Sign in with Facebook
Kevin's Reviews > Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by
by
Kevin's review
bookshelves: econ-environment, 1-how-the-world-works, 2-brilliant-intros-101, econ-inequality, econ-health, econ-postcapitalism, econ-market, econ-resources, econ-state-welfare, econ-imperialism
Jun 21, 2021
bookshelves: econ-environment, 1-how-the-world-works, 2-brilliant-intros-101, econ-inequality, econ-health, econ-postcapitalism, econ-market, econ-resources, econ-state-welfare, econ-imperialism
Read 2 times. Last read June 23, 2023 to June 28, 2023.
Degrowth as decolonization� what an unexpected gem!
--Dream book = tackling the most urgent questions in an accessible synthesis of numerous sources that I was already sifting through... great pairing with:
-Hickel's previous gem: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Varoufakis' elegant primer: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
Highlights:
1) History of real-world capitalism:
--I’ve heard this story elsewhere (fellow anthropologist David Graeber, those influenced by Fernand Braudel like Immanuel Wallerstein), and of course this is a messy topic with many inner debates, but this was a refreshing summary: capitalism did not “evolve� from feudalism in a linear, progressive manner.
--Instead, European peasants had finally pushed back serfdom (assisted by labour shortages after the Black Death), leading to the “golden age of the European proletariat� (1350-1500)
--Capitalism was a bloody backlash (1500-1800) to recover elite accumulation, with the Enclosures. As was New World colonialism (as opposed to the “discovery� myth).
2) Logic of real-world capitalism:
--Ѳ’s --� (Money invested into Commodity production for the goal of more Money) representing capitalist production's logic in contrast to pre-capitalist market exchange C-M-C (Commodity exchanged via Money for another Commodity). Thus, the capitalist logic is fundamentally about growing money.
--Ѳ’s exchange-value (selling private commodity on market for profit) triumphing over use-value (intrinsic use). In particular, Commons have intrinsic value despite abundance, whereas capitalist exchange-value requires artificial scarcity (central in the commodification market-creation of the Enclosures/colonialism/Neoliberal globalization).
--Even deeper, the ontology of the time was transformed to serve capitalist accumulation. Previous forms of animism (living Earth, nature as subjects) in European peasants and in indigenous colonies were stamped out with the dualism of early science (Bacon, Descartes; mind vs. body, nature as objects).
...This objectification facilitated extraction/commodification/privatization (property) of nature, as well as of labour (human body as machines� thus productivity and disciplining of labour).
“Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.� -Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
--Hickel only later appends on money as debt, citing that more than 90% of money in circulation is loaned into existence by private banks via “fractional reserve banking� (banks only hold in reserves ~10%; the rest is conjured out of thin air) and the attached interest (esp. the infamous compound interest) that banks feast on is a deep driver of growth. If we bring back Marx, we get -� (Money for more Money).
“It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.� -Henry Ford
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
3) Unpacking mainstream solutions:
--The Green New Deal at its core targets the urgency of climate change (although the broader movement has many overlaps with steps in this book), while Hickel’s scope is broader (considering the 9 “planetary boundaries� of the Earth System, where climate change is but one boundary) and deeper (decolonization: systemic change, power considerations ex. Green New Deal mineral requirements targeting the Global South; must-read: A People’s Green New Deal).
...It's a relief that Hickel is well-versed on the actual histories/political economy of imperialism on the Global South (his previous book is The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions, after all), so he can synthesize Global North degrowth + Global South “de-linking� from imperialist intellectual property trade/debt. Here are the gems Hickels refers to:
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.
ii) History: Vijay Prashad: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, etc.
...Related topics covered:
i) Technocratic climate “solutions�: “decoupling� myth of more efficient processes meaning we can “dematerialize� economic growth vs. Jevons paradox where savings are reinvested to grow production (“efficiency� for what? ...under capitalism, it is to endlessly grow profits and survive competition); the delusional assumptions behind mainstream negative emissions technology (esp. BECCS), etc.
ii) “ODZܱپDz�: I don't think we can stress enough how important the unequal distribution of per capita ecological footprint is here (see Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis and ); only after this is made clear should we then add that population growth is the one growth curve we know how to flatten in a socially-just manner, i.e. infant/women's health, reproductive rights, education, and of course overall improved living standards.
4) Building deeper solutions: reversing the logic (degrowth as decolonization):
--Perhaps the greatest problem with “degrowth� is the one-word label has a lot of baggage and confuses even those who should know better:
i) Liberal technocracy baggage: “degrowth� is close to the “Limits to Growth� MIT technocrats of the 1970's, who combined useful systems science (which eventually evolved into Earth System Science) with reductionist “overpopulation� analyses mentioned above.
ii) Economic Growth: perhaps more concerning for me is how even obvious allies like progressive economist Robert Pollin and anarcho-syndicalist Noam Chomsky counter with “well, we obviously need some green growth in renewables� in The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet. This completely misses the point that “degrowth� is targeting overall economic growth (GDP)/ecological footprint! Of course we want to “grow� services for social needs, but economic growth (measuring instantaneous market exchange, which must continue to grow to return profits) is a perverse measure that rewards waste (requires growing re-purchases: single-use, planned obsolescence, advertising social addiction): see the excellent Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage.
...Even when Pollin considers “degrowth� of GDP, his progressive reformism barely registers as he compares this with economic crises which also “degrow� GDP! Who needs reactionary conservatives?! The amount of fetishization for an abstract macroeconomic measure rather than directly considering social health measures is appalling. We are not talking about basic accounting here; this is pure ideology!
--While Hickel does go over the issues with GDP (created during WWII to maximize war production, no accounting of costs or non-market goods, then enshrined as the universal target of “economic growth�), the crucial next step is exploring the strong coupling between (1) GDP growth and (2) raw materials consumption/ecological footprint which exploded with the “Great Acceleration� after WWII and no end in sight despite the supposed “Information Age�/“Intangible Economy�. Key in this is compound growth (exponential, not linear).
...I'd like to synthesize this with Michael Hudson's focus on Finance Capitalism's debt overhead (the aforementioned -�) and fictitious speculative growth (as opposed to industrial growth and its material use): The Bubble and Beyond. Hudson portrays "Industrial capitalism" being cannibalized by "Finance capitalism", which might sound like less raw materials use! One common ground is that high debt overhead forces more work to simply pay off the debts, thus more resource use.
...Indeed, as the magic of capitalism is driven by the abstract force of debt (see the "Great Reversal" in Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails, where capitalism's finance-production-distribution starts with the debt of capital investments, whereas prior economies were production-distribution-finance), needlessly forcing workers and industrial capitalists to exhaust the planet just to pay off parasitic debts to the various layers of creditors (the worst being institutional absentee speculators/rentiers... i.e. rent-seeking/passive income/Ponzi schemes). Insanity.
-Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
...Thus, we need to pair
i) Debt cancellations: Debt: The First 5,000 Years
i) Degrowth of bullshit jobs required merely to pay off parasitic debts: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
...so we can spend our precious time on earth with loved ones and rebuilding communities/ecologies; this is a crucial framing that Hickel should emphasize more.
--To reverse capitalism’s logic, the ontological change is to dismantle the dualism, to move from dominion to reciprocity. The interconnectivity of systems science has been the new paradigm in the physical sciences, from the human microbiome (The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life) to Earth Systems science (Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System). In critical economics: The New Economics: A Manifesto
--Our fears of needing more to achieve a “good life� is contrasted with the actual measures of wellness. Historically, this has not been from working to death/destroying our surroundings but from the creation of new Commons: public sanitation, public healthcare, public education, public housing/land reforms, improved working conditions, socialized safety nets/old age pensions/childcare, etc. (Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital). …Thus, degrowth is the transformation from artificial scarcity to radical abundance.
--Update: after reading a couple direct attacks on degrowth/Hickel's book, I re-read Hickel book and unpacked the critiques in reviewing Less Sucks: Overpopulation, Eugenics, and Degrowth.
--Dream book = tackling the most urgent questions in an accessible synthesis of numerous sources that I was already sifting through... great pairing with:
-Hickel's previous gem: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
-Varoufakis' elegant primer: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
Highlights:
1) History of real-world capitalism:
--I’ve heard this story elsewhere (fellow anthropologist David Graeber, those influenced by Fernand Braudel like Immanuel Wallerstein), and of course this is a messy topic with many inner debates, but this was a refreshing summary: capitalism did not “evolve� from feudalism in a linear, progressive manner.
--Instead, European peasants had finally pushed back serfdom (assisted by labour shortages after the Black Death), leading to the “golden age of the European proletariat� (1350-1500)
--Capitalism was a bloody backlash (1500-1800) to recover elite accumulation, with the Enclosures. As was New World colonialism (as opposed to the “discovery� myth).
2) Logic of real-world capitalism:
--Ѳ’s --� (Money invested into Commodity production for the goal of more Money) representing capitalist production's logic in contrast to pre-capitalist market exchange C-M-C (Commodity exchanged via Money for another Commodity). Thus, the capitalist logic is fundamentally about growing money.
--Ѳ’s exchange-value (selling private commodity on market for profit) triumphing over use-value (intrinsic use). In particular, Commons have intrinsic value despite abundance, whereas capitalist exchange-value requires artificial scarcity (central in the commodification market-creation of the Enclosures/colonialism/Neoliberal globalization).
--Even deeper, the ontology of the time was transformed to serve capitalist accumulation. Previous forms of animism (living Earth, nature as subjects) in European peasants and in indigenous colonies were stamped out with the dualism of early science (Bacon, Descartes; mind vs. body, nature as objects).
