[M]ost of us live an existence defined as much by what we cannot afford as by what we can
~Simon Hannah[1]
The question of scarcity and abundance has always been a central issue for societies. Since the dawn of time humans have been struggling to provide the material means for their survival. But is insufficiency of resources and materials a natural part of the human condition, or do ruling elites enforce it even at moments of abundance? According to economists that support the contemporary status quo, scarcity is unavoidable. Thomas Sowell, for example, suggests that [t]he first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it.[2]
Such a statement seems quite outdated in our day and age as it seems that nowadays humanity is producing much more than it can consume, while insufficiencies still plague our everyday lives. One example is that humanity is currently wasting around 40% of the food it produces[3], while hundreds of millions around the world continue to suffer from hunger and malnutrition[4]. Because of such indications, social ecologist Murray Bookchin has suggested that today, rather than being a natural occurrence, scarcity ‘has to be enforced‘.[5]
This is so because any hierarchical system, like the one we have today, is based on, and constantly reproduces, scarcity. At the very core of hierarchy is the narrowing of the amount of people who have access to decision-making processes. While taking decisions is not a finite resource, it is nonetheless constantly being artificially restricted. As a result, access to decision-making processes has been allowed only to a very narrow layer of the population, part of which one can become based on specific characteristics like possessing wealth or belonging to a specific ethnic group, as well as through very harsh antagonistic processes (such as that of electoral politics, as is the case with parliamentary oligarchies).
Restricting access to resources, goods, and commons, is a major tool for maintaining and deepening dependencies on the ruling elites. By sustaining scarcity, even through artificial means, the managerial classes (of nation-states, as well as of the private sector) ensure that the great majority of a population will remain in a precarious, and thus, submissive state. This leads Bookchin to conclude that:
scarcity is more than a condition of scarce resources: the word, if it is to mean anything in human terms, must encompass the social relations and cultural apparatus that foster insecurity in the psyche.[…] in a hierarchical society it is a function of the repressive limits established by an exploitative class structure.[6]
The world today is structured around institutions and processes that constantly reproduce scarcity. The Nation-State is one such megastructure. Being organized vertically, with all decision-making being restricted to a tiny managerial class that is called government, its very existence is predisposition to scarcity. By laying its borders, every statist entity automatically incorporates certain territories and resources under its authority, effectively excluding communities that find themselves outside of said borders. This is also one of the main reasons behind most wars nowadays – the fight between nation-states for resources.
The paradigm of unlimited economic growth, which is an inseparable part of the dominant today Capital-Nation-State complex, too contributes to the reproduction of scarcity. Constantly striving at commodifying society and nature, it has led to mass extraction worldwide of resources so that the profit-driven system can continue. Thus, finite resources are rapidly being depleted, without having the time to replenish, for the profits of narrow business elites, while the environment around extraction-sites is being reduced to waste, thus making it nearly impossible for local communities to continue living there. In this way both resources and livable environments become scarce.
And of course, private companies can enforce scarcity through patents and intellectual property, in order to artificially maintain high prices. As Wayne Brough suggests, pharmaceutical companies have become adept at “gaming” the patent system to extend exclusivity and monopoly power to maximize profits.[7] In this scheme owners can limit the production of essential goods, like life-saving medications, and through the created insufficiency they can then demand higher prices. An ugly reality that is nurtured by an antagonistic system, which places profits over lives.
In a similar way, artificially created scarcity can make real estate prices go up and generate hefty profits for property owners. Through various schemes like land banking (where developers and investors buy large swaths of land), purposefully keeping properties vacant, short-term rental, etc. housing is sustained in short supply so its role as commodity is further enforced. In one such context, as Andrew Price notes, “housing is a commodity that is in limited supply, and when there is a limited supply, the price rises to curb the demand.”[8]
But even goods that have been produced and sold are not left for long-term use by the buyer. Capitalists ensure, through so-called planned obsolescence, that people will have to buy again the same product in a given moment in the future. In this scheme produced goods are created in such a way so as to be certain that they will not last for too long and will need constant replacement. Different tools and gadgets are made non-upgradable, while smart devices that are deemed ‘outdated’ are often denied vital software updates, thus making them practically unfunctional. In this way the growth-hungry engine of the Capital-Nation-State complex can continue generating profits for the elites, while artificially enforcing scarcity on things that could have been made to last a lifetime.
