Limits to Growth at 50: the groundbreaking study that failed to change the world
50 years on from the publication of The Limits to Growth, why has its influence on policymakers been so limited? And what can post-growthers learn from the movement that has succeeded in reshaping the world since the 1970s — namely, neoliberalism?
When it was published in 1972, The Limits to Growth was both groundbreaking and controversial. It warned that pursuing infinite growth on a finite planet would lead to collapse. Half a century on, this is no longer a controversial conclusion among scientists. But, in the corridors of power, the notion that never-ending growth might not be desirable — or possible — remains a heresy.
Why has The Limits to Growth and the “post-growth” movement it spawned been such a failure in political terms? And what can it learn from the political movement that has succeeded in reshaping the world since the 1970s — namely, neoliberalism?
If Limits to Growth was the launch manifesto for the post-growth movement, then Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, is probably neoliberalism’s closest equivalent. By the time The Road to Serfdom reached 50, Thatcher and Reagan had come and gone, deregulation and privatisation were in full swing pretty much everywhere (even — or rather, especially — in the former Soviet Union), and political parties from the other end of the ideological spectrum — the US Democrats, the British Labour Party, even the Chinese Communist Party — had embraced neoliberal ideas and policies.
So what explains neoliberalism’s extraordinary political success?
Learn from your enemies
The leading proponents of neoliberalism were eager students of the process by which ideas seep into policy. Hayek, in particular, studied the success of the British Fabian Left at injecting new ideas into the political mainstream in the early 20th century and sought to replicate it. The key, Hayek concluded, was to build and cultivate networks of opinion-shapers: academics, think tanks, public intellectuals, journalists and politicians. He did precisely that, founding the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, which became the nerve centre of the international neoliberal movement.
Charles Koch, the libertarian billionaire who is probably more responsible than any other individual for the US’s embrace of radical free market ideology over the last 50 years, went even further: his model was Lenin. As the historian Nancy MacLean writes, ‘informed early on by one of his grantees that the playbook on revolutionary organization had been written by Vladimir Lenin, Koch dutifully cultivated a trusted “cadre” of high-level operatives, just as Lenin had done, to build a movement that refused compromise as it devised savvy maneuvers to alter the political math in its favor.’
Never waste a crisis
Then it was a matter of being ready when opportunity struck. As Milton Friedman famously observed:
“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
Crucially, those alternatives couldn’t be half-baked. Guiding principles weren’t going to cut it in a crisis. What you needed to have on the shelf were fully worked out policy prescriptions — and the neoliberals made sure they did.
In 1973, the University of Chicago-trained Chilean wing of the neoliberal movement produced a document known as El ladrillo (“The Brick”) that would become the template for the economic policies of Augusto Pinochet’s regime, following the military coup that brought Pinochet to power that September. Pinochet knew nothing about economics, but the Chilean economy was in deep crisis when he took the helm. The “Chicago Boys” with their brick were the answer to his problems.
A few years later, the Heritage Foundation (a US think tank, established in 1973) would do the same thing for Ronald Reagan’s government. In 1981, it produced a massive 1000-page manual called “Mandate for Leadership” full of concrete proposals for cutting the size of government and unleashing markets. Reagan handed copies out at his first cabinet meeting. According to one of the Heritage Foundation’s co-founders, no fewer than 775 of the proposals set out in the Mandate for Leadership were subsequently adopted.
Where are the post-growth movement’s equivalents to “The Brick” and the “Mandate for Leadership”? The neoliberals had a comprehensive plan for shrinking government: where’s the comprehensive plan for shrinking the economy? Currently it doesn’t exist in anything like the level of detail necessary to make it a viable alternative. Arguably, post-growthers have spent too long evangelising and not enough time preparing for victory.
Fear is not enough
The neoliberals’ first big break came in 1971 — just months before The Limits to Growth hit bookshelves. That summer it became clear that the US could no longer afford to keep the international monetary system designed at Bretton Woods in 1944 going. On Sunday 15th August, President Nixon announced that the US would no longer convert dollars into gold at a fixed price of $35 an ounce, as it had done for quarter of a century.
