Do degrowthers really believe a peaceful transition is possible

Source for thinking the degrowth crowd thinks this: Introduction to "The Future is Degrowth". Does the degrowth crowd really think they can get rid of capitalism without any violence? This seems to have the opposite of a historical precedent, and is a deviation in Marxism, which they seem to heavily draw from. Anytime revolutionaries took the peaceful road they got outcompeted at best and massacred at worst.

28 comments

I support degrowth, but only after the revolution. Any degrowth within capitalism is just going to be austerity.
- I don't think degrowth is the answer, but it depends on your definition of degrowth. Growth using green technology and renewable energy backed by socialist economic planning should be the solution.
  
  My degrowth position is basically: you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. We use way more resources than we actually have. Under socialism we can make far fewer products, but make them higher quality, so fewer resources are wasted. We also need a circular and library economy where things are used as much and by as many people as possible within a closed system rather than producing things for profit.
  
  There will be growth temporarily as we transition our farms to more sustainable methods of agriculture, lots of work is to be done. There will be growth in chaning our energy infrastructure, for lots of work is to be done there. There will be growth in building durable electronics and infrastructure for us to depend on built with free and open source software managed by communities. We'll also need to build recycling facilities to recycle all non organic matter to build replacement parts to maintain our infrastructure. Things like that.
  However after that, we won't be buying new things so frequently. We'll consume less, but enjoy more.
  
  Yes, growth in some positive sectors, but if you would agree that advertising, fossil fuels, fast fashion, car dependence, planned obsolescence, etc. all need to be severely downsized or gotten rid of, it seems like you'd agree more than disagree with the changes degrowthers want to make; that is to say nothing of their ideas of transition, which may very well be utopian. I have yet to get to that chapter in my book to make a proper investigation.
Degrowth isn't a serious ideology. It's just cope for people who believe that capitalism will bring about the apocalypse. The work of changing the world is reserved for those dedicated to living, not those waiting to die.
- For a quite long, I shared the views of degrowthers, and it is really depressing world with no realistic solutions.
  
  It seems like degrowthers have some valuable insight but yeah if you simultaneously did not believe in the neccesity and potential of revolution and state overthrow it would be very "doomer".
- The work of changing the world is reserved for those dedicated to living, not those waiting to die.
  absolute banger 🔥
Everytime i see the degrowth discussion out in the liberal internet wilds it tends to draw in thinly veiled ecofash or/and the magical hand of anarchism types.
I would like to sarcastically tell anarchists and "leftist" liberals: "yes sure, the most privileged people in the world will be happy to give their power away and reduce growth after you will educate them how this is harmful to the world". This is not gonna to happen. Billionaires who made a private space race will be concerned by few ecoactivists? This is so childish. Anarchists are delusional.
- What leads you to believe that anarchists want a nonviolent redistribution of power? In my experience with my own city's local leftist groups, anarchists are often the ones pushing for violent solutions vs our local "socialists" who are mostly still lib-brained enough to believe peaceful protest is an effective tool.
  
  I spent a large portion of time reading materials from Polish lemmy instance, called szmer.info. They associate themselves with anarchists, but they are not very different from libs, maybe except some antifa people. Of course they blocked Lemmygrad. Many of them have so called "free" market views. There are many anarchists post, but none of it is about anything radical. Recently, they posted a stance of Russian anarchists, who are willing to take a power in Russia, so it is very radical but I think also not very realistic
What exactly is degrowth? Like technological regression or something?
- Here is some stuff from my notes on the book to give a rough idea. Disclaimer, I don't have a horse in this race, so any grievances with these ideas are not with me, although I am trying to give the degrowth ideas a fair shake. You will see that some of them are basically socialist demands:
  [degrowth is about] democratizing the development of productive forces and social metabolism in order to achieve public abundance (p.22)
  Not about austerity or belt-tightening sacrifice (p.22)
  Degrowth is about private sufficiency and public abundance (p. 23)
  Degrowth differentiates between certain economic activities and forms of production and consumption, proposing policies for the downscaling of some and the flourishing of others (p.24)
  growth does not differentiate between the useful and destructive, essential and superfluous. (p. 24)
  it is because our economies growth dependent that stagnation is seen as problematic. p. 27
  [degrowth also strives for ] decoupling wellbeing from imperative to grow. p. 27
  Effects of growth: destroys ecological foundations of life; impedes equality and well-being; imposes alienated ways of living; depends on exploitation, competition, accumulation; relies on gendered super-exploitation; oppressive ways of production; relies on neocolonial relations.
  6 changes (p. 33):
  democratize economy, redistribution and social goods;
  democratizing technology, a repair station in every neighbourhood;
  revaluation of labour, reducing work time and eliminating useless jobs;
  democratization of social metabolism;
  international solidarity and reparations in the form of money, technology, and help.
Regular degrowthers are liberals so yeah they are idealistic.
What grinds my gears is that they try to force us global south nations to also abandon fossil fuels while they conveniently make profit off selling the green energy infrastructure to us. Fuck em there can not be degrowth without a extractivist phase, they are the ones that should take that burden first not us and not only that but to also pay off their climate debt to us.
The irony about Malthusians is that their theories and worries would indeed come to pass if their ideas were to come into practice.

28 comments