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Redistribution, not growth - why the Left should embrace degrowth

09.11.2015

By Giorgos Kallis

A new Left has to be an ecological Left, or it won’t be left at all. Environmental change ‘changes everything’ for the Left too, Naomi Klein argued. Capitalism requires constant expansion, an expansion predicated on exploitation of humans and non-humans, that irreversibly damages the climate. A non-capitalist economy will have to sustain itself while contracting. But how can we redistribute or secure meaningful work without growth? There is not yet a concrete ‘economics of degrowth’. Lamentably, Keynesianism is the most powerful tool the Left, even the Marxist Left, has for dealing with issues of policy. But this is an economics of the 1930s when unlimited expansion was still possible and desirable.

Read the whole article in the New Internationalist

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Digitalisierung und Postwachstum

Digitalisierung wird eine wichtige Rolle in ökonomischen und politischen Entwicklungen einnehmen. Aus diesem Grund sollten sich soziale Bewegungen mit dem Thema auseinandersetzen und in die gesellschaftliche Debatte einbringen. Steffen Lange sieht vor allem fünf Bereiche, in denen sich Themen der Degrowth-Bewegung und der Digitalisierungsdebatte überschneiden: 1. Wachstum und Entkopplung, 2. di...

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Capitalism and (De)Growth

By: Susan Paulson

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 success in Pursuit ...

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How to Integrate Degrowth into All Aspects of Life: Some Thoughts on the Budapest Conference

By: Corinna Burkhart

The picture above shows some of the statues decorating the northern entrance of the Corvinus University in Budapest where the recent Degrowth Conference took place. The building has not always been a university. It once was a place of trade, and the statues over the entrance depict virtues which, back then, were considered central to trade. Virtues like courage, faith, love and honesty. When di...