Post-Growth Living

I 100% purchased this book without knowing anything about it - the term "alternative hedonism" had me the moment it entered my brain. And yes the concept is as sexy as its name!!!

Turns out I was an alternative hedonist in many ways and didn't even know it - thus I vibed very hard with what the author proposes: an improved (ethically and environmentally) future society must rely on finding sensual pleasure from a non-consumeristic lifestyle, i.e. working less, slow(er) living, or new production and consumption standards.

There's a LOT of information on this book to develop this argument, and now writing this I'm honestly finding it hard to make sense of it all. This book pairs very well with the whole degrowth movement, and I guess it just makes a case for how degrowth could "stick": if people actually found non-growth based activities pleasurable rather than "going back to stone age" or whatever people say when talking about degrowth.

At the beginning of reading I was all like yassss get it! By the middle I was like wow this is a lot of info. And by the end she does a whole chapter of actual political measures that could be taken to promote this which is nice (but doesn't go too much into detail tbh!). But yes, very very nice food for thought, do read it if you're into degrowth!

For some reason, I've found myself reading a lot of radlib books this summer. This book, despite claiming to be leftist, certainly earns its spot with the other radlib books I've read. As my title says it is terminally capitalist realist in that even when it acknowledges the failures of postwar social democracy and correctly articulates that it failed because it gave the bourgeoise time to fight back against it, this book argues that a return to such a system, albeit with a lower consumption rate, is the best that we can hope for. Furthermore, although it correctly notes that degrowth is antithetical to capitalism, it still advocates for social democracy as a means for degrowth because then the capitalism will be "regulated". Finally, it advocates for class collaboration because "the bourgeoise will be affected by climate change too" and seems outright hostile to the idea of an organic working-class movement for ecological sustainability. The previous points aside, were I a professor marking this book as a monograph, I would have to say that it failed. This is not because it is poorly written, but because it fails at every opportunity to prove or even defend its thesis. The central thesis of the book is that we can argue for degrowth on hedonist grounds because consumer society makes people unhappy. All well and good. However, the book does not give a single example of how a society based on degrowth would make people happier, and just assumes that the reader will agree that it would. This sucks because I do agree that a society based on degrowth would be both more fulfilling and more hedonically desireable. However, I can't reccommend this book to someone on the fence about these issues because there is no argument regarding this claim. Do yourself a favour and give this book a pass in favour of a better book on degrowth.