Seeking Sustainability

On the prospect of an ecological liberalism

G. J Paton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415566100
• eBook ISBN: 9781136879418
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The ideas of neoliberalism perpetuate a disembedded and dichotomised view of economy-ecology relations. The renewed interest in climate change and sustainability attests to the lack of progress achieved by the 'sustainable development' regime and to the need for more appropriate frameworks for guiding social organisation toward ecological sustainability. This book is born of the need for a critique of current approaches to environmental policy and governance and the search for alternative sustainability frameworks.

Utilising a conceptual approach based on the Polanyian concept of 'embeddedness', this book argues that the links between economic theory, neo-liberalism, and the current regime of sustainable development, have rendered 'sustainability' a discursive frame in the service of economic rather than ecological goals. In rejecting the integrity of 'environmental neo-liberalism', Paton argues there are some clear points of divergence between liberalism and neo-liberalism. She subsequently examines separately the impact on liberalism of efforts to integrate environmental concerns in order to determine if therein lies the potential for an effective reformist politics of 'ecological sustainability'.

1
Introduction

The pleasures of wealth and greatness … strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble … [but they] … are mere trinkets of frivolous utility … which … can afford … no real satisfaction. [However] … it is well that nature imposes on us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.

(Adam Smith 1759)

Adam Smith (1776) promoted capitalism as a materially progressive force that, with ‘good governance’, was capable of extending ‘universal opulence … to the lowest ranks of the people’. Notably, his concerns about the moral foundations of accumulation, expressed in the quotation above, were not accompanied by reflection on its bio-physical foundations. However, some two centuries later, the ‘industry of mankind’ had pushed those very concerns into the centre of political debate.¹ Between the end of the Second World War and the early 1970s, more of the world’s finite energy resources had been consumed than in the whole of previous human history (Connet 1994: 570). In the aftermath of the post-war boom, it seemed that demand for resource inputs by capitalist economies had already exceeded available sustainable resources, with first-world living standards only being temporarily maintained by living off ‘natural capital’ (Diesendorf 1997: 84).

A growing realisation that the prevailing pattern of economic expansion and ‘progress’ was unsustainable served to challenge the legitimacy of how ‘the economy’ is organised and understood. Concern with bio-diversity loss and human survival in the context of demand for ongoing ‘development’ led the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987) to argue that there was no alternative but to manage the planet out of decline. The popularity of the ideas embodied in its report, Our Common Future, and the subsequent embrace of ‘sustainable development’ at the level of international environmental governance, suggest that ‘sustainability’ was indeed an idea whose time had come. Yet more than two decades later, and despite some positive achievements, global environmental degradation has accelerated (Kovel 2002: 4) and a new wave of environmental concern has emerged around the specifics of climate change. The recent Stern Review (Stern 2006) was a timely aide memoire to the ongoing and unresolved question of ‘sustainability’, which requires efforts in both theory and practice in order to bring about the necessary social and economic transformations.

The meaning of sustainability is not self-evident though, and it remains a contested concept. On the one hand, it has been taken up by corporate leaders and politicians to validate the green credentials of a growth agenda. Yet for others, the term embodies radical normative dimensions that point to the need for an equitable society served by an economy operating within ecological limits. However, as popularly understood, both perspectives – ‘economic’ and ‘ecological’ sustainability – imply an equilibrium discourse. Bringing about the necessary ‘harmony’ or ‘balance’ in the relationship between humans and their environment is, on the one hand, a function of the ‘right’ market price for neo-liberals, while on the other hand, radical environmentalists seek the ‘right’ ethical values. It is the neo-liberal perspective, with its emphasis on technical economic criteria, which currently underpins the international consensus on ‘sustainable development’. As the centrepiece of environmental governance and policies for sustainability, it has furthered the opportunities for profit generation without achieving the promised environmental benefits. Unpacking that consensus and interrogating the concept of sustainability itself are necessary prerequisites for understanding the marginalisation of ethical concerns, as well as for building a sustainability framework that offers the environmental protection neo-liberalism has failed to secure.

Ecological political economy

At the core of concerns regarding sustainability lay critical questions about the way in which society organises production, consumption and reproduction in relation to the natural environment that sustains it. However, contemporary theory is typically discipline-specific and unable to articulate the underlying dynamics and relational qualities of such processes. A political economy approach, with its emphasis on power and contradiction rather than equilibrium, is well placed to deal with such imperatives and to interrogate the associated discourse of sustainability. Indeed, the nature–(re)production–power nexus provides an appropriate conceptual focus for an ecological political economy that informs a dynamic understanding of sustainability (Gale and M’Gonigle 2000; Mellor 2000). It also appreciates sustainability as a concept that derives from the substantive political arguments shaping the direction of social and economic development, rather than as one that is technically or scientifically defined in order to make it operational (Jacobs 1999: 26).

