Degrowth and disagreement: Why engage with our strongest critics?

Democracy is a central principle of degrowth. A democratic downscaling ensures that all citizens can freely choose to live within their means. The question posed by this essay is: What if they disagree?

Democracies take many forms. Many democracies are imperfect, whereas visions of fairer, direct democracies are discussed just outside the scope of this essay. I therefore take it that all democracies share a common feature - an ideal of political equality among all citizens. In a brilliant essay written in an era when democracy was at risk, John Dewey called this the “democratic faith”:

“...to treat those who disagree -even profoundly- with us as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends.”

This produces a dilemma for degrowth. Many of us recognise that a “fair” downscaling of consumption and production requires “unprecedented changes to all aspects of society”. Citizens in the global north must use less energy, with some studies putting the decrease at 68-86%. This is not the arbitrary demand of a privileged interest group. Rather, it is in the interest of environmental justice. Almost anything that could conceivably be valued -including democracy- is put at risk by environmental breakdown, so its causes must be eliminated for the common good.

In this situation, those who oppose such changes can appear to us not just wrong, but reckless, because they act against the common good. The French, German and Dutch farmers protesting EU green laws; the anti-ULEZ campaigners; the Gilets Jaunes up in arms against fuel taxes; and even voters supporting the wrong party can appear ignorant, dangerously reactionary, and uninvested in the democratic ethos. Why should we listen to what they have to say? Moreover, why should we treat them as equals in a participatory democracy, given their destructive intentions?

This is a genuine dilemma that arises from our democratic faith. Some writers have warned that engagement with conservatives and ethno-nationalists is dangerous for degrowth. Since the latter believe in racial hierarchy, they do not believe in civil political intercourse among equals. In response to this threat to democracy, degrowth is urged to “take a side” and resist “attempts to capture from the right”. The strategies proposed by these writers are oblique (having “only just started”), but essentially call for more discerning allyship and a refusal to engage with right-wing criticism. Andreas Malm even advocated for an anti-democratic “ecological Leninism” at a degrowth conference.

Instead, I will argue that we must maintain contact with our strongest critics. In a democracy, those with whom we disagree remain our equals – even in Dewey’s 1939. No, we shouldn’t concede, or even conciliate, with actual fascists. Rather, seeking out our opponents’ strongest good-faith arguments will improve our own understanding of degrowth. It will also prevent us from exaggerating disagreement, and help us to maintain good relations among our allies. To explain, I draw heavily from work done on the phenomenon of polarisation by the American philosopher Robert Talisse, from his book Sustaining Democracy.

Belief polarisation is a widespread, robustly evidenced phenomenon “by which interactions among like-minded people tend to result in each person adopting more radical versions of their shared views”. This may not appear to be a problem among us degrowthers, who are correct about everything and have never been wrong. However, extensive literature shows time and again that any group of people who talk together, about something on which they agree, leave with more extreme and more similar views. This causes a defect in the group’s ability to reason. Polarised groups exaggerate the soundness of their own beliefs and the irrationality of their opponents.

A fantastic example of this happening among research academics can be found in Richard Jackson’s study of the field of Counter-Terrorism Studies in the wake of 9/11. During the Bush Doctrine, counter-terrorism experts held a patent fear of “moral contamination”, and adopted the view that “understanding terrorist motives equates sympathising with them”. The resulting lack of critical self-reflection among academics who engaged only with accepted lines of research and each other’s papers, neglecting research from psychology, peace studies, and anthropology, was so crippling that it might be compared to economics. But it could also happen to degrowth. Group polarisation can affect any like-minded group, regardless of their beliefs.

Recall the Gilets Jaunes from earlier. Because they protested the fuel tax, many environmentalists and NGOs assumed them to be selfish opponents to the common good. But without engaging with our opponents, polarisation could make us believe that they are more extreme and homogenous in their viewpoints than they really are. A degrowth-oriented discourse analysis of Yellow Vests found that they were “not a denialist, anti-environmental movement”, but had a range of opinions – with many in favour of climate policies. Their opposition was focused on the specific French tax that was punitive and implemented without consultation.

