“Post Growth”—Why and How?

People against destroying our planetary home often favor “No Growth”—“steady as she goes”—or even the rhetorically catchier “DeGrowth”—“shrink baby shrink.” Their pro-growth opponents sometimes say, “grow baby grow,” or more pointedly, “drill baby drill.” But if you asked me, “where do you stand vis a vis growth? Give yourself a really short label that includes the word growth.” I would reply, “I favor what I think most degrowthers and no-growthers also favor and what many pro-growthers oppose. That is, I am for “post-growth” or, to clarify, I am for good growth and against bad growth.

To focus on growth per se orients us to care most about the size of a pile of products. But to focus on pile size misdirects eyes away from full consequences. We may tend to ignore what each product may be. We may tend to ignore how the pile arrives. We may tend to ignore where the pile goes.

Many growth advocates like that effect. They want growth per se center stage. They want eyes off well-being much less impoverishment, alienation, subordination, and planetary impact. Some then say “ignore consequences. Go for growth. Growth is good.”

Degrowthers and no-growthers instead care what’s in the pile. They care about how it got created and where it winds up. They want eyes on well-being, impoverishment, alienation, subordination, and planetary impact. Consequences matter. But in that case, why do degrowthers and no-growthers opt for a label that suggests our eyes should see mainly pile size?

“Post growth” as an alternative label would instead suggest that growth per se is not the point. Post growth would not imply that growth per se guarantees net benefit or imposes net damage. Post growth would say highlight the consequences of production, consumption, and allocation that enhance human fulfillment and development and decry the consequences of production, consumption, and allocation that reduce human fulfillment and development. Likewise, reject what violates ecological sustainability. Welcome what enhances ecological sustainability. So should we all say “post growth” to avoid making growth per se the issue? Or how about if we say “we favor good growth and we oppose bad growth?”

Many analysts incorrectly treat growth as homogenous. Some then wrongly deduce that growth is good. Growth is essential. Don’t question growth. Welcome growth. But their entreaty is demonstrably, wrong—or worse, maliciously deceptive. Some other analysts also treat growth as homogenous but then wrongly deduce that growth is bad. Growth harms. Reject growth. Their entreaty is also demonstrably wrong.

Growth is not always good. Growth is not always bad. Growth is not essential for sensible economy. Growth need not destroy sensible economy. To perceive a zero sum face-off, “grow or don’t grow,” can derive from willful obfuscation but also from correctable confusion.

Growth of any kind surely requires an increase in something over some period of time. Height, weight, income, wealth, distance, whatever. But what is the thing whose increase from one year to the next ought to constitute year on year economic growth? This is harder to agree on.

Some say or at least imply that economic growth should register more weight or perhaps more items this year than last year. But with that definition, there will be more growth next year if we switch some effort from tending the sick or educating the young to producing more gas guzzling suvs, or even piling up unused cement. To drop more bombs that generate more corpses and headstones would contribute to growth. To reduce bombs, corpses, and headstones would diminish growth. If we define growth by pile size, even disgusting choices could augment growth. Spit poison. Clean it up. More growth than if we did neither. So we can define growth as pile size, but should we? Is to define growth as pile size useful or obfuscatory?

What if we take society’s total productive output and measure it by worth per worker, and then do so again, and so on, to see if it is more per year with each new year? With this definition, only more worth of output per worker would constitute growth. Since we can define things however we choose, should we define “growth” this way?

We should want our concepts, the things we keep track of with a label, to be things that we care about and we want to pay attention to. Assuming we want everyone to eat, sleep, and be merry—and not just those who work—let’s direct our attention to worth per person, not worth per worker. Growth would then mean more worth per person. Worth not volume, is that a good definition?

It depends on what counts as worth. How about benefits of society’s product for people minus costs of the product’s creation for people? The reason to subtract cost is straightforward. If we use five pencils to produce two pencils, our net result is minus three pencils, not plus two pencils. Similarly, if we use fossil fuel, lithium, sunlight, or human work hours to produce household energy whose consumption can increase human well being, then we need to subtract the cost of the production to see if the economy’s yearly productive output has grown. What if we ignore some costs of either production or consumption, or, for that matter, some benefits of either? We would calculate the wrong result. Why would anyone do that? Here are some reasons.

The automobile industry uses energy, human labor, steel, rubber and so on to produce vehicles. What is its positive output and what should we subtract to determine the net worth of the auto industry’s yearly activity? The positive output is presumably the vehicles. What is the cost to subtract? We used up steel, rubber, human labor, etc. But we also generated some other productive output than just the vehicles, for example pollution, smashed souls and severed limbs of workers, and reinforced class divisions. For that matter, to further the picture, to use the outputted vehicles provides transport, a good thing, but it also generates traffic deaths and more pollution, decidedly bad things.

It turns out, even in our simple survey, that to highlight net worth of output, we have an advisory. We should count the the beneficial impact of what’s produced, including of how it is produced and of its consumption, but then we should also count the harmful impact of how it is produced and of its consumption including what gets used up or harmed. So far, so good, but a new problem arises. How do we count the worth or cost of anything? Where does such a measure come from?

