This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Environmental Politics on 12/10/2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09644016.2012.712793.
Post-environmentalism: An Internal Critique
Christopher D. Buck Assistant Professor of Political Theory
Government Department St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY USA
Government Department St. Lawrence University
23 Romoda Drive Canton, NY 13617
USA
Abstract: ‘Postenvironmentalism’ is an approach to ecological modernisation in the United States which criticizes mainstream environmentalism’s emphasis on placing limits on economic activity to address the climate crisis. Building upon Ronald Inglehart's analysis of shifting cultural values, postenvironmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger reject this antipathy towards economic growth because it undermines the material conditions that enable postmaterial, quality of life concerns like environmentalism to flourish in the first place. This essay argues that some of the policies advocated by Nordhaus and Shellenberger to promote economic growth actually serve as obstacles to the realization of postmaterial values and offers an alternative account of the emergence of modern environmentalism by situating it within the transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist model of economic growth. The post-Fordist analysis reveals more promising possibilities for promoting postmaterial values such as autonomy, self-realization, and environmental concern than the proposals put forward by Shellenberger and Nordhaus.
Keywords: economic growth; postenvironmentalism; post-Fordism; postmaterialism; work
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Introduction
Even before the Great Recession of 2008 activists and academics alike questioned the
effectiveness of mainstream approaches to environmental advocacy in the United States, which
have not been able to seize political opportunities and repeat early legislative successes regarding
the protection of air, water, and endangered species when faced with contemporary ecological
challenges such as global climate change (Dowie 1995, Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004,
Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007). Arguably the most influential and controversial articulation
of this frustration with major environmental organizations comes from Michael Shellenberger
and Ted Nordhaus (2004), who received national media attention and fostered vibrant scholarly
discussions over the future of ecological politics (Meyer 2005, 2008, Blühdorn and Welsh 2007,
Brick and Cawley 2008, Chaloupka 2008, Anderson 2010) with their provocatively titled
pamphlet The Death of Environmentalism. The authors fault mainstream environmentalism for a
variety of reasons: its perpetuation of a ‘limits to growth’ narrative which seeks to constrain
human intrusions into the environment, its reliance on scare tactics to draw attention to the
climate crisis, its emphasis on the need for people to make personal sacrifices, and its insistence
on framing climate change first and foremost as an environmental issue at a time when most
people are primarily concerned with economic security. This approach is a recipe for creating an
atmosphere of hopelessness and despair rather than inspiring a broad-based political response to
climate change, and Shellenberger and Nordhaus call for a ‘postenvironmental’ movement which
questions the prevailing assumptions of traditional environmentalism and develops new political
strategies and alliances that they believe will succeed in bringing about the transition towards a
post-carbon future.
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Nordhaus and Shellenberger have elaborated both their critique of environmentalism and
their approach to progressive politics in numerous magazine articles, op-ed pieces, policy
reports, and most notably in their book Break Through (2007). Several of these writings
(Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007, 2009b, 2009c, Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2010) rely on the
argumentative strategy of upending conventional wisdom by providing alternative explanations
for the successes and failures of environmentalism in the United States. At the centre of their
analysis in Break Though, for example, is a retelling of the American environmental movement’s
emergence as well as its subsequent demise. Drawing on research in cognitive therapy, Nordhaus
and Shellenberger (2007, p. 217) note how the act of re-narration enables patients to ‘imagine
new possibilities and futures for themselves’ and use this insight as ‘a parable for
postenvironmentalism.’ The new narrative highlights the importance of material wealth for the
emergence of postmaterial values such as environmental concern, with the aim of articulating a
‘new social contract for postmaterial America that can provide enough security and prosperity to
support a new progressive era’ (Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007, p. 40). This narrative is a
welcome departure from the prevailing responses to the challenge of global climate change by
portraying this crisis as an opportunity to promote ecological sustainability while simultaneously
bringing about greater economic security and prosperity, rather than offering a doomsday
scenario in an attempt to motivate people to sacrifice their current standard of living for the sake
of the planet (Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2009a). At the same time, however, the re-narration
they put forward overlooks possibilities for creating even more imaginative and promising
approaches to cultivating postmaterial values.
