Ecomodernism, Green Growth and the Imperial Arrangement

 

Jason Hickel

Ecomodernism is, in its dominant articulation, a capitalist position. It is meant to appeal to those who wish to maintain the current structure of the economy while making it compatible with ecology (Kallis and Bliss 2019). Toward this end, it proceeds from the premise—either explicit or tacit, inasmuch as no alternative arrangement is advanced—that growth and accumulation. production and distribution should remain owned and controlled by capital, and therefore driven by the imperatives of profit maximisation, growth and accumulation.

The green transition ultimately cannot be left in the hands of capital. It will require substantial public finance, public works, industrial policy and planning in order to build out necessary renewable energy capacity, as well as to undertake other low-profit or zero-profit activities such as expanding public transit, insulating buildings, and regenerating ecosystems. Furthermore, increasing these activities cannot be done while national productive capacities are already maxed out by capitalist production. It will necessarily require scaling down less-necessary production, to liberate labour, engineers, resources etc to be remobilised for this purpose. Here too, this is not something that can be achieved within capitalism. Capital will not voluntarily scale down profitable forms of production. In other words, on all fronts, the transition will require reclaiming control over production from capital and aligning it with democratically ratified objectives.


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