Why, in our affluent society, do so many people live in poverty, without access to health care, working multiple jobs and are nevertheless unable to make ends meet, with no future prospects, while the planet is burning?
In his international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and climate change, subsequent calls for “sustainable growth” and a “Green New Deal” are a dangerous compromise. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity by pursuing profit based on the value of products rather than their usefulness and by putting perpetual growth above all else. It is therefore impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society—more: the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution.
Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production. In …
Why, in our affluent society, do so many people live in poverty, without access to health care, working multiple jobs and are nevertheless unable to make ends meet, with no future prospects, while the planet is burning?
In his international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and climate change, subsequent calls for “sustainable growth” and a “Green New Deal” are a dangerous compromise. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity by pursuing profit based on the value of products rather than their usefulness and by putting perpetual growth above all else. It is therefore impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society—more: the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution.
Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production. In practical terms, he argues for:
the end of mass production and mass consumption
decarbonization through shorter working hours
the prioritization of essential labor over corporate profits
By returning to a system of social ownership, he argues, we can restore abundance and focus on those activities that are essential for human life, effectively reversing climate change and saving the planet.
growth will kill us faster, and marx maybe knew it too?
3 stars
Two fascinating books smooshed together, neither what I was expecting, both earnest enough. First, a very readable light explanation that "green growth" and any ecological turn that leaves capitalism in place will be insufficient to avoid extractive exploitation beyond ecological limits we're facing. Second, a niche academic journey through Marx' years after Capital Vol 1 arguing from thin circumstance that he too realized some of the ecological necessities of degrowth rather than unerring progress. If that's what you needed to hear to slow down, well ok!
Enjoyed this light read. Saito comes off as extraordinarily delusional and dumb when he ends the book with "this is meant to be a version of Capital for this new era." This book is an airport read. The ideas in even the first few chapters of Capital are far deeper and more important than anything you'll find here. Saito's arguments are paper thin at best. That said, I agree with some of them, and do find the vision of degrowth communism invigorating. But we'll need much stronger thinkers to build the real strategy to achieve it, thinkers who are not afraid to learn positive lessons from Lenin, Mao, and other successful revolutionaries. Saito is unfortunately a severe anticommunist who believes himself to be the first person to understand Marx and who seemingly wants to throw out all Marxist thought other than his own.
Good stuff, but a bit wrapped up in exegesis of Marx
4 stars
Good on assessing/criticizing 'green growth', left-accelerationism, SDGs, and the like. Also good on discussing Japanese thinkers and whether Japan's lost decade(s) count as degrowth. Gets a bit bogged down in analyzing whether Marx was leaning away from productivism in his later years, based on reading his unpublished notebooks. Sketches out a pretty plausible model for what degrowth communism could look like, but then gets a bit wrapped up in Chenoweth's 3.5% as all we need to achieve our ends :(
This was a brilliant read on the folly of "green growth". Saito does an amazing job at collating the evidence for why trying to implement any "green growth" is bound to fail and how capitalism would subsume those efforts. He also does a great job at providing a potential alternative model - degrowth communism - that could help us overcome those barriers.
These efforts center around re-building the commons, both in the local, environmental sense (e.g. land water) but also the communal, local ownership (of infrastructures) and how co-operative ownership of the commons can bring about those changes. A worthy read to think about how we can collectively act at avoiding even worse-case scenarios in the future.
The one thing that somewhat negatively stood out to me: I get that it's not "just" a collection of evidence but a manifesto, but I was nevertheless surprised how little room Ostrom's work …
This was a brilliant read on the folly of "green growth". Saito does an amazing job at collating the evidence for why trying to implement any "green growth" is bound to fail and how capitalism would subsume those efforts. He also does a great job at providing a potential alternative model - degrowth communism - that could help us overcome those barriers.
These efforts center around re-building the commons, both in the local, environmental sense (e.g. land water) but also the communal, local ownership (of infrastructures) and how co-operative ownership of the commons can bring about those changes. A worthy read to think about how we can collectively act at avoiding even worse-case scenarios in the future.
The one thing that somewhat negatively stood out to me: I get that it's not "just" a collection of evidence but a manifesto, but I was nevertheless surprised how little room Ostrom's work on governing the commons got, in light of how central the commons are to his argument.
As an aside: It's hilarious to me that the non-US versions of this book actually comes in a bright red cover with the subtitle "How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth" instead of the tamer, green "The Degrowth Manifesto"
