The elephant and the snail. Source: © Bàrbara Castro Urío (labarbara.

net)

Ecological Economist FEDERICO DEMARIA was the youngest panellist at a recent House of Commons
debate on ‘Degrowth' as a movement gaining traction and now entering the corridors of power.
Here's his report on the challenges and tasks ahead

Can degrowth enter into the Parliaments? How large would its constituency be? What policy
proposals shall be put forward? How could a synergy be built between grassroots social movements
and institutional politics?

These are some of the questions that have been on the table in Europe for a decade - at least since
2008 when the first international degrowth conference took place in Paris. In 2009 Tim Jackson
published an influential report title Prosperity without growth? as chair of the UK sustainable
development commission. Professor Jackson, a central figure of the beyond growth debate, has
recently promoted the ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group (AAPG) on limits to growth' with the support
of the Green Party and the MP Caroline Lucas (a kind of political miracle, given the British electoral
system), among others. The AAPG aims to "create the space for cross-party dialogue on
environmental and social limits to growth; to assess the evidence for such limits, identify the risks
and build support for appropriate responses; and to contribute to the international debate on
redefining prosperity". It is part of a long tradition of promoting a post-growth agenda within
parliaments in Europe, most recently with the parliamentary commissions in France (Commission on
the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress) and Germany (Enquete commission
on Growth, Prosperity, Quality of Life).

Among its other activities, this AAPG organizes debates at the House of Commons and I recently had
the chance to join one of these, entitled The end of growth? Which was moderated by Tim Jackson
and Caroline Lucas and which asked the question: "is there still a role for economic growth in
delivering a sustainable prosperity?".

Panellists included Kate Raworth (author of Doughnut Economics), Jørgen Randers (co-author of the
1972 Limits to Growth study) and Graeme Maxton (Secretary General of the Club of Rome). The 100
tickets made available to listen to the debate sold out in a few hours. And I think there was a general
consensus among panellists that economic growth, rather than a panacea to solve all social problems
is itself a problem, if not directly a cause for many other problems.

The panellists brought in different arguments to demonstrate that economic growth is ecological
unsustainable, socially undesirable and that it might have come to an end (i.e. secular stagnation). In
a nutshell, we quickly removed the question mark from the title of debate: growth has indeed come
to an end.

Now, although we broadly agreed on the diagnosis, differences emerged when discussing the
prognosis, or what I would call the politics of sustainable degrowth: What has to be done? How are
we going to do it? Who is going to do it? And for whom?
The consensus with the audience was that we face many unresolved challenges: How does social
change happen? How do we scale up grassroots alternatives? How do we position ourselves in
relation to capitalism? How would we envision a socio-ecological transformation in low-income
countries? What are the obstacles? How do we make the welfare state sustainable? How do we
avoid co-optation? And so on...

Overall, the debate was to the point. I'm told it even continued at a pub later on, along the lines of
the British cultural tradition. I unfortunately missed that. I found a nice balance among the panellists
themselves, although I missed someone bringing in a feminist perspective. For example, I had a nice
exchange of opinions on the role of democracy with Jørgen Randers. We were the youngest and
oldest panellists, respectively. Randers brought in the experience and authority of someone that has
been in these debates for almost 50 years, but who is somehow now disillusioned. I hopefully
brought in the enthusiasm of the ‘youth' (sic), and I was rightly reminded that we are not reinventing
the wheel. The newcomers, like myself, definitively stand on the shoulders of our predecessors.
However, during the debate I did my best to make the case for degrowth, and argue that we need to
focus on degrowth and not just limits to growth, or moving ‘beyond' growth. Let me explain how I
understand degrowth.

In the article What is degrowth?, we conclude that "Generally degrowth challenges the hegemony of
growth and calls for a democratically led redistributive downscaling of production and consumption
in industrialised countries as a means to achieve environmental sustainability, social justice and
wellbeing."

Degrowth is not an end, but a means. The focus should be not only on less but on different (See
accompanying image to this piece). Degrowth, as a term, was first used by Andre Gorz in 1972. It was
then launched as an activist slogan in France at the beginning the 2000s in reaction to the failure of
sustainable development, seen as an oxymoron.