...This objectification facilitated extraction/commodification/privatization (property) of nature, as well as of labour (human body as machines� thus productivity and disciplining of labour).
“Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.� -Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
--Hickel only later appends on money as debt, citing that more than 90% of money in circulation is loaned into existence by private banks via “fractional reserve banking� (banks only hold in reserves ~10%; the rest is conjured out of thin air) and the attached interest (esp. the infamous compound interest) that banks feast on is a deep driver of growth. If we bring back Marx, we get -� (Money for more Money).
“It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.� -Henry Ford
-Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
3) Unpacking mainstream solutions:
--The Green New Deal at its core targets the urgency of climate change (although the broader movement has many overlaps with steps in this book), while Hickel’s scope is broader (considering the 9 “planetary boundaries� of the Earth System, where climate change is but one boundary) and deeper (decolonization: systemic change, power considerations ex. Green New Deal mineral requirements targeting the Global South; must-read: A People’s Green New Deal).
...It's a relief that Hickel is well-versed on the actual histories/political economy of imperialism on the Global South (his previous book is The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions, after all), so he can synthesize Global North degrowth + Global South “de-linking� from imperialist intellectual property trade/debt. Here are the gems Hickels refers to:
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.
ii) History: Vijay Prashad: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, etc.
...Related topics covered:
i) Technocratic climate “solutions�: “decoupling� myth of more efficient processes meaning we can “dematerialize� economic growth vs. Jevons paradox where savings are reinvested to grow production (“efficiency� for what? ...under capitalism, it is to endlessly grow profits and survive competition); the delusional assumptions behind mainstream negative emissions technology (esp. BECCS), etc.
ii) “ODZܱپDz�: I don't think we can stress enough how important the unequal distribution of per capita ecological footprint is here (see Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis and ); only after this is made clear should we then add that population growth is the one growth curve we know how to flatten in a socially-just manner, i.e. infant/women's health, reproductive rights, education, and of course overall improved living standards.
4) Building deeper solutions: reversing the logic (degrowth as decolonization):
--Perhaps the greatest problem with “degrowth� is the one-word label has a lot of baggage and confuses even those who should know better:
i) Liberal technocracy baggage: “degrowth� is close to the “Limits to Growth� MIT technocrats of the 1970's, who combined useful systems science (which eventually evolved into Earth System Science) with reductionist “overpopulation� analyses mentioned above.
ii) Economic Growth: perhaps more concerning for me is how even obvious allies like progressive economist Robert Pollin and anarcho-syndicalist Noam Chomsky counter with “well, we obviously need some green growth in renewables� in The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet. This completely misses the point that “degrowth� is targeting overall economic growth (GDP)/ecological footprint! Of course we want to “grow� services for social needs, but economic growth (measuring instantaneous market exchange, which must continue to grow to return profits) is a perverse measure that rewards waste (requires growing re-purchases: single-use, planned obsolescence, advertising social addiction): see the excellent Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage.
...Even when Pollin considers “degrowth� of GDP, his progressive reformism barely registers as he compares this with economic crises which also “degrow� GDP! Who needs reactionary conservatives?! The amount of fetishization for an abstract macroeconomic measure rather than directly considering social health measures is appalling. We are not talking about basic accounting here; this is pure ideology!
--While Hickel does go over the issues with GDP (created during WWII to maximize war production, no accounting of costs or non-market goods, then enshrined as the universal target of “economic growth�), the crucial next step is exploring the strong coupling between (1) GDP growth and (2) raw materials consumption/ecological footprint which exploded with the “Great Acceleration� after WWII and no end in sight despite the supposed “Information Age�/“Intangible Economy�. Key in this is compound growth (exponential, not linear).
...I'd like to synthesize this with Michael Hudson's focus on Finance Capitalism's debt overhead (the aforementioned -�) and fictitious speculative growth (as opposed to industrial growth and its material use): The Bubble and Beyond. Hudson portrays "Industrial capitalism" being cannibalized by "Finance capitalism", which might sound like less raw materials use! One common ground is that high debt overhead forces more work to simply pay off the debts, thus more resource use.
...Indeed, as the magic of capitalism is driven by the abstract force of debt (see the "Great Reversal" in Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails, where capitalism's finance-production-distribution starts with the debt of capital investments, whereas prior economies were production-distribution-finance), needlessly forcing workers and industrial capitalists to exhaust the planet just to pay off parasitic debts to the various layers of creditors (the worst being institutional absentee speculators/rentiers... i.e. rent-seeking/passive income/Ponzi schemes). Insanity.
-Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
...Thus, we need to pair
i) Debt cancellations: Debt: The First 5,000 Years
i) Degrowth of bullshit jobs required merely to pay off parasitic debts: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
...so we can spend our precious time on earth with loved ones and rebuilding communities/ecologies; this is a crucial framing that Hickel should emphasize more.
