Tim Jackson's book, Prosperity Without Growth (Earthscan, London, 2009), recently translated into French under the title Prosperity without growth (De Boeck & Etopia, Brussels, 2010 ) is a very important milestone in the reflection on political ecology. It will be essential in the future, in all discussions on the guidance to our economies and our societies in a context of transition. (The subtitle French, moreover, is "The transition to a sustainable economy," showing that the preliminary report of the Sustainable Development Commission which was the basis for the book.)
Jackson offers a remarkable analysis the context in which currently facing the challenges of transition: a logic of ecological debt and economic imperative driven by a perpetual growth, itself rooted in consumerism based on the relentless quest for novelty, within ' a social world where the "language of material goods the predominant means of communication between people. It also explains (in a very clear language, which is one of the virtues of structure constants) why it is absurd to invoke the notion of "disconnection" as a solution to the challenges of climate change and resource scarcity. Indeed, it comes eventually to believe that we can maintain or exceed current rates of accumulation using energy flows constantly reduced. The author demonstrates, evidence supporting figures (and the degree of statistical documentation of his work is impressive throughout throughout his book) that the odds of such an "absolute disconnection" are practically nil. Jackson does not deny that - far from it - the importance of technological advances in the environmental fight, but it closes permanently (and healthily) the door to the fantasies of a "high productivity of the intangible" that wants one could one day produce all the goods demanded by consumers with a grain of sand, for a hyper-efficient.
It will therefore inevitably, according to Jackson, to come to reduce our rates of consumption and therefore production. Without becoming an adversary of dogmatic growth, as our author - in large pragmatic it looks like - never use the word "decay". The expression, indeed more happy, "prosperity without growth" allows him to pussyfoot: there must be limits on the emission of pollutants (including CO2), but not necessarily a radical change compared to nature, there must be "green" investments in reduced profitability, but not necessarily an abandonment of the financial logic as such, we must abandon the obsession with labor productivity, but not in all sectors (as it remains sectors which will be more productive imperative), and it should certainly not challenge the logic wage labor as such, must call into question the social causes of consumerism (language material goods, social status, race, compulsion to novelty), but he is not questioning the "human nature".
More generally, if the market economy does contain the seeds of problems that drive us to seek growth at any price, in the eyes of Jackson we need not necessarily bind to growth and capitalism. (He is opposed in this, including Richard Douthwaite in his book The Growth Illusion , according to the structure of bank debt in the capitalist imperative impulse absolute growth.) So the question of anti-capitalism and post-capitalism is removed by the author in two tablespoons pot shots. Society without growth will she capitalist or not? It is not important to him. Only count the actual opportunities for each citizen, access to skills development the most important food, shelter, health, education, friendship, love, meaning. (This is the approach inspired by the "capabilities" of the economist Amartya Sen). We'll see later if this development is really possible in the framework proposed by Jackson. As
key measures against consumerism and productivism, Jackson alleges the takeover of investment by the government, abandoning the quest for labor productivity to generate a service economy with high labor intensity, the frugality chosen and work sharing. One can not blame him, as these ideas already fairly well known in Francophone may appear in the Anglo-Saxon context where Jackson is changing as economic heresies. "Virtue" - if one may say - the work of Jackson is to suggest that the critical frontal (especially Marxist) of capitalism is perhaps not essential to reflect on the transition. He said we could pass to a new economy if states (with the help of scientists) are able to calculate ecological limits and to equalize incomes, if citizens regain control over their development, they realize their consumerist alienation, and if economists are willing to fundamentally reconstruct their science into a Ecological Economics where the constraints are first bio-environmental and explicit.
Jackson is clearly a strategist. His remarks are perhaps more radical than it seems, but he chose to hide his game is probably, in fact, which will give the book a wider audience than has been possible to obtain a work, in my view, deeper and more radical as that of Serge Latouche, The Leap decay (Fayard, Paris, 2006 ). The strength of the book Latouche is that it goes further in reaching implications for prosperity without growth. Certainly, Latouche, and Jackson share the bias of not wanting to change "human nature". I will return later. Yet where Jackson only scratches the issues, Latouche with its "eight R" (re, re-conceptualize and restructure, redistribute, relocate, reduce, reuse, recycle) advance tracks much more explicit - particularly in the field of economic relocation and the takeover of the citizen money creation. Jackson, a good strategist and perhaps also in more conventional thinker simply, never touch these two key issues of our system: international trade and currency.
