The Sustainable More of Unsustainable Bores: A Polemic about Degrowth
In this article, with an introduction from R.C. Roberts and a polemic by Dwayne Monroe, the way people have gone bananas about Degrowth is mocked.
There are two major plays about the Titan, Prometheus: Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. These plays, one a tragedy and the other a Romantic poem, tell us the classic story of Prometheus: Prometheus, creator of mankind, stormed the ramparts of Olympus to steal fire for our species, and he was punished for this: until Hercules came forth on a quest, his liver is eaten by eagles--or vultures, depending on who you ask. While there have been many plays and poems, TV shows and movies, novels and comics about Prometheus, I find that the myth of Prometheus has always been a two act myth; the first Bound and the second Unbound.
I have always joked that, if we ever got ourselves a third act for the Promethean myth, it would be a comedy and ought to be titled Prometheus: Rebound. After all, from tortured soul to Romantic martyr, Prometheus has already had his fall and his rise--the next part for a hero, always, is to become a caricature. Even a trickster like Prometheus, having become tragic, is bound (oh, the word) to become comical.
It is much to my chagrin that I am right, only because I am also wrong. I was right because, in fact, we are having this third act of the Promethean myth. But where I was wrong, and I almost faint just thinking of it, was that I assumed that this third myth would come to us in the trusting hands of literary satirists. I believed the satire would be intentional, something meant to make a point about the titan whose name we all love to evoke. I was nearly positive that, at worst, one might get some tome by Jonathan Franzen or, at best, a sesquipedalian artifice from Will Self or Zadie Smith. I assumed that, or perhaps hoped, that the third act of Prometheus would give our lackluster literary tradition something to rally around as it is drowned out by television, streaming services, adenoidal YouTube 'shows' and the deforestation project known as the 'YA novel'.
Instead, what we have in our third act of the Promethean myth is an unintentional satire, where the cyberpunks of certain political 'movements' (ideologies that move like people who use LifeAlert) declare themselves 'Prometheans'. Perhaps I should have seen this coming; in a world where political ideologies function as religions, eventually even the literature we put on the top shelf would be grasped and defiled. But Prometheus' third act, in the hands of Prometheans, has become a political vaudeville, full of delusional heroism and heroic delusion. Like the poor, the pretentious are always with us--and some of them call themselves 'Prometheans'. Prometheus has rebound from his tragic heroism and has gotten himself a job as an ideological icicle for people to get their tongues stuck on.
This third act is something of a sitcom, whose formula is being run into the ground. In the last episode, we had our great Prometheans discussing, along with other revolutionaries (or reactionaries, if you believe the Prometheans), how one might get bananas if you overthrow capitalism. This 'discourse' (discourse in the same way flinging feces is potty training) went on for weeks as every netizen of the 'communist-anarchist-leftist-Leninist-Maoist-socialist-...' stripe made use of the question; how would we get bananas if we overthrow capitalism? Coloring books were set aside, Ushankas adorned the sweaty brows of sweaty revolutionaries, and thumbs were utilized as the question was met with quote tweets, ALL CAPS, quote tweets of quotes in tweets, and the most tepid of hot takes from our revolutionaries. And I was always expecting to see some kind of ending credits, showing that this farce was directed by Larry David.
While this played itself out, the voice of John Gray whispered on the wind. Specifically, you could hear him saying something he said to English author Will Self at a discussion they had at the RSA called 'Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death'. In a response to Will Self pondering about the ubiquity of the term 'sustainable' in economics, John Gray said the following:
"I think we have stumbled upon the possibility of an ideological underpinning for the big society; it'll be called 'the sustainable more' or 'more sustainability', or 'more and more sustainability'."
While the people who were once discussing bananas call themselves socialists or communists of whatever stripe, they are all part of the ideological underpinning that makes capitalism what it is--they believe in 'the sustainable more', and their ravenous fighting is only over which of these sides of this contradictory belief one should believe in more. Will aiming for sustainability lead us to getting more? Or will the desire for more make us sustainable?
