This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work responding to another Ask Prof Wolff question
from our Patreon community and this one comes from 'David L.' David asks a question many of you have
inquired about, namely this tradition, if you like, this movement often called de-growth.
It comes, if I'm not mistaken, out of the ecological environmental world. In which it is
clear to people that we are outrunning the available resources, natural resources
of this planet. That the history, particularly, of capitalism in the last few centuries has been
a kind of rapacious using up of the forests, of the sea water, of the air, literally of the soil,
and of the minerals below the soil, and the metals and all the rest of it. And that we are running
out and we are damaging the planet that hosts us. And that we have to address that question.
And that one of the ways to approach it is to realize that we live in a system
that fetishizes growth, in which the mentality of people,
as well as the pressure of the institutions makes everyone think they have to do more to do
everything bigger, or more, or more extensively. When there is an option, which is to say 'no,
let's economize, instead of growth, de-growth, the opposite of growth, get smaller in some sense.'
And I think the case has been very persuasively made by those, and they are growing by the numbers
all around the world, that we need to do this. And I don't think there's much opposition on
that level. Where the opposition comes in is that all the decision makers, particularly,
who could and should take this to heart and de-grow
refuse to do so. Some, honestly most of them, fake. That is, they talk about de-growth,
they talk about ecology, they talk about the environment, but they don't change their behavior.
And now to the heart of the matter. I think the heart of the matter lies in the institutional
framework, namely capitalism. Capitalism is a system in which companies compete with one another
inside each industry by maximizing profit. And one of the ways you do that is you grow. You grow
your business because if you have more workers working they will produce more profit for you. So
growth and profit are the names of the game. They're what these companies are all doing.
And because they can only survive if they grow and profit they don't want to be constrained
by taking care of Earth, by taking care of de-growing as an urgent problem. They don't even
have to deny that it's a problem, but they can't attend to it. Multiply that by nearly every other
capitalist employer and you have the situation we're in today.
And let me give you two very quick examples of what I mean. It's very clear,
it's been shown a hundred times by technical studies, scientific examinations and so on
that it's much more efficient to move people across distances, what we call transportation,
to do that collectively in a bus rather than a private automobile, in a train
rather than a bus or a private automobile, etc. Mass transportation would save vast amounts of
fossil fuels that wouldn't have to be found or processed or consumed. It would use much
less metal, it would occupy much less space on the earth, it would be infinitely cheaper and better.
And it would mean saving the amount of destruction we now do to manufacture, to fuel, to fix
private automobiles by the billions (with a b) because that's what we've done on this planet.
What's holding that back is not an awareness of the virtues of de-growth. What's holding that back
is the refusal of all the companies whose profits depend on producing the automobile, producing the
plastic in the automobile, producing the rubber of the tires on which it runs et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. So we have to deal with the profit motive with the capitalist system that rewards
those who are profitable no matter what damage they do to the larger society, rather than have
a society run on a different basis. And the second example, and there are many, but the second one I
thought of to present is housing. Once again, we know that housing people in communities,
both vertically high but also collectively sharing all kinds of functions is a much better way
to solve the housing problem. It would take less space, it would take fewer resources.
It would be a way of de-growing, of shrinking our footprint. And that would save the earth.
We know how to do it, but here's the obstacle. A huge amount of money has been
invested in what we call real estate. The real estate interests dominate for example
most urban politics in the United States. You want to know what happens in New York City
or Atlanta or San Francisco or Chicago? You will find out what runs a local politics by following
it back to the real estate interests and they don't want a new and better system of housing
that economizes on the footprint that builds in deep growth. They want to grow and make more
money. And they're the obstacle that prevents it. So you get the conclusion you often get from me.
But not because I have to repeat myself, but because it is the problem. We have to face,
that we have a dysfunctional economic system: capitalism.
And in addition to all the other things that are wrong with it in terms of human relationships
and social priorities it is a disaster when it comes to dealing with our environment, the
nature we depend on, the de-growth we now need. And that's why capitalism has to be fundamentally
changed or superseded so we can address, because we know how, what the issues are. And then we can
deal with it. But we have to change the economic system, otherwise it blocks us at every turn,
as it has been showing us for at least the decades since Rachel Carson wrote her famous book.
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