Below is the lastest article from Ted Trainer. As always, bold, radical and hard-hitting. But where is he wrong folks?
Thoughts on the NSW CASSE Project
For Transition to a
Steady-State Economy.
24.3.2013
Ted Trainer
NSW CASSE (Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State
Economy) is to work on the question of how we might transition to a zero growth
economy. This project is of the greatest
importance, especially as in my view much/most thinking on the issue is
confused and/or mistaken.
There is now much critical literature on the growth economy. However most of it, especially from the best
known contributors such as Tim Jackson, Herman Daly, Paul Gilding, David Korten
and Hazel Henderson, does not argue that
it is necessary to scrap and replace capitalism; they proceed as if changes
within a capitalist society can head off the problems it is presently
generating. I will briefly indicate
below reasons why this view is quite mistaken, but my main concern here is with
the problem of transition to a steady state economy, on which the above authors
do not provide much assistance. In my
view, when one grasps the situation we are in, and the basic nature of
capitalism, one sees that the required transition will be extremely difficult, it
will involve a vast remaking of society, and will probably not be achieved. I will then indicate what these
considerations point to as the best strategy for us to put scarce energy into.
The generally unrecognised (wicked) nature of the problem.
A major mistake many make is in seeing growth as an isolated
or specific fault within this society, like a dead car battery that can be
taken out and replaced, leaving the rest of the car intact and able to go on
much the same as before. This is not a
society that has growth, it is a growth society. Growth is built into the foundations and
integrated through its basic processes and systems. The economy functions on growth and cannot
exist without it. For instance if there is no growth then no interest can be paid,
and therefore finance sectors can not function and the entire savings- investment-infrastructure
complex could not exist. Who would
lend money? Where would investment capital come
from? Superannuation could not be paid
from earnings on investments. Unemployment
would inevitably constantly increase.
Governments are in trouble if the growth rate slows. There is recession, bankruptcy, unemployment,
cut backs in vital services, and before long determination to get rid of the
government. Above all the few who own
most of the capital and who have most power to determine what happens want to
invest their capital to get back more than they had. They will not tolerate any threat to the
system which enables this, and that system has to involve growth. They
want ever more outlets for the investment of the ever-increasing quantities of capital they
own.
In this system no government can possibly do anything but
constantly prioritise and gear all its efforts and agencies to maintaining
growth in production, consumption and GDP.
There is no possibility of government considering zero-growth as a
goal. It follows that if we are going to
move in the sane direction it will have to be via processes that are independent
of government, and that will be opposed by government. Any serious move to cease growth would
rightly be seen by government, and just about everyone else, as ruining the
economy.
What should the supreme goal be for anyone concerned about
the fate of the planet? The answer is
not, getting rid of growth. At best this
is only one sub-goal. There are several
major faults in consumer-capitalist society, and the growth commitment is not
even the most important among them. It is even misleading to state a
zero-growth economy as the goal.
Several measures show that resource use
and ecological impact are far beyond levels that could be sustained or spread
to all people. There must be dramatic
reduction in present levels of production, consumption, GDP, trade,
investment, business turnover etc. The
“limits to growth” case has made this clear for decades. For instance the “Footprint” figures show
that we must eventually get per capita resource consumption down to perhaps 10%
of their present levels in Australia. It
is obvious that there are nowhere near enough resources for all the world’s
people to have anything like the levels of resource use etc. that people in
Australia have now. Australia’s per
capita use of productive land is ten times the amount that will be available to
all in 2050, even if no more land is lost.
So it is not just a matter of ceasing to increase our levels
of resource use, production, consumption and GDP, i.e., of having a zero-growth
economy. In addition we have to cut
these to small fractions of their present levels.
The next major point is, that cannot be done in an
economy that is driven by market forces and profit maximisation. There might be a place for markets in a
satisfactory society, but obviously if what is produced and who gets it and
what is developed are decided by who can bid most and make most profit then in
a non-growing economy there will quickly be chaos as the rich take more and
more of he fixed volume of production.
Market systems are about maximising advantage, income, wealth, business
turnover and market share. Those who
mistakenly think that market forces can have an important role in a
satisfactory society, such as Korten and Henderson, are assuming heavily
controlled and regulated “markets”, that is, “markets” in which market forces
are largely or totally prevented from operating.
All this points to an even more daunting problem, the need
to achieve the most enormous cultural change. People and their institutions
must come to be content with stability in income, possessions and wealth. That is, they must abandon all and any
interest in gain, in getting richer.