International Trade: When Jackson advocates of resilient communities, it is unclear what such communities provide if not a greater capacity for integration into the globalized trade flows. (And his few positive hints seem fair trade indicate that it does not challenge the corporate globalization. See footnote 11, pp. 193-194.) It was therefore rather seems to me he thought Anglo-Saxon community resilience as a tool to protect individuals against the inevitable turbulence of a global economy. In Latouche, as in Douthwaite, the more radical elements of the local resilience, more related to the quest for autonomy deep (see in particular the prospect of Ivan Illich), are more emphasized.
Currency: On a recent day of work on complementary currencies, Bernard Lietaer we explained very convincingly that the element to which any economist, even moderately "protest" as Krugman or Stiglitz, dares to attack is the system of money creation by commercial banks and the idea that only a single legal currency can serve medium of exchange. He explained that by the overlapping between the concrete world of ideas éconmiques and the banking and finance. The silence of Jackson would play the role of banks and a currency change in the "resilience" of communities indicates that it respects, too, the absolute taboo. In Latouche, as in Douthwaite or Lietaer (or Margrit Kennedy), the idea that the local currency could serve as a tool for healthy communities disconnection is much more present. This
what Jackson says almost nothing, that's the kind of work that would be offered to workers through a work-sharing (with reduction of the statutory period) in a process where the investment public "green", less consumerist and more labor intensive, would become predominant. What place does it give to the trend of the current system not only wasting resources but also a waste of resources? The heart of political ecology is it not the fact that for capitalism, the human is just part of "natural resources" to manage? How to ensure that this vision totally instrumental humans be abandoned, along with consumerism? On this key issue, Jackson's book says nothing explicit. This is unfortunate and this makes even my eyes, a rather dangerous book. It illustrates that in my paper "Transition ecological and economic transition", I call the commonplaces of environmentalism: climate change and waste of nonrenewable resources are certainly critical challenges, and we have indeed rethink investment strategies long-term function of these challenges but must also include issues "anthropo-environmental" reflection.
Replace GDP with other indicators will not in itself a sufficient gesture in this regard. Emphasize the need to rethink the personal development of citizens outside the language of consumer goods does not suffice in itself. We can not simply say that "it is likely that the new economy [no growth] will be less 'capital'" (Jackson, p. 196). Capitalism is not simply a system where "ownership and control over means of production belong to the sphere private and state alike "(ditto ) there is obviously also a state capitalism. A key aspect of capitalism is that people's lives are regimented by the imperative of profitability of capital, ie search for a surplus between revenues and costs in return right to the owner of capital (whether state or private person). How this key aspect, this aspect extractive-grabbing " Is considered by Jackson? It is not clear at all. Reducing hours of work and share the remaining work within the framework of a society where consumption is slowing, much will it lead to capitalism fiercest again, where people who work will be squeezed like lemons to produce goods less abundant, and to work in "green jobs" intensive manpower? Share the work can coincide with social disasters and abuses of power and power relations exacerbated.
Basically, the danger of the approach of Jackson is his silence about the quality of work and especially the (s) scheme (s) of property that would accompany (es) the transition to prosperity without growth. Certainly, he said vaguely that "employee ownership" (p. 197) offers prospects - but that is a model completely compatible with capitalist exploitation and alienation, as the model of incentive pay or that of co-management. Still true to its strategy of drowning fish, Jackson writes: "The requirements of the new economy we call to revisit and supervise the concepts of productivity, profitability, asset ownership, and control the distribution of surplus. Wherever can lead us to this exploration, two things are clear: investment in assets is crucial and the ecology of this investment is very different from the current functioning of capital markets. (...) Is this still capitalism? Does it really matter? "(P. 197) Certainly, if the State's task is to re-regulate finance and investment so as to modify the" ecology of investment "(that is to say coexistence of assets more or less profitable, more or less long term), and if you like Jackson believes that the state is able to handle this task, it is possible to imagine a social democracy where the green appetites of the most powerful actors can be harnessed and controlled. Suddenly, Jackson thinks, capitalism would lose its abrasive and destructive aspect and become a nice dog to serve consumers become reasonable with ... the state, there too.
