#Degrowth and #Socialism: Notes on Some Critical Junctures
by Güney Işıkara and Özgür Narin
"Most degrowth thinkers agree that growth, as both a fact and a concept, is brought about by #capitalism. It is even acknowledged that growth is not the driver, but an outcome, the “surface appearance or ‘fetish’ of an underlying process: capital accumulation.” One would then expect that the challenge to it and the imaginary of an alternative society would be based on the negation of capitalism as a mode of production. Yet instead, growth remains the focal point of the discussion.
"The emphasis on growth as an aggregate phenomenon that emerged only with industrial capitalism and turned into an unquestionable economic paradigm following the Second World War is not trivial. It implies that growth as we know it is capitalist growth, or actually accumulation of capital, constituted in processes of exploitation and expropriation peculiar to capitalism, measured by indicators designed by and for capitalist societies. Why should we then be so concerned with growth as such from the viewpoint of a socialist (or #postcapitalist) society? The degrowth position is that it mesmerizes and captivates individual and social imaginaries, political movements, parties, and projects, including that of socialism: “Growth is the child of capitalism, but the child outdid the parent, with the pursuit of growth surviving the abolition of capitalist relations in socialist countries.”
"The transplantation of growth from its capitalist historical context into a socialist future, and thereby the problematization of growth as such—which supposedly transcends social relations upon which societies are founded—can be justified only under one condition: if all growth, regardless of the underlying relations of humans to both humans and nonhuman natures, can be seen as homogeneous, or at least alike to a significant degree. This is precisely what Giorgos Kallis puts forward: 'socialist growth cannot be sustainable, because no economic growth can be #ecologically #sustainable. Growth in the #material standard of living requires growth in the #extraction of materials. This is unavoidably damaging to the environment and ultimately undermines the conditions of production and reproduction.”
"The logical conclusion of this argument is that all human activity involving extraction, transformation, and use of materials—that is, all human reproduction—is in direct conflict with the environment as the former unavoidably damages the latter. This is a reversion to crude materialism founded on the oppositional binary of nature and society. According to Kallis, this conflict becomes #unsustainable if material living standards keep growing. Growth, however, is still understood in its meaning in the capitalist context, representing a process of accumulation.
"The qualitative difference between socialism and capitalism as two distinct modes of production is highly relevant here. The primary function of production under socialism is to provide all citizens with use values to satisfy a universal standard of basic needs (essentials), which determines the length of the necessary working day. This comprises not only shelter, basic food items, clean water supply, health care, education, and accessible public transport, but also child and elder care, parks and recreation, basic cultural and informational services, (possibly) ecological restoration activities, and the like."
Read more:
https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/degrowth-and-socialism-notes-on-some-critical-junctures/
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