In our capitalist economy, markets assign prices. If these prices accurately account for all costs and benefits, we can add up the total price of all units of stuff to get the price of the whole pile of stuff, and then take that per capita. Bingo, except—wait a second. Do those prices actually reveal what we mean by worth? Do market prices accurately assess positive impact on workers, consumers, society writ large, and the planet? Do they accurately subtract negative impact on each including what we used up and bad consequences for global warming or for workers’ well being? Via the clash and jangle of market competition, where bargaining power rules, do prices of what goes into producing outputs and prices of outputs themselves and prices of outputs’ consumption effects accurately account for the full personal, social, and ecological consequences of producing and consuming stuff?

We can easily see that they don’t. Think of public transport, health care, parks, safe streets, and education. Think also of missiles flying and bombs exploding. Consider liposuction that thins few and pollution that sickens many. Think of exhausted souls exiting factories at day’s end. Do the changes in workers’ well being on and off the job get counted? Tesla, Amazon, Apple, and Google disperse gigantic profits that gild owners’ mansions of glory. How does that get assessed? What about positive and negative economic implications for future ecology or for future social relations? Do prices account for killing the planet?

My too quickly argued point is that market accounting doesn’t register accurate full personal, social, and ecological consequences of producing and consuming stuff for all those affected or even for anyone affected. Rather it reflects the relative power of those who want this or that as against those who suffer the consequences of this or that.

So why are utterances about the virtues of capitalist growth bogus? It is because market prices don’t actually measure full personal, social, and ecological costs and benefits. They instead measure what buyers and sellers were able to buy and sell things for, which in turn depends overwhelmingly on what people were able to coerce by their bargaining power.

No market mechanism accurately tallies the real personal, social, and ecological effects on workers of doing their jobs to produce what they produce, or on residents near workplaces affected by factory run-off, or on the intended direct consumers, or on those who didn’t buy but who are affected by other consumer’s consuming what they bought, or on those affected by emergent social relations, or those affected by ecological implications. What does get measured reflects who can take what, who can impose what, and also, bearing directly on our discussion of labels, on who decides what consequences are named and counted and what consequences go unnamed and uncounted.

In capitalism, choices of how to produce, how much to produce, and what to consume are made overwhelmingly by necessarily competitive and inexorably profit-seeking owners and by consumers unavoidably saddled by restrictive social situations. All confront horribly inaccurate prices. Markets bend us all out of shape. Bent outcomes emerge.

In our world, economic growth names an increase in something economic from one period to the next. Fair enough. But what is the something that economic growth measures? Who has an interest in measuring that something? Who is mislead by eyes being focussed on only that something?

Consider when British imperial control of India was at its height. Suppose about a billion dollars worth of stuff moved from India to England yearly. Suppose the cost of maintaining the imperial relation between England and India was about two billion dollars yearly. Why might England pursue such a costly policy? Follow the money. Where did the billion that came back to England wind up? Where did the two billion that it cost England come from?

Suppose the billion that went to England from India went to British owners as profits. Suppose the two billion that were spent to maintain the relationship came from British taxpayers. In that case, what grew? The wealth of the owners in England. Who lost? The rest of the population of England, and of course, India, suffering not only extraction but subordination. Now consider the U.S. in the world today. The U.S. has roughly 800 overseas military bases. Imagine the costs. Are there any benefits? Who pays? Who profits? Gross pile size ignores differential consequences.

Consider a more domestic example, the auto industry, mentioned earlier. Broadly speaking, the picture is clear enough. The owners and less-so but still significantly, empowered employees do stupendously or at least fantastically well. Other disempowered employees and the pollution-breathing population, not so much. Take into account ecological effects like global warming and depletion of non replaceable resources. Count the direct and indirect personal effects. Count the effects on social relations inside and outside the auto plants. Count pain, danger, ill health, nervous tension, and hate. We would then see workers with not much that grows other than bodily damage year to year—and we would see owners and to a lesser but not insignificant extent empowered employees whose income and influence grows greatly year to year. We would see differential consequences.

Consider another example, also mentioned earlier, the “suck away the fat cosmetic surgery” industry. Stuffed wallets of the rich bid up the product’s price. Given the incredible inequality of bargaining power among different constituencies, the will of the rich counts far more than that of the poor regarding all aspects of production and consumption including what is done, how it is done, and how it is valued. It turns out that if we judge output by market prices, we get an incredibly bent accounting and very seriously warped outcomes. Many consequences go un-counted. This is capitalist profit-seeking as usual.

So it comes down to this. Suppose we want “growth” to measure something that bears on human well being and development in all its dimensions. Then what should growth measure? What should we care about enough to want keep track of and celebrate its increase?

