New Afterword for The Divide
The Divide was first published in 2017. In the years since, many people have written to me, or approached me during public events, to share the impact it had on them. I am always grateful for this. And yet as a researcher, I look back on the text now and wish that it could include all that I have learned over the past seven years. Knowledge moves quickly, and I want to make it available to readers. My goal with The Divide was to serve as an accessible introduction. I hope it continues to do that for readers. But – until Penguin is ready to produce a new edition – here are some resources that I encourage people to explore for more information and new knowledge.
1. On the rise of capitalism in Europe
The Divide briefly describes the violent processes of enclosure and dispossession that accompanied the rise of capitalism in Europe during the long 16th century. This description is improved with new information and references in the opening chapters of Less is More. It describes how worker revolutions brought down feudalism and improved human welfare, before elites responded with enclosure and other interventions to push wages back down and restore working-class subordination.
2. On the human toll of colonialism and capitalist integration
The Divide describes the devastating suffering that was inflicted on people in Asia, Africa and the Americas as they were colonized and forcibly integrated into the capitalist world-economy. In a recent article for World Development, we assessed this history more systematically by looking at empirical data on real wages, human height and mortality rates from the 16th century onward. We found that the rise of capitalism and its imposition around the world was associated with a striking decline in social indicators, with wages often crashing to below subsistence and mass mortality crises occurring in several regions. In the global South, recovery only began during the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of progressive and radical anti-colonial movements that reclaimed control over national resources and production.[1]
This history offers an important counterpoint to dominant narratives claiming that capitalism rescued people from widespread extreme poverty. Quite the opposite is true: capitalism caused widespread extreme poverty, and progress in human development was brought by progressive social movements and governments in the post-colonial era. This history is also captured in Amya Kumar Bagchi’s book Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital.
3. On neo-colonial backlash
The Divide describes how the USA, Britain, France and other imperialist powers intervened violently to stop the rise of progressive and radical governments in the global South in the mid-20th century, deposing and sometimes assassinating progressive leaders in coups, and imposing structural adjustment programmes to reverse their progressive economic reforms. This history has since been described yet further in several excellent new books: The Jakarta Method (by Vincent Bevin), which tells the story of the bloody anti-communist crusades perpetrated across the global South by the US and its allies, and Capital and Imperialism (by Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik), which describes the economic mechanisms of the imperialist world economy past and present. I also recommend Imperialism in the 21st Century (by John Smith), and Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism (by Intan Suwandi).
4. On drain from the global South
The Divide describes how the wealthy economies of the global North appropriate much more from the global South than they give in aid. In recent years, researchers have quantified this drain more comprehensively, building on methods first described by early theorists of “unequal exchange”. My colleagues and I have contributed to this work in several recent articles. In one, we describe how growth in the global North relies on a large net appropriation of labour, land, energy and materials from the global South, embodied in traded goods. This appropriation is worth more than $10 trillion per year, represented in Northern prices, which would be enough to end extreme poverty in the global South 70 times over.[2] This drains the South of resources necessary for development, it perpetuates mass deprivation, and it means that the social and ecological costs of Northern growth are overwhelmingly suffered in the South.
5. On the colonial dimensions of ecological breakdown
Since writing The Divide, my research has focused increasingly on the crisis of climate change and ecological breakdown. In recent papers, my colleagues and I have reported on data showing that the rich countries of the global North are overwhelmingly responsible for causing this crisis, while the consequences (in terms of social and ecological damages) fall hardest on the South. We can see this clearly in terms of emissions: the global North is responsible for 92% of all emissions in excess of the safe planetary boundary – in other words, the emissions that are causing climate damages.[3] And high-income countries are responsible for 74% of cumulative excess material use since 1970, which is driving biodiversity loss and other forms of ecological breakdown.[4] This represents processes of colonization – of atmosphere and ecosystems – and the consequences are playing out along colonial lines. In a recent paper we also find that high-income countries have overshot their fair-shares of the Paris Agreement carbon budget, and are set to owe $192 trillion in compensation to countries in the global South.[5]
6. On strategies for decolonization
In the penultimate chapter of The Divide, I describe some of the major structural changes that we must fight for in order to make the world economy fairer and ensure that global South countries have pathways to real sovereign development. I still stand by many of these principles, and I believe that progressive political movements in the global North should adopt them as core demands. But I also believe it is naïve to assume that the imperialist powers will agree to these changes any time soon. Global South countries should not just wait around to be decolonized. They can take active steps toward unilateral decolonization, to achieve economic sovereignty. We have developed this approach together with my colleague Ndongo Samba Sylla,[6] whose writings I recommend. As for development strategy, it will require using industrial policy and planning to overcome the obstacles presented by capitalism in the periphery.[7] The task of progressive social movements in the global North is to align with and support Southern struggles for emancipation and self-determination.
