Bread and Circuses on Nostr: PART 6 — Excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth ...
PART 6 —
Excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth Movement”…
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We are a very long way from the ideological conditions that must prevail before significant movement towards degrowth can possibly take place. We cannot get anywhere unless and until some kind of simpler way has come to be widely understood and willingly accepted. Thus, strategy must concentrate on how to bring about that huge cultural change.
The eco-socialist is strongly inclined to counter that if we had state power, we could facilitate that change in consciousness, help people to see the need for localism, etc. But there is a major logical confusion here. No government with the required policy platform — one focused on transition to simpler systems and lifestyles and cutting the GDP — could get elected unless people in general had long before adopted that extremely new and radical worldview.
So the main task would be to work on the development of that change in grassroots consciousness, and if that succeeded to the point where the right sort of party was elected, the revolution would have already been won. The essence of this revolution is in the cultural change, and if that is achieved then the taking of state power and the structural changes thereby enabled will be consequences of the revolution. Focusing on taking state power here and now would not contribute much, if at all, to cultural change.
A major tactical implication is: ‘Do not fight to eliminate capitalism’. This contradicts the socialist’s fundamental assumption that we must get rid of the old before the new can be built. But the historically unique situation we are now in presents us with the need for a non-confrontational strategy, one that involves turning away and ‘ignoring capitalism to death’. (This does not deny the need to confront over specific threats, such as logging a forest.)
Again, getting rid of capitalism and installing a socialist government would be of no value unless the newly installed government held a radically different, much simpler perspective — and it would not do so unless it had been elected by a public committed to that perspective. The task therefore is to create that kind of public. But then it would not be the state that had built the simpler way; it would have been done by people taking control of their local communities.
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Part 7 will follow soon.
Full article is here -- https://medium.com/postgrowth/a-friendly-critique-of-the-degrowth-movement-f0bd2297072d
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth
Excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth Movement”…
_________________________
We are a very long way from the ideological conditions that must prevail before significant movement towards degrowth can possibly take place. We cannot get anywhere unless and until some kind of simpler way has come to be widely understood and willingly accepted. Thus, strategy must concentrate on how to bring about that huge cultural change.
The eco-socialist is strongly inclined to counter that if we had state power, we could facilitate that change in consciousness, help people to see the need for localism, etc. But there is a major logical confusion here. No government with the required policy platform — one focused on transition to simpler systems and lifestyles and cutting the GDP — could get elected unless people in general had long before adopted that extremely new and radical worldview.
So the main task would be to work on the development of that change in grassroots consciousness, and if that succeeded to the point where the right sort of party was elected, the revolution would have already been won. The essence of this revolution is in the cultural change, and if that is achieved then the taking of state power and the structural changes thereby enabled will be consequences of the revolution. Focusing on taking state power here and now would not contribute much, if at all, to cultural change.
A major tactical implication is: ‘Do not fight to eliminate capitalism’. This contradicts the socialist’s fundamental assumption that we must get rid of the old before the new can be built. But the historically unique situation we are now in presents us with the need for a non-confrontational strategy, one that involves turning away and ‘ignoring capitalism to death’. (This does not deny the need to confront over specific threats, such as logging a forest.)
Again, getting rid of capitalism and installing a socialist government would be of no value unless the newly installed government held a radically different, much simpler perspective — and it would not do so unless it had been elected by a public committed to that perspective. The task therefore is to create that kind of public. But then it would not be the state that had built the simpler way; it would have been done by people taking control of their local communities.
_________________________
Part 7 will follow soon.
Full article is here -- https://medium.com/postgrowth/a-friendly-critique-of-the-degrowth-movement-f0bd2297072d
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth