more sustainable because that’s why those [Indigenous] societies lasted for many, many years. In America, they lasted many, many years before those people coming to conquer the land.

Marx came to recognize that not necessarily Western societies are more progressive in creating a better society for the workers, but rather Western society also need to learn from non-Western societies. This is another very radical transformation for Marx in his late years. But then he came to realize not a top-down Soviet style dictatorship is necessary for the sake of establishing socialism, but rather more democratic, horizontal management of commonwealth lands, water, forests and other resources. That is quite essential for creating a better society.

And he actually uses the term association — not socialism or communism. He often describes the future society with “association.” And so my idea is really not state socialism, but associated model production. This is why I still use the term “communism,” because the society based on capital is capitalism and a society based on the commonwealth, the democratic management of commonwealth is actually to be called “communism.”

Could you elaborate on how the degrowth philosophy that you say has been implemented in locations like Quito, Ecuador or Barcelona, Spain, as well as during the COVID-19 pandemic.

My book, originally in Japanese, was published like three years ago, so it was published in the middle of pandemic. Japan is also a captive society and it’s a very conservative society. I didn’t expect that this call for going back to Marx and reviving the tradition of communism combined with new idea of degrowth would attract so much attention and interest from people.

But it was, I think, because of the pandemic, that we came to recognize how destructive our economic activities were. It was obviously deforestation and that kind of thing. Ugly business was a main cause of the pandemic. Now at the same time, the climate crisis was deepening. So it was a moment we saw how our daily life was quite clearly destructive, but at the same time, we had to stop the economy for the sake of protecting our lives. Shutting down departments, shopping malls and restaurants and so on.

We used to believe that it’s impossible for the state or for the society to intervene in the market and say, “You know, we shouldn’t be making profit because human lives are more important or nature is more important.” But in the middle of the pandemic, we did this. We came to realize that these things are actually possible. And once we started working from home, once we stopped taking trains and going to hang out with people, buying new clothes all the time and so on, we came to realize, ‘Why did we consume so much? Why did we work so hard?’

The pandemic created some kind of space for reflection upon our previous life, the massive consumption, massive production, and massive waste. This is really the moment when the degrowth idea appeared more attractive, because people could spend more time with family, friends — not necessarily friends because of the pandemic, but maybe with friends — they could read more books and newspapers, and they enjoyed different ways of life that are not necessarily consumptionist. 

At the same time, a new crisis is coming — the climate crisis — and it will accelerate inflation. It will create a bigger economic inequality. And various natural disasters will also create a food shortage, which might lead to various kinds of conflicts. Geopolitical tension will increase, and so on. My claim in my book is basically this crisis cannot be simply overcome by investing in new green technologies. It is like early Marx: We overcome the crisis of capitalism by technologies, the state should intervene, the Green New Deal must be new investments, blah, blah, blah. But I don’t think that works.

My idea is basically we need to learn from the experience of the pandemic — that capitalist society is driven for the sake of creating more profit, not necessarily able to provide what is necessary. Because what is necessary, like medicine and education and hospital masks and so on — are not necessarily profitable. Capitalism doesn’t produce what is necessary unless it is profitable.

This gap creates disparities for us to tackle. My idea is basically degrowth is focusing on what is necessary rather than what is profitable. We should share more with the commonwealth like public transportation, the education system, the medical care system. These necessary things, essential goods, must be shared more equally instead of some rich people monopolizing all the wealth of the planet. 

Can you explain the “Netherlands Fallacy” — namely, the idea that the Netherlands proves that socialism can be ecologically sustainable and prosperous. Can you elaborate on why that is indeed a fallacy? 

I don’t know why it’s really the Netherlands. It can be the U.S. Fallacy or whatever, but it’s traditionally called the Netherlands Fallacy. The Netherlands had some environmental pollution and basically they overcame this issue with new technologies. Everything seems fine, but the problem is this fallacy. The solution to some kind of environmental damage was simply externalized to somewhere else. It was shifted basically to the global south.

One contemporary example is electronic vehicles, EVs, which are today very important; Tesla making massive profits, and so on. For the sake of a decarbonized society, I totally agree that we need more electronic vehicles and we need to produce them more, and that gasoline should be abandoned as fast as possible. I totally agree. But the problem is, are electric vehicles totally sustainable? 

