"The case for degrowth" (Polity Press, 2020) By Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D'Alisa and Federico Demaria

Abstract

Buy it for 8 euro here (discout code FAL20): https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509535620

Covid-19 has lain bare the fragility of existing economic systems. Any decline in market activity threatens systemic collapse. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To be more resilient to future crises –pandemic, climatic, financial, or political – we need to build systems capable of scaling back production in ways that do not cause loss of livelihood or life. We need to make the case for degrowth.

Degrowth is not simply a contraction of the economy, it is living meaningfully, enjoying simple pleasures, working less, and sharing and relating more with others and working less, in more equal societies. Its goal is to purposefully slow things down in order to minimize harm to humans and earth systems. The world will change after the virus, and there will be struggles over which paths to take. But the time is ripe for us to refocus on what really matters: not GDP, but the health and wellbeing of our people and our planet. In a word, degrowth.

You can buy it here for 8 euros, with the discount code: FAL20

Find here a short article about the book by the authors in Open Democracy: “The case for degrowth in a time of pandemic” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/case-degrowth-time-pandemic/

We hope you like it. In case, please help us out with dissemination! 🙂

Best,

the authors (Giorgos, Susan, Giacomo and Federico)

Giorgos Kallis is ICREA Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Susan Paulson is Professor at the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida.
Giacomo D’Alisa is a FCT post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra.
Federico Demaria is Serra Hunter lecturer in ecological economics and political ecology, University of Barcelona.

REVIEWS:
“COVID-19 is the symptom; the profit-driven destruction of natural and social habitants is the disease. There’s only one cure consistent with global social justice. Read this eloquent and urgent book and find out what it is.”
Mike Davis, University of California and author of Ecology of Fear and Planet of Slums

“This is a major contribution to the current debate on growth and degrowth. The authors lay bare the innards of each and show us the importance of degrowth. Wellbeing, equity, and sustainability are key vectors organizing this text. These should be understood in the fullness of their capacities to move us out of our current modernity –a decaying order that is today still dominant. But history has shown us across the centuries that no system of power can last for ever, and nor will our current system. Indeed, it is busy destroying itself.”
Saskia Sassen, Columbia University and author of Expulsions

“Degrowth is one of the most important ideas of the 21st century. Here it is in compact form. Clear, timely, urgent. Don’t miss this book.”
Jason Hickel, London School of Economics and author of The Divide and Less is More

“Is there life after economic growth? Kallis and his co-authors have taken up the baton from the early proponents of degrowth and created a vibrant, accessible discourse for the 21st Century. The Case for Degrowth provides the why, the where and the how of a better economy and a richer society. Its vision is needed now more than ever.”
Tim Jackson, Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity and author of Prosperity without Growth

“The COVID pandemic is laying bare dysfunctions of the growth model and the urgency of a pathway to sanity, climate protection, and security for all. This wonderful and accessible introduction by leading degrowth scholars is a vital resource for anyone interested in viable alternatives, rooted in cooperative economic relations and respect for planetary limits.”
Juliet Schor, author of After the Gig: how the sharing economy got hijacked and how to win it back

“A superb account of why capitalist economies fail life on Earth, even as peoples initiatives in community sharing already revive joy and hope for our futures. This small book teaches economics like no other. It will reply to your doubts about change. It should be on every public library shelf and every syllabus; give copies to your friends.”
Ariel Salleh, activist and editor of Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women write Political Ecology

“The case for degrowth as argued in this book is so well rounded and compelling that it is difficult to imagine how progressive politicians could avoid integrating the many policies advocated here into their party manifestos . . . unless of course they cannot escape the growth mentality that has suffocated progressive policies for decades. But even in this case, the book offers ways of changing that mentality through commoning and collective action.”
Massimo De Angelis, University of East London, editor of The Commoner, and author of Omnia Sunt Communia

“The degrowth movement now has its Manifesto. A rigorous, practical analysis that will guide grassroots and institutional politics so they can realize a transformation akin to degrowth and turn the current global crisis into a new opportunity and pathway towards more sustainable and carrying societies.”
Isabelle Anguelovski, Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ) and author of Neighborhood as Refuge

