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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.

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Before strategy, who is strategising?

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By: Jocelyne Sze, Omar Saif

This article is part of a series on degrowth.info discussing strategy in the degrowth movement. The introduction to the series and an ongoing list of contributions can be found here. In the article “Beyond visions and projects…”, by Herbert, Barlow, Frey, Ambach, and Cigna, the authors persuasively set out the case for a more explicit debate on strategy in the degrowth movement. Highlighting...

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Hitch-Hiking, Ivan Illich and Degrowth

By: Corinna Burkhart

When hitch-hiking, a certain irony is common: Time and time again, the authors' of this post have been picked up by drivers who immediately instruct them that hitch-hiking used to work, but now is impossible. That these conversations were taking place at all would appear to contradict this supposed fact. This is not to say that it is always easy. Roads bar access to their sides for pedestrians ...

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Degrowth und Commons - gemeinsam in eine postkapitalistische Welt

By: Leslie Gauditz und Johannes Euler

Aus unserem Projekt Degrowth in Bewegung(en) Wenn Degrowth heißt, dass wir Menschen uns von den Fesseln des Wachstumszwangs befreien müssen, und wenn Commons-Aktivist*innen sich für mehr Commoning in der Welt einsetzen, dann müssen wir uns wohl folgende Fragen stellen: Von welchem Wachstum gilt es sich zu lösen? Wovon brauchen wir mehr? Wie könnte das gehen? Wer setzt sich dafür ein? Auf der ...