Degrowth is the hypothesis that we can live well with less. It is about imagining and enacting
alternative visions to modern growth-based development. Alternative, better, or greener
development is simply not enough - including sustainable development and all its reincarnations such
as green economy, green growth or circular economy. Else, economic growth is not compatible with
sustainability, no matter how you rephrase it.

However, degrowth is not only about ecological sustainability. In London, I stressed that its prognosis
(why degrowth?) includes a variety of sources, such as democracy, justice, meaning of life, spirituality
and care. We shall not compromise on any of these. For example, the theory of degrowth rules out
entertaining the possibility of an ecological dictatorship in the name of enforcing limits that people
otherwise are not willing to voluntary impose upon themselves. The socio-ecological transformation
has to come from the people, and to the people, or it won't happen. So any definition of degrowth
must take into account all these concerns
Degrowth as a word is an act of détournement (French for "rerouting" or "hijacking"); a technique
developed in the 1950s by the Situationist International consisting in turning expressions of the
capitalist system and its media culture against itself. Today's most famous example is the work done
by Adbusters in modifying advertisements in order to subvert their meaning. Some see degrowth as
punk, but the battle will have been won when the ideas behind degrowth have become pop(ular)
and changed the imagination and commonsense of everyone, not just the punks. This is hard work
and people like Kate Raworth or Tim Jackson have done the most on bringing the degrowth concept
to the mainstream, including into the Parliaments.

But is such a political entry possible? Degrowth has certainly already had an impact, at least in South
Europe, where prime ministers like Nicolas Sarkozy and Matteo Renzi felt at least the need to
address it, even if only to dismiss it. Widely debated in the media, at the moment it receives the
support of at least three contemporary European political leaders, including Juan Carlos Monedero of
Podemos in Spain, Beppe Grillo of Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy and Benoit Hamon, ex minister of
social and solidarity economy and current candidate for the French Parti socialiste presidential
primary.

Elsewhere it is happening too; for example the senator Cristovam Buarque praised degrowth at the
Brazilian congress in 2010. This is not so much a new phenomenon, but a revival of the 1970s limits
to growth debate. For example, in 1972 Sicco Mansholt, a Dutch social-democrat who was then EU
Commissioner for agriculture, wrote a letter to the President Malfatti, urging him to seriously take
into account limits to growth in the EU economic policy. Mansholt himself became President after
only two months, but for a too short term to push a zero (or below) growth agenda.

There is no doubt that there are numerous obstacles for degrowth to make headways to politics.
However, the ongoing 2008 financial crisis has helped revive this debate, and has deeply changed
citizens' opinion about the economy. A recent study by colleagues on the public views on the relation
between economic growth, the environment and prosperity in Spain shows that although a majority
still views growth and environmental sustainability as compatible (green growth), about one-third
prefers either ignoring growth as a policy aim (agrowth), or stopping it altogether (degrowth). Only
very few people want growth unconditionally (growth-at-all-costs). Difficult to determine what drives
citizens' opinion, and whether Pope Francis pleading for degrowth helps. The question remains why
if there is a ‘constituency; of a sort that is willing to entertain the critique of degrowth, why are there
so few politicians daring to speak to it?

Last autumn, we organized a debate in Budapest on ‘degrowth in the parliaments' with four MPs
from different EU countries discussing the challenges they have faced promoting degrowth within
their parties and parliaments (it can be watched here). There are also efforts of developing degrowth
policy proposals, like the ones by the collective Research & Degrowth, to which I belong. I shall also
mention the field of ecological macroeconomics, of which Tim Jackson is a prominent figure. For
example, we - at Research & Degrowth - are working on a macroeconomic model based on Tim's
models to explore the opportunities of generating employment in a post-growth scenario in the EU.
Our book, Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, (now published in ten languages), explores some of
those opportunities and also ideas around a basic income, debt audit, public money, work time
reduction and work sharing.

In conclusion, let me outline our hypothesis. If growth has been a central pillar of stability in wealthy
countries throughout the 20th century, then it is reasonable to argue that its lack in growth-oriented
societies might create instability. I propose to read under this light too, but of course not only, the
recent emerging political conjuncture, from Trump to Brexit, including a generalized rise of the
authoritarian right.

