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2024-05-09 14:00:09
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Bread and Circuses on Nostr: PART 8 — Concluding excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the ...

PART 8 —

Concluding excerpts from an article titled “A (Friendly) Critique of the Degrowth Movement”…
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The coming time of great troubles could be the end of us, but if it is slow-onset and mild at first, it will create conditions that will be powerfully conducive to the desired transition. As it impacts, it will force people to realize that the old systems are not going to provide for them and that they will have to get together in their neighborhoods, suburbs, towns, and regions to increase their capacity to collectively provide for themselves.

It is a race against time. Our task is to ensure that as the system crumbles, we will have helped enough people to adopt the new degrowth perspective to be able to begin to build the sustainable and just alternative.

As local economies become more widespread and elaborate, and as the global economy deteriorates, it will become increasingly obvious that scarce national resources must be deliberately and rationally devoted to the production of basic necessities, as distinct from being left for market forces to allocate to the most profitable purposes. Local communities will increasingly exercise more demands on and control over central governments, and will take functions away from them. They will organize their own farms and employment agencies, supply systems, and arrangements between towns for mutual security and assistance.

The size and role of central governments will shrink. Big national decisions will tend to devolve to the local level via referenda, federations, and citizen juries. This is how some large regions proceed now: in New England, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, various big national issues are decided by the deliberations and votes of ordinary people. This means a great deal of planning and regulation will take place, as distinct from leaving things to the ‘free market’, but it will not be ‘big state socialism’ — the planning and implementation will be carried out mostly at the local level.

As with the discussion of goals, this approach to strategy is Anarchist. It is not about the socialist goal of trying to take state power here and now in order to run things from the center. It involves establishing elements of post-revolutionary society in order to raise awareness, which is an Anarchist ‘prefiguring’ strategy. When this is widespread and strong, then changing systems and power structures will probably be fairly smooth, peaceful, and easy, because the fundamental cultural revolution will have been achieved.

The chances of the transition proceeding as has been outlined here are not at all promising, but this is the path that must be worked for. One of its merits is that it envisages a transition that could be entirely peaceful and non-authoritarian.

The revolution does not require heroic sacrifice at the barricades. It requires a long and probably slow effort to communicate new ideas and values. This should be the degrowth movement’s main concern here and now, and for a considerable time to come. Degrowth is gaining attention rapidly, but its forces are scattered and should be more focused on the cultural task.
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And that concludes this L-O-O-O-N-G series of posts.

I know I’ve given you a lot to take in and many unorthodox ideas to digest. But if you’ll take the time to read it all, think about it, and absorb what’s being proposed, I hope you will see the same level of wisdom in it that I do.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://medium.com/postgrowth/a-friendly-critique-of-the-degrowth-movement-f0bd2297072d

MORE INFORMATION -- https://thesimplerway.info/

SEE ALSO -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v6GIgCTQEc

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth

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