--To reverse capitalism’s logic, the ontological change is to dismantle the dualism, to move from dominion to reciprocity. The interconnectivity of systems science has been the new paradigm in the physical sciences, from the human microbiome (The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life) to Earth Systems science (Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System). In critical economics: The New Economics: A Manifesto
--Our fears of needing more to achieve a “good life� is contrasted with the actual measures of wellness. Historically, this has not been from working to death/destroying our surroundings but from the creation of new Commons: public sanitation, public healthcare, public education, public housing/land reforms, improved working conditions, socialized safety nets/old age pensions/childcare, etc. (Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital). …Thus, degrowth is the transformation from artificial scarcity to radical abundance.
--Update: after reading a couple direct attacks on degrowth/Hickel's book, I re-read Hickel book and unpacked the critiques in reviewing Less Sucks: Overpopulation, Eugenics, and Degrowth.
Sign into ŷ to see if any of your friends have read
Less Is More.
Sign In »
Quotes Kevin Liked
“It wasn’t until nearly 400 years later [since capitalist privatizations at home in Britain, i.e. the Enclosures starting in 1500s] that life expectancies in Britain finally began to rise. […] It happened slightly later in the rest of Europe, while in the colonised world longevity didn’t begin to improve until the early 1900s [decolonization]. So if [capitalist economic] growth itself does not have an automatic relationship with life expectancy and human welfare, what could possibly explain this trend?
Historians today point out that it began with a startlingly simple intervention […]: [public] sanitation. In the middle of the 1800s, public health researchers had discovered that health outcomes could be improved by introducing simple sanitation measures, such as separating sewage from drinking water. All it required was a bit of public plumbing. But public plumbing requires public works, and public money. You have to appropriate private land for things like public water pumps and public baths. And you have to be able to dig on private property in order to connect tenements and factories to the system. This is where the problems began. For decades, progress towards the goal of public sanitation was opposed, not enabled, by the capitalist class. Libertarian-minded landowners refused to allow officials to use their property [note: the Enclosures required state violence to privatize land], and refused to pay the taxes required to get it done.
The resistance of these elites was broken only once commoners won the right to vote and workers organised into unions. Over the following decades these movements, which in Britain began with the Chartists and the Municipal Socialists, leveraged the state to intervene against the capitalist class. They fought for a new vision: that cities should be managed for the good of everyone, not just for the few. These movements delivered not only public sanitation systems but also, in the years that followed, public healthcare, vaccination coverage, public education, public housing, better wages and safer working conditions. According to research by the historian Simon Szreter, access to these public goods � which were, in a way, a new kind of commons � had a significant positive impact on human health, and spurred soaring life expectancy through the twentieth century.”
― Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
Historians today point out that it began with a startlingly simple intervention […]: [public] sanitation. In the middle of the 1800s, public health researchers had discovered that health outcomes could be improved by introducing simple sanitation measures, such as separating sewage from drinking water. All it required was a bit of public plumbing. But public plumbing requires public works, and public money. You have to appropriate private land for things like public water pumps and public baths. And you have to be able to dig on private property in order to connect tenements and factories to the system. This is where the problems began. For decades, progress towards the goal of public sanitation was opposed, not enabled, by the capitalist class. Libertarian-minded landowners refused to allow officials to use their property [note: the Enclosures required state violence to privatize land], and refused to pay the taxes required to get it done.
The resistance of these elites was broken only once commoners won the right to vote and workers organised into unions. Over the following decades these movements, which in Britain began with the Chartists and the Municipal Socialists, leveraged the state to intervene against the capitalist class. They fought for a new vision: that cities should be managed for the good of everyone, not just for the few. These movements delivered not only public sanitation systems but also, in the years that followed, public healthcare, vaccination coverage, public education, public housing, better wages and safer working conditions. According to research by the historian Simon Szreter, access to these public goods � which were, in a way, a new kind of commons � had a significant positive impact on human health, and spurred soaring life expectancy through the twentieth century.”
― Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
Reading Progress
July 8, 2020
– Shelved
June 16, 2021
–
Started Reading
June 21, 2021
–
Finished Reading
June 23, 2023
–
Started Reading
June 28, 2023
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-31 of 31 (31 new)
date
newest »
newest »
Fantastic review, appreciate it Kevin! You turned me onto Jason Hickel.
Jack wrote: "Fantastic review, appreciate it Kevin! You turned me onto Jason Hickel."That's great to hear Jack! I had to smile when I realized we both graduated from Ha-Joon Chang's "Bad Samaritans" to Jason Hickel :)
I've updated my review with a few more on the level of Hickel:
1) Utsa Patnaik + Prabhat Patnaik: Hickel frequently cites them on economics of imperialism. Prabhat's works are dense, so I recommend Utsa's "The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era" first.
2) Max Ajl "A People's Green New Deal": actually considering the world's majority, Global South
3) Ashley Dawson "People's Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons": fantastic application of "Less is More" thesis of radical abundance via reviving Commons (vs. artificial scarcity of commodification) for energy.