Yet, the competing traditions that political economy encompasses, together with the variety of ‘environmentalisms’, admit a diversity of possible approaches to sustainability, and these are not easily synthesised under the rubric of one ‘ecological political economy’. In addition, the goal of sustainability necessarily implies an emphasis on praxis, yet theory, policy and activism are not always, or even usually, integrated within academic research. As a result, theoretical and philosophical explorations may lack policy relevance (Light and Katz 1996: 1), while popular mobilisation for alternatives to neo-liberalism may benefit from the explanatory power that relevant theorising can provide (Gale and M’Gonigle 2000: xi; Harvey 2005: 199). Although perhaps ‘incomplete’ on their own, such contributions can be understood as elements in an emergent ‘tradition’ of ecological political economy. However, if such a ‘work in progress’ is to have analytical substance, as well as practical import, its ‘construction’ requires a systematic approach.

In the fiftieth issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy, Rosewarne (2002: 180) suggested that engagement with the economy–environment nexus represents a ‘three tiered challenge’ for those practitioners seeking to develop an ecological political economy. In outlining the parameters of such a project, he argued that it must first contest the ‘intellectual veracity’ of mainstream environmental economic theory which has so clearly dominated the development of policies for ‘sustainability’ (Rosewarne 2002: 197). Second, and in order to move beyond the status of ‘critique’, an ecological political economy should contribute to the development of alternative ‘sustainable’ modes of organisation. Finally, it needs to be ‘political’ by ‘identifying and critically engaging with the social forces’ that might effect the necessary transformations implied in sustainability (Rosewarne 2002: 180). The material presented here seeks to embrace these three elements in contributing to the growth of an ecological political economy, and it does so by drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi (1944, 1957a, 1971, 1977), in particular, on the concept of ‘embeddedness’ associated with his oeuvre.

Polanyi’s approach was interdisciplinary in method and holistic in outlook, thereby providing a favourable basis for ecological political economy. On the one hand, it exemplifies the relational theorising necessary for addressing the social organisation of production and reproduction so critical to questions of sustainability. On the other, it has embedded within it the potential to meet Rosewarne’s (2002) criteria. Polanyi (1957a) was critical of the formal abstractions of economic theory because of their obfuscatory effect on understanding ‘the place of the economy in society’ (he also engaged critically with the Austrian School economists). Drawing, in part, on Marx and anthropological scholarship, Polanyi (1957a, 1977) developed a more general model of economic processes that is conducive to modelling sustainability. As well as writing passionately about ‘freedom’, he identified the crucial role and ‘cross-class’ character of progressive social forces in ‘market society’ (1947a; 1944). These approaches point to both the radical and reformist potential in Polanyi’s oeuvre.

However, while also drawing on Marxian economic categories, the Polanyian framework developed here and the analysis it underpins are self-consciously reformist in intent. There is already a strong tradition of radical political economy that has oriented its focus towards environmental questions, and the ‘unsustainability’ of capitalism in particular. Although a mainstream concept today, sustainability first emerged within this more radical tradition as a critical and transformative discourse. It encompassed the potential for a radical green agenda that could also challenge the social oppressions and hierarchy of capitalist societies (cf. Bookchin 1982). Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the idea of ‘building a sustainable society’ (Brown 1981) that was both socially equitable and ecologically sustainable was thought by its proponents to be as possible as it was necessary. That period provided fertile ground for ‘alternative social visions’, not just because of the perceived ecological crisis, but also because of the broader ‘policy vacuum’ left by the accumulation crisis that characterised the collapse of the post-war boom (Bryan 2002: 153).

In seeking to establish a paradigm for sustainability beyond the contradictions and crisis-prone tendencies of capitalism, radical theorists turned to a variety of ideological positions that gave rise to new ‘composite’ fields of enquiry; Eco-feminism, Eco-Marxism and Socialist Ecology, Social Ecology (anarchism) and Deep Ecology all sought to integrate an ecological perspective into existing ‘progressive’, albeit anthropocentric, paradigms.² However, their alternative ‘eco-models’ prioritised social and ecological processes over and above economic ones at a time when a stagnant capitalism was driving economic imperatives to the top of policy agendas. More broadly, sustainability was understood as marking a transition from high-growth to low-growth or even no-growth societies. The economy and environment were thus conceived as opposing sides in a zero-sum game, and there would necessarily be trade-offs between economic ‘efficiency’ and ecological integrity. Economic activity was viewed as a problem to be curtailed, and the early political integration of environmental concerns gave rise to a raft of constraining legislative events.

These regulatory efforts might well have been the precursor to a state-led ‘ecological restructuring’. However, pursuit of the transformative agenda in the policy domain was appropriated during the 1980s by the rise of neo-liberalism, which asserted that economy–environment tensions could be reconciled in the market and sustainability secured by the ‘invisible hand’. In the subsequent decades, with the strengthening of the neo-liberal ‘programme’ and its market-based approach to environmental governance, radical perspectives and, with them, the transformative capacity of ‘sustainability’ were pushed to the margins of relevance. In the current policy of ‘sustainable development’, there has been an implicit drift away from ecological sustainability toward the idea of economic sustainability as an explicit policy goal; the former being understood as a ‘by-product’ of the latter.

