Vol. 2, No. 1, Autumn 2017
David
Samways
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DOI: 10.3197/jps.2017.2.1.5
Licensing: This article is Open Access (CC BY 4.0).
How to Cite:
Samways, D. 2016. 'Editorial introduction'. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 2(1): 5–14.
https://doi.org/10.3197/jps.2017.2.1.5
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The
contents of this, the third issue of The Journal of Population and
Sustainability, once again illustrate the breadth of scholarship required to
grapple with the relationships between human numbers and environmental
sustainability. With papers covering the development of ideologies of consumerism
and economic growth, the idea of the Earth’s human carrying capacity, UK
immigration in a global context, and the ethical problems surrounding
individual reproductive choice, the diversity of concerns is, once again, all
too apparent. We also carry a review by Ugo Bardi, professor of Physical
Chemistry at the University of Florence and author of The Limits to Growth Revisited (2011) and Extracted (2014),
of Raoul Weiler and Kris Demuynck’s Food Scarcity (2017).
Whilst
reading our first paper, Kerryn Higgs’ Limits to Growth: Human Economy
and Planetary Boundaries, I was reminded of John Maynard Keynes’
essay The Economic Possibilities for
Our Grandchildren (1930).
Keynes
gazed 100 years into the future and envisaged the society brought into being by
the wealth created from compound interest and ever-advancing technology. He
anticipated a leisure society where work occupied three hours of a day, the
love of money was regarded as a disease, and the biggest challenge was how to
meaningfully occupy free time. From the standpoint of 2017 the achievement of
Keynes’ vision seems a great deal further off than 13 years hence. However, I
am struck by how Higgs’ paper gave some of the key reasons why Keynes’
prediction did not come true, but also by the fact that, in essence, Keynes
presents us with the germ of a idea of what a sustainable society might look
like.
The
articles in this issue are linked via their emphasis on the role of ideas,
values and choices in both the generation and amelioration of our current
environmental problems. They all, therefore, have an indirect relevance to
Keynes’ forecast, both in terms of its failure to materialise and the actions
required if we wish to achieve it.
Keynes
reasoned that the contemporary issue of technological unemployment, caused by
increasing mechanisation of production, was a temporary situation that
ultimately would be liberating. Like Marx, Keynes had great foresight and
correctly predicted the ever-increasing impact of automation on economic
activity, and while not revealing how the dividends of technology would be
equitably distributed, Keynes argued that basic needs would be universally
satisfied without labour. Although first written at the end of the 1920s,
Keynes’ essay was not published until after the Wall Street Crash. In this
version Keynes argued that the pessimistic view that the economic progress of
the 19th Century had come to an end was not
correct. While he did not foresee the depth and severity of the Great Depression,
he was correct about the still enormous growth yet to come. Undoubtedly, Keynes
believed that economic growth was good. Once again he concurred with Marx that
technology was eradicating scarcity and liberating human beings from toil.
However, this was not growth without end. Keynes believed that a point would be
soon reached where “we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic
purposes” (p. 326). Thus leading to a form of steady-state economy with people
living “wisely and agreeably and well” (p. 328). Ultimately, Keynes thought
that economic appetites would be satiated and further economic growth would be
neither necessary nor desirable.
According
to Zibotti (2008) Keynes’ optimism about economic growth was not misplaced.
Zibotti calculates that during the half-century after the war GDP per capita
quadrupled and that if projected over the century amounts to a 17-fold increase
– Keynes anticipated a four to eight-fold increase. Whatever the precise rate
of economic growth since Keynes was writing, as Higgs notes in her paper
published here, post-war economic growth is unprecedented in human history and
has exceeded the capacity of the planet to sustainably provide material
resources and absorb waste.
Two
important factors should be appreciated in Keynes’ essay. Firstly he was only
considering the “progressive countries” (i.e. the developed world), and
secondly he included the caveat “no important increase in population” (p. 326).
When Keynes was writing world population stood at around 2 billion with Europe
and North and Central America (largely representing the “progressive
countries”) constituting around a quarter of that total, by 2016 the combined
populations of Europe, North and Central America had roughly doubled to over a
billion with total world population at 7.33 billion (Roser and Ortiz-Ospina,
2017).
