Degrowth is a noble ideal to strive for, and it would certainly mitigate a lot of our current problems if implemented. However, I fear that it is an ideal that can be adopted by the few but not the many. Growth, progress and personal ambition are inherent human traits - it may not be the case for all people, but it is certainly evident in today’s society and many societies that have come before. In my opinion, we need solutions and frameworks that most (if not all) personalities can exist within. I worry degrowth is wishful thinking, and would love to hear your thoughts.
All of that said - I believe it is a very worthwhile thought exercise and even if all degrowth principles cannot be implemented, some can and that is what matters.
Degrowth is absolutely not compatible to capitalism because as an economic system it has growth embedded in its model. One of the biggest problems is that this economic system has taken over the decision making processes of human societies all over the globe (ie representative democracy). Like models of the past they portrait themselves as invincible, like kings thought of their situation, slave owners etc. I believe we should first be able to imagine a world without capitalism in order to achieve this goal. Btw I don’t have the answers, we do.
So the way I see things degrowth is fully compatible with humans and human societies (sorry I can’t use the term “human nature” but I suppose that’s another topic), personal growth and societal prosperity because it is anti-capitalistic.
So I also thought of sharing a 15-min video from a few years back:
New Economies: How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel
I agree that in the long run degrowth is not compatible with capitalism, at least not capitalism as we know it. Even if markets and private property continued to play some role in the economy. However, I think it’s important to emphasize that we don’t need to first somehow completely rid of capitalism (that would require some higher order magic) and then implement degrowth. There are many reforms that can start building the path of a prosperously degrowing society. A good overlook of degrowth policies can be found in this article. Of course, the need to reduce material flows is absolutely urgent, and I definitely advocate building popular support and implementing degrowth policies asap.
I read the article you linked but I don’t see how it backs your argument that degrowth could be compatible with some form of capitalism (as you mention in your first sentence). It seems to me this article does the opposite.
Personally, I can’t think of any kind of capitalism that is compatible with policies / goals / objectives related to:
Tax justice for social ecological justice
or
Redistribute land, labour, capital and resources within and between countries
or
Direct activism and sabotage For example - anti-capitalism malware program
or
Restrict platform capitalism (e.g. AirBnB); Promote decentralised platform cooperative models
etc
(found in the Appendix A. Thematic synthesis of degrowth policy proposals)
For me degrowth is potentially one way to get rid of capitalism.
Thanks for the insight and the video :)
Nobody knows human nature for sure aside from the fact that we’re very social and very adaptive thanks to that. Our species is about 300k years old, it would be silly to take a tiny bit of that, the last 6k or 10k as an adequate sample size.
Very good point!
I think you are confusing personal growth with “number go up” as understood by GDP growth percentages and similar metrics.
Degrowth as a theory is mostly concerned with the latter and issues such as compound interest forcing continous and specifically continously accellerating economic growth.
Degrowth doesn’t mean you as a person can’t use your own labor to improve your living conditions and similar things. And such personal growth is only very indirectly related to economic growth.
Admittedly I need to learn more about degrowth. However, I feel GDP is just a manifestation of multiple cases of personal ambition.
Let’s say we all worked to the point that we had equal, abundant luxuries. Surely at this point we are happy and need no more? Unfortunately I think this is not the case. If a person or a group identifies a route to greater success, or dominion over others, it’s likely they will take it, just for the sake of being more powerful.
Then apply this not just to the individual, but to the group, and then to the nation.
Yes of course there is some relation between the aggregate of peoples’ work and the GDP. I mean, that is what it is supposed to measure after all 😅
In reality it only measures monetized work though, and unpaid care work for example is neglected.
But indeed until we reach “fully automated luxury communism” there will be people that will try to amass wealth/power to make other people work for them… usually this is disguised as making money work for them in modern capitalist societies, i.e. stock-markets with all that entails.
The negative externalities of such a financial growth oriented society is what theories of degrowth mainly advocate against.
