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The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism

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Abstract

We need to break free from the capitalist economy. Degrowth gives us the tools to bend its bars. Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it. Not only in society at large, but also on the left, we are held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for emancipatory Green New Deals or postcapitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all. This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. Building on a vibrant field of research, it discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy. It charts a path forward through policies that democratise the economy, “now-topias” that create free spaces for experimentation, and counter-hegemonic movements that make it possible to break with the logic of growth. Degrowth perspectives offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system. A handbook and a manifesto, The Future Is Degrowth is a must-read for all interested in charting a way beyond the current crises. https://www.versobooks.com/books/3989-the-future-is-degrowth
The Future Is Degrowth
A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism
Matthias Schmelzer
Andrea Vetter
Aaron Vansintjan
London New York
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First published by Verso 2022
© Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan 2022
All rights reserved
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schmelzer, Matthias, author.
Title: e future is degrowth : a guide to a world beyond capitalism /
Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan, Andrea Vetter.
Description: New York : Verso, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identi ers: LCCN 2022005477 (print) | LCCN 2022005478 (ebook) | ISBN
9781839765841 (Trade Paperback) | ISBN 9781839765865 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Negative growth (Economics) | Economic development. |
Imperialism. | Exploitation. | Capitalism.
Classi cation: LCC HD75.6 .S375 2022 (print) | LCC HD75.6 (ebook) | DDC
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LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005477
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005478
Typeset in Minion by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
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Contents
Preface vii
1 Introduction 1
2 Economic growth 36
2.1 Growth as an idea 38
2.2 Growth as a social process 47
2.3 Growth as a material process 59
2.4 e end of growth? 70
3 Critiques of growth 75
3.1 Ecological critique 79
3.2 Socio-economic critique 93
3.3 Cultural critique 104
3.4 Critique of capitalism 117
3.5 Feminist critique 133
3.6 Critique of industrialism 143
3.7 South–North critique 156
3.8 Growth critique outside of the degrowth debate 169
3.9 Why degrowth is di erent 176
4 Degrowth visions 178
4.1 Degrowth currents 181
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vi The Future Is Degrowth
4.2 De ning degrowth 191
4.3 Why degrowth is desirable 210
5 Pathways to degrowth 212
5.1 Democratization, solidarity economy,
and commoning 215
5.2 Social security, redistribution, and caps
on income and wealth 225
5.3 Convivial and democratic technology 229
5.4 Revalorization and redistribution of labour 232
5.5 Democratizing social metabolism 238
5.6 International solidarity 244
5.7 Why degrowth is viable 249
6 Making degrowth real 251
6.1 Nowtopias: Autonomous spaces and
laboratories for the good life 255
6.2 Non-reformist reforms: Changing
institutions and policies 262
6.3 Counter-hegemony: Building people
power against the growth paradigm 267
6.4 Confronting crises: Beyond
degrowth by design or by disaster’ 276
6.5 Is degrowth achievable? 283
7 e future of degrowth 285
7.1 Class and race 289
7.2 Geopolitics and imperialism 291
7.3 Information technology 293
7.4 Democratic planning 295
7.5 Degrowth: A visionary pathway to post-capitalism 297
Index 299
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Preface
Over the last een years, degrowth has made signi cant contribu-
tions: it has helped to politicize the debate on sustainability and devel-
opment, question green growth and technologically focused futurism,
strengthen utopian alternatives, and bring together social movements,
academics, and those engaged in the solidarity economy and civil soci-
ety. During times of intense and continuous crisis, the degrowth
community has become a gathering place for people who are seeking
answers to how we got in this mess in the rst place, and how we can get
out of it. is book describes the debates that have happened within
this community, and relays them to a wider audience.
is is an expanded version of an original German book, rst
published in 2019, Degrowth/Postwachstum zur Einführung, written by
Matthias Schmelzer and Andrea Vetter. For the English version, we
worked with Aaron Vansintjan to extend it for an international audi-
ence, changing it signi cantly in terms of structure, argumentation,
and content. Many people and organizations have been instrumental in
making this book a reality. We would like to thank our publisher, Verso
Books, who gave us the opportunity to bring the degrowth debate to the
centre of the English-speaking le . e writing of this book was made
possible by several institutions: the Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie
(Laboratory for a New Economy) in Leipzig enabled Andrea and
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viii The Future Is Degrowth
Matthias to work in a self-organized collective at the interface of NGOs
and social movements doing organizing and outreach around social
and ecological justice and alternative economics. e Post-Growth
Societies’ research group at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena,
which played a key role in shaping and advancing the academic debate
on capitalist growth drivers and post-growth, as well as the follow-up
umen’ project, provided an intellectual context for working on and
discussing this book. e Barcelona Degrowth Reading Group and the
organization Research & Degrowth have also been crucial through
providing a supportive and critically engaged environment for learning
about degrowth. Also, we are grateful for the nancial support of the
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in New York City, who made it possible
for Aaron to work on the book. Finally, during the process of writing
this book, we were all involved with and learned from various social
movements. Without the support of all of these, this book would not
exist.
Degrowth thinkers, following feminist theories of science, point out
that there can be no ‘neutral’ science but that the production of knowl-
edge is always bound to a speci c location. is introduction has been
written by three politically engaged academics who are part of a wider
community, the members of which have shaped and transformed our
thinking. Even so, in this book, we have sought to balance a thorough
and fair representation of degrowth with a critical engagement with
those same ideas. We hope that we have succeeded in this e ort.
We also want to thank all the individuals who made the creation of
this book possible and accompanied it through intensive and o en
critical discussions. In particular, we want to thank Frank Adler, Max
Ajl, Bengi Akbulut, Rut Elliot Blomqvist, Ulrich Brand, Ky Brooks,
Hubertus Buchstein, Michaela Christ, Silke van Dyk, Dennis Eversberg,
Christoph Gran, Friederike Habermann, Lina Hansen, Giorgos Kallis,
Vijay Kolinjivadi, Martin Krobath, Cornelia Kühn, Ste en Lange,
Ste en Liebig, Eva Mahnke, Christoph Sanders, Tilman Santarius,
Ulrich Schachtschneider, Bernd Sommer, and Nina Treu. We also
thank the German publisher Junius for making this English book possi-
ble. All errors and inaccuracies are of course the sole responsibility of
the authors.
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Preface ix
We hope that this book can be an inspiration to think di erently
about today and tomorrow, to continue researching ways beyond
growth, and to strengthen social movements that aim at building a
future for all beyond capitalism.
Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan
Berlin and Montreal, December 2021
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1
Introduction
In April 2020, a group of academics in the Netherlands wrote a manifesto
for a post-pandemic recovery. is manifesto, with its ve demands
based on the principles of a little-known degrowthmovement, gained
widespread attention. In this moment of insecurity and destabilization, it
pushed the degrowth agenda into Dutch mainstream media and the
traditional corridors of power, and it was discussed on prime-time televi-
sion and in parliament. e claim that the neoliberal and growth-based
model of development underpins many of our current crises – including
the coronavirus pandemic resonated with many, as did the call for a
strategy to reorient the conversation away from symptoms and towards
underlying causes. e manifesto made ve key policy proposals:
1. A move away from development focused on aggregate GDP
growth (economic growth is conventionally measured as increas-
ing gross domestic product, or GDP) to di erentiate between
sectors that can grow and need investment (the so-called critical
public sectors, clean energy, education, health, and more) and
sectors that must radically degrow due to their fundamental
unsustainability or their role in driving continuous and excessive
consumption (especially private sector oil, gas, mining, advertis-
ing, and so forth);
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2 The Future Is Degrowth
2. An economic framework focused on redistribution, which estab-
lishes a universal basic income rooted in a universal social policy
system, a strong progressive taxation of income, pro ts, and
wealth, reduced working hours and job sharing, and which recog-
nizes care work and essential public services such as health and
education for their intrinsic value;
3. Agricultural transformation towards regenerative agriculture
based on biodiversity conservation, sustainable and mostly local
and vegetarian food production, as well as fair agricultural
employment conditions and wages;
4. Reduction of consumption and travel, with a drastic shi from
luxury and wasteful consumption and travel to basic, necessary,
sustainable, and satisfying consumption and travel;
5. Debt cancellation, especially for workers and small business
owners and for countries in the Global South (both from richer
countries and international nancial institutions).1
Whether these proposals really grasp the core of degrowth will become
clear throughout the rest of this book. We feature them in full here to
highlight how the economic crisis caused by the pandemic has shi ed
the conversation around economic growth. On the one hand, as illus-
trated by the Dutch example (and we will cite several others later on), a
widespread feeling encapsulated in the slogan that went viral, ‘We
don’t want to get back to normal, since normalcy was the problem
created a window of opportunity for degrowth ideas to become known
and see more widespread support.
On the other hand, and likely as a reaction to the increasing popu-
larity of degrowth ideas, major newspapers from Forbes to the Financial
Times and e Spectator started to publish opinion pieces that frontally
attacked degrowth. ese argued that ‘the coronavirus crisis reveals the
misery of degrowth, that degrowth would make the recession
1 Degrowth.info international editorial team, ‘Planning for Post-corona: Five
Proposals to Cra a Radically More Sustainable and Equal World’, Degrowth
(blog), 11 May 2020, degrowth.info. See also Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance,
‘Feminist Degrowth Re ections on COVID-19 and the Politics of Social
Reproduction, Degrowth (blog), 20 April 2020, degrowth.info.
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Introduction 3
permanent, or that it would be a ‘recipe for misery and disaster’.2 And,
indeed, this is how many people initially understand degrowth, as a call
for economic recession, austere lifestyles, romantic luddism – as a reac-
tion against progress. However, as we will argue throughout the book,
recessions and what happened during the pandemic do not represent
degrowth, far from it.
So, what is this idea that, at the height of the pandemic, sparked a
debate about radical alternatives, as illustrated by the Dutch manifesto,
and which also provoked intense reactions from the establishment, as
illustrated by the ongoing wave of half-baked opinion pieces lambast-
ing degrowth?
‘Degrowthis a term that is increasingly mobilized by scholars and
activists to criticize the hegemony of growth – and a proposal for a radi-
cal reorganization of society that leads to a drastic reduction in the use
of energy and resources and that is deemed necessary, desirable, and
possible. Degrowth starts from the fact – demonstrated by an increasing
number of studies that further economic growth in industrialized
countries is unsustainable. Even if that growth is ‘green’ or ‘inclusive, or
even as part of a transformative progressive agenda that massively
invests in renewable energies and the sustainability transition, industri-
alized countries cannot reduce their environmental impact (emissions,
material throughput, etc.) fast and su ciently enough while, at the same
time, growing their economies. e transformation needed in industri-
alized countries – if they are to reduce their emissions and environmen-
tal impacts fast enough to leave space for the Global South to develop –
will also lead to reducing the size of Global North economies.3 While
2 Benedict McAleenan, e Coronavirus Crisis Reveals the Misery of
Degrowth, Spectator.co.uk, 27 March 2020.
3 For some recent papers linking to more evidence, see Jason Hickel and
Giorgos Kallis, ‘Is Green Growth Possible?’, New Political Economy 25, no. 4 (April
2019): 1–18; Timothée Parrique et al., Decoupling Debunked: Evidence and
Arguments against Green Growth as a Sole Strategy for Sustainability (Brussels:
EEB, 2019); omas Wiedmann et al., ‘Scientists’ Warning on A uence, Nature
Communications 11, no. 1 (2020): 3107; Helmut Haberl et al., A Systematic
Review of the Evidence on Decoupling of GDP, Resource Use and GHG
Emissions, Part II: Synthesizing the Insights’, Environmental Research Letters 15,
no. 6 (2020): 065003.
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4 The Future Is Degrowth
this need for su ciency, a reduction of the material throughput for the
most a uent, or an end to overconsumption may sound radical to many,
it is increasingly common ground among ecologically oriented progres-
sives. For example, Naomi Klein writes in her recent book that lays out
the case for a Green New Deal:
e bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the
overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by
improving the e ciency of our economies, but also by reducing the
amount of material stu that the wealthiest 20 percent of people on
the planet consume.4
Degrowth claims that such a transformation in the Global North is not
only possible but also desirable: it is feasible to live well without growth
and to make society more just, democratic, and truly prosperous on the
way. To do this, however, a fundamental political and economic reor-
ganization of society is necessary, which aims at overcoming multiple
structural growth dependencies inherent in the capitalist economy
from industrialized infrastructures to social systems to the ideological
myths of growth societies. More speci cally, degrowth can be de ned
as the democratic transition to a society that – in order to enable global
ecological justice is based on a much smaller throughput of energy
and resources, that deepens democracy and guarantees a good life and
social justice for all, and that does not depend on continuous expansion
(see chapter 4 for a more thorough exposition of this de nition). Before
explaining where degrowth comes from and what exactly it proposes,
we start by situating ourselves in a particular moment, showing why
degrowth has taken such a crucial place in the political landscape today.
Why degrowth and not a Green New Deal?
It has been noted for decades, but by now everybody can see it clearly:
we live in a time of many and accelerating crises. Climate breakdown
4 Naomi Klein, On Fire: e Burning Case for a Green New Deal (London:
Penguin, 2019), 100.
