From growth to post-growth – lessons from Keynes

This article originally featured on the LSE British Politics blog on 26^th January 2026, and has been reposted under CC BY 4.0.

The Government is focused on economic growth, a goal that John Maynard Keynes would have approved of. But as David Spencer reminds us, Keynes didn’t think economic growth should go on forever. Once productivity had improved beyond a certain level, Keynes envisaged a post-growth era in which people worked less and enjoyed leisure more. Remembering that growth isn’t an end in itself should be a guide not just for a utopian future, but for drawing up economic policy today.

In a context where unemployment is rising and the economy is stagnating, it is appropriate and useful to return to the original writings of Keynes. As is well-known, Keynes wanted to grow the economy. He favoured growth not as an end in itself but as a means to resolve unemployment. Full employment – a product of a strongly growing economy – would prevent misery from a life without paid work.

Yet, as I argue, there is another side to Keynes – one that reflects his beliefs in progress beyond growth and beyond the economy as we know it today. The Keynes of the long-run can still inspire us today in thinking about a future beyond that immediately on the horizon. His ideas can remind us of the work still to be done in making the economy fit for people, not just for the accumulation of material wealth.

In the short-run, we all should work more

Keynes stressed the dysfunctional nature of the capitalist economy. The view of “classical economists” that the economic system would self-equilibrate at full employment lacked creditability. Instead, in reality, the economy could get stuck at an equilibrium with involuntary unemployment. Keynes identified the problem of a lack of consumption and investment in causing firms not to hire labour. This lack meant that workers could be out of work through no fault of their own.

The restoration of full employment could not be achieved without state action. The state had a particular role to play in managing demand levels. Redistributing income from rich to poor might help with the increase in demand by putting money in the hands of those who were most likely to spend it. The state could also invest directly in the economy – say by building more houses. This would create new jobs and stimulate demand in the economy.

In the very long run, Keynes hoped for a future where constant work would be replaced with ample leisure.

Keynes even thought, perhaps half-jokingly, that people could be employed digging holes and filling them in again – the work didn’t have to be productive, as long as it gave people incomes they could then spend on goods and services.

It was preferable for Keynes, however, if workers could be employed in socially useful activities like house-building. A lesson for the present Government, given contemporary interest in building new houses: state investment can help to both raise growth and reduce unemployment.

In the long-run, we should all work less

Yet, while Keynes favoured more people being in work to prevent unemployment, he also believed in a future where full employment would be replaced with “full unemployment”. That is, in the very long run, he hoped for a future where constant work would be replaced with ample leisure.

Growth, for Keynes, was a necessary evil. It was needed to resolve unemployment in the short-run. But growth would also enable society to spend more time away from work. Keynes envisaged the proceeds of growth being used not for more work but for more leisure.

His vision of the long-run was set out in his 1930 essay, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”. Much like us today, Keynes confronted an uncertain economic and political environment. He was, however, optimistic about the future. Provided growth could be restored and the fruits of this growth could be shared equitably in society, the economic possibilities for future generations would be positive. Concretely, a “shared capitalism” could bring about higher living standards and shorter working hours.

Keynes assumed different things in predicting this future. He assumed, firstly, the equitable distribution of the rewards of growth. This neared achievement under Keynesian policies during the post-war period, but it has disappeared under the type of capitalism that has evolved since the 1970s. The shift away from Keynes has prevented the realisation of the future he coveted.

Keynes assumed, secondly, that consumption wants were finite. Once our “absolute needs” were met, he thought we would all want to use the economic benefits of growth to cut working hours. Such was his confidence that Keynes predicted a fifteen-hour working week by 2030.

What Keynes got right was the long-run growth in productivity that has driven rises in living standards. Unfortunately, he overlooked the tendency for our appetite for more consumption to grow not wane, thanks to factors like mass advertising. Contra Keynes, many of us have continued to work and consume more, despite earning more.

The higher costs of basic goods, notably housing but also increasingly health and education, has also kept us at work longer than Keynes and our ancestors would have hoped and expected. The need to work remains acute for most of us.

Keynes, while no socialist, believed in a post-growth, post-work and post-capitalist future.

Keynes had in mind us reaching a certain level of income with further growth in productivity allowing us to work less. This assumed we would come to be satisfied with what we have while also meeting our basic needs. In the present, the challenge of low productivity coupled with high inflation acts as a barrier to us meeting our wants and needs.

But Keynes’s long-run vision remains seductive and insightful. It reminds us of a world yet to be won: one where the “normal” activities of capitalism – working for wages and investing for higher capital returns – are overcome. Keynes argued that these activities were required to grow the economy and eliminate unemployment, but he believed that they could and should be replaced by higher-level activities in the future.

For Keynes, following his involvement in the Bloomsbury Group, the expansion of leisure entailed the increase in opportunity to create great art – in the future, we would become poets and artists rather than workers and strive for beauty not for pay. Nowadays, our leisure time might be filled with watching streaming services like Netflix rather than writing poetry and painting. There are questions here about the meaning of leisure – now and in the future – that test the limits of Keynes’s vision.  

Keynes, while no socialist, believed in a post-growth, post-work and post-capitalist future. This future would evolve spontaneously out of capitalism, and would spell the beginning of a new era of human flourishing. His radical message was that a better society existed beyond capitalism, even if he couldn’t articulate fully and accurately what that would look like.

Funding the future

One final point can be made. Recently, the ESRC has proclaimed that it would set a “higher bar” for bids focused on de-growth. This is partly on the basis that “growth” is an essential prerequisite to creating the kind of society we want to live in. Drawing on Keynes, we can see the merit of this argument. Growth is vital in periods, like now, where unemployment is increasing. But Keynes also shows us how we must strive for futures where growth is tamed and ended. An essential prerequisite to creating a better society is overcoming the growth imperative. We must aim for an economy that supports the quality of life over endless growth. From a social science and reform perspective, we can still learn from Keynes about how to remake the economy in the long-run.