“By this book, degrowth finally becomes adult. No longer a simple game of hide-and-seek with the growth regime. No longer a vague illusion postponed until the advent of a catastrophe that never comes. No longer a generous experimentation among circles of virtuosos nor an extreme form of resilience by the excluded from the banquet of the consumer society, but a mature and innovative political project, facing the hegemony challenge in the open field of the social arena. The authors are the best fruits of the degrowth movement: activists at the forefront and at the same time leading scholars.”
Onofrio Romano, University of Bari and author of Towards a society of degrowth

“Decrecer es la consigna. Más y más crecimiento económico en un mundo finito es una locura. Más todavía si éste ahonda las diferencias sociales, las frustraciones y la infelicidad. No podemos mantener ese ritmo despiadado de acumulación del que afloran múltiples pandemias, como la del coronavirus. No hay duda, requerimos una desaceleración programada de la actividad económica para reencontrarnos armónicamente con los ritmos de la Madre Tierra, así como para construir otras sociedades basadas en la diversidad, la sostenibilidad, la pluralidad y la reciprocidad; bases fundamentales del Pluriverso: un mundo donde quepan todos los mundos posibles que aseguren una vida digna a humanos y no humanos.”
Alberto Acosta, former president of the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador and author of Buen Vivir

The Case for Degrowth

Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria
The relentless pursuit of economic growth is the defining characteristic of contemporary societies. Yet it benefits few and demands monstrous social and ecological sacrifice. Is there a viable alternative? How can we halt the endless quest to grow global production and consumption and instead secure socio-ecological conditions that support lives worth living for all?

In this compelling book, leading experts Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa and Federico Demaria make the case for degrowth – living well with less, by living differently, prioritizing wellbeing, equity and sustainability. Drawing on emerging initiatives and enduring traditions around the world, they advance a radical degrowth vision and outline policies to shape work and care, income and investment that avoid exploitative and unsustainable practices. Degrowth, they argue, can be achieved through transformative strategies that allow societies to slow down by design, not disaster.

Essential reading for all concerned citizens, policy-makers, and students, this book will be an important contribution to one of the thorniest and most pressing debates of our era.

More Info

September 2020
140 pages
Available Formats: Hardback £35.00 €39.60; Paperback £9.99 €11.30; Open eBook £8.49 €9.99

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. A case for degrowth
2. Sacrifices of growth
3. Making changes on the ground
4. Path-breaking reforms
5. Strategies for mobilization
Frequently asked questions
Notes