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Introduction 5
is breathing down our neck. Biodiversity is collapsing in ecosystems
around the world, and many natural safety nets water cycles, soil
fertility, sh stocks, microbial diversity are unravelling. Civil war
and natural disasters have ripped whole countries apart, sending
millions of people to seek safety only to be blocked by militarized
borders. A pandemic has brought the global economy to a shuddering
halt. Financial and economic crises roil the world roughly every
decade. ere is a resurgence of nationalist and racist electoral parties.
Meanwhile, mass movements arise every year to demand change,
blocking business as usual. While leaders have promised prosperity
and a middle-class lifestyle for all decades ago, those standards of
living are becoming less and less attainable for most, as high levels of
stable employment tilt towards precarity and endemic
unemployment.
Which proposals might get us out of this mess? Here, we nd it
useful to borrow a term from Immanuel Wallerstein, the world-systems
theorist. In the 2000s – during what we could now consider the heyday
of neoliberalism and the corresponding global movements against it –
Wallerstein suggested that there were two main political camps: the
‘Spirit of Davos, where the world’s economic and political elites meet at
the annual World Economic Forum, and the ‘Spirit of Porto Alegre’, the
birthplace of the World Social Forums, where the worlds popular social
movements come together. Today, these camps have been split into two
poles each.5
On the Davos side, there are not only the globalists, many of whom
are in favour of green capitalism, but also feudal authoritarians and
neo-fascists, as represented in particular by Donald Trump in the
United States, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Rodrigo Duterte in the
Philippines. e globalists recognize the reality of climate change, and
advocate ecological modernization and green growth. ey think there
is no need to fundamentally change the current system – we just need
better technology, more e ciency, and the proper application of science
5 Immanuel Wallerstein et al., Does Capitalism Have a Future? (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013), 45.
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6 The Future Is Degrowth
and market mechanisms.6 Just replace what we have now with electric
cars, carbon capture and storage, green appliances, and renewable and
nuclear energy and the problem is solved. Neo-fascists, by contrast,
are more explicitly in favour of a kind of eco-apartheid: close the
borders to migrants eeing ecological collapse and the ravages of capi-
talist globalization, expand military powers to defend the privileges of
those who have bene ted from economic growth, further entrench the
global division of labour, and accelerate the extraction of resources.
What drives this reactionary idea is the willingness to change every-
thing in order to preserve what is seen as the natural order of things.
Ultimately, this proposal will lead to a world more unequal than the one
that exists today and will still cause the wide-scale collapse of the
present system. Importantly, both camps – the globalists and the neo-
fascists – favour growth; they just support di erent means to attain it.7
On the other side, the Porto Alegre camp also has two poles. On the
one hand, there is progressive productivism: those parts of the le that
in the tradition of socialist and social-democratic workers move-
ments – focus on growth, increases in technical productivity, and redis-
tribution, and that tend to prefer vertical forms of organization. O en,
these le ists argue for keeping existing technological infrastructure,
but seek to make it more e cient and socially just through centralized
and hierarchical state planning. Proposals for utopias based on over-
coming work through productivity increases or a ‘fully automated
6 John Asafu-Adjaye et al., ‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto, ecomodernism.org,
2015; Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: e Case for Reason, Science, Humanism,
and Progress (London: Penguin Books, 2018); Giorgos Kallis and Sam Bliss, ‘Post-
environmentalism: Origins and Evolution of a Strange Idea, Journal of Political
Ecology 26, no. 1 (2019): 466–85.
7 Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise
of Racist Nationalism (Haymarket Books, 2021); Andreas Malm and the Zetkin
Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (London:
Verso, 2021). As we discuss in section 3.8, criticism of growth also exists in the
Davos camp, above all in the form of enlightened conservatism and in parts of the
ethnic and nationalist right. But, by and large, the dominant project of the right
today is that of more growth and, given that the right fundamentally aims to
strengthen social hierarchies, it will likely stay ideologically in the service of
economic growth.
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Introduction 7
luxury communism’ also fall in this camp.8 Let us call this ‘le produc-
tivism. On the other hand, there are the libertarian movements and
currents that strongly focus on self-organization from below and that
fundamentally question growth – we could call this ‘le libertarianism.
is pole positions itself against hierarchy and productivism, and seeks
to fundamentally alter global relations towards a multi-polar, post-
growth internationalism. Today, degrowth has become one of the key
reference points within le libertarianism in the Global North – or, as
put in a recent volume, within the ‘mosaic of alternatives’ that ght for
a good life beyond growth, industrialism, and domination.9
In the last half-decade, one phrase has been at the centre of both
controversies and potential alliances between the productivist and
libertarian poles: the Green New Deal. Some watered-down versions
of a Green New Deal or ‘Green Deal’ are promoted by governments,
international organizations, and the European Commission, which
essentially boil down to the ecological modernization of capitalism.
ese would be considered green growth globalism, rmly placed in
the Davos camp.
But we are here only interested in the more transformative le ist
variants. Long a set of policies for transition upheld by Green Party
candidates, the Green New Deal is increasingly becoming a corner-
stone of radical environmental politics and also larger political parties,
such as the Labour Party in the UK and parts of the Democratic Party
in the United States.10 e basic proposal seeks – through public invest-
ment and regulations – to radically reduce fossil fuel consumption and
8 Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. A Manifesto
(London: Verso, 2019); Paul Mason, PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
(London: Penguin Books, 2015).
9 Corinna Burkhart, Matthias Schmelzer, and Nina Treu, eds., Degrowth in
Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation (Winchester: Zer0, 2020).
Globally, the situation is of course much more complex. See, for example, Max
Ajl, A Peoples Green New Deal (London: Pluto Press, 2021).
10 Similar proposals have been presented in South Korea, New Zealand, and
the European Parliament. See, for example, Ann Pettifor, e Case for the Green
New Deal (London: Verso, 2019); Ajl, A Peoples Green New Deal; Noam Chomsky
and Robert Pollin, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: e Political
Economy of Saving the Planet (London: Verso, 2020).
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8 The Future Is Degrowth
transition to a fully renewable economy, while guaranteeing just work-
ing conditions and full employment, as well as vastly improved living
conditions, for all, and in particular for marginalized communities.
Inspired by the New Deal carried out by US president Franklin D.
Roosevelt following the Great Depression in the 1930s, the idea is for a
large-scale mobilization and public investment programme of green
Keynesianism that fundamentally restructures the economy.
While at rst sight it appears that there is stark opposition between
these more transformative, le ist Green New Deals and degrowth, we
argue throughout the book that there are many overlaps and similari-
ties, that there is a wide scope for learning from each other and for
collaborations, and that degrowth o ers an important corrective for
existing Green New Deal proposals. Degrowth’s particular strengths
include its strong analysis of the biophysical metabolism of capital-
ism, the global justice and resource implications of ecological
modernization, the ideological hegemony perpetuated by growth-
based economics, and its advancement of more deeply transformative
policy proposals for an economy based on autonomy, care, and
su ciency.11
What distinguishes degrowth most clearly from other socio-
ecological proposals is the politicization of social metabolism and its
rami cations for policy design. Degrowth shares with most programmes
of ecological modernization – and with the Green New Deals – the call
for massive investments into rapidly building up the material infra-
structures for a post-fossil society, from (community-controlled)
renewable energy sources to (democratically managed) public trans-
port networks, to retro tted (social or collective) housing, or to
(worker-owned) industrial plants (such as for long-lasting, repairable,
and recyclable consumer products). Similar to the outlook of Kate
Arono , Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel A. Cohen, and ea Riofrancos in A
11 Robert Pollin, ‘De-growth vs a Green New Deal’, New Le Review 112
(2018): 5–25. ere are, of course, also a number of key lessons for degrowth. See,
for example, Riccardo Mastini, Giorgos Kallis, and Jason Hickel, ‘A Green New
Deal without Growth?’, Ecological Economics 179 (2021): 106832; Elena
Ho erberth and Matthias Schmelzer, ‘Degrowth vs Green New Deal: Gekoppelt
wird ein Schuh draus, politische ökologie 159 (2019): 31–7.
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Introduction 9
Planet to Win, degrowth also calls for a “Last Stimulus” of green
economic development in the short term to build landscapes of public
a uence, develop new political-economic models, jump o the growth
treadmill, break with capital, and settle into a slower groove.12 However,
the degrowth analysis – which takes into account extensive research on
climate injustice and the possibilities of decoupling emissions from
economic growth posits that this needs to be accompanied by an
economy-wide transition beyond economic growth. ese studies
show that a Green New Deal with growth even if temporary will
likely be not sustainable.
us, while Green New Deal proposals tend to emphasize this
investment push and the growth of everything sustainable, degrowth
also and at least as rigorously puts the focus on the many things that will
have to go. To bring about a globally just and sustainable economy,
large areas of production and consumption will need to be dismantled,
while other systems will need to be built in their place. In contrast to
most Green New Deals, degrowth formulates active policies to achieve
a selective downscaling and de-accumulation of those economic activi-
ties that cannot be made sustainable, contribute little use values, or are
super uous consumption and these include things like advertising,
planned obsolescence, ‘bullshit jobs’, private planes, or fossil fuel and
defence industries. Degrowth claims that there is a need to reduce
energy and material throughput to avoid ecological overshoot.
Furthermore, the necessary policies that put a cap on emissions, rapidly
curb fossil production, and end overconsumption will likely lead to a
reduction of GDP. While this might not be bad in and of itself (as GDP
is a highly problematic indicator), societies need to be prepared by
reorganizing institutions so that they are no longer dependent on
growth and accumulation.13
ere is certainly a tension that needs to be addressed here, since
12 Kate Arono et al., A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
(London: Verso, 2019), 35f.
13 For details, see chapters 4 and 5. See also Kai Kuhnhenn et al., A Societal
Transformation Scenario for Staying Below 1.5°C (Berlin: Konzeptwerk Neue
Ökonomie & Heinrich-Böll Sti ung, 2020); Mastini et al., A Green New Deal
without Growth?’.
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10 The Future Is Degrowth
Green New Deal platforms are either in favour of economic growth or
vague on whether the goal is growth, even as they propose policies that
will in fact spur economic expansion.14 So, how could the ‘last stimulus
of the Green New Deal be combined with more transformative poli-
cies? ese policies should, on the one hand, aim at degrowing those
areas of production and consumption that are related to excess energy,
mass, and emissions and, on the other hand, ensure that these invest-
ments do not merely stabilize an economic system built around growth
and accumulation, but initiate its transformation. Furthermore, Green
New Deal platforms have been criticized for simply continuing, rather
than challenging, uneven neo-colonial relationships between industri-
alized countries and the rest of the world.15 For example, by expanding
solar power and lithium battery storage technology without taking
apart the unequal relationships between rich countries buying lithium
and poor countries mining it, the Green New Deal may just create new
problems and entrench neo-colonialism.16
Degrowth, we argue in this book, o ers perspectives that should be
productively integrated and critically adapted into progressive politics,
including those of what has been proposed as a ‘Green New Deal with-
out Growth. Proponents of degrowth are therefore not only faced with
the challenge of organizing social majorities for a political project in the
face of a shi to the right which advocates growth-oriented authoritari-
anism, as well as the continued presence of fossil fuel–driven and green
capitalism. It is also important to convince those who represent the
14 Pollin, ‘De-growth vs a Green New Deal’; Giorgos Kallis, A Green New
Deal Must Not Be Tied to Economic Growth, truthout.org, 10 March 2020; Aaron
Vansintjan, ‘Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal’, Briarpatchmagazine.com, 29
April 2020; James Wilt and Max Ajl, ‘Either You Are Fighting to Eliminate
Exploitation or Not: A Le ist Critique of the Green New Deal’, Canadiandimension.
com, 14 June 2020.
15 Christos Zografos and Paul Robbins, ‘Green Sacri ce Zones, or Why a
Green New Deal Cannot Ignore the Cost Shi s of Just Transitions, One Earth 3,
no. 5 (2020): 543–6; Stan Cox, e Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the
Climate Emergency While We Still Can (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2020).
16 Jasper Bernes, ‘Between the Devil and the Green New Deal’, Commune, 25
April 2019: 151–60; Francis Tseng, ‘Inside Out’, Phenomenalworld.org, 17 April
2020; Kate Arono et al., A Planet to Win.
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Introduction 11
‘Spirit of Porto Alegre’ – but are also oriented towards productivism –
of the merits of a degrowth society. In this way, degrowth advocates
must navigate the multiple political realities that arise through repeated
crises of the capitalist system and people’s responses to these.
is book is one attempt at navigating these challenges: by showing
how degrowth can respond to the crises we face, we seek not only to
introduce the various critiques of growth and the vision, policies, and
strategies of degrowth, but also make a case for a degrowth that speci -
cally addresses capitalism and societal hierarchies, and to argue why
the le should support it.
Where did degrowth come from?
