The Folly of Degrowth

Appreciation and Application of History

The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, by Barbara Tuchman, was published in 1984. It is quite a good read, quite perspicacious in its paradigms, and quite devastating to the postmodern world in which we live. It also adds another dimension to the US and Israeli nihilism that is destroying the sociopolitical fabric as we watch collapse unfold. This book was my first introduction to Tuchman, but I also read The Guns of August (1962), and am still reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978).

I thought about The March of Folly because of my latest run-ins with degrowthers. They are “full o’folly.” I have gotten into quite a few arguments over the years with the degrowther crowd. What I have noticed is their general nastiness and lack of a coherent program. Their strategy seems to be: 1) play on the public’s confusion about the growth paradigm, 2) conflate economic contraction with the nonsense term “degrowth,” 3) adopt an arrogant attitude at all times, and 4) attack, attack, attack.

So why is degrowth a nonsense term? Simply put, it is not needed AND cannot exist without growth. It is like postmodernism. It is no coincidence that the original use of degrowth was a postmodern construction. The original term was décroissance (degrowth in English) and invented by the Austrian-born, naturalized French social philosopher André Gorz, who asked (in English translation): “Is the earth’s balance, for which no-growth – or even degrowth – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible with the survival of the capitalist system?” This throwaway line was then seized on by the new postmodernism of the late 1960s/early 1970s as a counterpoint to the growth paradigm developed after World War II in Amerika.

Without accepting the grand narrative of modernism, postmodernism cannot exist. Oops. This is what is called a “logic bomb.” It requires you to hold on tightly to Subject A in one hand while you argue for Subject B in the other hand. This should be familiar to critics of Marxism, because Marx defined capitalism in a certain way and then proposed an alternative. The one could not exist without the other. As Cory Doctorow, astute social critic and author of the “enshittification” meme, said recently on a podcast, “Marx and Engels LOVED capitalism. They just wanted to seize the means of production.” [Sidebar: The reason I have been dismissing Marxism since 1968, when I first looked into it, was because of the way Marx kinked the argument by setting it up for only one conclusion. This is stinky cheese.]

The opposite of growth is contraction. Other antonyms to growth are decrease, decline, downsizing and reduction. These all have their own specific meanings. But these words do NOT have to start from a condition of growth. They can all start from a condition of stasis. The degrowthers start from an economic system in motion, i.e. a growing economy. It seems that degrowth still incorporates economic growth, just a different kind. Contraction, decrease, decline, downsizing and reduction do not.

One hilarious aspect to the whole degrowth debate is that if you look up degrowth on Wikipedia, it says right on the top of the Webpage, “Not to be confused with downsizing or shrinkage.” This gave me a good laugh when I first saw it. In other words, the authors and monitors of the term on Wikipedia are careful to make a distinction between degrowth and downsizing/shrinkage/contraction. I see this as a tactic, related to Number 2) - conflation - in my second paragraph above. The degrowthers want the casual observer to just accept the “degrowth” term as synonymous to other anti-growth terms, but when you investigate further they provide more distinction. Conflate first, discriminate later. I see this all the time. People looking for answers to the real problem of “infinite growth on a finite planet” become seduced by conflation of terms. This sets the stage for the degrowth agenda as the unsuspecting searcher is already hooked and halfway landed into the boat. As I say, stinky cheese.

So let’s dive further into degrowth. There are many, many Web articles available. One that I recommend as a starting point is A History Of Degrowth at https://degrowth.info/en/history This short article mentions many of the early authors and propagators of the term. You can do your own research on the history of the term by starting with the article. So instead of repeating the article, let’s cut to the chase, using the Degrowth entry on Wikipedia previously mentioned.

Degrowth is an academic and social movement, predominantly in Europe, and aimed at the planned reduction of production and consumption as a solution to social-ecological crises. [Okay, simple description. That’s fine.] Policy goals include reducing the environmental impact of human activities, redistributing income and wealth within and between countries, and encouraging a shift from materialistic values to a convivial and participatory society. [Sounds a bit airy-fairy doesn’t it?]

The policy goals of degrowth start with a doable goal (reducing environmental impact) and then proceed through redistributing wealth (less than 5% chance of happening) to shifting values in society (i.e. fighting against the core values of state-level societies - an impossible task). [The continuum is from a doable solution right through to something doomed to fail. What is called “capitalism” and a “growth economy” is much simpler. Make as much money as you can using capital instead of labor. Keep growing the economy. Forget about society at large. Is it any wonder capitalism and growth wins out?]

