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...
Making sense of inputs from the Budapest Degrowth Conference The degrowth community in Budapest and other forums formulated a number of concrete policies and identified alliances with other movements. Acknowledging the diversity of perspectives and a more concise set of proposals by Research and Degrowth, this article puts together a number of policies and proposals consistent with degrowth. T...
Aus unserem Projekt Degrowth in Bewegung(en) Artivism ist keine Bewegung im eigentlichen Sinne. Es ist eher eine Haltung, eine Praxis in den fruchtbaren Grenzbereichen zwischen Kunst und Aktivismus. Artivism entsteht, wenn Kreativität und Widerstand ineinander fallen. Es ist das, was passiert, wenn unsere politischen Aktionen genauso schön werden wie Gedichte und genauso effektiv wie ein perfe...