Criticism of economic growth is almost as old as the phenomenon of
economic growth itself. But the term degrowth, as it is used today, can
be traced to relatively recent beginnings. Let us take a short look at its
history. Some traditions of growth criticism date back to the late eight-
eenth century and ranged from Luddite riots against the machines of
industrialization to romantic unease with modernity or anti-colonial
dissections of European civilization. Yet, in the second half of the twen-
tieth century, changed public perceptions of the niteness of resources
on this planet also led to a popular surge in critiques of economic
growth. e rst report to the Club of Rome in 1972 initiated a global
debate on ‘ e Limits to Growth which has not yet subsided. e birth
of the word décroissance, translated into English as degrowth, can also
be dated back to the year 1972. e political theorist André Gorz already
asked at that time: ‘Is the earths balance, for which no-growth – or even
degrowth – of material production is a necessary condition, compatible
with the survival of the capitalist system?’17 Other intellectuals of this
17 Quoted in Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis,
Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (London: Routledge, 2014), 17; See also
Barbara Muraca and Matthias Schmelzer, ‘Sustainable Degrowth: Historical
Roots of the Search for Alternatives to Growth in ree Regions, in History of the
Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable
Degrowth, ed. Iris Borowy and Matthias Schmelzer (London: Routledge, 2017),
174–97.
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12 The Future Is Degrowth
period in uenced the early degrowth discussion – particularly impor-
tant was the Romanian-American mathematician and economist
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who integrated an understanding of phys-
ics and thermodynamics into economic theory. e debate on growth at
the time extended far beyond environmental movements and included
governments of industrialized countries, trade unions, and anti-colonial
debates about development. One aspect of current degrowth ideas has
been, for example, articulated by US revolutionary intellectuals and civil
rights activists James and Grace Lee Boggs, who argued in 1974 that ‘the
revolution to be made in the United States will be the rst revolution in
history to require the masses to make material sacri ces rather than to
acquire more material things, because, they continue, these were
‘acqu ired at the exp ense of damnin g over one- third of the world into a
state of underdevelopment, ignorance, disease and early death.18 Still,
during this time, the term degrowth was rarely used, and did not
become a frame for a wider set of ideas until much later – and with the
end of the oil crisis and the rise of neoliberalism since the 1980s, broader
criticism of economic growth receded into the background.19
is only changed in the early 2000s. At the height of the neoliberal
penseé unique (Margaret atcher’s ere is no alternative’) and the
hegemony of ‘sustainable developmentin environmental debates (the
claim that economic growth can be reconciled with sustainability),
degrowth was formed as a political project to open up cracks for
systemic alternatives. In 2002, a special issue of the French magazine
S!lence was published with the title ‘Decroissance soutenable et convivi-
ale (sustainable and convivial degrowth). In the introduction of the
issue, Bruno Clémentin and Vincent Cheynet coined the term décrois-
sance soutenable explicitly as a counter-term to sustainable
18 James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the
Twent ie th C en tur y (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 163, cited in Jamie
Tyberg and Erica Jung, Degrowth and Revolutionary Organizing (New York: Rosa
Luxemburg Foundation, 2021).
19 Matthias Schmelzer, e Hegemony of Growth: e OECD and the Making
of the Economic Growth Paradigm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2016). During the 1990s, (eco-)feminist and post-development critics developed
key arguments that were later taken up in the degrowth debate (see chapter 3).
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Introduction 13
development, the buzzword at the time. In pairing the words ‘degrowth
and ‘sustainability’, the authors highlighted the fact that ending the
pursuit of growth should not point to collapse or recession as the
word ‘degrowth’ may suggest to many – but to a democratic process of
transformation to a more just, sustainable, and less material and energy-
intensive society. And the reference to degrowth as ‘convivial’ (a French
term, based on Latin con vivere, to live together) emphasized that it
referred to a positive vision of the good life de ned by cooperative
social interrelations with each other and with nature, a vision insisting
that another world is indeed possible.20
In this new use of the term, ‘degrowth’ was both a provocation and a
political proposal meant to challenge mainstream economic assump-
tions of development and to lay out a path for the future. Initially, it
combined two intellectual strands: rst, a socio-metabolic and thermo-
dynamic analysis of capitalist growth, which highlighted the need for
the countries of the Global North to exit the irrational and unsustain-
able growth race and subvert the related hegemony of the ‘growth para-
digmthat claimed GDP growth was good, imperative, and limitless;
second, the radical critiques of the ‘post-development’ school of
thought, which criticized capitalist development and the idea that
progress requires growth as a misguided, destructive, and universaliz-
ing Western ideology.21 e term gained currency in France in the
following years, especially through the work of French economist,
philosopher, and critic of development Serge Latouche.22 By 2008, the
20 Timothé e Parrique, e Political Economy of Degrowth: Economics and
Finance (Clermont: Université Clermont Auvergne, 2019); Serge Latouche,
Renverser nos maniè res de penser: Mé tanoï a pour le temps present (Paris: Mille et
Une Nuits, 2014); Vincent Liegey and Anitra Nelson, Exploring Degrowth: A
Critical Guide (London: Pluto Press, 2020).
21 Valérie Fournier, ‘Escaping from the Economy: e Politics of Degrowth,
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 28, no. 11 (2008): 52845,
Muraca and Schmelzer, ‘Sustainable Degrowth’; Barbara Muraca, ‘Decroissance:
A Project for a Radical Transformation of Society,Environmental Values 22, no. 2
(2013): 147–69; Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
(London: William Heinemann, 2020).
22 Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth, trans. David Macey (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2009).
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14 The Future Is Degrowth
English term ‘degrowth’ had received international attention, with the
rst ‘International Degrowth Conference on Ecological Sustainability
and Social Justice’ in Paris. From this point onwards, the degrowth
concept spread from France to Spain, Italy, the rest of Europe, and
beyond.23
In its origins, the movement was rooted in anarchist environmental
groups, campaigns for car-free cities and against large-scale industrial
infrastructure, as well as in local collective projects such as collective
housing groups and eco-villages. Yet it was the biannual International
Degrowth Conferences which served as meeting points, places for
discussion, and the slow formation of an international degrowth frame-
work. In 2014, the Fourth International Conference in Leipzig attracted
3,000 participants. By 2020, the Seventh International Conference, held
online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, attracted over 4,000 partici-
pants. Research on the subject has multiplied, with hundreds of peer-
reviewed academic journal articles being published on the topic. Each
year, degrowth summer schools organized by di erent institutes and
collectives across Europe attract dozens and sometimes hundreds of
participants, and the Global Degrowth Day in June is an opportunity
for local organizations and initiatives to organize festivals and confer-
ences around the world.
While degrowth continues to be a largely academic and activist
concept, the critique of growth as an overarching priority is gaining
popularity in the public realm as well. While polls have to be taken
with a grain of salt, a 2018 poll taken in France showed that 54 per
cent of respondents supported degrowth, compared to 46 per cent
who supported green growth; in another poll, also in France, 55 per
cent of respondents were for a degrowth future, compared to 29 per
cent who preferred a more secure, stable continuation of the present
and 16 per cent who were for a neoliberal, digitalized future.24 In
another poll, a majority of Europeans agreed that the environment
23 Muraca and Schmelzer, ‘Sustainable Degrowth’; Parrique, e Political
Economy of Degrowth.
24 ‘Les Français, plus “écolos” que jamais’, Odoxa.fr, 3 October 2019; Philippe
Moati, ‘Lutopie écologique séduit les Français’, Lemonde.fr, 22 November 2019.
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Introduction 15
should be a priority, even if that hampered economic growth.25
Surveys such as these do not necessarily translate to, for example,
voting patterns it is still hard to imagine a degrowth party taking
double-digit percentages of the vote in French or let alone European
elections. But they are an indication of the fact that there is some
concern and receptiveness by the public, and that there could be room
for degrowth to prosper and develop further as a new eco-social
common sense competing against eco-modernist and green growth
ideas.
Research on degrowth is by now quite diverse and empirically
robust. It spans disciplines such as economics and the humanities,
political science, climate sciences, technology studies, and some natural
and engineering sciences, and it includes hundreds of scienti c articles
on issues ranging from economic modelling to analyses of international
socio-metabolic datasets, to case studies of squats in Barcelona. More
and more books for a general audience are being published in English
on the subject since 2014, as well as dozens of edited books and special
issues that focus on diverse topics such as housing, technology, political
economy, tourism, food, democracy, social movements, feminism,
anthropology, and history.26
However, while degrowth goes beyond the ecological and
economic perspectives that are dominant in the literature, there is
25 Mark Rice-Oxley and Jennifer Rankin, ‘Europe’s South and East Worry
More about Emigration an Immigration Poll, eguardian.com, 1 April
2019.
26 For a review of the existing literature, see: Giorgos Kallis et al., ‘Research
on Degrowth, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43 (2018): 291–316;
Martin Weiss and Claudio Cattaneo, ‘Degrowth: Taking Stock and Reviewing an
Emerging Academic Paradigm, Ecological Economics 137 (July 2017): 220–30;
Matthias Schmelzer and Andrea Vetter, Degrowth/Postwachstum zur Einführung
(Hamburg: Junius, 2019). Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, published in
2014, has since been translated into over a dozen languages and has proved to be
particularly in uential; designed as a handbook, it presents a large number of
core terms that are central to the discussion of degrowth and gives room for some
very disparate perspectives. D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis, Degrowth. Other
in uential books include Hickel, Less Is More; Giorgos Kallis et al., e Case for
Degrowth (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020); and Liegey and Nelson, Exploring
Degrowth.
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16 The Future Is Degrowth
not much writing that explores degrowth in its full breadth, includ-
ing analyses from the social sciences and humanities centre stage.
And while the degrowth movement is clearly progressive or even
largely anti-capitalist, there are few books exploring degrowth
from a perspective explicitly critical of capitalism that engages
with wider debates on the left that is, one that sees systems of
domination such as patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, racism,
and capitalism as the central, structural problems facing us today.
This is what we seek to do in this book. In doing so, we argue that
degrowth represents a crucially important, and internally coher-
ent, framework for just futures one that must supplement and
possibly transform progressive proposals like the Green New Deal.
While degrowth’ as a term need not be taken up by emancipatory
social movements and the broader left, we argue that its perspec-
tives, its critiques, and its core proposals should form an integral
part of the larger ‘movement of movements’ that is necessary for a
globally just future for all.27
What is degrowth?
ese days, with growing interest in degrowth, it seems that almost
every other week another humourless columnist for a major newspaper
writes a criticism of degrowth. is is to be expected and even, to a
certain extent, welcomed: the more those in positions of power rail
against degrowth, the more people who might be sympathetic to it, who
would otherwise not have heard about it, are exposed to it. And, indeed,
it also ful ls degrowths initial goal as a provocation, a conversation
starter, a shit-disturber. Yet, usually, these columnists show little under-
standing of what degrowth means and so their objections tend to
badly miss the mark.
What better way to nd out the meaning of degrowth than to ask
those most interested in it? e largest empirical survey of degrowth
proponents, a survey at the 2014 Leipzig conference in which one of us
was involved, found that respondents held several positions in common:
27 On this, see also Burkhart, Schmelzer, and Treu, Degrowth in Movement(s).
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Introduction 17
they largely agreed that economic growth without destruction of nature
is an illusion and that therefore industrialized countries need to equita-
bly downscale production and consumption; they also mostly agreed
that consequently the rich will have to do without some amenities to
which they have become accustomed, and that the transformation to a
degrowth society must come from below, will be peaceful, and will
require overcoming capitalism and patriarchy.28 is basic consensus
across many di erent perspectives among conference attendees high-
lights that degrowth proponents are fundamentally critical of growth,
capitalism, and industrialism, want to overcome other forms of domi-
nation, and advocate a radical restructuring of the economy in indus-
trialized countries, requiring the selective downscaling of certain
industries and production. is clearly distinguishes degrowth from
many other political positions not only from conservative currents
(e.g., preserving the status quo, green fascism, or green growth) but also
from le ist productivist positions such as most Green New Deals or
visions of post-capitalism, which are less precise on the need to trans-
form capitalism, dynamics of growth, global justice, and excess
consumption.
Yet, these basic agreements aside, degrowth is not a uni ed concept
– it can better be understood as a multivalent term. One of its charac-
teristics is that it is not only a scienti c research paradigm but also a
political project. is becomes very clear at the International Degrowth
Conferences and the degrowth summer schools, which stress exchanges
among academics, activists, practitioners of alternative economic
projects, and political actors. is exchange o en goes both ways:
scienti c work and collective action can be mutually bene cial. Much
of the scienti c research done by degrowth scholars can be called activ-
ist research or ‘post-normal science’, which highlight the political
implications of academic work in times of necessary social change and
28 Matthias Schmelzer and Dennis Eversberg, ‘Beyond Growth, Capitalism,
and Industrialism? Consensus, Divisions and Currents within the Emerging
Movement for Sustainable Degrowth’, Interface: A Journal for and about Social
Movements 9, no. 1 (2017): 327–56; Dennis Eversberg and Matthias Schmelzer,
e Degrowth Spectrum: Convergence and Divergence within a Diverse and
Con ictual Alliance, Environmental Values 27, no. 3 (2018): 245–67.