This essay engages in an internal critique of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's
postenvironmental politics to highlight the contradictory nature of their project. Kysar (2008)
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follows a similar line of argumentation by identifying several performative contradictions in
Break Through. He notes how Nordhaus and Shellenberger's tendency to portray
environmentalism as a monolith runs counter to their anti-essentialist commitments, how their
critique of the role of science in environmental politics undercuts the urgency of their policy
initiatives, and how their emphasis on the need to market and package these initiatives in ways
that appeal to the American public leaves them with no means 'of evaluating [their] wares, other
than how well they sell' (Kysar 2008, p. 2046). Contra Kysar, I start with the assumption that the
merits of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's postenvironmentalism can and should be judged
according to the criterion set out by the authors themselves: whether or not it establishes the
material conditions which enable postmaterial values to flourish. The central claim of my
critique is that by positing a linear relationship between economic growth and the prioritization
of postmaterial values, Nordhaus and Shellenberger underestimate the ways in which some
forms of economic growth can become obstacles to the fulfilment of postmaterial needs and
desires. While other commentators (Beevers and Petersen 2009, Davidson 2009) make the
general point that the relationship between economic growth and environmental concern is more
complex than Nordhaus and Shellenberger suggest, I demonstrate how specific policies they
propose risk undermining the very postmaterial values they are seeking to promote. By framing
clean energy initiatives not as environmental measures but rather in a manner that resonates with
Americans’ concerns about economic security, Nordhaus and Shellenberger ultimately propose a
new social contract that is more materialist than postmaterialist in its treatment of work.
A second, more constructive aspect of this internal critique of postenvironmentalism
involves appropriating Nordhaus and Shellenberger's preferred argumentative strategy of
offering an alternative account of the history of environmentalism in order to draw attention to
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political possibilities that they overlook. Insofar as it places great emphasis on creating full-time
jobs with high wages through economic growth fuelled by massive public investments in clean
energy research and development, Nordhaus and Shellenberger's social contract resembles the
Fordist-Keynesian compromise between capital, labour, and the state characteristic of the
postwar economic boom driven by mass production and mass consumption that lasted until the
early 1970s. Drawing on the writings of French political ecologists André Gorz and Alain
Lipietz as well as American sociologist Juliet Schor, I put forward an alternative narrative that
situates the emergence of modern environmentalism within the context of the transition from a
Fordist to a post-Fordist model of economic development. From this perspective, the social
upheavals of the late 1960s can be understood in part as a rejection of the Fordist compromise,
on the basis that higher levels of material comfort were no longer considered adequate
compensation for devoting one’s working life to full-time employment. Not only does this
alternative narrative reveal limitations to individual autonomy and flexibility inherent in
Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s new social contract, it also reveals possibilities for enhancing
individuals’ opportunities for self-actualization and minimizing their ecological footprints
through the maximization of free time rather than relying primarily on increases in material
wealth.
Focusing critical attention on Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ vision of
postenvironmentalism is warranted for several reasons. First, their approach constitutes one of
the more prominent and influential examples of ecological modernisation in the United States
(Rootes 2008, Schlosberg and Rinfret 2008, Luke 2009). On the campaign trail in 2008, soon-to-
be President Barack Obama called for a new ‘Apollo project’ that would involve large scale
public investments in clean energy technology to secure energy independence, create jobs, and
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reduce carbon emissions (Klein 2008). This was a reference to a plan outlined by the Apollo
Alliance, a coalition of labour and environmental groups co-founded by Shellenberger and
Nordhaus, and the environmental aspects of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
closely resemble the investments proposed by the Apollo Alliance (Schneider 2009), albeit on a
smaller scale which has led Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2010, Shellenberger and Nordhaus
2010) to criticize the Obama administration and Congress for not allocating adequate funding for
research into new clean energy technologies. Second, as both the United States and Europe
appear to be ushering in an era of austerity, the possibility of national governments implementing
green stimulus packages seems less likely than it did at the beginning of the recession. Given this
context it would be prudent to explore other strategies for reducing unemployment, providing
economic security and promoting the development of postmaterial values that do not rely
primarily upon encouraging economic growth through public investments.
Re-narrating the birth of environmentalism
While Nordhaus and Shellenberger offer a scathing critique of modern environmentalism
in the United States, they acknowledge and express gratitude for the impressive achievements
accomplished by the movement soon after its inception. The establishment of the National
Environmental Policy Act, the significant amendments to the Clean Air and Water Acts, and the
creation of the Endangered Species Act in the early 1970s should be celebrated as major
victories that continue to play an important role in preserving and protecting the nonhuman
world for present and future generations. Nordhaus and Shellenberger disagree, however, with
environmentalism’s own version of its origin story and question the movement’s prospects for
adequately confronting the crisis of global climate change.
