Radical abundance through degrowth - a vision for a communal economy

Can we slow down the economy and be richer in the things that really count?

12 minute read

This is the second part of my review of Kohei Saito’s Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. The first part is here. This is part of a longer project I call Possible Worlds, envisioning alternatives to the current system in the spirit of “Another world is possible.” Confronting our current political situation, we need to go beyond the defensive to explore how we came to this place and how we can make the systemic changes needed to move beyond it. In the series I will review books and other sources, some relatively new, some classics, to help inform this exploration.

How capitalism creates scarcity

Author Kohei Saito puts a simple question: “What produces plenty, capitalism or communism? Most people would surely answer capitalism. Capitalism has fostered technological advances previously unseen in human history and brought about a society rich in material objects. That is what most people think, and there’s some truth to the view.”

He continues, “But that’s not the whole truth . . . Doesn’t capitalism in fact cause scarcity (author’s emphasis), at least for 99% of us? Couldn’t we say that the more capitalism advances, the more hardship does?”

Saito quickly moves to one of the most obvious examples of the phenomenon, housing, now a crisis around the world. One of the prime reasons is that housing has become a field for speculative investment, bidding up the price. It has become increasingly difficult for the middle class to find affordable housing in major cities, while rental prices are driving out independent businesses.

“ . . . capitalism is a system that ceaselessly produces scarcity. On the other hand, communism, contrary to popular belief, aims to provide a certain kind of abundance.”

Saito’s communism is different than the standard picture inherited from the Cold War era. His book, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, originally published in Japan under the title, Capital in the Anthropocene, boldly makes a case for what he calls degrowth communism, an ecological economy that is not the state socialism generally associated with the term communism. It is instead a communal form, a cooperative network based on community self-management and mutual aid that, honestly, Marx had in mind more than the Soviet Union.

The Japanese Marx scholar intends to present a form of communism consistent with the contemporary idea of degrowth, which he sees as necessary for humanity to draw back within planetary ecological boundaries, particularly to restore climate stability. He tracks an evolution in Marx’s thinking that in his later years was heavily influenced by non-Western and indigenous communal models, as well as ecological sciences. Unlike his younger self, he no longer saw the need for a phase through capitalist industrialism, which he came to believe was inherently destructive of nature. Instead, communal forms seen in traditional societies could realize his vision of a worker-managed society. Marx called for a return to the archaic. I track this evolution in the first part of this series.

In this part, I look at how Saito sees degrowth communism working in practice. But first, it is key to understand his proposition that capitalism causes scarcity. From a fundamental supply and demand standpoint, it makes sense. The scarcer a thing is, the more you can charge for it. Saito goes deeper, delving into what Marx called primitive accumulation. The classic case is the enclosure of the commons in Europe, which went furthest in Britain, by which the upper classes closed off lands that peasants could freely use to generate food and materials. Thus the richer classes could monopolize the means of production formerly available to all, and through the resulting scarcity drive the peasants into cities to work in their factories. This was the basis of capital accumulation.

Marx was not the first to observe this. Saito points to James Maitland, the Earl of Lauderdale, who in the early 1800s wrote about how the increase of private riches comes at the cost of public wealth. By reducing public access to the commons and creating scarcity, private parties could accumulate wealth. This came to be known as the Lauderdale Paradox. Saito cites a contemporary example, the privatization of water supplies. Obviously, everybody needs water, so limiting public access and commodifying supply provides great opportunities to accumulate capital. Saito calls this the tragedy of the commodity in counterpoint to the old notion of tragedy of the commons.

“Capitalism manufactures artificial scarcity to perpetuate itself. This makes abundance its natural enemy. The key to restoring radical abundance is reclamation of the commons. Indeed, it’s the commons that will enable us to overcome capitalism and restore radical abundance in the twenty-first century.”

“Reclaiming the commons is communism,” Saito proclaims.

The five pillars of degrowth communism

How does this economy based on the commons work in practical effect? Saito updates some basic concepts of Marx to present a picture of an economy that supplies human needs while living in the boundaries of nature. He calls it the five pillars of degrowth communism.

The first pillar is producing for use-value rather than for capital accumulation.

“ . . . capitalism’s need for constant growth and capital accumulation makes a commodity’s value more important than its use value,” he writes. “Capitalism’s number one priority is increasing value. In its extreme form, this means anything has value as long as it sells. Its utility (use-value), its quality, its impact on the environment – none of that matters.”

So we have SUVs rather than small cars and ubiquitous mass transit, fast fashion rather than clothing made to endure, luxury condos rather than affordable housing. Especially in a time of climate disruption, we need “universal access to food, water, electricity, shelter and transportation” as well as infrastructure adapted to rising seas and storms and ecosystem protection. “We must prioritize the production of things necessary to respond to the crisis, not things whose worth resides only in their capacity to produce value . . . Put a different way, fulfilling people’s basic needs would be prioritized over increasing the GDP. This is the grounding principle of degrowth..”