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18 The Future Is Degrowth
calls for the involvement of laypersons in the production and critical
evaluation of knowledge.29
Another aspect of this multivalence is that degrowth is simultane-
ously a critique of the present and a visionary goal. As we lay out in this
book, degrowth has its roots in diverse, wide-ranging analyses of the
present – including ecological, feminist, anti-capitalist, and decolonial
approaches. Degrowth, we argue, can be understood as the combina-
tion of a speci c set of critiques of growth. But, straddling both
academia and social movements, and building on these multiple
critiques, degrowth also poses the question of what characteristics,
institutions, infrastructures, and relationships a utopian growth-inde-
pendent society should have. In this way, degrowth is explicitly a
utopian project: it embraces the need to think, and act, beyond the
present and to propose alternative futures. Degrowth thus involves a set
of common principles for what that future could look like, policies for
how to get there, and strategies for transformation. We begin the book
with speci c critiques of growth, then lay out proposals for a degrowth
future, and nally discuss how we can get from here to there.
A central target of the degrowth critique, it must be noted, is the
discipline of economics. Degrowths relationship to economics is in
many ways quite ambivalent. On the one hand, degrowth o en analyses
questions that are traditionally dealt with by economists such as
trends in global economic patterns, secular stagnation, or the relation-
ship between productivity, resource use, and GDP growth and
degrowth-inspired research has o ered important contributions to the
eld. Degrowth can thus be understood as an attempt to recon gure
economics.30 On the other hand, degrowth is also a radical critique of
economics itself, a critique of economic thinking as a form of
29 Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, ‘Science for the Post-normal
Age, Futures 25, no. 7 (September 1993): 739–55.
30 is perspective is particularly prominent within the ecological economics
writings on degrowth. See, for example, Giorgos Kallis, Degrowth (Newcastle
upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2018); Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: e
Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996); Tim
Jackson, Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London:
Earthscan, 2016).
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Introduction 19
knowledge that became dominant with the growth economy, is closely
interconnected with it, and stands in the way of thinking and talking
about other economic and social orders freed from the logics of growth
and ‘the economy’.31 Degrowth thus aims at escaping from the
economy’,32 which importantly also includes a critique of economics of
the perspectives, methods, and basic assumptions of the discipline
claiming to explain economic activities. Even as we incorporate theo-
ries and insights from heterodox economics, in this book we focus
especially on the latter perspective, because we think degrowth o ers a
critique of economic thinking and of the dominance of economics that
is especially useful for the le .
Beyond being both a critique and a proposal, degrowth also func-
tions as an enabler of certain conversations. On the one hand, degrowth
is a provocation: a way to rile people up and a way to begin asking
transformative questions the French historian Paul Ariès calls it a
‘missile word.33 On the other hand, degrowth is also a meeting space for
various concepts, arguments, and communities. us, the Italian
economic historian Stefania Barca prefers the less militaristic metaphor
of degrowth as an ‘umbrella term’: not just because it encapsulates many
di erent critiques, proposals, and strategies, but also because, like an
umbrella, it protects. As Barca explains,
In a world constantly hit both by the heavy rains of ecological degra-
dation, impoverishment, [and] austerity measures, and by the
implacable heat of overconsumption, overproduction and the nan-
cialisation of everything, opening an umbrella and creating a space
for di erent movements to converge and talk about (or practice) the
alternatives that they want is exactly what the degrowth term has
been doing in the past decade, especially in Europe.34
31 Schmelzer, e Hegemony of Growth.
32 Fournier, ‘Escaping from the Economy’.
33 Paul Ariès, croissance ou barbarie (Lyon: Golias, 2005); Giorgos Kallis,
e Le Should Embrace Degrowth, Newint.org, 5 November 2015.
34 Stefania Barca, ‘In Defense of Degrowth: Opinions and Minifestos/
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to ink Like a 21st-Century Economist’,
Local Environment 23, no. 3 (2018): 379.
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20 The Future Is Degrowth
Building on this image of degrowth as an umbrella, we aim to hold
space for the many interconnected, overlapping, yet not always harmo-
nious concepts and ideas, lines of research, and political projects that
are brought together under degrowth. In so doing, we argue that
degrowth must be understood as a holistic term that both draws from a
wider tradition of critical thought and o ers a new framework that is
indispensable for overcoming the crises we face.
What degrowth is not
at said, being such a provocative term, degrowth is o en misinterpreted
or deliberately misrepresented, even by many who generally share the
objectives of degrowth. We thus want to discuss some of the most wide-
spread misunderstandings upfront. One common misconception is that
degrowth is either a proposal for recession, imposed austerity, or that it will
necessarily result in economic collapse and social catastrophe. Since
economic growth is seen as the only possible way to improve living stand-
ards, whenever an economic crisis happens, critics of degrowth will say,
o en disingenuously,see, this is what happens when you degrow.35 And,
since our economy depends on economic growth, and economic crisis is
catastrophic for many peoples livelihoods, people assume that degrowth
would similarly be a catastrophe and lead to full-scale collapse. Both
assumptions are, of course, false. Degrowth is the opposite of recession:
recessions are unintentional, while degrowth is planned and intentional;
recessions make inequality worse, degrowth seeks to reduce it; recessions
typically lead to cuts in public services while degrowth is about de-commod-
ifying essential goods and services; recessions o en cause bold policies for
sustainability to be abandoned for the sake of restarting growth, while
degrowth is explicitly for a rapid and decisive transformation.36 Hence the
35 See, for example, McAleenan, ‘Coronavirus Reveals the Misery of
Degrowth’; or the debate between Branko Milanovic and Jason Hickel, in Jason
Hickel, ‘Why Branko Milanovic Is Wrong about Degrowth’, jasonhickel.org, 19
November 2017. For a collection of some controversies around degrowth, see
‘Controversies’, timotheeparrique.com.
36 Jason Hickel, ‘What Does Degrowth Mean? A Few Points of Clari cation,
Globalizations 18, no. 7 (2021): 1105–11.
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Introduction 21
slogan of the French décroissance movement: eir recession is not our
degrowth. Such a transformed, just, and growth-independent economy is
the core of the degrowth project. Further, degrowth is explicitly framed to
build a system not structurally bent towards crisis. Crises like the 2008
nancial crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, the res engul ng the Amazon,
and the past and ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples indicate that
growth-driven capitalism already is a catastrophe. More than ever, the
choice is between degrowth – a multidimensional set of transformations
based on su ciency, care, and justice – or barbarism. In other words, we
talk about degrowth in order to avoid the catastrophe that awaits us and
which is already a daily reality in many parts of the world. Degrowth is not
the crisis; capitalism is.
Another critique of degrowth is that it is reactionary, that it is against
modernity and against progress.37 For example, the Greek economist
and politician Yanis Varoufakis recently characterized degrowth as some
kind of regressive nostalgia aiming for a return to pre-industrial times
that mainly argues that ‘now we need to go back to the bush. Similarly,
the Serbian American economist of inequality Branko Milanovic vili ed
degrowth as ‘an asceticism reminiscent of the early Christendom’ and a
proposal for the ‘immiseration of the West’.38 at little de-’ in the word
o en rubs people the wrong way. And many – even on the le fall for
the ideology of growth and con ate modernity, development, emanci-
pation, and improvement with economic growth, with more stu , and
with a continuous development of productive forces. It makes sense
when conservatives, centrists, and liberals advance this criticism: for
these people, any criticism of the present is all-too-o en accused of
being dismissive of the advances that we have made. ‘If you don’t like it,
go live in a cave and see how you like that. is all-or-nothing argument
is the last resort of those who aim to preserve the status quo. But when it
is put forward by le ists, it seems rather insincere. Rather than being
37 Leigh Philips, Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence
of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stu (Winchester: Zer0, 2014).
38 Timothée Parrique, A Response to Yanis Varoufakis: Star Trek and
Degrowth, timotheeparrique.com, 3 January 2021; Branko Milanovic, ‘Degrowth:
Solving the Impasse by Magical inking’, glineq.blogspot.com, 20 February
2021.
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22 The Future Is Degrowth
against modernity and progress, degrowth claims that a system built on
economic growth obstructs meaningful progress towards global justice,
well-being, and sustainability. And, as we will argue, degrowth posits
that defending and strengthening the social, political, and cultural rights
that modern movements have won requires moving beyond economic
growth. Furthermore, far from being reactionary or against all modern
technologies or conveniences, degrowth aims at democratizing the
development of productive forces and social metabolism in order to
achieve public abundance. And, far from being about ‘belt-tightening
sacri ce, degrowth is about strengthening more meaningful and less
destructive forms of happiness, new forms of the joy of life (the oldest
degrowth periodical is called Le journal de la joie vivre), or what has
been called ‘alternative hedonism.39 Degrowth is not against progress;
rather, holding on to continuous economic growth undermines real
progress.
In a similar vein, degrowth is also o en understood as simply
another word for ‘austerity’: it is claimed that degrowth advocates use
ecological arguments to say that we should have less, to deprive us of
good stu and make us tighten our belts – in particular, poor people’s
belts.40 Even proponents of a Green New Deal, who are critical of
growth, have asked, ‘Who will march for green austerity?’41 is is a
curious criticism because austerity (or as the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank call it euphemistically, ‘structural adjustment’)
has always been imposed on populations for the sake of growth. We have
been convinced, for half a century now, that cutting public services is
good for us because it will increase competitiveness, balance the budget,
and eventually lead to growth.42 By contrast, degrowth targets the
assumption that it is economic growth that we need and focuses instead
39 See chapters 4 and 5. Timothee Parrique, ‘A Response to Branko Milanović:
e Magic of Degrowth’, 25 February 2021, timotheeparrique.com; Kate Soper,
Post-growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism (London: Verso, 2020).
40 ‘Ep 011 Destroying Degrowth with Facts and Logic (feat. Matt Huber)’, 11
April 2021, Spacecommune.com, podcast; or Philips, Austerity Ecology.
41 Kate Arono et al., A Planet to Win, 12.
42 Mark Blyth, Austerity: e History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013).
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Introduction 23
on a radical redistribution of income and wealth, on global justice, and
on what actually ensures well-being. While austerity increases inequal-
ity by thrashing public services and bene tting the rich, degrowth poli-
cies focus on democratizing production, curbing the wealth and over-
consumption of the rich, expanding public services, and increasing
equality within and between societies. As we’ll explain in this book,
under degrowth, public services would ourish, rather than see cuts –
degrowth is about private su ciency and public abundance. Certainly,
life would look a lot di erent, many people would likely possess fewer
material objects but others would have access to more and society
would be more sustaining, just, convivial, and ful lling. In essence,
degrowth aims at a society in which well-being is mediated less by capi-
talist market transactions, exchange values, or material consumption –
and more by collective forms of provisioning, use values, and ful lling,
meaningful, and convivial relationships.43 As one degrowth slogans
states: ‘moins de biens, plus de liens’ (fewer transactions, more
relations).
One of the most common misconceptions assumes that degrowth
would imply an across-the-board, undi erentiated reduction of all types
of production or consumption – a patently absurd idea. On the one hand,
it is argued, degrowths critique of ‘growth as such’ does not di erentiate
between essential and super uous production and consumption and
proposes to reduce all. As recently claimed by Kenta Tsuda,
Degrowthers tend to elide the colloquial meaning of consumption,
as something like discretionary ‘retail therapy’, with the terms
economic de nition: the nal use of a resource as a good or service.
e latter sense encompasses not only the ostensibly super uous
resource uses that degrowthers would reduce or ban, but also unam-
biguously essential ones: nutritious food, commodious shelter,
healthcare and childcare.44
43 See chapter 4. Hartmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship
to the World (Medford, MA: Polity, 2019).
44 Kenta Tsuda, ‘Naive Questions on Degrowth, New Le Review 128 (2021):
111–30, 128.
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24 The Future Is Degrowth
However, degrowth is not against consumption as such, but rather criti-
cizes the dominance of a consumer culture, in which consumption
governs social and political life (wherein proposals to the current crises
are framed as individual choices), and the absurdity of ‘positional
consumption’ based on status competition. Degrowth also takes aim at
policies promoting GDP growth precisely because growth does not
di erentiate between useful and destructive, essential and super uous.
In contrast, degrowth di erentiates between certain economic activi-
ties and forms of production and consumption, proposing policies for
the downscaling of some and the ourishing of others – depending on
how they address social needs, justice, care, and sustainability (see
chapters 4 and 5).
On the other hand, proponents of ecological modernization or
a Green New Deal have repeatedly argued that degrowth does not
make sense because, as recently argued by Noam Chomsky, a ‘shift
to sustainable energy requires growth: construction and installa-
tion of solar panels and wind turbines, weatherization of homes,
major infrastructure projects to create efficient mass transporta-
tion, and much else’.45 Literally all degrowth proposals do include
policies for the selective expansion of all these things. Yet
degrowth also asks whether this would necessarily result in an
increase of the size of the economy as measured in GDP when
combined with the required contraction of other sectors and
activities. Put differently, degrowth aims to disassociate socially
and ecologically necessary improvements from the idea of
economic growth – which often leads people to mix up well-being
with economic growth as measured through GDP, while obscur-
ing the material and energetic throughput that economic growth
depends on.
