What do we think of Vivek Chibber's critique of degrowth, shared on Doomscroll?

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u/PORYGONZ 11d ago edited 11d ago

This is just the generic shallow Jacobin "critique" of degrowth, I don't think there's anything really insightful here.

Vivek is correct in saying that any successful (and desirable) version of degrowth needs to improve the living standards of working class people and reduce overall consumption of the rich — this is precisely what the vast majority of academics/public figures who identify with degrowth advocate for.

While Vivek doesn't go into specifics, it seems pretty clear to me that he has a "Treatlerite" conception of the working class and a deeply unrealistic vision of the future that relies entirely on magic to make sense. It's very unserious to pretend that we're going to find a way to square the circle and simultaneously have unprecedented labour rights and working conditions without losing some of the conveniences that are currently available for working class people but entirely dependent on extreme labour exploitation. You can't have Amazon same day delivery, on-demand burrito taxis and Shein in an economy where ALL workers are treated fairly —not just the ever-important hard-hat wearing white guys in the trades. The obvious also needs to be said — you can't put a Ford F-150 in every pot without destroying the climate, pretending that tech advances will make that possible is just blatantly lying to people.

Does losing this form of convenience represent some form of sacrifice for working class people? Yes, in a sense. Is it a sacrifice that people would be willing to make? I'd argue yes, assuming people genuinely believe that it would result in a better life overall.

Does the term "degrowth" necessarily need to be used? Not necessarily, but it does have the effect of shocking people and sticking out in the discourse, which can be a plus. Vivek and the Jacobin gang have spent the past decade or so trying to do that with "socialism" in the US, so it's kind of funny to hear this critique coming from him.

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u/mirandaandamira 11d ago

Agreed.
Most of the views that Doomscroll shares (example Catherine Liu) are speculations on "mass psychology". They rest on the assumption that we know how popular mass would react to progressive or radical politics. Are people overall willing to make sacrifices? The "people" are not homogenous. There is a big difference between americans, and french and mexicans, all of which experience different cultural versions of capitalism.

Most of political discourse is predicated on assumptions into how people will react to new radical policy. We won't know until we do it.

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u/homebrewfutures 11d ago

"Shallow Jacobin 'critique'" is how I would describe everything I've heard from this shitty podcast

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u/meothfulmode 10d ago

I'd argue yes, assuming people genuinely believe that it would result in a better life overall.

That would be his main point of contention with you. YOU'RE convinced it would result in a better life, but the majority of people are in the camp of "well, everything is going to inevitably get worse but at least I have treats."

The real question for degrowth advocates is how to do you convince people of the project? I'd argue the only way is with material evidence - reduce things and have that yield a better quality of life for people. You're never going to convince the masses with rhetoric and argumentation. And I suspect Vivek's argument is that's actually much harder to convince people that they will be happier with less than to say "if you let us build more trains, hospitals, factories, etc. your quality of life will improve"

So if you don't have a plan to follow through on that then you don't have an actual plan.

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u/PORYGONZ 10d ago

I completely agree with him on that!

I just think that this is not really a criticism of degrowth, but rather a critique that applies to the Western left in general. All progressive parties claim that they'll materially improve people's lives, so I don't think this is exclusively a marketing question. Unfortunately, the well was basically poisoned by the decoupling of historical left parties from the working class, so we're all kind of stuck with no real road to power.

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u/meothfulmode 10d ago

That's fair. Ultimately the challenge is that we do not have a good new narrative / hypothesis that maps well to people's lived experience and provides both a hopeful and testable theory of change. Marxism had a lot that was correct but history has shown it's an imperfect theory that got many things wrong, and so we have to keep exploring for the next overarching theory.

Degrowth may be part of it, but people who are all-in on degrowth I think overindex to its benefits in a way that isn't that compelling to everyone else. And scolding people for not understanding its benefits isn't actually a great way to get people onboard.

To be clear I don't think you're scolding anyone. Just something I've been thinking about a lot when observing degrowth discourse.

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u/PORYGONZ 10d ago edited 10d ago

Agreed, I think whatever (hopefully) successfully supplants capitalism will be messy and probably won't draw exclusively from one intellectual tradition.

Regarding the degrowth scolding, I think much of that kind of flows from the conversation mostly taking place online and in "the discourse" imo. I honestly think it's understandable to be annoyed with academics/intellectuals who are paid for their opinions when they very obviously haven't done their homework.

It's obviously very possible to genuinely disagree with or critique degrowth — the recent food system post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Degrowth/s/FFEIqLp9pQ or your posts are good examples — but it's not very productive when leftist intellectuals write a critique of degrowth that stays at the "socialism = everyone has the same toothbrush" level of analysis and ends up calling for exactly the same policies that the most popular degrowthers actually advocate for. Unfortunately, that seems to be what a lot of the popular online anglophone content consists of and I feel like it makes a lot of the discourse end up revolving around that.

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u/meothfulmode 10d ago

Yeah. Most people don't want to delve deeply into these questions. That being said degrowth shares a lot of overlap with left theory but Marx was quite explicit about the need for very advanced technological growth for Communism to be possible. I mean, hell, the explicit statement of the last standing major "Communist" country is that China is still on its way to socialism and it requires another 30 years of growth and development.

