Andrew Packman: ‘Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis’ by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind set out a comparison of ideas about the use of natural resources and economic organisation. They term these as ‘Cornucopian’, being the active mastery of nature by mankind, and ‘Finitarianism’, which emphasises the limitations of humanity over nature and the importance of constraint and moderation. They trace these ideas from Aristotle to Marx and Keynes. Jonsson builds here on his work on the impact of Enlightenment ideas on the Scottish Highlands from which he developed ideas about cornucopian and pessimistic outlooks. Wennerlind’s previous work has centred on David Hume, while they have previously both contributed essays to a collection on mercantilism.

Their view is that cornucopian theories are inimical to sustainable life on the planet and that constraint on economic activities is needed if climate change is not to have an irreversible adverse impact. The way that ideas about the relationship between human needs and natural resources are summarised, with the tone set by the assurance that palaeolithic foragers ‘always had more than they needed’.

While there is much here of interest, it is unfortunately undermined by a lack of rigour when dealing with less familiar material, in places by unnecessary arrogance and is arguably overly simplistic. Jonsson and Wennerlind are historians of the Enlightenment, with a focus on political economy, and they are clearly most at home when writing about these subjects. It is unsurprising that they draw most of their examples from England but might perhaps exercise a little more caution when outside their area of expertise. They refer to the Poor Laws and Sumptuary Legislation as examples of finitarianism harnessing desire for ‘moral and spiritual ends’. They describe sumptuary legislation as being introduced ‘to regulate consumer desire’ and the poor laws as providing ‘parish welfare’. While broken windows at the Carlton Club were doubtless irritating, to cite the riots in the west end of London in 1886 as an attack on industrial capitalism alongside the Russian revolution of October 1917 is surprising. They are perhaps on their weakest ground in their understanding of how land tenure changed in England and exaggerate the nature and the impact of sixteenth century enclosures. They describe land as being transformed from the ‘existential and spiritual foundation of the community’ into ‘exclusionary and alienable pieces of property’. The active land market which has been extensively explored by medieval historians, the impact of the Black Death and the complexity of changing forms of tenure are ignored to suggest a transition from virtue to vice, which is not persuasive. While one could regard the frailty of their grasp of English history, outside their area of expertise, as not being fatal to their argument, there is a sense of material being mined at a superficial level and with a limited grasp of context.

Perhaps more serious is the tone of arrogance which characterises this work. The authors claim to have undertaken ‘historical detective work’ which has uncovered ‘this hidden history of scarcity’. This is difficult to reconcile with their having written for ‘students and other young people’. Given that they have summarised the work of More, Luther, Bacon, Locke, Swift, Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Mill, Burke, Ricardo, Malthus, Marx and Keynes, one is tempted to compare this to an introductory course on political economy rather than anything obviously original. It is helpful to show how ideas have developed over time, but to claim that they have uncovered hidden material does not aid their credibility. It would have been much better to have recognised that people have debated the ways in which natural resources are exploited for an extended period and to use that debate to contribute to the current challenges. The impression is created of academics responding to the pressure to publish by placing readily available material in the context of climate change, to make it topical, and being tempted to claim more for their contribution than can be justified.

However, this should not detract from the fundamental weakness of this book. The central thesis is that unconstrained human demand, facilitated by the wickedness of capitalism, has brought the planet to the verge of disaster. There is no recognition of the extraordinary improvement in living standards since the industrial revolution. Many would accept that the unconstrained use of fossil fuels has had a serious and perhaps disastrous impact on the planet, but to characterise their use as reflecting greed and wickedness, without recognising the benefits to humanity, means that this book does little to advance the debate about the trade-offs between prosperity and sustainability. To suggest that capitalism ‘has brought about rapid and massive changes that threaten to overwhelm the earth system’, rather than recognising that, independent of the economic system, fossil fuels had the capacity to increase human productivity, is to advance a political agenda with shallow support. In a world of short life expectancy and widespread poverty, it is surely unreasonable to blame mankind for having made use of the fuels available. To conflate their use with criticism of the economic system which has arguably been most commonly found on the planet is unhelpful.

Their conclusion is, perhaps unsurprisingly, that we need to give up the idea of perpetual economic growth. They see this as the exorcising of cornucopianism from culture to be replaced by a focus on repair aiming at ‘universal flourishing within planetary constraints’. To be fair to the authors, they recognise both that ‘degrowth’, presumably in the West, to balance growth elsewhere, would require ‘immense effort and creativity’. However, they fail to engage with how this might be done.

The failure to engage with the challenge of an industrialising Asia being unsurprisingly unwilling to deny themselves the benefits of fossil fuels that facilitated the economic growth of Europe and North America undermines the value of this book. Not everyone will accept the authors’ analysis, but many will be interested in how a genuinely sustainable world might be achieved. Perhaps most surprising is their failure to include the contribution of Garrett Hardin in his well known, if contested, article from 1968 ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. The challenge of how the sustainability of the planet is to be ensured, while individual nations seek to prosper, is arguably the key challenge for the next generation. This book is a missed opportunity to advance that debate. A little less grandstanding and a little more thought would have been welcome.

 

‘Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis’ by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind was published in 2023 by Harvard University Press (ISBN: 978-0-67-498708-1). 304pp.


Andrew spent his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers where he was a partner for more than 25 years. He led a variety of the firm’s businesses both in the UK and globally, with a focus on the pharmaceutical industry. He also led the firm’s work on explaining corporate taxation to civil society and the public. He is now studying for a masters in history which he combines with being a trustee at the London Handel Society.