1 The idea of doing away with the goal of economic growth in order to pursue the development of a “degrowth” society first emerged in France in the early twenty-first century, and has since taken root. Its leading theorist, Serge Latouche, has explained what this project entails in numerous publications, some aimed at the general public. [1] Here we present a summary of his ideas. In the first article in this dossier, Latouche outlines his belief that economic growth has become a “religion,” the concept of sustainable development is a “mystification,” and we need to “restore a sense of limits to ensure the survival of humanity and of the planet.” This requires us to challenge capitalism, the consumer society, and “economic totalitarianism” more broadly. There are, however, no “one-size-fits-all” solutions, since each region of the world must follow its own path.
2 The second article consists of a discussion between Latouche and Quebecois sociologist Jacques T. Godbout. While he supports the idea of degrowth, Godbout challenges Latouche by arguing that the idea of the market contains “a fundamental principle of autonomy and freedom” that people are not ready to give up. He also believes that degrowth lacks a mobilizing power—a problem given that humanity needs positive myths. Godbout emphasizes the idea of the gift as a key component of degrowth, and argues that the concrete solutions outlined by Latouche remain “merely empty words.”
3 The third article, by sociologist Dominique Méda, pleads for the concept of gross domestic product (GDP) to be abandoned altogether. As an aggregate, GDP is fetishized by economists and governments, but it has numerous flaws: it only records positive flows and cannot be used to produce a true balance sheet for economic activity, since it completely ignores the environmental and social damage produced by growth. Interestingly, however, Méda argues for a “postgrowth” rather than “degrowth” society.
4 The fourth article comes from the very different perspective of economist Alain Bienaymé. He agrees with some of the observations made by the “degrowthers”: that growth has become “a veritable obsession,” and “the pursuit of endless growth in a finite world brings us to an impasse.” But in his view, “the ambition of the proposed reforms is utopian in its scope.” He suggests a more realistic approach, based on three priorities: reducing unemployment, the pursuit of “frugality,” and the concept of “smart growth.”
Serge Latouche’s vision
5 Serge Latouche has published several books on degrowth, and is considered to be its leading theorist. Here he sums up its key ideas in a short article published in the Revue juridique de l'environnement. The term “degrowth” was introduced in 2002 “to expose the mystification of the ideology of sustainable development.” Growth is a “natural [. . .] phenomenon,” but “the modern West has turned it into a religion.” Far from developing “in symbiosis with nature,” the “body economic” exploits nature “ruthlessly” and, according to this religion, must “grow indefinitely, as must its fetish: capital.” This “culminates in the fantasy of the immortality of the consumer society.” Latouche defines the “growth society” as follows: “It is not a matter of growing to satisfy identified needs, which would be a good thing, but of growing for the sake of it.” It is a race characterized by “doing away with limits in three areas”: the extraction of renewable and non-renewable resources, the production of new needs (“and therefore of superfluous products”), and the production of waste (pollution).
6 The objective of the degrowth movement is therefore to “restore a sense of limits to ensure the survival of humanity and of the planet.”
7 Latouche sees degrowth as “a matrix of alternatives” capable of “lifting away the leaden blanket of economic totalitarianism.” Degrowth (or “a-growth,” as he also calls it) “will not be established in the same way” across the various regions of the world. It is impossible to “propose a one-size-fits-all model of a degrowth society; we can only sketch out the fundamentals of any sustainable non-productivist society.” It will be organized on the basis of the “eight ‘Rs’: re-evaluate, reconceptualize, restructure, redistribute, relocalize, reduce, reuse, and recycle.”
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The danger of throwing out the baby of the market with the bathwater of growth
9 In one of his most recent books, Comment réenchanter le monde: La décroissance et le sacré (Rivages, 2019), Latouche analyzes the way Pope Francis approaches the question of growth, and hails his encyclical as a turning point for the Catholic Church. Although the encyclical does not “pursue to its conclusion the idea of needing to break with the economy,” Latouche sees the Pope as adopting a “radical critique of the destructive effects of productivism.” This article, published in La Revue du MAUSS, presents a discussion between Latouche and Quebecois sociologist Jacques T. Godbout, who takes a friendly but critical look at the idea of degrowth.
10 Godbout is more circumspect than Latouche about the need to entirely “desacralize” growth. He has no hesitation in concurring with condemnation of “the runaway circulation of things that resembles a cancerous cell reproducing beyond the control of an individual’s genetic code.” But at the heart of the concept of growth lies another idea: that “everyone knows what is good for them and that we should not impose our values on others.” The idea of the market contains “a fundamental principle of autonomy and freedom that the classical left has always sought to ignore, as so strikingly illustrated by George Orwell.” As such, Godbout challenges Latouche’s idea that “the market ideology [is] a myth.” The market, Godbout writes, “is a key ingredient of autonomy that individuals will not readily give up.” And “if we want humanity to embrace degrowth, we must not ask it to give up everything the market has brought it.” To put it another way, “if we throw out the baby of market liberation with the bathwater of growth, degrowth will be hard to accept.”
