Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

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In “Less is More” Hickel believes firmly that the states and politicians are the good guys and they just can’t wait for an opportunity to pass legislation that is a slap in the face to big business, they just haven’t had the language to correctly ascertain what is there to be done, misled by GDP and other economic indices (poor, poor politicians). A manifesto for the future of the planet packed with scholarship, yet as easy to read as a beach novel, a perfect antidote to doomscrolling. We need to change how we see the world and our place within it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity with our planet’s ecology. The history of capitalism is marked by material productivity and by famines and economic impoverishment. Our fears of needing more to achieve a “good life” is contrasted with the actual measures of wellness.

Less is More îți ia toate concepțiile despre lume cu care ai crescut, pe care ți le-au șoptit în ureche părinții, sistemul, politicienii, televiziunile care reprezintă interesele corporațiilor, nu ale cetățenilor, le strânge frumos într-o pungă, o leagă la gură și apoi dă cu ea în perete până nu mai rămâne nimic. It's not entirely clear that disaster is as close as Jason Hickel argues, but we ignore the consequences of exponential growth in resource use at our extreme peril. i) Political Economy: Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present, The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry, etc. This book explains the complex state of our world in an accessible way, and not only sheds lights on the systemic causes of the problems we face but also shares inspiring solutions we might adopt to change the course of our history.

It’s unfortunate that he has botched a number of the significant details that should emerge from a book on degrowth. I'd like to synthesize this with Michael Hudson's focus on Finance Capitalism's debt overhead (the aforementioned M-M’) and fictitious speculative growth (as opposed to industrial growth and its material use): The Bubble and Beyond.

The transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe had more to do with the Black Death and demographic pressures than any glorious working-class revolution. Rather than making a strong argument for degrowth, he made a straw man argument for growth, which he could then easily tear down and scoff at. He’s even got a chapter about lobbying in this book (even though lobbying is of course only a small part of the picture of how big business controls the state). The way that everyone interacts with the world is a product of a system that is fundamentally flawed.Daar wringt het schoentje toch wat: directe democratie is allemaal goed en wel, maar in deze gepolariseerde maatschappij waar macht vaak corrupt is kan ik me niet voorstellen dat deze noodzakelijke snelle en wereldwijde overgang zonder slag of stoot zou kunnen gebeuren, of zonder dat totalitaire leiders zich hier en daar in het machtsvacuüm wringen. This objectification facilitated extraction/commodification/privatization (property) of nature, as well as of labour (human body as machines… thus productivity and disciplining of labour). I’m not sure how I felt about him providing “steps” to shifting our economy centered around exchange-value to one centered around use-value.