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Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 6) contend that ‘environmentalists have long
misunderstood, downplayed, or ignored the conditions for their own existence. They have tended
to view economic growth as the cause but not the solution to ecological crisis.’ According to the
narrative frequently told by environmentalists, by the 1960s the levels of pollution generated by
the industrial economy had become unbearable. Cities were shrouded by a haze of smog, and
rivers were literally erupting into flames. Images of Earth photographed from outer space
reminded its inhabitants that they live in a finite world. In the United States widespread concern
gave birth to a movement that put environmentalism on the national agenda and succeeded in
institutionalizing ecological rationality through a series of legislative acts (Nordhaus and
Shellenberger, p. 21-22).
What this narrative fails to take into consideration, however, is the way in which the
postwar era of industrial capitalism itself established the preconditions for ecological concern by
creating unprecedented wealth through economic growth. Drawing on Abraham Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs (1943) and Ronald Inglehart’s analysis of shifting cultural values (1997),
Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that environmental and other postmaterial quality of life
issues become social priorities only after people feel secure about meeting their physiological
needs for food, water, clothing, and shelter, as well as their safety needs for a steady source of
income and adequate access to health care that are essential for a stable and comfortable standard
of living. When people satisfy these basic needs, new needs such as the desire for fulfilment,
autonomy, and self-realization begin to emerge. According to Shellenberger and Nordhaus
(2011, p. 10), ‘the entire postmaterial project is, confoundingly, built upon a foundation of
affluence and material consumption that would be considerably threatened by any serious effort
to address the ecological crises through substantially downscaling economic activity.’ Given this
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relationship between material wealth and public support for ecological issues, ‘few things have
hampered environmentalism more than its longstanding position that limits to growth are the
remedy for ecological crises,’ leading Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 15) to ‘argue for an
explicitly pro-growth agenda that defines the kind of prosperity [they] believe is necessary to
improve the quality of human life and to overcome ecological crises.’ By continuing to embrace
a tragic narrative which portrays humanity as having fallen from grace through its excessive
intrusions upon the natural world, the environmental movement pursues a politics of limits that
seeks to protect the environment by placing constraints on human activities, a strategy that
ultimately risks undermining the movement’s own foundation.
Environmentalism’s ambivalence towards economic growth threatens its relevance at a
time when Americans tend to prioritize their concerns about economic insecurity over ecological
issues such as global climate change. Soon after the environmental movement accomplished its
major legislative victories, social and economic crises put an end to the prosperity enjoyed by
most citizens of United States in the years following World War II and ushered in an era of
economic insecurity that continues to this day. The turbulent transition from an industrial to a
postindustrial economy brought about an accompanying shift in values that runs counter to the
overarching movement away from material values and towards postmaterial values. The outcome
of these transformations is the growing prevalence of a condition Nordhaus and Shellenberger
(2007, p. 14) describe as insecure affluence, in which ‘Americans have seen their wealth and
spending power rise, but they have also become increasingly insecure in terms of their
employment, retirement, health care, and community.’ Nordhaus and Shellenberger stress the
importance of distinguishing the flexibility of postindustrial society from the insecure affluence
that has arisen alongside it. Flexibility itself has the potential enhance individuals’ freedom; what
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is needed is a ‘new social contract’ that provides security without abandoning the benefits of
flexibility (Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007, p. 15).
Another reason for questioning environmentalism’s ability to confront the crisis of global
climate change stems from the way in which environmentalism has become a victim of its own
success. Often taking the form of a special interest group, as opposed to a movement,
mainstream environmentalism succumbs to the trap of policy literalism. Charged with the
responsibility of protecting nature, mainstream environmental organizations assume that their
campaigns must speak directly to ecological concerns, regardless of whether or not alternative
framings would create broader public support for bringing about the same desired outcome.
Moreover, these organizations fall back on the same tactics and strategies that were effective
within a different values landscape and in response to different environmental issues than the
ones dominating headlines today. Drawing the public’s attention to ecological degradation
through visual imagery and the presentation of scientific facts worked at a time when
postmaterial values thrived and people were primarily worried about pollution, but the looming
threat of abrupt climate change in an era of insecure affluence demands a new approach to
ecological politics. Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 6) advocate a political response to
global warming that ‘swim[s] with, not against, the currents of changing social values’ by
framing their initiatives in a way that speaks to Americans’ concerns about insecure affluence
and emphasizing the possibilities for economic growth and job creation associated with
investments in clean energy technology. Surveys conducted in the United States by the Pew
Research Center (2012, p. 6) lend credence to this claim. When asked to identify their top policy
priorities from a list of 22 issue areas, 86% and 82% of respondents mentioned improving the
economy and addressing unemployment respectively, making these issues the two most widely
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shared priorities, whereas responding to climate change appeared at the bottom of the list, with
only 25% of respondents identifying it as a top priority.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s willingness to challenge the environmental establishment
has earned them the title of ‘the bad boys of American environmentalism’ (McKibben 2005). But
is their argument really that controversial? After all, the postmaterial narrative of the birth of
environmentalism will sound familiar to most students of environmental policy in the United
States. In the introduction to Environmental Policy, a standard text in the field, Norman Vig and
Michael Kraft (2006, pp. 9-10) acknowledge the
fundamental changes in American values that began after World War II and accelerated as the nation shifted from an industrial to a postindustrial (or postmaterialist) society. Preoccupation with the economy (and national security) has gradually given way to a new set of concerns that includes quality-of-life issues such as the environment.
