Alternatives to Economic Growth - Original Sources

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Ilan Kelman

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May 13, 2023, 3:11:57 AM5/13/23
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I am seeking original sources for alternatives to economic growth, with the following compilation so far:

1. Circular economy (Stahel and Reday-Mulvey, 1977/1981).

2. Deglobalization (Bello 2008).

3. Degrowth (Lefèvre 2004).

4. Doughnut economics (Raworth 2017) despite its focus on the heavily critiqued planetary boundaries framework https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003017653-16/planetary-boundaries-ilan-kelman

5. Essential exponential (Bartlett 2004).

6. Gift economy (Malinowski, 1922 noting the extensive, subsequent critiques and discussions of this work - perhaps a more useful foundation for the gift economy would be Perroux, 1960?).

7. Overshoot / Homo colossus (Catton, Jr. 1982).

8. Purpose economy (Hurst, 2014).

9. Steady state economy (Daly 1977).

10. Wellbeing economies (Dalziel et al., 2018; Visser 2018).

I do not know this work or field in detail, so apologies for inevitable errors and misapprehensions. Corrections and additions would be welcome. Thank you!

Ilan

Gus Speth

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May 13, 2023, 8:12:02 AM5/13/23
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Ilan, more than 20 alternative political economies are presented here, each from a different contributor. https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Reader-James-Gustave-Speth/dp/0367313391. Though they share many basic goals, these systems range from a revitalized social democracy through a variety of next system possibilities to new systems like Parecon where the market is effectively unimportant. A somewhat longer version of my contribution to the collection, "The Joyful Economy," can be found here. https://thenextsystem.org/sites/default/files/2017-08/GusSpeth-1.pdf.

You should also check out https://weall.org and the impressive list of Alliance members, as well as the important Solidarity Economy which has a good Wikipedia page.

There are some "economies" that are branded with names and many equally engaging ones that are not.

My best wishes for your project.  Gus

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Tom Walker

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May 13, 2023, 11:56:05 AM5/13/23
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I don't see communism in that list.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)


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Harris, Craig

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May 13, 2023, 1:08:21 PM5/13/23
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is communism, either essentially or in its specific realizations,

an alternative to economic growth ?? . . .

cheers,

craig

Ashwani Vasishth

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May 13, 2023, 1:37:23 PM5/13/23
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Ah, but if we begin with plain, unadorned, socialism, do come to a different place?

Go to Durkheim, et al. 

Is society the cumulative expression of individualism (as we Americans would have it)?

Or are all individuals expressions of their originating society?

What makes us, us? I?  Or we?

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Tom Walker

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May 13, 2023, 3:31:25 PM5/13/23
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My provocation of mentioning communism is also pertinent to the other current thread on population. One of Marx's objectives was refuting Malthus, but the subtlety of that refutation was lost on future generations of "Marxists." What Marx was targeting was Malthus's premise that population growth was "natural." Marx's rebuttal was that capital required population growth as a major element of expanding surplus value.

If communism is defined simply as "social production controlled by social foresight," such foresight might well view population growth and economic growth as both superfluous and destructive. I guess what I am saying is that all of the donuts et al. are frantically and earnestly engaged in reinventing a wheel that no one dare speak the name of.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)


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JOHN DE GRAAF,* JOHN DE GRAAF

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May 13, 2023, 3:58:10 PM5/13/23
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Don't disagree with this Tom.  It's just that with communism's track record, the concept is a very hard sell anywhere in the world these days.  Marx, of course, was brilliant.  But he was not a "Marxist."  ;-)

John de Graaf

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Harris, Craig

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May 13, 2023, 4:08:57 PM5/13/23
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there are ways to have “social production controlled by social foresight”

without communism . . .

and there are ways to have “communism” that include economic growth . . .