But today, scarcity is not limited to material goods only. It gradually encompasses different spheres of life. With the capitalist expansion of economism, everything has become a potential commodity that can be parceled and distributed along the dominant market logic – and even our own time is not safe from the ongoing commodification. The phrase “time is money” has become the norm in capitalist societies worldwide. Because of this, David Graeber writes that:
Time came to be widely seen as a finite property to be budgeted and spent, much like money.[…] One began to speak of spending time rather than just passing it, and also of wasting time, killing time, saving time, losing time, racing against time, and so forth.[9]
In order to move towards a post-scarcity society, it is by no means enough to simply produce more. As we have seen, nowadays we produce more than enough for people around the world to lead dignified lives. The problem, as I claim above, is the dominant institutional framework that artificially creates multidimensional scarcity as an innate part of its hierarchical structure. In order to move beyond its limitations, we need to dismantle the institutions that sustain the current system and replace them with new ones that will advance a radically different culture and a new anthropological type. As Bookchin suggests:
“post-scarcity” means fundamentally more than a mere abundance of the means of life: it decidedly includes the kind of life these means support. The human relationships and psyche of the individual in a post-scarcity society must fully reflect the freedom, security and self-expression that this abundance makes possible.[10]
This implies the replacement of the nation-state, the paradigm of unlimited growth, and the profit motive, among others, with the passion for unmediated political participation, ecological sustainability, and mutual aid. The institutional framework that can give way to such values must be based on the greatest possible dissemination of decision-making power, thus empowering local communities connected into decentralized confederations, so that parochial localism will be avoided.
In one such setting there is no space for elites and lobbies that constantly seek to maximize their wealth and authority on the back of toiling masses and nature. Instead, with power being reclaimed by grassroots communities, a sort of communal luxury could be achieved, which according to Eugène Pottier, Paris communard and author of the Internationale, consists of a program in “public beauty”: the enhancement of villages and towns, the right of every person to live and work in a pleasing environment.[11] Actually, it was during the Paris Commune that an attempt was made in this direction, with rebellious communards laying the foundations of a new democratic and egalitarian system, based on revolutionary councils and sectional assemblies, where art and beauty are deprivatized and blended together with everyday life, and not hidden away from the masses for a tiny elite to enjoy.
Daily life is, as Guy Debord suggests, the measure of everything: of the fulfillment or rather the non-fulfillment of human relationships, of the use we make of our time.[12] Without aiming at the root cause of scarcity, we can never hope to get rid of it and lead gratifying lives. For a society of abundance, we need to first and foremost open the sphere of decision-making to every single member of society and radically redistribute power. It is through one such process of self-emancipation that we can see the birth of a post-scarcity society.
[1] Simon Hannah (2023, December 16): Capital is Scarcity. Anti-Capitalist Resistance https://anticapitalistresistance.org/capital-is-scarcity/
[2] Thomas Sowell: Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays (Sanford: Hoover Institution Press Publication, 1993).
[3] https://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/food-waste
[4] https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/alarming-number-people-worldwide-suffer-high-levels-acute-food-insecurity-2024-04-24_en#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20over%20281.6%20million,population%20of%20the%20countries%20considered
[5] Murray Bookchin: Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986), 59.
[6] Murray Bookchin: Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986), 13.
[7] https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/bad-patents-keep-drug-prices-high/
[8] Andrew Price (2016, April 22): Housing unaffordability is the result of artificial scarcity in Strong Towns https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/4/20/affordable-housing
[9] David Greaber: “Punching the Clock” in Harper’s Magazine (June, 2018) [available online at https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/punching-the-clock/][10] Murray Bookchin: Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986), 13.
[11] Kristin Ross (2015, May 04): The Meaning of the Paris Commune in Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2015/05/kristin-ross-communal-luxury-paris-commune/
[12] Guy Debord: “Perspectives for Conscious Modification of Daily Life” in Internationale Situationiste, no. 6 (August 1961), p. 2.