At the time of Nixon’s announcement, it was not clear what would happen next. Many members of his administration hoped that the system of fixed exchange rates would be restarted in due course. Others — influenced by the views of Milton Friedman in particular — argued that exchange rates should be left to float freely. The Friedmanite camp won. Free-floating exchange rates became the norm and the neoliberals were no longer political pariahs.
It helped that the neoliberals’ message was a soothing one for Nixon and his officials. The US Government had essentially lost control of the international monetary system: the neoliberals were telling them (and everyone else) to relax and not worry about it.
Today, there is perhaps a similar opening for post-growthers: to help politicians rebrand “secular stagnation” as success. Post-growthers have tended to focus on trying to scare politicians into taking their ideas seriously, but the ability to soothe may prove more important in the end.
Work with the system
When neoliberalism first emerged as a coherent ideological movement after World War Two, none of the established political parties in any major economy was receptive to its ideas. Traditional parties of the right had made their peace with the welfare and regulatory state. Even in the early 1970s, the Nixon administration continued to practice Keynesian top-down management of the economy.
And yet, rather than give up on incumbent political parties, the neoliberals tirelessly engaged with them. Initially their ideas were taken up only by politicians on the fringes of their parties — people like Enoch Powell in the UK and Barry Goldwater in the US. But it was a foothold, and despite setbacks — Goldwater’s defeat in the 1964 Presidential election remains one of the most comprehensive in US history — they kept chipping away. Slowly, through the 1960s and 1970s, they won more converts to the cause within mainstream parties, until the strategy of patient engagement paid off.
By contrast, the post-growth movement has never (yet) established a foothold within any major political party. It’s scarcely even tried. It has too often chosen purity over pragmatism.
Summary: four traits that enabled neoliberalism to change the world
Neoliberalism has been the most successful political movement of the last half century partly because it learned from studying its ideological enemies. If post-growthism is to be the most successful political movement of the next half century, it needs urgently to cultivate four characteristics that underpinned neoliberalism’s success:
- Organisation: the Mont Pelerin Society and the global network of think tanks founded by “policy entrepreneurs” — and funded by people like Charles Koch — played a profoundly important role in developing and spreading neoliberal ideas around the world. The institutional infrastructure provided by this web of organisations enabled an extraordinary level of discipline and coordination across an international movement that was not exactly short of big egos. In contrast, post-growthers have largely succumbed to a “Blessed Unrest” mindset: a belief that a movement that lacks unity of purpose and coordination of action can nonetheless change the world.
- Pragmatism: neoliberals excelled at working with the system, cultivating existing power bases within mainstream political parties. They have been hungry for partial victories, preferring to achieve some of their aims than stick to their principles and achieve none. And they have been unsqueamish — to a fault — about who they will get into bed with. Post-growthers have, in contrast, tended to stay aloof from incumbent power, preferring to engage with fringe parties (which is what the Greens are in most countries), rather than mainstream ones.
- Opportunism: from the collapse of Bretton Woods to spiralling inflation, the Chilean coup of 1973 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the neoliberals never wasted a crisis. By comparison, the post-growth movement has missed opportunity after opportunity. This is partly because its policy programme has been too narrow: no movement that lacked a well-thought-through stance on how to restore financial stability was going to be able to capitalise on the crash of 2007–8; no movement that lacks an answer on how to tackle inflation is likely to get a hearing today. Which brings us to the fourth, and final, characteristic…
- Preparation: arrogance is an unpleasant characteristic in individuals, but it turns out to be a highly desirable one in political movements. Writing a 1000-page policy briefing for an incoming US President before you even know the result of the election is, surely, the height of hubris. But without the kind of meticulous preparation that went into the “Mandate for Leadership”, the opportunity to get stuff done in that brief window of opportunity when a new leader enters office is, more often than not, squandered.
Where next?