When coupled with the critique of policy literalism, however, the postmaterial narrative has the
potential to generate controversy insofar as it seems to imply that ecological sustainability will
inevitably result from policies that solely pursue economic growth rather than focusing on
protecting the environment (Davidson 2009). This would not be a fair assessment of Nordhaus
and Shellenberger’s argument (2007, pp. 6-7, emphasis added), since they aim ‘to create a kind
of prosperity that moves everyone up Maslow’s [hierarchy of needs] as quickly as possible while
also achieving our ecological goals.’ Nonetheless, their emphasis on economic growth risks
promoting material values at the expense of cultivating the postmaterial values that can enhance
both human freedom and consideration for the nonhuman world.
The limits of the politics of possibility
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By abandoning the assumption that addressing the crisis of global change must involve a
movement that frames it as an environmental issue, Nordhaus and Shellenberger have formulated
several innovative policy proposals designed to appeal to the values currently held by a majority
of American voters. These values, however, are best understood as materialist rather than
postmaterialist. According to several surveys cited by Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007 pp. 11,
10) that had results resembling those of the Pew Research Center survey, ‘voters name concerns
like jobs and the economy as their top priorities’ while ‘the environment almost always [comes]
in last.’ In other words, Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem to be rejecting the policy literalism of
mainstream environmentalism on the basis that policies framed around environmental issues
aren’t materialist enough to gain traction among American voters. Nordhaus and Shellenberger
might respond to this criticism by insisting that the establishment of economic security is the first
step toward cultivating postmaterial values, but this response begs the following question: Is
prioritizing economic growth and job creation the best means by which postmaterial values can
be promoted, or are there other ways to pursue economic security while simultaneously
advancing postmaterial values already held by many Americans? While Nordhaus and
Shellenberger call for a new, postmaterial social contract, the policy proposals developed by
their Breakthrough Institute and American Environics company fail to seize the opportunities
generated by the crisis of insecure affluence to create an even more flexible approach to work.
This is due in part to the emphasis they place on full-time employment in their policy proposals.
Through their own research on the values held by Americans and how these values affect
their willingness to support initiatives to increase government assistance to unemployed and
underemployed citizens, Breakthrough Institute, the Center for American Progress, and
American Environics discovered that participants in focus groups encountered a dilemma that
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pits two sets of values against one another: Americans want to be generous and lend a helping
hand to those in need, but also tend to believe people should be able to lift themselves out of
poverty through hard work, dedication, and perseverance (The Breakthrough Institute et al.
2006a, p. 1). Focus group participants realized that a workfare program, in which receiving
assistance was contingent upon maintaining steady, full-time employment, enabled them to
resolve this internal dilemma:
It is fair, it demonstrates that the aid is deserved and earned, and it helps instill confidence in the recipients and cultivate the kinds of traits that all success in life requires. We heard again and again that no matter what the job, if recipients are working or if they can start working, it means that they are motivated to improve their lives, and if they are not so motivated, work will instill the confidence and other traits necessary to better their condition (The Breakthrough Institute et al. 2006a, p. 2, emphasis added).
Based on this finding, these think tanks drafted a policy report calling for the establishment of a
Citizen Corps that would provide full-time work at a living wage for the unemployed by creating
jobs that will improve the housing, education, and infrastructure of low-income communities.
According to the proposal, ‘these transitional jobs will build skills and give needed experience
while bestowing the rights and dignities of workers on the unemployed’ (The Breakthrough
Institute et al. 2006b, p. 2).
