Capital, Economic Growth, and Socio-Ecological Crisis: A Critique of De-Growth

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a critique of mainstream growth ideology, as well as of a variety of neo-Malthusian or liberal approaches considering economic growth as an ideology, and “growth economies” as the main culprit of ecological crisis, while disconnecting growth from the prevailing capitalist mode of production. To tackle ecological crisis, they suggest economic de-growth or a steady-state economy, while often projecting the negative impact of economic growth to different forms of production. On the contrary, this paper considers economic growth as an inherent necessity of the capitalist mode of production and explores the socio-ecological conditions of economic growth and capitalist accumulation. With a brief reference to Greece, it is demonstrated that even a protracted recession cannot reverse the trend of environmental degradation and socio-ecological crisis. As argued, overcoming the current crisis requires overcoming not only economic growth, but capitalism itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Capitalism
• economic growth
• socio-ecological crisis
• de-growth
• Greece

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

George Liodakis is professor of political economy at the Technical University of Crete, Greece. His research interests concern political economy, international relations and economic development, agriculture, technology, and environment. He is the author of Totalitarian Capitalism and Beyond (Ashgate, 2010) and a number of books in Greek. His research work has been published in academic journal such as Science & Society, Review of Radical Political Economics, Capital & Class, International Critical Thought, Historical Materialism, Sociologia Ruralis, and Sustainability.