The
aggregate figures for wealth and population reveal relatively little. As Joel
E. Cohen’s paper How Many People Can the Earth
Support? published
here shows, “the devil is in the detail”. Cohen’s paper shows that despite
rapid global population growth, average well being on a number of indices has
improved. However, regardless of this general improvement massive inequality
and poverty persists. In particular Cohen demonstrates that while enough grain
is presently produced to feed 10-12 billion people, only just over two fifths
goes to feed humans directly while a third is used to feed animals to produce
meat for those who can afford it (the remainder goes for industrial use). In
2017 800 million people are chronically malnourished.
Even
within the “progressive countries” Keynes’ implicit assumption that inequality
would diminish has proved to be incorrect. Paul Mason (2015) has argued that
while income inequality flattened in the mid-20th century, the adoption of neoliberalism in
the late 1970s onwards has led to the weakening of worker’s bargaining power
and a squeeze on incomes.
If we
accept, as Piketty [(2014)] and others show, that modern capitalism is geared
to boost asset wealth above incomes, inflation and GDP growth rates, then even
rising per-capita GDP can lead to an increase in poverty among growing parts of
the population. You get the oligarch’s yacht alongside the food bank, forever.
(Mason, 2015)
Furthermore,
Porritt and Hines argue in Reflections of the Current
Immigration Debate in the UK published
here, that the free movement of labour is the principle neoliberal method of
keeping wages low and reducing workers’ power. This is particularly true for
the least skilled strata of British society. While immigration has had a
limited but broadly positive economic impact for most people, it has undermined
the earning power of unskilled labour and in turn contributed to increasing
inequality. The neoliberal drive toward globalisation of the capital, labour
and commodity markets has concentrated wealth into fewer and fewer hands both
globally and within nation states.
As we
have seen, while Keynes had great foresight where economic growth and the
development of technology was concerned, he did not anticipate massive
population growth and, most importantly, widening inequality. Yet, Keynes was
not unconcerned about human numbers. In The Economic Consequences of
the Peace (1919)
he writes:
Before
the eighteenth century mankind entertained no false hopes. To lay the illusions
which grew popular at that age’s latter end, Malthus disclosed a Devil. For
half a century all serious economical writings held that Devil in clear
prospect. For the next half century he was chained up and out of sight. Now
perhaps we have loosed him again. (Keynes, 1919, p. 8).
Furthermore,
Keynes’ writings on Malthus and population (see Toye 2000) clearly show that
for a considerable time he was concerned with the return of the Malthusian
Devil and that he did not dismiss the idea of natural limits[1].
While
population growth and widening inequality are possibly sufficient reasons for
Keynes’ prediction to fail, there is yet another factor, related to both, which
he did not anticipate: the rise of consumerism and the ideology of perpetual
economic growth.
Keynes
identified two types of needs: absolute and relative. The first, as we have
seen, he believed were likely to be universally met by the fruits capital
accumulation and technology. The second, “those which are relative in the sense
that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel
superior to, our fellows” he acknowledged, “may indeed be insatiable; for the
higher the general level, the higher still are they” (p. 326).
Perhaps
Keynes’ acknowledgement of the status ordering nature of human beings is
actually one of the main reasons why, despite the satisfaction of basic needs,
so many people in the developed world still choose to work long hours and
strive for ever higher material accumulation. This, no doubt, would have
greatly perplexed Keynes since status ordering need not express itself
materially and he certainly believed that even if there were those who pursued
accumulation “the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud
and encourage them” (p. 329).
The
“naturalisation” of the desire to acquire ever increasing wealth and material
possessions is so entrenched in modern consciousness that to many the idea that
people would choose to consume less in order have more free time seems
fanciful. Yet, Weber (1930) alerts us to the role of ideology, specifically the
work ethic, as a necessary but not sufficient condition in the development of
capitalism. Weber points out that without a work ethic pre-industrial
agricultural labourers, usually paid piece-rates during harvest, would actually
choose to work fewer hours if the employer raised the rate with the intention
of bringing the harvest in more quickly. Weber observed: “A man does not “by
nature” wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is
accustomed to live and earn as much as is necessary for that purpose” (Weber,
1930 p. 60).