Another common misunderstanding is that degrowth for poorer
countries does not make sense, since it is in particular the poor that
need material development and that therefore degrowth is a neo-
colonial plot, or just magical thinking, that will keep global inequality
45 Chomsky and Pollin, Climate Crisis, 118. See also Pollin, ‘De-Growth vs a
Green New Deal’.
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Introduction 25
as it is.46 Again, however, the opposite is the case degrowth starts
explicitly from a global justice perspective that aims to decolonize the
Global North so as to make space for the Global South.47 Indeed, a
degrowth perspective aims at the convergence of living standards at an
equitable and globally sustainable level. While degrowth has allies in
the Global South within the broader framework of ‘alternatives to
development, it mainly focuses on the Global North or, more speci -
cally, on the a uent who maintain what has been called the ‘imperial
mode of living.48 Furthermore, as we argue in this book, degrowth
embraces proposals for a decolonization of North–South relations,
reparative justice and transfers of resources, technology, and money,
and a self-determined increase of material and energy use by the
dispossessed in the Global South (and those that have too little in the
Global North).49 is should su ce to make clear that degrowth is also
not a critique of population growth (arguments that centre overpopula-
tion are squarely refuted by degrowthers), a depoliticizing call for
‘humanity’ to live more su ciently, or an initiative to conserve ‘Half-
Earth’ (which tends to misdiagnose the causes of ecological disruption
and disregard Indigenous land rights).50 Some authors have also warned
that degrowths rise in popularity could reproduce neo-colonial asym-
metries by setting a global agenda that dominates and renders invisible
diverse perspectives from the Global South. Degrowth would thus
‘re-enact the presumed superiority of Modern developments over
46 Branko Milanovic, ‘Degrowth: Solving the Impasse by Magical
Thinking’, Global Inequality (blog), 20 February 2021, glineq.blogspot.com;
Max Roser, ‘The Economies That Are Home to the Poorest Billions of People
Need to Grow If We Want Global Poverty to Decline Substantially’,
Ourworldindata.org, 22 February 2021; Noah Smith, Against Hickelism:
Poverty Is Falling, and It Isn’t Because of Free-Market Capitalism, noahpinion.
substack.com, 2 April 2021.
47 Hickel, ‘What Does Degrowth Mean?’
48 Ashish Kothari et al., Pluriverse: A Post-development Dictionary (Delhi:
Authors Up Front, 2019); Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, e Imperial Mode
of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism (London: Verso,
2021).
49 See chapter 5. Ajl, A People’s Green New Deal.
50 See chapters 3 and 5 for more details.
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26 The Future Is Degrowth
alternative topologies of the pluriverse’.51 While this might be a danger
that needs careful attention, degrowth explicitly rejects imperial and
Western hegemony and advocates for ‘liberation from the one-sided
Western development paradigm, as a precondition for enabling a self-
determined shaping of society and a good life in the Global South, and
enters into active alliances within the broader pluriversal framework of
alternatives to development’.52
Some understand degrowth – or more o en ‘post-growth– merely
as a descriptive concept that characterizes societies that are not or are
no longer growing. For example, in their recent book on a Global Green
New Deal, Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky analyse degrowth as a
proposal for stagnating or shrinking economies, arguing that the
‘fundamental problems with degrowth are well illustrated by the case of
Japan’ – which has for decades been a capitalist and growth-dependent,
though slow-growing, economy.53 If degrowth or post-growth are
understood as merely analytical terms, they can indeed be used to char-
acterize some advanced capitalist countries with long-term growth
rates close to or below zero. Degrowth would thus also describe the
trend of falling growth rates characterized by economists as secular
stagnation contracting economies in crisis, showing the structural
problems capitalist economies face without expansion.54 However,
degrowth is not a description of, for example, the tendencies of
51 Saurabh Arora and Andy Stirling, ‘Degrowth and the Pluriverse:
Continued Coloniality or Intercultural Revolution?’, steps-centre.org/blog, 5 May
2021; Padini Nirmal and Dianne Rocheleau, ‘Decolonizing Degrowth in the Post-
development Convergence: Questions, Experiences, and Proposals from Two
Indigenous Territories’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 2, no. 3
(2019): 465–92.
52 Corinna Burkhart, Matthias Schmelzer, and Nina Treu, ‘Degrowth:
Overcoming Growth, Competition and Pro t’, in Degrowth in Movement(s):
Exploring Pathways for Transformation, 143–58, 147; Kothari et al., Pluriverse.
53 Chomsky and Pollin, Climate Crisis, 118; see also David Roberts, ‘Noam
Chomsky’s Green New Deal’, Vox.com, 21 September 2020.
54 Klaus Dörre, Die Utopie des Sozialismus: Kompass für eine
Nachhaltigkeitsrevolution (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz Verlag, 2021); Aaron Benanav,
Automation and the Future of Work (London: Verso, 2020); Schmelzer, e
Hegemony of Growth.
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Introduction 27
crisis-ridden late capitalist industrial societies that, without growth,
tend towards neo-feudal hierarchies and exploitation, also called socie-
ties of ‘social decline’ by sociologists.55 On the contrary, degrowth is an
explicitly normative concept. It delineates the contours of a desirable,
democratic transformation process, which focuses explicitly on analys-
ing, criticizing, and then overcoming growth dependencies. Degrowth
does in fact argue that because growth rates are declining in some
advanced economies, it is high time to restructure these economies
along the lines proposed by degrowth in order to avoid structural prob-
lems such as rising unemployment, inequality, and debt, which are
partly caused by growth dependencies. In other words, it is only because
our economies are dependent on continuous growth that stagnation is
seen as problematic by economists. Degrowth proposes to break out of
this bind by decoupling well-being from the imperative to grow. It is the
contours of such a concrete utopia that we work out in this book.
Finally, next to these misunderstandings and there are many
others that will be covered throughout the book there is also an
intense debate on the usefulness or pitfalls of the term ‘degrowth.56 In
fact, many who may agree with the general thrust of degrowth’s radi-
cal ecological transformation still complain that the term is too
focused on undoing growth and that it activates the problematic
semantic frame of growth(con ating it with more of the good things)
that should rather be avoided. Some have thus argued that we should
remain agnostic about the question of growth – in other words, about
the increase or reduction of GDP and simply focus on the policies
and transformations needed.57 Instead of ‘degrowth, ‘agrowth has
55 Hartmut Rosa, Stephan Lessenich, and Klaus Dörre, Sociology, Capitalism,
Critique (London: Verso, 2015); Robert Gordon, Rise and Fall of American
Growth: e U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2016); Oliver Nachtwey, Germanys Hidden Crisis: Social Decline
in the Heart of Europe (London: Verso, 2018).
56 On common critiques of degrowth, see Kallis et al., e Case for Degrowth;
and a collection of degrowth controversies at timotheeparrique.com/
degrowthcontroversies.
57 Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to ink Like a
21st-Century Economist (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing,
2017), chapter 7.
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28 The Future Is Degrowth
been proposed as a better term (as cognate with atheism’), since it
makes little sense to orient oneself to GDP statistics, which are largely
meaningless for well-being.58 Others still prefer ‘post-growth’, empha-
sizing that the goal is not to contract but to become growth-
independent in an era ‘a er growth.59 ‘Post-growth, when used as a
normative rather than a descriptive term, is o en seen as a safer, less
negative, and more aspirational concept. As a result, post-growth
o en is agnostic about the role of GDP and its relationship to envi-
ronmental and social impacts.
While there is certainly some truth to these arguments, and eventu-
ally there may come a time to drop the term ‘degrowth, they miss one
of the key goals of degrowth: to tear down the cracked edi ce of the
hegemony of growth. As we explain in chapter 2, growth is the corner-
stone of an ideological construct justifying uneven global relations,
growth dependencies, and policies that uphold private pro ts. us, it
cannot simply be ignored; it must be dealt with head-on. Also, as
discussed in more detail throughout the book, if a decoupling of GDP
growth from ecological destruction is not possible, and if modern soci-
eties are structurally dependent on expansion, then it would be highly
irresponsible to not address these structural growth dependencies,
because they will always block e ective environmental policies that
would hamper growth.60 As James Baldwin said, ‘Not everything that is
faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.61
Without facing the ideology of growth head-on, we will not be able to
manifest the radical transformation of society that we need. Despite
58 Latouche, Farewell to Growth; Jeroen van den Bergh and Giorgos Kallis,
‘Growth, A-growth or Degrowth to Stay within Planetary Boundaries?’, Journal of
Economic Issues 46, no. 4 (2012): 909–20; Jeroen van den Bergh, ‘Environment
versus Growth: A Criticism of “Degrowth” and a Plea for “A-growth” ’, Ecological
Economics 70, no. 5 (2011): 881–90.
59 Irmi Seidl and Angelika Zahrnt, Postwachstumsgesellscha : Neue Konzepte
für die Zukun (Marburg: Metropolis, 2010).
60 Or, for the sake of argument, if environmental policies were e ective,
structural growth dependencies would push societies into recession, eco-austerity,
and crisis. See the arguments and literature in chapter 4.
61 James Baldwin, ‘As Much Truth as One Can Bear’, New York Times Book
Review, 14 January 1962.
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Introduction 29
some of the confusions that o en emerge from using the negative term
de-growth, we believe it remains useful as a term that is more di cult
to co-opt (see the fate of the term ‘sustainable development’), that
names the enemy, and, through its provocative framing, is extremely
productive in starting conversations about systemic alternatives. As we
argue in this book, degrowth is di erentiated, rst, through its princi-
pled criticism of capitalism and economic logics, and second, because
the degrowth policies that aim at global ecological justice and the
necessary reductions in material and energy throughput necessary to
achieve it will in all likelihood also lead to a reduction in the size of ‘the
economy’ as measured in GDP – and it is good to be prepared and do
this in a planned manner.62
It is true that the aspirational character of ‘post-growth also has its
bene ts in certain contexts for example, European Green parties
have used the term ‘post-growth as a less confrontational way to
advance degrowth ideas. ‘Post-growth’ is somewhat more open than
degrowth’ because it does not activate the growth frame as much, and
all the complex debates this stirs up, but focuses on a future beyond
economic growth. Yet, a debate on growth is still very necessary. As
Giorgos Kallis puts it in a discussion with Kate Raworth on whether
degrowth’ is a good word: ‘the missile has landed, but it hasn’t worked,
so it is not yet “the time to move on.63 e issue is also partly a linguis-
tic problem. While in France, where the term décroissance was born
and gained widespread prominence, in German, using De- or Ent-
alongside Wachstum is awkward, and so Postwachstum is usually
preferred. In Japan, datsu seichou (roughly, degrowth’) is used; in
Dutch, ontgroei (roughly, ‘ungrowth’); and in Scandinavian countries,
people usually use the English term, ‘degrowth. In this book we use
the term ‘degrowth, though neither are we against people using ‘post-
growth’ instead.
62 Van den Bergh and Kallis, ‘Growth, A-growth or Degrowth’; see also
chapter 4.
63 Giorgos Kallis, ‘You’re Wrong Kate, Degrowth Is a Compelling Word’,
oxfamblogs.org, 2 December 2015.
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30 The Future Is Degrowth
What we argue
is book o ers o er a systematic introduction to the dynamic, trans-
disciplinary debate on economic growth, critiques of growth, the many
currents of degrowth, degrowth policies, and a political strategy for
degrowth from a decolonial, feminist, and anti-capitalist perspective.
roughout the book, we respond to the ‘naïve questions on degrowth
that are o en raised by its critics (e.g., Is green growth not more realis-
tic? How could a planned contraction be implemented? What should
grow and what should degrow?64). Many questions may remain, but we
aim to provide context for readers to think more deeply about the chal-
lenges posed by the critiques of growth.
What distinguishes degrowth, we claim, is that it holds together
social, cultural, and ecological questions and in this way advances new
ideas that could provide answers to the pressing questions of the
twenty- rst century. e peculiarity and the potential of the degrowth
discussion is that these various forms of criticism are taken up, recog-
nized, brought into mutual productive exchange, and understood as
parts of a common space of discourse. is book is therefore not only
an introduction to the vision of degrowth but necessarily also an intro-
duction to the dynamics of growth and the critiques of growth in
modern societies. We argue that degrowth contributes what other
le ist proposals do not: a holistic critique and proposal capable of
deconstructing the dominant ideology driving capitalism today – the
ideology of growth – and showing ways forward for unmaking growth
and capitalism in our everyday lives, in our societal institutions, and in
our economic structures.
We thus devote chapter 2 to the concept of ‘growth. Here, we high-
light some foundational claims for the degrowth debate. Economic
growth, we argue, appears as the ideological, social, and biophysical
materialization of capitalist accumulation. To understand and disman-
tle the politics of growth today, we need to analyse economic growth as
three interlinked processes that have evolved dynamically over time.