Fantastic, thanks for the recommendations! I'll check them out. I worked in energy investing prior to switching to startup culture so quite familiar with the renewables arguments. All so frightening and hard to know what exactly to do..
Jack wrote: "Fantastic, thanks for the recommendations! I'll check them out. I worked in energy investing prior to switching to startup culture so quite familiar with the renewables arguments. All so frightenin..."Interesting... so I suppose you're well-versed with ESGs and such? There's a comrade here also with that background, I've been in some reading groups with him and had some great conversions, I'll message you his profile link since I can't link in comments. What kind of startup are you in these days?
For sure, the situation is dire, we need to plan for not just ideal solutions (as social imagination is crucial) but prepare for a range of scenarios, which sadly includes escalating militarism, like:
-"Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century"
-"Strategies for Rapid Climate Mitigation: Wartime mobilisation as a model for action?"
Seems like some leftists are still having trouble distinguishing this book's critique of capitalist growth from liberal Malthusianism. See liberationschool.org "Degrowth: An environmental ideology with good intentions, bad politics"
John wrote: "Seems like some leftists are still having trouble distinguishing this book's critique of capitalist growth from liberal Malthusianism. See liberationschool.org "Degrowth: An environmental ideology ..."So much to unpack there, working on it!
I definitely need to read this book
Ava wrote: "I definitely need to read this book"Yes! I stumbled across this book/author only looking for an intro to "degrowth", not realizing the author has synthesized many of the thinkers I look up to! Hickel's acknowledgement:
I’ve also learned from and been inspired by the writings of many others: Silvia Federici, Jason Moore, Andreas Malm, Naomi Klein, Kevin Anderson, Tim Jackson, Juliet Schor, Vandana Shiva, Arturo Escobar, George Monbiot, Herman Daly, Kate Aronoff, Robert Macfarlane, Abdullah Öcalan, Ariel Salleh, David Wallace-Wells, Nnimmo Bassey, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Timothy Morton, Daniel Quinn, Carolyn Merchant, Vijay Prashad, David Harvey, Maria Mies, Gustavo Esteva, André Gorz, Serge Latouche, Bill McKibben, Jack D. Forbes, Philippe Descola, David Abrams, Kofi Klu, Bruno Latour, Suzanne Simard, Murray Bookchin, and Ursula Le Guin. Their works have been signposts along the way.
But this list only barely scratches the surface. And I cannot leave out the towering figures whose words � and lives � I find myself returning to over and over again, for grounding and direction: Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Thomas Sankara, Berta Cáceres, Mahatma Gandhi, Patrice Lumumba, Samir Amin. They guide me as the ancestors.
Your reviews are as fantastic as ever! Excited to borrow this book from my lib once it’s available
elias wrote: "Your reviews are as fantastic as ever! Excited to borrow this book from my lib once it’s available"Cheers Elias, just trying to unpack these critical nonfiction to get more engagement outside academia ;)
hey Kevin, unrelated to this review but not sure how to message - you should read "surveillance valley" when you get the time, last 2 chapters are especially important. thought id return the favour because your reviews introduced me to a lot a lot of stuff, I've read a lot since I found your goodreads last year.
Justin wrote: "hey Kevin, unrelated to this review but not sure how to message - you should read "surveillance valley" when you get the time, last 2 chapters are especially important. thought id return the favour..."Cheers Justin, I see you actually direct messaged me last year, maybe you're now using the phone app so it's trickier to find the messaging? Anyways, I prefer public comments especially when it's about great recommendations that others will also benefit from :)
Thanks for the reminder on Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex and the heads up on the last 2 chapters, I've categorized the author Yasha Levine as compelling for a while now but have yet to explore his works. Now you'll have to write a review haha so I can see if I should bump it ahead of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (I've been looking for a stand-out tome to theorize information technology and capitalism).
Regarding the latter book, Varoufakis (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present) had an interesting discussion with the author (Shoshana Zuboff), I can't link external links in comments but you can find it on youtube titled "A Vision for Europe 2020 - Book Launch with Yanis Varoufakis, David Adler & Shoshana Zuboff | DiEM25". I say interesting because Varoufakis pushes Zuboff on a few points, since Varoufakis is working on his next book on "technofeudalism".
hi kevin i like your reviews! how do you read books so fast? im pretty new to reading and it takes me a month+ to read a book. do you have any reading advice to read faster? i also have mito disease which gives me double vision so i take frequent breaks when reading.
Yes wrote: "hi kevin i like your reviews! how do you read books so fast? im pretty new to reading and it takes me a month+ to read a book. do you have any reading advice to read faster? i also have mito diseas..."Cheers, I'm glad you asked because I also identify as a slow reader :)
To be more precise, reading itself is not the slow part for me, it's the process of review of all my notes/synthesis to write a review that is the most labourious.
...My trick with the reading part is audiobooks, as I can multi-task, chipping away during my commute, during walks, during chores, etc. (and indeed rest the eyes! I'm also big on formatting my notes, I cannot stand a giant block of text.)
...I learned English with "books on tape" (cassettes back then), so I'm comfortable with the audio format, but it's something everyone can get better with through practice.
...We definitely romanticize holding something in our hands and flipping the pages, but I've learned to really enjoy taking the book with me on all those routine activities when my brain is craving something more meaningful. And as for the fear of missing footnotes, I can always dive deeper when I review my notes.
...I'm so experienced now, I don't even need a professional audiobook narrator (which may be difficult to find for the obscure academic books I prioritize). Instead, I can just take an ebook, use text-to-speech, and create an mp3 using freeware Balabolka. I'm totally fine with the voice (I prefer "Microsoft Zira Desktop"), I don't find it too robotic but of course I'm comfortable with audio. And I can crank it to around x1.2 to x1.5 speed.
...For those who just simply cannot get into audiobooks, I do have plans on making podcasts to discuss books in a more flowing/conversational manner, in hopes of making research more accessible...
thanks for the reply! i guess i have to get used to listening to more audiobooks while knitting and spinning yarn. i find a certain degree of stigma towards audiobooks since i worried i was not "actually reading" the books. seeing you listen to audiobooks has now made me less shameful about it. thanks for the reply, please inform us if you ever start the podcast.
Yes wrote: "thanks for the reply! i guess i have to get used to listening to more audiobooks while knitting and spinning yarn. i find a certain degree of stigma towards audiobooks since i worried i was not "ac..."Ah, yes, we need to struggle against such stigma. I have certain OCD-like thoughts about how thorough I must be in reading every footnote etc. etc., but in reality it just limits me from even starting so many other books. So what's worse:
a) Being perfect with a single book, while missing out on 49 other books, or
b) Being 80% with 50 books?
...As for active listening, for dense books I definitely pause/take notes frequently. In fact, I probably take more notes than when I'm physically reading; much of my review comes after reading the book, when I synthesize my notes.
...Heck, I listened to tomes like Marx's Capital Volume 1 while commuting and taking walks by our freight train/shipyard infrastructure (quite a fitting environment as I considered the abstraction of labour/value in industrial production!).
...Regardless, it's when I review my notes (which I transcribe to re-format) where much of my contemplation happens.
...Knitting sounds like a perfect pairing with audiobooks :)
What is Noam Chomsky's contribution in siding with Robert Pollin to dismiss degrowth?
John wrote: "What is Noam Chomsky's contribution in siding with Robert Pollin to dismiss degrowth?"Let’s unpack how green economist Robert (Bob) Pollin and Chomsky deal with “degrowth� in The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet [emphases added]:
1) Degrowth and Green New Deal: Antagonize instead of Synthesize?:
--Interviewer C. J. Polychroniou presents the question as follows:
An alternative to the proposed Green New Deal scheme for rescuing the planet from the catastrophic effects of global warming is the transition to a new economy beyond waste and continuous growth. This line of thinking has coalesced as a “degrowth� movement. Bob [Pollin], in your view, is degrowth realistic or even desirable?…We should note how this question is worded to antagonize rather than synthesize, framing the “degrowth� movement as an “alternative� to the “Green New Deal�.
2) Anti Green New Deal?
--From my understanding, those leading the “degrowth� movement are actually relatively reformist (i.e. Western social democrat/”Progressive�/technocratic), overlapping much with Ecological Economics (i.e. Herman Daley, as acknowledged by Pollin: “Herman Daly, without question a major intellectual progenitor of the degrowth movement�), with those like Jason Hickel (Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World) pushing the radical side (decolonization/Global South/overtly anti-capitalism).
--So, this is distinct from the fringe anarcho-primitivism (anti-civilization anarchism/Deep Ecology/eco-primitivism) who would broadly reject a Green New Deal.
--The “degrowth� movement features some form of Green New Deal, and a Green New Deal that does not feature “Green Growth�/“Green Capitalism� (Pollin: “I share virtually all their values and concerns�, referring to degrowth economists Tim Jackson and Peter Victor) would feature some form of “degrowth�. The question is in degrees/priorities. Ex. of critical Green New Deal: A People’s Green New Deal
3) Pollin’s fallacy: Degrowth as Capitalist Crashes?:
--Pollin then proceeds to do the “very simple arithmetic� to prove how the “degrowth� from the 2008 Financial Crises/Great Recession and Japan’s stagnation does not adequately address emissions�!?!?
…This is tragic logic. Obviously the “degrowth� movement is not synonymous with capitalist economic crisis to “degrow�! If it was that easy, we’d just let capitalism take care of it, as economic crashes is a capitalist feature.
...continued...
