I haven't read Saito's books, or looked too deeply into degrowth as a movement. I just read this article and thought it made some good arguments against what it claims are Saito's understandings of Marx. I'm not sure I agree with everything, but I thought it was interesting enough to share.
Good answer. The story I usually go with involves a can of peaches from Del Monté.
You take that can and you look at it and find "grown in Greece, processed in Singapore" and it ends up all the way here into motherfucking Alaska. Those peaches have traveled the world just to end up on our shelves for a few dollars.
The reality of the resource consumption in the form of logistics of moving those damn peaches is absurd as hell and it would literally make more sense to grow the fuckers down in California or Georgia or some shit and move them around a hell of a shorter distance domestically. Apply this to all the shit that's been outsourced over the decades within reason, and you'll have easily millions of jobs for Americans that are less exploitative, paid better, have better working conditions, have better environmental protection standards, etc.
But doing that is unprofitable for the capitalist class because they seek to maximize their profits at the cost of everyone but themselves, therefore the workers themselves must seize the means of production itself so it can reorganize the economy into one that actually works for the workers because it is built by the workers.