Matthias Schmelzer 1 ‘Without Growth, Everything is Nothing’: On the Origins of Growthism Abstract: While studies show the incompatibility of continued GDP growth in the Global North with reaching climate targets and while climate activists are increas- ingly criticising the ‘fairy tale of eternal growth’ as a dangerous myth threatening cli- mate security, politics remains thoroughly committed to growth policies. In fact, economic growth is generally understood as a necessary condition for a functioning economy. Yet, how did the pursuit of economic growth become a key priority taken for granted among social scientists, politicians and the general public? This historical chapter provides answers by examining the genealogy of growthism. After analysing the emergence of expansionist ideas in the context of European colonisation and the industrial revolution, the article focuses on the historical making of the modern ‘growth paradigm’ in the post-war period. It analyzes this the growth paradigm as the core ideology stabilizing capitalist societies in the era of the Great Accelleration. The final section concludes by arguing that undoing the hegemony of growth, and thus overcoming not just the political focus on GDP, but the ‘growth paradigm’ as such, is a prerequisite for climate justice. Keywords: economic growth, climate change, ideology, social theory, inequality You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. (Thunberg, 2019) With these powerful words, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist at the time, accused heads of state and government of failure at the UN Climate Summit in September 2019. Instead of ‘empty words’ and the ‘fairy tale of eternal growth,’ they called for a fundamental shift in thinking to implement the policies and solutions needed in light of the climate crisis. With such a critique of economic growth, analyses and posi- tions in the young climate justice movement are currently radicalising. But what exactly is this fairy tale? How did it become so powerful that, one can rightly argue, it is domi- nating high level policy debates all around the globe? And how can it be debunked? Historical research on what has been called the ‘growth paradigm’– a historically constructed and powerfully hegemonic ideology – aims at giving historical and social Matthias Schmelzer, Norbert Elias Center for Transformation Design & Research, University of Flensburg, Germany https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778359-004