In the coming era of intense scarcity satisfactory communities will have
to be focussed on providing themselves with stable, self-sufficient and very
frugal material lifestyles. If there
remains any interest in getting richer, some will outpace others and soon take
more than their fair share and social cohesion will disintegrate. This means
there must be astronomical change in
thinking about progress, entrepreneurship and incentive, and indeed the purpose
of life. People would have to be
satisfied to receive low, stable, more or less equal incomes, with no prospect
of or interest in any increase in their lifetimes,(… apart from those which technical
or organisational advance enabled, but it is now increasingly being recognised
that technical advance and GDP growth have been predominantly due to increasing
inputs of resources, especially energy, so in the coming era of severe scarcity
don’t expect miracles in this department.)
So there will have to be a jettisoning of some of the fundamental values
and assumptions that have driven two hundred years of Western society,
especially to do with unlimited movement towards bigger, better and more.
Many within the CASSE
and the De-Growth movement seem not to
understand the enormity of the tiger they have by the tail. Getting rid of growth means an
almost total remake of Western society.
And getting rid of growth is far from all that has to be done. A just and peaceful world order cannot be
achieved unless the rich few stop taking far more than their fair share of
world resources. This cannot happen
while markets, and imperial thuggery, deliver most of the wealth to the rich
countries. The advent of the limits to
growth has confronted us with the fact that we are not going to solve the big
problems or avoid catastrophic breakdown unless we largely remake Western
“civilization”.
Up to this point in history the revolutionary task was
comparatively simple and easy compared with what we have to try to do. Over the
past two hundred years the task was to take control from the ruling class and
then run the same old centralised, top-down, industrial , wealth-creating and
affluence-seeking system, but to do it in the interests of the oppressed
class. But the resource and environment crisis
is a historical game-changer. We have
run into limits which mean that we cannot get to a sustainable and just world
unless we scrap growth and affluence and the many institutions and practices
that go with it and move way down to simple and stable ways that just about all
people are unfamiliar with, have little or no competence at…and regard as unacceptable,
repulsive and ridiculous.
What does this mean for transition strategy?
Governments have to run things primarily in the interests of
the ruling class. (For instance, nothing is more important to the owners of
capital than growth. It has been known for years that growth of GDP in rich
countries either does not improve the quality of life, or reduces it, yet
governments ignore this.) Governments believe that what’s best for business is best
for all; if business prospers there are more jobs and goods for all. But in addition governments serve business
mainly because if they don’t they will be punished and/or dumped. So don’t expect governments to lead a
transition to a steady state economy.
But it’s more than a problem of vision and will. Try to imagine what would happen even if a
government wanted to transition to a steady state economy. It would have to prevent any increase in
investment. It would have to limit
and/or phase out many firms and whole industries, especially those which
increase things, such as much of the construction industry. There would have to be government decisions
about what to produce and where, and how to relocate and/or provide for vast
numbers of displaced workers. They could
not be relocated in other industries, because the point of the exercise would
be to reduce the amount of work and employment.
How could a government possibly deal with such an astronomically big and
multi-dimensional problem. Even if a government wanted to tackle the
problem it couldn’t begin without embracing the most massive commitment to an
authoritarian and repressive form of “socialism”, i.e., to an attempt by government to reorganise and run the
economy and to force enormous and painful changes through despite huge
resentment and resistance. Many firms would have to be made to close down, many
investors would be told there will not be more industries for them to invest
in, many workers would be told there will not be more jobs, most people in the
finance industry would be told there is no future role for them. What would the government do for all those in
the construction etc. industries who presently work at increasing the number of
factories, shops, trucks etc?
Getting through the black hole.
It is not just that no government led move to a steady state
economy could take place without massive and oppressive bureaucracy, central
planning and enforcement, even if people in general supported the move. Clearly movement towards a steady state
economy starts us on a rapid, accelerating spiral down to a black hole.
The many well-meaning people in movements such as Downshifting,
Voluntary Simplicity, Permaculture and the Eco-village and Transition Towns
movements do not seem to realise that the more people they persuade to their
ideas, values and ways, the more they dig their own and everybody else’s
graves. They are damaging the
economy. They are leading people to
consume less, and if more and more people shift to these ways obviously the
economy will descend into recession and worse...and the Downshifters et al.
will find it increasingly difficult to buy the many goods they need. (Evidence
on the footprint of people in even the most effective eco-villages indicates that
they only cut dependence on the wider economy by half. They still need vital imports and if the
wider economy falters they will not get them.)
So if large numbers of people start opting to Downshift,
live simply, share, grow, make things and buy less we will all accelerate to
the breakdown of the rest of the economy we are all still heavily dependent
on...the reduced sales would create increasing recession, bankruptcy, inability
of the economy to produce basic necessities or to provide incomes to the increasing
numbers willingly or involuntarily displaced.