First, economic growth as a policy goal, as well as the broader societal
64 Tsuda, ‘Naïve Questions on Degrowth.
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Introduction 31
obsession with growth as we know it today, are relatively new develop-
ments that can be traced to attempts in the middle of the twentieth
century to stabilize and plan capitalist economies through state inter-
vention, to measure capitalist economies against state socialist ones,
and to appease the increasingly militant working class. It was only
through the new idea that ‘the economycould be measured through
GDP that it became possible to justify the belief that growth is natural,
necessary, good, and unlimited. However, focusing on the new hegem-
ony of growth alone would obscure the social and material roots of
growth. us, second, we argue that growth is also a social process that
preceded the hegemony of growth and which results in cultural norms,
speci c modes of production and living, and a set of class interests
oriented towards increase, acceleration, and escalation – subsequently
leading modern societies to become dependent on growth and its
dynamics of accumulation. And third, growth is a material process
the ever-expanding use of land, materials, and energy – that is rooted in
patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, resulting in an accelerated
material and energetic throughput and exploitation for the sake of
pro t. ‘Economic growth’ can thus be understood as both an increase in
economic production and as an interlocking, self-reinforcing cultural,
social, and material process which has transformed life and the planet
over the past centuries.
Having de ned growth, in chapter 3 we explore the critique of
growth. People o en think that degrowth is only about limiting
resources; however, it is much more complex. Degrowth, we argue,
can be understood as the attempt to integrate a number of di erent
strands of growth critique we focus on seven. Economic growth,
according to these critiques, (1) destroys the ecological foundations
of human life and cannot be transformed to become sustainable; (2)
mismeasures our lives and thus stands in the way of well-being and
equality of all; (3) imposes alienated ways of working, living, and
relating to each other and nature; (4) depends on and is driven by
capitalist exploitation, competition, and accumulation; (5) is based
on gendered over-exploitation and devalues reproduction; (6) gives
rise to oppressive and undemocratic productive forces and tech-
niques; and (7) necessarily relies on and reproduces unjust relations
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32 The Future Is Degrowth
of domination, extraction, and exploitation between capitalist centre
and periphery.
A historical analysis of growth, and a discussion of the critiques
thereof, comprises the rst half of the book. In the second half, we start
from the position that degrowth is not only a critique but also a vision-
ary proposal, an attempt to create ‘concrete utopias’ and to combine
them with resistant practices and alternative ways of life in the here and
now. In the last decade, there has been much debate on what degrowth
stands for, with emphasis being put on di erent aspects of the theory.
Chapter 4 provides an overview of the di erent visionary currents of
degrowth and draws them together in a common de nition. Degrowth,
we argue, describes the democratic transition to a society that in
order to enable global ecological justice – has a much smaller through-
put of energy and resources, and thus also a smaller economy; ensures
justice, self-determination, and a good life for all under this changed
metabolism; and does not depend on growth and continuous expan-
sion. In essence, the degrowth vision is about pushing back against the
dominant economic logic and economic calculation namely, the
question of whether everything pays o nancially as the dominant
basis for decision-making in society. e aim is thus to repoliticize and
democratize social institutions as well as power and property relation-
ships, in order to abandon the social dominance and logic of the
economy’.
Following this, we ask: how do we get there? In chapter 5 we consider
the policies that could make degrowth a reality. Degrowth o ers many
concrete proposals for ‘non-reformist reforms’ (André Gorz) or a ‘revo-
lutionary Realpolitik(Rosa Luxemburg).65 is refers to reforms that
take advantage of existing institutions and bureaucratic regulations and
yet also lead to immediate gains for social movements and even point
beyond the capitalist, growth-oriented mode of production and central-
ized technocratic states. ey ultimately strengthen the struggles that
65 On the concept of non-reformist reforms, see Mark Engler and Paul
Engler, ‘André Gorz’s Non-Reformist Reforms Show How We Can Transform the
World Today’, Jacobinmag.com, 22 July 2021; Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Karl Marx’, in
Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1.2 (Berlin: Dietz, 2000): 369–77, 373.
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Introduction 33
help us overcome these same institutions, eventually helping to bring
about revolutionary change.66
We focus on transformational changes in six areas: (1) democratizing
the economy, which includes, for example, strengthening the commons
and solidarity economy, transferring utilities like water or electricity
into democratic ownership, providing institutional support for coop-
erative workplaces, or proposals for macroeconomic coordination and
participatory planning; (2) redistribution and social security, which
includes policies guaranteeing access to basic services such as health
care, public transport, food, and education for all, or as the French
décroissance movement has called it, dotation inconditionelle
d’autonomie universal basic services; (3) democratizing technology,
supported by policies such as assessing the impact of technologies on
society and the environment over their entire life cycle, or opening
repair centres in every community; (4) revaluation of labour, including
policies such as radical reduction in working time, and eliminating
useless or socially harmful jobs (like advertising or the fracking indus-
try) while recentring the economy around needs and care work; (5)
democratization of social metabolism, meaning that large areas of
production and consumption will need to be dismantled, while other
systems will need to be developed in their place – this could include, for
example, reforming taxation systems to disincentivize harmful indus-
trial activity, or moratoria on planned fossil fuel infrastructure such as
airports or mega-highways; (6) international solidarity, which could
include, for example, restructuring the international monetary system
to dismantle uneven hierarchies between nations, or cancelling the
debts of Global South countries and transferring resources, technology,
and money as reparations for climate debt. is wide selection of poli-
cies shows how degrowth is not just about proposing a single policy
that could potentially change everything (as many basic income
66 A strategy of non-reformist reforms, Gorz argues, aims by means of
partial victories to shake the system’s equilibrium profoundly, to sharpen its
contradictions, to intensify its crisis, and, by a succession of attacks and
counterattacks, to raise the class struggle to a greater intensity, at a higher and
higher level’. André Gorz, Strategy for Labor: A Radical Proposal (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1967), 181.
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34 The Future Is Degrowth
advocates argue, for example) but, instead, o ers a holistic package
where each policy complements the others.
However, policies alone cannot bring about a society-wide transfor-
mation: we need a strategy for societal change. While the discussion
about how to combine policies, electoral campaigns, social movements,
and local initiatives is still only developing, chapter 6 aims to advance
this debate by o ering a transformative approach to linking movement-
building, a strengthening of existing cooperative alternatives, and non-
reformist policy change. Drawing on the analysis of sociologist Erik
Olin Wright,67 we distinguish three di erent, complementary transfor-
mation strategies: interstitial strategies that create more cooperative
economic practices and spaces that do not follow the logics of capital-
ism, growth, and competition within existing structures; non-reformist
reforms that transform policies and institutions and fundamentally
democratize the economy, thus strengthening the scope for alternatives
and struggles; and strategies for building counter-hegemony and parallel
institutions of power that, through confrontational tactics such as
strikes, blockades, citizen assemblies, autonomously organized munici-
palities, and alternative forms of government, make it possible to break
with the logic of growth in individual sectors and regions of society.68
We argue that the transformation towards a degrowth society requires
an interplay of these three types of transformation strategies. We stress,
however, that building counter-hegemony and parallel structures of
power in other words, pursuing a strategy of dual power – is para-
mount, despite being under-explored within the degrowth debate. It is
only through collective power and the development of new kinds of
common sense that it becomes possible to productively relate the other
transformation approaches to envision degrowth becoming reality.
Degrowth, we believe, is a critique, a proposal, and a politics whose
time has come. A er the term was taken up in France, Spain, Italy, and
67 Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso, 2010).
68 e word ‘citizen’ has strong connotations with formal citizenship tied to
membership of nation-states. In this context, however, we use the word ‘citizen’ as
a broader category referring to any individual who has the capacity to engage in
politics, which does not exclude undocumented migrants, refugees, or the
stateless.
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Introduction 35
Germany, it spread beyond Europe. ere are now groups, events, festi-
vals, and publications in North America, India, and Mexico, among
others, and degrowth is increasingly taken up in various social strug-
gles. ough degrowth discussions initially developed surprisingly
independently of one another, the degrowth community is increasingly
interconnected globally and becoming more prominent in the main-
stream. is, however, does not mean that it should not be further
developed. In the concluding chapter, we highlight four areas which
could be better integrated within the degrowth debate: class and race,
geopolitics and imperialism, information technology, and democratic
planning.
In this book, we propose that degrowth is well positioned to help us
navigate the crises that face us. Degrowth is unique in o ering both an
analysis of how we got here and a way to get to the root of the crises we
face. Over the last ve centuries, a material, cultural, and political
system has developed that depends on growth and further drives it.
is is a system geared towards collapse. Neither green growth nor le
productivism are desirable options: growth cannot solve the problems
it creates, and, to face the impending crises, we need an economy that
values rather than exploits, disposes of, and invisibilizes, women and
people of the global majority. As far as the Green New Deal goes, this is
an admirable and encouraging development on the le – and its grow-
ing popularity is a promising indicator of the possibility of mass appeal
for transformative, radical projects. Here, a degrowth perspective can
be a compass for determining what kind of policies a truly transforma-
tive – that is, a caring, internationalist, post-growth, and socially just –
political project would entail. Our intention is that this book provide
both a compass and a navigational guide for how to get there.
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Index
abundance 22, 23, 184
abundance paradox 98
academic work, political implications of
17–18
acceleration 112–13
accounting techniques, statistical tools 40
accumulation 47, 48–54, 72, 102, 117,
118
as biophysical growth 61–6, 64
capitalist 30–1
continuous 119–20
and economic growth 121–2
materialization of 37, 48
primitive 50–1, 124, 137
achievability 215, 283–4
Acosta, Alberto 161–2, 163–4
activist research 17–18
Adbusters (magazine) 109
adbusting 109–10
Adler, Frank 263
Adorno, eodor W. 153, 179
advertising 210
Agarwal, Bina 139–41
agriculture 2, 50
community-supported 186, 216, 217
agrowth 27–8
Ajl, Max 244
alienation 104–16, 106–9, 113, 115, 143,
154–5, 204, 214
Allen, Amy 204
alter-globalization degrowth current
189–91
alternative economy degrowth current
185–8
Alternative for Germany 172
alternative hedonism 22, 103, 206, 289
Altvater, Elmar 118
Amazon res 21
Anders, Günther 145
Anthropocene, the 67
anthropogenic mass 60, 61
