Economism
from Richard Norgaard
We live in the era of Economism. Human consciousness is deeply etched by economistic beliefs in individualism, materialism, property, markets, economic growth, and freedom as consumer choice. These beliefs are necessary to sustain the system that supports us. But the economy we have is unlikely to support our grandchildren. Natural scientists argue that we are in a new geologic era, the Anthropocene, where people have become the major force in changing the geosphere: the atmosphere, oceans, and land. But it is the economistic beliefs that describe the cosmos of most people, bind people together, support their particular behavior, and sustain the economic system. Economism is altering the physical processes of the geosphere and collapsing the diversity of the biosphere. Econocene is a more appropriate term for the new geologic era. Fossil fuels and their technologies have transformed agricultural and industrial processes, the mobility of goods and people, and the geographies of cities and rural areas. People’s values, ways of understanding, and social organization have coevolved with fossil fuels and their technologies, but it is economism that binds people together and girds the economic system we have. We need a new “ism”, a new human consciousness, to support a new relationship with Earth and its other inhabitants. Economism and the Econocene
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Thanks for posting this insightful, informative and interesting essay. Most refreshing to see an academic economist refer to the orthodoxy as “an ideology”. Only recently did a prominent professor at a local university insist, with profound intellectual blindness, that “economics is not about ideologies”.
Professor Norgaard is associated with my grad alma mater, the Department of Agricultural (now Natural Resource) Economics at Berkeley. The conventional wisdom is that the Chicago Boys and Milton Friedman are the most prominent purveyors of market-fundamentalist economics ideology. But I can tell you that my pre-Norgaard professors at Berkeley, all with one exception (a Friedman protege and wonderful teacher) liberal Democrats of the Hubert Humphrey stripe, evangelized market fundamentalism as fervently as Friedman. Perhaps even more effectively, as all presented themselves as “objective and rational scientists”. All dismissed Institutional Economics (including the department’s most famous alum, J.K. Galbraith) as “passe”. Marx, of course, was a no-no. But so was ecology, in spite of the fact that John Stuart Mill was admired, as was Kenneth Boulding. But the work of Nicolas Georgescu-Reagan and any ecologist? A no-no.
I admire Professor Norgaard for bringing this most interesting coevolution perspective to that department and to the discussion here.
We have been ratcheting up the Econocene since at least 1492. Charles C Mann’s book “1493” is well worth reading.
“Columbus’s voyages… marked the beginning of an extraordinary exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas.
As Charles Mann shows, this global ecological tumult of the “Columbian Exchange” underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest generation of research by scientists, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Manila and Mexico City – where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted – the centers of the world.” – BookBrowse.
Another way to view this, along with the rise of industrialism and technology, is to see it is a tragically irreversible process. The natural world has been changed almost beyond recognition and how humans survive has been changed just as radically. There is seemingly no way that 7.6 billion people can survive other than by continuing industrial production, including industrial agriculture. This virtually mandates high energy use, high material consumption and wide ecological destruction. That’s a bleak statement of course and there may be a few caveats.
Certainly, we have to look for answers but they will be difficult to find. We are ratcheted up and locked in. When an irreversible growth process reaches ecological limits both growth and ecology will be seriously damaged. In fact they are being seriously damaged already.
Of course economistic beliefs are a very important negative factor. When our beliefs are locked in we cannot even consider alternatives. An Econocracy is like a Theocracy. Only one set of beliefs is permitted or permitted to be operative. But we are locked-in in other ways too. There is the systemic lock-in of the entire industrial system and technology. So, to use the symbiotic metaphor, economism and technologism are symbiotes. Together they are parasitic on the biosphere.
There can be no reversal. There are many irreversible processes known to science. Human history is another. The only real possibilities are to crash or glide (as controlled de-growth) to a rough landing at a lower, sustainable level; creating a circular, sustainable economy in the process. Realism indicates that a smooth landing is probably out of the question. Growth in knowledge (qualitative growth) and lowered impact technology developments could still be possible. Overall, continued use of technology is unavoidable but we have to move to low impact technologies. Impact science needs to become as important and well funded as production science.
How do we do all this? We don’t know yet. It appears it will take an extended crisis where it becomes patently obvious to the majority of people that economism is a false religion (in essence). Then people will demand and create new survival answers. It likely will be a tumultuous time.
Good points, and I recommend Mann’s book to many people.
But one can argue also that the econocene is thousands of years old. Just consider the Army Corps of Engineers’ fight song: “Ev’ry valley is exalted/And ev’ry hill made low/The crooked straight/And the rough places plain” (Isaiah 40:4). And not just the Corps, I note as I help fight a billion-dollar freeway boondoggle in my part of the world.
Well-done to all colleagues for these wonderful contributions.
This era should be renamed as “Ecocide” or the genocide of all things natural by beasts who call themselves human.
Culture (ways of life) is difficult to consider or even make visible from inside of it. And culture is what this article is about. The ways of life (including, of course, ideas, desires, feelings, explanations) of a group of people are created by this group protect the group and its future wellbeing. Once into a way of life people no longer notice it exists apart from themselves. They are it and it is them. In this way people learn to live a “normal” life. If humans had to consider each event or situation and create responses to these, human life would be impossible and soon humans would go extinct. I have only two objections to the contents of the article. First, because of the above, in writing such an article as this, one needs to be careful about word choice and use. For example, in describing the shared economic culture (in article, belief system) words like rationalize and explain are used. Keep in mind that what these terms are and how they are used is fixed by the very culture one is attempting to undermine. One must almost create a new language to evaluate an existing culture from within that culture. Fiction writers (novelists, poets, etc.) are often good at this. Social scientists and philosophers not so much. That’s why science fiction writers are particularly good sources. They often stand outside an existing culture because of their “weird” notions and thus can use their writing to break the hold of that culture on actions and beliefs of people inside the culture. Second, this point is illustrated by economism’s nature. Culture provides “correct” or appropriate laws, study, love, family, etc. But it also provides the nature of nature. Consequently, nature and the study of nature (e.g., science) is not outside culture but within it. The history of culture not only shows the history of society and its parts (laws, classes, etc.) but also what is said to be a separate part of human life, nature. Often the first is depicted as subjective (what humans create) and the latter as objective (what is not created by humans). But because humans create culture, which includes both, then humans create both. The latter’s creation via culture is illustrated in detail in the book, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf. Humans may be the most destructive species ever to inhabit Earth, but that’s only because they are also the most imaginative and creative to ever inhabit Earth.