Climate change, critical theory and economic democracy: ‘Small is Beautiful’ and the challenge to growth

Abstract

This article brings ‘Small is Beautiful’ into dialogue with Frankfurt School critical theory to explore reshaping capitalism considering the climate crisis. Nature’s subjugation to capitalist instrumental reason is discussed in terms of Schumacher’s arguments. The article contends that market-based emission reduction schemes privatise Earth’s life-sustaining capacity and underscores how current lifestyles depend on growth whilst commodifying environmental concerns. Capitalism, it is argued, relies on producing a continued demand for new products, requiring continued growth to sustain the ‘treadmill of production’. Technology disrupts markets but not capitalism, further serving accumulation. Economic democracy, as in Schumacher’s argument, is proposed as a solution which redirects economic activity by combining the worker/producer duality of the individual but notes the challenge of changing the growth-based status quo on which we rely despite the existential threat it presents.