Even the IMF argues that we might have entered into a new phase of low growth potential, especially
in wealthy economies. This has been called New Normal, New Mediocre, or Secular Stagnation. The
Wall Street Journal recently argued that: "In Europe, as in the U.S., voters are angry at political elites
and frustrated by slow growth". This places the end of growth right at the centre of 21st Century
politics - inside and outside the parliaments.

For how long will we keep sacrificing everything in the name of growth, with austerity policies? How
far will the mainstream be able to support growth's mirage? And how - and who - is going to
challenge the discontent emerging out of slow growth in growth's societies? Can we give this
frustration a new meaning and direction, other than that of closure and phobia?

Welcome to the new era of post-growth politics. As Tim Jackson and Peter Victor argued in The New
York Times: "Imagining a world without growth is among the most vital and urgent tasks for society
to engage in."

So we start a new year with the knowledge that degrowth has now entered into the Parliament, and
hopefully it is here to stay. We have just started and we recognise the challenges remain huge and
sometimes seem insurmountable. The degrowth community wants to face the challenges. And in the
House of Commons I was pleased to see we share the challenges and the tasks ahead with powerful
companions.
his article originally appeared in eldiario.es (Spanish) and The Press
Project (English). It was then re-published -slightly edited- by different international
media including Der Freitag, Liberátion, The Ecologist, Reporterre, Wiener
Zeitung and Der Standard.

The article has also received the endorsement of Naomi Klein who reposted it in
her blog This Changes Everything and wrote on Twitter and Facebook “Excellent
de-growth policy ideas from @g_kallis and @R_Degrowth: http://t.co/MuUtijLEDw.
Draws on recent book: http://t.co/EAFfUsN9mm”.
In our recent book “Degrowth. A vocabulary for a new era” we argue that economic
growth is not only becoming more and more difficult in advanced economies, but that
it is also socially and ecologically unsustainable. The global climate, the welfare
state, or social bonds that have lasted for ages, are all sacrificed in the name of
appeasing the god of growth.

Like terminally ill patients, whole populations are asked to suffer without end, just so
that their economies score a few extra decimals in the GDP scale, to sustain the
profits of the 1%.

In theory, growth is needed to pay off debts, create new jobs, or increase the
incomes of the poor. In practice, we have had decades of growth, yet we are still
indebted, with our youth unemployed and poverty as high as ever. We were indebted
to grow and now we are forced to grow to pay off debts.

Degrowth is a call to decolonize the social imaginary from the ideology of a one-way
future consisting only of growth. Degrowth is not the same thing as recession. It is the
hypothesis that we can achieve prosperity without economic growth.

In other words: that we can have meaningful work without the need for ever-lasting
growth; sustain a functional welfare state without the economy getting bigger every
single year; and increase equality and eliminate poverty, without having to
accumulate more and more money each year.

Degrowth challenges not only the outcomes, but the very spirit of capitalism.
Capitalism knows no limits, it only knows how to expand, creating while destroying.
Capitalism cannot and does not know how to settle. Capitalism can sell everything;
but it can’t sell “less.”

Degrowth offers a new narrative for a radical left that wants to go beyond capitalism,
without reproducing the authoritarian and productivist experiences of real existing
socialism (or what some may call “state capitalism”).

A new Left, new in terms of ideas, but also in terms of the young age of its members,
is rising in Europe, from Spain and Catalonia, to Greece, Slovenia or Croatia. Will
that Left be also green and propose an alternative cooperative model for the
economy inspired by the ideas of degrowth? Or will this new Left, like the new Left of
Latin America, driven by the demands of global capitalism, reproduce the
expansionary logic of capitalism, only substituting multi-national corporations with
national ones, distributing somewhat better the crumbs to the populace?

Many people who are sympathetic to the ideas and critique expressed in our book tell
us that even though the critique of degrowth sounds reasonable, its proposals are
vague and anyways they could never be put into practice. It seems easier to imagine
the end of the world, or even the end of capitalism, than to imagine the end of
growth.

Even the most radical political parties do not dare to utter the D word, or at least
question the desirability of growth. To break this spell of growth, we at Research &
Degrowth in Barcelona decided to codify some of the policy proposals that are
coming out of the theory of degrowth, policies that are discussed in more detail in our
recent book.

