Anti Degrowth Preview

I want an ecosystem that’s not dead and a planet that’s not on fire. But I also really hate “degrowth” as a movement. This is the eternal bug up my ass that I will be speaking about today.

For those who don’t know, Degrowth as a movement says that we in the “Global North” need to shrink our economy to preserve the environment and stop robbing the “Global South,” often accompanied by the idea that we need to “live with less” and that we don’t need all this “stuff” to be happy. Essentially, not full-on primitivism; though they are often caricatured as such, but also more liminally related to/a “lite” version of the basic assumptions behind thereof than they’d like to admit. Like right-libertarians/anarcho-capitalists and the Dark Enlightenment!

As an aside, I would be foolish to not admit the diversity in the movement's views that does exist, with some leaning more towards explicit gestures towards primitivism and some being more vague on their views or motivated by other reasoning, but the fact they agree more than they disagree are enough to consider them similar enough to critique collectively. Because, I will bluntly say as a principle, one's views are not only contained in one's ideals, but who one is willing to compromise and seek solidarity with.

Nor will I pretend there aren't some good ideas that the movement's leaders do endorse. Right to Repair laws, an end to planned obsolescence, recycling technologies that aren't terrible, these are all good things that need to exist. These things are also possible without degrowth, but treated as the sugar to help the "poison pill" go down.

There are most certainly easy targets to go after in the Degrowth movement, whether it be the person insisting the future will be covered in shit; suck it up, the people going into the eco-left versions of Atlas Shrugged or Victoria-type scenarios, or the people blaming the ecofascist shooting on the ecomodernists for somehow “failing” rather than the shooter sharing the same base assumptions as them but taking the more cowardly way, but I want to take a broader look at this.

I speak, of course, as a layman, so don’t expect this to be as rigorous as somebody more professional than myself. I also won’t be using many points of direct "hard" statistical data, because then they’ll come back with their own numbers and the whole thing will turn into a ping-pong match that divorces it from the actual issues of philosophies involved, and really, neither of us will likely be viewing the full picture, because this is an issue that will require the intersection of many; many fields to actually work, and we are likely both operating on wildly incomplete information.

Which, really, is a problem to that part of degrowth worldview that views it as the most “realistic” solution, that if we were even able to get rid of the full depredations of capitalism and work against its efficiencies; we still would not be able to live as we do now without parasitizing off of others. Whereas, most leftists I know (though Western ones) take a more ambivalent approach; taking more views into account and trying to negotiate them; as a many-field effort such as not fucking the ecosystem should do. Oliver Thorn’s videos on Climate Grief and; of all thing; Witchcraft have that far more balanced view I can respect much more.

They use the uncertainty of the future as a cudgel, based on the idea that even if we do beat down the depredations of capital or at least get it small enough to drown in a bathtub, it “won’t be enough.” Unless, of course, we do their One Simple and Pragmatic solution. Because that kind of thing always works, just look at the Gold Standard!

I am less interested in that one-size-fits-all solution; which degrowth has as a driving principle no matter how much one puts asterisks and alleged democracy therein; and more interested in what the engineer who knows of emerging technologies that could turn mining into something that isn’t a toxic nightmare but which capital has no interest in developing, I am interested in the engineers who can come up with a system of recycling that isn’t a depressing farce or a joke.

I am interested into research and development. I am also interested into alternate social solutions. I am interested in those  I am interested in those activists from many places who can actually work building solidarity between the workers of the Global North and South so we can mutually better our means of creation, rather than a Thanos-lite balancing act of equal aeceticism.

There’s a reason I used the phrase “asceticism” instead of “austerity,” because they balk at that and I do see where they come from. Austerity conveys the right-wing cruelty, scarcity as punitive min-maxing, Thatcher and Greece. But they do genuinely see their preferred way of life as a universally good thing, and that any manual labor will enrich life instead of making it more difficult because they see that work as fufilling. The Simple Life, Live With Less Stuff, Degrowth As Utopia.

To which I say: Good for them. And there should be ways in society to allow one to live like that and for it to work within the “web” of other ways of living. I want a society where your raising of heritage livestock and traditional handicrafts are considered no less valid than managing a polyculture mega-greenhouse at scale while 3d printing action figures.

