Hence, given the immediate relevance of the monetary growth imperative for degrowth, one would expect that degrowth scholarship would feature the issue of money rather prominently. The same is true for the development of concrete policies addressing distributional issues or monetary system design. However, a lack of concrete policy proposals from the degrowth literature has been lamented repeatedly over the years in different contexts…
This is my criticism of most leftist ideas: how do you get from here to there? Most of the stuff I’ve read on degrowth is often about why it matters based on the result it’s intended to science, as if people aren’t taking the idea seriously enough. But there’s so little on how to get from here to there, what should happen if we do take the idea seriously.
In my experience, people aren’t taking the idea seriously enough. People are happy to geek out about electric cars and solar panels, but degrowth, despite the broad political consensus on the overwhelming evidence for its necessity, is still regarded as fringe.
Agreeing on goals is often a larger obstacle than finding solutions. How many leftists who were responsible for building sewers were sanitation engineers? Do you think they had a fleshed-out building codebook and peer-reviewed waste management proposal before they acquired political power? Or was that the easy part, compared to building a political coalition powerful enough to tax rich people who were fine with running sewage down the middle of the streets of working-class neighborhoods?
From your link:
With the creation of the Socialist Party of America, this group formed the core of an element that favored reformism rather than revolution, de-emphasizing social theory and revolutionary rhetoric in favor of honest government and efforts to improve public health.
I think you’re both wrong and right. People do recognize the necessity of producing and consuming less. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to degrowth’s proposed goals.
But focusing on the goals as such is the more effective approach. If we want people to consume less, then we should give them a reason to do so. A day spent at an animal festival (just randomly off the top of my head) is one less spent doom scrolling and buying something from Amazon and is fun af.
Why people consume less matters less than that they do so, imho.
I think expecting people to consume less is the wrong approach. We should instead stop the wasteful production, then the people will naturally consume less. For example, banning production of SUVs.
