Early critiques of work

A significant precursor to degrowth theory can be found in twentieth-century critiques of work and defences of freedom from work. It should be clarified that neither necessarily entails opposition to work in all forms, more often taking aim at a ‘concept of work that equates work with paid labour’, traceable to the late modern period and typically taking the form of ‘non-domestic, paid, legally codified, institutionalised and socially safeguarded employment’ (Komlosy, p. 8). It should also be noted that this literature is ambivalent on Marx: sometimes claiming him as a critic of capitalist work and at other times underlining his productivist tendencies.

In the twentieth century, two theoretical accounts stand out for developing comprehensive critiques of this model of work. First, Max Weber’s inquiry into the ‘ “social ethic” of capitalist culture’ and the religious origins of a work ethic that looks beyond ‘satisfying the material needs of life’ (pp. 13, 12). Second, Jean Baudrillard’s account of Marxism’s efforts to convince workers ‘that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power’ and how this implicitly censors ‘the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power’ (p. 31, my emphasis). Beyond this, exemplary pleas for freedom from labour include: the anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin’s defence of ‘the Right to Well-Being’ in place of the right to work (p. 90); the autonomist Marxist Mario Tronti’s call for ‘mass passivity at the level of production’ (p. 260); the Wertkritik (value criticism) theorist Moishe Postone’s efforts to reclaim Marx as an author interested in ‘overcoming […] the concrete labor done by the proletariat’ (p. 749); and the ‘type 3’ anarchist Bob Black’s appeal for ‘a new way of life based on play’ (p. 17).

While critiques of capitalist work are thus evident, they nonetheless remained marginal throughout most of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In a 1956 dialogue, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that ‘[t]he idea of freedom from labour’ had by the mid-century been replaced on the left by ‘the possibility of choosing one’s own work’ (p. 16). Friedrich Engels’s 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific offers a clear encapsulation of this development, observing the demise of ‘eclectic, average’ utopian socialism in favour of a ‘scientific socialism’ prioritising the seizure of ‘the means of production’ (pp. 70, 61, 94). Reinforcing Adorno and Horkheimer’s insistence on the subsequent marginality of work critiques, Alastair Hemmens has recently argued that French thinkers engaged in this project have generally been ‘dismissed as naïvely utopian and even as reactionary’ (p. 2). Thus, while some critiques of work claim Marx’s allegiance, the broader consensus is that the ascendance of Marxism coincided with the marginalisation of early critiques of work.

Degrowth

While, as Aaron Vansintjan, Andrea Vetter and Matthias Schmelzer note, ‘traditions of growth criticism date back to the late eighteenth century’, the concept of degrowth – entailing not just a critique of work, but criticism of the entire growth paradigm – is relatively recent (p. 11). Indeed, they suggest that degrowth was ‘formed as a political project’ in the early 2000s in order to counter the combined spectre of neoliberalism and ‘the hegemony of “sustainable development”’ (p. 12). Confirming this, in their recent inventory, Nick Fitzpatrick, Timothée Parrique and Inês Cosme find that ‘degrowth literature’ has ‘grown over five-fold, from ∼220 texts in 2014 to 1166 by the end of 2020’ (Nick Fitzpatrick et al., p. 2). Under the umbrella of what might be termed degrowth theory, Vansintjan, Vetter and Schmelzer identify ‘the convergence of seven forms of growth critique – the ecological, socio-economic, cultural, anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-industrialist, and South-North critique’ (p. 169). The following presents a selective overview of recent developments within the social sciences and humanities, thematically divided into literature on ecology, feminism, automation and postdevelopment – focusing on how authors position themselves in relation to socialism and Marxism. This survey will underpin my subsequent analysis of Saito’s recent intervention in this area.

Kohei Saito’s Marx in the Anthropocene

The dramatic impact of the late publication of Karl Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in the 1930s is well documented (da Silva and Vieira, pp. 62–96). Less clear is the full impact of the 2019 publication of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Volume IV/18, containing Marx’s later economic manuscripts and notebooks written between February 1862 and December 1872, not previously published in their entirety (Otani et al.). However, Kohei Saito – who co-edited the MEGA IV/18 – has sought to present this as a similarly momentous turning point, in large part for overturning assumptions regarding Marx’s productivism, as documented above. Saito’s Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism argues that tracing (among other things) disparities between Marx’s manuscripts of later volumes of Capital and Engels’s published editions, together with his neglected later notebooks, may allow us to overturn interpretations of Marx’s ecology founded upon select passages of the Grundrisse and mis-transcribed editions of Capital Volume III.