7. On “degrowth” and global justice
In the final chapter of The Divide, I explore an idea that I only really engaged during the final weeks of writing the book – an idea called “degrowth”. Degrowth describes how the wealthy economies of the global North need to reduce their use of the planet’s resources in order to stop ecological breakdown and also end imperialist appropriation from the global South, and how this can be done while at the same time improving people’s lives and achieving better social outcomes. The idea was new to me and still somewhat underdeveloped at the time. In the years since, it has advanced through a large scientific literature, international reports, and several new books. For readers who are new to the concept of degrowth, or who find it confusing or challenging, I wrote a full accessible account in my recent book Less is More. I have also written several articles which elaborate the empirical basis.[8],[9],[10],[11],[12] Ultimately, for me, degrowth is not just about ecology. It is about economic justice. It is about decolonization.[13] It is about the urgent need for post-capitalist transition.[14]
The changes we need are not reformist but revolutionary. Revolutions require liberating first our imagination – to think beyond the constraints of our existing economy and its ideologies, and to envision a post-capitalist world. But they also require the hard work of organizing and struggle.
Jason Hickel, March 2024
Written for the Korean translation of The Divide and updated.
[1] Sullivan, D., & Hickel, J. (2023). Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century. World development. See also: Hickel, J. and Sullivan, D. (2023). Capitalism, poverty, and the case for democratic socialism. Monthly Review.
[2] Hickel, J., Dorninger, C., Wieland, H., & Suwandi, I. (2022). Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015. Global Environmental Change. See also: Hickel, J., Sullivan, D., & Zoomkawala, H. (2021). Plunder in the post-colonial era: quantifying drain from the global south through unequal exchange, 1960–2018. New Political Economy, 26(6).
[3] Hickel, J. (2020). Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(9), e399-e404.
[4] Hickel, J., O’Neill, D. W., Fanning, A. L., & Zoomkawala, H. (2022). National responsibility for ecological breakdown: A fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017. The Lancet Planetary Health, 6(4), e342-e349.
[5] Fanning, A. L., & Hickel, J. (2023). Compensation for atmospheric appropriation. Nature Sustainability, 6(9), 1077-1086.
[6] Sylla, N., and Hickel, J. (2024). Proposals for unilateral decolonization and economic sovereignty. Progressive International. See also Hickel, J. (2022). How to achieve full decolonization. New Internationalist.
[7] Hıckel, J., & Sullıvan, D. (2023). Capitalism, global poverty, and the case for democratic socialism. Monthly Review, 75(3), 99-113.
[8] Vogel, J., & Hickel, J. (2023). Is green growth happening? An empirical analysis of achieved versus Paris-compliant CO2–GDP decoupling in high-income countries. The Lancet Planetary Health, 7(9), e759-e769.
[9] Hickel, J., & Kallis, G. (2020). Is green growth possible?. New political economy, 25(4), 469-486.
[10] Hickel, J., Brockway, P., Kallis, G., Keyßer, L., Lenzen, M., Slameršak, A., … & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2021). Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios. Nature Energy, 6(8), 766-768.
[11] Hickel, J. (2021). What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification. Globalizations, 18(7), 1105-1111
[12] Hickel, J., Kallis, G., Jackson, T., O’Neill, D. W., Schor, J. B., Steinberger, J. K., … & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2022). Degrowth can work—here’s how science can help. Nature, 612(7940), 400-403.
[13] Hickel, J. (2021). The anti-colonial politics of degrowth. Political Geography, 88.
[14] Hickel, J. (2023). The double objective of democratic ecosocialism. Monthly Review.
New Preface for the Divide
(link here)
Look around and it is impossible to ignore the fact that our world is torn apart by brutal inequality. Some countries enjoy unimaginable material affluence while others suffer mass deprivation, with billions lacking basic necessities like nutritious food and clean water. The injustice stares every sane observer in the face. But where does it come from? This book shows that global inequality is not a natural phenomenon. It is not the inevitable feature of a normal economy. It is the result of the particular kind of economy that dominates our world. Capitalism.
