Abstract
Laruffa F (2024) Eco-social policies, capitalism and the horizon of emancipatory politics. Critical Social Policy 0(0). DOI: 10.1177/02610183241262733.
The author wants to notify that in the Onlinefirst version of the article, published on August 1, 2024, the discussion of Milena Büchs' interview gave the impression that she does not use the concept of capitalism in her work, which is not true. In order to be more precise, the corrected version of the article also rapidly mentions some scholars beyond Milena Büchs (Ian Gough and Max Koch) who – among others – employ the concept of capitalism in their work. However, note that the argument in that section of the paper is not concerned with identifying the authors who use and those who do not use the concept of capitalism. Rather, the goal is to highlight a general tendency in the literature on eco-social policies to problematize explicitly growth instead of capitalism, discussing both the risks and the dilemmas that go with this.
At the request of the author, following modifications have been undertaken in the corrected version of the article.
To be sure, theorists of sustainable welfare are deeply critical of capitalist modes of production and consumption. When they criticise growth, they clearly mean capitalist growth: they question growth as a measure of wellbeing, proposing alternative, needs-based conceptions of human flourishing. However, scholars often refrain from discussing capitalism explicitly. In an interview with Milena Büchs – one of the leading scholars in the field – Anita Engels asked her how useful she finds the concept of capitalism in analysing the question of post-growth welfare. Büchs (2021b) was surprised by the question, asserting that she has not been asked this question before and that she needed to think about it. Her answer suggests that maybe avoiding the concept of capitalism is not such a self-conscious choice. However, there is also some evidence that this is done for strategic reasons. After reflection, Büchs (2021b) mentions that the main reason for her avoiding the concept is that capitalism is ‘a loaded term and often there isn’t sufficient space to explain what theoretical baggage you agree or disagree with if you use that term’. In particular, once you employ the word capitalism, ‘people immediately assume you are a Marxist’, and ‘when you say we need to abandon capitalism, people immediately think you are suggesting we need socialism or communism’ – of the type of ‘the Cold War era’.
To be sure, theorists of sustainable welfare are deeply critical of capitalist modes of production and consumption. When they criticise growth, they clearly mean capitalist growth: they question growth as a measure of wellbeing, proposing alternative, needs-based conceptions of human flourishing. However, while early theorists of sustainable welfare such as Ian Gough and Max Koch discussed capitalism explicitly, scholars now often refrain from doing so. This choice can be motivated by different reasons. Milena Büchs – one of the leading scholars in the field – uses the concept of capitalism in her work (including in publications co-authored with Max Koch). She sees growth and capitalism as closely intertwined and, as a consequence, she considers that postgrowth positions are inevitably anti-capitalist. However, she also acknowledges that the term capitalism may be problematic. In an interview in which she was asked to reflect on the use of the term capitalism in debates on sustainable welfare, Büchs (2021b) argues that one problem is that capitalism is ‘a loaded term and often there isn’t sufficient space to explain what theoretical baggage you agree or disagree with if you use that term’. In particular, once you employ the word capitalism, ‘people immediately assume you are a Marxist’, and ‘when you say we need to abandon capitalism, people immediately think you are suggesting we need socialism or communism’ – of the type of ‘the Cold War era’.
For example, while Büchs was still sceptical about employing the concept of capitalism in her interview published in 2021, in 2023 she co-authored a paper that explicitly discusses eco-social policies in terms of ‘anti-capitalism’ and ‘eco-socialism’ (Nenning et al., 2023).
For example, Nenning et al. (2023) explicitly discuss eco-social policies in terms of ‘anti-capitalism’ and ‘eco-socialism’.