Throughout most of human history economic growth was nearly not a thing on a global scale. Obviously some cities, states and individuals ended up with economic growth, but not even close to what we saw in the last two centuries. Before that with hunter gatherers it was basically economic stagnation for thousands of years.
Most personal growth is really about gaining status within the group. In our society it is mainly about making more money. However there are also a lot of paths, which have much less to do with money. Artists gain fame from their art, politicans from the position in the political hierachy and scientists from the discoveries they made. All of that is also status in the group and could replace a lot of wealth.
I’m not sure how useful this exercise is, but I like to boil things down to the basic “cavepeople fighting for survival scenario”.
In this scenario, art is irrelevant. So are any politicians that don’t offer immediate results such as more food or more water.
What matters is survival by means of effectively allocating resources and defending those resources. This is where ambition comes in.
These drives don’t go away when survival is no longer at risk. They are inherent to our being because they ensure our survival. Unfortunately, we also love excess.
I fear the current system exists because our nature has resulted in it existing.
Hunter gatheres did work about 20h per week to survive. That is also why hunter gatheres were able to commit quite a few resources to things like art. We do see rock paintings pretty much all over the world. Totem poles in the Pacific Northwest come from hunter gatherer socities and a lot of other cultures have created similar works. To be fair most of the time they just hang out, which seems to be rather human.
Thank you for sharing!
What makes you believe art was irrelevant back then. And there might not have been politicians but still some kind of structure or social hierarchy.
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I was gonna suggest The Dawn of Everything. I think one of the major arguments they make in the book is that humans have lived in very differing cultures and societies throughout (pre-)history. So attaching any one mode of societal organization to “human nature” is hardly possible.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will check it out
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Thanks for this!
If I remember correctly ecology of freedom by marray bookchin touches on the subject a bit. May be a good read.
I’ve heard of this author, thanks for the recommendation!
I think a lot of the endless growth, progress and improvement is somewhat of a negative mutation. No other creature on earth constantly needs to change and improve.
That said we have done many amazing things, and no one wants to go back. But constant improvement just for improvement seems wrong.
Capitalism and the economy are all based on endless growth and most people will not give up anything or let go of it at this point (the cats out of the bag). It will take a very huge shift probably caused by something very bad to change most people’s ways.
While it’s not the mainstream, it’s not everyone that constantly wants more. There are many religious orders that practise asceticism, voluntary simplicity, and other behaviours which are not growth focused. Minimalism as a movement in western society is genuine. People do sometimes reach a point where they stop being seduced by consumerism, realising it doesn’t bring the happiness it falsely promises.
This is true but the exception to the rule sadly.
I agree, our ambition seems useful at first but tends to become a curse once we have what we need. If you take space exploration as an example, I feel that until we go to mars humanity is always going to want to go to mars. And then, we will want to do the next thing. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, assuming we can. If we can, we will.
Unfortunately, a very annoying human happens to be leading this effort at the moment.
I think most people are operating within the framework given to them. That framework is composed of material and philosophical values, and this is what determines how someone pursues growth, progress and personal ambition.
Take for example the potlatch societies on the pacific coast. This will be an awful summary of those societies, but my understanding is that people accumulated food and possessions. They then held a potlatch event where they gave all their stuff away. The more stuff you gave away, the more successful you were, the more you were liked and valued. (Again that’s my basic understanding, could be very wrong).
How would an ambitious person behave in a potlatch society? They would probably go through cycles of accumulation/potlatch to increase their social standing. What would be the billionaire equivalent in a potlatch society? Maybe a village chief that held such extravagant potlatches that they are now fully supported by their community, maybe to the point they’re a burden? I doubt such a thing could happen in a potlatch society, but it’s a funny idea.
Basically the idea I’m trying to convey is that people are operating within the framework given to them, and their potentially toxic traits could be expressed differently under different frameworks. Our current system promotes unlimited accumulation and selfishness, so we have idiots like Musk and Trump doing their thing. They probably wouldn’t do very well in another type of society, assuming they didn’t change their behavior.