The Fresh Start proposal represents an innovative attempt to cultivate postmaterial values
by expanding welfare benefits in a manner that has the potential to garner widespread public
support insofar as it speaks to citizens’ commitment to a strong work ethic and the American
Dream. Its authors acknowledge that ‘“work” must therefore be put at the center of the initiative,
but not in a way that cedes important ground to the conservative worldview’ (The Breakthrough
Institute et al. 2006a, p. 3). Through the creation of a Citizen Corps, the proposal seeks to
‘reclaim the inherently communitarian role of work in this country—work as a means, not to
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amass extraordinary amounts of personal wealth, but to help build and rebuild our communities
and better the lives of others’ (The Breakthrough Institute et al. 2006a, p. 1). In other words, the
initiative fosters postmaterial values not only by securing the material conditions for these
values, but by generating employment opportunities that will potentially provide workers with a
sense of belonging and fulfilment as well.
Despite the intention of its authors, the Fresh Start initiative’s very insistence upon
placing a work component at the centre of its proposal for welfare reform ultimately affirms a
conservative worldview that risks undermining the overall aim of cultivating postmaterial values.
Rather than embracing the decline of the Protestant work ethic caused by the shift to a
postindustrial society, the Fresh Start proposal exhibits nostalgia for the postwar era of economic
expansion when it notes that ‘the modern economy continues to change at a rapid pace, and
America must return to a culture that puts work at its core’ (The Breakthrough Institute et al.
2006b, p. 2, emphasis added). This is surprising, considering that in Break Through Nordhaus
and Shellenberger (2007, p. 247) celebrate how ‘the traditional Protestant work ethic has been
replaced by a more flexible and more creative relationship to work, employment, and one’s
identity as a laborer’ in postindustrial societies. The message of the Fresh Start proposal,
however, seems to be that individuals must learn to gain satisfaction from full-time work,
whatever the job may be, in order to be entitled to economic security. While a work requirement
might make expanding welfare programs more appealing to American voters, it does so at the
cost of promoting a less flexible relationship to work.
The Fresh Start initiative also departs from another aspect of the new social contract
advocated by Nordhaus and Shellenberger in Break Through. They emphasize that health
insurance and retirement plans ‘are preconditions to autonomy, control, and meaningful self-
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creation,’ but also note how these benefits can become ‘an obstacle to imagining and starting a
new career and life’ when people must hold down full-time jobs to secure them (Nordhaus and
Shellenberger, pp. 178-179). Moreover, some approaches to expanding health care coverage,
such as those that focus solely on coverage for children, risk ‘reinforcing the widespread
perception among the insured that those without health care are personally responsible for their
plight and thus undeserving of assistance’ (Nordhaus and Shellenberger, p. 183). The centrality
of work in the Fresh Start proposal, by contrast, functions precisely to reinforce the perception
among the employed that those unable to find work are personally responsible for not having a
job and thus undeserving of assistance until they find full-time employment, since the work
requirement makes welfare reform more palatable to American taxpayers.
In sum, the Fresh Start proposal, as well as other initiatives spearheaded by American
Environics and the Breakthrough Institute (such as the New Apollo Project), assumes that
spurring economic growth with the aim of creating more jobs is the best means by which
economic security can achieved, thus establishing the conditions necessary for postmaterial
values to thrive. There are also moments when Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 115) go
further by implying that economic development should be understood not only as a means to
promote postmaterial values, but also as a paradigmatic example of human achievement that
ought to be valued as an end in itself:
overcoming global warming demands something qualitatively different from limiting our contamination of nature. It demands unleashing human power, creating a new economy, and remaking nature as we prepare for the future. And to accomplish all of that, the right models come … from the very thing environmentalists have long imagined to be the driver of pollution in the first place: economic development.
This leads them to overlook the ways in which economic development, especially for the sake of
creating jobs, can serve as both an obstacle to and a precondition for the realization of
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postmaterial values, and results in a missed opportunity to formulate more imaginative
approaches to establishing a new social contract capable of ensuring both economic security and
ecological sustainability.
Ronald Inglehart’s analysis of the relationship between economic and cultural
transformations provides grounds for calling into question a direct correlation between economic
growth and the shift in emphasis from material to postmaterial values. Inglehart argues that
economic growth brings diminishing returns in subjective well-being once a certain threshold
level of GDP per capita is met. In wealthy, postmaterial societies ‘further economic gains no
longer produce an increase in subjective well-being. Indeed, if further economic growth brings
deterioration in the nonmaterial quality of life, it may actually lead to lower levels of subjective
well-being’ (Inglehart 1997, p. 64). To meet the new needs of its postmaterial citizens, these
societies ought to ‘place increasing emphasis on quality of life concerns, rather than to continue
the inflexible pursuit of economic growth as if it were a good in itself’ (Inglehart 1997, p. 65).
Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s approach to addressing global climate change risks prioritizing
economic growth over quality of life concerns, even though the United States, when viewed from
a comparative perspective, currently appears to be pursuing economic growth at the expense of
leisure and subjective well-being.
In 2009, Luxembourg and Norway were the only OECD countries that enjoyed higher
levels of per capita income than the United States, when adjusted to reflect purchasing power
parity (OECD 2011). With regard to labour productivity, measured as ‘the value of goods and
services that the economy can produce, on average, in an hour of work’ (Mishel et al. 2009, p.
360), Norway had the highest level, while Belgium, France and the Netherlands had roughly the
same level of productivity as the United States (Economic Policy Institute 2011b). This suggests
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that the high level of per capita income in the United States cannot be explained solely by its
level of labour productivity. According to the authors of The State of Working America
2008/2009 report (Mishel et al. 2009, p. 366), a significant part of this income ‘comes not from
working more efficiently than its peer countries, nor from being more successful in providing
jobs to potential workers, but rather from each worker simply working longer hours on average.’
With the exceptions of Greece and Italy, workers in every other Western European country
worked fewer hours on average in 2009 than workers in the United States (Economic Policy
Institute 2011a). Interestingly, workers in the Netherlands, a country with a similar productivity
level as the United States, worked the fewest hours on average out of all OECD countries in
2009 (Economic Policy Institute 2011a) and the Netherlands had one of the lowest levels of
unemployment at 3.4%, compared to 9.3% in the United States (Economic Policy Institute
2011c).
These statistics demonstrate how wealthy countries such as the United States can direct
the fruits of economic development toward either material or postmaterial ends: ‘In essence,
some countries have chosen to translate their high levels of productivity into more leisure, while
the United States has tended to use such efficiency gains to boost consumption of goods’ (Mishel
et al. 2007, pp. 357-358). At the level of prosperity already achieved by the United States, the
pursuit of economic growth as a means to increase in employment opportunities is neither
necessary nor sufficient for enabling postmaterial values to flourish. On the contrary, the
comparison between the Netherlands and the United States suggests an alternative strategy,
overlooked by Nordhaus and Shellenberger, for overcoming insecure affluence: redistributing
work to attain the goal of each individual ‘working less so everyone can work’ (Gorz 1989, p.
233).1 To explore this opportunity, I will offer an alternative narrative inspired by the work of
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Gorz, Lipietz, and Schor. This narrative, which characterizes the social and economic
transformations of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist
model of development, reveals how the relationship between economic growth and postmaterial
values is more complex than it is portrayed in Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s narrative. In
addition, this narrative discloses possibilities for establishing a new social contract that is more
flexible and postmaterial than the one proposed by Nordhaus and Shellenberger.
An alternative narrative: the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism
Just as Nordhaus and Shellenberger investigate the preconditions for the emergence of
postmaterial values in general and ecological concern in particular, they also take a further step
back to consider the factors that made the impressive economic growth of the postwar era
possible. The Fresh Start proposal simply asserts that ‘it is [Americans’] work ethic that led to
the greatest expansion of economic progress the world has ever witnessed, in the immediate
aftermath of the two World Wars’ (The Breakthrough Institute et al. 2006b, p. 1) Nordhaus and
Shellenberger (2007, pp. 29-30) provide a somewhat more sophisticated account in Break
Through when they attribute postwar prosperity to the political leadership of the Roosevelt,
Kennedy, and Johnson administrations, as well as the ‘brand of benign corporate capitalism
made possible by the postwar compact between big business and organized labor.’ This
compromise between capital and labour is one aspect of what Lipietz refers to as the Fordist
model of development, a phase of capitalism that was not as benign as Nordhaus and
Shellenberger suggest.
Henry Ford invented neither the assembly line nor the hierarchical organizational
structures that enabled him to mass-produce the Model-T. For David Harvey (1990, pp. 125-6),
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what was special about Ford…was his vision, his explicit recognition that mass production meant mass consumption, a new system of the reproduction of labor power, a new politics of labour control and management, a new aesthetics and psychology, in short, a new kind of rationalized, modernist, and populist democratic society.
In 1914 Ford instituted the five dollar, eight hour day for assembly line workers to ensure their
acceptance of the discipline demanded on the shop floor, to encourage them to adopt a sanitary
and morally upright lifestyle in the private sphere, and to give them the opportunity to purchase
the very cars they manufactured. In conjunction with Keynesian reforms designed to maintain
near full employment of the workforce, the Fordist regime of accumulation created conditions
for impressive economic growth from 1945 until 1973, when the first major postwar recession
hit.