Our Prometheans are no different--they do not undermine the ideological underpinning, which we inherited from the quotidian excel sheets of neoliberal number crunchers. In fact, they champion this nonsensical notion of 'the sustainable more'. In their indeterminate wisdom, they see nothing odd or ridiculous about using Marxist language, lathered on like barbecue over a burnt brisket, to establish the 'revolutionary' idea that we should keep doing what we are doing.
Of course, one should not be surprised; these Prometheans include people like Ashley Frawley, a Professor of Yoga Poses and best buddy to the basement gremlin Douglas Lain--when you say 'vaccine' she melts like the Wicked Witch of the West, and if you say 'trucker' she becomes cataplectic as she mumbles 'freedom convoy' and convulses. Next, you have Ben Burgis; befuddled professor, defender of reactionary friends, and the man whose students recognize him by the way he snores more than by any of the lessons he supposedly gives. Jacobin continues to take in his articles for the same reason people keep casting Rob Lowe in TV shows; they love the way he fails because it draws a crowd. Then we have Leigh Phillips; when he is not talking about the one book he wrote seven years ago, he is writing lengthy Twitter threads, plodding articles, and pestering Paris Marx with childish rants and accusations that people are 'afraid to debate' him. No one is afraid of a Ralphie from A Christmas Story who grew up to be a drunk uncle; we just cannot sit through Phillips' attempts to say the same thing in different variations; that is, everything is fine and we should do more of the same. What was the definition of insanity again? I feel like I have heard this answer before.
There are many others who fit into this clown car, but let's not be tedious. This view of themselves as Promethean becomes caricature. They talk in heroic mindlessness, espousing how technology is mankind's great tool for the future, it's great savior. It is as if they have only ever read half of the Promethean myth--or, really, only part of that half. Whatever they say, they are not really Prometheans--they are Faustians, blind and foolishly believing that more is sustainable, because they are unconcerned with the soul they are signing over. If we give them anything but our disdain, we should offer them our skepticism; as Dwayne's article here will assert, the debate over growth or degrowth is built on a sort of foolishness that these Prometheans won't examine and, if they have examined it, won't concede;
Why must growth be capitalist? And why must we believe that what we have been doing, if continued, will give us a different (let alone better) outcome?
…
I came upon the debate about degrowth, if ‘debate’ is the correct word, the way we tend to stumble upon things these days; by accident while scrolling, as if through an obituary page, down the haunted feed of the platform formerly known as Twitter. I must admit, dear reader, that the first few passes of this term in front of my eyes didn’t make much of an impression. There were some of the usual suspects, such as Sublation Media micro-celebrity Ashley Frawley and academic logician and Jacobin regular Ben Burgis, arguing in the usual online leftist way with this or that person about ‘degrowth.’
I’m not proud to say it (because I pride myself on investigating things thoroughly) but, beyond observing the flotasm of Internet arguments drift by, I didn’t give the question of degrowth much thought. To be honest, I wasn’t precisely sure what was meant by the term, only that a collection of leftists decried it as being regressive, even anti-Marxist (as dramatic as that seems).
But then, wearily (we’re all tired these days, aren’t we?) I reviewed the proceedings of an intriguing thread: a debate about nuclear power, discussed within the framework of degrowth. On both sides of the question were people of, or on, the left. Some were anti-nuclear and others pro. Radioactive waste, our old friend, with us at-scale since 1945, received a good number of mentions as a reason to be firmly against but what interested me most was the reason offered by the for camp: nuclear power, by its existence and untapped potential, we were told, enabled the preservation of our consumption patterns and habits in a zero carbon manner, thereby refuting the argument for degrowth. In other words, to borrow from philosopher John Gray, we could achieve a sustainable more and do so in a more equitable, socialist fashion.