50 years on, the core message of The Limits to Growth is as relevant and as chilling as ever:
‘The basic behaviour mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital, followed by collapse… Under the assumption that population and capital growth should not be deliberately limited but should be left to “seek their own levels”, we have not been able to find a set of policies that avoids the collapse mode of behavior.’
We still have time to choose societal transformation over civilisational collapse — but not much time. If we are to succeed, I believe post-growthers must heed the lessons of neoliberalism’s success. In particular, there are three things I think we should be focusing our attention and resources on:
1. A post-growth equivalent of the Mont Pelerin Society
In theory, this is a role that the Club of Rome (which commissioned the original Limits to Growth study) could and should play. But, somehow, it has never — yet — managed to turn itself into the nerve centre of a coherent global movement in the way the Mont Pelerin Society did.
The problem is largely an issue of fragmentation: there is no shortage of international networks of post-growth thinkers — from the Wellbeing Economy Alliance to Earth4All — many of which have overlapping memberships. What’s needed is a degree of coalescence. The Mont Pelerin Society was effective because it was the place where neoliberal thinkers and influencers convened, year after year. Forging a close-knit community that has the capacity to act as a collective, rather than as a collection of individuals, is essential.
To be clear, the role of a Mont Pelerin Society equivalent is coordination not centralisation. Much of the detailed intellectual work will need to be done at local, national or regional level. The ideal structure is probably a federated network, with country chapters responsible for translating global ideas into local policy prescriptions.
2. Post-growth equivalents of the “Mandate for Leadership”
This would be a task for the country chapters of a post-growth Mont Pelerin Society: to put together a comprehensive programme for government that is implementation-ready. The point is to make it easy for an incoming government to pass effective laws from day one, before the forces of reaction have a chance to rally.
To work, any post-growth “Mandate for Leadership” would need to deal with the full spectrum of policy questions facing an incoming government — from how to maintain financial stability while tackling inflation, to how to manage the economic and social consequences of shifting to a zero or negative growth economy. What’s more, this policy programme would need to be updated ahead of each potential change of government — just as the Heritage Foundation has done for 40 years.
3. A post-growth strategy for winning political power
We urgently need politicians who are passionate and knowledgeable about addressing the challenge of living within our ecological means. Today, very few are. There are two ways to rectify this. One is to cultivate rising stars within the major parties, who have the potential to shift that party’s centre of gravity. Could Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, be the Barry Goldwater of planetary boundaries?
The other is to encourage people in different walks of life who are sympathetic to the post-growth cause to enter politics. Think of it as building a pipeline of post-growth Ronald Reagans. (Reagan was, of course, an actor before he entered politics).
There is no shortage of people with the passion and expertise to address the ecological challenges we face; it’s just that most of them aren’t in frontline politics — the place we need them most. Given this misallocation of talent, we need new infrastructures of support to help get people with the right knowledge and commitment into frontline politics. That means identifying and nurturing post-growth political talent — and de-risking the path into frontline politics by giving candidates the support they need to win. The focus should be firmly on working within the existing party system to get people into positions where they have a credible chance of being in government.
Conclusion
The post-growth movement has one crucial disadvantage relative to neoliberalism. As Jørgen Randers, one of the authors of the original Limits to Growth study, commented via email in response to a draft of this essay:
‘The central problem with our movement is that it does not increase the short-term income of its supporters. Most of the things the world needs to become more sustainable are not profitable. The main tools needed to win our battle are higher taxes and more regulation. Most people hate that… The neoliberals have the advantage of making more money in the short term if they succeed. We do not have this carrot — and neither do our financiers.’
50 years of inaction has made the task harder too. In 1972, the global economy had not yet exceeded what we would now call ‘planetary boundaries’. Today, we have overshot those boundaries, which means the challenge is no longer simply to apply the brakes, but to find reverse gear.
So I do not underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead. It will require very substantial reserves of funding, organisational talent and perseverance. But, to adapt Lewis Powell Jr., whose 1971 memo for the US Chamber of Commerce set out a (largely successful) strategy for transforming America’s politics in a free market direction: human civilisation and the earth system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.