Degrowth is critical of the concept of growth in gross domestic product as a measure of human and economic development. [Commendable. So am I.] It argues that modern capitalism’s unitary focus on growth causes widespread ecological damage and is unnecessary for the further increase of human living standards. [This is a bit dodgy and is where degrowth starts its path o’spin.] Degrowth theorists posit that degrowth would increase human living standards and ecological preservation even as GDP growth slows or reverses. [Now they are in fantasy land fer sure.]

My analysis: The integral thought that degrowthers seem to miss en masse is that we ONLY have affluent lifestyles because of fossil fuels. You would NOT be able to live the modern Amerikan and western European lifestyle of 24/7 electricity and convenience stores and on-demand entertainment and cushy jobs in air-conditioned offices without fossil fuels. This can be quantified in kilojoules, kilocalories, and kilowatt hours. Many authors, podcasters and movie makers have pointed this out. I have done so myself in three books, many Substack articles and lots and lots of arguments over the last fifty-six years. Other authors have pointed out the same thing: Nate Hagens, Ian Morris, William Catton, Joseph Tainter and others.

Unlike the degrowthers, I am right upfront about the reality of reduced fossil fuel use. IF you want a cleaner and more just world, you are going to have to embrace a much reduced lifestyle. There is NO possibility of maintaining a phoney-baloney affluent society without a continuing increase in fossil fuel use. Not just a steady-state economy, so beloved of the ecological economists. A continuing increase in the growth of the economy. This is why our political overlords keep reinforcing and supporting the growth economy paradigm. Keep in mind that even China, which is the world leader in development of renewables, has had to continue to increase their use of coal and other fossil fuels in order to develop and grow. [Sidebar: China presently uses one-half the amount of energy per capita - most of which comes from fossil fuels - than the US. But it used to be one-fifth twenty years ago. France, where I live, is only 10% more than China in energy use per capita, so half of the US. Source: Our World in Data.] The only two times in the recent past when there was a worldwide downturn in emissions was 2009 and 2020. This was because of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) - sometimes called the Great Recession - of 2008 and the lockdown of global supply chains in reaction to the Covid pandemic in 2020. In other words, a catastrophe has to happen to shock the socio/political/economic system enough to reduce fossil fuel use in order to reduce chemicals, thermal heat and gas emissions into the environment.

The idea of decoupling is where the rubber meets the road for degrowthers. The concept of decoupling means splitting off economic growth from the use of natural resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The usual measurements of growth are GDP (gross domestic product) or GNI (gross national income). GDP measures the aggregate amount of domestic product sales and wages, while GNI measures total aggregate income of citizens both domestically and abroad. Two different measures, but both are crap quantitative tools. As an example, neither of them provide a value for housework, even though Dick usually cannot bring in the paycheck unless Jane raises the kids and does the necessary work to keep the household running. Plug in your own genders, names, two-income perturbations, etc. if you like. You get my point. Support services are not counted if they do not generate income.

There are two divisions in this decoupling idea. Absolute decoupling refers to GDP growth coinciding with a reduction in natural resource use and GHG emissions, while relative decoupling describes an increase in resource use and GHG emissions lower than the increase in GDP growth. The degrowth movement heavily critiques this idea and argues that absolute decoupling is only possible for short periods or specific locations, or with small mitigation rates. There is also the problem of scale, as “There is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown.” [For reference, see the original European Environmental Bureau report here: https://eeb.org/en/library/decoupling-debunked/ AND a secondary analysis of the report here: https://www.exploring-economics.org/de/entdecken/decoupling-debunked-evidence-and-arguments-agai/ ] The same report uses relative decoupling as a default term for temporary, local instances of eco-economic decoupling that do not constitute absolute decoupling.

Degrowthers have also pointed out the time factor, as absolute decoupling is highly unlikely to be achieved fast enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions. So . . . economic growth cannot be decoupled from increasing energy use and instances of this phenomenon will be only local and temporary. There is also the pressing issues of scale and time. Bummer.

The answer to the decoupling problem, according to degrowthers, is better resource allocation. This is essentially “better management,” a concept honored more in the breach than reality. Just work in an office for a week if you don’t believe me. One signal policy change for degrowthers is the abandonment of the current growth model, relocalizing and abandoning the global economy. In the Global South this would allow people to become more self-sufficient and would end the overconsumption and exploitation of Southern resources by the North. Ah, but the devil is in the details. As an example, when the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016 and finally severed ties in 2020, this would have been a wonderful opportunity to relocalize British manufacturing and agriculture to test out a degrowth policy. But did it even rise to a level of prominence among policy makers? Of course not. The attempted policies post-Brexit were based on buying and selling to different markets in the same old growth economy and the failure was spectacular.

