Degrowth (With Teeth) or Doom!
Dip traces the core ideas of degrowth and explains why a focus on policy is counterproductive.
Degrowth is the planned reduction of energy and resource use for settler colonial and otherwise powerful states, along socialist and ecological lines. It’s a good response to the polycrisis, and is more actionable and realistic than seeing ecocide as an engineering problem, which believes in the ability to outsmart nature.
Photo by Mosharraf Hossain on Unsplash
I really appreciate degrowth; it feels like an “inside baseball” version of starting to move away from the focus on growth (and the coterminous idea of development). However, the focus on policy proposals (and movements meant to influence policy) is problematic. There are many reasons[1] for this, but the most intractable one is that it reinforces the power of the social organs that have caused this issue.
States, corporations, and their lackeys have spurred on this climate crisis. Appealing to those same structures to play nice is not only allowing them to avoid meaningful accountability, but it also prevents an understanding of the extent of the issues and what actions their severity requires.
That is not to say that they have no understanding of the situation we’re in, at least empirically. Calls to stay under 1.5ºC of warming, while outdated, are useful insofar as they let folks know things will be irreversibly different in the event of extreme warming of 2ºC+, not to mention the fallout from blowing past other environmental boundaries.
I also appreciate that, in the main, degrowth sees its proposals to decrease energy and resource use as connected to climate goals, couched in the values of “justice, decolonization, redistribution of wealth, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism”, while being mindful of planetary limits. Even the proposals–where “wealth”/“abundance” is not found in useless numbers like GDP–but in “radical reductions in working time; repair centers; provisions of basic services; participatory planning; co-operative workplaces”, and a ton of other practical proposals is exciting.
These are all well and good, especially for a kind of “minimal program” that allows people to know that things can get better, but that in itself can be a kind of trap, especially when the focus is on getting those concrete “wins” through collaborating with or deferring to the system that is stopping people from having those things (and even more stuff that can’t be imagined).
This points us towards praxes that are more horizontal, autonomous, and potentially even anarchic. This could look like a lot of things, but in general, I think it’s a tripartite, recursive movement between care, analysis, and action, where the action, in the case of appropriating degrowth for autonomous ends, revolves around a focus on expropriation and impediment. Any mediation and cooperation should be framed in such a way as to undermine the critical functions of the systems of domination, and bolster the spicier efforts.
Whatever is done, it must be understood that the stakes are high… contrary to previous endings of the world,[2] the collapses of the present represent a much larger threat, and much less discrimination. Rather than socially defined regions being at stake, geologically defined continents might be. The good and bad thing is that it is caused by (specific classes of) humans, so it can be responded to by (other classes of) humans. Our broad tasks are to:
- stop as much of the destruction of the land as we can, centering “Traditional Ecological Knowledge” in our models of stewardship of the land, especially through #LandBack practices that center Indigenous self-determination,[3] and;
- figure out new ways to live that take into account the fact that “rich” territories will need to consume way way way less energy and resources, and “poor” territories will need to set up ways to support good living for the people therein without resorting to following the patterns of the rich/trying to emulate them. This will mean that we especially attend to social reproduction, where we understand that care work and reproductive labor is the (often unthanked) foundation of any society, and, as such, would need to be treated with the respect it deserves as we move towards degrowth.
Hopefully, taking a more grassroots, militant approach to degrowth will allow it to embody its potential as a meaningful challenge to capital and ecocide.
Most of the issues that I see stem from my analysis as an anarchist. Being against any/all hierarchies and domination/coercion/oppression means fighting against anything that starts and ends with any of the specific, concrete, or general manifestations of those social relations. Policies, jurisprudence, and statecraft are commonly seen as the terrain of struggle, and my stance is, at minimum, quite critical of that formulation. I see those things as only able to engender more oppressive relations, especially if their movement are shaped by working with them rather than against them. ↩︎
There are many collapses that have happened throughout history, and while many of them have led to better things for those on the margins of power, (at least) some have been disastrous. The targeted enslavement of Black peoples from Africa, and the continued genocide of us alongside folks Indigenous to the Americas are poignant examples (that are often ignored, for all their centrality in our European-dominated world). ↩︎
This should be understood as, rather than independently applying indigenous practices, working with the folks from whom those practices arise, and making sure that it happens in line with their culture, and the ways that you, dear reader—especially if you are not of that specific community in whatever way—can help. ↩︎