So how do we change our framework so we stop valuing what we’re currently collectively valuing? Do most people actually value what’s being encouraged by the framework? If so, why? If no, why is the framework persisting?
This is interesting and thought-provoking, thanks. I must admit I share the obvious skepticism of OP about the potential for cultural change but my skepticism has definitely softened in recent years as I’ve learned about historical anecdotes like yours. Clearly humans are a just a species of ape so there there are some limits on how much we can bend our minds into new shapes, but culture does seem fairly flexible, maybe more than I once thought.
BTW, personally I’d make a distinction between the pathologies of Trump and Musk. The former is certainly cartoonishly obsessed with “accumulation and selfishness”. But for Musk and a few of the other tech barons, like Zuckerberg with his hoodies and identical T-shirts, relative wealth does not seem to be what interests them at all, it’s more of a messianic obsession with expansion and colonization, i.e. the opposite of zero-sum. Transhumanism, basically. For me the issue with that vision that it’s clearly utopian and disconnected from reality and it’s distracting us from solving problems right here and now. Just my personal take.
If I remember correctly someone else in this thread mentioned The Dawn of Everything. I’m sure you’d like it if you haven’t read/listened to it yet. It’s about periods of history where there weren’t kings and what life might have been like during those periods.
Ugh those tech barons. It seems like they’re drunk with power and and high on their desire to make their imagined futures a reality. The problem is they don’t seem to care what the rest of us think, and will gladly subvert democracy to impose their “utopian” visions on the masses. Their absurd levels of wealth and power are likely corrupting their utopian ideas as well. I’d go as far to say that they are the current problem, more than a distraction. This shit never ends.
It’d be fine to have a national/global discussion about the ideas these guys have. Their ideas can’t be completely bad, there must be some good bits, but the way they’re working behind the scenes with Trump and especially Vance (Musk, Thiel, Andressen, Horotwitz, Armstrong, and Sacks) really ruins any trust I could possibly have in their ideas.
The Dawn of Everything. I’m sure you’d like it if you haven’t read/listened to it yet
Yes I have heard of it. Personally I’m uneasy with the fashionable practice of going straight to the revisionism without first being sure to understand what’s being revised. And I’ve also had my fill of 700-page social-science books whose thesis could easily fit in a pamphlet, but again that’s just my take. The authors are credible and respected, I know that.
Their ideas can’t be completely bad, there must be some good bits, but the way they’re working behind the scenes with Trump and especially Vance (Musk, Thiel, Andressen, Horotwitz, Armstrong, and Sacks) really ruins any trust I could possibly have in their ideas.
Completely agree. I listened to Andreessen talking to Ross Douthat on the NYT podcast recently. The smugness level and self-satisfaction was though the roof, it was the sound of literal sneering. Awful, made Bannon seem like a nice warm guy by comparison.
I am unfamiliar with the potlatch system, so please forgive me if I am misunderstanding it, but I would guess that the fact it is no longer around and capitalism is proves that it is not a viable long term solution that humans would gravitate towards.
I fear that eventually someone in the system would think “those people who are giving away their stuff are gaining social approval, sure, but at the end of the day I have all of my resources and can use them to accumulate more, and then social approval will be irrelevant because I will own all of the wealth”
Well, you’ve got to keep in mind that Native American societies (like Communist ones btw) faced constant cultural and physical genocide from Capitalists wherever the two systems touched. This is exactly like the “well, Communism lost so Capitalism is better” argument, when Capitalism was violently enforced (in favor of dictatorships, against democracy) wherever Communist revolutions took place.
For your first point, yes, I doubt such a system could coexist alongside a more powerful capitalist system.
Second point, I think if you own all the wealth but are socially ostracized, what’s the point of having all the wealth? A caveat to that is most of the wealth in a potlatch society was renewable and not very easy to hoard. Their primary food source was salmon, which can be preserved but not as easily or for as long as grain. In our society, it seems you could hoard a lot and that gives you power.
