Current social inequality and lack centralized development after degrowth ensures inevitable failure. (retag)

Serge Latouche has been a leading proponent of the degrowth movement in Europe. In a recent article he argues that degrowth is the “only political project capable of renewing the Left” (Citation2010) as it provides a “radical critique of consumption and of development…ipso facto a critique of capitalism.” Further, he maintains that the degrowth project is “not about substituting a “good economy,” good growth or good development for a bad one and repainting it green, or social, or equitable, with a stronger or weaker dose of state regulation or hybridization through a logic of the gift and solidarity economy. It is about exiting the economy.” I find this argument highly problematic for a number of reasons. First, there is no recognition of the qualitative versus quantitative aspects of growth, nor of the material requirements for a high quality of life, in particular the minimum energy consumption per capita. Second, it is a program available for only a minority of the world's people, even in the global North. Who has the option to “exit the economy?” At best, we can welcome his degrowth program as pointing to the creation of local food- and energy-producing cooperatives as complementing and supporting class struggles in the real economy; at worst, it calls for a withdrawal from class struggle, a reprise of the (failed) 1960s hippy commune culture.

In a paper that recognizes the reality of energy poverty in the global South, Martínez-Alier (Citation2010) provides a more fruitful conception of degrowth. He calls for research “on the environmental, technological, demographic, social and socio-psychological aspects of socially sustainable economic degrowth leading to a steady-state economy…in alliance with the environmental justice movements of the South” (2010, 10) and a “moderate economic degrowth (implying a lower social metabolism)…a plausible objective for the rich industrial economies. This would be supported by the EJOs [Environmental Justice Organizations] and their networks in the South which are fighting in ecological distribution conflicts” (2010, 12). While I have argued that a steady-state economy is only conceivable as an ultimate outcome of global ecosocialist transition (Schwartzman Citation2009b), Martínez-Alier is right to emphasize the need to degrow unsustainable consumption in the global North. Further, he recognizes that

There are enormous inequities in the world, both between North and South, but also in the South and in the North. Some people use per year 250 GJ (gigajoules) of energy [equivalent to 8.0 kilowatt/person], most of which from oil and gas, other people manage with less than 10 GJ [or 0.3 kilowatt/person], including their food energy and some wood or dried dung for cooking.

The degrowth program puts much emphasis on local autonomy and struggle (Latouche Citation2009). But simply acting on a local or even a national scale is not sufficient. There is growing urgency for a transnational ecosocialist movement, a simple recognition that transnational capital and its military arm are blocking an effective and enforceable climate treaty for rapid decarbonization of global energy sources.