John wrote: "What is Noam Chomsky's contribution in siding with Robert Pollin to dismiss degrowth?"...continued:
4) Degrowth’s tensions:
--The transformative role of “degrowth� is to help transcend capitalism’s irrationalities. True, the focal critique is capitalism’s endless growth leading to existential ecological crises, but this can be tied to capitalism’s artificial scarcity imposed on the masses where so much productive capacity does not reach social needs due to maldistribution (favouring ownership over labour/unpaid labour) and for-profit waste.
…Capitalist crashes only heightens this contradiction, spreading unemployment (why does this occur in capitalism when so much work needs to be done, and so many workers demanding jobs?) to the middle-class buffer that preserves social consent towards capitalism’s inequalities.
--Now, this is the tension in the “degrowth� movement, as the reformist side focuses more on technocratic changes rather than directly confronting the sociopolitical power struggle. However, this is still quite different from simply reproducing capitalist crashes. I’m assuming Pollin, a reformist himself, has only taken the degrowth reformists seriously:
“I have not seen any degrowth advocate present a convincing argument as to how we could avoid a severe rise in mass unemployment if GDP were to fall twice as much as during 2007�9.�
-Capitalist contradictions: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-Transcending capitalist contradictions: Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
…then compare these alternatives with critical “degrowth�: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
5) Chomsky’s vague stance:
--Interviewer’s question to Chomsky: “Noam, how do you feel about the “degrowth� alternative to the climate change challenge?�
--Chomsky’s rely [emphases added]:
A shift to sustainable energy requires growth: construction and installation of solar panels and wind turbines, weatherization of homes, major infrastructure projects to create efficient mass transportation, and much else. Accordingly, we cannot simply say that “growth is bad.� [A one-word label like “degrowth� will always fail to capture nuance. But c’mon Chomsky. “Degrowth� isn’t going to prevent children from growing. But children who don’t stop growing is cancerous. There needs to be balance.] Sometimes, sometimes not. It depends on what kind of growth. We should of course all be in favor of the (very rapid) “degrowth� of energy industries, largely predatory financial institutions, the bloated and dangerous military establishment, and a lot more that we can list. We should be thinking about how to design a livable society—exactly as Bob has been doing. That will involve both growth and degrowth, raising many important questions. How it balances out depends on a wide range of particular choices and decisions.--Hickel’s radical definition of “degrowth� uses Marx’s distinction of:
i) Exchange-value: market price for buying/selling on market. Growth, in the context of capitalist economic growth, is driven to pursue this, which especially in the case of “fictitious commodities� esp. land/labour/money (i.e. not “produced� like “real commodities� with a more obvious cost of production) requires creating “artificial scarcity� via violent state privatization, monopolistic property claims, etc.
ii) Use-value: the actual use. If we targeted social needs (rather than market prices for elite capitalists), of course we want to “grow� the “radical abundance� of social goods/Commons, but this requires “degrowth� of capitalism’s “artificial scarcity�.
--Finally:
a) Chomsky/Pollin: climate change is so dire it needs to be addressed within capitalism.
b) Hickel: capitalism cannot address climate change, let alone the broader ecological crisis.
...Of course we will get swamped in debates defining "capitalism", but I think the above summary provides a useful summary.
I absolutely loved this book and always recommend it! Happy to see you also gave a positive review, and I appreciate the recommendations for further reading.
Monica wrote: "I absolutely loved this book and always recommend it! Happy to see you also gave a positive review, and I appreciate the recommendations for further reading."Ah, that's great to hear Monica! Synthesizing the ecological crisis with the capitalist crisis is so dire at this point, we need to spread this far and wide...
How to ecosocialists engage with degrowth?
John wrote: "How to ecosocialists engage with degrowth?"--Labels can be so limiting, especially because divisiveness (enhanced by social media) insists on staying at the level of labels rather than carefully unpacking them.
--Is "degrowth" an optimal label?
1) "Degrowth":
--As with all labels, there is a range of opinions along with contradictions.
i) Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (The Entropy Law and the Economic Process) seems to be a major figure
ii) roots in Limits to Growth (MIT systems science technocrats) later becoming Earth Systems Science (Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction), esp. their planetary boundaries
iii) Ecological economics of Herman Daley, esp. steady-state economy
iv) My focus is in radical (esp. anti-capitalist/imperialist) interpretations, i.e. the one Hickel provided here focusing on capitalism's logic of valuing exchange-value (via market price), its private property requiring enclosures of nature, and its purpose of endless private accumulation externalizing social/ecological needs/consequences.
-A Companion to Marx's Capital
-The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
2) Socialists/leftists on "degrowth":
i) Academic critiques seem to always link it to the Limits to Growth to critique the Malthusian technocratic elitist roots. However, we can separate Malthusianism vs. concern for capitalist growth: Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
ii) There's so much confusion with defining "growth", as if anything (children?) growing is seen as negative by degrowth, forgetting that nature has phases for growth but the overall system requires circularity.