Several factors contributed to the decline of Fordism. By the late 1960s productivity in
the United States had fallen while real wages and fixed capital costs continued to rise, leading to
lower profit margins. At the same time, the Western European and Japanese economies finished
their post-war recoveries and began competing with manufacturers in the United States by
exporting lower-cost goods. The oil crisis of 1973 was the final nail in the coffin, bringing an
end to the postwar boom and the Fordist model of development that sustained it (Harvey 1990,
Lipietz 1992). What has emerged in its place is a post-Fordist model of development that relies
on casual forms of labour with fewer fringe benefits and tolerates higher levels of unemployment
and underemployment. According to Schor (1992, p. 40), ‘rather than hire new people, and pay
the extra benefits that would entail, many firms have just demanded more from their existing
workforces. They have sped up the pace of work and lengthened the time on the job.’ Those
lucky enough to hold full-time jobs have little choice but to resign themselves to more
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demanding hours or risk joining the ranks of the unemployed, leading to an unequal distribution
of worktime.
Given the precarious nature of employment in the current neo-liberal phase of capitalism,
it is tempting to look back at the postwar Fordist period with nostalgia. Historian William Sewell
(2005, p. 30) remarks that ‘from the perspective of the hypercompetitive, predatory, and
extraordinarily inegalitarian American capitalism of the early twenty-first century, the Fordist
mode of regulation may seem remarkably humane, a kind of quasi social-democratic “world we
have lost.”’ It is important to keep in mind, however, that many of the countercultural and
progressive movements of the late 1960s can be understood both as an expression of postmaterial
values and a rejection of the Fordist compromise, according to which increasing levels of
consumption were supposed to serve as compensation for engaging in forms of work that in
many cases were not intrinsically fulfilling. Lipietz (1992, p. 349) notes how most inhabitants of
the global North enjoy
a standard of living in which the right to well-being is restricted more by a ‘lack of quality of life’ than a ‘lack of possessions’. Even before the economic crisis, around 1968, the post-war model of mass consumption began to reveal its existential deficiencies. People need time to live with what they have; they need to experiment with new social relations and independent creative activities.
The collapse of Fordism resulted in more free time for some, but more often than not it came in
the form of unemployment and underemployment at a moment when the social safety net was
unravelling, thus ushering in an era of economic insecurity that has only been exacerbated by the
most recent recession.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s new social contract attempts to bring together the best of
both worlds by re-establishing some, but not all, aspects of the Fordist regime of accumulation
(economic security through relatively high wages and full employment) while preserving the
19
flexibility of the post-Fordist workplace. Yet for Gorz and Lipietz, full-time employment is itself
a form of inflexibility that can place constraints on individual freedom. It may seem as though
this account of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism that focuses on new methods of
labour control has nothing more to offer than another narrative of tragedy and resentment, but
Gorz and Lipietz aim to provide a clear articulation of the crisis in order to highlight both the
dangers and opportunities associated with the decline of the Fordist mode of development.
Gorz’s proposal for a new social contract (1999, p. 53), for example, resembles that of Nordhaus
and Shellenberger insofar as he seeks to liberate post-Fordist flexibility from insecurity:
It is [the] insecure worker that is potentially the central figure of our own world; it is this figure which must be civilized and recognized so that, rather than being a condition one reluctantly bears, this pattern of working can become a mode of life one chooses, a mode that is desirable, one that is regulated and valued by society, a source of new culture, freedoms, and sociality, establishing the right of all to choose the discontinuities in their working lives without experiencing a discontinuity in their income.
While they share a similar vision with Nordhaus and Shellenberger, Gorz and Lipietz’s narrative
points towards an alternative political agenda for bringing this vision to fruition. Nordhaus and
Shellenberger diagnose the crisis of economic insecurity as a lack of employment opportunities
that can be remedied by creating jobs through ecologically sustainable development. Gorz,
Lipietz, and Schor, on the other hand, interpret the crisis as a problem of unequal distribution of
working time, and call for a reduction of working hours and work-sharing program as a means
for providing economic security and leisure time for all. This proposal not only addresses
economic insecurity associated with unemployment, but also promotes the fulfilment of
postmaterial values and would result in a smaller ecological footprint (Schor 2005, p. 47).
Why do Nordhaus and Shellenberger neglect this alternative approach? Three reasons
come to mind. First, Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 222) characterize reductions in
20
consumption as a sacrifice, and an environmental agenda cantered upon convincing people to
consume less is unlikely to succeed since a pragmatic approach to politics must, among other
things, provide ‘a solution that is not perceived to require tremendous sacrifice.’ This is why
Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 126) support public investments in clean energy: it
enables people to minimize their ecological footprint without a major shift in their consumption
habits.