Weber’s
emphasis on the work ethic as a force in the economic growth brought about by
capitalism only takes us so far in understanding modern consumer society.
Indeed, Keynes was well aware of the power of the work ethic and the possible
difficulty of suppressing it (“[f]or we have been trained too long to strive
and not to enjoy” (Keynes, 1930 p. 327)). However, what Weber alerts us to is
the role of ideology – values, beliefs, attitudes – in what appear to be value
neutral economic choices. The generation of our current environmental predicament
has to be understood in this context.
In
her paper published here, Kerryn Higgs gives an account of the history of the
idea of economic growth and the development of consumerism that goes a
considerable way to understanding why Keynes’ expectation of the satiation of
material desire failed to occur.
Higgs
points out that by the early 20th century the basic needs of
most of the population of the United States had been satisfied and
industrialists feared a permanent crisis of overproduction. However, writers
like Edward Bernays and Victor Lebow realised that the manipulation of consumer
desires through advertising could lead to insatiable demand. In particular the
stimulation of status consciousness, the creation of new “needs” in tandem with
constantly changing products encouraged a desire for unfettered consumption of
new goods and discarding of the old under the banner of “progress”. All this
encouraged and depended upon the impetus to spend rather than save, and to
value material goods over free time – a kind of bastardised version of Keynes’
own. General Theory.[2]
Higgs
argues that prior to the 1950s economic growth as a government policy objective
was conspicuously absent and neither businessmen nor politicians thought
governments should have any role in promoting it. However, post-war governments
and international economic agencies the world over embraced the idea of
economic growth as an imperative, and it became, and still is, the central and
uncontested objective of economic policy. At the same time, the idea of
economic development of the third world came into being and redefined
well-being in terms of economic growth and the exploitation of resources. In
the face of national liberation movements in these “undeveloped” countries,
economic growth was preferred over the redistribution of land and resources.
Higgs
goes on to draw up a list of environmental problems all too familiar to readers
of this journal, including loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution
etc., consequent of this explosion of economic growth and human numbers. Higgs
argues that all these problems are indicative of approaching planetary
boundaries.
Keynes’
vision of an almost work-free steady-state economy has failed to materialise
due to a number of related factors including population growth, chronic
inequality, consumerism, an ideological commitment to economic growth and
environmental damage chief amongst them. Yet Keynes’ vision is far from
redundant and has provided inspiration for a number of contemporary writers on
steady-state economics including Dietz and O’Neill (2013), Maxton and Randers
(2016) and Tim Jackson (2017). While there is insufficient space in this
editorial to explore the proposals of any of these writers, it’s worth noting
that the papers published in this issue (and indeed previous issues) of The Journal of Population and Sustainability all contribute insights compatible with
the achievement of a sustainable, low-growth, or steady-state economy.
Higgs
argues that we need to challenge the ideologies of economic growth and
consumerism, and develop an alternative economic system. Redistributive justice
within and between countries will be essential. The rich world will need to
reduce material consumption and allow the developing world to achieve material
security. She points to Herman Daly’s (2008) ten point program including
ecological tax reform, policies to deal with unequal income distribution and
the stabilisation of population, as a means to tackling our current predicament.
While
Cohen’s approach can be seen as critical of authors that have raised concerns
about human numbers in combination with economic growth such as Meadows et
al.’s Limits to Growth (1972), it is also complementary to them.
When addressing the issue of the planet’s human carrying capacity Cohen argues
that natural constraints are only part of the equation and that choices and
values play a critical role. Thus, as we saw above, more than enough food is
currently produced to feed the entire global population, but the persistence of
poverty and inequality, and a range of other collective and individual choices
and actions, lead to the greater part of a billion people being malnourished.
The impact of such choices of course go well beyond the ability of agriculture
to feed the world’s population. Putting aside the issue of our current
dependance on fossil fuels to produce fertilizer, the growth in the consumption
of meat, and even the choice of which animals are regarded as culturally
acceptable as food, affects the environment in different ways.