Full text

The Case for
Degrowth
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Giorgos Kallis,
Susan Paulson,
Giacomo D’Alisa
Federico Demaria
The Case for
Degrowth
polity
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Copyright © Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa, and Federico
Demaria 2020
The right of Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa, and Federico
Demaria to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance
with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
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Suite 300
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3562-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3563-7(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in 11 on 15 Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International Limited
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external
websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been
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For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
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v
Contents
Preface vi
Acknowledgments xvi
1 A Case for Degrowth 1
2 Sacrifices of Growth 24
3 Making Changes on the Ground 44
4 Path-Breaking Reforms 65
5 Strategies for Mobilization 87
Frequently Asked Questions 110
Notes 130
Index 149
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Preface
As this book goes to press, in April 2020, the
World Health Organization has declared a global
pandemic of COVID-19. We write these lines quar-
antined in our homes in Barcelona and Florida. We
are not prophets, so we cannot predict how health
and economic crises will have unfolded by the time
you read this book. One thing we do know is that
the case for degrowth will remain as relevant as
ever.
We make a case for attributing current ecologi-
cal disequilibrium and a range of social ills to the
relentless pursuit of growth. It would be naive
to claim that this pandemic is proof of limits to
growth, a messianic reckoning for our unsustain-
able ways. Epidemics happened in the past and will
happen in the future. Yet the speed and scope of
this contagion are clearly driven by interconnectivi-
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Preface
ties of accelerated global economies, exemplified in
its spread via airplane and ship routes. The grow-
ing ease with which viruses jump from animals to
humans is conditioned by expansion of corporate
agricultural systems, encroachment of humans on
habitats, and the commodification of wildlife, all
integral to current growth economies.
The failure of some leaders to respond quickly
and to protect their populations, as well as urges to
restart economies before the pandemic is over, can
likewise be understood in the context of ongoing
pushes to sustain growth analyzed in this book. One
dangerous dimension of these pushes is rejection of
scientific evidence and advice. In recent decades,
climate change deniers have undermined faith in
science among a portion of the public in efforts
to defend fossil-fueled growth. Not welcoming
scientific findings that threaten growth economies,
some governments have cut funding for pandemic
research units and epidemic control teams, as well
as studies on mitigation and adaptation to climate
change.
Several decades of budget cuts to public health
and to social and civil security infrastructures,
enacted in the name of economic growth, have
eroded capacities of many states to respond to this
crisis. The pandemic has lain bare the fragility of
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existing economic systems. Wealthy nations have
more than enough resources to cover public health
and basic needs during a crisis, and could weather
declines in non-essential parts of the economy by
reallocating work and resources to essential ones.
Yet the way current economic systems are organized
around constant circulation, any decline in market
activity threatens systemic collapse, provoking gen-
eralized unemployment and impoverishment. It
doesn’t have to be this way. To be more resilient
to future crises – pandemic, climatic, financial, or
political – we need to build systems capable of scal-
ing back production in ways that do not cause loss
of livelihood or life.
Some of you might protest, “Isn’t the coronavi-
rus crisis revealing the misery of degrowth?” We
invite you to first read this book. What is happening
during the pandemic is not degrowth. The goal of
degrowth is to purposefully slow things down in
order to minimize harm to humans and earth sys-
tems. The current situation is terrible, not because
carbon emissions are declining, which is good, but
because many lives are lost; it is terrible not because
GDPs are going down, to which we are indiffer-
ent, but because there are no processes in place
to protect livelihoods when growth falters. For us,
caring and community solidarity are vital principles
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Preface
of degrowth societies, and engines for moving in
more equitable and sustainable directions.
We would like to see societies become slower
by design, not disaster. This pandemic exemplifies
the types of growth-induced disasters we diagnose
in this book. The economic policies and social
arrangements we propose offer ways to make such
situations more livable and just, to emerge stronger
and better post-crisis, and to reorient practices and
politics that are setting the scene for future disasters.
The end of growth will not necessarily involve a
smooth transition. It may very well be unplanned,
unwilled, and messy, in conditions not of our own
choosing. Conditions like the ones we are living
through now. History often evolves with punctua-
tions; our analysis shows how periods of paralysis
can reach a tipping point, when unexpected events
open new possibilities and violently close others. The
COVID-19 pandemic is such an event. Suddenly,
things take radical new directions, and the unthink-
able becomes thinkable, for better or for worse.
Severe economic depression led to Roosevelt’s New
Deal, and also to Hitler’s Third Reich. What are the
possibilities and dangers now?
Amid this pandemic, many scientific, political,
and moral authorities are communicating the mes-
sage that caring for people’s health and wellbeing
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should come before profit, and that is great. A resur-
gence of the care ethic that we advocate is evident
