
Degrowth Explained
It doesn’t take a scholar to realize our world isn’t doing so well. Our economies, our systems of government, and our environment are all collapsing in on themselves. It’s easy to bemoan our fate, what’s harder is to point to the root causes. Many like to point to capitalism but this, in my opinion, is a convenient scapegoat to examine something that has affected every civilization ever. Many like to assume because this has happened to all civilizations ever we’re doomed in a sense. They’ll point to horrific statistics and say, “We’re doomed. There’s no way to solve this.” If you look at Reddit subs like r/collapse or threads on the internet you’ll find that this isn’t exactly a rare reaction, but this isn’t an acceptance of reality as they claim, but rather a failure of imagination. To quote the writer Ashley Ford, “[t]he goal of oppressors is to limit your imagination about what is possible without them, so you might never imagine more for yourself & the world you live in.” Better worlds are possible, perhaps even within our lifetimes. “But how?” many will say. And to that I do not entirely know the answer, but I do know where we can start. Degrowth. Let’s take a look at what degrowth is; why it is necessary; and how we can go about creating a degrowth society.
Degrowth Explained
Unfortunately, degrowth has fallen for the classic plight of bad leftist branding and right wing Orwillien redefining, so we have to explain what degrowth isn’t before we explain what degrowth is. Degrowth isn’t a plan to make people poorer nor is it like a planned recession. It isn’t even 100% against growth. Degrowth is instead an alternative to what I’m going to coin as the “cult of growth.” In our modern capitalist society growth is king. Investors want growth and companies have a legal obligation to provide it. This is perfectly exemplified in the term GDP. Almost every country uses it except for the Kingdom of Bhutan and The Democratic Republic of North Korea . Bhutan uses GNH (Gross National Happiness) as a measure of prosperity and North Korea is seemingly uncaring with no marker of prosperity to speak of. GDP is of the highest importance at least in the western world. If it grows you’re a “successful” country. If it stagnantes or shrinks, your country is considered backwards, unstable, evil or even unfit to be a country. Yet the correlation that growth is equal to happiness or better living standards is seemingly untrue. Take a look at India. Despite having the 5th largest GDP in the world, its people are still comparatively poor with skyrocketing inequality and skyrocketing food prices. Or take a look at the U.S.A. It has the world’s “best” economy yet it has low happiness compared to other developed countries . It almost appears many economists have fallen for a classic logical fallacy—a cause without a correlation.
The Greatest of Fallacies and Why We Need Degrowth More Than Ever
The more I look at this the more I continue to believe our society is fundamentally built on the correlation-without-cause logical fallacy. It’s quite a cliché at this point, being the conspiracy theorist’s bread and butter. Just because there’s a correlation doesn’t mean it’s the cause. The rise of living standards has, in my mind, only to do with advances in the sciences of technology and medicine. Was growth the mode in which these advancements in human welfare came to be? Yes, absolutely. But is it the only way? In my mind it’s incredibly foolish to assume so. Especially when you realize that growth both helps and hinders progress. In a perverse and ironic way it brings innovations out in their worst forms. Cars and roads were supposed to speed up our rapidly changing society, yet nowadays cars seem to hinder our ability to go places. Cutting apart communities with roads and making it impossible to go anywhere without a 3000 pound machine. Look at the internet—the singularity of human socialization if you will. An invention which promised more connectivity with the world now seen as the avatar of isolation. It’s not that these inventions are bad, necessarily rather that our society’s desire for growth makes them worse over time. It’s not like we can grow infinitely anyway, that’s delusional. To quote David Attenborough “someone who believes in infinite growth is “either a madman or an economist.” We all learned this in kindergarten. There’s no infinite of anything on a finite world. This is perfectly exemplified in the energy crisis. Our society runs on cheap energy and unfortunately we are running out of it. Almost every material needed for energy has its problems. Fossil fuels contribute to climate change, while nuclear fission uses tons of water and nonrenewable uranium. Even solar and wind energy need rare natural resources which are already being eaten at an unsustainable rate. The consequences of eternal growth have been known for decades at this point. There is no infinite growth on a finite planet. But theory isn’t everything, so how does degrowth play out in the real world?
Degrowth in Practice
Degrowth has been around for a long time in some form or another but I’m going to focus on modern examples. Bhutan doesn’t measure their economy with GDP. instead they use the rather interesting system of gross national happiness. Whatever money they used to maintain growth at all costs was instead reallocated to interviewing the country’s citizens on their happiness. It’s a complex system that could take up at least 2 articles to talk about so instead of doing that I’ll leave an article here. I also recommend a documentary called Agent of Happiness. Of course it’s not a perfect system. There are many many problems with Bhutan’s national happiness—it’s accused of being used as a tool to distract from the government’s genocide of Hindus—but Bhutan is still carbon negative. In fact, their non growth policy is so effective that they still use fossil fuels, the trees just offset their emissions.
Many small degrowth communities are also popping up like wild fire. The city of Bristol has focused on community sustainability, trying to keep its economy isolated and self reliant. Its main strategy was an alternative to the British pound called the Bristol pound. It was a voluntary system designed to boost local businesses and the effects are clear to see. Bristol was named the cleanest city in the world in 2021 and while, unfortunately, the Bristol pound is no longer used, it was largely regarded as a success. Everywhere degrowth has been implemented it has been mostly a success, and honestly it’s no surprise because much of degrowth economics revolves on making sure people have enough before people have excess. It reminds me of a comic:
(a personal favorite of mine when speaking to climate deniers)
A Sprinkling of Marxist Theory
Self-described Marxist Koehi Saito’s book Slow Down creates a unique combination of lesser known communist theories and degrowth to create what he describes as “communist degrowth.” Much of his stuff fixes many of degrowth’s political and economic holes, particularly when it comes to degrowth and capitalism as partners. Instead of working against capitalism, a truly Herculean task, he instead proposes replacing the current system of late stage capitalism with a form of ecosocialism or communism; a solution which, in my opinion, patches the main issue of degrowth not being radical enough. Before this book was made, degrowth was at a dead end of sorts—too radical to work with the capitalist system and too mild to be anti-capitalist. This caused degrowth to be looked down on as a fantasy solution to environmental destruction. After all, growth is one of the central pillars to capitalism. There’s more to Saito’s book, which I think helps answer the main question many have about degrowth, how to get from a growth-at-all-costs society to one that actually degrows.
Revolution for Dummies (degrowth edition)
When I often spiel the concept out like this to people in person, many are inclined to agree with me. But the main counter point I get is often, “this is great and all but it’s politically impossible.” While there is always more than one way to solve a problem, I think Saito provides the best and most elegant solution. Saito says, “What’s more realistic is Rosa Luxemburg’s idea of revolutionary realpolitik through reform; taxing the rich to introduce a maximum income, for example reforms and policies can bring a lot of change in our daily perception and behavior even though it doesn’t overcome capitalism changing our consciousness and behavior.” In less complex terms individual/community action can cause a domino effect leading to your desired outcome. Small changes can lead to big things. Even small things that don’t lead to big things can take pressure off of time sensitive issues like climate change. To make matters even better, it’s something an individual person can do. You can plant a tree; you can advocate for public transportation; you don’t have to buy the newest iphone; and you can do bigger things if you put your mind to it as well. Activism is an interesting thing because you never know who is interested in it until you reach out. But it is important to remember that these actions are minor. A public transport bill won’t save the economy. Building a house out of wood won’t save us from our concrete shortage. Even with all these things, to quote the Lorax, “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot things aren’t going to get better they’re just not.”