A subversive idea: the values of frugality fly in the face of the prevailing economic order

It is doubtful whether many people would subscribe openly and explicitly to the notion that human happiness derives exclusively, or even mainly, from the consumption of goods and services, or that the only, or even main, way of increasing that happiness is to increase consumption. So it is surprising that this notion has come to exercise a near-dictatorial power over public policy, and thence over the way societies are run and over the directions in which they are constrained to develop. How has this situation come about? What results has it had? What would be the rationale for, and some of the implications of, an alternative view of how human happiness comes about, in which frugality plays a significant role?

Clearly all living things need to consume in order to stay alive, and humans are no exception. The use of matter and energy is necessary to sustain our bodies and to protect us from hostile environments. Many, but not all, human societies have also sought to achieve more than this by generating (often through the use of slave or forced labour) surpluses over and above basic consumption needs in order to build civilizations. But until relatively modern times the goal of such civilizations was not simply to increase aggregate consumption. While they seem to have been no less fond of wealth and power than modern societies, they also had complex belief systems which provided them with explanations of human life and purpose that went far beyond accumulation and consumption.

Economic growth: benefits and costs

It was the conceptualization of "the economy" as a macro-social entity, and of economics as a macro-social science, rather than as household management (which is the root meaning of the word) that began to stress the importance of consumption as an end in itself. Adam Smith, often called the father of economics, wrote: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." As the economy has come to dominate public discourse, and as the only goal of economics is to increase consumption, which it views as synonymous with human welfare, this has become the prime objective of modern societies. No matter what the question, in practical politics economic growth is the answer. This primacy is acknowledged in the collective term used to describe Western industrial societies: consumer societies.

At least for those who tried it first the project of increasing consumption has been phenomenally successful in its own terms. Economic output in the early industrialized economies has increased by orders of magnitude over the last 200 years. This has brought many benefits to the populations which have participated in this growth. These benefits should be neither denied nor belittled. They are so obvious to those who do not yet have them that in practically every country of the world their achievement has become the principal social project.

But with these benefits have gone costs. Most obviously the explosion of consumption, coupled with the growth of human population, and the vast increase in the use of energy and materials that have accompanied them, have put unprecedented pressure on natural systems.

Other costs are less easy to measure and quantify but are no less keenly perceived. The processes of capitalistic accumulation through competition in markets, the promotion of which is now generally considered to take priority over all other social objectives, have led to what can only be described as profound social unease. Social institutions, like the family or community, disintegrate or degenerate; antisocial behaviour - crime, vandalism, drug abuse - proliferates; unemployment becomes less cyclical and more structural at higher levels, and threatens previously secure white-collar employees; countries that try to sustain comprehensive systems of social security find them an unsustainable economic burden, those that do not experience sharp increases in inequality; and, finally, social values of trust, integrity and public service are eroded by the increasing identification of personal success with private gain.

Clearly not all these phenomena are equally evident in all countries, but they are ever more apparent in both industrialized and industrializing societies. Not only are they negative effects in themselves, but they threaten to render the growth process unsustainable. Growth in all the old industrial economies is substantially slower in the 1990s than in previous decades. It is at least possible that these economies are beginning to experience social as well as environmental limits to growth. This is potentially traumatic in a society for which economic growth is the be all arid end all of social purpose. Perhaps it is time to ask whether there are other sources of human happiness which could be given a higher social profile and receive greater emphasis in public policy.

Once sources of human happiness apart from consumption start to be identified, they seem so obvious that it is difficult to understand how they were ever allowed to be marginalized by the quest for economic growth or compromised by its consequences. They include: stable, caring families; secure, convivial communities; meaningful and satisfying work; good health; a sense of personal identity and social purpose; a diverse, beautiful and sustainable natural environment; and open, participatory and democratic societies.

Clearly these sources of happiness are interrelated in many different ways. Equally clearly they can be, and have been, adversely affected by a pursuit of economic growth that does not recognize their value. A question then arises as to what concept may be able to temper modern societies' obsession with growth in order to give weight to some of these other sources of human happiness. This is where the idea of frugality may have a role to play.

Downshifting

In a society devoted to consumption, it is hard not to identify frugality with notions of sacrifice, of "doing without" or "giving things up". Such identifications are, however, misplaced. Certainly frugality implies modest consumption and simplicity in personal lifestyle. But these are not motivated by abstract asceticism or self-denial, but from a perception that frugality in consumption permits a greater emphasis to be placed on other aspects of human experience, which are actually more personally rewarding and fulfilling than consumption. Far from entailing self-denial, frugality in this reading is a means of liberation. An all-absorbing concern with consumption is replaced by the pursuit of other values that yield more happiness.

