Degrowth: Poverty as Policy

By Thomas Benjamin

From the people who brought you vaccine passports, CBDCs, 15-minute cities, Net Zero, and The Great Reset comes a unifying economic vision for the ruins of The West. You’ll own nothing and you won’t be happy, and you’re not supposed to be. It’s called ‘degrowth,’ and it’s just getting started.

In his most recent interview with Joe Rogan, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked why he finally decided to go ahead with his purchase of Twitter (now X). In a characteristically thoughtful answer, Musk justified his purchase as a way to hit back at what he called ‘the extinctionists.’

These extinctionists, according to the Tesla chief, espouse a Neo-Malthusian worldview pervasive in San Francisco progressive circles; one having a disproportionate reach due to its domination of one of the world’s most powerful social media platforms.

Musk prefaced his answer by suggesting he was going to be described as ‘melodramatic’ with this assessment. In fact, he probably seriously understated the gravity of the problem. Not only is it an ideology that permeates the stereotypically woke wealthy denizens of California, but it is an entirely pervasive attitude within powerful NGOs, the Davos class, and, most importantly, The United Nations.

For while there may be different grades to this belief that mankind is a disease from which the Earth must be purged, its advocates almost all – at least in policy terms – share a similar economic vision; that of ‘degrowth.’

The basic premise is that ‘growth’, i.e., overall increases in material wealth, is ecologically ‘unsustainable,’ therefore the population must learn to exist with fewer goods and less individual freedom, therefore there must be a managed decline in living standards.

James Lindsay ascribes the contemporary origins of this creed to the New Left of the 1960s and Herbert Marcuse in particular. He cites the Frankfurt School academic’s 1964 book One-Dimensional Man in which he asserts that the problem with socialism is that it ‘cannot produce’ and that the problem with capitalism is that it is ‘not sustainable.’ A potential solution, Marcuse posits, is a usurpation of the capitalist system so that it can be shaped towards sustainable, more socialistic ends.

It may be something of a stretch from Lindsay to pin the birth of this economic movement to one text, but it certainly does illustrate an early articulation of the ethos. And it clearly manifests in how the technocrats who intend to usher in Net Zero envision the future of The West.

One of the contemporaneous sources Lindsay cites is that of Dr Andreas Wittel, writing in Phys.org. The website, as its name suggests, is a scientific publication; Dr. Wittel is, however, NOT a scientist and works primarily as a lecturer in ‘Social Theory’ at Nottingham Trent University. And it could not have been better chosen to illustrate the pseudo-intellectual, anti-capitalist cancer riddling our leftist Brahmin overlords.

As he puts it with uncharacteristic succinctness:

“Degrowth does not just refer to a set of theoretical concepts – it also refers to a movement of activists who engage with the implementation of these concepts on a local, regional, national, and international level.

Over the last two decades, the concept has become so influential that it has entered the arena of policymakers. The conference Beyond Growth in May 2023 aimed to discuss and create policies for a sustainable future. It was held in the European Parliament in Brussels and actively supported by more than 20 MEPs. Unfortunately, in the UK, a similar initiative has yet to emerge. Here degrowth is still limited to academic debates and to activist initiatives...”

He additionally demands a ‘democratization’ of the global economy, where the interests of ‘the workers’ are prioritized rather than shareholders. If that sounds a lot like a near-dictionary definition of socialism, that’s because it is. He is, however, profoundly immodest about the scale of the degrowth agenda in its effects in Europe and the United Kingdom.

While there may not be massive explicit uptake at the executive level, largely because it sounds like the willful recessionary policy that it clearly is, the policies enacted by governments reflect the assumption that this is the new Realpolitik of the global regime. There is no other option and resistance (including voting to the contrary) is futile. The consequences of this are already being felt, and they are brutal.

The German economy, until so very recently the driver of the EU’s broader prosperity, has slowed to the extent that it is once again being referred to as ‘the sick man of Europe.’ Spiralling costs brought about by the Ukraine war and Net Zero policies and enforced by a governing coalition with one of the most extreme Green parties on the continent are battering the German manufacturing base, which for decades had been key to its post-war prosperity.

The UK too has recently seen the stark effects of this ideology. The deindustrialization of the nation has long met with thinly veiled celebration as politicians tout the ‘declining emissions’ of Britain’s economy. And all while the nation’s energy prices surge ever-upward, despite the country’s abundant natural gas reserves, reserves rendered unavailable by a fracking ban enacted by the supposedly pro-capitalist Conservative Party.

All of this culminates with scenes like those in January where a slew of Welsh far-left politicians took to television, radio, and social media to bemoan the loss of 3000 jobs with the imminent closure of the blast furnace at Tata Steelworks in Port Talbot. A devastating loss for the community met with a complete failure to acknowledge that the crippling costs of the devolved government’s radical Net Zero agenda may have played a part.

GDP, while an inadequate measure of wealth, is not merely a line on a graph. It reflects the ability of individuals to better their material position and invest surplus time and money into their communities. Growth, contrary to what the new communitarians on the right might say, is good. Growth is right. Growth works. And the case for it needs to be made as strongly as ever.