A policy optic from East and Central Europe for degrowth: a must-read

Lessons from post-socialist transformation for social-ecological transformation

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe have experienced two different economic systems and transformations. These experiences are valuable for the social-ecological transformation towards a post-growth society. The central findings of our analysis of these transformation experiences are presented here. . .In our view, it is worthwhile to include these experiences in the degrowth debate.

I. Experience with the economy of shortage shows that low production of goods does not necessarily go hand in hand with positive environmental effects.

In an economy of shortage, there can be a forced equilibrium of adjustment with scarcity and abundance often being at odds with each other: “We had nothing [in the shops], no vegetables, no fruit, just tangerines for the New Year. And then we bought them in advance for a whole month. But imagine what happens to them when they lie around for a month. Half were rotten and had to be thrown away. [Laughs]” (Interview, Narva/Kudruküla, 2019). Accordingly, shortage can even lead directly to waste. For a degrowth economy, this means that a one-sided orientation towards ecological limits on the supply side can lead to inefficient hoarding tendencies with high environmental burdens on the demand side. A sufficiency economy must therefore consider both the supply and the demand side in order to bring about a new equilibrium of adjustment.

II. Experiences with the shortage economy must not be reduced to shortage, because this often devalues the whole body of knowledge and life practices associated with it.

Although practices such as semi-subsistence agriculture can also be seen as a way of coping with shortage and as such provide socio-economic buffers and resilience, they cannot be reduced to mere economic neediness. For this image, whether intentionally or not, leads to a renewed process of marginalisation and devaluation of the knowledge and life practices involved. It is inseparable from the hegemonic discourse of modernisation, according to which only Western standards of living are considered universally desirable. At the same time, the image reproduces the binary opposition of the ‘modern West’ and the ‘catching-up East’, thus preventing socially and ecologically desirable practices from ‘the East’ from gaining the same (global) acceptance and recognition as those from ‘the West’.

III. The distinction between the basic components of a system and its economic effects is central to understanding transformations.

The transformations in Central and Eastern Europe were successful at the macro level because they addressed the fundamental components of the systems: political power, the distribution of property rights and the coordination mechanism. The previously typical behaviour of economic actors and phenomena changed as a result of these fundamental changes. If the degrowth discourse is serious about a social-ecological transformation, and does not (mis)use the term as a synonym for ecological reform, then it is essential to examine how people in Central and Eastern Europe have experienced these changes and to take more account of post-socialist transformation research. . . .

https://www.ipe-berlin.org/fileadmin/institut-ipe/Dokumente/Working_Papers/ipe_working_paper_215.pdf