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Is degrowth possible under capitalism?
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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Degrowth
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Discussions about degrowth and all sorts of related topics. This includes UBI, economic democracy, the economics of green technologies, enviromental legislation and many more intressting economic topics.
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I'm pretty sure the destruction of value is inconsequential in a capitalist model until you destroy means of production. In fact, I'm pretty sure destroying things would be beneficial to capitalism, because then it would be able to produce useful things again rather than trying to invent new useless shit all the time.
Is it compatible with degrowth though? Well, I'm pretty sure we are already living it. The growth is mostly virtual imo, but the actual riches is decreasing for most people in the west. The growth benefit is going more and more to the privileged, and the poor get their public services slowly decaying because the growth doesn't go into it.
Which is why I hate this concept of degrowth. Growth as a concept only serve one purpose : it's an illusion so people can believe capitalism will benefit everyone. But the core problem of capitalism is the asymmetry of power between the capitalists and the workers. And degrowth does nothing against this asymmetry, so a de growing world would only make the life of workers even worse.
Degrowth is perfectly possible IMO withing capitalism. Wars and crisis are mostly about that.
Finally, the biggest problem for ecology is not actually capitalism, it's consumerism. Consumerism is a consequence of capitalism, but not a necessity of it. What you usually want to solve with degrowth is consumerism.
How would you envision capitalism without consumerism ? I fail to see how capitalism would work without mass consumption.
If I may enter the discussion. I think it's very very hard but may be possible. Let's say people only buy new things when it's something they need and the things itself should work for a long time, like generations. It reduces consumerism, things would only be replaced if something greatly superior appeared. Some things would still be bought so there is still some capitalism but wouldnt be focused on mindless spending in junk. Things would be more expensive but overall we'd have better things.
You are describing market economy, not capitalism.
Fair enough. Degrowth from capitalism to market economy is more of an obtainable goal
Maybe if everyone had access to roughly the same wealth, market economy could be a good method of balancing economy ?
Yes but it's tough to imagine a path to that.
True. But there has been experiments, especially around melting currencies (is that the correct English name ?).
A recent example (in French, but I guess automatic translators are good enough now ?) : https://monnaie-libre.fr/
Thank you for that, I wasn't aware that was a thing! I'll bookmark that to read later as it seems a bit long! I didn't even know melting currencies were a thing
Such is the power of economic orthodoxy - to trick you into thinking there is no alternative, that economic laws are laws of nature when they are "only" social constructions ...