11 In addition to this, while agreeing that growth must be desacralized, Godbout asks what might replace it. He argues that “degrowth does not give meaning to life [. . .] And humans need myths, even if they do not believe in them.” Here he introduces his favorite topic—the gift: “We need to establish a relationship of gift exchange with nature, and perceive ourselves as recipients who must give in turn.” This, he writes, is “the positive side of the idea of degrowth, and crucial to infusing it with a soul.”
12 In terms of concrete solutions, Godbout quotes Latouche, who criticizes Pope Francis for “offering merely empty words,” and returns the compliment: “But the same criticism could perhaps be made of Latouche himself.” Godbout emphasizes that, in his view, the answer to the question of “how to re-enchant the world” must involve the gift: “Only the gift can bring an end to the tendency to turn everything into a commodity.”
13 In his response, Latouche counters that “the decommodification of the three fictitious commodities that are land, labor, and money [. . .] would [. . .] abolish the Market (and thus the market society and market economy) in favor of a non-market society with markets.”
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“Postgrowth” rather than “degrowth”
16 While it appears that the idea of growth has clearly had its day, sociologist Dominique Méda suggests that advocating degrowth demands a “break with the past” that is difficult to reconcile with “meeting everyone's needs.” In her article for the journal Humanisme, she agrees with the degrowthers on the fundamental point that growth can no longer be seen as a realistic objective, given the immeasurable damage it has caused to the planet. But she takes a different approach by focusing on a related myth: the idea that GDP is a credible measure of the wealth produced by economic activity. Méda argues that this recent aggregate, which dates back only to the Second World War, has so many flaws that it should be abandoned altogether. GDP “offers an extremely reductive and inaccurate picture of [reality],” she writes. “It leaves out and assigns no value to numerous activities and realities that are essential to social reproduction, including all those that do not result in products destined for trade or even in products at all, such as ‘domestic work,’ and family, voluntary, civic, political, leisure, and personal development activities.” And “GDP also assigns a positive value to all products, whether they are useful or useless, in the traditional sense of the word.” It does not take into account “inequalities in participation in production (the same GDP can be produced with a small number of unemployed people or with five million unemployed),” or “inequalities in consumption.” More fundamentally, national accounts based on GDP “only record positive flows”: unlike business accounts, they have “no balance sheet on which to offset increases with depreciations, subtractions, and negative values.”
17 In conjunction with colleagues, Méda is thus working to develop “new wealth indicators that might provide a more accurate picture of the wealth of society and, in particular, of the critical assets that enable it to live: natural resources and social health.” Denouncing another “myth”—that of “green growth”—she calls for a “postgrowth” society whose performance is evaluated on the basis of such new indicators.
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Reforms of a utopian scope
19 Is degrowth a realistic goal? Many would argue not. Here, while agreeing with some of the points made by the degrowthers, economist Alain Bienaymé offers a critical reading of the concept. In his article for the journal Commentaire, he begins by recalling that the idea of GDP growth is itself a recent one, developed in the wake of the Second World War. Before then, “whether out of indifference or skepticism, most economists [. . .] saw no future in growth.” But since 1945, governments “have enshrined it as a priority,” to the point of it becoming “a veritable obsession.” The turning point was the 2007 financial crisis, which “came as the planet was embarking on a new trajectory, one imposed by the long overlooked scarcity of its natural resources.” In fact “the pursuit of endless growth in a finite world brings us to an impasse.” The realization that nature’s services are a “global commons” has profoundly changed the intellectual climate. We have entered what Ulrich Beck describes as the “risk society,” which is dominated by uncertainty.
20 “Condemning our addiction to growth appears to be the ethical thing to do,” writes Bienaymé, in reference to the work of Serge Latouche. The “growth objectors” propose “a new production function” in which capital is replaced by nature. But in his view, “the ambition of the proposed reforms is utopian in its scope.” For degrowthers, “the sole purpose of protecting the environment is to end capitalism. We are asked to condemn an organizing principle solely on the grounds of its excesses, which are an inevitable part of any human endeavor.” But “it is hard to see how new energy sources and other ‘bioeconomic’ innovations can emerge without capital or capitalists willing to take industrial risks.” In short, “degrowth models come to socially unacceptable, economically demotivating, and politically unworkable conclusions.”
21 To conclude, Bienaymé proposes three interrelated scenarios of future growth: the first aims to reduce unemployment, the second “turns its back on consumerism” and commits to “frugality,” and the third is designed to bring about a “smart growth,” in which “the rate of growth is less important than the range of purposes assigned to a country’s activities.”
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Translator: Hayley Wood, Editor: Zahira Ransome, Senior editor: Mark Mellor
Notes
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[1]
Serge Latouche, La décroissance (Paris: PUF, 2019).