I do not deny that strong disagreement remains. It should remain. However, when we engage critically with our opponents, we can identify common ground and areas of debate that we have not yet considered. As Stefania Barca writes, blindly throwing the “degrowth missile” will “convince some, but others will remain sceptical or get defensive”. We must recognise the merits of good-faith opposition. For example, Roger Scruton’s essay Conservatism and the Environment argues for a remarkably familiar “domesticated economy” as opposed to globalisation. His oikophilia (love of home) concept even resembles ideas in environmental aesthetics. However, it fails to acknowledge the effects of global environmental breakdown on the local world, leaving it open to criticism.

Furthermore, we can learn from novel critiques of economic growth that arise outside degrowth. There is broad-spectrum agreement that Joe Biden’s growth rhetoric is no longer persuasive to a working class suffering declining living standards. ‘Post-liberal’ authors across the political spectrum also share degrowth’s scepticism of the modernist narrative of unending progress, a focus on community, spirituality, and place-based governance. Modern technology creates enough echo chambers that we shouldn’t willingly add to them. As Professor Giorgos Kallis writes in the preface to Degrowth:

“Patience and the willingness to learn each other’s languages – even the language of those with whom we instinctively disagree – is more necessary than ever in an era in which different audiences are closed off behind digital walls that reinforce already-held beliefs.”

Sustaining relations with our strongest critics is also the best way to protect the diversity, intelligence, and reasonableness of degrowth. As Talisse points out, groups who have ceased to communicate with others become more “hierarchical”, “conformist”, and “less accepting of difference”. Our opponents can help to put our friends’ common ground into perspective. If we shut them out, the forces of polarisation do not simply disappear. Instead, they get to work on our allies, eating away at the bonds of civil partnership that make the group effective. As experienced members of other progressive movements may already know, group members who are perceived as “deviant” (such as a shopkeeper whose business interests conflict with her sincere environmental interests) risk psychological and physical exclusion from the polarised group.

As The Case for Degrowth states, it is impossible for citizens today to fully give up their ‘private’ interests in favour of those of the group:

“Demands that a person’s every action be fully consistent with a defined valueset effectively paralyze impulses for innovation. Short of abandoning everything to live in a cave, none of us can try out options without contradicting existing lifestyles designed to facilitate growth.”

Such idealistic discrimination would be fatal to the degrowth movement, whose strength derives from its diversity and commitment to the ‘democratic faith’. As Susan Paulson has recognised, degrowth’s “fertile tension” between viewpoints fosters “inclusion, participatory democracy, commoning, sufficiency, conviviality.” Susan Paulson has also been a champion of real diversity; urging us to be aware of the capabilities and limitations that are basic to race, class, sex, etc., rather than assuming we are all the same. Ekaterina Chertovskaya agrees, writing, “multiplicity is a key resource and strength of degrowth” because it allows for “a variety of … ideas and movements. Stefania Barca highlights the value of degrowth’s toleration of different movements, which “are not engaged in a battle of ideas against each other in the same fashion as different currents of Marxism were used to.”  These are the reasons which may have motivated the 34% of degrowth conference-goers who in 2014 did not want degrowth to be ‘distanced’ from conservative thought.

Ultimately, all individuals are limited in their physical and intellectual capacities. We make better decisions in groups, but we are also subject to natural forces that can harm cooperation. We are neither gods nor beasts. Degrowth’s commitment to democracy makes use of the unique capacities of each individual to solve problems in common. But it also means that we must treat those with whom we disagree as our political equals; both as means as well as ends.

Perhaps a longer essay could discuss further limitations and possibilities of democracy. Certainly, there are cases in which our opponents are unreasonably opposed to the common good. But these cases are extreme. As we have seen, considering the views of our strongest critics helps maintain the integrity and purpose of our movement. May it last forever.