At the centre of Saito’s revisionist account of Marx’s ecology is the concept of metabolic rift: the disruption of natural processes through human intervention, for instance capitalism’s ‘material disruption of cyclical processes in natural metabolism’, such as soil exhaustion resulting from modern agriculture (p. 24). More specifically, Saito suggests that for Marx ‘metabolic rift is consistently deduced from his labour theory of value’ – as in, Marx came to theorise the basis of these rifts using his theory of value creation as a product of labour exploitation in Capital (p. 122). In other words, Saito suggests that Marx developed an interest in the rifts between the natural and the non-natural world that the capitalist mode of production results in. Saito proceeds to define this position in ontological terms, describing it as a form of ‘methodological dualism’ through which Marx both acknowledged the duality of the natural and the human while attributing this to schisms produced by capitalist production (p. 96). Thus, Saito views Marx neither as ‘a Cartesian dualist who believed that nature is something distinct and separate’, nor as ‘an absolute monist who views human society as an expression of nature’ – but instead as someone who ultimately viewed dualism as a structurally determined reality (p. 153). Saito goes on to argue (predominantly through analysis of the later manuscripts and notebooks) that this methodological dualism eventually transformed Marx’s ‘analysis of the capitalist mode of production’ (p. 153). While the younger Marx succumbed to the ‘latent Promethean idea of the domination of nature in the Grundrisse’, Saito suggests that the later Marx ‘consciously distanced himself from his earlier technocratic productivism’ (p. 155).

More specifically, Saito argues that Marx’s worldview was transformed when ‘he investigated the material aspect of the production process unique to capitalist production, especially how [the] material world – human and non-human – is reorganized by capital’s initiative in favour of its own accumulation’ (p. 155). Saito suggests that Marx subsequently came to see the limitations of his former focus on the ‘relations of production’ and specifically on the appropriation of the means of production as an emancipatory strategy (p. 155). As evidence for this, Saito cites Marx’s later Preface to Capital, in which he finds evidence of a ‘transformation of Marx’s vision of post-capitalism’ – in particular in Marx’s rejection of the assumption ‘that a socialist revolution could simply replace the relations of production with other ones after reaching a certain level of productive forces’ (pp. 155–6). According to Saito, this moment marks a turning point in Marx’s conception of the limits of human liberation from capitalism. Paraphrasing Marx, he writes:

Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature. (p. 60)

After presenting further evidence of this shift – for instance, identifying a passage in Volume III of Capital in which Marx declares that society must learn to ‘govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way’ (p. 158) – Saito summarises by suggesting that Marx’s later alertness to the environmental harm wrought by capitalism resulted in ‘a radically different conception of the alternative’: the modification rather than the appropriation of capitalist modes of production (p. 173). He in turn argues that this had a profound impact on Marx’s outlook, causing him to abandon his former ‘Eurocentrism and Prometheanism’ as he developed an interest in how ‘non-Western and pre-capitalist rural communities’ might be studied to determine ‘different ways of organizing metabolism between humans and nature’ (pp. 173, 200) – indirectly challenging Federici’s account of Marx’s lack of interest in ‘the knowledge and wealth produced by non-capitalist societies’ and affirming the value of recent postdevelopment discourse.

In light of his revisionary study, Saito identifies flaws in several interpretations of Marx’s ecology, for instance criticising traditional Marxists (like David Harvey) for their unwillingness ‘to recognize the necessity of integrating environmentalism into the Marxian critique of capitalism’ (pp. 104, 111) alongside ‘monist’ ecosocialists (like Jason W. Moore) for their attempts to combat the alleged Cartesian dualism in Marx with holistic accounts of ‘the society-nature relationship’, enabling proposals for ‘further technological intervention in the name of stewardship of the Earth system’ (p. 104). Relatedly, Saito also takes aim against ‘[c]ontemporary utopians’ who promote visions of ‘a luxury future’ enabled by technology, not only presenting their writing as a deviation from Marx but also dismissing it as fantasy, well suited to satisfying ‘people’s immediate desires without challenging the current imperial mode of living in the Global North’ (p. 160).