The answer is obviously no. It is not just that usage of electric vehicles still consumes electricity, which might be produced by using fossil fuels, but the problem is — instead of fossil fuels — we also need a lot of rare metals: Lithium, copper, cobalt. And those rare metals are often located in the global south: Latin America, China, Russia, Africa and so on. And in these places now, the extraction of metals are creating very poor working conditions for even children.

Child labor is obviously a problem in Congo, where a lot is massively extracted, but also the problem of environmental pollution, massive deforestation and the lithium use uses a lot of water. Chile is now suffering by wildfires, but they are also suffering from drought. And then mining lithium consumes a lot of water when people actually need water for their lives, and also for producing food, and so on. 

People like us and affluent people in the global north can continue a very comfortable life by buying new electric vehicles like Tesla instead of Toyota. And they think that, “Okay, we did something good for the environment. I feel my responsibility for the next generations and so on.” They are actually falling into this fallacy of believing their sustainability. No, they’re not. Their behavior is not sustainable because the real problem is only hidden: massive extraction of the lithium in the global south. It’s still causing quite a damaging impact upon people and the environment. So the metabolism between humans and nature, it’s still distorted and disrupted in a quite serious manner.

And my idea of degrowth is not a negation of technology. We need electric vehicles. I repeat again because this is open to misunderstanding that degrowth denies technology to try to go back to nature or something like that. This is absurd, but at the same time, I clearly want to say that there are too many cars.

We need to shift to a society where we share electric vehicles with neighbors. So sharing cars. And we also need to invest in more green technologies like public transportation and also bicycles. And the bicycles of today are kind of dangerous because all the roads are created for the sake of cars. So the city urban planning is centering around all industries, and that needs to be challenged, that needs to change. And these are idea that degrowth will create a more eco-friendly, pedestrian friendly kind of society. The new kind of fair mobility is a central idea of degrowth. But this is just one example we need.

My basic point is that often technologies simply hide the true environmental impacts, and we needed technological development, but at the same time, we need to reduce our excessive consumption. Otherwise we will fall into the Netherlands Fallacy. 

I’m reading a book by billionaire philanthropist, Tom Steyer, who argues for more traditional approaches to addressing climate change: Funding green technologies, pushing voter registration drives, supporting a Green New Deal platform. Do you think there is anything fundamentally flawed about approaches for dealing with climate change when they come from billionaires or from others in the elite classes? 

Yes. I don’t actually deny some kind of Green New Deal, but not a Green New Deal for people like the American people. Because my idea of sustainability is more comprehensive. It includes the people in the global south. So greening or decarbonization in the U.S. can be achieved at the cost of people in the global south, and that doesn’t make sense, right? And the same thing can be said within the U.S.

The green transformation for the sake of billionaires could be achieved at the cost of many people in the global south. Minority indigenous people could be sacrificed for the sake of sustaining today’s capitalism. What do I mean by this? Growth is always good for billionaires. They say, “Okay, we’ll invest more in something good — green technologies — and it will grow the economy. And then all the poor people working class people will also benefit from growth.”

Growth actually hides the necessity of redistribution. When we talk about redistribution and compensation or reparation, billionaires needs to give up some of what they have gained. Not just wealth, but also private jets, massive houses and cruise ships and those luxury items, too.

But when we invest in green technologies, flying jets can be sustainable, blah, blah, blah. And they also don’t have to redistribute their own wealth because the entire pie of the economy will be bigger, so that the working class can also gain higher salaries and so on. My idea of degrowth is much more challenging because the degrowth doesn’t seek after continuous growth of the economic pie. 

When the pie doesn’t grow, we need to share more. So it really clearly demands the massively distribution of the wealth from the rich people to the poor people. But also we should give up what is actually unnecessary. I claim that, but the most obvious example is private jets. Private jets are unnecessary because people can still fly with business class or whatsoever. So my point is, rich people should give up their wealth, rich people should give up private jets and so on, other unnecessary things. And when people now talk about the Green New Deal, they hide the necessity of such a radical transformation of our lifestyle for the sake of everyone.

Kohei Saito received his Ph.D. from Humboldt University in Berlin. He is currently associate professor of political economy at Osaka City University. He has published articles and reviews on Marx’s ecology, including “The Emergence of Marx’s Critique of Modern Agriculture,” and “Marx’s Ecological Notebooks,” both in Monthly Review. He is working on editing the complete works of Marx and Engels, Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Volume IV/18, which includes a number of Marx’s natural scientific notebooks.