The word capitalism tends to cause immediate confusion. For most people it calls to mind things like businesses, markets and trade: the ability of people to produce and sell things to one another. Who could possibly be against this? But in fact businesses, markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is a relatively recent system, having emerged in Western Europe only about 500 years ago. If one was to point to the single most important defining feature of this particular economic system, it would be that it is fundamentally anti-democratic.
Let me clarify what I mean. Yes, many of us live in electoral systems where we select political leaders from time to time. We have something approximating political democracy, as corrupt and imperfect as it may be. But when it comes to the economy, the system of production, not even the shallowest illusion of democracy enters. Production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital, meaning large corporations, the major financial firms, and the 1% who own the lion’s share of investable assets. Capital determines what gets produced, how our labour and resources shall be used, and for whose benefit. And for capital, the purpose of production is not to meet people’s needs, or to achieve social progress. The purpose is to maximize and accumulate profit – that is the overriding objective.
Capital seeks constantly increasing accumulation. To achieve this, it needs to cheapen the prices of inputs as much as possible (labour, land, energy, and materials), and maintain those prices at a low level. It also needs a constantly increasing supply of these inputs. This process cannot go on for very long within a bounded national economy. If you over-exploit your domestic working class, sooner or later you are going to face a revolution, or a crisis of overproduction. And if you over-exploit your domestic environment, eventually you will degrade the ecological base upon which all production relies.
To overcome these contradictions, capitalism always requires an “outside,” external to itself, where it can cheapen labor and nature with impunity and appropriate them on a vast scale; an outside where it can “externalize” social and ecological damages, where rebellions can be contained, and where it does not have to negotiate with local grievances or demands. This is where the colonies come in. From the origins of capitalism in the late 15th century, growth in the “core” of the world economy (Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan) has always depended on the mass appropriation of labor and resources from the “periphery” (Latin America, Asia and Africa). There was no lag between the rise of capitalism and the imperial project. Capitalism has always required an imperial arrangement.
This was obvious during the first several hundred years of capitalist history, which I detail in this book. European colonizers went about destroying self-sufficient industries in the periphery and forcibly re-organizing production to serve consumption and accumulation in the core. Historians have documented that extraordinary quantities of value were siphoned out of the periphery and into the core, subjecting the former to deprivation, misery, and mass mortality while furnishing the latter with unprecedented wealth.
Then, in the middle of the 20th century, a revolution occurred. Anti-colonial movements succeeded in overthrowing their occupiers and immediately set about reclaiming their productive forces. Their objective was to organize production around local human needs and national development. And they met with remarkable success. But the core powers were not pleased. Sovereign development meant that people of the global South were producing for themselves and increasing their consumption of Southern resources. This reduced the share of resources available to the core – making these inputs more expensive – and capital accumulation became much more difficult to achieve.
To solve this crisis, the core powers – led by the US, Britain, and France – intervened.In many cases they used military force to overthrow independent governments and install compliant regimes in their place. On top of this, beginning in the 1980s, they also imposed structural adjustment programmes across the global South, which dismantled sovereign industries, re-cheapened labour and resources, and re-organized production around exports to the core in subordinate positions with global commodity chains. Structural adjustment restored the imperial arrangement without the need for occupation.
The result of this arrangement is that today – according to new empirical research that is not included in the main text of this book – the growth of affluence in the core continues to rely on a massive net-appropriation of labour, resources and goods from the global South, worth trillions of dollars per year.[1] The situation is quite extreme: the global South contributes 80% of the resources and 90% of the labour that fuels the capitalist world economy. But these productive capacities, which could be used to provision nutritious food, good housing, and healthcare for everyone in the region, are mobilized instead to churn out plantation crops and sweatshop products for corporations and consumers in the core.
Recent research has found that we have more than enough productive capacity to end poverty forever and ensure good lives for all 8 billion people on this planet – with even less resources and energy than we presently use, thus also achieving our ecological goals[2],[3] – if production was organized around human needs rather than capital accumulation. But to get there the global majority must win democratic control over the means of production. That is the fight. That is the future we must struggle to achieve. I hope this book brings inspiration toward that end.
Jason Hickel, March 2024
Written for the Korean translation of The Divide
[1] Hickel, J., Dorninger, C., Wieland, H., & Suwandi, I. (2022). Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015. Global Environmental Change, 73, 102467.
[2] Millward-Hopkins, J., Steinberger, J. K., Rao, N. D., & Oswald, Y. (2020). Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario. Global Environmental Change, 65, 102168.
[3] Vélez-Henao, J. A., & Pauliuk, S. (2023). Material requirements of Decent Living Standards. Environmental Science & Technology, 57(38), 14206-14217.
