Political Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Political Geography
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
Viewpoint
The case for socialist modernism
Matthew T. Huber
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 13244, USA
The exchange between Robbins and Gómez-Baggethun is a debate
between a middle-ground and strong degrowth perspectives. Here, I
offer an argument for what Paul Robbins calls “socialist modernism”—a
somewhat redundant phrase since socialism has always been
“modernist.” It’s a shame that Breakthrough Institute-style “ecomo­
dernism” – which Robbins (2020: 4) rightly deems “apolitical” – has
taken up all the oxygen and has obscured left articulations, which, I
believe offer a more robust and realistic alternative to degrowth
positions.
Early on, my perspective reflected the wholesale rejection of capi­
talism and industrial modernity. I came to geography seeking to study
what Robbins (2020: 3) claims typifies degrowth projects: “localized
experiments in autonomous economics.” I hoped to uncover cultural
practices that reflected a “protest against Western capitalist civilization
in the name of certain pre-capitalist and even pre-modern values”
(Gómez-Baggethun 2020). But, over time, my study of the “energy/labor
nexus” – the focus of Robbins’s (2020: 3) article – led me to much
different conclusions. We need to confront industrial modernity’s dele­
terious ecological consequences, but historical materialism teaches us
why we can only build a just world on its material foundations.
The first tenet of historical materialism is that our visions of the
future must take seriously the historical and material conditions of the
present. In other words, we can’t simply reject industrial capitalism and
build a new society from scratch. Despite Gómez-Baggethun’s epigraph
quote from The German Ideology, Marx was always clear that capitalism
laid those very conditions for a better society: “The development of the
productive forces of social labour is capital’s historic mission and
justification. For that very reason, it unwittingly creates the material
conditions for a higher form of production” (Marx, [1894] 1981: 368).
The second basic tenet is that history is rooted in labor. Marx ([1867]
1976: 283) said, “[l]abour is, first of all, a process between man and
nature.” My research into energy history has taught me that labor is also
fundamentally a process between humans and energy systems. As Rob­
bins (2020: 2) points out, modern “producers” often face “complex
tradeoffs” between energy and “lost human and animal labor power.”
I think Robbins is speaking narrowly about rural areas where labor is
scarce due to depopulation; globally the situation is not one of
E-mail address: mthuber@maxwell.syr.edu.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102352
Received 26 January 2021; Accepted 26 January 2021
Available online 10 February 2021
0962-6298/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Matthew T. Huber, Political Geography, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102352
“labor scarcity” but what Benanav (2020: 9) describes as a “low demand
for labor.” Much of the world’s population falls into what Mike Davis
calls, “surplus humanity” (Davis, 2006). The “energy/labor nexus” has
much broader historical implications. The industrial revolution was an
energy transition from a society where most production was
accomplished by muscle power to one powered by fossil fueled machinery.
Moreover, as Marx ([1867] 1976: 436) demonstrates, capital has an
“immanent drive” to improve labor productivity (i.e. “relative surplus
value”); one of its most profitable methods is replacing human labor
with machinery. The industrial energy transition was one in which
production itself became “entirely emancipated from the restraints of
human strength” (Marx ([1867] 1976: 499).
Fossil fuel and industrial technology has inescapably remade the
world in which we live. On the one hand, it has vastly expanded our
productive capacity in ways that have severe environmental conse­
quences. Yet, on the other hand, this labor saving technology has liber­
ated our energy system from muscle power. We should be wary of
attempts to romanticize “pre-modern” agrarian life – or “frugal and
egalitarian small-scale societies in which degrowth takes inspiration”
(Gómez-Baggethun 2020: 3). Much of premodern life was based on vi­
olent control over labor – most notably slavery – as a basic necessity of
social reproduction.
It cannot be overstated just how different our more than 50 percent
urban world is now compared with 200 years ago. In the U.S. in 1790, 90
percent of the population worked in agriculture; in 1910, 35 percent;
and today 1.5 percent (Olmstead & Rhode, 2014, p. 168). This is not just
a developed-world story. Across the planet the percentage of labor in
agriculture has been plummeting due to dispossession, mechanization
and other labor-saving inputs like nitrogen fertilizer. Aaron Benanav
(2020: 42) reports:
… [In] the 1980s, the majority of the world’s workers were still in
agriculture; by 2018 that figure had fallen to 28 percent … Thus, the
major destroyer of livelihoods in the twentieth century was not
“silicon capitalism” but nitrogen capitalism.
As Robbins (2020: 3) explains, degrowth proponents seem to think a
M.T. Huber Political Geography xxx (xxxx) xxx

reversal of these trends – “deescalating energy production overall (pre­ so that others may be free. It means we must share out the work that
sumably in favor of labor)” – is both possible and attractive. Yet, so­ remains to be done in a technologically advanced society …
cialists feel the opposite. A just and livable world could only be built with
Yet, Gómez-Baggethun continually offers blanket rejections of “in­
industrial labor-saving technology.
dustrial technology” and instead offers a vision based on “pre-modern
Socialists historically claimed these trends represent an unprece­
values.” What explains this?