This piqued my interest, turning my thoughts to the relationship between France, hailed as a nuclear power leader and the nations it holds in quasi-colonial subservience such as Niger, home to rich uranium deposits, unwanted French military forces and extraordinarily poor people. Capitalist political economy - supply chains, geopolitics - these things and more are, under current conditions, as tightly wound about the usage of complex technologies such as nuclear power generation as a python winds itself around its unfortunate prey. How is this serpent uncoiled? The answer offered was simple: we’ll just make a socialist world as we build new nuclear plants.
…
In the online left, a world well acquainted with strange, and strangely niche arguments, and a style of argumentation - or even conversation - shaped, we might say warped, by the rats in a maze-like requirements of neoliberal academic life, the degrowth debate is among the oddest. Odd, because the people arguing against the degrowth position are, whether motivated by naivete, self delusion or simple dishonesty, arguing against the idea fundamental change is required to address the crises we face. So fundamental in fact, that the type of change needed can accurately be described as radical; a nearly complete break with what has gone before.
I might have sensed this when I first encountered the degrowth go-round but I lacked the tools to go further. Things came into much sharper focus when, like a desert wanderer who comes upon an oasis, I found a video by YouTube essayist ‘JohnTheDuncan’ titled, “Degrowth is not Austerity” (we don’t use links here so I suggest a Google search to reveal it). In the video, which provides a tour of people Duncan calls “degrowth’s malcontents” we are provided with a summation of the positions of degrowth thinkers such as the venerable John Bellamy Foster, who, in a 1999 essay titled, “Marx's Theory of metabolic rift” described the way, according to Marx, capitalism creates a perceptual faultline between people and the nature of which we’re a part.
To do this video justice, I’m going to share my raw notes with you in bullet form, inelegant but necessary. According to John Duncan, degrowth, as a school of thought, is built upon the following assumptions:
Global warming is devastating the world
A radical response is required
A communist vision of degrowth is required
Degrowth does not critique individual choices but critiques the expansion necessitated by the capitalist mode of production which requires unlimited exploitation of resources and people
This expansion is responsible for the carbon output problem and the material throughput of an economy
GDP growth as a measure of national wealth is tied to the system of exploitative material throughput
For example, fixes proposed within the current system, such as switching to electric vehicles, still requires the capitalist mode of production to scale as advocates hope
The material reality of the capitalist mode of growth is addressed by the Marxist concept of the ‘metabolic rift’ - this describes the way capitalist relations alter the relationship between people and the nature of which they are a part by ideologically separating the two and subordinating what is called ‘nature’ from humanity
The core idea of growthers - yes, let’s call them that - is mastery of nature
Quote: “For the first time, nature under capitalism is purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility and ceases to be recognized as a power for itself. The theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appear merely as a ruse to subjugate it under human needs whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.” Marx on soil degradation [Foster, J.B. 1999 Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift]
Naive anti-degrowthers, such as the nuclear power advocate I mentioned earlier, understand all of the above but assume it’s possible to square a circle by building ‘green’ energy within a capitalist society and somehow, someway, work our way to a socialist political economy that erases the exploitative foundation - we will unwind the serpent from strangling its prey with one hand, and equitably mine uranium with the other.
Alongside the naive there are those whose arguments, and perhaps motivations, would be right at home in an Exxon strategy session. Unlike the naive, who look longingly at reactors yet to be built, hoping for better days, the would be Prometheans attempt to strike the sky like Das Kapital quoting Ahab. There is, for example, the previously mentioned Professor Frawley who declares degrowth to be the “ideology of capitalism in decline”, “dystopian” and a “delusion.” A search of the Professor’s Twitter/X page for the term ‘degrowth’ reveals a cascade of attacks. We can be confident Frawley sees no issue with a world of innumerable toothpaste brands, strip mines and endless C02 production because, as she told the unfortunate viewers of Sublation Media’s YouTube channel during a May 16, 2023 stream, “individualism and wealth production belong to the left!” The echoes of prosperity gospel rhetoric are strong.