This may seem fanciful, but in fact just such a calculus is at the heart of the growing movement of "downshifting" which has taken place in recent years, especially in the United States. Downshifters are people who, by reducing their employment commitments, and therefore their income, have chosen some or all of the following: to have more time with their families; to contribute to their communities; to do more work of their own choosing; to experience less stress; to reduce their impact on, and/or increase their contact with the natural environment. So much momentum had this movement gathered by 1995 that the Wall Street Journal was openly speculating whether so many people refraining from market-based consumption could have a depressing effect on share prices. Such a concern well expresses how deeply subversive frugality is of the prevailing economic order.

However, a commitment to frugality in order to have the time and attention to concentrate on other sources of human happiness and fulfilment is entirely in line with some recent theories of human motivation and behaviour. For example, the American psychologist and philosopher Abraham Maslow postulated that humans have a hierarchy of needs, in that they seek first to satisfy material needs of comfortable survival and security, then are concerned with social needs, including being accepted and esteemed by their social group, and then direct their energies towards the satisfaction of self-actualization needs, seeking to act in accordance with ideals of love, truth, justice and aesthetics in order to realize a higher human purpose. In this framework increasing material consumption is irrelevant to human fulfilment once a reasonable standard of living has been attained. The striving for further consumption is indicative of psychological fixation and immaturity, a failure to progress to the realization of higher human potentialities.

The Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef's classification of human needs is similar, except that he rejects Maslow's hierarchical arrangement, believing that satisfaction of material and non-material needs is sought simultaneously. He identifies nine fundamental human needs (subsistence, affection, protection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, freedom), satisfaction of which is sought through four modes of experience (being, having, doing, interacting). The means of satisfaction Max-Neef calls "satisfiers". Some satisfiers only satisfy the needs to which they are directed, while others synergistically satisfy other needs as well. Less positively, there are "pseudo-satisfiers", which do not really satisfy the relevant need; "inhibitors", which satisfy one need but simultaneously inhibit the satisfaction of others; and "violators" which militate against the satisfaction even of the need to which they are directed. Examples of these non-satisfiers might be status symbols (which unsuccessfully seek to address the need for identity), over-indulgence in watching television (a leisure pursuit which inhibits creativity) and the arms race (which sought to give both sides protection but ended up making them both less secure). From this perspective overemphasis on material consumption is often evidence of a counter-productive fixation with pseudo-satisfiers, inhibitors or violators. Conversely, embracing frugality can be a means of liberation from negative satisfiers involving material consumption, in order to concentrate on satisfying needs of which consumption is not and cannot be an authentic satisfier.

It seems, therefore, that frugality is a valid, and perhaps a necessary, value of a society that is truly promotive of human fulfilment. This raises questions as to why it occupies little or no space in the social psyches of industrial cultures, and why frugality as a value (if not material deprivation as a fact) is increasingly being driven out of societies worldwide. The answer to the second question is largely historical and has to do with power and empire. Put crudely, cultures geared to increasing material consumption developed more powerful weapons than those which valued frugality, permitting the former to conquer, and colonize or enslave the latter. Decolonization and independence generally failed to restore traditional values of frugality, the residual of which have suffered a further sustained assault from the globalization of Western commerce, culture and consumerism.

Unresolved contradictions

The answer to the first question renders very problematic the rediscovery of frugality in capitalist industrial societies. In such societies, where the achievement of greater material consumption has become the dominant social objective, economic growth is a condition not just of supposed greater human well-being, but also of basic economic stability. Capitalism operates through the generation of economic surplus that accumulates into capital and generates more production through investment. Unless economic growth is in prospect, capitalists will not invest. Economic growth requires increased consumption, even in the richest societies in the world. Such a requirement is hardly consistent with a resurgence of frugality.

Moreover, under capitalism, work is organized as employment. The profitability of business is increased when labour becomes more productive, and the whole thrust of technological development has been and is to raise labour productivity. Yet without economic growth increased labour productivity in a given labour force means greater unemployment, with all its attendant personal misery and social strain. If a new commitment to frugality were to hold back growth in consumption, but the forces increasing labour productivity were to continue to operate, then frugality would have produced unemployment, which is hardly a recipe for human happiness even among the more frugally inclined.

Developing new institutions and ways of working that can resolve the contradictions between frugality as an individual value and the social need under capitalism for investment, economic growth and more jobs, will not be easy. It will only happen, of course, if the quest for frugality becomes a far more widespread and potent social movement than is currently the case even with regard to downshifting in the United States. If greater adherence to the value of frugality is indeed a necessary part of the solution to the environmental destruction and social degeneration brought about by materialistic consumerism, the transition whereby frugality is either accommodated to capitalism, or transforms it into a different social and economic system, is likely to be a rough ride.

PAUL EKINS, of the United Kingdom, is Senior Lecturer in the Environmental Policy Unit of the Department of Economics at Keele University, where his research focuses on the conditions and policies for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy. He is the author of A New World Order (Routledge, 1992) and co-editor of Global Warming and Energy Demand (Routledge, 1995). In 1994 he received the UNEP Global 500 Award "for outstanding environmental achievement".

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