## Metadata - Author: [[tedtrainertsw]] - Full Title: A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth Movement - Category: #articles - Summary: The text critiques the degrowth movement for lacking a clear strategy and failing to address the need for radical changes in lifestyles and systems to achieve sustainability. It emphasizes the necessity of shifting towards simpler ways of living to reduce resource consumption and environmental impacts significantly. The author argues that degrowth requires scrapping capitalism and embracing cooperative, self-sufficient, and frugal systems to address global challenges effectively. - URL: https://medium.com/postgrowth/a-friendly-critique-of-the-degrowth-movement-f0bd2297072d ## Highlights - The eco-socialist is strongly inclined to counter that if we had state power we could facilitate that change in consciousness, help people to see the need for localism, etc. But there is a major logical confusion here. No government with the required policy platform, one focused on transition to simpler systems and lifestyles and cutting the GDP, could get elected unless people in general had long before adopted the associated extremely new and radical worldview. So the main task would be to work on the development of that change in grassroots consciousness, and if that succeeded to the point where the right kind of party was elected, the revolution would have already been won. The essence of this revolution is in the cultural change, and if that is achieved then the taking of state power and the structural changes thereby enabled will best be seen as consequences of the revolution. Focusing on taking state power here and now would not contribute much, if at all, to cultural change. This rejection of resort to force, power, or violence, and advocating of turning to the awareness task is central in the strategic thinking of some notable Anarchists of the past, including Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Kropotkin (see Peter Marshall’s [*Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism*](https://bookshop.org/a/8588/9781604860641)). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze33cstsmq50skh2bgvwp93)) - The historically unique situation we are now in presents us with the need for a non-confrontational strategy, one that involves turning away and ‘ignoring capitalism to death’. (This does not deny the need to confront over specific threats, such as to log a forest.) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze3259nz5sjjmzdg87vwg5v)) - The (usually implicit) strategy evident in degrowth discussion centres on calling on governments to implement degrowth policies, or generating the public pressure that will get them to do so in future. As has been explained above, sufficient degrowth could not be achieved without scrapping capitalism and several other unacceptable and unsustainable approaches, including: predominantly centralized government, globalization, existing global trading and financial systems, and, above all, a culture committed to affluent lifestyles. If the above analysis of the magnitude of the degrowth required is at all valid then sufficient degrowth will constitute the greatest revolution in history. Simpler Way transition theory stresses that this cannot be deliberately brought about by the decision-making institutions of this society; it will be forced upon us by the coming time of great troubles. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze36v97wrgegk8ej7j2dgpn)) - Perhaps the most effective way to do this is to get involved in ‘prefiguring’ alternative ways — that is, building some of the structures and processes the revolution is for, such as cooperatives, community gardens, community owned swap-shops, our own town employment, and aged care arrangements, etc. Some towns are building their own schools and dementia homes. But it is most important that these ventures be designed as educational devices, intended to introduce visitors to the big picture and thus to raise awareness of the need for huge and radical transition. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze4xmjggmw3xn21hpsha246)) - The point of this prefiguring is not to increase the number of post-revolutionary ways one by one until the old society has been replaced. It is primarily to create activities and devices that will introduce subversive ideas and illustrate the kinds of ways we will enjoy in post-consumer-capitalist society. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze4xwf9z9w4bf7wfbd09ymr)) - The coming time of great troubles could be the end of us, but if it is slow-onset and mild at first it will create conditions that will be powerfully conducive to the desired transition. As it impacts it will force people to realize that the old systems are not going to provide for them and that they will have to get together in their neighbourhoods, suburbs, towns, and regions to increase their capacity to collectively provide for themselves. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze4zfq25z69hx784jtwgf24)) - As with the discussion of goals, this approach to strategy is Anarchist. It is not about the socialist goal of trying to take state power here and now in order to run things from the center. It involves establishing elements of post-revolutionary society in order to raise awareness, which is an Anarchist ‘prefiguring’ strategy. When this is widespread and strong then changing systems and power structures will probably be fairly smooth, peaceful and easy, because the fundamental cultural revolution will have been achieved. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hze537eb9wn9xrtr6h2fsncg))