anti-capitalist movements 119
anti-modernism 174–5
apolitical ecology, avoiding 92–3
appropriation 118
Arendt, Hannah 234
argument 30–5
Ariès, Paul 19
asceticism 21
austerity 20–1, 22–3
automation 154–5
automobiles 150
autonomous spaces 257–8
autonomy 105, 116, 203–4
Baldwin, James 28
banks and banking 222–4
Barca, Stefania 19, 57, 232–3
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300 The Future Is Degrowth
basic services 33, 220–1, 225, 226, 232,
238–9, 247, 263
Bataille, Georges 127–8
Beck, Ulrich 100
Bennholdt- omsen, Veronika 138–9,
139–41
Bernau, Olaf 245
Berry, Wendell 115
Bielefeld subsistence approach 138–9
biodiversity 2, 5, 208
biodiversity loss 68, 69
biomass 60, 61
biophysical growth 60, 61–6, 64
bioregionalism 172
Black Panthers 155
Bloch, Ernst 115, 179, 269
blockadia 267–8
blood-and-soil environmentalism 171–4
Boggs, Grace Lee 12
Boggs, James 12
Bolsonaro, Jair 5
Bond, Patrick 280, 282
Bookchin, Murray 153, 179
bottom-up degrowth strategies 254–5
Bourdieu, Pierre 167
Braidotti, Rosi 139–41
Brand, Ulrich 164, 166–7
Brown, Wendy 44
buen vivir 158, 160–2, 168, 205
bullshit jobs 107, 240
Calafou, Spain 256
capital 48–54, 121
capitalism 48–54, 166, 198–9, 212
biophysical metabolism 8
as crisis 21
critique of 76, 78
growth as a core feature of 37
growth critique of 76, 117–32
historical background 48–54
holistic critique 30
role in growth 130–2
and scarcity 127–8, 128–30
social metabolism 62–3, 69
social relations 47
understanding 37
capitalist accumulation 30–1
capitalist modernity 54
capitalocene, the 67
carbon culture 66
carbon emissions 63, 72, 227, 245–6
carbon intensity 89
carbon storage 93
care 41
care revolution 188–9
care work 236–7, 289
caring economies 140–1
Casseurs de pub (magazine) 110
Castoriadis, Cornelius 129, 203
Catalan Integral Cooperative 255–6,
259–60
Chakrabarty, Dipesh 56, 202
challenges 276, 288, 288–96
change, demand for 5
Cheynet, Vincent 12–13
Chiapas, Mexico 259
China 292
Chomsky, Noam 24, 26
citizens 34
civil disobedience 267–8
class 31, 35, 47, 289–90
Clémentin, Bruno 12–13
climate change 5–6, 68, 69, 70, 150, 208,
240–1
climate debt 165, 240
climate injustice 9
climate justice 165
Club of Rome 11, 68
CO2 emissions 87–8, 89, 91–2, 163
cognitive frames 36–7
Cold War 43–4
collective production 185
colonial expansion 53
colonialism 46, 48, 49, 158, 161
commodi cation 54
commodity consensus, the 162
commodity system 124
commoning 210, 217–24, 225
commoning degrowth current 185–8
commons 33, 50, 186, 190
commons public partnerships 255n
competition 120, 143–4, 187, 210, 220,
231
conservative growth critique 170–1
conspicuous consumption 95–6
consumer culture 24
consumerism 108, 289
consumption 1, 2, 9, 23–4, 94, 114, 115,
214, 289
and alienation 108
conspicuous 95–6
downscaling 17
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Index 301
excess 241
positional 96, 97
reduction of 183–5, 192, 198
socio-economic growth critique 97–8
sustainable development 200
continuous accumulation process 119–20
convivial technology 156–7, 229–31
conviviality 116, 205, 209
cooperatives 185, 219–20, 225, 255–6
coronavirus pandemic 1, 2–3, 21, 91–2,
102, 208, 277, 281, 285–6
Cosme, Inês 213–14
counter-hegemony 34, 187, 267–75, 276,
281–3
counter-productivity threshold 151–2
COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2–3, 21, 91–2,
102, 208, 277, 281, 285–6
creative destruction 238
crises 21, 72, 269, 285–6
accelerating 4–5
and counter-hegemony 281–3
and interstitial strategies 278–9
and non-reformist reforms 279–81
and risk 282–3
role of 276–83
Crutzen, Paul 67
cryptocurrencies 218–19, 219–20
crypto-technology 218–19
cultural critique 76, 78
cultural growth critique 76, 104–16,
144–5
adbusting 109–10
and alienation 106–9, 115
culture jamming 109–10
ecological humanism 104–5
and human nature 110–12
logics of intensi cation, acceleration,
and alienation 112–13
subjective limits to growth 113–15
culture jamming 109–10
Davos, Spirit of 5–6
de Benoist, Alain 168, 172
de-accumulation 9
Debord, Guy 108
debt 27, 210
debt cancellation 2
decision-making 32, 296
decolonial thought 157–8
decolonization 43, 290
of North–South relations 25
decoupling 86–92
décroissance 11, 82
décroissance durable 110
décroissance movement 21, 33, 172, 226
décroissance soutenable 12–14
deglobalization 247–8
degrowth
de nition 3–4, 180–1, 191–5, 295
as descriptive concept 26–7
desirability 211
distinguishing features 8–9
misinterpretation 20–9, 75
origins and development 11–16, 110
policies 9–11
potential 297
principles 180–1, 195–210
roots 18
spread of idea 34–5
strengths 8
term usefulness debate 27–9
understanding 16–20, 30, 31, 75–6
viability 249–50
degrowth by design or by disaster 276–83
degrowth currents 181–91
alternative economy 185–8
commoning 185–8
feminist 188–9
institution-oriented 181–3
post-capitalist and alter-globalization
189–91
su ciency-oriented 183–5, 259
degrowth growth critique 176–7
degrowth ideas, increasing popularity
2–3
degrowth policies 32–4
degrowth society 34, 191–2, 197, 288
desirability 211
transformation to 17
degrowth system, viability 212–15
degrowth transformation 251–5, 287,
288, 292
achievability 283–4
bottom-up degrowth strategies 254–5
counter-hegemony 267–75, 276, 281–3
diversity of approaches 276
incubators 270
interstitial strategies 254, 255–62, 268,
276, 278–9
non-reformist reforms 262–7, 268,
271–2, 276, 279–81
nowtopias 255–62
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302 The Future Is Degrowth
degrowth transformation (continued)
the role of crisis 276–83
ruptural strategies 254, 255
symbiotic strategies 254, 262–7
top-down degrowth strategies 254–5
dehumanization 50
demand, increasing 110–11
democracy 4, 203, 220–4, 275
democratic planning 35, 295–6
democratic transformation process 27,
182–3
democratic transition 32
democratization 22, 168, 215–16, 217,
220–4, 264
economic 33
social metabolism 33, 237–44
technological 33, 228–9
workplace 290
demographics 93
demonetization 227
dependency 153, 158, 247
dépense 127–8, 129, 131, 222, 296
depoliticization 184
‘Design global, produce local’ proposal
248
détournement 109
development 39, 46, 53, 245
challenging 13
critique of 158–60
uneven 56, 164–6, 280
development paradigm 26
digital commons 248, 294
digital data 218
digitalization 293–5
diminishing marginal utility 99
disciplinary technologies 53–4
distributive justice 289
dotation inconditionelle d’autonomie 226–7
doughnut economy 182, 196n
downscaling 9, 17, 110, 278
dual power 273–5
Duterte, Rodrigo 5
dynamic stabilization 47–8, 54–9
Easterlin, Richard 98
eco-feminism 133–4, 139–40, 189
ecological breakdown 68–70
ecological budgets 184
ecological crises 38, 72
ecological critique 78
ecological debt 201
ecological economics 79, 80–3
ecological footprint 199–200
ecological growth critique 76, 79–93
apolitical ecology 92–3
decoupling 86–92
ecological economics 80–3
social metabolism 84–6
ecological humanism 104–5
ecological justice 32, 168, 177, 195,
196–201, 227, 293
ecological modernization 5–6, 8, 24
ecological overshoot 9
ecological tax reform 182
economic complexity, increasing 83
economic contraction 196–8
economic crises 20–1, 92
economic crisis
economic de nition 23
economic democracy 220–4
economic democratization 33
economic destruction 87
economic development, green 9
economic expansion 10, 48
economic growth 2, 20–1, 30–1, 36–74,
155–6, 165, 197–9
and accumulation 121–2
de nition of growth 36–8
downscaling 17
end of 70–4, 73
and global justice 22
the great acceleration 66–70, 67
growth paradigm 39, 43–7
hegemony of 31, 78
as an idea 38–47
introduction of term 39
invention of ‘the economy’ 39–43
limits to 68–70, 81–3, 287
as material process 31, 59–70
and necessary improvements 24
as perpetual crisis 122–5
precursors 39
processes 37
and progress 94
role of capitalism 130–2
as social process 31, 47–59
social returns 59
structural unsustainability 79
subjective limits to 113–15
transformative progressive agenda 3–4
urbanization and 125–7
world system 47
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Index 303
economic policy 44
economic reduction 193–4
economic restructuring 17
economic stagnation 72
economic structures 210
economics
critique 18–19
recon guration 18
economy, the
circular ow model 80–1
dematerialized understanding 42
environmental context 82
invention of 39–43
Ecopop 172–3
eco-socialism 119, 189–90
eco-su ciency 185
ecosystem degradation 72
ecosystem depletion 63
Eight R Programme 213
Eisenstein, Charles 70
electoral campaigns 270
electoral representation 224
elevator societies 100
emancipation 194
emancipation movements 56
emancipatory achievements 202
emancipatory degrowth 189–91
emission reductions 240–1
employment 8
Ende Gelände 267, 271
energetic throughput 85
energy consumption 61–2, 64, 66, 67,
82–3, 87–8
Enlightenment, the 159, 166
entropy, law of 80–3
environmental justice 200, 245
environmental justice movements 79
environmentalism of the rich 175–6
equality 23, 46
Eurocentrism 157–8
European Commission 7
European Environment Agency 101
European Union 292
Eversberg, Dennis 76–7, 114
evolutionary Realpolitik 32
exchange value 119
expansion, dynamics of 38
exploitation 27, 31, 118
externalization habitus 166
factory labour 58
fair trade movements 186
Fanon, Frantz 158
Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance 189
feminist critique 76, 78, 99
feminist degrowth current 188–9
feminist economics 133–4
feminist growth critique 133–43, 136,
155, 210
nance system 222–4
nancial crisis, 2008 21, 91–2, 208
nancial institutions, restructuring
222–4
Financial Times (newspaper) 2–3
Forbes (magazine) 2–3
Ford, Henry 58
Fordism 57–8, 100
fossil capitalism 66
fossil fuels 56, 65–6, 69, 72, 87, 223,
240–1
Foster, John Bellamy 85
France 14, 29
freedom of movement 201
freedoms 57, 105, 166, 202
freshwater usage 68–9
Fromm, Erich 107
frugal abundance 184
G8 89
Galbraith, Kenneth 97
Garzweiler opencast lignite mine protest
267
GDP 30–1, 38, 40–1, 47, 62, 135, 198,
233
criticism 41–2
impact 43
international standardization 41
measurement 41, 42
preindustrial growth 49n29
and quality of life 98–101
GDP growth 1, 18, 24, 28, 57, 94, 100–1,
101, 103, 193, 287
decoupling 89–90
invention of 39
gender 76, 106, 139–40
gendered exploitation 137–9
genocide 21, 50
gentri cation 290
geoengineering processes 208
geopolitics 35, 291–3
Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas 12, 79,
80–2, 83, 110, 169
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304 The Future Is Degrowth
Germany 89, 172, 267
Gibson-Graham, J. K. 137
global agenda 25–6
Global Degrowth Day 14
Global Ecovillage Network 185
global energy intensity 88–9
global inequality 24–6
global justice 22, 23, 77, 157–69
global justice perspective 25
Global North 25, 94
burdens of the global transformation
201
international solidarity 244–9
right-sizing 199–200
transformation 3–4
see also South–North growth critique
Global South 24–6, 199
drain from 164
international solidarity 244–9
relevance of degrowth for 195
see also South–North growth critique
globalists 5–6
globalization 125, 158, 195
goals 28
good life 4, 26, 32, 195, 202, 205–6, 213
good living 160–2
Gorz, André 11, 32, 33n66, 125, 143, 150,
214, 234, 237
governance 75, 224
Graeber, David 107
Gramsci, Antonio 46, 268
great acceleration, the 66–70, 67
Great Depression, the 40
green capitalism 5, 163
green economic development 9
green economy 153, 163
green fascism 171–4
green growth 5–6, 35, 87
Green New Deal 4, 7–10, 17, 22, 24, 35,
223, 238n, 265–7, 280, 295
Green New Deal for Europe 265
greenhouse gas emissions 69
growth 6–7, 28
accumulation and 48–54
and austerity 22–3
biophysical 37, 60
as a cognitive frame 36–7
as a core feature of capitalism 37
and crises 20–1
de nition 36–8
as dynamic stabilization 47–8, 54–9
end of 70–4, 73
as energy ows 62–3
the great acceleration 66–70, 67
hegemony of 37, 44, 46–7, 74
as an idea 38–47
ideological hegemony 8
limits to 68–70, 287
as material process 59–70
myth of 209
processes 37–8
race for 44
resistance to 114–15
social 37
as social process 37, 47–59, 60
social resistance against 70
Spirit of Davos 5–6
Spirit of Porto Alegre 6–7
subjective limits to 113–15
and sustainability 12
and the technosphere 149–51
world system 47
growth critique 11–12, 19, 31–2, 74,
75–8, 78, 286–7, 288
anti-modernism 174
of capitalism 76, 78, 117–32
conservative 170–1
criticism 76–7
cultural 76, 78, 104–16, 144–5
degrowth 176–7
ecological 76, 78, 79–93
environmentalism of the rich 175–6
feminist 76, 78, 99, 133–43, 136, 155,
210
green fascism 171–4
holistic approach 77
of industrialism 76, 78, 143–57
Malthusian 92–3
outside of the degrowth debate 169–76
socio-economic 76, 78, 94–104, 101
South–North 76, 78, 138–9, 157–69,
210
strands 31–2
growth dependencies 4, 27, 206–10
growth economy, critique 19
growth independence 206–10
growth machine 126–7
growth paradigm 39, 43–7, 51, 70, 287
counter-hegemony strategy 267–75
hegemony of 13, 288
growth rates 26–7, 58, 71, 82–3
growth societies 48, 198–9, 287
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Index 305
growth state, the 45
Guerrilla Girls 109
Half-Earth 245–6
happiness 22, 94–7, 102