Since
publication of his 1995 book How Many People Can the Earth
Support?, Cohen has argued for extending universal primary and secondary
education in the developing world. This will allow people to create and use
better technology, it enables people to understand their own bodies and better
regulate their fertility, and it empowers them to demand better governance
(Cohen 2007). However, without meeting a standard of basic nutrition prior to
and in the first three years after birth (the time during which the brain is
developing fastest) children born into the poorest regions of the world are
already significantly disadvantaged. Cohen argues that addressing this issue is
a vital prerequisite to the success of any education programme leading to the
achievement of the desired outcomes.
As
Cohen’s work makes clear, migration is an important factor in the relationship
between population and sustainability. However, Porritt and Hines argue that
the “progressive centre-left” has a particular blind spot where it comes to
immigration issues (and indeed to the consequences of world population growth)
and tends to be committed to an “open borders” perspective, often
characterising attempts to raise the issue as “xenophobic”. Yet this
unintentionally supports neoliberal free movement of labour policies with their
tendency to increase inequality. As a counter to this, Porritt and Hines
propose a “progressive internationalism” consisting of international trade and
development designed to address the factors where people perceive their life
chances being improved from leaving their homeland. Critically these aid and
development policies should be tailored to improve the employment prospects of
the young, and most importantly, to improve women’s access to education and
reproductive healthcare which will help reduce population growth.
Many
advocates of a low growth or steady-state economy, such as Dietz and O’Neill
(2013) and Maxton and Randers (2016) see the shrinking of the developed worlds
population as essential in shifting the global imbalance in resource
consumption and environmental impact. Julian Roche’s paper is a response to
Sarah Conly’s One Child: Do We Have a Right
to More (2016),
a summary of which was published in the first issue of this journal. Roche
identifies Conly’s earlier concept of ‘coercive paternalism’, where individuals
are forced to act in their own interests by morally concerned external agents
such as government, as a limit on the policy options for dealing
with population growth. According to Roche, Conly’s ‘one-child per couple’
position, apart from being poorly defined and in the process of being rendered
obsolescent by technology, is a direct consequence of her commitment to the
liberal concept of the individual and the centrality of the associated notions
of individual autonomy and rights. Roche argues that by substituting
a more relational and communitarian concept of the individual, solutions
to deal with population growth are better solved by transcending narrowly
defined individual interests and notions of rights and autonomy. This wider
approach Roche contends, has a much greater chance of dealing with the
issue of human numbers and is likely, with appropriate
policy development, to be more effective, democratic,
and, importantly, more just.
In
conclusion, Keynes’ prediction of a steady-state economy should perhaps be
reinterpreted as a global aspiration. As Maxton and Randers (2016) observe,
automation of both the production of goods and the provision of services is
already with us, and as this becomes more widespread has profound implications
for our economic system that “business as usual” cannot deal with. Keynes’
vision of a society where machines do all the work may well be a reality much
sooner than we think, but creating a sustainable society by overcoming the
entrenched discourses of consumerism and economic growth, as well as tackling
inequality both within and between nations may take longer. The transition will
require the kind of government intervention approved of by Keynes but abhorred
by neoliberals. As Maxton and Randers acknowledge, the biggest barrier is not
economic but political. However, with the entrenchment of neoliberalism in
national governments, international agencies, and corporate lobbying networks,
overcoming established short-termist discourses will not be easy.
Notes
[1] However,
as John Toye (2000) has made clear, Keynes’ views on population were not
static. Furthermore his enthusiasm for eugenics, shared by many “progressive
thinkers” such as Beatrice and Sydney Webb, is now rightly regarded with
considerable distaste.
[2] Despite
the claims of neoliberals like Steven Horwitz (2010), Keynes would not have
been in favour of consumerism. Certainly, Keynes argued for aggregate demand
management involving the stimulation of consumption in order to smooth out the
business cycle, but, as Higgs’ article will make clear, this is not the same as
the ideology of consumerism. Indeed, Higgs would point to the organisation for
which Horwitz is writing, the FEE, as one of the “think tanks” which have
promoted the neoliberal agenda of unfettered economic growth.
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