Jason Hickel - Less is More: How Degrowth will save the World

Jason Hickel's latest book opens with a devastating summary of the ecological crisis. But despite this, he argues that Less is More is "not a book about doom. It is a book about hope." It is also a book that attempts to go far beyond the mainstream responses to climate crisis which focus on new technologies or neoliberal economics. He concludes that "we" need to cut emissions to "zero much, much faster than anyone is presently planning". The reason that nothing has happened so far goes far beyond the superficial causes of the crisis:

Fossil fuel companies, and the politicians that they have bought, bear significant responsibility for our predicament. But this alone doesn't explain our failure to act. There's something else - something deeper. Our addiction to fossil fuels, and the antics of the fossil fuel industry, is really just a symptom of a prior problem. What's ultimately at stake is the economic system that has come to dominate more or less the entire planet over the past few centuries: capitalism.

More specifically, Hickel argues that it is the growth imperative to capitalism that is the problem, "it's not our technology that's the problem. It's growth".

Hickel's focus in this book on capitalism feels like a breath of fresh air. Early chapters in the book take a look at how capitalism developed and the dynamics of the system itself which create growth. Marxists like myself might find some nuances to argue with here, but that's not the key thing. What is important is that Hickel is discussing capitalism and critiquing its central dynamic. 

Hickel continues, however by arguing that he isn't saying that "growth is bad, in and of itself." Rather, he argues, the problem is "growthism" by which he means the "pursuit of growth for its own sake". Here I do have some important disagreements, because on occasion I think that Hickel comes close to arguing that growth is a choice made by the capitalists. He says for instance that "all sectors of the economy must grow, regardless of whether or not we actually need them to. This is an irrational way to manage an economy". 

But growthism, to use Hickel's word, isn't a managerial choice made by the owners of capital. It is a compulsion. They are compelled to do this because of the competitive nature of the system. It is a system of "competitive compulsion" after all. The capitalists cannot break free of this. 

In a recent piece on another book on Degrowth I wrote that:

Karl Marx said this compulsion flowed from competitive accumulation. Capitalists compete with each other to maximise their profits, and are forced to plough back into production most of the wealth they extract from workers. The compulsion to accumulate arises from the competition faced by capitalists. Unless they constantly innovate and develop production methods, they face losing out to their competitors—resulting in possible bankruptcy.

Now to be fair to Hickel, a great strength of his work is that he draws on the insights of Marx and similar writers to develop his arguments. Indeed he probably wouldn't greatly disagree with what I write above. I make this point not to imply that I am a better reader of Marx or for sectarian reasons, but because I think that the importance of understanding the inherent compulsion for "growth" within the system is key to understanding how we can get to a sustainable society.

Firstly, what do we mean by such a society? Hickel outlines the urgency well: "We have built up a global fossil-fuel infrastructure over the past 250 years, and now we have to completely overhaul it in over thirty". Hickel is not arguing here for austerity politics whereby everyone has to tighten their belts In fact Hickel is in favour of growth in some parts of the economy to ensure that people's needs are met equitably. He is arguing for degrowth in large sectors of the economy in a way that challenges the dominant functioning of our system. One example might be how much we work:

Researchers have found that if the United States were to reduce its working hours to the levels of Western Europe, its energy consumption would decline by a staggering 20%. Shortening the working week is one of the most immediately impactful climate policies available to us.

Here Hickel is certainly not arguing that workers should loose a fifth of their incomes. He is very much in favour of defending wages and improving them. Rather he is highlighting how wasteful our system of production is. Another example is a direct challenge to the colonial system that has impoverished and underdeveloped the Global South. Hickel writes:

It means... investing in robust universal social policy to guarantee healthcare, education, water, housing, social security. It means land reform so that small farmers have access to the resources that they need to thrive. It means using tariffs and subsidies to protect and encourage domestic industries. It means decent wages, labour las and a progressive distribution of national income. And it means building economies that are organised around renewable energy and ecological regeneration rather than around fossil fuels and extractivism.

Hickel argues that the capitalism is marked by "artificial scarcity". His argument is that this drove the development of capitalism, because shortages of land caused by enclosure forced people to take up wage labour to survive. Today he says, scarcity of jobs, resources, public services, time, creates a dynamic that forces people to engage with the system to survive. 

In a growth system, he says, "the objective is not to satisfy human needs, but to avoid satisfying human needs. It is irrational and ecologically violent... Once we grasp how this works, solutions rush into view... liberated from the pressures of artificial scarcity, and with basic needs met, the compulsion for people to compete for ever-increasing productivity would wither away. The economy would produce less as a result, yes - but it would also need less".

Capitalism is a system that produces scarcity at the same time as producing over-abundance. The crises of over-production that see vast amounts of commodities produced for profit, despite not being needed, are a direct result of the compulsion to growth. But scrapping this system will not come from simply wishing it away. It is fine to say, as Hickel does, that "by decommodifying public goods, expanding the commons, shortening the working week and reducing inequality we can enable people to access the goods that they need to live well without requiring additional growth in order to do so". But what is the mechanism.

Hickel argues that democracy is key. He wants to see democracy expanded arguing that democracy is inherently anti-capitalist. But as he also points out, capitalism is inherently anti-democracy. Herein lies the crux of the limitation of Hickel's transformative vision. Unless we come up with a strategy to break capitalism, capitalism will constantly use its own power to smash us.

In my recent book Socialism or Extinction I described various historical revolutions in order to reclaim the idea of revolution as a mass democratic movement from below. I also wrote at length about events in Chile in 1973 when Salvador Allende's mildly reforming government was broken by a vicious military coup led by Pinochet and supported by the United States. The importance of that lesson was not that reforms weren't important. But that without a social movement capable of disarming the capitalist state, such radical reforms are doomed to defeat. And, as Hickel acknowledges, we are not arguing here for minor changes but for a direct challenge to the nature of capitalism itself.

As such I was left disappointed by the end of Hickel's book. His demonstration of the failure of capitalism and his argument for a different way of running society seemed to be less a call for systemic change and instead a call to try and create a different system from within capitalism. In contrast I would argue that we have fight for the greatest possible reforms in the immediacy to minimise ecological destruction and offer social justice, at the same time as recognising that an economic system without the compulsion to growth will be one based on a different economic order. That requires revolutionary politics.

Much of this review has focused on my disagreement with Hickel's conclusion. That perhaps arises out of his framework, which differs from mine. But having said all this, I want to argue that his book, like that of Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter and Aaron Vansintjan is one that Marxists should engage with. There is much we agree on here, and Hickel's eloquence and passion, as well as his anti-capitalism, remain important within our shared environmental movement.

Related Reviews

Foster - Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution
Saito - Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism
Schmelzer, Vetter & Vansintjan - The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism