Degrowth is a popular concept among solarpunks. This Jacobin article discusses some of its flaws from a Marxist standpoint. In particular, Jacobin reminds us an interpretation of Marxism which blames the Western working class for exploiting the Global South, and lectures the ever-more-exploited Western worker on the need to consume less, divides international labor against itself and sabotages its own best hope of success.
I’ve read Marx and various commentary on his ideas. My conclusion is that he had some interesting things to say, maybe even the seeds of a better future, but we’ve learned a hell of a lot since then. It’s past time to leave the study of Marx to historical context, not advice for today.
This is the big one. Unless there is some kind of trigger to force a revolutionary change against our will, we are still at least a few generations away from leaving behind the moral imperative to devote our lives to labour.
I mean, it’s not my morality and never has been, but I know very few people of any age who don’t view work as necessary to fulfillment, even shitty work. In fact, I would argue that the preponderance of work being shitty is why work has become a moral imperative. “Growth through suffering” and similar nonsense.
Until that changes, degrowth will be either impossible or disastrous, because the systems and the very manners of thinking we need in a steady-state (or shrinking) economy are so radically different from those needed by a growth economy.
One potential path is to redefine what we think of as ‘work’. That word is almost always used to refer to the types of things you can attach a monetary value to. Truth is, though, there’s an awful lot of work that gets left out of the definition. Raising kids is work - hell, being pregnant is work. Caring for relatives is work. Growing stuff in your garden is work. Learning new skills is work. Caring for the environment - everything from land management to rewilding to picking up litter - is work. Running social clubs, talking to your neighbors, and generally participating in society is work, particularly when it’s so easy to just look at a screen.
Obviously, saying that we simply need to change the way everything thinks is a bit pie in the sky. But I think it’s a serious tactic to try to employ. We’re letting the capitalists define what ‘useful work’ is, and we’re hurting for it.
People have been trying for several decades to get unpaid but necessary labour classified as work. Largely unsuccessfully, because that brings in a lot of other things like how to calculate pensions. (In Canada, we have a government run pension plan that pays out based on contributions. Homemakers can’t contribute, because they’re not earning any money.)
Then you have workplace injury compensation, access to supplementary health insurance, and a myriad of other things.