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master’s Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

Kohei Saito, philosopher: ‘Spending so much money, effort and time on going to Mars is stupid’ / by Pablo Leon

Kohei Saito at home in an image from last year | SHIHO FUKADA ( NEW YORK TIMES / CONTACTO )

Reposted from El Pais

Philosopher Kohei Saito (Tokyo, 1987) is a Marxist phenomenon in Japan. In his country, the original edition in Japanese of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto has sold more than a half-million copies. His books synthesize investigations in which he ties together Marxism and environmentalism. “In the U.S., but also in Spain, the term communism has negative implications. Something similar takes place in Japan,” says Saito in his office at the University of Toyko, where he is an associate professor and “the only” specialist in Marxism. He has also published Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy.

He doesn’t think Marxism is antiquated. His ex libris is a fine stamp of a caricature of himself standing next to Karl Marx, seated. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Saito began to pay attention to the environmental consequences of capitalism. And he wondered how Marxists should deal with ecological disaster.

Question. Where do you start?

Answer. We are 8 billion people, much more materialist than before, in the midst of an ecological crisis whose primary cause is capitalism. There are sectors of society that say, with a certain simplicity, that technology will solve everything. But we cannot develop continuously and growth is no longer feasible, especially in the Global North. To get over capitalism, we need something that goes further. The situation is tough. And only human beings can stop this crisis. If we don’t, the planet will be completely changed for millennia. It is an ethical and moral responsibility.

Q. The environment has entered into the so-called “culture war.”

A. Yes, but at the same time, societal perception with respect to the climate crisis has matured. When the former Spanish minister Alberto Garzón recommended reducing meat consumption, a kind of degrowth, a campaign sprang up against him. A big step forward: not long ago, we could not imagine political leaders defending this. At the same time, a reactionary attitude emerges; a response from the extreme right and conservatives who feel threatened by criticism of meat consumption and cars. The majority of the population is concerned about the environmental crisis, but also about giving up things they once took for granted.

Q. Does that cause anxiety?

A. We are in a chronic state of emergency. The pandemic was not the last crisis, but rather the beginning of more problems. We should not forget that moment [during lockdown] when, consciously, we halted capitalism. It seemed impossible. But it happened. For a short time. A good moment to establish some distance: people came back more anti-capitalist and inclined towards degrowth. Let’s remember that.

Q. What is your proposal for the future?

A. I talk about a degrowth communism: a society that adapts to the limits of nature and offers universal access to education, health, transportation, internet… Due to a variety of crises, access to these services — the common good — has been undermined for many. But without positive visions of the future, there will be more and more discontent. What we need is to build a broad movement: environmentalist, working-class, feminist, Indigenist… To propose an inclusive and emancipatory future.

Q. Is capitalism making us bitter?

A. We live absorbed by the system; often alienated, poor, indebted by loans, suffocated by rent, without medical coverage… Once in a while people enjoy, perhaps, watching Netflix; going to a concert or shopping. Opium. We need to realize that another kind of happiness is possible; another society; another life more enriching, joyful and linked to nature. We would have to establish what is necessary and what is not.

Q. What is not?

A. Private jets. The majority of us will never use one. They only benefit a few super-rich people who, in addition, utilize them as a status symbol as they destroy the planet. No matter how much money they have, the rich are not allowed to do that. We should ban their use. There are many things that can be restricted. We should start cataloging unnecessary things and then, ban them. In the 21st century, the important thing is not if it contributes to the GDP, but rather that it is sustainable, just, and promotes human welfare.

Q. In your public appearances, do you defend these ideas?

A. I try to reach out to the public. Currently, I am the only relatively young and explicitly left-wing talk show host. I consider it important to make these positions visible in mass media; otherwise, that space will be occupied by the right. The younger generations are more open; it is a good moment to mobilize them towards the left. The situation is precarious; we have to be careful. The existing parties don’t always offer a convincing alternative. That may be favorable to the resurgence of Marxism.

Q. There are Marxists who deny the connection you make to environmentalism.

A. Marx read and took notes. In those notes, he talks about how nature, in the 19th century, was already being destroyed, criticizing capitalism’s destruction. When Marx died, Engels edited the volumes and emphasized the idea that socialism can improve the lives of all, especially the working class. His dissertation became optimistic regarding technological progress. It eclipsed Marx’s ecological ideas.