Because yes, Jackson believes that the fight against consumerism will only be possible if the state intervenes and sets (from above, therefore) social conditions allowing everyone to get out of its isolation. Which? Mainly by changing the "signals" that we perceive and which we respond. New signs, new players. What new signals? This is especially the ban on advertising to children, the return of public financing in the media to reduce dependence on advertisers and the strengthening of commercial standards (fair trade, durable consumer goods) (see Jackson, p. 182). With such signals, we suggest the author, our choice of personal frugality become less heavy to bear as we proceed into a social world more buoyant. You can not really object to such ideas make sense - except that, while appealing to communities of practice and to philosophical and spiritual traditions (p. 152), Jackson insists (Latouche as I have said) the intangible nature of "human nature". No need to touch it. So, you're lost. On what, exactly, should be the effort of citizens? If I decide to frugality, it is according to Jackson because that frugality was always in me, waiting in somehow, but was stifled by the social context. It is certainly a part of reality, but to first choice of frugality, is what I should not have done work on myself? And state actors themselves, which Jackson also shows they are caught in a dilemma between long and short term (p. 167), did not they (like Jackson himself as an economist has become "heterodox") work to do on themselves personally, for a change of perspective? Does the transition to prosperity without growth does not require both new collective norms and new ways of being human?
Because if Jackson is right to say (as a result of many works in psychology and philosophy of economics) that consumerism is based on the fear of lack, I think he glosses over the need a change in "human nature". If consumerism was anchored in a fixed human nature and ultimately, we do not see how even the new collective norms that Jackson proposes could win the battle against the obsession with novelty. This is not, fortunately. Consumerism is rooted in profound anxieties in us, but we can - all our spiritual traditions attest - To overcome these fears. Does the community give us access to resources "meaning" real so that we can overcome our fears, so consumerism, therefore growth? Jackson, unfortunately, said nothing, nor indeed Latouche. It seems to me that thinking about the economic transition can not do without changing human nature, the anthropological change, so also fundamental cultural change. This is not a case of new public standards of consumption - is a matter of increased public support to work of citizens themselves . And that means also publicly support the people who dare to engage in alternative community experiences. (See my recent article "Down utopia, long live democracy deep!", In No. 63 of the journal Policy .)
Should not tie prosperity without growth at a "return of religion, "or even ( horribile dictu) the institutionalization of a state religion? Of course not! Citizens have enough emotional and intellectual capacity to "connect" on philosophical and spiritual traditions which "move" in the public space (if we let them move) and which may enable them to work on their depths. Admittedly, as Jackson says, must rethink the "ecology" of investment to allow coexistence between the requirements of short-term profitability and opportunities for building long-term, but well, is that we should not rethink the "ecology" research tools allow philosophical and spiritual coexistence between different "human experiments" in our societies? Prosperity without growth says nothing about it, almost. Yet this is part of the governance of prosperity!
short, it is unclear whether the prosperity without economic growth according to Jackson is a transition to post-capitalism. It does not matter to him, I'm not so sure because as I said, the issue of quality of work and capitalist exploitation is not resolved. We do not know either if prosperity without growth corresponds to a transition to a public space where the work of citizens themselves is really possible. It is equally worrisome, because as I said, the issues of deprivation, death, suffering, distress can not be addressed by new standards of public consumption.
It would be regrettable that the book Jackson, with his characteristic clarity and is one of his virtues, be used to evacuate or to obscure the issues more radical than other jobs, like those of Latouche ( The challenge of decreasing , Small treatise decay serene ) or even those of a Paul Aries ( No. Conso , grow and Disobey: Towards a society of decrease , Voluntary simplicity against the myth of abundance ) , raised more explicitly. Still, the publication of this book is a very important event. We can not, henceforth not be "Jacksonian." It is a clear starting point, but accurate as perfectible, to want too win consensus, it hides or scrambles perhaps more radical issues. Continuing the debate!
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