Missing from Frawley’s high decibel declarations and those of even more infamous anti-degrowther Leigh Phillips is an acceptance of the idea that any limits exist at all. Here’s Phillips in an August 17, 2023 Twitter post:
“Capitalism [...] fetters our ability to transcend nature's limits as it restricts production to that which is profitable. By unfettering production from this irrational restriction and expanding it to what is useful, liberation from domination by Nature is radically enhanced."
Domination. Anti-degrowthers reject and misrepresent, often deliberately, the views of degrowth thinkers to preserve, in ideology if not reality, human domination of nature; to preserve in other words, the current way of life, red in tooth and claw, forged by the notion nature, somehow separate from humanity, must be contained as if the natural world in which we are embedded is a Cold War adversary. When the term, sustainability, is used by this group, it is only to present the concept, as John Gray stated, of a sustainable more. In the name of Marx, the Prometheans discard the old man’s most potent tool, dialectical materialism, which should inspire one to look out the window to see our actually existing condition, to sell us a vision of life as usual, only more so. They claim to look boldly into the future but are caught in a forever 1950 when American capitalism gazed upon the world and saw only resources.
As a point of comparison with Phillips’ Silicon Valley-esque call to “transcend limits”, consider J.B. Foster’s definition of degrowth, presented in an essay titled “Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development” the introduction to a series published in Monthly Review (Volume 75, Number 3 (July-August 2023):
“The word degrowth stands for a family of political-economic approaches that, in the face of today’s accelerating planetary ecological crisis, reject unlimited, exponential economic growth as the definition of human progress. To abandon economic growth in wealthy societies means to shift to zero net capital formation. With continual technological development and the enhancement of human capabilities, mere replacement investment is able to promote steady qualitative advancements in production in mature industrial societies, while eliminating exploitative labor conditions and reducing working hours.”
To paraphrase John Duncan, and contrary to the tireless, and tiresome, efforts of the Prometheans to apply GDP and corporate growth projection thinking to Marxist methods, degrowth is not austerity (which is, after all, a capitalist technique, imposed to preserve profit). It is, simply, an acknowledgement of our material conditions; an effort to imagine, and hopefully shape, a world beyond ‘growth’ as defined by capitalism.
**
We are beset by a plague of debates. The Internet age began, naively, with hope; a hope that enabling millions of flowers of opinion to bloom would usher in an era of unprecedented, group sourced wisdom. Although it would be churlish to deny the benefits, on balance, under capitalism, the Internet has been a disaster. There´s a lesson in this: material conditions matter. One would expect that people who declare themselves to be Marxists would understand and apply this understanding. But not the Prometheans; for them, there are no conditions to consider, only factories to be built. Climate change is a minor inconvenience to humanity’s march towards… well, we can’t be sure. Maybe an unending string of new iPhone models, stretching to the stars.
Given a chance, the Prometheans would burn the world to save it.
I'm going to share this on my social media, thanks for the engaging and interesting read.
Charles Chevalier
Initially the Promethean thread drew me in and you almost dragged it too far, for me anyway, I almost put the read down. However, the mention of degrowth gripped my attention and made me read on. I know a bit about degrowth and the post growth discourses and they are intriguing and not only intriguing, I predict they will become more mainstream in the short to mid term future and in the long term will dictate pace and influence the political order of the day. I'm currently writing a comparative essay on sustainability, with the environmental pillar as the primary focus, and the approach will be climate proofing mitigation measures, aka GHG mitigation via (EMS's) environmental management systems, (WtE) waste to energy systems and (LEB's) low energy buildings. The comparison will explore all of the above in Gothenburg city and Singapore city state.
Degrowth, although not a primary concern in the essay will be mentioned as an alternative to the growth machine doctrine of capitalism within the neoliberal political economy franchise, Lorded over by the owners of FINCAP.
Well written and measured to keep the reader engaged, although only, and I say this, not in a snobbish or arrogant way but with the broad reader who is familiar with Greek mythology and enjoy's the myths and their protagonists. Degrowth is unlikely to be constrained as Prometheus in the short term, however considering forethought, as degrowth clearly is, will inevitably be adopted by forethought and those that do not posses this ability will eventually be compelled to do so.