Peter Victor

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May 14, 2023, 11:19:06 AM5/14/23
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Ilan: allow me to suggest the following:

Managing without Growth. Slower by Design not Disaster (Victor, P.A., 2008, 2019)
Escape from Overshoot. Economics for a Planet in Peril (Victor, P.A., 2023)
Prosperity without Growth (Jackson, T., 2009, 2017)
Post Growth (Jackson, T., 2021)

Best, 

Peter

Peter A. Victor PhD, FRSC
Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar
York University
Canada


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Tom Walker

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May 14, 2023, 8:08:16 PM5/14/23
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Agreed. There are also ways to have dysfunctional social production controlled by distorted social foresight. Any "alternative to economic growth" program could be adopted by a party, group, or faction that when they achieved political power proceeded to implement something horrific. And what do you suppose the enemies of alternatives to economic growth would label an alternative that became broadly popular? "Communists!" Remember that Marx and Engels embraced the label, "communist," in defiance of the reactionaries who labeled any initiative for social emancipation as communistic. 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

Ricardo da Silva Vieira

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May 15, 2023, 5:50:11 AM5/15/23
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Dear Ilan, I think as alternatives to economic growth you can only consider degrowth and steady state. All the remaining fall into one or the another (growth, steady state or degrowth). For example, you can have a circular economy linked to economic growth (making profit from closing the loop), but you can have linked to steady state or even to degrowth. 
Best regards, Ricardo 

David Chittenden

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May 15, 2023, 4:46:26 PM5/15/23
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To take Ricado's point further, isn't degrowth what rich countries need to do now to reduce the size of their economies to a 'sustainable' level at which point they can be maintained at a steady state?  Ie degrowth is a transition and steady state is the goal?  The goal of steady state is then adaptive rather than fixed depending on changes in ecological carrying capacity, population, technology, material lifestyles etc


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Ricardo da Silva Vieira

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May 16, 2023, 2:46:42 AM5/16/23
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Building further on this, maybe Ilan, what you are looking for is not necessarily alternatives to economic growth but instead, alternatives to neoclassical economy? The degrowth movement, the steady state, the ecological economics, evolutionary economics, etc, all of these would fit better as alternatives to neoclassical economics rather than specifically "economic growth".

Ruben Nelson

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May 16, 2023, 11:51:58 AM5/16/23
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Building on Ricardo’s post, the original question and this whole conversation have assumed two things that seem to me to not be possible:  (1) That we can develop the new economy we need apart for reimagining the rest of the society/culture that we live in.  This assumes that modern economics works at least to this extent: we can think and act in silos with lots of externalities that we can safely ignore.  Surely the whole point of learning to see, understand and respond to complex living systems as complex living systems is to realize that, at root, what we in MTI cultures take as sound economic thinking is simply foolish mush of the muddle–headed.  (2) The wider erroneous assumption that we seem to be making is that we can use the very ways of seeing, experiencing and responding to reality – our MTI ways – that got us into trouble, to get us out.  No serious thought has been given to the notion that Einstein’s quip about NOT being able to use the same ways/levels of thinking that cause the troubling condition actually applies to us as MTI persons in MTI cultures.   

 

See the attached paper on “Where are we in history?”  In it I suggest we have far, far wider and deeper work to do than we now understand.

 

Ruben

 

Ruben F.W. Nelson

Executive Director

Foresight Canada

www.foresightcanada.com

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Rees, William E.

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May 16, 2023, 12:01:16 PM5/16/23
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What Ruben said!

Bill

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ruben Nelson <ruben...@shaw.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 8:51:43 AM
To: mr.r....@gmail.com; 'David Chittenden'
Cc: 'SCORAI'
Subject: RE: [SCORAI] Re: Alternatives to Economic Growth - Original Sources
 
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Rees, William E.

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May 16, 2023, 2:14:33 PM5/16/23
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Tom -


I think you underestimate Ruben and what he is saying.   


His point is that MTI culture, like all cultures, reflects a deeply-embedded yet socially-constructed set of beliefs, values, norms, expectations and behaviours.  Once entrenched such a worldview is entirely self-referencing -- confronted with a problem, it seeks  solutions from within the same set of beliefs, values, norms and expectations that created the crisis. 


MTI societies are founded on human exceptionalism which includes the notions that H. sapiens is not bound by the same natural laws and limitations as other species and that human ingenuity (i.e., technology) can overcome any natural barrier, e.g., find near-perfect substitutes for the products of nature. Hence we are unconstrained by ecological limits. Grow baby grow!