It should be noted that critics of degrowth describe it as a vague concept that fails to offer an effective strategy for reducing environmental harm, ignores rebound effects, and has little social or political support. Critics also describe degrowth research as largely normative opinions rather than analysis, with most proposals lacking precision, depth, and concrete policy design, rarely using quantitative or qualitative data, formal modelling, or representative samples, while empirical and system-wide analyses remain scarce. Whew, that was a mouthful! I don’t write like that, of course, and the criticism is right from the Degrowth article on Wikipedia. To their credit, the degrowthers who maintain the webpage are passing on some criticism.

A 2025 review of research literature on degrowth concluded that degrowth scholars are skeptical of the feasibility of achieving an equitable economic slowdown within a capitalist framework. [Yep, they are right on this one.] This skepticism stems from the structural reliance of capitalism on continuous growth driven by competition. [In other words, capitalism and growth are dependent on each other. Correctomundo.] As a result, degrowth advocates argue for a deliberate and democratically guided overhaul of the economic system. [Certainly a laudable goal.]

As noted earlier, degrowth is an academic and social movement. That means reform. And if you are committed to reform of the System, you are not planning on collapse of the System. This is where the degrowthers and myself part ways. I see collapse as inevitable and I also see attempts at reform as wasting time, energy and money that should be going to preparations for the post-collapse world. In economics, this is called opportunity cost, the value of the next best alternative you give up when a choice is made, showing the benefits forgone in choosing one option over another. It is largely a specious concept and I only use it when I am criticizing people like Nate Hagens who use to work for a high-ranking securities firm and still talks like that.

However, wasting time, energy and money trying to fix the System is a real problem. Spending your time canvassing for Bernie or AOC or whoever is the hip progressive du jour instead of digging your potatoes is a gigantic disconnect. Likewise, spending your mental capital thinking up cool ways to save the world when they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, is poor management of your time and energy. And you can eat the potatoes.

I usually regard degrowth as just green growth in a different dress. And green growth is just a phoney-baloney concept of having an affluent lifestyle without environmental cost. But here is a more precise view from “Degrowth vs. Green Growth. A computational review and interdisciplinary research agenda,” by Max Polewsky, et al, on the Science Direct website: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800923003300#:~:text=Using%20a%20comparative%20analysis%20of,theory%2Ddriven%2C%20focuses%20on%20the

Abstract (selections)
The concepts of Green Growth and Degrowth represent two major narratives in the public and academic debate on socio-ecological transformation. . . Using a comparative analysis of the two research fields, we confirm several findings from previous reviews, including that Green Growth research is highly policy oriented, focuses on practical implementation and builds on empirical research methods, while Degrowth research is highly theory-driven, focuses on the analysis of complex human-nature interrelationships and builds on a sound theoretical and conceptual foundation. Our analysis further reveals that Green Growth and Degrowth are two rather isolated fields of research with little exchange and mutual reference on related topics. However, the topic of social change and transition represents an intersecting and promising future research area. . . .

Notice that Green Growth is policy-driven and Degrowth is theory-driven. This distinction is important but the authors feel there can be a synthesis. Well, shucks. I guess my simplistic formulation of green growth, degrowth, eco-modernism, astro-turfing and bright green lies all being the same is not discerning enough. Okay.

But here is the bottom line. Do you want to save the System that is killing you? Nope. Do you want to ensconce yourself in a theory-driven, eco-social transformation that has little hope of succeeding, especially as the capitalists own the banks, have all the guns AND own the gun factories to boot? Nope. Wouldn’t it be better just to reduce your lifestyle and prepare yourself for the coming contraction and collapse? Yep.

Contraction, reduction, downsizing are all individualistic and local. They do not require laws and organizing and getting everybody on the same page to fight against a System that is rigged. You can just reduce your lifestyle and build community. So the ultimate question about degrowth vs. reduction/contraction boils down to what you can do right now.

Me? I am digging potatoes and harvesting black radish seed. I write articles when it is too hot to work outside. I am not watching TV because the Tour de France has a rest day today and the France/Spain quarter-final is not until tomorrow night.