It is becoming clear that capitalism cannot be reconciled with ecological limits. Of the nine planetary boundaries identified by climate scientists, six have already been crossed, meaning that the planet has entered a crisis mode. Climate change is the most obvious of these. Data shows that 2024 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record and temperatures are already surpassing 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Carbon emissions need to be radically reduced now. We cannot wait for speculative technological solutions or the slow decoupling of society from fossil fuels. In this context, the movement for degrowth offers an appealing point of departure. The proponents of this view say that production and consumption in the Global North, which is primarily responsible for climate change, should be curtailed in a planned fashion. With less use of resources, carbon emissions will come down, thus staving off climate catastrophe.
Importantly, degrowth would not lead to a reduction in standards of living. By focusing on human needs rather than chasing after GDP growth, we can achieve a form of “frugal abundance” where, though excessive consumerist demands are curtailed, fundamental needs are met, people enjoy greater leisure time, and convivial social relations are commonplace. GDP does not always correlate with quality of life, with countries with relatively small economies (e.g., Costa Rica) outperforming countries with massive economies (e.g. the USA) in terms of healthcare, education, environmental quality, and other basic needs.
Ecosocialists have embraced degrowth in recent years. Many define degrowth as a planned reduction in the material throughput of the economy—in particular, this means reducing energy use. The radical implications of this proposal are highlighted by ecosocialists. As figures such as Kohei Saito argue, capitalism is dependent on an endless process of accumulation, one that is increasingly out of sync with meeting human needs. The end of growth thus means the end of capitalism. Degrowth involves not only breaking with the ideology of economic growth (something evident from Keir Starmer’s empty call for “growth, growth, growth”), but a systematic reorganisation of society in which production is oriented towards needs rather than exchange.
That said, some on the left remain suspicious of degrowth. Left accelerationists suggest that technological progress will redefine planetary limits, meaning that non-frugal abundance can be reconciled with environmental sustainability. Others question the theoretical basis of degrowth, highlighting its misinterpretation of Marxism, which always distinguished capitalist growth from socialist growth.
A final critique concerns strategy. That is, how to achieve the systematic change envisioned by degrowth? As Matthew Huber pointed out at Ecosocialism Conference 2023, it is difficult to see why degrowth would appeal to working class people, who suffer from not enough rather than too much. The Green New Deal is more strategically astute because it links material needs (e.g., job creation, investment in communities) to tackling climate change.
It is this last strand of critique we are interested in. While degrowth is not devoid of strategy, it is certainly the case that the movement has not articulated convincing responses on this point. In fact, as we describe below, the three key strategic orientations within degrowth—what we call the prefigurative approach, the discursive approach and the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach—suffer from significant limitations. That said, as we show later on, this does not mean that degrowth should be rejected but rather that an alternative strategy is needed that has the interests of the working class at its core.
Prefiguration
Many degrowth scholars and activists adopt prefigurative politics. They argue that an alternative to growth-driven societies must be established in the here and now through practical experiments in alternative ways of living. This means establishing “bottom-up nowtopias”, with degrowth activists engaged in a vast array of experiments including community gardens, timebanks, cooperatives, communal kitchens, and co-housing. Kohei Saito, in Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth (2023), adopts this strategy, arguing that ecosocialists should focus on small-scale, localised initiatives, such as founding workers’ cooperatives.
The primary problem with this approach is that it is far from clear why the state and capital would allow these alternative forms of life to flourish. As critics point out, once they reach a point of becoming a threat to capital accumulation, it is likely that they will face repression. In John Rackham’s words: “These projects, if they gain importance, will have to quickly pass through the hands of local political authorities, suffering legal, judicial, fiscal, and sometimes even police harassment; in short, the state.” Such institutions are likely to become coopted by the dominant forces of capitalist society, representing vulnerable and disconnected islands of degrowth surrounded by a sea of capital accumulation. Moreover, it is also unclear how such prefigurative formations will challenge the dominant institutions and practices of society, which remain committed to growth.
Cultural change
If some advocates of degrowth focus on the need to establish new institutions that can supplant the existing institutions of society, then others have suggested that the latter are capable of delivering at least some of the aims of the degrowth movement. Accounts of degrowth often propose a recipe of policies, including ending planned obsolescence, reducing the advertising sector, the four-day work week, and scaling down certain industries, that could be adopted by states committed to radically reducing the material throughput of society while also meeting the needs of their citizens in a just and equitable fashion.
If it is possible for existing institutions to adopt degrowth policies, why are they not doing so? To address this question, the cultural change approach focuses on the ideological dominance of growth in contemporary societies. The prioritisation of economic growth is not intrinsic to existing institutions but instead the product of what Peter Ferguson calls a “global discourse coalition that is heavily invested in the pro-growth status quo”.
The first step towards the end of growth is a hegemonic transformation, a cultural shift in which growth ceases to appear to be the natural and right way to organise the economy. Giacomo D’Alisa and Giorgos Kallis’s example is helpful here: “Imagine for the sake of illustration a wild scenario that a revolution or an election puts Herman Daly as the leader of the U.S., or Kate Raworth of the U.K [two prominent degrowth economists]. Even in that extreme case, little would change, unless there was a common sense cultivated in society that steady state or postgrowth is the way to go.”