Against these defective accounts, Saito explores post-capitalist possibilities that steer clear both of Moore’s essentialised vision of nature and of Promethean utopianism. Building on Marx’s late shift from Prometheanism and Eurocentrism, he argues that a proper conception of Marx’s ecology must lead to a ‘much more radical’ agenda than ‘the re-appropriation of the means of production by the working class’, instead prophesying a ‘radical reorganization of the relations of production […] so that the productive forces of capital disappear’ (p. 156, my emphasis). Saito thus redefines the late Marxist post-capitalist project as one centred on revolutionising production while limiting productivism to correct unsustainable metabolic rifts produced by capitalist work. Along the way, he argues that this approach would still result in a more abundant society than under capitalism – as it would involve overcoming capitalism’s structural dependence on scarcity while also, crucially, minimising environmental harm and allowing ‘free and autonomous activity’ to flourish (pp. 232–3).

Saito and degrowth

While Saito’s analysis reinforces concerns expressed in Gorz, Vansintjan, Vetter, Schmelzer, Frayne, Stronge, Lewis, Moore, Huber, Weeks, Federici, Hester, Srnicek, Williams, Bastini, Benanav, Escobar, Esteva, Babones, Babcicky, the Red Nation, and others regarding the dangers of growth, his analysis plainly challenges both the celebratory and the denigratory accounts of Marx’s productivism found in most of these authors. On the one hand, Saito’s study clearly warns against the Promethean suggestion that productive forces might be positively appropriated – most explicitly formulated in Srnicek, Williams and Bastini, but also mirrored in the utopianism of Weeks, Hester and Srnicek (although not by Benanav or Federici) – by demonstrating Marx’s opposition to this notion with his theory of metabolic rift. On the other, it also overturns theories that reject Marxism for its alleged productivism (such as Gorz, Federici and Weeks) on the same grounds. Simultaneously, Saito’s analysis may be seen to reinforce the merits of postdevelopment’s engagement with Global South alternatives, while also challenging its occasional rejection of socialism and reification of nature.

At the same time, Saito’s analysis would perhaps benefit from a greater level of attentiveness to earlier critiques of work and literature on degrowth. In his study, Saito attempts to explain why ‘Western Marxism neglected Marx’s extensive research in the natural sciences and marginalized the central concept of “metabolism”’, pointing towards the rejection of Engels’s ‘mechanistic dialectic of nature’ in the Anti-Dühring by Western Marxists intent on distinguishing themselves from the ‘crude materialism of Soviet Marxism’ (pp. 44, 48). Straightforwardly attributing the refusal to acknowledge Marx’s ecological writings to an intellectual distrust of Soviet Marxism does not, however, adequately account for the broader conditions – famously described by Foucault as the discursive ‘rules of formation’ – that enabled this to happen (p. 89). In this respect, Saito’s dismissal of Weber’s ‘genealogical’ attempt to offer a ‘cultural explanation’ for productivism (Weeks, pp. 40–41) – an effort subsequently developed by Baudrillard, Federici, Weeks, and others – is a serious shortcoming, ensuring that he does not fully account for the role of ideology in enabling productivism to pollute interpretations of Marx. Federici’s description of how Marx’s narrow focus on political economy limited his proposed postcapitalist strategies of resistance is relevant here – implying that without acknowledging the diverse means through which productivism has gained social ascendance, our proposals for countering it will necessarily be inadequate.

New directions in criticism

What, then, are the implications of this for literary and cultural critics? Clearly, to begin with, these recent redevelopments signal the validity of Klaus and Rignall’s initial suggestion that ‘the social and the ecological agenda’ need to be ‘thought through together’. At the same time, they also point towards some significant indications as to how this might be done in the present. First, the steep rise in studies emphasising the environmentally destructive effects of growth reinforces the need (already articulated by Klaus and Rignall) to present degrowth as the focus point in such inquiries. Second, Federici, Weeks, Hester and Srnicek’s contributions indicate the importance of attending to the gendered dynamic of productivism when doing so. Third, Benanav and Saito’s interventions serve as a warning against envisaging Promethean solutions when theorising possible avenues of resistance. Fourth, postdevelopment accounts (reinforced by Saito) indicate the need to underline the disproportionate role of the Global North in facilitating a growth agenda, together with the significance of Global South alternatives. Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, Saito’s account warns against naïvely characterising such a project as antithetical to Marxism. And lastly, sixth, Saito’s dismissal of the broader social and cultural causes that have enabled productivism to advance reminds us of the vital importance of foregrounding these determiners.

