degrowth

"For the first 400 years of its history, capitalism caused immiseration virtually everywhere it went: enclosure, dispossession, genocide, mass enslavement, colonization, famine. It wasn’t until 1870 that we began to see any improvement in life expectancy in Europe, and that was the product of the labour movement and related struggles for democracy, municipal socialism, and basic interventions like public sanitation, public housing, and public healthcare. We don’t see improvement in the global South until progressive movements succeed in achieving decolonization. This history is important, because it reveals that what’s required for progress isn’t growth as such (as in, an aggregate expansion in the commodity economy), but rather a fair distribution of income and opportunity, and access to universal public goods. It’s not rocket science, but it does require a political struggle. So one might say that degrowth redefines progress. The goal is to achieve well-being for all, in balance with the Earth’s ecosystems, and any step we take in this direction (i.e., degrowth) represents progress." (Jason Hickel)

COLLECTED RECOURCES

degrowth and decolonization

Hickel, Jason (2021). The anti-colonial politics of degrowth.

Hickel, Jason (2021). How to achieve full decolonization.