in the willingness of younger people to stay home
to protect their elders, and in the spirit of duty and
sacrifice among care and health workers. Of course,
many stay home also because they fear the virus and
worry about themselves, or to avoid police fines.
And many care workers go to work because they
must earn a living. But, as we argue, acting collec-
tively against such crises requires combinations of
sacrifice and solidarity, self and collective interest,
government interventions and popular consensus
about the right thing to do.
Deep inequalities are coming into play in new
ways. While some have the luxury of sheltering at
home, others must choose between unemployment
without an adequate safety net and exposure to
the coronavirus in jobs involving care work and
provisioning. As the pandemic plays out differently
in different parts of the world, those who are in
more vulnerable identities and positions are likely
to suffer more than others. These injustices coexist
with an awareness that, unless whole populations
are protected, not even the wealthiest are fully safe
from contagion.
In this crisis, like others before, people have
mobilized and self-organized where businesses and
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Preface
governments have failed to provide for their needs
– from mutual aid groups delivering food and medi-
cines for elders, to groups of doctors, engineers,
and hackers collaborating to 3-D print components
for oxygen ventilators, to students babysitting the
children of doctors and nurses. The proliferation
of caring and commoning endeavors, which form
the bedrock of the degrowth societies we envision,
are all the more commendable given the contagious
nature of the virus. After the pandemic is over, and
the difficult path of economic reconstruction starts,
this resurgent dynamism of commoning and care
will be vital.
Positive impulses among individuals and grass-
roots networks are necessary but not sufficient for
sustained change. We need states to secure safety
and healthcare, protect the environment, and pro-
vide economic safety nets. The policies we advocate
in this book were necessary before the pandemic, and
are vital during and after: a Green New Deal and
public investment program, work-sharing, a basic
care income, universal public services, and support
of community economies. So is the reorganiza-
tion of public finance through measures including
carbon fees and taxes on wealth, high incomes, nat-
ural resource use, and pollution. Whereas our book
focuses on demobilizing resource-intensive and
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Preface
ecologically damaging aspects of current economies,
pandemic responses deal with demobilizing those
aspects not immediately essential for sustaining life.
We coincide in facing the fundamental challenge
of managing political economies without growth
during and after the pandemic: how to demobilize
parts of the capitalist economy while securing the
provisioning of basic goods and services, experi-
menting with resource-light ways of enjoying
ourselves, and finding positive meanings in life.
Radical proposals are already being considered
and selectively adopted across the political spec-
trum as they provide concrete solutions amid the
pandemic. Companies and governments have
reduced working hours and implemented work-
sharing; different forms of basic income are being
debated; financial measures have been instituted
to subsidize workers in the quarantine period and
after businesses close; an international campaign for
care income has been launched; governments have
engaged the productive apparatus to secure vital
supplies and services; and moratoriums are being
considered or imposed on rent, mortgage, and debt
payments. There is growing understanding that vast
government spending will be required.
Our book suggests ways we can reconstruct econ-
omies with the goal of mitigating crises that loom
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Preface
on the horizon, including a wide array of threats
associated with climate change. This goal will not
be met by subsidizing fossil fuel companies, airlines,
cruise ships, and tourism mega-businesses. Instead,
states need to finance Green New Deals and rebuild
their health and care infrastructures, creating jobs
in a just transition to economies that are less envi-
ronmentally damaging. As oil prices fall, fossil fuels
should be taxed heavily, raising funds to support
green and social investments, and to provide tax
breaks and dividends to working people. Rather
than using public money to bail out corporations
and banks, we urge the establishment of basic care
incomes that will help people and communities to
reconstruct their lives and livelihoods.
The world will change after the virus, and there
will be struggles over which paths to take. People
will have to fight to direct change toward more
equitable and resilient societies that have gentler
impacts on humans and natural environments.
Powerful actors will try to reconstitute status quo
arrangements, and to shift costs to those with less
power. It takes organizing and a confluence of alli-
ances and circumstances to ensure that it won’t be
the environment and the workers who pay the bill,
but those who profited most from the growth that
preceded this disaster.
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This crisis arguably opens up more dangers than
it does possibilities. We worry about the politics
of fear that the coronavirus pandemic engenders,
the intensification of surveillance and control of
peoples’ movements, xenophobia and blame of
others, as well as home isolation that curbs com-
moning and political organizing. Once measures
such as curfews, quarantines, rule-by-decree, border
controls, or election postponements are taken, they
can become part of the arsenal of political possibil-
ity, opening dystopian horizons.
To counter these risks, this book motivates and
guides us to re-found societies on the commons
of mutual aid and care, orienting collective pur-
suits away from growth and toward wellbeing and
equity. These are not just lofty aspirations; we iden-
tify everyday practices and concrete policies to start
building the world we want today, together with
political strategies to support synergy among these
efforts in the construction of equitable and low-
impact societies.
When we were writing this book, we knew we
would have to work hard to convince readers of the
case for degrowth. Our job may be somewhat easier