Taken together, these recent developments may be seen to indicate the urgent need (from an environmentalist, feminist, socialist and developmental standpoint) for criticism that addresses and resists productivism, while steering clear of promoting Promethean alternatives – and at the same time acknowledging the compatibility of this project with Marxism, together with the broad social and cultural basis of productivism.

While not necessarily fulfilling all of these criteria, what follows is a select account of recent literary and cultural studies that take significant steps in this direction by addressing the negative effects of growth, in particular by excavating neglected examples of anti-productivist resistance within the cultural domain.

The first of these is Roberto del Valle Alcalá’s British Working-Class Fiction: Narratives of Refusal and the Struggle Against Work (2016), a study that challenges ‘the traditional vindication of labour by the working-class movement’ by developing an operaismo approach concerned with identifying within post-war working-class novels ‘a logic of negativity and “impotentiality”, of radical passivity and capacity to not do, to abstain – either militantly or evasively, joyfully or traumatically – from the socially structured injunctions of capitalist work’ (pp. 3, 7, emphasis in original). Alastair Hemmens’s The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought: From Charles Fourier to Guy Debord (2019) similarly adopts a Wertkritik-inspired approach (following Postone in emphasising Marx’s ‘radical critique of the labour form’) in developing an account of the ‘singularly rich’ French intellectuals who, in Hemmens’s view, surpass other anti-work thinkers in staging a ‘ “categorical break” with the ontology of labour’ (pp. 15, 1, 32). Abigail Susik’s Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (2021) makes the related claim that among surrealism’s ‘most intransigent demands were its overarching attack on the ubiquity of paid labour in modern life, its call for the total abolition of waged conscription, and its declaration of an ongoing “WAR ON WORK”’, which she suggests functioned less as a ‘social critique’ and more as ‘part of a passionate struggle to ensure the survival of emancipatory art practices and communities in a world that increasingly devalues the role of art in favour of a totalising life of work’ (pp. 1, 14). Adam Bridgen’s contribution to Romantic Environmental Sensibility: Nature, Class and Empire (2022) – an essay collection that seeks to establish links between the ‘Romantic turn to nature’ and the environmental ‘catastrophe that we are facing today’ (Tee, p. 7) – argues that the eighteenth-century poet James Woodhouse represents ‘the emergence of a labouring class ecosocial sensibility’ for his assessment of ‘ways in which the ascendance of capitalist ideology not only led to the exclusion and impoverishment of working people, but also severely degraded the environments they relied upon’ (p. 175). Lastly, my own study, The Tramp in British Literature, 1850–1950 (2022), explores ‘a neglected strain’ of British fiction and life writing that celebrates the tramp’s ‘apparent failure to contribute to the welfare and wealth of the population’ through work – in the process promoting ‘a radical anti-productivist agenda’ (pp. 326, 53, 317).

What, it might be asked, is the specific value in excavating instances of degrowth resistance? And how might these accounts contribute to the current effort to combat productivism’s deleterious effects upon the environment, women, workers and the Global South? Building on his scepticism towards depictions of the emancipatory potential of automation, while also echoing Saito’s distrust of Promethean post-capitalism, Benanav has argued that if ‘neither technological advancement nor technocratic reform leads inevitably to a post-scarcity world, then it is only the pressure of social movements, pushing for a radical restructuring of social life, that can bring it about’ (p. 95). As if responding to this claim, Susik suggests that ‘the flourishing present-day discourse of work critique stands to gain significant insights from […] under-acknowledged’ social and cultural movements (such as surrealism) for the reason that they function as key examples ‘of protest strategy against the economic coercion of humans into a life of value-production’ (p. 14). The combined suggestion that only a social movement can save us and that previous cultural movements are the best available blueprint offers a clear justification for the critical project undertaken by the above authors.

To return to the starting point of this essay, it should be noted that as well as acknowledging the risk of succumbing to productivist bias when studying socialist fiction (Klaus, 1982, p. 1), H. Gustav Klaus’s edited collection, Tramps, Workmates and Revolutionaries: Working-Class Stories of the 1920s (1993), was among the first attempts (if not the first) to excavate cultural works operating outside of a traditional work-oriented framework (p. 4). The developments described above indicate both the prescience of Klaus’s work and the urgent need for further efforts along these lines.

Works cited

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