This treatment of consumerism, however, does not mention how reaching higher levels of
consumption often involves sacrificing opportunities for greater free time brought about through
increases in productivity. As mentioned earlier during comparison between the Netherlands and
the United States, the increased productivity of a given country can be translated into either
higher income levels or fewer working hours, but it would be misleading to describe the United
States’ privileging of increases in material wealth over greater leisure as an outcome freely
chosen or democratically decided, since employers rarely allow their employees to forego pay
raises in exchange for a reduction in hours and ‘the growth of worktime did not occur as a result
of public debate’ (Schor 1992, p. 3). Survey data cited by Schor suggests that a majority of
American workers would exchange future income for greater free time if given the choice (Schor
1992, 2005), and an increasing number of Americans are making ‘voluntary lifestyle
change[s]…that [entail] earning less money’ (Schor 2011, p. 107). In addition, many workers
who are forced to accept involuntary reductions in working hours eventually come to appreciate
the greater amount of free time and are reluctant to return to full-time employment when given
the opportunity (Schor 2011, pp. 108-109).
Second, Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 174) associate consumerism with ‘the
virtuous cycle of economic growth’ in which consumption ‘…increases production, which
21
increases employment, which increases consumption.’ This cycle of growth, central to the
Fordist model of development, made the economic successes of the postwar era possible, but it
was no longer considered virtuous by the late 1960s when postmaterial values began to emerge.
At that point, the ongoing cycle of working and spending became an obstacle to the realization of
freedom, belonging, and self-actualization for many young people, resulting in social opposition
to the Fordist compromise.
Third, while Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2009c) do not engage directly with the
approach to environmental politics advocated by both Gorz and Schor, it would not be surprising
if they dismissed it as a call for voluntary simplicity which serves primarily to alleviate middle-
class guilt rather than make a significant reduction in overall carbon emissions or associated it
with an anti-modern 'ecotheology' which 'values creativity, imagination, and leisure over the
work ethic, productivity, and efficiency...' (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2011, p. 12). These
characterisations of Gorz and Schor’s privileging of free time over consumerism, however,
would overlook how they value free time not only an end in-itself but also a means to reduce
unemployment through a more equitable distribution of working hours.
Finally, the social values research conducted by American Environics (2006) does not
appear to devote much attention to Americans’ attitudes towards free time and leisure. In a
‘Glossary of Environics Social Values Trends,’ 11 of the 117 entries relate to consumption and
consumerism, while no entries exist for free time or leisure.2 By neglecting to investigate
whether people might prefer to translate productivity gains into more free time instead of higher
levels of consumption, Nordhaus and Shellenberger might underestimate Americans’ willingness
to participate in the ecological movement advocated by Gorz, Lipietz, and Schor that ‘aims
fundamentally to restore politically the correlation between less work and less consumption on
22
the one hand, and more existential autonomy and security for all, on the other’ (Gorz 2010, p.
70).
Conclusion
In the final pages of Break Through, Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2007, p. 270)
rearticulate their vision for the future:
the new vision of prosperity will not be the vision of economic growth proposed by those who worship at the altar of the market. It will define wealth not in gross economic terms but as overall well-being. Wealth will be defined as that which provides us with the freedom to become individuals. It will embrace our power to create new markets.
If Nordhaus and Shellenberger are serious about redefining wealth in terms of individual
freedom, then they should consider devoting their energies towards creating what Schor (2005, p.
45) calls the ‘missing market’ for shorter working hours. By placing full-time work at the centre
of their proposals for economic development, Nordhaus and Shellenberger advocate a politics
whose means risk undermining its ultimate ends: economic security comes at the cost of
flexibility and autonomy, leaving people with fewer opportunities to fulfil their postmaterial
needs and desires. In an age of insecure affluence, it may be the case that a politics of limits—a
postenvironmental politics which seeks to empower individuals with the freedom to set limits on
the amount of time they must spend at work—holds the greatest promise for minimizing
ecological degradation while simultaneously expanding the sphere of human possibility.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Bill Chaloupka, Andrew Jones, Michael Nordquist, Mark Somma, Rosa
Williams, and several anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this essay.
23
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1 Alain Lipietz (1992, p. 84) prefers the reverse formulation: ‘everybody working so that people can work less.’ 2 An entry for ‘time stress’ exists, but this variable measures one’s ‘desire to obtain better control of one’s life stress, particularly as it applies to better time management,’ and not one’s desire for more free time (American Environics 2006, p. 72).