dented historic opportunity for real species-wide emancipation. As
If history is driven by class struggle, what class does degrowth
Hadas Thier (2020: 236) affirms, “Capitalism, with its immense pro­
represent? Clearly, it emanates largely from the professional class, and it
ductive capacity, has created for the first time, the ability to wipe out
is “mostly an academic movement” (Vansintjan, 2019). As the editors of
hunger, want, and poverty.” Scarcity is socially enforced under capi­
a recent volume admit, “self-critical reflection … revealed that most of
talism, but socialist politics asserts we have an opportunity to create a
those active in many of the movements are – at least in Germany –
“post-scarcity world” (Benanav, 2020, p. 12). It is true, as
well-educated, middle class, and white” (Burkhart et al., 2020, p. 23). It
Gómez-Baggethun (2020: 3) points out, that hunter-gatherers lived in a
is true that degrowth often claims alliances with a variety of peasant,
kind of “abundance,” but returning 7.7 billion people to such a liveli­
indigenous and anti-colonial movements in the Global South (see,
hood is impossible. While most degrowth visions of the future entail
Hickel, 2020, pp. 4–6). Yet, I would wager most of these allies don’t
small-scale localized agriculture, few contemplate the labor requirements
know what “degrowth” means and very much want access to “industrial
of such a regime – and how this kind of politics could enlist the millions of
technology”— most notably the electricity that remains out of reach for
people required to do the agrarian labor. Small urban gardens are
1.1 billion people (Robbins 2020: 2).
attractive as a hobby or community-builder, but what happens when
A materialist account must also understand degrowth in its historical
they must provision society as a whole?
context: widespread deindustrialization and the massive expansion of
The socialist task today is not only to seize the means of production
professional-class knowledge work after World War II in the Global
for human liberation, but also species survival. This would entail
North. During the peak of working-class power in the 20th century,
restructuring industrial systems to keep the labor saving aspects but
socialist movements were embedded in industrial factory production.
discard the ecologically destructive aspects. Given how much scientific
The prospect of “seizing” the means of production and transforming
knowledge we already have about “industrial ecology,” we should be
capitalist scarcity to socialist abundance seemed viscerally possible.
more confident that such restructuring is possible. The reason our in­
Much of the “proletarian” workforce by definition had directly experi­
dustrial system is not already “green” is not because of some inherent
enced, or had cultural memories of, their agrarian past (and had little
characteristic of industrial production; it is because it is not profitable to
interest in going back).
invest in “green” production, and it is cheaper to externalize ecological
In contrast, degrowth emerged in what Benanav (2020: 56) calls the
costs.
“postindustrial doldrums” where postmodern thought and ecological
Ultimately, the socialist vision of emancipation hinges on the
crisis has led many to reject industrial modernity tout court. These sen­
distinction between the realm of necessity – the labor required to
timents come out of lived reality completely severed from industrial
reproduce life – and the realm of freedom (see Benanav, 2020, pp.
production, which is either automated or offshored and totally invisible
81–94). Crucially, Marx understood freedom, in ecological terms. The
to the professional class. This is why degrowth often aims its critiques
realm of freedom would allow us to “govern the human metabolism with
not at production but at what Hickel (2020: 5) calls “excess consumption
nature in a rational way … accomplishing it with the least expenditure
in the global North” (I would rather direct your attention to excess profits
of energy” (Marx, [1894] 1981: 959). Socialists seek to gain social
in the Global North!). Anxiety over “excess” consumption is the lived
control over production so that ecological constraints – from planetary
experience of the professional middle class. Yet, most working-class
boundaries to resource availability – can be addressed democratically
people even in the Global North, especially in the wake of the
“in a rational way” and not guided by anarchic markets and profit
COVID-19 recession, do not experience excessiveness, but rather face
imperatives.
severe limits on access to necessities—a condition described in the U.S.
But there can be no freedom unless the realm of necessity is taken
context as “living paycheck to paycheck” (Glink and Tamkin, 2020). For
care with the least amount of time and energy. This is why Marx ([1894]
degrowth and other academic critics, production is not something you
1981: 958) felt “the reduction of the working day is the basic prereq­
experience but an object of study– a life-cycle or commodity chain
uisite” of a free society. The realm of freedom is all about a goal
analysis. The result of such study is usually to show the hidden costs
degrowth proponents claim to share – free time and less work. But a so­
embedded in production systems. But these unending studies do little
ciety based on free time would need industrial technology to drastically
more than unhelpfully reprimand all industrial production. The question
reduce the time required in the realm of necessity. This is what the dairy
for me is: how do we recover the socialist project to transform industrial
robot, as described by Robbins, delivered to the bleary-eyed dairy
production?
farmer: “time … to see his grandchildren” (Robbins 2020: 1).
I’m thankful to Robbins for calling attention to the importance of the
Under capitalism “the realm of necessity” is controlled by capital for
labor/energy nexus. Yet, the framing of the debate (is less more? more
profit, leaving billions without access to the basic necessities of life. This
less? more more?) is not helpful. Under capitalism, a small slice of hu­
is the core of capitalism’s injustice: poverty amidst plenty. Capitalism
manity gets to live with more, while the majority are condemned to less.
also shifts drudgery – like harvesting food and cleaning bathrooms – to
The answer is not more or less in the aggregate, but more for the many
the most marginalized. Socialists understand we cannot automate away
and less for the few. Yet, without industrial production everyone would
the realm of necessity. The socialist vision insists the necessary labor
be condemned to much less.
requirements are shared by all. Benanav (2020: 94) is worth quoting at
length:
Declaration of competing interest
Recognition of the fundamental dignity of the 7 billion plus … re­
quires that we no longer agree to relegate some to a life of drudgery I have no conflict of interest.

2
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