This approach relies on a certain reading of Antonio Gramsci’s work, stressing the importance of cultural factors in achieving political change. However, what this approach often ignores are material interests. Its proponents seem to suggest that everybody in capitalist society has an equal stake in realising the transition to a degrowth society, and they simply need to be persuaded of the viability and desirability of the latter. For instance, Giorgos Kallis and his colleagues say that: “‘While degrowth futures move away from class, racial, gender, and colonial hierarchies that evolved to support growth, they neither privilege nor exclude certain groups.”
This leaves unclear exactly who the political subject of degrowth is. As Stuart Hall stressed in his account of Gramsci’s politics, “hegemony is not exclusively an ideological phenomenon” and instead focuses on “how social forces and movements, in their diversity, can be articulated into a set of strategic alliances”. The question is: What are the strategic alliances that will bring about degrowth? That is, who are the social groups that have a particular interest in fighting for a society of frugal abundance?
“Everything but the kitchen sink”
It should finally be noted that some degrowthers advocate adopting a plurality of political strategies. For instance, Michel Lepesant argues that the movement should seek to “balance […] the three political legs of degrowth”: doing (the building of new institutions in the present), saying (making the discursive argument against growth), and acting (campaigning for and implementing degrowth-oriented policies). The emphasis on plurality has advantages. Most particularly, it allows for flexibility. Rather than fetishising a single vision of social change, the movement remains open to different potentialities for degrowth transitions.
At the same time, as Nathan Barlow argues in a recent collection on degrowth and strategy, “plurality alone is not a strategy” in the sense that it does not provide guidance on how the finite energies of the degrowth movement should be directed and fails to acknowledge that “not all strategies are equally useful for achieving degrowth in a given context”. While dogmatism regarding degrowth transitions should be avoided, it is possible to be more precise than simply affirming all possible approaches as equally productive.
Who wants degrowth?
Given the problems of these approaches, an alternative strategy is needed. A way forward is to concentrate not on prefigurative formations and changing common sense but instead on relationships of power and exploitation between different social groups. Who wins and who loses, against a backdrop of the pre-existing inequalities of capitalist society, are key questions that should preoccupy degrowth activists. Jason Hickel asks the right questions when he states: “We need to be able to specify growth for whom, and for what ends. […] Who benefits from it?” However, this question needs to be asked not only of proponents of growth but also of proponents of degrowth. Building support for degrowth requires aligning it with the interests of those oppressed and marginalised in contemporary capitalist society.
Alternately put, the task is to concatenate the goals of degrowth with the already existing material interests of the working class (understood in an intersectional sense), such that the former becomes an expression of the political struggles of the latter. Emphasising material interests demonstrates the importance of intervening in already existing spaces of oppositional power, most particularly labour and social movements. In this way, stressing the role of interests—i.e., who will benefit from degrowth—offers a clear strategic orientation to the movement, it demonstrates where it should intervene to achieve political change.
This perspective chimes with Stefania Barca’s recent book Workers of the Earth (2024), which argues that the political subject of degrowth cannot merely be an abstract subject, the general public, or an environmentally conscious middle class. Instead, a successful degrowth transition can only be brought about by being cognisant of the different societal forces affected by degrowth, the relationships between them, and any possible common interests that can be galvanised to support the degrowth vision.
Our approach also draws out potential strategic dilemmas that the degrowth movement may face. Some of the demands of the degrowth movement may need to be prioritised in some contexts and deemphasised in others, depending on the particular interests of social groups in particular contexts. Moreover, it also indicates the need for a patient process of building alliances between distinct and diverse groups. Despite the urgent need of some degrowth aims, particularly decarbonisation, there are no shortcuts to the formation of an anti-capitalist bloc. To this end, in the following, we offer an analysis of two social forces, Greek trade unionists in the lignite sector and activists in the Black Lives Matter movement, who could form the basis of a degrowth political strategy.
Labour movements
The role of the labour movement is particularly important. One risk of degrowth is unemployment—as the economy shrinks, there is less work available—a fear that has traditionally made trade unions wary of degrowth as a movement. However, it is possible to identify implicitly degrowth currents in the labour movement, even amongst groups of workers who seemingly have a strong interest in the growth-oriented status quo.
This is demonstrated by the case of Greek workers in the lignite industry, one of the most polluting fossil fuels. In 2019, Greece embarked on an ambitious process to close all lignite mines by 2028, with earlier deadlines for the majority of lignite-powered energy plants and lignite mines, some of which have already been shut. If successful, this would make Greece the country with the quickest transition from fossil fuels in the EU.
At first glance, it appears that workers are entirely opposed to the project, given the participation of the Labour Solidarity (energy workers’) union in the Collective of Workers’ Unions and Bodies Against Delignitization. However, there are surprising synergies between the interests of this group of workers and the demands of degrowth. Labour Solidarity has shown a keen awareness of the dangers of the industry for its members. It has a long history of campaigning for fewer working hours, better health and safety at work, and environmental protection. As part of the campaign against delignitization, the union emphasised the issue of land grabbing by renewable energy companies, and the causal link between rapid mine closures and landslides.
