So it goes. I finished another book this morning. As I reflect on it, I recognize it is one of number recently read that overlap a growing area of both scholarly and activist interest. Lots of energy and synthesis between them all. I can't adequately summarize each of these I'm reflecting on from the pile of books read over the last six months, but I want to try and to speak to the collective, even if distinctive, voices and emphases.
The one finished this morning by Jon Erickson is The Progress Illusion: Reclaiming Our Future from the FairyTale of Economics. Erickson, a professor of economics at the University of Vermont, has essentially given us history of the field up to recent times intertwining his own learning path which has included being past president of the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics. The Progress Illusion is a very readable for the lay reader. His literary style is obviously informed but also easy to digest. He challlenges the underlying myth of endless growth upon which capitalism is fashioned. He weaves the various famous names of economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman and Herman Daly and many in between and since. His book culminates in a final chapter, "A New Economy" that paints both a direction and a path that we might choose to help build.
To be honest, I didn't go looking for Erickson's lucid tome. In fact I was in search of a different tome, The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism by two European economists, Matthias Schmelzer, and Andrea Vetter, and translated by Canadian economist Aaron Vansintjan. This one held great promise, but I was stifled by the tone and lingo used to describe a facet (degrowth) of new economic interest to me.
What led me to that title was another excellent read, Christopher Jones, Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Came to Believe a Dangerous Delusion. Jones, an economic historian reviews in great detail how the concept of growth evolved across society and embedded itself in contemporary economics, even after being warned of the transgression of planetary boundaries. The chickens are coming home to roost at an accelerating speed. David Orr calls Jones' work - "Superb scholraship and writing on the most important untold story of our time."
At the end of last year I finished Ingrid Robeyn's mesmerizing Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. I found it so compelling, having offered blogs on the basic idea years ago, that I bought several copies as gifts to friends and for myself to come back to. Robeyn's work was both a New Yorker and History Today 'Best Book of the Year'. The accelerating income and wealth inequality is bringing this issue into clearer light. Robeyn, a Dutch philosopher, offers moral and economic arguments for seeking a limit on the top. Compelling indeed.
Just before I fell upon Robeyn's book off the MSU Library's new book shelf I also found Pelle Dragsted's Nordic Socialism: The Path Toward a Democratic Socialism. Dragsted, a Danish Member of Parliament reviews how the Nordic countries have each created a more equal and secure society through democratic socialism. Quite readablle, with lessons easily transferable to communities and countries elsewhere. An easy read. You need not be a political scientist or economist to get much inspiration and understanding about the different paths we could take.
The first title that brought me back to an economic focus over the past six months was Allan Todd's, For the Earth: The Case for EcoSocialism. Todd is the only one amongst this set of authors who has been an activist trying to redirect policy away from the abyss that our domineering neoliberalism is taking us. Which brings me to another short paper that Jon Erickson co wrote with Canadian Economist, Peter Brown - that I stumbled upon when looking up info on Prof. Erickson - "How Higher Education Imperils Our Future: An Urgent Call for Action". In it, these two economists make the case that higher education is miseducating the vast number of its students in this Anthropocene age, as if the polycrises don't exist or don't matter.
Of course, there are exceptions for some insitutions and especially many faculty from multiple disciplines who do their best to resist the dominant neoliberal position of many migher education enterprises. Brown and Erickson emphasize not only a fundamental need for an understanding of the science that best explains the workings and limits of the natural world we are part of, but also a renewed emphasis on economics, law and ethics. This brief study was written a decade ago and published by the Club of Rome, the publishers of the 1972 landmark Limits to Growth.
One additional arrow I would add to their quiver aimed at higher education would be the notion that learning about conflict resolution and how to be effective citizens and change agents in a changing world should be added to their other fundamentals. Not many schools attend to these things collectively, although some tackle one or more of them. Should you believe that the polycrises these authors address is neither of immediate or longer term concern, I would encourage you to look at the most recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists statement on the setting of the Doomsday Clock, set at 85 seconds to midnight, even before the launching of the war on Iran and the Middle East by the U.S. and Israel. It's the closest it has been since Einstein, Oppenheimer and others launched the Bulletin and the Clock nearly 70 years ago!
Sitting on the couch holding a lottery ticket feeling lucky won't keep us from edging closer to that abyss.