But the problem is, not everyone wants to live like that. “Stuff” is an awful weaselly word that a lot of things potentially very useful to many people can be treated as disposable under, especially if you always use the most extreme examples of “useless” goods, and substitutes that are inadequate to you or me are just fine to them, and if you balk at that, it’s always your fault and you’re a capitalist shill.

Not to mention the fact that I have sincerely seen degrowth-types argue against such "hedonistic" "luxuries" as central air conditioning and refrigeration. So, that gives little confidence that "stuff" is not being used as a dogwhistle right there, along with certain parts of the left's treatment of "trash" culture as an inherent evil of capitalism (Given how much these people cite Adorno, though that's its own topic).

They act as if this slowing of creation is still freedom from min-maxing. But they too are min-maxing in a different way, based on what they think we can afford to lose; and which they think of as a must rather than an ideal. Because, like capitalism at its inverse, There Is No Alternative.

As a digression, while I regret not screencapping that tweet, to the person who said “Sorry but you’ll have to give up your anime titty figures so the rest of us can have a livable planet,” fuck you for being exactly what I’m talking about. And, it's not isolated, I have seen articles where the response to what we'd lose is essentially "Suck it up, you gotta"

And that is the bullet point time and again I have seen in all of their works I have linked, it is that driving principle of aeceticism is the only viable way. To them, the details can be decided later, but the principle is irrevocable.

Thusly I cannot take their arguments that things would not be worse were their broader scale ideals put into practice, because of how the driving principle as indicated by their words and deeds shows that lifestyles beyond their aecetic ideal or the existence of "luxuries" so many depend on are a low enough priority to be considered "necessary sacrifices," no matter how much they use "democracy" as a beatstick.

And it's telling that they deeply loathe people who have their own ideas on how an ecopocalypse could be avoided; like Leigh Phillips who argues for better management of the economy on a democratic level that would not result in mass-mandated asceticism and argues that "growth" need not be cancerous and all-consuming in an economy based around people's input and needs. Or the Breakthrough Institute, talking about the ways in which economies of scale; such as agricultural intensification and concentration in cities (Designed to not only be concentrated but actually well-integrated into their environments) could in fact reduce the footprint.

Though, that’s not to say that the anti-degrowth movement don’t have their own problems.

Because, really, while I like Leigh Phillips a lot in a lot of areas, he’s been… more than a little glib on the issue of native rights and worldviews. Aside from some… questionable things published in other magazines on other subjects, but his pooh-poohing of the Buen Vivir in his book ignores that it’s based on native ideas of land use, and while I can’t quite be arsed to go so deep to get the tweets, but there’s one in particular about the issues of indigenous lands under his ideas of democratic economic management, and his view on his standard’s universality can itself have issues; as the only adequate critique I’ve found from a degrowth-skeptic on an Amazon review of all places mentioned.

And, while the Breakthrough Institute has many interesting ideas, aside from the ethical nightmares intensified agriculture can cause especially with animals, their idea of moving to the cities to preserve nature could very easily lead to awful things done to those living in rural areas in the name of "progress". While I won't link the guy's article because he basically goes into full-on primmie status, one critic makes a good point that it could easily result in the sort of violence that faced rural populations with the mass damming projects in the 30s, and I think that Breakthrough desperately needs more rural and indigenous perspectives to avoid that.

What I’m saying is they could likely become two steps from a “Democracy for me, not for thee” view of resource use, by virtue of one’s flaws being one’s virtues taken too far is you get. I mean, Ollie Thorn did a pretty thorough talk on how that happened with the views Elon Musk represents, and while it’s often a caricature; there’s a reason degrowthers use the spectre of silicon valley capitalist techjerks as a smear.

These are concerns because that issue of grappling with extractive imperialism’s the strongest point degrowth has; given the most painfully notable posts I’ve seen shit-talking the commonly asserted idea of Fully Automated Luxury Communism as A Thing tend to come from that perspective; and even Degrowth’s Knight In Rusty Armor Jason Hickel grew up in Swaziland and has done a lot of work regarding the robbing of the Global South by the Global North; which almost certainly shaped his views. And thusly, we need to topple their greatest point of strength if we are to truly supplant them and prove them wrong.