So, if fossil fuels (FF)are a problem then more, and more sophisticated technologies (the electrification of everything), is the solution (to sustaining the status quo).  Unfortunately, the evidence is accumulating that the so-called green energy transition is likely to be even more ecologically damaging than continued FF use -- so far, it is even FF dependent.  And this is only one example of how, through self-reference, we are digging our ecological pit-trap even deeper.  


This is no trivial issue. As I wrote about it elsewhere: 

"Neurobiologists and cognitive scientists are

showing that cultural norms, beliefs, and values can
effectively be imprinted on the human brain (Wexler,
2006).  In the normal course of individual development and maturation,
repeated social, cultural, and sensory 'inputs'
actually help to imprint the individual’s synaptic circuitry
in neural images of those experiences. Once
entrenched, these neural structures alter the individual’s
perception of subsequent experiences and information.
People tend to seek out experiences that
reinforce their preset neural circuitry and to select
information from their environment that matches
these structures. Conversely, “when faced with information
that does not agree with their internal
structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret, or forget
that information” (Wexler, 2006) (i.e., denial has a
neurological basis).

Neuroscientists like Wexler (and philosophers like Ruben) argue that entrenched worldview, narratives, paradigms etc., can be changed but not as an instantaneous 'epiphany' or alternative that 'suddenly materializes'.  We are not taking about an 'ah, so' moment.  Success  requires acknowledgement that there is a problem, understanding of its elements, and a lot of hard work to create an alternative worldview/narrative that (in this case) conforms to biophysical and social reality.


I think Ruben understands profoundly that MTI culture will fail unless we/it goes through the necessary cognitive transition and consciously recreates itself.  


I'm not hopeful that this can/will occur, but I believe he is correct. 


Bill







From: Tom Abeles <tab...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 10:36:22 AM
To: Rees, William E.
Subject: Fwd: [SCORAI] Re: Alternatives to Economic Growth - Original Sources
 
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What Ruben wants is to formulate a world which, when viewed, one will say, "ah so" and become transformed- an epiphany!  He really can't understand why such a moment is not created and the movement materialize. It's the world of the 60's-80's  tune in turn on and drop out

As a friend said, "I now have a wife, 2 kids and a mortgage"

I wonder how the 1st nations see this or why the US clings to the delusion that China is NOT in the ascendance while the US sledgehammer of the dollar reserve currency and the military has the ability to transcend the new Silk Road, the Chinese Belt and Road

Jean Boucher

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May 16, 2023, 2:53:25 PM5/16/23
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and (circular firing squad here): cultures are not completely socially constructed, they also emerge from material conditions.    JB

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Martin Calisto Friant

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May 16, 2023, 2:54:55 PM5/16/23
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Hi everyone,
This thread and original question on alternatives to growth reminded me of this quote from David Graeber: 
"the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently.”
We have created the Modern Techno-Industrial anthropocentric, patriarchal, hypercompetitive, and hyperconsumerist culture, and there is no reason why we can't just as easily create another one. In doing so, there is no need to start from zero or to reinvent the wheel. There is a beautiful plurality of alternatives to growth-based societies from the Global South and North alike, such as Buen Vivir, Ubuntu, Voluntary Simplicity, Participatory Economics, Economy for the Common Good, Eco-Anarchism etc.
For a brilliant and diverse exploration of these and many other alternatives, I highly recommend this book: Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. You can find a free pdf copy here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334051449_Pluriverse_A_Post-Development_Dictionary_AUF_2019_NEW_BOOK_edited_by_Ashish_Kothari_Ariel_Salleh_Arturo_Escobar_Federico_Demaria_and_Alberto_Acosta_Download_full_ebook_for_free_PDF_License_Creative_Co 
Cheers,

Martin Calisto Friant

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Ruben Nelson

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May 16, 2023, 9:26:30 PM5/16/23
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Martin,

 

Thank you. 