How could this black hole be got through?
The only hope of lessening the impact of this inevitable
crisis point is to try to set up in advance as much capacity as possible to enable
people no longer needed by the consumer-capitalist economy to somehow move over
to satisfactory livelihoods in a totally new and different kind of economy.
It is not credible that this could be
done smoothly; there will inevitably be a more or less chaotic, and possibly fatal,
situation, but the more that local self-sufficient etc. ways are in place, or
at least known to be needed, the better the chances. At this stage the Transition Towns and
related movements have given no thought
whatsoever to this astronomically big and difficult issue. They are focussed on their community gardens,
skill banks and clothing swaps and (in my experience) they distinctly do not
like being badgered to think about how the massive and radical system change is
to be achieved or what their strategy is for getting us through the black hole
they are helping to create. I have
argued with participants in these movements that unless they eventually (not
necessarily now or even soon) shift their focus to these huge and difficult and
very radical alternative system goals, to how we are going to scrap capitalism
and implement some kind of “socialism”, how we are going to close most of the
factories and relocate people … then
their movements will come to nothing. We
will only end up with a moribund consumer-capitalism which contains a lot of
community gardens.
Again there is no possibility of avoiding the coming period
of great troubles. As the growth machine
decelerates, either rationally or as a result of resource limits and/or
financial meltdown, there will be disruption to put it mildly. The more rapidly
and effectively the foot is taken off the growth throttle the more rapidly will we slam into
problems of recession, confusion, intense dissent and resistance, … and the need for repression….and these will be challenges
our system of government is utterly incapable of dealing with.
So, CASSE strategists, your focal question is, in view of
this situation we are in, up against the fundamental catastrophic internal
contradictions of consumer-capitalism and the need for unprecedented change, with
no possibility that governments will or can save us, what on earth can/should
we try to do in order to have some chance of getting through the black hole to
a satisfactory society eventually?
The Simpler Way answer.
My answer is detailed in The Transition to a Sustainable
and Just World, (Envirobook,2010) and at trans document. I do not think the
strategy I argue for is very reassuring or likely to succeed; I think we do not
have the wit or the will to do what’s required.
But I have no doubt that if we do get through the coming decades
satisfactorily it will be via a process of the kind I argue for. Some core themes are:-
- Embrace core elements
in TSW perspective… especially the significance of the limits analysis
of the global situation and thus the magnitude of the change required,
i.e., a historically unprecedented, rapid, large-scale remaking of society
and culture, the irrelevance of official government for this, the black
hole problem… This perspective
includes,
- Recognising that the
ultimate goal has to be the building of small, highly self-sufficient
local communities, in which people take collective control of their
situation, via thoroughly participatory and mostly cooperative processes. (There will still be a need for wider
systems, including a remnant ”state”, under our control.)
- Building and taking
control of our own local Economy B,
those co-ops, businesses, commons, committees and working bees which
will enable us to collectively meet as many of our basic needs as
possible, from our own resources and effort, outside and despite the
market economy. Small
communities must plan, organise and run their community-owned productive
system, to try to meet as many of the basic needs of all as they can.
Economy B can be developed underneath the existing Economy A. As the latter increasingly fails to
provide people can come across to our new arrangements.
- This vision cannot be
achieved unless Simpler Way ideas
and values come to be widely held.
Our over-riding goal must therefore be working to develop that awareness
in people in our localities.
- The best way to do this
is to
a) take every opportunity to spread this
perspective, including campaigns, writing, and everyday conversation etc.,
and
b) participate in those movements which have
begun to go in the general direction required, the Transition Towns,
Downshifting, Voluntary Simplicity, Slow Food, Men’s Shed, Permaculture etc.
movements … in order to help their participants see the need for the radical system change goals discussed
above. The point of joining is not
to create another compost heap or community garden. Just building more community gardens will not
lead to the jettisoning of the growth economy.
The point of joining is to be able to talk to those you are
working with, about the fact that our activities (eventually) have to be geared
to goals such as getting rid of growth, about the need to build and take
control of our local Economy B, about how we are going to get through the black
hole, about the fact that we can get nowhere in the long run unless we solve
problems like affluence and collectivism.
c) Develop the arrangements which
will support this awareness raising work, the web sites, issue summaries to
refer people to, speakers panels, advisory services, outreach functions,
campaign groups…and the links whereby we can chat, seek advice and ideas, and
maintain morale.
A feeble and disappointing
strategy? Not likely to succeed. I agree.
But if our situation is as I have argued, can you suggest a better one?
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