Hello comrades, I'm looking for some guidance on understanding degrowth.

It seems very idealistic. Where they hope their work can convince people on an individual level, then on an organizational level, to influence policy which creates targets that will decrease environmental impact (that is the main contradiction) and subsequently profit-seeking.

I think some part acknowledges that quality of life with respect to material possessions is sufficient for people in the global north, and they can be content with their current conditions and improve things like community with a decreased emphasis on growth. There isn't a base theory or mechanism to understand or explain how humans and societies work like historical materialism or dialectical materialism in ML. It does seem to rely on ecological thinking, e.g. carrying capacity. Maybe the idea is that there is a physical limit, we can acknowledge it and work around it for the best outcome for all people rather than butt heads against it after consequences emerge.

This doesn't seem to operate at the level of human societies which I think is a bit confusing. You can take something from ecology but its application needs a robust set of auxiliary theories to explain how it operates at the level of human society. It also seems there is wishful thinking about how movements like this work historically and there are inherently groups (i.e. classes, but they don't seem to indicate this in another form) which are the causes of this. Am I correct to assume this is a reactionary response to current political problems using some of the language of Marxism without any of the fundamental understanding?

I can't shake the idea that believers of this think the solution will 'magically' emerge if enough people agree with it or are educated on it. Accepting that the bourgeois will not relinquish their control after understanding and that their lack of cooperation is a feature of their class interest and not 'needing to be educated enough' is just ignored?

Any commentary or analysis would be really appreciated, my thoughts are a bit jumbled.

Here's a website for this someone shared with me recently: https://degrowth.info/en/degrowth

  • immuredanchorite [he/him, any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think that the conversation on degrowth is evolving among marxists, but there is a kernel of malthusianism in some degrowth arguments that is fundamentally reactionary. https://www.liberationschool.org/degrowth-a-politics-for-which-class/

    "The reality is that, in developed capitalist countries like U.S., there is an overabundance of material wealth and that scarcity is socially produced by the capitalist market and private ownership. Degrowth is correct on the point that if wealth were redistributed then there would indeed be abundance. However, even though proponents of degrowth are well intentioned and truly want to solve environmental crises, the political-economic methods and solutions that degrowth calls for actually work against creating the critical mass necessary to make a socialist revolution here in the U.S. I address each of these below by showing how 1) degrowth reproduces Malthusian ideas about so-called “natural limits;” 2) it’s anti-modern and anti-technological orientation lacks a class perspective; and 3) there are key practical issues with deploying degrowth ideas in the class struggle itself. "