Q. Does it seem to you that this techno-optimism is still present, for example, in the galactic ambitions of multimillionaires?

A. The Anthropocene signifies that humans have become a geological force, with the ability to modify the planet. But not everyone is equally responsible for this situation. It’s primarily the people of the Global North; particularly, the super-rich who think they can do it all with their money, even flee the Earth. That idea of conquest originates with European colonialism, linking imperialism, capitalism and progress. We should also restrict space shuttles, like SpaceX. Spending so much money, effort and time on going to Mars seems stupid to me; we should invest that energy in saving our planet. As a philosopher, I’m an optimist. Our perception, our values, can change in two or five years. Opportunities for change are everywhere. I want to explore what they are.

Pablo Leon writes for El Pais.

Commentary – A call for economic degrowth / by Kohei Saitoa

Though renewable energy can significantly reduce carbon emissions, if growth remains the global economic imperative, increased energy use will prevent us from reaching decarbonization goals | GILLES SABRIE / THE NEW YORK TIMES

GDP expansion under a green agenda is part of the problem, not the solution

Reposted from the Japan Times

“No poverty,” “zero hunger,” “gender equality,” “climate action”. These lofty ideals are expressed in several of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Understandably, the SDGs have become very popular in Japan.

Can the 17 goals — launched by the U.N. in 2015 to be reached by the end of this decade — really save the world from the multipronged crises of climate change, inflation, war and populism? I start off my book “Slow Down” with a resounding “no,” arguing that “the SDGs are the new opiate of the masses.” In fact, the U.N. goals have become popular in a conservative society like Japan precisely because they do not demand transformative, systemic change but, rather, aim to preserve the status quo.

In fact, if one looks at the concrete proposals of companies and the media to achieve these goals, they often advocate for individuals to adopt eco-friendly behaviors such as opting for reusable bags and bottles, reducing food waste and recycling fast fashion products.

Although these small, individual behaviors are obviously insufficient to tackle the “polycrisis,” actions like recycling and buying eco-products relieve our conscience. And the feeling of satisfaction hinders us from recognizing the real root causes of today’s emergency.

This is also partly why the SDGs are used by companies to enhance their public image: They function as a marketing and greenwashing tool to reassure consumers that the act of constantly buying new commodities actually contributes to enhancing equality and sustainability. No wonder, then, that the discourse of redeeming capitalism with the SDGs has been so easily watered down.

Thus, the polycrisis has only gotten worse year after year because, at the moment, almost no one is challenging the business as usual model, even though urgent actions are needed given the chronic state of the emergency we are in.

Achieving rapid decarbonization to reach the Paris Agreement’s target — namely limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — demands ending wasteful mass production and consumption for the sake of endless economic growth.

Concretely, this means banning luxurious, unnecessary products such as private jets, cruise ships and yachts, as well as drastically reducing meat consumption and the sale of SUVs, in addition to investing in green technologies and infrastructure. However, the current economic and political system is incapable of seriously considering such options — no matter how necessary they are — because they are against the logic of endless capital accumulation.

Within a capitalist society, the only solution to the global ecological crisis is growth, growth and more growth. Popular proposals such as Society 5.0 in Japan and the Green New Deal in the United States aim to make energy and resource usage more efficient and create more stable jobs with higher salaries. They wish to achieve both economic growth and a transition to a sustainable society by decoupling growth from energy and resource usage.

Although innovation is surely important, green growth cannot realize the ideals of the SDGs. Capitalism does not necessarily produce what is needed, but what is profitable. Even if technology increases productivity and efficiency, if the price of goods goes down due to higher productivity, consumption also increases, so efficiency gains would be lost. This is called Jevons paradox.

Furthermore, new green technologies such as electric vehicles and renewables — while having the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions — still employ massive amounts of resources and energy. Therefore, if, as we invest in such technologies, growth remains the absolute imperative of economic activities, large electric SUVs and more solar panels will continue to be manufactured in greater quantities, with models changing constantly, and more and more marketing campaigns.

As a result, despite the introduction of such advances, resource and energy use will not decrease sufficiently to achieve decarbonization.

Intense competition for green growth in the Global North is also likely to accelerate monopolization by a few companies, which will increasingly widen economic disparities, and make people more vulnerable to precarious employment and long working hours.

