{"id":14297,"date":"2015-11-11T08:20:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14297"},"modified":"2015-11-11T08:20:35","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:20:35","slug":"the-left-should-embrace-degrowth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14297","title":{"rendered":"The Left should embrace degrowth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Left should embrace\u00a0degrowth<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"Stop<\/div>\n
Only if we stop the cycle of endless growth will our planet prosper, argue Degrowthers.\u00a0Jenny Downing under a\u00a0Creative Commons Licence<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Degrowth is a frontal attack on the ideology of economic growth. Some call it a critique: a slogan or a \u2018missile word\u2019. Others talk of the \u2018theory of\u2019 \u2013 or the\u00a0\u2018literature on\u2019<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 degrowth; or of\u00a0degrowth policies\u2019<\/a>. Many see themselves as the \u2018degrowth movement\u2019 or claim they live\u00a0\u2018the degrowth way\u2019<\/a>. What is degrowth and where did it come\u00a0from?<\/p>\n

Origins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Intellectually, the origins of degrowth are found in the Continental\u00a0\u00e9cologie politique<\/em>\u00a0of the 1970s. Andre Gorz spoke of \u2018d\u00e9croissance<\/em>\u2019 in 1972, questioning the compatibility of capitalism with earth\u2019s balance \u2018for which \u2026 degrowth of material production is a necessary condition\u2019. Unless we consider \u2018equality without growth\u2019, Gorz argued, we reduce socialism to nothing but \u2018the continuation of capitalism by other means \u2013 an extension of middle-class values, lifestyles and social\u00a0patterns\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Demain la d\u00e9croissance\u2019<\/a>\u00a0(\u2018tomorrow, degrowth\u2019) was the title of a 1979 translated collection of essays of\u00a0Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen<\/a>, a Romanian \u00e9migr\u00e9 teaching in the\u00a0US<\/span>\u00a0and a proto ecological economist who argued that economic growth accelerates entropy. These were the times of the oil crisis and the Club of Rome. For continental \u2018red-green\u2019 thinkers, however, the question of limits to growth was first and foremost a political one. Unlike Malthusian concerns with resource depletion, overpopulation and collapse of the system, theirs was\u00a0a desire<\/em>\u00a0for pulling the emergency brake on the train of capitalism, or, to quote Ursula Le Guin,\u00a0\u2018put a pig in the tracks of a one-way future consisting only of growth\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The slogan \u2018d\u00e9croissance\u2019 was revived in the early 2000s by activists in the city of Lyon in direct actions against mega-infrastructures and advertising.\u00a0Serge Latouche<\/a>, a professor of economic anthropology and vocal critic of development programmes in Africa,\u00a0popularized it with his books<\/a>, calling for an \u2018End to sustainable development\u2019 and \u2018a long life to convivial degrowth\u2019.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Left should embrace\u00a0degrowth Only if we stop the cycle of endless growth will our planet prosper, argue Degrowthers.\u00a0Jenny Downing under a\u00a0Creative Commons Licence Degrowth is a frontal attack on the ideology of economic growth. Some call it a critique: a slogan or a \u2018missile word\u2019. Others talk of the \u2018theory of\u2019 \u2013 or the\u00a0\u2018literature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14,6502,111,150,203,1546,391,10558,485,6044,9424,606,1453],"class_list":["post-14297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-activism","tag-balance","tag-capitalism","tag-collapse","tag-degrowth","tag-development","tag-growth","tag-left","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-malthus","tag-new-internationalist","tag-overpopulation","tag-resource-depletion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14298,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14297\/revisions\/14298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}