Beyond growth or beyond capitalism?

Submitted by martin on 10 August, 2021 - 5:40 Author: Tony Southwell
Capitalist junk

There’s more to Tim Jackson’s new book, Post Growth: Life after Capitalism than I’m going to deal with in this review. I’d note especially his call for investment in the caring economy, changing the nature of work and the need for new definitions of prosperity.

The Guardian review has a broader treatment but I’m just going to concentrate on two points. How to legislate for reduced consumption - he doesn’t square the circle. And whether or not socialist societies need to grow in the same sense as capitalist ones - he gets it wrong.

Jackson is a proponent of degrowth, defined as “… a phase of planned and equitable economic contraction in the richest nations, eventually reaching a steady state that operates within Earth’s biophysical limits”, and he would like the state to tell us to consume less. He baulks at the idea because: “People don’t like being told their lives are limited… And when the telling is done by those whose lives appear to be much less limited, anxiety rapidly turns to resentment. The challenge of governance in a postgrowth world is profound for this very reason.”

His promise to return to this challenge later in the book just compounds his difficulties in my view, because it confirms a Marxist understanding of the state “… the ideal of a benevolent, unpartisan state has already been irredeemably tarnished by wealth and privilege.” “The result is a vision of the state as an executive club whose main function is to protect the interests of property-owners.”

Jackson isn’t a Marxist, but he is thinking along the right lines when he says that “… we haven’t yet reached the destination of democracy.” Perhaps we need to introduce him to the idea of economic democracy.

He does suggest regulation of party funding and some desirable characteristics for political representatives, but it all seems woefully inadequate compared to the scale of the democratic deficit he outlines and the urgency needed to deal with climate change and sustainable development. In another paper, he suggests that the UK should aim for net zero carbon by 2025, and it ends with an appeal to Buddhist and Taoist teachings on power!

As it is the economies of the richest nations, under degrowth conditions, which need to contract it seems only equitable that within those nations it is the rich who need to contract the most. Jackson doesn’t address this. I think it just makes his case for degrowth sponsored by the state, as currently constituted, even more problematic.

Of course the rich could set such a moral example to us all by the scale of their downsizing that they might be able to persuade us to follow suit. But if history is anything to go by, then we know that when sacrifice is called for it isn’t the rich who step up.

To deal with the issue of economic growth in future socialist conditions requires an explanation of where capitalism’s expansionary drive comes from.

Jackson says “First, of course, we should be clear that growth is not exclusive to capitalism. Communist countries have also routinely set growth targets for almost as long as capitalist ones have – and still do so today”. Jackson is confused over what constitutes a "communist country", and I think Richard Smith has answered his charge well. In short, there isn’t the same in-built drive to grow within planned economies: they can choose not to.

Capitalism and "communism" on the model of China or Stalin's USSR do have something in common: exploitation. Jackson acknowledges the class struggle with the statement that “the owners of capital are in constant competition with the ‘owners’ of wage labour”, but we could substitute 'bureaucrats in charge of state property' for "owners of capital". That would give him an equivalence between the two, but not the one he seeks to demonstrate. Jackson can’t discriminate between the different roles of growth in the two systems because he never acknowledges that there is also constant competition between the owners of capital. In order to protect their investments and attract more, capitalists must demonstrate that they are getting and will continue to get the largest returns possible on their capital, and they do that by growing their business. That same dynamic was not at play in the so-called "communist countries".

Jackson’s prescription for dealing with sustainability issues seem divorced from the current political situation and pessimistic. At one point in the book, commenting on the struggle for democracy, he says “… we have relegated all hope of that prospect to the gutter.”

Implemented right now his degrowth proposal would surely lead to social unrest whilst probably leaving the capitalists in charge.

Instead we should push for a socialist green new deal to slow down the rate of climate change and for repeal of all the anti-union laws to increase the chances for a democratic revival through challenging the power of the capitalists and their governments. Our goal remains a sustainable planned economy controlled by us all, in contrast both to capitalism and to the "communist countries".

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