happiness-income paradox 98–101
Harvey, David 125
hegemonic stabilization 39
hegemony 167, 268–9
Hirsch, Fred 97, 98
Höcke, Björn 172
holistic approach 77, 177
holistic critique 30
Homo economicus 111–12, 134, 136, 141,
142
Horkheimer, Max 118, 153
housewife paradox, the 135
housework 41, 42
human nature 76, 110–12
human–nature interactions 70
iceberg model 135–7, 136, 138
ideas, war of 270–1
ideological constructions 38–9
Illich, Ivan 114, 151–2, 154, 205, 229
imperial mode of living 25, 58, 72, 132,
166–7, 195, 201, 209, 244, 272–3,
283
imperialism 35, 53, 158, 291–3
income, and happiness 98–101
income capping 227–8
incubators 270
Indigenous land stewardship 245–6
Indigenous worldviews 161–2
individuality 115
individualization 184
industrial capitalism 51
industrial work, alienation and 154–5
industrialism, growth critique of 76, 78,
143–57
industrialization 159
industrialized countries, emissions 3–4
industry 50
inequality 20, 23, 24–6, 27, 56, 57
information technology 35, 293–5
infrastructures 149–50, 195, 296
investment 8–9
material 207–8
mental 209–10
institutional change 262–7
institutional economics 95–6, 97
institution-oriented degrowth current
181–3
institutions 195
intensi cation, logic of 112–13
interdependence 105
International Degrowth Conferences 14,
17, 199–200
International Monetary Fund 22, 249
international monetary system 33
international relations 248–9
international solidarity 33, 244–9
interpretative exibility 257
interstitial spaces 257–62, 270
interstitial strategies 34, 254, 255–62,
268, 276, 278–9
invisible hand, the 39–40
Italy 89, 173
Jackson, Tim 100, 280
Japan 89
Jevons, William Stanley 87
Jonas, Hans 145
just futures 16
just transitions 241–2
justice 8, 22, 23, 77, 247
distributive 289
ecological 32, 168, 177, 195, 196–201,
227, 293
environmental 200, 245
reproductive 185
social 195, 202, 203, 213, 225, 287
Kallis, Giorgos 29, 129, 192–3, 223,
264–5, 270
Keynes, John Maynard 96–7, 249
Keynesianism 40
Khrushchev, Nikita 44
Klein, Naomi 4, 267, 279–80
knowledge, critical evaluation of 18
labour
revalorization and redistribution of
232–7
revaluation of 33
Lafargue, Paul 236
Lako , George 36
land use 68
Latouche, Serge 13, 168–9, 172, 183–4,
213
Le journal de la joie vivre (magazine) 22
Lefebvre, Henri 125
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306 The Future Is Degrowth
le libertarianism 7
le productivism 35
LeGuin, Ursula 178–9, 179
Leipzig 14
Lenin, V. I. 143, 272n
Lessenich, Stephan 166
liberalism 40
liberation, workshops of 270
libertarian movements 7
life satisfaction 102
lifestyle changes 182, 196, 197, 258
lifestylism 174–5
Linebaugh, Peter 144
literature 15–16
living standards 8, 20–1, 25, 97, 197
Luddites 144, 145
Luxemburg, Rosa 32, 117, 124, 137, 214
Maier, Charles S. 46
Malm, Andreas 172
Malthus, omas 129
Malthusian critiques 92–3
Marcuse, Herbert 107
market economy 237–8
Markey, Ed 265
Martínez-Alier, Joan 163
Marx, Karl 84–5, 95, 106–7, 108, 117,
119, 122–3, 125, 128, 152, 179
mass movements 5
material footprint 73, 73
material prosperity, democratization 55
material sacri ces 12
MAUSS 107, 112, 115
metabolic ri 85, 122–3
middle-class environmentalism 175–6
Miegel, Meinhard 170–1
Mies, Maria 138–9
Milanovic, Milanovic 21
militant optimism 269, 270
militarization 291
military industrial complex 223
Mill, John Stuart 95
mining 56
Mishan, E. J. 97
modern monetary theory 223
modernity 21–2, 57, 74
monetary ows 40, 62
monetary production economy 38
money and the monetary system 40, 48,
222–4, 249
Moore, Michael 174
Morris, William 95, 178, 179
movement building 273–5
Movimento per Decrescita Felice 183
Mumford, Lewis 145, 147
municipal-level changes 271–2
Muraca, Barbara 113–14, 260, 270
mutual obligations 49
national accounts 40
nationalist right, the 283
nature
domination of 153
global transformation of 68
mechanistic understanding of 52, 53
relationship with 79, 246
necessary improvements, and economic
growth 24
needs 96–7
needs-oriented technology 231
neoclassical economic theory 111
neo-colonial plot 24–6
neo-colonial relationships 10
neo-extractivism 162
neo-fascists 6
neo-feudal hierarchies 27
neoliberalism 12, 44, 100, 162, 168
Netzwerk Vorsorgendes Wirtscha en
140–1
New Economics Foundation 235
New Right, the 171–4
nitrogen cycle 68
non-reformist reforms 32, 33n66, 34,
214, 262–7, 268, 271, 276, 279–81
normalcy, as problem 2
normative concept 27
North–South relations, decolonization of
25
nostalgia 21–2
nowtopias 186, 253, 255–62, 263, 268,
279
nuclear power 145, 148–9
Öcalan, Abdullah 224
Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria 265
Occupy Wall Street protests 109
ocean acidi cation 68–9
OECD 42, 94
open-source 248
Ostrom, Elinor 96, 186, 217
overaccumulation 63–4
overproduction 123–4, 127–8
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Index 307
overshoot 88
ownership 242–3
Oxfam 227
ozone layer depletion 68–9
Paech, Niko 183, 184–5, 193
parallel institutions 34
Parrique, Timothée 194–5, 214
participatory planning 210, 221–2,
296
Patnaik, Prabhat 248
Patnaik, Utsa 248
patriarchy 134, 139–40, 140, 161
people power, building 267–75
perpetual crisis, economic growth as
122–5
Piketty, omas 57, 227
Pineault, Eric 46–7, 63, 132
Planet of the Humans ( lm) 174–5
planetary boundaries 68–70
planning, democratic 295–6
plantation revolution 51
policy proposals 1–2, 212–15
commoning 217–19
convivial technology 229–31
democratization 215–16, 217, 220–4
funding 223–4
international solidarity 244–9
revalorization and redistribution of
labour 232–7
solidarity economy 216–17, 219–20
technology democratization 228–9
wealth distribution 225–8
policy tools 213–14
political decentralization 105
political project 17
political reforms 182–3
politics
democratization 224
scale of 249
Pollin, Robert 26
pollution 63, 64, 68, 72
poor countries 24–6
population growth 25, 76, 92–3, 174–5
Porto Alegre, Spirit of 5, 6–7, 11
positional consumption 96, 97
positional goods 96, 98
post-capitalism 17, 130, 210, 223, 287,
297
post-capitalist and alter-globalization
degrowth current 189–91
post-development 13, 158, 158–60,
168–9
post-extractivism 162–4, 168, 273
post-growth 26–7, 28, 29, 182
post-normal science 17–18
post-pandemic recovery manifesto 1–2
post-work society 204
poverty 228
power relations 32, 157, 204
precautionary economics 140–1
pre gurative social movements 256–7
pre gurative spaces 261
primitive accumulation 50–1, 124, 137
private ownership structures 228
production
democratization 221
democratizing 23
means of 221, 264
reduction of 192, 198, 200
productivism 6–7, 17
productivity 6–7, 58, 66, 71, 87, 114,
143–4, 233–4
pro t 31, 48, 170, 238
progress 22, 39, 53, 94, 147, 158–60
progressive productivism 6–7
property and property rights 32, 51, 52,
187, 228
property management, public 217n
prosperity 102, 170–1, 209
democratization of 58
holistic understanding of 205–6
provocation 16, 19, 23–4
public abundance 22
public goods 46
public health crises 72
public investments 222
public services 23, 225–6, 263
Puerto Rico 278–9
quality of life 94, 98–101, 103
queer ecologies 139–40
race and racism 35, 227, 290
radical monopoly, the 151
radical municipalism 249
Raworth, Kate 29, 182
real existing socialism 130
real utopias 254
rebound e ects 87–8, 91
recessions 2–3, 20–1, 102–4
reciprocity, suppression of 54
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308 The Future Is Degrowth
Red Nation, the 272
redistribution 2, 33, 46, 192
reforestation 208
refugees 290
relational freedom 204
relationality 209
relative income e ect 99–100
re-municipalization 220–1
renewable economy, transition to 8
renewable energy 62
reparations 33, 200–1, 244, 245, 247, 292
reproduction, forces of 232–3
reproductive justice 185
reproductive work 133, 137–9, 232
research 15
Research & Degrowth network 192, 213,
263
Resilient Puerto Rico 278–9
resistant practices 32
resonance 205, 209
resource prices 71
retail therapy 23
revolutionary change 33
revolutionary Realpolitik 214, 253, 263
richest 1 per cent 227
richest 10 per cent 227
Riesman, David 97
rights 22, 57, 226–7
right-sizing 199–200
Robinson, Kim Stanley 179
Rockström, Johan 68
Rojava, Syria 259
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 8
Rosa, Hartmut 112, 115, 205n
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 106
ruptural strategies 254, 255
Salleh, Ariel 139–41
Santarius, Tilman 88
savings 80
scarcity 127–8, 128–30, 131
scarcity economics 184
Schachtschneider, Ulrich 263
schooling systems 207
Schumacher, E. F. 115, 145
Schumpeter, Joseph 238
scienti c research paradigm 17
secular stagnation 26, 71
securitization 292
self-determination 32, 105, 143, 195, 202,
203–4, 205, 213, 287
self-limitation 203, 238
self-optimization 115
self-organization 7
self-sacri ce 258
self-su ciency 183n
self-transformation 260–1
semantic frame 27–9
sharing economy, the 187
simplicity 105
Situationist International 107, 108–9, 109
slaves and slavery 50
S!lence (magazine) 12–13
slow economy 184
Smil, Vaclav 82–3
Smith, 39
snail, as symbol of degrowth 151–2
social alternatives, evaluation 211
social con icts 55
social decline, societies of 27
social ecology 152–3
social hierarchy 98
social imaginary, the 180
social improvement 58
social institutions 208–9
social justice 4, 195, 202, 203, 213, 225,
287
social media 108–9, 294
social metabolism 84–6, 152–3, 193, 213
social metabolism democratization 33,
237–44
social mobility 100
social organization 102–3
social participation 102
social returns 59
social rights 202
social security 33, 225–6, 242
social transformation 34, 180, 182–3,
251–2
society–nature relations 153
socio-ecological interactions, prioritizing
93
socio-economic growth critique 76, 78,
94–104
consumer criticism 97–8
and degrowth debate 102–4
early 94–7
happiness and income paradox 98101
socio-technical systems 151–2
solar energy 81–2
solidarity 264
solidarity economy 186, 216–17, 219–20
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Index 309
Solnit, Rebecca 278–9
Soper, Kate 103, 236
South–North growth critique 76, 78,
138–9, 157–69, 210
space 52
species extinction 68
Spectator, e (magazine) 2–3
Spirit of Davos 5–6
Spirit of Porto Alegre 5, 6–7, 11
stability 212n
stagnation 27
state, the, role 51, 291–3
state economization 44
statistical tools, statistical tools 40
status quo, the 21
Stockholm Resilience Centre 68
strikes 56
structural adjustment 22, 46
subsistence approach 188
su ciency 23, 93
su ciency-oriented degrowth current
183–5, 259
surplus capacity 63
surplus value 117, 120
sustainability 12, 110, 192
sustainability indicators 88
sustainability transitions 199
sustainable development 12–13
Svampa, Maristella 162
Switzerland 172–3
symbiotic strategies 254, 262–7
systemic changes 196
Táíwò, Olúfmi O. 201
tax and taxation 2, 33, 129, 223, 225–6,
228, 241, 247, 264
techno-feminism 148
technological democratization 33
technological development 82, 143–4,
145, 151, 156–7
technology 151–2, 155–7
accessibility 230
adaptability 230–1
appropriateness 231
complex 146–9
connectedness 230
convivial 229–31
democratization 228–9
needs-oriented 231
risk 230–1
technosphere, the, and growth 149–51
terminology debate 27–9
atcher, Margaret 12
thermodynamics, second law of 81n
think tanks 270
time
scarcity of 112
understanding of 51–2
time prosperity 205–6, 235, 258
tipping points 70
top-down degrowth strategies 254–5
trade 247–8
trade unions 56, 220
transformation strategies 34
transformational changes 33
transformative progressive agenda 3–4
transition town movements 184, 185, 258
travel 2
Truman, Harry S. 159
Trump, Donald 5
Tsuda, Kenta 23
under-development 159, 164–5
unemployment 27, 208, 210
uneven development 56, 164–6, 280
United Kingdom, Labour Party 7
United Nations 42, 292
United States of America
coronavirus pandemic 277
Democratic Party 7
Green New Deal 265–6
New Deal 8
universal basic income 2, 214–15, 226,
263
universal social policy 2
unpaid activities 41, 42, 133, 137
urbanization 125–7
US Council of Economic Advisers 43–4
utopian project 18, 32, 195
utopian surplus 115, 269
utopian visions 178–81
utopianism 212
Vaneigem, Raoul 108
Varoufakis, Yanis 21
Veblen, orstein 95–6
venture capital 50
visionary currents 32
voluntary simplicity 183, 184, 193, 258
von Werlhof, Claudia 138–9
voting rights 56
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310 The Future Is Degrowth
wages and wage labour 50, 235
Wallerstein, Immanuel 5
war capitalism 50–1
waste 64, 74, 84–5
water cycle 86
wealth distribution 23, 45, 203, 223,
225–8, 264
welfare states 56
well-being 23, 28, 59, 99, 100, 192, 295
Western hegemony 26
Westernization 169
Wikipedia 217
Wilson, E. O. 245–6
Winner, Langdon 146
Wissen, Markus 166–7
work, transformation of 232–7
work-and-spend ethics 58, 235
working hours 225, 232, 233–5
workplace democratization 290
World Bank 22, 249
World Social Forum 186
world system, emergence of 49–51
World Trade Organization 110
worldmaking 245
Wright, Erik Olin 34, 211, 249–50, 251,
253–4, 256, 278
Zapatistas 259
Zetkin Collective, the 172
Zone à Défendre in Notre-Dame-des-
Landes, France 259
zoonosis 70
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