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Tag Archives: degrowth
Capitalism and (De)Growth
Capitalism and (De)Growth By Christopher Laughton What is capitalism? A kind of state? An institution? Some values? A power structure? Ideology? A Culture? What governs capitalism? Supply and demand Invisible hand Enclosure of land The drive to expand Market mechanism Class schism Racism The moral virtue of productivism. Innovation! Invest! Impress! Progress! Entrepreneurial quest for Technological […]
Degrowth by designed disaster?
Degrowth by designed disaster? How the conflation with neoliberalism and austerity unfairly reduces the idea of degrowth to absurdity – and where the degrowth movement can turn for answers to the crisis. The degrowth movement has been developed in response to neoliberal reality, neoliberalism’s comically reductive view of human nature, its ecological blindness and the […]
Exit from the Megamachine
Exit from the Megamachine Why a social-ecological transformation is impossible without changing the deep structures of our economy Opening a newspaper or listening to the radio news exposes us to a flood of catastrophic messages: devastating droughts, failing states, terrorist attacks, and financial crashes. You can look at all those incidents as unconnected singular phenomena, […]
Limits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from disaster
Limits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from disaster The earth is a finite place. If the rich nations in the world keep growing their economies by 2% each year and by 2050 the poorest nations catch up, the global economy of more than 9 billion people will be around 15 times larger than it is […]
Critical Self-Reflection as a Path to Anti-Capitalism: The Degrowth-Movement
Critical Self-Reflection as a Path to Anti-Capitalism: The Degrowth-Movement By Sonia Goicoechea Although growth-critique is currently in vogue and degrowth is mentioned favorably even by the pope in his most recent encyclical, there is as yet almost no scientific research on degrowth as a social movement. We can now present the first empirical findings on the character […]
My Journey toward degrowth
My Journey toward degrowth By Sam Bliss Growth means a process of increasing in physical size. When we think of economic growth, it is difficult to fathom what exactly grows, since ‘the economy’ is an invented concept that describes billions of human interactions as if they were one giant entity. But gross domestic product is a rate […]
Let’s define Degrowth before we dismiss it
Let’s define Degrowth before we dismiss it The reluctance of degrowth-critics to define growth makes for poor debate Diverse leftist commentators such as Samuel Farber, Paul Krugman, and Leigh Phillips are arguing that economic growth is necessary to protect existing and future well-being. But rarely do they define what they mean by economic growth. Recently […]
Collaboration and changing beliefs are two keys for a degrowth economy
Collaboration and changing beliefs are two keys for a degrowth economy Brazil is an amazing country, full of natural richness and blessed with many beauties. It has, however, a terrible sin on his shoulders: the thought that everything has to be done in a different, shorter, and faster way – in a way that takes […]
What is Degrowth? Envisioning a Prosperous Descent
What is Degrowth? Envisioning a Prosperous Descent This is a transcript of my keynote address presented at the ‘Local Lives, Global Matters’ conference in Castlemaine, Victoria, 16-18 October 2015. Other keynote speakers included Rob Hopkins, David Holmgren, and Helena Norberg-Hodge. INTRODUCTION Thank you for that introduction, Jacinta, good morning everyone. I would like to begin […]
The Left should embrace degrowth
The Left should embrace degrowth Only if we stop the cycle of endless growth will our planet prosper, argue Degrowthers. Jenny Downing under a Creative Commons Licence Degrowth is a frontal attack on the ideology of economic growth. Some call it a critique: a slogan or a ‘missile word’. Others talk of the ‘theory of’ – or the ‘literature […]
What is Degrowth? Envisioning a Prosperous Descent
What is Degrowth? Envisioning a Prosperous Descent This is a transcript of my keynote address presented at the ‘Local Lives, Global Matters’ conference in Castlemaine, Victoria, 16-18 October 2015.Other keynote speakers included Rob Hopkins, David Holmgren, and Helena Norberg-Hodge. Introduction Thank you for that introduction, Jacinta, good morning everyone. I would like to begin by […]
The decoupling debate: can economic growth really continue without emission increases?
The decoupling debate: can economic growth really continue without emission increases? Most ecological economists argue that continued economic growth is incompatible with ecological safety. That is to say continued increases in Gross Domestic Product, (GDP and also Gross Value Added, GVA) cannot happen while reducing ecological impacts in general, and climate change-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) […]
Austerity and degrowth – dealing with the economic crisis and the ecological crisis together
Austerity and degrowth – dealing with the economic crisis and the ecological crisis together This article arises from increasing frustration and irritation about the way that the debate about Greece, and in general about austerity, is framed. My frustration is not only with the policy thugs who are implementing austerity, but also, to a degree, […]
Post-Development Discourse: Lessons for the Degrowth Movement (Part 1)
Post-Development Discourse: Lessons for the Degrowth Movement (Part 1) Is degrowth only conceivable in the context of “oversaturated” industrial societies while the global “South” remains dependent on growth? In two installments, this article questions such assumptions. In this first part it introduces positions critical of development which refuse to adopt the Western model of prosperity; […]
Learning beyond Growth
Learning beyond Growth Deschooling as a Path to Social-Ecological Transformation “Deschooling is at the root of any movement for human liberation”, wrote Ivan Illich, today almost forgotten but once a world-renowned critical thinker, in 1971. With books like “Deschooling Society” and “Energy and Equity” he inspired in the 1970s both the emerging environmental movement and the renewed interest […]



