The first reason why de-growth should be crucial to any radical environmentalist is that it can be understood as the core of the reversal of the flow of resources from the global south to the global north. As Walter Rodney (Walter Rodney) explained, Europe’s underdeveloped Africa, and other parts of the south of the world are also the same.
Colonialism
The countries of the global south are not just passively lacking what the countries of the global north have: they are caused to lack resources, unable to develop their own means of production, and generally remain underdeveloped.
In this case, de-growth means reducing the exploitation and unnecessary use of global southern resources in global northern production through global production reorganization.
By reducing production and pollution in the global north, it creates space for the global south to develop its own standard of living without violating the global emission threshold.
In doing so, de-growth opens up economic space for real international cooperation between working people, instead of on the basis of unbalanced exchange, resources from the global south are used to obtain the benefits of the rich people in the global north with minimal compensation. , But the benefits of global development, the satisfaction of global demand, and the payment of climate debt.
Capitalists in the global north have become rich through colonialism, imperialism, and the burning of fossil fuels, while the global south bears the brunt of the resulting climate.
ownership
De-growth—if connected with the resulting payment of debt to the South—means the reorganization of the world system to eventually develop the global working class together.
The degradation of the north opens up space for climate change that pays for climate compensation and meets everyone’s needs without getting out of control.
As mentioned above, when asking whether we really need to produce current products, growth is almost close to the core of what progressives have long wanted the economic system to look like.
Radical de-growth aims at mass production of objects For them to use, Instead of accumulating garbage for profit. By focusing on what is necessary, to grow allows us to ask broader questions about what a society that satisfies all needs looks like.
For example, capitalism encourages the rapid expansion of automobile use, not only encouraging the purchase of a variety of vehicles, but also encouraging regular replacement of vehicles, owning multiple cars in a family, and a wider public transportation system that is underfunded. Road construction.
extraction
The de-growth method of transportation will focus on the actual transportation needs of the community and how to best meet these needs effectively. It will not lead to a proliferation of cars, but may lead to forms of collective transportation, such as trains, buses, and even car sharing within the community.
In doing so, instead of considering profit maximization, growth and progress are thought to share demand satisfaction as a priority of economic planning and reduce pressure on the biosphere.
In this way, radical de-growth involves shifting from production to accumulating more capital, but appears to satisfy human needs.
In an attempt to reformulate the way that world capitalism is based on the uneven exploitation of unreasonable production and consumption, the most progressive form of de-growth is aligned with the goals of the radical environmentalist movement.
In the face of absurd GDP measurement standards, this is not just about reducing the rough needs of the economy, but also a transition to a different way of social organization, which focuses on what we need, not our growth rate.
By linking de-growth to the traditional concerns of the left—the imbalance in access to resources and capital accumulation from workers in the global South—the radical vision of de-growth is very useful for organizing a global climate justice movement.
This author
Gus Woody is the organizer of rs21, a British eco-social organization.They are authors We only want the earth: anti-capitalism against the climate crisis‘.Copy can be Order online.
