A Human Rights Based Political Economy for a De-growth Based Equitable Development

Abstract

Within a scenario of de-growth many may conclude that development in general, and equitable development in particular, may become outdated concepts and aspirations. In their minds this would immediately put the de-growth philosophy amidst the reactionary ideas and would favour world wide resistance to de-growth. The purpose of this paper is to explore institutional principles and tools that allow the conciliation between de-growth and equitable development, namely within economic thought. In this respect we will present human-rights based political economy as an institutional tool of this sort. We will show how a human-rights based political economy can at the same time respect ecological sustainability and social equity. The main reason for that consists in the fact that within a human-rights based political economy, welfare is not the result of economic growth, as within traditional political economy, but of justice. The main objectives of development will be attained, therefore, not through growth but through redistribution of resources. In this paper more specific issues will be discussed by examining the human right to work. The main aspect which will be stressed is that within a human-rights frame full employment becomes disconnected from both growth and labour market deregulation. It will be shown that traditional policies not only do not solve unemployment but are also not environmentally and socially sustainable. The only policy that is not contradictory with either human rights and de-growth is work sharing by decreasing the length of the work day. When properly enforced this policy has, indeed, historically shown to be the only one that has created jobs qualifying to right-to-work specifications.