Alternatives to the ‘market hegemony’ are therefore more necessary than ever, yet they also seem less achievable. Even though radical green theorists have provided the most insightful and trenchant critiques of the ‘status quo’, they have been progressively marginalised from ‘practical relevance’ (Light and Katz 1996: 1). This mirrors, in part, a growing sophistication in moral theorising about green ‘ends’, with less emphasis on the ‘means’ for getting there. The resultant political agendas often appear utopian and promote seemingly unbridgeable dualisms: eco-centrism versus anthropocentrism; intrinsic value versus instrumental value; holism versus individualism. This is not to deny the importance of utopian ideas for the realm of ‘possibility’ (Eckersley 1992a: 186), or their role in disrupting ‘the taken-for-granted nature of the present’ (Levitas 1989: 33). But for ecology-centred aspirations to be realised, they not only need a ‘surrogate’ ideology,³ they also need to be connected to institutions in the present (Eckersley 1992a: 186). However, in a consolidated ‘neo-liberal’ milieu, the policy opportunities are not as ‘fluid’ as those that existed in the mid-1970s, which somewhat circumscribes the field of ideological and institutional possibility (Bryan 2002: 158).

Under such circumstances, a constructive vehicle for sustainability would be one that could ‘rescue the middle ground’ (Martell 1993) in the territory between radicalism and neo-liberalism. It would draw on the insights of radicalism without being constrained by its political utopianism; and would challenge neo-liberalism without succumbing to its economic determinism (and the separation of economy and society implied therein). It is precisely this need that renders a reformist agenda a useful ‘point of entry’ into the process of ecological transformation. Creating more sustainable ways of organising social provisioning and reproduction requires more than moral argument. It is necessary to engage with the contradictions arising from ‘market ecology’ and to develop an alternative logic and rationale around which progressive forces might coalesce, and upon which policies for protecting the environment could be based. This needs to be underpinned by an approach that takes seriously the role of the state and the social processes that make policy determination a dynamic and pragmatic – rather than ‘truth-finding’ – event. This book explores the scope for liberalism to function as a vehicle for such an agenda.

Which liberalism?

Because of its dominance, a focus on what liberalism can offer sustainability is clearly important. Liberal ideology sets the principal parameters of mainstream political discourse and is also closely connected to the history and practice of capitalism. In the ‘getting from here to there’, environmentalists must work within the ambit of its structures. With its roots in Enlightenment progressivism, liberal ideology has, historically, claimed to be a political force for change, and the transformation of institutions towards ecological sustainability requires just such a vehicle. Thus, Lynch and Wells (1996: 10) argue that it is necessary to unearth liberalism ‘in its original spirit’ because a liberal environmentalism holds ‘the promise of a liberating tradition that is … far from exhausted’. Just exactly what constitutes liberalism’s ‘original spirit’ is a moot point, but one that highlights the necessity of reconsidering its complexity. Deconstructing liberalism is therefore a necessary step in determining if an ‘ecological liberalism’ – one that integrates the holism of green thinking – is possible and whether or not it might serve as a bridge between existing institutions and the ecological transformations implied in the notion of sustainability.

This may seem a heroic task, given the individualism that is understood to characterise liberal ideology generally, and its neo-liberal variant specifically. However, the liberal ‘edifice’ is not underpinned by one all-embracing theory, and various interpretations have gained ideological ascendancy in different historical contexts. In failing to take account of this ‘chameleonic’ (Jones 1994a: 2) quality of liberalism, contemporary critics have left concealed a major mechanism shaping and enabling the evolution of capitalism, thereby leaving neo-liberals relatively free to pursue their restructuring of its institutional foundations. This makes unpacking the ideological and institutional divergences within liberalism an essential task in ‘seeking sustainability’; but so too is unpacking the differences between liberalism and neo-liberalism because therein may be considerable potential to mobilise progressive liberal forces as an alternative to ‘throwing out the liberal baby with the neo-liberal bathwater’.

Although the current orthodoxy claims to represent a return to classical (read: ‘true’) liberalism (Hayek 1960a: 160), the term ‘neo-liberalism’ is a misnomer. The neo-liberal phenomenon derives, in part, from radical nineteenth-century libertarianism on the one hand, and a resurgent socio-political conservatism on the other (Hamilton 1998: 22). Neo-liberalism, in both these respects, represents a contradiction for liberalism. The authoritarian political agenda (neo-conservatism) that has been a necessary element in the economic agenda is recognisably ‘illiberal’. However, the anti-state programme of libertarianism is also problematic, especially in conceiving libertarianism as merely a quantitative ‘extension’ of liberalism that involves more freedom and less government. There are qualitative distinctions that must be made here, because some libertarian tendencies do not sit comfortably within liberal ...

Table of contents

• New political economy
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Theorising embeddedness for sustainability
• Part II Policy and governance for sustainability
• Part III Greening liberal theory for sustainability
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index