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 InternationalistEine deutsche Version des Textes findet sich hier. When it comes to technological development, I often hear the words: What can be done will be done – sooner or later. Many people think that technological development follows a path directed by quasi-natural laws that head into one and only one direction – called “progress” – which is: to use more technology, more complex technology, more exp...
With the "Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change" published by the International Islamic Climate Change Symposium earlier this month, another world religion has expressed heavy concerns about the pursuit of relentless economic growth. Professor Odeh Al Jayyousi, one of the members of the Symposium, had attended our summer school on degrowth and climate justice right before the symposium a...
Boris Woynowski und Ludwig Schuster sind aktive Mitglieder des Netzwerkes Wachstumswende. In ihrer Rolle als Mitgründer der Thinkfarm, eines kooperativen Gemeinschaftsbüros in Berlin, haben wir ein Videointerview mit ihnen geführt, das fiktiv im Jahre 2030 spielt und in dem sie gemeinsam auf die schwierige aber spannende Zeit eines gesellschaftlichen Wandels zurückblicken.