Furthermore, the expropriation of resources and land in the Global South by companies from the Global North will exacerbate inequality worldwide. This is the inevitable result of ecological imperialism.

In contrast, the introduction of new technologies in the context of degrowth would result in a shortening of working hours — instead of the creation of more products by working the same hours as before — though, if poorly introduced, this paradigm shift could also lead to recession and increased unemployment.

Although some of the SDGs’ targets can be implemented without the need for technological innovations, the focus on green growth alone may end up marginalizing these important targets, such as economic equality through redistribution, gender equality and the elimination of racial discrimination.

In short, economic growth is appealing because of its simplicity. It dismisses the complexity of justice, equality and sustainability by converting everything into a single economic value and concentrating only on its increase. In this sense, abandoning the gross domestic product as the measure of social progress is a prerequisite for addressing solutions to structural problems that have been marginalized under the growth imperative. This is what degrowth calls for.

Today’s world is characterized by poverty and inequality. But these exist not necessarily due to insufficient production. Our society already has the technology and resources to meet the basic needs of all people, but they are concentrated in the hands of a few and, moreover, employed to seek endless economic growth, instead of providing everyone with adequate living standards.

In this context, accelerating innovation does not lead to saving the planet. By slowing down, degrowth opens the path to a truly just transition.

Kohei Saito is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo. He is the author of “Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto” (Astra Publishing House, 2024).

Accelerationist possibilities in an ecosocialist degrowth scenario / by Jason Hickel

Image via Agianst the Current

Reposted from Jason Hickel blog

I want to make a brief intervention here to highlight an aspect of degrowth climate mitigation strategy that has so far been inadequately developed.  It is widely understood that scaling down less-necessary forms of production can contribute substantially to decarbonization, in two direct and obvious ways. First, it directly reduces emissions in addition to what can be achieved through efficiency improvements and renewable energy deployment.  Second, it reduces total energy demand and therefore makes it possible to decarbonize the energy system much more quickly, because it is not necessary to install as much new infrastructure, and the process of doing it involves less extraction and emissions. These are powerful benefits.

But there are several other benefits to a degrowth scenario that are less widely understood and are worth considering.

Here’s the main thing. If high-income countries are to decarbonize fast enough to stay within their fair-share of Paris-compliant carbon budgets, then urgent climate mitigation tasks – like building renewable energy capacity, insulating buildings, expanding public transit, innovating and distributing more efficient technologies, regenerating land, etc – need to happen very quickly. This “green production” requires mobilizing massive amounts of labour, factories, materials, engineering talent, and so on.  In a growth-oriented scenario, this is difficult to do because our productive capacities are already devoted to other activities (activities that are organized around profit and which may not contribute to social and ecological objectives). So we need to either compete with existing forms of production (for labour, materials, energy etc, which can drive prices up), or otherwise increase total productive capacity (i.e., grow the economy).  This cannot be done at just any desired speed.  Under these conditions, there are very real physical limits to how fast we can decarbonize. 

Scaling down less-necessary production solves this problem, not only because of the two benefits indicated above, but also because it liberates productive capacities (factories, labour, materials) which can then be remobilized to do the production and innovation required for rapid decarbonization. For example, factories that are presently devoted to producing SUVs can produce solar panels instead. Engineers that are presently developing private jets can work on innovating more efficient trains and wind turbines instead. Labour that is presently employed by fast fashion firms can be liberated to train and contribute to installing renewable capacity, insulating buildings, or a wide range of other necessary objectives depending on their interests, through a public job guarantee program linked to green public works.

This helps us rethink a longstanding question in ecological economics. Some ecomodernists have in the past argued that it is easier to achieve green transition in a bigger economy than in a smaller economy, because it means we have more capacity to devote to green production.  But this fails to grasp the nature of the problem. Yes, a bigger economy may have more capacity, but in a growth-oriented scenario that capacity is already allocated.  In this respect bigger economies face the same problem as smaller economies.  But a degrowth scenario is not a “smaller economy” (i.e., a low-capacity economy).  It is a high-capacity economy which is reducing less-necessary production, and therefore is suddenly endowed with spare capacity that can be redirected for necessary purposes.  This is a unique situation that carries significant potential: it enables acceleration in the speed of green production and innovation at a rate faster than what can be achieved in a growth-oriented scenario.

By the way, this spare capacity can also be directed toward urgent social goals, too—for example to provision universal public services—in order to end the needless misery and deprivation that so many people suffer in our existing economy.