Because, I do remember the native woman in the comments of an Oliver Thorn video, talking about how; what they want is the right to live as they used to; in some form. I think, outside of degrowther min-maxing, that’s a goal we can work for collectively, for all the indigenous peoples who’ve been hosed by colonialism and robber-barons robbing them for their baronies, and in fact we must!

This is less a full-on slamming of the anti-degrowth position though, and more a statement that more diverse perspectives of leftism need to get in on “fuck Degrowth.” I’m extremely interested if anyone’d actually directly provide such from a postcolonial/anti-colonial perspective! Solidarity not shutdowns y’all!

And, I will admit not all “growth” is good. The rise of microtransactions and lootboxes in games shows us an object-lesson too that not all “growth” is what most people who have hearts instead of a huge sack of money implanted where one should be would define as growth. Same for the way the commons is slowly being liquidated online for the sake of monetization, looking straight at Youtube.

This is perhaps less a sign that growth must die and more that growth should be re-defined, talking about the growth that helps nobody but the One Percent, AKA Bullshit Growth akin to David Graeber’s concept of Bullshit Jobs. Not degrowth, but regrowth. Growth defined and re-distributed in a way that helps human beings on the ground floor, not by some obtuse mathematics that makes some Chicago/Austrian School ghoul's dick hard.

Which is perhaps related to why degrowthers often use the; quite frankly; bad and obsolete capitalist/GDP standard of defining “growth” to go against it while not so subtly slipping in digs at other forms of growth, as a form of weasel-words. Which is probably why Mr Phillips keeps his conception of growth broad to counter all those points, but that strategy has had mixed results, but I digress.

Of course, there is a reason I bring these concepts of self-criticism up. Quite frankly, we need the non-degrowth response to the climate crisis to be as strong as it can possibly be. As another friend rightfully commented when I showed them this, it's not just about rebutting degrowth. In fact, that was as of little urgent concern to her as the hypothetical politics of a moonbase. Rather, it's about the fact that we need first and foremost as our most important goal to prevent degrowth from being necessary at all.

Because there is still infrastructure that needs to be changed and megacorp ghouls that need to be smashed down before we cook ourselves to near death, and it must be done swiftly and forcefully before we have to implement the desperate measures degrowth proposes. Because there is still time to do that, and it is dangerous and disingenuous to insist there isn't.

There is a bafflement that we can agree with some of their ideas; that we’ve robbed the Global South blind; that overproduction and planned-obsolescence is bullshit, that major infrastructural changes are needed and that capitalism’s gotta go, and yet still not go with their solution, even in the degrowther papers I’d say are most “fair” to the ecomodernist movement.

And that is because, as the person who felt rightfully that the writers were unfair to his organization’s views mentioned in a part of his thread, there are pluralities of both ways of living beyond the simplicities of geographic adaptation that much degrowth literature feels is the only plurality of living that matters.

While social solutions are vitally important as well, the treatment of potentially deeply useful technologies as “technofixes” can have a nasty chilling effect on their R&D regarding improvement and deployment, thorium reactors and direct air carbon capture immediately coming to mind, because they don’t want to admit their ideology is not a cure-all

But, we need that plurality of action and of ways of life, both for the fight ahead of us and the “peace” after. There is a reason my nickname for the current eco-crisis is “World War Gaiden,” not quite the nation-versus-nation apocalypse as World War 3; and not even technically a “war” against any nation; hence the “Gaiden” title, but something that will require war-level effort not simply in terms of action but in terms of contextualization.

A means for contextualizing grief, horror, and the likely rocky period we will face in the transition; not as a means of some idealistic goal but rather the rushed; pragmatic scrabble to put out fires and survive in the fight to stabilize afterwards. They are right on one thing that this will be a time of panic, a time of fear. And after the bleeding stops, a time of rubble.

But, what I see afterwards; once the world is built back up; is not a degrowth utopia, likely not quite even an ecomodernist utopia, but rather a utopia of many ways accompanying many livelihoods.

One day, after the worse yet to come, I hope the desert monsoons will someday come again and the orange poppies will light up the streets yet to be reborn in the city of Tucson. And I will see them; through the windows in my air-conditioned domicile, and I will smile.

But, degrowth sees their vision for the future as a monad; a solution of aecetic universalism; damn all the others who want some part of their new world to be decadent in its joy; to be one of more not less. Let’s work to create a world where we can do these many futures without robbery of our brethren and green turned to ashes, won’t we?