Thanks Michael. This is by no means a Marxist, class, or even historical analysis of the problem. Degrowth is a Marxist current in ecosocialism, so there is little chance that this debate will be fruitful since the author and the degrowthers will likely talk past one another.
I think the article runs into a problem early on: "It is, however, a distraction for left climate movements, one that we can ill afford when the world has such limited time to decarbonize." The left climate movement has no power over decarbonizing, it is in the hands of capitalist states and the people who control them. Failing to recognize this turns the climate struggle into a struggle to discover the correct policies. But we have a Green New Deal President in the US, and three years into his administration, we have broken records for fossil fuel production. That is, we need to reduce, and not increase, fossil fuel production and burning, but instead the GND will have us produce and consume fossil fuels like never before - presumably as a precondition for us to get to a point where we don't need them at all. That to me sounds like a canard, a way to unite environmentalists with the bankers and capitalists who profit most from growth. When discussing a planned economy, the author didn't note that such a thing would require the overthrow of capitalism. The author's economics also seem magical to me: "An orthodox economics perspective would claim that we must decrease consumption to decrease emissions." The author then invokes Moore's Law as an example of how to get something from nothing. But Moore's Law requires a new factory with each generation of computer chips, tens of billions of dollars of capital are needed for a new fab, which is why the world is down to so few chip fabricators. It involves large-scale construction with tons of concrete to build new fabs, and it is all done in pursuit of growth, faster chips, which are leading us to nowhere fast, viz. AI, social media, cryptocurrency, online surveillance, etc. The author worries about decreases in consumption and what the masses will need to give up. But it's not about consumption because commodity production is only one way to produce values to consume, there are others, starting in the home where people generally don't earn a wage or leave tips for their meals. That is, it's about commodity production versus the production of use values. The last point about lacking an adequate theory of political transformation seems true. And as a political slogan, "degrowth" isn't very compelling. But I can think of steps to degrow that might align with immediate working class interests. For example, shorten supply chains. They have gotten very long, brittle even, as a result for the hunt to exploit cheaper labor. The people as a whole have no interest in that or the offshoring of jobs. But the imperative to accumulate capital causes more fossil fuels to be used with no benefit to anyone than those who are accumulating. Mark > On Feb 23, 2024, at 6:26 PM, Michael Pugliese <[email protected]> > wrote: > > <image_6487327.JPG>https://x.com/jacobin/status/1761152705354174518?s=46&t=thf2gsXv3Gi946-uvyZAzw > > https://jacobin.com/2024/02/degrowth-movement-problems-climate-change/ > > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29097): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29097 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104541381/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