-Ex. Chomsky and progressive economist Robert Pollin being confused in The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet
iii) Even when critics like Radhika Desai and Ann Pettifor acknowledge the focus is on "economic growth", they focus on the absolute mess (esp. in the age of Finance Capitalism) of GDP calculations, stating that Neoliberalism has actually derailed "economic development" yet is still terrible for the environment due to short-term pillaging rather than long-term green investment. How Desai/Pettifor confuse GDP vs. "economic development" vs. social development is rather embarrassing as this is both of their focus. Hickel clearly addresses how social development contradicts GDP (a measure originating in war-time production).
3) Eco-socialists on "degrowth":
i) Ecosocialists like Ian Angus (Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System) seeking a synthesis with the Earth Systems Science's planetary boundaries seem to align more easily with degrowth.
ii) While critiquing "ecosocialist" for lacking synthesis with critical history (i.e. the history of ecological crises being opportunities for class struggle), I'm curious to read more about how Jason W. Moore engages with degrowth.
Where does Steve Keen fit into this schema?
John wrote: "Where does Steve Keen fit into this schema?"Keen is a fascinating synthesis between:
a) Political Economy:
--Politically, I’d say Keen is less radical (quite cautious in avoiding the disruption of the stereotypical “revolutions�).
--The main economic tools he uses are Post-Keynesian (i.e. macroeconomics regulations; Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis?).
--Despite praising Marx as probably the single most outstanding theorist, Keen is frequently critical of Marxist economists (Ch.17 “Nothing to Lose but their Minds� in Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor Dethroned?).
--Keen is also quite pro-entrepreneurship; indeed, he names Schumpeter as top tier along with Marx.
b) Ecological:
--The real innovation is the direction towards synthesizing biophysical economics (The New Economics: A Manifesto), referencing Charles A.S. Hall (Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy) etc.
…given his interest in macro-foundations (and rejection of micro-foundations), he is big on complex systems/systems science (Thinking in Systems: A Primer). So, he follows the lineage of Limits to Growth�
Absolutely loved this book, especially the philosophical argument of dualism and animism and the economic, political, and imperial implications of it. Probably the highlight of the book for me and wish he expanded on it more! It seems like David Graeber is the logical next read and to be read with ecology in mind. I hope to be able to that soon. I myself got a copy of Consumer Society and will be reading that soon with the ecological consequences of consumerism/capitalism in mind.
Jeremy wrote: "Absolutely loved this book, especially the philosophical argument of dualism and animism and the economic, political, and imperial implications of it. Probably the highlight of the book for me and ..."That’s great to hear, Jeremy!
--Hickel is a favourite, esp. because I read his academic articles for classes, and here he is writing a more accessible synthesis for the reading public, and also going on talks/debates for that wider audience.
…To have both academic research AND public communication skills from a critical leftist perspective is dire, esp. when our capitalist crises of climate/ecology/finance hide in abstraction, leaving us vulnerable to reactionary scapegoating targeting visible prejudices.
--Graeber: which book are you thinking to start with from an ecological perspective? I’m in the process of reviewing/re-reviewing a bunch of Graeber’s works; he was a huge early influence, I ran into a speed bump with The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, so I’ve been reviewing everything for an updated synthesis.
--Dualism/animism: yes, this is central! Have you read Jason W. Moore yet? I find his writing-style unnecessarily dense/jargony, but to me he is a next step on this topic. Co-authored A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet is more accessible, the dive is Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital.
--You’re planning to read Jean Baudrillard’s book? A French sociologist, good luck ;)
...My materialist side makes me find more success with books like Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (which also has great references). For cultural analysis, it’s perfect when a fiction author I actually enjoy gets into the nonfiction topic, in this case Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.
--I highly recommend The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions. It features essays from like all the big critical names in activism and science (Hickel/Klein/Ghosh etc. etc.), it’s well-organized so you can comprehend the big picture, sample the various aspects and decide where to follow up on.
From a quick skim of this review, this book seems way better than Kohei Saito Slow Down
Max wrote: "From a quick skim of this review, this book seems way better than Kohei Saito Slow Down"Agreed, Hickel's book is the go-to intro especially for those on the fence.
Even for those already convinced, Saito's niche detours on late-Marx is neat but I'm not sure how foundational for a manifesto.
a) using GDP to calculate the flow of productive output (goods/services)
b) thus a proxy for raw materials consumption
a) Michael Hudson claims the US's GDP calculations have been manipulated for the past 10-15 years to include:
i) "imputed homeowner's rent": for homeowners, how much would they earn if they were to rent the house to themselves
ii) "financial services" (which Hudson points out is mostly on asset price inflation, i.e. real estate/stock prices, not productive investments, thus a parasitic economic rent overhead on the productive economy)
...all the growth in US's GDP since 2008 are apparently from these measures. The lecture is on youtube titled "Left Forum with Prof Michael Hudson"
b) still unsure how much this impacts other (i.e. global) GDP calculations, and how much this affects its use as a proxy for raw materials consumption since 2008.