Abstract: I argue that a coincidence of growing profits and growing consumption / wages cannot be presumed any longer. Even if many participants of the Degrowth-Debate do so, the equation of economic Growth of enterprises and consumptive Growth of the population (at least in the Global North) is in itself bound to imaginations coming from the postwar (“fordist”) period and the class-compromise installed in the countries of the global North. But, as I want to discuss with conceptions taken from development-theory, the nexus of mass-production and mass-consumption has become loose and what is now typical instead is a modus of fragmented development with a dual structure of production - in the global South as well as in the global North. This socio-economic duality, I argue, is reflected by two different modes of suppression and deny of social (also consumer oriented) requirements: The first is to subordinate social demands to the need of economic growth, the second is to disconnect people from means to realize a dignified life.

This media entry was a contribution to the special session "Degrowth and social inequality: Eating the rich or governing the poor?" at the 4th International Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014.

There is no paper for this media entry. This was a contribution to a scientific session at the 4th International Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014, which doesn't exist in written format or is not published under open access.