In what follows we present 10 proposals that we wrote for the context of Spain and
Catalunya, and which we submitted to progressive political parties such as Podemos,
the United Left, the Catalan Republican Left, CUP or Equo. The context to which
these proposals refer to is specific; but with certain amendments and adaptations
they are also applicable elsewhere and relevant for radical Left and Green political
parties all over Europe.

1. Citizen debt audit. An economy cannot be forced to grow to resolve accumulated

debts that have contributed to fictitious growth in the past. It is essential not only to
restructure but also to eliminate part of the debt with a people’s debt audit, part of a
new, really democratic culture. Such elimination shouldn’t be realised at the expense
of savers and those with modest pensions whether in Spain or elsewhere. The debt
of those that have considerable income and assets should not be pardoned. Those
who lent for speculation should take the losses. Once the debt is reduced, caps on
carbon and resources (see 9) will guarantee that this will not be used as an
opportunity for more growth and consumption.

2. Work-sharing. Reduce the working week to at least 32 hours and develop

programmes that support firms and organisations that want to facilitate job-
sharing. This should be orchestrated such that the loss of salary from working less
only affects the 10% highest income bracket. Complemented by environmental limits
and the tax reform proposed below (see 4), it will be more difficult for this liberation of
time to be used for material consumption.

3. Basic and maximum income. Establish a minimum income for all of Spain’s
residents of between 400 and 600 Euros per month, paid without any requirement or
stipulation. A recent study suggests this is feasible for Spain, without a major
overhaul of the tax system. Design this policy in conjunction with other tax and work
reforms so that they increase the income of the poorer 50% of the population while
decreasing that of the top 10%, to finance the change. The maximum income for any
person—from work as well as from capital—shouldn’t be more than 30 times the
basic income (12,000—18,000 Euros monthly).
4. Green tax reform. Implement an accounting system to transform, over time, the
tax system, from one based principally on work to one based on the use of energy
and resources. Taxation on the lowest incomes could be reduced and compensated
for with a carbon tax. Establish a 90% tax rate on the highest incomes (such rates
were common in the USA in the 1950s). High income and capital taxes will halt
positional consumption and eliminate the incentives for excessive earnings, which
feed financial speculation. Tackle capital wealth through inheritance tax and high
taxes on property that is not meant for use, for example on the second or third
houses of individuals or on large estates.

5. Stop subsidizing and investing on activities that are highly polluting, moving
the liberated public funds towards clean production. Reduce to zero the public
investment and subsidy for private transport infrastructure (such as new roads and
airport expansion), military technology, fossil fuels or mining projects. Use the funds
saved to invest in the improvement of public rural and urban space—such as
squares, traffic free pedestrian streets—and to subsidise public transport and cycle
hire schemes. Support the development of small scale decentralised renewable
energy under local and democratic control, instead of concentrated and extensive
macro-structures under the control of private business.

6. Support the alternative, solidarity society. Support, with subsidies, tax

exemptions and legislation, the not-for-profit co-operative economic sector that are
flourishing in Spain and include alternative food networks, cooperatives and networks
for basic health care, co-operatives covering shared housing, credit, teaching, and
artists and other workers. Facilitate the de-commercialisation of spaces and activities
of care and creativity, by helping mutual support groups, shared childcare and social
centres.

7. Optimise the use of buildings. Stop the construction of new houses,

rehabilitating the existing housing stock and facilitating the full occupation of houses.
In Spain those objectives could be met through very high taxes on abandoned, empty
and second houses, prioritising the social use of SAREB housing (those falling under
the post-crash banking restructuring provisions following the Spanish real estate
crisis), and if this is insufficient, then proceed with social expropriation of empty
housing from private investors.

8. Reduce advertising. Establish very restrictive criteria for allowing advertising in

public spaces, following the example of the city of Grenoble. Prioritise the provision of
information and reduce greatly any commercial use. Establish committees to control
the quantity and quality of advertising permitted in the mass media and tax
advertising in accordance with objectives.

