Scarcity - A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis

In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind, authors of Scarcity - A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (HUP, 2023). In this book, modern economics is shown to be founded on a particular view of scarcity, in which human beings are said to be possessed of indefinite desires. Society must therefore facilitate endless growth and consumption – regardless of the limitations of the natural environment. Jonsson and Wennerlind examine the intellectual origin and context of this vision of scarcity and demonstrate its historical contingency, even in the age of capitalism. It reflects the triumph of infinite-growth ideologies at the expense of all other conceptions of scarcity that sought to live within nature’s constraints.

Carl Wennerlind is Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson is Associate Professor of History and of Conceptual and Historical Studies in Science at the University of Chicago.