How about a comparison, from year to year, of the total value per capita of society’s economic activity where value (somehow) takes into account the full consequences of both production and consumption on individuals and groups regarding the well being and development of people, of the environment they live in, and of the social relations that bear on their future options—and where the benefits and costs that people enjoy or suffer count just as much for each person as for each other person?

That is not precisely perfect. None of the above is. It is all too brief to be precisely perfect. Nonetheless, perhaps the proposed definition is good enough to clarify what we ought to mean by growth, and who should want it.

But now comes a worldly wrinkle that often gets overlooked. It is a kind of intellectual con game. Suppose we talk about a society in which the economy properly and equitably accounted for true personal, social, and environmental costs and benefits. In that case, if we define it as above, growth would track the net gain (or loss) of benefits outputted per year per capita. It would tally harmful consequences for equity, self management, ecological balance, and social and personal material well being as negatives. It would tally beneficial consequences of all those types as positives. It would calculate the net result. Positives minus negatives. In that case, if we grew that economy year to year, it would mean that having taken everything into account, we would have generated more net good for people per capita. In that case, if there is also equitable dispersal, we should all favor growth. With that definition and in that type of post capitalist economy, growth would be good. But that is not our world. And to act as if it is our world—that is the con game.

Unlike in an imagined vastly better future world, in our actual capitalist market economy, we have no proper accounting of costs and benefits, nor are they equitably distributed. An increase in production and consumption in our world can yield more negatives than positives, but with the negatives not counted or undercounted, and with the positives over counted and also inequitably allotted. Such growth can be not just bad, but even catastrophically bad. High waters rising. Essential resources disappearing.

For our proposed definition, we can see various ways to maintain or increase desirable growth from time 1 to time 2. We could produce more benefits per capita with no increase in detriments, or we could produce the same amount of benefits per capita, but with less detriments. We could apportion more fairly. But if we are eager for, or quite content with, or even just unaware of or misinformed about negative outcomes, we may accept that to produce more value of what some get even at the expense of producing less that others get and regardless of how much harmful stuff we suffer even unto ecological death could seem to be wonderful and essential growth.

The con game causes people to think that more growth will necessarily mean more good stuff for them despite that it will often instead mean more good stuff for someone else plus more loss or devestation for them. Or it causes people to think that cutting back output will necessarily mean less good stuff for them even though it can mean less bad stuff for them.

It turns out if we think things through, we need to be careful when we talk about growth. Perhaps we should arrive at the observation that we might better call ourselves “post growth” then “no growth” or “degrowth” much less “pro growth.” Perhaps we should pay attention to what actually matters, not to what professors or media minions of power and wealth tell us to pay attention to.

But how do we do that? Ultimately, I happen to think we reject all hierarchies of inequitable influence. We reject private control of productive assets. We reject a class-creating corporate division of labor. We reject competitive market or centrally planned authoritarian allocation. We adopt instead an approach to economy (kinship, polity, and culture) that elevates diverse participation, equity, solidarity, and self management. We adopt classless collectively self managed work and enact classless collectively self managed participatory allocation. We uncover and properly account for ecological impact and entwinement. We abide the ecological precautionary principle.

But even if we all came to agree on all those ultimate steps, still what about the here and now? What about global survival? The long haul should inspire and inform us now, for sure. But how do we prevent current warming turning into to tomorrow’s heating? How do we prevent tomorrow’s heating turning into next year’s boiling? How do we prevent next year’s boiling turning into next decade’s end times? And how ow do we deal, as well, with other less known but also urgent ecological crises?

Some say we can only deal with global climate change or any other ecological crisis by first winning a new world. For them, “Revolution is the only solution.” But that sentiment fails to recognize that escalating current ecological nightmares and foreseeable desirable future social revolution don’t share one timeline. For the former, we don’t have much time to avoid calamity. For the latter, we need considerable time. We better not ignore that we have to win calamity-preventing changes while the whole world is still horribly flawed. We can wish we could attain a post capitalist economy quickly enough that its subsequent operations would organically reverse global warming, but for people who are against destroying our planetary home to treat that wish as reality would unintentionally drown and burn us all in a surging, boiling pool of self-imposed delusion. Winning a new world won’t happen soon enough to reverse global warming before global boiling incinerates us.

We want a new vastly better society. But we also want to survive ecological crises. The order of these accomplishments is not a matter of free choice. To survive to then battle on to win a new world is a possible path. To win a new world to then survive is not a possible path. The new world part would take too long. We would succumb to an endless night before we won a new morning.

On the way to a new world, we must win calamity-preventing reforms in our current world, albeit in a manner that develops informed desire for and prepares means to win much more later.

With capitalism, racism, and sexism still propelling the opposite of our desires, we nonetheless have to win changes that immediately reduce, curtail, and reverse ecological damage. Our practices, demands, and struggles and our self definition should communicate to those not yet immersed in our agenda that we want not growth per se and also not no growth or degrowth per se. We want positive growth, which first requires an end to global warming and attention to other on-coming ecological crises.

This piece first appeared on Znet.

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