Nicholas Villareal’s comments on the economics of degrowth are a valuable contribution to the discourse on eco-socialism. None of his major points—that labor cost is separate from material throughput, that a reduction in material throughput would not necessarily mean a reduction of economic activity, and that changing the relations of production is about more than political will alone—are ones that I would meaningfully dispute. The resulting description of a degrowth economy, culminating in an ever-reducing nominal GDP, is certainly intriguing. At the same time, I believe these fiscal observations suggest a conception of eco-socialist transition that misses the forest for the trees, and risks falling into the ‘economism’ (or, more precisely, ‘productivism’) which the original piece by Martin Rose was meant to critique.

My problem with Villareal’s analysis starts from one of his core contentions, namely that the long-term reduction in material and energy use which degrowth prescribes would require a short-term increase in economic activity. While this accurately describes a socialist climate transition in purely economic terms, it also obscures the political character of such a transition. One of the main tasks of Marxist political economy is to dispel the obscurantism of liberal economics and reveal the social reality at its root. In this instance, then, it ought to be clarified that the ‘blip’ of economic growth associated with eco-socialist transformation would be of a manifestly different kind than that of ordinary capitalist accumulation. 

To make sense of this contrast, let us speak first of the usual course of events. In capitalist societies, the need to consistently increase economic activity and labor productivity through profit-seeking enterprises is necessitated by more primary societal concerns; though individual capitalist greed plays its role, far more important is the general preservation of the class structure by maintaining institutions of amelioration and enforcement. The welfare states of the 20th century could be taken as the most successful expression of such a growth-dependent social contract. The generation of elites who established it had to contend with well-developed labor movements, and were keenly aware of the dangers of a ‘less managed’ cycle of accumulation. Alas, they were still beholden to the inherent crisis-and-breakdown tendencies of capitalism as such, where the ever-growing productive capacities of industrial production easily outstrip their profitable disposal. With the profitability crisis of the 1970s on their doorstep, global elites were forced to entertain new modes of state-capital management, a dispiriting arrangement which history has come to call neoliberalism. Importantly, the measures associated with this system–greater labor discipline, cheap credit, a further globalization of trade–could only compensate for waning margins, and not restore them wholesale. This is the secular tendency in successive cycles of capital accumulation; barring the addition of unrealized domains of exploitation, the growing ease of production can only harm the prospects of competing states and capitals.   

The above analysis is one that Villareal and I largely agree on. Like me, he would locate a distinct break in capitalism’s own logic with the advent of neoliberalism, as weak returns on industrial investment created a greater dependence on rent-seeking ventures in preserving capitalist consumption patterns. Even the recent turn to economic nationalism among the ‘overdeveloped’ parts of the world seems unable to break this pattern, and in fact intensifies the zero-sum tendencies of contemporary competition, with the state’s role in choosing winners and losers growing increasingly important. 

What separates Villareal’s account from my own is his emphasis on capitalist consumption as the primary ‘fetter’ on further accumulation. Though the collective comforts of the capitalist class could certainly be categorized as an impediment to investment, this is a barrier that has always already existed. The true variable is the long-term decline in profitability, with the neoliberal period being that prophesied point where the preservation of capitalist consumption begins to cut into the need to expand investment. This moment would have arrived sooner or later, something which Villareal even acknowledges. Where we differ, then, is in our conception of what the elimination of this final fetter would entail. 

To make my point clear, I would consider the question of economic transformation from the vantage point of that other pillar of capitalist society: the State. In my view, it would be naive to see the state as just an instrument of naked class interest. Those who hold office know that their position depends on more than mere financial backing or even military force. In advancing its domains of activity, the control of the State does not expand unilaterally, no matter how absolute it imagines its rule to be. As systems of social and ecological reproduction are progressively enclosed, they must also be taken into account. It is in this context that modern bureaucracies build their understanding of economic necessity, as only the constant accumulation of capital can sustain the demands of national competition and popular uproar. The more intimately this fact is understood, the more willing a part of the ruling class will be to discipline itself, or to spurn its immediate benefactors. 

Throughout modern history, this willingness to reserve short-term interests for long-term stability has made the difference between reform and collapse. It certainly motivated the postwar social contract, its objective being to ‘save capitalism from the capitalists’. With this in mind, we might well ask why the crisis of the 1970s did not itself produce a transformation of this caliber; while neoliberalism constituted a return to growth in some aspects, it came at the expense of those exact social guarantees which were supposed to effect class peace. In cybernetic terms, the substitution of industrial policy with financialized investment flows vastly shortened the horizon of state planners, who also suspended much of the countercyclical safeguards against future financial breakdowns. Compared to the Keynesian dream of ever higher wages and ever-reducing working hours, the actual course of the neoliberal period stands out as a stark break with reformist prophecy. But what was Capital to do? Had it actually implemented the industrial changes that would have been necessary to maintain productivity growth in the developed world, such as the creation of cybernetic planning systems or the universalization of something like the Toyota production model, it would have immediately run into the political problems of an increasingly socialized economy. The more that matters of social reproduction and working class collectivity are incorporated into the State-Capital architecture, the more that it becomes subject to democratic pressures, and thereby the potential deviation from a path of maximal accumulation. If anything, this was the real crisis of the 1970s. Globalization, financialization, austerity; to preserve the class order and maintain some semblance, these were the only real options.

