https://nishikantsheorey.substack.com/p/prefiguring-degrowth
"From 15-17 May of this year, much of the academic Degrowth community gathered
at the EU Parliament in Brussels for the Beyond Growth Conference. While it
wasn’t the first of its kind—there had been gatherings organized similarly in
previous years—something seemed special about this year’s event. There was an
energy to it that was obvious even to those of us who were participating
remotely, and it seemed to be a sort of coming out party for degrowth; a
culmination of several years of steady growth (sorry) of what is becoming a
real degrowth movement. Over the course of the conference, a multitude of
politicians, scholars, and activists spoke on a variety of components of the
degrowth concept from a range of perspectives. And make no mistake, there were
throngs of interested people eager to hear what they had to say.
The highlights of the event, to me, were the presentations from some of the
scholars present, including such degrowth ‘celebrities’ as Giorgos Kallis,
Jason Hickel, Julia Steinberger, Kate Raworth, Farhana Sultana, and Dan
O’Neill, as well as the passionate words of the youth activists who were
invited to speak and brought with them a much-needed sense of anger and
urgency. While some of the politicians involved clearly didn’t have a very good
grasp of the basic concept of degrowth, overall the technical knowledge on
display was top-notch. The ‘why’ of degrowth—built on the conclusions of
several decades of research on biospheric boundaries—was made absolutely clear.
In other words, the argument in favour of degrowth was articulated very well,
backed as it was by an abundance of empirical research.
The socio-political analysis, on the other hand, was a bit of a mixed bag, with
the sharpness of any systemic critique likely blunted by the institutional
setting in which the conference took place. When one’s host is the state, it’s
admittedly difficult to be particularly radical in one’s analysis. That being
said, I think there could have been better articulation of the underlying
systemic causes of the growth imperative. While there were some notable
mentions of the relation of growth to capitalism and colonialism, the
mechanisms could probably have been better explained and stated more bluntly.
That being said, it was pretty clear that the majority of speakers (and
attendees) understood the significance of these two systemic foundations of
growth, at least at a superficial level. The greater impact of the contextual
limitations was on how the path forward was envisioned.
The core issue here is that the state-hosted event incentivized articulation of
state-centric solutions, though I’m not convinced that the vision presented
would have been significantly more radical given a different setting. The
overarching theme of the conference was state-mediated universalization of
services, centered on concepts like UBI, maximum income, redistribution of
wealth, reduced work hours, and right to repair. In a word: policy. To me, it
seems, this needs to be transformed into a more radical critique that advocates
for the abolition of wage labour, money, and capitalism and calls for the
decommodification and (re)commoning of everything—a radical shift away from not
just the mechanics of contemporary socio-ecological formations, but change in
the foundational elements of societal organization itself. What this
shortcoming indicates to me is that there is far too much uncritical faith in
existing institutions, liberal democratic governance, and the social democratic
mindset."
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