Thus, the faulty measurement known as GDP might go down, along with materials and energy demands to produce unneeded items, but the real abundance of goods and services people actually need would increase.

The second pillar is shortening work hours.

An economy that produces for use-value can rid itself of meaningless work and “bullshit jobs.” “Once we stop producing so many things we don’t need, we can reduce the hours people work across society as a whole.”

Automation already has created a situation in which productive power could free people from wage labor if it were not monopolized for capital accumulation, Saito notes. But automation implies increased energy usage, which can elevate climate disrupting pollution, not all labor can or should be automated, he adds.

How many of us would not like to work fewer hours? Time is a quality of which each of us has a limited amount. Spending the greater part of our lives toiling in cubicles and on factory lines when we could radically reduce work demands is an attractive proposition. This is another aspect of the radical abundance of which Saito writes.

The third pillar is abolishing the division of labor.

The quality of work life is a vital issue. Repetitive work creates greater efficiencies, but becomes monotonous and boring. Schedules driven by hard deadlines and market competition create stress. It is hard to think of a better example for this than Amazon, a corporation driven to maximum efficiency whether on the warehouse floor or in the office tower, notorious for burning through workers. People turn to consumerism as a means to compensate for all this, intensifying the ecological crisis, another angle where Amazon is also a poster.

Marx saw the need to restore creativity to work, to make labor a means of self-realization. Marx called for “attractive work” and saw the elimination of divisions between mental and physical labor as key, breaking down the division between managers and other workers. And rotating among tasks could break monotony and make work more interesting.

“To make work attractive again, we must establish sites of production that allow workers to engage in a wide variety of tasks and activities,” Saito writes. “Abolishing the uniform division of labor to restore humanity to labor necessarily implies deprioritizing the type of efficiency meant to produce economic growth.” This “would naturally contribute to a slowdown of economic activity. We must see this as a good thing.”

This means emphasizing open technologies more accessible to use by a wide range of people, as opposed to locking technologies that require expertise limited to a few, Saito writes. The latter concentrate wealth and power while the former distributes them, he notes. One might pose the factory powered by a small modular nuclear reactor versus one with an on-site solar installation.

The fourth pillar is democratizing the production process.

Much of the case for capitalist forms of management is that they can move fast to take advantage of new opportunities. When the priority is on growth and capital accumulation, that is a logical choice. But, Saito writes, when the emphasis is on use-value and shortening work hours, democratic management of production is vital.

Decisions about which technologies to employ, what to produce, which materials and energy sources are used, should be made by democratic discussion and debate, Saito asserts. That will slow down decision making, which from a degrowth standpoint is desirable. Democracy is less efficient, but more likely to produce outcomes that promote use-value and reduced work hours. It is more likely to favor accessible technologies and supply chains that yield socially and ecologically favorable results, in contrast to a system that conditions everything on growth.

“The Soviet Union failed to adopt this principle, leading it to become a dictatorship of bureaucracy,” Saito writes.

Saito would abolish intellectual property rights and monopolized platforms that produce huge profits but represent a modern form of enclosure. “Knowledge and information would instead be treated as the commons.” Open technologies that diminish the profit motive might diminish innovation, Saito acknowledges. But they also might eliminate locking technologies that themselves reduce innovation, he adds. The history of software monopolies would seem to bear him out.

The fifth pillar is prioritizing essential work.

Saito posits that the use-value economy will emphasize labor-intensive essential work such as caregiving occupations, now seen as high-cost but low productivity. These occupations will gain new value in a degrowth economy, resulting in deceleration, but increased quality of life.

Here is where the author briefly delves into AI, citing caregiving’s need to flexibly respond to specific situations as opposed to automation’s standardization, making caregiving difficult to automate. One wonders if humanoid robots powered by AI will overcome Saito’s argument, though it is easy to see that most people would prefer being cared for by a real human being rather than a machine. In any event, the role of AI in displacing humans is central to considerations of how a future economy should be shaped.

Saito wrote his original text in 2020, before the AI boom, so his treatment of the topic seems only partial. But the mass unemployment that seems in store must have an answer. Universal basic income (UBI) is commonly cited, and this will likely be needed. But universal provision of basic human needs in a production system centered on use-value would offer a much more comprehensive solution. It would reduce costs in ways that make UBI more feasible. It would also release us for fulfilling and more voluntary forms of labor such as taking care of each other, ecological restoration, community building and artistic creation. People find meaning and value in their work. We have to invent forms of work that AI can’t do and which fulfill the human need for contribution, and that seems more feasible in a use-value economy.