now amid such tangible evidence that the current
system is crumbling under its own weight. As we
embark on the second major global economic crisis
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Preface
in a dozen years, perhaps some of us will be more
willing to question the wisdom of producing and
consuming more and more, just to keep the system
going. The time is ripe for us to refocus on what
really matters: not GDP, but the health and well-
being of our people and our planet.
In a word, degrowth.
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Acknowledgments
For years now, the four of us have been writing
about the negative impacts and disastrous futures
of economic growth, while urging moves toward
healthier horizons. This is the first book we dedicate
to alternative paths forward. An organized transi-
tion to degrowth will be politically difficult, but we
believe that it is possible, and that living and work-
ing toward that transition is good in itself.
Writing this book is an act of care. Care for family,
friends, and fellow citizens striving to contribute and
find meaning in the face of historic challenges. Care
for people and places around the world struggling
to survive the burdens and damages of growth. And
care for each other, as collaborators and co-authors.
As in any act of care, our efforts to produce this
book ran up against limits and vulnerabilities of our
individual positions – class, gender, disciplinary, cul-
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Acknowledgments
tural, and other. Together we have worked toward
new understandings and acceptance. Convinced
that meaningful and rewarding journeys are rarely
the easiest ones, we hope that this book motivates
and empowers differently positioned readers on
their own challenging paths.
Giorgos Kallis is an ICREA professor at ICTA-
UAB, where he teaches ecological economics and
political ecology. He has studied how water has
been mobilized to fuel the growth of cities and has
devoted recent years to arguing against the folly of
green growth. Giorgos’s latest work is a defense of
the notion of limits.
Susan Paulson, based at the University of Florida,
studies and teaches about gender, class, and eth-
noracial systems interacting with bodies and
environments. She has researched and taught in
Latin America for thirty years, fifteen of those living
in South America among low-income, low-impact
communities. Susan is currently studying changing
masculinities among men who perform painful and
dangerous labor in extractive industries.
Giacomo D’Alisa is based at CES-UC in Coimbra,
Portugal, where he researches commons and
commoning, arguing that a society that prospers
without growth must be based around the com-
mons. Giacomo has written about conflicts over
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Acknowledgments
waste in his native Campania, and about political
strategies for degrowth, warning against discourses
of “emergency.”
Federico Demaria is a lecturer in ecological eco-
nomics and political ecology at the University of
Barcelona, part of the Environmental Justice Atlas
team that studies and maps environmental conflicts
and injustices around the world. Federico has lived
and worked with waste-pickers in Delhi, studying
how environmentalisms of the poor can inform a
pluriverse of alternatives to development.
In the collaborative production of this book, each
of us contributed theoretical perspectives, contents,
and critiques. Giorgos took the lead in bringing
these together, conceptualizing the book, laying out
its arguments, and writing first drafts of the chap-
ters. The text you have in your hands, however, is
the product of Susan’s labor, writing, and rewrit-
ing each passage. Her language, approach, and
anthropologist’s attention to historical, cultural,
and geographical context marks our difference
from previous publications on degrowth domi-
nated by economistic or environmental arguments.
Giacomo’s philosophy of life and politics is respon-
sible for rooting our argument in the commons, and
for the political strategy that permeates our case, a
strategy of building common senses slowly through
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Acknowledgments
deep cultural changes that are embodied and prac-
ticed. Federico brought experiences of dialogue
with allied movements, and conducted research in
Barcelona used to illustrate our arguments.
It has not been easy to navigate among four his-
tories of thought and action. We debated heatedly
about ways to honor, connect with, critique, or
condemn a variety of positions and paths. Our con-
structive struggles may prefigure wider debates and
tensions that we aim to impel among readers.
The understandings expressed in this book have
developed through engagement with overlapping
networks of scientists and activists, including col-
leagues and students at ICTA-UAB, Research &
Degrowth, the Center for Latin American Studies at
the University of Florida, the Ecology and Society
group at CES, and the Entitle and Political Ecology
Networks, as well as the participants of the inter-
national degrowth conferences and summer schools.
Let us also acknowledge critics of degrowth, past
and future. We are grateful to those who care deeply
enough to raise sharp questions and critiques, and
to impel the continual clarification and adaptation
of our understandings and proposals.
We are grateful to our editors Louise Knight
and Inès Boxman, who have been at the heart of
this book project since its conceptualization, and
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Acknowledgments
– together with anonymous reviewers – provided
valuable insights. Thanks also to William Boose
and Juanita Duque, who helped to manage bibliog-
raphy and review drafts.
We acknowledge support from the Spanish
government (COSMOS and María de Maeztu
grants – Kallis; CSO2017-88212-R), the European
Research Council (EnvJustice project – Demaria;
GA695446), and the Portuguese Foundation
for Science and Technology (D’Alisa; UID/
SOC/50012/2019).
As co-authors, we take responsibility for all gaps,
errors, and inconsistencies in this book, with the
hope that our limitations will spark future efforts.
We offer the book as an invitation to explore strat-
egies for social-ecological transformation, starting
with ways of seeing, being, and interrelating. And
we invite you to engage, learn more, and contribute
to the conversation.
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