Less is More? A review of Jason Hickel’s argument for degrowth.

In his book Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin Random House, 2020), Jason Hickel provides a fascinating account of what is wrong with capitalism and how a shift to degrowth will allow us to move towards a post-capitalist world. There are a number of critical assessments of climate change and environmental destruction. Hickel stands out, however, by the way he clearly locates the roots of our problems in capitalism and acknowledges that overcoming these problems requires nothing else than transforming capitalism. In this blog post, I will draw out Hickel’s major contributions as well as provide a couple of critical reflections.

 

Organised around wage labour and the private ownership of the means of production, Hickel understands that it is not only workers, who compete with each other in capitalism, but equally companies in a relentless struggle to secure and expand their market share. ‘The choice is stark: grow or die’, Hickel writes. ‘And this expansionary drive puts other companies under pressure, too. Suddenly no one can be satisfied with a steady-state approach; if you don’t push to expand, you’ll get gobbled up by your competitors. Growth becomes an iron law to which all are captive’ (P.87). It is this pursuit of growth for its own sake, which ultimately underpins relentless capitalist expansion at the detriment of nature. In itself, climate breakdown will not stop economic growth. ‘One can imagine that GDP might continue growing even as social and ecological systems begin to collapse. Capital will pile into new growth sectors like sea walls, border militarisation, Arctic mining and desalination plants’ (P.122).

 

A second key contribution by Hickel is his focus on ‘artificial scarcity’ underpinning capitalist expansion. In Britain, people were separated from their means of social reproduction, when the commons were expropriated during the period of enclosures from around 1500 onwards. It is this ‘artificial scarcity’, which then forced them to move to expanding cities in the search for wage labour. This ‘artificial scarcity’ was then also imposed across the empire causing, for example, widespread famines in India between 1875 and 1900. ‘In fact, Indian grain exports more than tripled during this period, from 3 million tons in 1875 to 10 million tons in 1900. This was artificial scarcity taken to new extremes’ (P.59). 

 

Third, Hickel makes clear that climate change is a continuation of the colonial plunder, which had marked the initial expansion of capitalism sustained by the expropriation of Indigenous land in the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade. While the industrialised countries of the Global North have historically contributed 92 per cent of green house gas emissions, it is now countries in the Global South, which face the most drastic consequences. ‘According to data from the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, the South bears 82% of the total costs of climate breakdown, which in 2010 added up to $571 billion in losses due to drought, floods, landslides, storms and wildfires’ (P.114).

 

Fourth, Hickel successfully unmasks the role of technological innovation in capitalism. Unlike free market optimists, who regard technology as a way out of climate crisis in that it would support green growth decoupled from resource use, he understands that within the structuring conditions of capitalist social relations of production, new technology will always only be employed to secure greater market share through expanding production. ‘In 2018, the global economy achieved a recycling rate of 9.1%. Two years later it was down to 8.6%. This isn’t because our recycling systems are getting worse. It’s because growth in total material demand is outstripping our gains in recycling. Once again, it’s not our technology that’s the problem – it’s growth’ (P.156). 

 

Most importantly, however, are Hickel’s concrete suggestions for change based on principles of social justice. Degrowth, ‘a planned downscaling of energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way’ (P.29), is crucial in this respect. A good life, first of all, is based on low levels of inequality within and between countries. Hickel demonstrates how we already produce plenty to satisfy everyone’s needs across the world. The problem is, however, that the distribution of wealth is far too uneven. ‘If we can find ways to share what we already have more fairly, we won’t need to plunder the Earth for more. Justice is the antidote to growth’ (P.196). While industrial countries need to scale down their productive activities significantly in a strategy of degrowth, poor countries in the Global South should, however, still be allowed to continue economic growth in order to ensure the satisfaction of basic needs of all their people. 

 

And yet, Hickel goes beyond reformist demands of wealth redistribution. ‘Ending planned obsolescence, capping resource use, shortening the working week, reducing inequality and expanding public goods – these are all essential steps to reducing energy demand and enabling a faster transition to renewables. But they are also more than that. They fundamentally alter the deep logic of capitalism’ (P.230). Key here is, furthermore, the ability of more democratic participation in decision-making in open discussions about what kind of economy people want. Of course, the wealth of the one per cent will decline, the income of large corporations be reduced. Degrowth along these lines should not, however, be mistaken for austerity. ‘Austerity calls for scarcity in order to generate more growth. Degrowth calls for abundance in order to render growth unnecessary’ (P.234).

 

‘Degrowth is, ultimately, a process of decolonisation’ (P.251). When industrial countries move away from growth, countries in the Global South are no longer hostage to resource extraction, but can focus on their own needs. Degrowth, furthermore, involves a move away from individuality towards an emphasis on the connections between everything. ‘This is what Indigenous philosophers teach us: that we must learn to see ourselves once again as part of a broader community of living beings. If our approach to degrowth does not have this ethic at its heart, then we have missed the point’ (P.271).

I have some minor points of disagreement. Hickel’s history of capitalism is rather undifferentiated, portraying the emergence of capitalism as a European phenomenon, while in fact the enclosures were very much a British development. By contrast, peasants in Eastern Europe suffered a new period of enserfment and in France pretty much retained their feudal autonomy. In fact, Hickel himself focuses on Britain when he describes the enclosures. Equally, he looks at peasant life during feudalism with rather rose-tinted glasses. Yes, peasants had gained a lot of power vis-à-vis their lords due to the shortage of people after the plague in the mid-14^th century. Nevertheless, it was them who suffered most from the endless wars between European aristocracies such as the Hundred Years’ War between France and England from 1337 to 1453 or the Thirty Years’ War in the first half of the 17^th century, which devastated the European continent.  

 

These points, however, should not draw away anything from the excellence and importance of this book. A must read for everyone who is interested in how we can tackle climate change in a constructive way by transforming capitalism towards a society based on principles of social and global justice. 

 

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net

29 April 2021