Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

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Marx’s M-C-M’ (Money invested into Commodity production for the goal of more Money) representing capitalist production's logic in contrast to pre-capitalist market exchange C-M-C (Commodity exchanged via Money for another Commodity). Thus, the capitalist logic is fundamentally about growing money.

Indeed, as the magic of capitalism is driven by the abstract force of debt (see the "Great Reversal" in Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails, where capitalism's finance-production-distribution starts with the debt of capital investments, whereas prior economies were production-distribution-finance), needlessly forcing workers and industrial capitalists to exhaust the planet just to pay off parasitic debts to the various layers of creditors (the worst being institutional absentee speculators/rentiers... i.e. rent-seeking/passive income/Ponzi schemes). Insanity. I disliked the author's attempt to label all things white, developed north, technology, etc. as "bad" as opposed to all things colored, undeveloped south, native beliefs, etc. as "good". I thought such generalizations as overly trite and simplistic--and more than a bit bigoted. Also, he does dive a bit deeply into the hippie dippy cliches of my youthful friends in days past. He also links economic inequality and ecological destruction: “any policy that reduces the incomes of the very rich will have a positive ecological benefit” (p. 186). I was a bit surprised, though, to find that he doesn’t mention a universal basic income, which elsewhere he champions. Less is More" is the last piece of knowledge I needed to finally accept that we can invent a better system than neoliberalism. And I had been a neoliberalist for my whole adult life.

Degrowth, politics, and the environment

Climate Strike Movement (2019) 7.6 million people demand action after week of climate strikes’, available: https://globalclimatestrike.net/7-million-people-demand-action-after-week-of-climate-strikes/ (accessed 9 September 2020). If we want to have a shot at surviving the Anthropocene, we need to restore the balance. We need to change how we see the world and our place within it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity with our planet’s ecology. We need to evolve beyond the dusty dogmas of capitalism to a new system that’s fit for the twenty-first century. Take the chainsaw.....it’s a remarkable invention that enables loggers to fell trees, ten times faster than they are able to do by hand. But logging companies equipped with chainsaws don't let their workers finish the job early and take the rest of the day off. They get them to cut down ten times as many trees....."

In addition to his academic work, Jason writes regularly for The Guardian and Foreign Policy, and contributes to a number of other online outlets including Al Jazeera, Fast Company, Prospect, Jacobin, Le Monde Diplomatique, New Internationalist, Red Pepper, Truthout, and Monthly Review. His media appearances include Viewsnight, the Financial Times, the BBC World Service, Sky News All Out Politics, BBC Business Matters, Thinking Allowed, Renegade TV, NPR, Doha Debates, TRT World, the LA Times, Citations Needed, and Russell Brand's podcast Under the Skin.Capitalism has robbed us of our ability to even imagine something different; Less is More gives us the ability to not only dream of another world, but also the tools by which we can make that vision real.' ASAD REHMAN, director of War on Want Varoufakis' elegant primer: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails And if you are telling to yourelf that won't happen in your lifetime, then it is good to know that: Capitalism has robbed us of our ability to even imagine something different; Less is More gives us the ability to not only dream of another world, but also the tools by which we can make that vision real.”

a b "The World Really Is Getting Richer as Poor Countries Catch Up". Bloomberg.com. 7 March 2019 . Retrieved 26 May 2023. Perhaps the greatest problem with “degrowth” is the one-word label has a lot of baggage and confuses even those who should know better: Less Is More explains how GDP, the measur For what it’s worth, I think he’s exactly right about capitalism’s unsustainability, and even about possible ways we might try to reconfigure economic and social relations. Will it happen? The chances are not good, I fear. But they are well-nigh impossible if people do not understand the underlying forces that got us into this cataclysmic mess. If you’re even vaguely interested in the past and future of the planet, you ought to read this book.

The philosophical backdrop

Verder is niet alleen het overheersende economische systeem dringend aan vervanging toe. Het dominante wereld- en mensbeeld – waarin de menselijke geest geacht wordt de natuur en ook het lichaam te onderwerpen en exploiteren – dient plaats te maken voor een alternatieve filosofie, die je als lezer graag in de plaats wil laten komen eens je weet dat het mogelijk is: een filosofie gebaseerd op wederzijdse afhankelijkheid, evenwicht en respect, die stelt dat alles met elkaar verbonden is en men niet meer mag nemen dan men kan teruggeven. Of the many disconcerting paradoxes of our time, perhaps the most jarring is the idea that as our understanding of the causes and possible consequences of climate change improves, politicians are often unwilling to connect the dots and design policies to avert a catastrophe. This is a catastrophe that is rapidly unfolding before our very eyes. However else the political class may justify their inaction, they won’t be able to claim they weren’t warned. If you choose to read a single non-fiction book next year, then this should be the one. I left so many little colorful bookmarks in this book that it looks now like a rainbow. Definitely on my list to re-read in the near future.