Beyond the language, a compelling case

As I began the first part of this series, the terminology of degrowth communism poses practical political challenges. Degrowth stirs up resistance because it seems to imply austerity, a political hard sell, though in reality current neoliberalism is what is really delivering austerity. That supports Saito’s proposition capitalism creates scarcity, while the abundance he depicts would have widespread attraction.

Meanwhile, though I long ago moved to the left in politics, I grew up in a conservative 1950-60s Roman Catholic milieu. I understand how the word “communism” sends cold shivers up people’s backs, how it is associated with gulags and totalitarian regimes. As noted in this and the first part of this series, Saito is critical of that form of communism and looks to a genuinely democratic order. But nonetheless, the word has been subject to such a long propaganda campaign, it is hard to see it coming into common use in mass politics, at least in the U.S. Though one must applaud efforts such as Saito’s to pry back the meaning of the word from the propagandistic miasma that has surrounded it.

Getting beyond the language, Saito’s arguments are sound in terms of the inability of capitalism to adequately confront our ecological crisis, the failure to deal with climate overload glaring in the foreground. As dealt with in the first part, the fundamental drive of capitalism is to externalize costs to increase profits. Externalizing the cost of fossil fuel use by dumping its pollution into the atmosphere is one of the prime examples. The drive for growth inherent to capitalism implies increased resource and energy use, also making it difficult to take the load off the planet needed to restore ecological stability. We have understood the climate crisis for decades, but have not moved to solve it in any way proportional to the challenge. This stands as testimony to an inherent problem in the system itself.

The alternative posed by Saito also makes a great deal of sense – An economy devoted to producing for human needs rather than capital accumulation. After all, the root of the word economy is housekeeping. One keeps the house to provide for needs, and does not endlessly add new rooms. It is also desirable. Work that fulfills and produces goods actually needed for human life, and does not consume so many hours of one’s life. Workplaces in which one has a say about how the work should be done rather than being bullied by managers who are themselves driven by profit-seeking shareholders.

Saito makes a compelling case this is exactly the kind of economy we need, one which will slow it down so we can deal with our multifaceted crises. In other words, to leave a world with which our children can cope. But is it the kind of economy we can have? How do we get from there to here?

Practical pathways - Community energy and worker coops

Saito poses some remarkably practical pathways to arrive at a destination that might seem utopian. One is independent action by people that might or might not take place in a state-driven context. He cites community energy as an example, “ . . . citizen management or municipalization of energy production . . . is essential for the widespread adoption of renewable energy. It represents an opportunity to construct small-scale power networks amenable to democratic management and capitalizing on its inherently dispersed and decentralized nature.”

The alternative, he notes, is large scale renewable installations in rural ecosystems. In actual situations now emerging, this is creating serious obstacles to renewables expansion. Yes, judged purely by cost-effectiveness, it is cheaper to install renewables on a mass basis in rural settings rather than as localized projects within an urban framework. But this requires long-distance transmission that takes years to build, often against community resistance. Large-scale solar and wind plants are also drawing increased community opposition. Lack of transmission and local opposition are stalling or cancelling many projects. Small-scale projects in a community setting, reclaiming the commons in energy, overcome obstacles inherent in the logic of capitalist management.

To reclaim the commons in production, Saito sees the spread of worker cooperatives as the answer. “organizations allowing workers to invest jointly in the co-ownership and comangement of the means of production without interference from capitalists and shareholders.”

Saito writes, “Introducing democracy into the workplace allows workers to suppress competition among themselves and make joint decisions about development, education, and restructuring on their own terms. While co-ops still do support the continuation of their enterprise through profit-making, they are not at the mercy of market-driven speculation by investors or the drive to maximize short-term profits above everything else.”

The author cites many examples operating in today’s world. The Mondragon Cooperative in Spain is a large and diversified industrial enterprise. Japan has long-standing cooperatives in areas including nursing, childcare, forestry, agriculture and waste disposal. People power movements have generated models such as the Evergreen Cooperatives in Ohio, Cooperation Buffalo, and Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi.

Coops can go wrong, Saito acknowledges. Profit and cost-cutting can come to rule. “The system as a whole must change to prevent this. Yet . . . workers’ cooperatives can become the basis on which to transform society overall.”

How can specific reclamations of the commons, in energy, production and other areas such as the internet, ramify to the whole?

“Via the commons, the collective management of productive activity can spread horizontally through society, independent of both the market and the state,” Saito writes.

Still, the leap from specific models to that broad societal transformation is hard to envision. Saito poses a piece of the whole in which the kind of coordination and common planning needed might first be achieved. That is the city. Saito points to models emerging under the rubric of municipalism, with climate as the lever to bring disparate activities together. He delves into the most well-known example of municipalism, Barcelona, as a case study. To that will I turn in the next part of this series, and to the role of politics, movements and the state in making his vision happen.

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