This is an outline of how we might situate degrowth in a history of alternative economics and regenerative movements, in the context of brutal new scientific and socio-economic realities. What does ‘true prosperity’ look like in times of socio-ecological crisis?
The climate reality is leaking in to everyday life, from resource wars to flash flooding to extreme weather events to the refugee crisis. This reality can’t be ignored any longer. The second is that we have just lived through a (cliche klaxon ‘unprecedented’) collective experience that we are still unable to process in which the tendrils of state control and ‘benevolence’ have been stretched and questioned.
If the pandemic showed the fragility of things it also showed remarkable social resilience and solidarity. Now the war in Ukraine exposes again the ridiculous precariousness of a society based on externalities. Food and energy are outsourced and uncontrolled. We live in a world which is literally out of control and from our (relative) comfortable western lives we have assumed these benefits are safe and secure.
If the failure of the of the British state and the descent of living standards have become acute this is not likely to propel any change on its own.
The challenge for proponents of degrowth is to make manifest ‘radical abundance’ in a society experiencing extremes of poverty and deprivation. That is a political and a conceptual challenge, and one that takes place in a putative semi-state, in a landscape dominated by constitutional issues which tend to obscure all others.
Creating degrowth cultures and changing the narrative about how ‘wealth’ is created and what a ‘true prosperity’ would look like is the challenge ahead. This is a major challenge in a society deep in climate denial and suffering post-covid PTSD. But is it a challenge that comes in the wake of seismic climate failure and the UK emerging as a sort of failed state, a kleptocracy of elite rule. ‘True prosperity’ may seem an elusive and difficult aim but in the context of immiseration and climate failure the status quo is indefensible.