9. Establish environmental limits. Establish absolute and diminishing caps on the

total of CO2 that Spain can emit and the total quantity of material resources that it
uses, including emissions and materials embedded in imported products, often from
the global South. These caps would be in CO2, materials, water footprint or the
surface area under cultivation. Similar limits could be established for other
environmental pressures such as the extraction of water, the total built-up area and
the number of licenses for tourist enterprises in saturated zones.
10. Abolish the use of GDP as indicator of economic progress. If GDP is a
misleading indicator, we should stop using it and look for other indicators of
prosperity. Monetary and fiscal national accounts statistics can be collected and used
but economic policy shouldn’t be expressed in terms of GDP objectives. A debate
needs to be started about the nature of well-being, focusing on what to measure
rather than how to measure it.

These proposals are complementary and have to be implemented in concert. For

example, setting environmental limits might reduce growth and create
unemployment, but work-sharing with a basic income will decouple the creation of
jobs and social security from economic growth.

The reallocation of investments from dirty to clean activities and the reform of the
taxation system will make sure that a greener economy will emerge, while stopping to
count the economy in GDP terms and using prosperity indicators ensures that this
transition will be counted as a success and not as a failure.

Finally, the changes in taxation and the controls in advertizing, will relax positional
competition and reduce the sense of frustration that comes with lack of growth.
Investing on the commons and shared infrastructures will increase prosperity, without
growth.

We do not expect parties of the Left to make “degrowth” their banner. We understand
the difficulties of confronting, suddenly, an entrenched common sense. But we do
expect radical left parties to take steps in the right direction, and to pursue good
policies, such as the ones we propose, independent of their effect on growth. We do
expect genuine Left parties to avoid making the relaunch of economic growth their
objective. And we do expect them to be ready, and have ideas in place, on what they
will do, if the economy refuses to grow. Is this a reasonable expectation in the current
political conjecture of Southern Europe for example? Yes and no.

The draft economic policy of Podemos released in November, has many elements
that fit with the above agenda. The document does not set growth as its strategic
goal. It omits any reference to GDP. It proposes to reduce working hours to 35, it sets
a minimum guaranteed income for the unemployed, it calls for a forgiveness of part of
household and public debt, and it promotes a shift of investments towards caring,
education and the green economy, posing the satisfaction of basic needs through an
“ecologically sustainable consumption” as its primary objective.

The policy could go further by shifting taxes from labour to resources, establishing
environmental limits, controlling advertising, generalizing the basic income, and
reforming the welfare state by thinking ways to universalize the solidarity economy
that is thriving in Spain, providing viable and low cost solutions for health care or
education.

In Greece in contrast, the huge overhanging debt, and the need to escape the
socially disastrous policy of austerity and structural adjustment imposed by the
Troika, makes it much harder to ignore growth.
Syriza confronts austerity rightly with a proposal to forgive part of Greece’s public
debt. Unfortunately though, the objective of such debt cancellation is seen as the
relaunching of growth, with Syriza adopting Joseph Stiglitz’s proposal for a “growth-
clause,” whereby the remaining part of the debt will be growth financed.

Syriza proposes a European New Deal and espouses public investments that will
spur growth in Greece, but unlike Podemos, it does not talk of a “green” New Deal, or
about a shift from conventional to clean industries or from resource intensive sectors
to caring and education.

Within the current conjecture of powers in Europe, the dictatorship of the markets and
the fixation of Germany with austerity, even the Stiglitzian proposal of Syriza comes
to pass as “radical” and stands slims chances of being realized, save for dramatic
socio-political events in Greece and a political upheaval in the EU.

Assuming that Syriza were to implement its strategy one day, the question is what
would it do if, even after a restructuring of debts, the professed growth was not to
come.

Would it recoil into a left version of austerity as the “socialists” of Hollande did in
France when faced with the same problem?

Would it pursue even more intensely the current extractivist model of development,
exploiting the environments of Greece for resources, exports and tourism, even
though this would be against the wishes of its political base that is at the forefront of
current struggles against extractivist projects?

Or would it stop and listen to its youth, which is involved in the thriving solidarity
economy of Greece, trying to decipher and think how to universalize these pre-
figuring local experiments into something new for the national economy as a whole?
Not an easy feat, but a radical left was never supposed to follow the easy path.
Giorgos Kallis teaches political ecology and ecological economics at the Autonomous
University of Barcelona and recently co-edited the book “Degrowth. A vocabulary for
a new era.” This article originally appeared at The Press Project on January 7 2015.