Of course, we need some way of mobilizing the spare capacity.  This requires finance.  And this brings us to another problem.  Whoever controls finance determines what we produce, and therefore how our productive capacity is allocated.  In our existing economy, finance is controlled by capital, and capital invests in producing what is most profitable rather than what is most necessary.  This is why we get substantial investment in fossil fuels, SUVs and fast fashion (which are highly profitable) and insufficient investment in renewable energy, public transit and insulation (which are either not as profitable, or not profitable at all). Under capitalism, then, there are real limits to how quickly we can scale up green production and innovation. Capital would rather do other things.

To deal with this problem, we need a greater role for public finance. Instead of waiting for capital to make the necessary investments, governments that have sufficient monetary sovereignty can issue currency to do it directly, in the manner that we describe in this recent article in Ecological Economics (and see here for a discussion of options within the Eurozone).  Of course, there are limits to this process: if the new demand exceeds the productive capacity of the economy, it will drive inflation. But this problem is mitigated in a degrowth scenario, where we are reducing less-necessary production and therefore liberating capacity. Furthermore, inflationary pressures can be controlled by using taxation to cut the purchasing power of the rich, and by regulating private money creation in both quantitative and qualitative ways.

It helps to recognize that when we talk about “investment”, money is just the vehicle.  The real investment actually takes the form of allocating real productive capacity: real labour, materials, energy etc.  Once we understand this fact, it becomes clear that a degrowth scenario enables investment in green production and innovation, by making real productive capacity available. 

This represents an important rebuttal to the claim made by many economists that the only way to “fund” the green transition is first to increase growth.  The assumption here is that we need higher GDP in order to obtain higher tax revenues to finance green production (in other words, increase corporate production of stuff, and then take some of the money from this to spend on green production).  From this point of view, degrowth is self-defeating: less GDP, less tax revenue, less green production. But the flaw in this thinking should be immediately clear.  Corporations do not produce money.  They produce things. To say that we need to increase growth (i.e., increase production of existing things) in order to “fund” green production is tantamount to saying we need to increase production of SUVs, fast fashion and private jets in order to increase production of solar panels and public transit. Clearly this is absurd. We can increase green production directly, with public finance. And indeed this process is enabled – not inhibited – by reducing less-necessary forms of production and thus liberating productive capacity to be redirected for other purposes.

If this approach to public finance is so straightforward, why don’t governments do it?  The short answer is: because they are capitalist. The approach I have described here represents an increase in democratic public control over productive capacity.  This is good.  We should have greater control over the allocation of our own collective labour and resources, so that we can direct it toward necessary objectives (compared to the existing arrangement, where capital controls our productive capacity, in a non-democratic way, and directs it toward what is profitable to capital).  But this necessarily requires reducing capitalist control over productive capacity, which of course runs directly against the interests of capital accumulation. This is why capitalist governments tend to reproduce narratives like “we have to tax before we can spend” and “we must reduce the deficit”, even while knowing these claims to be false, because myths like these reign in our expectations for how much public production we can do, and indeed justify curtailing public production in order to ensure that a larger share of our productive capacity remains in the hands of private capital.

Of course, in high-income countries the remobilization of production to achieve ecological objectives must occur within an overall aggregate reduction of energy and material throughput to sustainable levels (degrowth), as ecological economists have established. We should also be clear that what I have described above need not reinscribe productivist or growthist visions.  Yes, accelerated production of certain things is necessary to accomplish urgent social and ecological tasks (building sufficient renewable energy capacity and establishing universal public services, for instance), but these tasks are not indefinite and – unlike the objective of capitalist growth – do not require perpetually increasing production. Once necessary objectives are achieved, the level of production can be adjusted in a democratic way according to what is socially and ecologically necessary.

The power of this approach is extraordinary. Those who wish to unleash technological innovation and production to achieve ecological objectives often hitch their wagon to capitalist growth.  But capitalism and growthism limit what we can achieve, for the reasons I’ve described here.  Degrowth, combined with a robust public finance strategy, can enable us to overcome these limits, improve our potential for green production and innovation, and enable us to achieve rapid decarbonization.

Dr. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.  He is Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and Chair Professor of Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo. He is Associate Editor of the journal World Development, and serves on the Climate and Macroeconomics Roundtable of the National Academy of Sciences, the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice, and the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Health.