Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

Capitalism rose on the back of organised violence, mass impoverishment, and the systematic destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies.

Private riches go up, but public wealth goes down. This became known as the ‘Lauderdale Paradox’

To maximise profit, people were encouraged to organise their lives around productivity.39 Those who fell behind in the productivity race and slipped into poverty were branded with the stigma of sin. Poverty was recast not as the consequence of dispossession, but as the sign of personal moral failing.

There is nothing natural or innate about the productivist behaviours we associate with homo economicus. That creature is the product of five centuries of cultural re-programming.

What are we doing here? Where are we going? What’s it all for? What is the end, as it were, of human existence? Growthism prevents us from stopping to think about these questions. It prevents us from reflecting on what we actually want our society to achieve. Indeed, the pursuit of growth comes to stand in for thought itself. We are in a trance. We slog on, mindlessly, unaware of what we’re doing, unaware of what’s happening around us, unaware of what we are sacrificing … who we are sacrificing.