But now, of course, these measures are failing too. All are ready to declare the end of neoliberalism, to the extent that using this term is fast becoming passe. The coming epoch appears to be one of economic nationalism, a new mercantilism that exchanges the meager returns of a global economy for a zero-sum competition therein. The desperation inherent in this maneuver ought to be self-evident. At the same time, it has created delusions of a new social democracy, of using the state’s newfound assertiveness to retake control over the economy from an unaccountable class of financiers. (The potential bigotry of this framing need hardly be elaborated.) This ambition dovetails nicely with the designs of an increasingly right-wing assemblage of techno-capital, all too happy to use the state’s turn to industrial policy to enrich the speculative soup du jour–be that cryptocurrency, AI, or whatever other overhyped mirages the coming years will bring. If either of these forces worked as advertised, they would constitute a ‘last gasp’ of capitalist accumulation, where various blue-sky technologies like nuclear fusion, cultured meat, or asteroid mining come to disrupt some of the most entrenched industrial interests around, eliminating their overconsuming rentier elements in the process. 

To me, the above scenario sounds largely implausible, if only because the state capacity needed to shape this new regime of accumulation far outstrips the abilities of any contemporary world power. Even China, whose party-state model has arguably done the best job at subordinating capitalists to the general interest in accumulation, is facing declining growth rates and premature deindustrialization. Indeed, even the greatest revolutionizing of production–the dream of ‘full automation’ comes to mind–could only exacerbate these secular tendencies of unprofitability and underemployment. 

However paradoxical this process may sound, it is the inevitable course of Capital as such, a drive which is enacted by, but exists apart from, the individual or collective interests of the capitalist class. Disciplining the latter would do nothing to curtail the former, as the mere measure of exchange value would lead the managers of Capital to increase the productivity of labor, often at the cost of increasing material throughput. To break with this tendency would be to break with Capital itself, a process which would inherently necessitate a new set of economic measures. 

Here, then, is why I detest those narratives which would present capitalism as a ‘fetter’ on production. To speak out against the decadent, rent-seeking behavior of modern capitalists is to do Capital’s own bidding, to treat any revolution in production as a matter of quantity rather than quality. As communists, our attitude about capitalist standards of productivity should be apathy, if not loathing. That our program might nominally increase a measure like GDP should be of no concern to us. In fact, we should understand that the democratic and ecological principles which underlie communist production cannot and should not be captured by a single standard, lest we awaken another mute compulsion like that of Capital.

Beyond its immediate expression in our contemporary social and ecological crises, I would consider this to be the true challenge of the twenty-first century: can we establish a new set of metrics, of values, that eschews the deleterious drive to accumulate? The challenge is epistemic as much as it is political, since it requires us to understand and speak of our world in an entirely new language. Degrowth may just be an early and somewhat clumsy attempt at speaking a post-capitalist world into being, and Villareal is right to point out its flaws. But that doesn't mean we should abandon its critique of Capital as Accumulation altogether.

So I come to my core disagreement with Villareal: to speak of eco-socialist transformation as an increase of economic activity, or as an increase of the investment rate by curtailing capitalist consumption, is to vastly underplay the challenge ahead, the stakes of this century. Terms like productivity, efficiency, or investment are not and were never politically neutral, and to pretend that the economic measures of socialism are morally continuous with their capitalist forebears is to ascribe an intentionality to History that is not borne out by the current age of stagnation. The past centuries of capitalist accumulation may have been useful in some ways, deleterious in others, but if we could have unlocked the wealth of the world by some other, more gentle mechanism, we would not have spared a thought for the ‘progressive’ role of the bourgeoisie. 

Overall, the epistemic break we must foment with regard to Capital’s view of this world, its workers, and its resources is so great that it can only be described as revolutionary. To try to describe it in the vocabulary of the old world is to do it a great disservice, and threatens to ignore its most salient aspects, such as the multi-criterial measures that would be necessary to assess any question of production in a democratic fashion. When our socialist way of life comes about–and I agree with Villareal that it would be far more meta-stable than the alternatives–we will look back on concepts like GDP, labor productivity, or profit and recognize them as the crude tools of a brutish regime, the economic equivalent of a billy club. The sooner we unlearn these styles of seeing the world, the better.

Sincerely,

The Inner Moon