While the opposition to rapid delignitization might indicate a lack of care for environmental issues, the workers’ consciousness of local ecological conditions suggests a more complex picture. Attention to the priorities of the workers, as expressed in their struggles past and present, helps to shape the strategic horizon of degrowth in the Greek context. For instance, in the case of the lignite workers, degrowth’s emphasis on the need for a four-day week resonates very closely with their historic demand for reduced working hours. Similarly, against the land-grabbing by renewable energy companies, degrowth suggests other ways to organise the economy that are especially relevant to the lignite workers, including the return of local food production, which many people in mining areas were engaged in prior to the arrival of the lignite industry.
Anti-racist movements
There has been some debate about organised labour in degrowth circles but race is an underexplored issue. It is unclear how degrowth advances the interests of racially oppressed working-class people, with their criticisms of the inequalities, violence and exclusion of contemporary society standing at some distance from visions of degrowth futures. As we have emphasised, if degrowth is to be achieved, it is necessary to build a broad-based coalition, in which groups with different histories and distinct priorities are able to identify with the demands of degrowth. Should degrowth be unable to resonate with anti-racist movements, it is unlikely to be successful, and nor will it be able to achieve a fully just and equal society.
As in the case of the lignite workers, it is possible to excavate incipiently degrowth proposals from the campaigns of Black and brown people. This is especially so in the case of the Black Lives Matter movement, which came to prominence with the uprisings against police brutality in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. One of the key demands of the movement is to defund the police, or a radical reduction in the number of officers and spending on equipment. This was echoed by calls from prison abolitionists to stop mass incarceration, with the number of imprisoned Black people rising hugely in the wake of the War on Drugs. Importantly, for these scholars and activists, the demand to defund the police and prisons not only involves the negative act of disinvestment but also the positive act of investing in Black communities, education, housing, healthcare and other services.
It is possible to understand the demand to defund the police as one that both advances the interests of racially oppressed people and contributes to the broader aims of degrowth. Clearly, for Black people, who have been subject to forms of violence from police forces from their inception in the nineteenth century onwards, the radical reduction in law enforcement would have liberatory effects. From the degrowth perspective, it would also disrupt one arm of the growth economy. As William I. Robinson asserts, “transnational capital is more and more dependent […] on perpetual state-organized war making, social control, and repression”. Government spending on police and prisons increases GDP but, as BLM activists demonstrate, does not increase well-being.
Connecting the movements of Black people with the degrowth drive to reduce socially unnecessary spending demonstrates that police and prisons are precisely examples of the latter. Jason Hickel’s account of degrowth in Less is More (2021) suggests that there are “huge chunks of the economy that are actively and intentionally wasteful”, listing planned obsolescence, food waste and advertising as the key culprits and calling for their immediate abolition. However, the book does not mention police or prisons, two areas of wasteful expenditure where the degrowth movement could make common cause with movements against racism.
Anti-racist movements will change degrowth, directing it in certain strategically significant directions. By focusing on interests, and the concrete demands of particular social groups, the priorities of degrowth are crystallised. In the context of building support for degrowth amongst racially oppressed people, a focus is needed on descaling economic sectors that directly contribute to their oppression and investing in sectors that support Black communities.
Forming alliances and identifying interests
As these examples suggest, oppositional movements are already implicitly degrowth-oriented. They are not ideologically opposed to it and do not need convincing of its value. The task is not persuading them that degrowth is the correct path forwards. Instead, it is that of identifying groups whose interests are already partly aligned with the degrowth movement and knitting them together into a strategic alliance.
On the one hand, the connection between degrowth scholars and social movements exists as a potential but not an actuality, suggesting the need for concrete links to be forged by the former. On the other hand, degrowth offers a counterhegemonic horizon that brings together a range of oppositional groups, such that lignite miners in Greece, with their commitment to a shorter working week and thriving communities, can be brought into dialogue with Black people in the United States, with their protests against police brutality and calls to cut wasteful expenditure.
Our perspective offers a productive means of responding to the critics of degrowth. As noted above, one of the central lines of critique from other tendencies on the climate left has been that degrowth, because it fails to respond to the interests of social groups in the present, is an impossible utopia. However, there are ways of reconciling the demands of degrowth with long established tendencies in oppositional politics. This is particularly clear in the case of reducing working hours and cutting wasteful expenditure, an area where the struggles of labour movements, anti-racist movements and visions of degrowth come together.
In the terms of the great Marxist theorist Ernst Bloch, degrowth is currently an abstract utopia, a pleasant dream in which environmental limits are respected and social needs are met in an egalitarian fashion, but it needs to become a concrete utopia, a vision of a new world that is grounded in the social and economic contradictions of existing capitalist society. “Abstractly introduced goals” become “tendentially concrete goals” when they are brought into “contact with history and process”, or the material interests of social forces within the world as it exists.
This article is based on a longer piece published in New Political Economy, which is available here.
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