What we are experiencing is not degrowth but rather a tragedy. ‘Surely, nothing could be worse,’ wrote Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958) than ‘the prospect of a society of laborers without labor’. The economic implications of containing the COVID-19 pandemic means that currently we have a growth society without growth or its engine,workers. But, this is not degrowth.
Degrowth is to growth as quality is to quantity, totally different. Growth is pure quantity: it is quality neutral. It is only because we live in a capitalist society where having more money is associated with a better quality of life that such confusion arises — so, degrowth is confused with lack, poverty and austerity. In reality degrowth stands for quality of life within planetary limits. This is the real opposite of capitalist growth.
‘Surely, nothing could be worse, than the prospect of a society of laborers without labor.’
Degrowth is about a democratic and serene transition toward new models of society where infinite growth on a finite planet is recognised as neither possible nor desirable. The degrowth movement advocates limiting growth and liberating degrowth. Here quality of life — not economic quantity — will be central to all our gaols and assessments.