 

It is vitally important to know that many folks, especially those who have been colonized by MTI cultures are now rejecting the MTI model of the future as their future.  While many (most?) of them have been touched by MTI cultures, they were not formed in and by MTI cultures.  In this they have a great advantage over those of us who were born into and formed by MTI cultures.  For us it is not enough to realize that our formation resulted in malformation, at least as far as becoming persons and cultures fit to live with goes.  We who are MTI persons and cultures must learn to transcend our own formation.  As I have come to understand this task, it work we have hardly begun to cotton on to.  It is work we know precious little about.  Most of our talk of transformed futures speaks more to our hunger for new futures, not our capacity to live into them.  This is not surprising given that we are in a truly unique historic position.  No people in history before us have faced the need to transcend their formation at every level of depth or die.  So there is no extant literature we can turn to and just “become like them.” 

 

I fear we are in deeper and quite different trouble than we think we are.  The fact that overwhelmingly we think we can use the best of MTI culture to deal with the depths of MTI culture is a clue that we are still largely clueless about the situation we are in.  That is why I use Wittgenstein’s metaphor of being a fly in a fly-bottle.  The fly knows it is trapped, but we know it has no chance of surviving the experience because it cannot learn at depth on the spot.  To date, neither can we.  Sadly, we are not even much interested in learning at the depths required if we are to develop to the point we can survive the end of the MTI form of civilization.

 

Or so it seems to me.

 

Ruben

 

Ruben F.W. Nelson

Executive Director

Foresight Canada

www.foresightcanada.com

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Richard Rosen

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May 17, 2023, 3:16:59 AM5/17/23
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The mining of mineral resources is never "sustainable" at a steady state, because such resources are not renewable!  -- Rich Rosen

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Ilan Kelman

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May 26, 2023, 6:43:54 PM5/26/23
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Thank you so much to everyone for their responses, sources, and discussions on this topic. Plenty of wonderful material and ideas. I am now sifting through it in order to produce a revised list, as well as the reframing suggested. Thank you so much again,

Ilan


Giorgos

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May 31, 2023, 5:12:11 PM5/31/23
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Hi Ilan,

For 4 (Degrowth), you probably mean Latouche, not Lefevre. If you really meant Lefevre I am very curious to see the citation :)

g.



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Ilan Kelman

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Jun 4, 2023, 4:50:26 AM6/4/23
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Thank you so much, Giorgos, for informing me about Latouche! I now have the following for degrowth...

...which led to...
I am not certain how much emerges from or relates to his earlier works of 1971 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653 and 1966 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281639 ?

...raising questions to SCORAI:
1. Which of the above five (or another one) might be the best academic citation as foundational/original/first for degrowth?
2. Should the baseline phrase be "contraction economics", "décroissance", "degrowth", "degrowth economics", or all simultaneously?

Thank you for continuing thoughts, sources, advice, and interpretations,

Ilan



Martin Calisto Friant

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Jun 4, 2023, 6:28:46 AM6/4/23
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Hi Ilan,
For Serge Latouche, I would rather recommend le Parí de la Décroissance (first published in 2006 and recently re-edited in 2022): https://www.fayard.fr/pluriel/le-pari-de-la-decroissance-9782818506783 (this book is one of the most important contributions to the degrowth debate in the 21st century). 
Regarding the origin of degrowth and the best academic citation for the foundation of the degrowth concept, it is generally recognised that André Gorz was the first to coin and popularise the concept of degrowth in a 1972 article in the Nouvel Observateur (see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9croissance#cite_ref-6 , https://degrowth.info/en/history and https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/material-civilization/transnational-consumption-and-circulations/degrowth-history-idea#:~:text=The%20word%20degrowth%20was%20formulated,material%20production%2C%20compatible%20with%20the ). I highly recommend the 1980 book Ecology as Politics, which translates some of the best articles of Andre Gorz to English. 
The 1979 reference from Georgescu-Roegen you refer to is a French translation of earlier work, and the 1995 reference is the same 1979 translation that was re-edited in 1995. His Magnum opus on the topic is his 1971 book The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.
Finally, regarding your question on the baseline phrase, I think the movement has clearly chosen degrowth as the "umbrella concept" that regroups the critiques of growth-based societies and proposes radical alternatives to them.
Best wishes, 

Martin Calisto Friant


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