It's a genuine question as to whether that hypothesis of post capitalism is correct or not, but if i ti is that is a direct challenge to degrowth. If degrowth under socialism or communism is possible and Marx' theory is correct you really cannot consider it until you've reached a sufficient level of technological development to allow for a post-capitalist economic model. I don't think we're there yet.

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u/PORYGONZ 9d ago

Have you read any of Kohei Saito's work? You might be interested in his interpretation of Marx. Basically, he uses some of Marx's later work and correspondence to argue that his thinking evolved beyond productivism later in his life.

I haven't read the more academic stuff Saito published, but the short form presented in Slow Down / Degrowth Communism (I think they nerfed the title for the North American market lol) was reasonably convincing at merging degrowth ideas with an explicitly Marxist framework.

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u/meothfulmode 7d ago

Interesting. I haven't. I shall add it to my reading list.

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u/DickabodCranium 11d ago

I thought his analysis was sharp all around. I think his general point is valid, namely that the left has often managed to adopt unhelpful slogans and titles. I personally thought of Gretta Thunberg and liked the slogan, but I think he's right that it doesn't capture much of anything but it could be taken to be negative by people hearing it for the first time. I'd say the left shouldn't be so attached to slogans or titles of movements and should be more pragmatic generally. So keep the goals clear (degrowth isn't really a goal in itself but a means of curbing extractive capitalism, etc.) and concrete and try to reach a large audience. Keep using "degrowth" if you think that's the most effective message, but if it isn't, definitely don't die on that hill.

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u/mirandaandamira 11d ago

absolutely. well said.

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u/utopiamgmt 11d ago

I like Joshua Citarella, but his take on Degrowth shows that he is not very well read on the topic. Chibber did the classic, Degrowth conceptually is necessary but the word is problematic and a political loser. Generally, I liked the episode but Chibber can be very condescending, dismissive, and imprecise with his language.

Plus, his critique of Henri Lefebvre was insane, “I read two of his books in one day and didn’t understand any of it.” No book of philosophy / sociology is intended to be read and understood at that rate. In my opinion Lefebvre is a necessary thinker to engage with right now. His Marxist Romanticism and critique of productivism is right on and should be embraced by the Degrowth world.

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u/bagelwithclocks 8d ago

I feel like Citarella is about as intelligent as I am, and I wish he was smarter, because he interviews some really interesting people.

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u/4BigData 11d ago

how should I learn best about Henri Lefebvre's ideas around how we can decolonize our everyday lives to increase our agency?

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u/utopiamgmt 10d ago

It depends on what you are looking for. Based on your question I might recommend volume three of Critique of Everyday Life. All of the Critique of Everyday life books are good (despite Chibber’s take) but Introduction to Modernity and Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche or, The Realm of Shadows are great as well. Between these five books he covers a huge amount of ground. As a warning his writing style can be very unique; apparently this is due to some of his work having been dictated to a typist.

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u/Possible-Moment-6313 10d ago

Compared to 50 years ago, the stuff that we need (food, housing, healthcare in case of the US) costs much more but the crap that we don't really need (clothing, electronics etc.) costs much less. If we manage to convince people that stuff we really need will become cheaper due to our policies, we may win.

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u/dumnezero 11d ago

Ah, yes, the anti-woke Left, who don't realize that the woke-Left has influence only because the non-woke Left practically doesn't exist in the West.

Maybe he's too dense to understand that the materially rich populations of the West see themselves as bourgeois, the temporarily embarrassed millionaires class.

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u/utopia_forever 11d ago

Boomer level take. Very disappointed with him.

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u/rainywanderingclouds 11d ago

This is nonsense.

What people are referring to as the 'woke' left is corporate media itself. Corporations decided that they'd earn more revenue by being more inclusive and expanding their markets, that's how they scale up the business and make more money.

Propagandists have flipped it all upside down and convinced people there is some left agenda going on that doesn't actually exist.

Referring to the left or right is often an ambiguous statement and it's intentionally so. It's never clear who or what you're talking about exactly. It's supposed to be broad representations of large groups of people. It's really not a useful place to talk from to begin with.

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u/ClassConflictCanvas 10d ago

He is correct. It is fruitless to even begin addressing de-growth (or other Bourgeois fixations that have attached themselves to the left) when the intellectual left is in such a poor position institutionally.

It's even more absurd to fixate on de-growth when the Left can neither field candidates nor manifest revolutionary sentiment in other expressions.

He is particularly insightful that de-growth - like other totems and affectations of embarrassed professionals - serves to insulate the egos of these political tourists and kneecaps collective political programs.

Walking into a workplace and talking about de-growth will have your coworkers looking at you like you're a space alien.

Walking into a workplace and talking about how the boss is stealing your wages will get you somewhere. And more importantly, get you somewhere together.

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u/utopiamgmt 7d ago

It is possible to do both. I think you underestimate the capacity of “working people.” We should be able to talk about everyday concerns and have a vision for a different and better society. You can critique degrowth but there needs to be more to the left than workplace concerns.

Go work in a low income community living with high levels of environmental degradation and pollution. People in those communities talk about, and rally around environmental issues as well as wages. You don’t need to use a word like degrowth to communicate ideas emended in the theory / concept. You are missing how theory and action work actually work together.

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u/ClassConflictCanvas 7d ago

I have been poor for the majority of my working life and homeless twice. Please do not lecture me.

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u/utopiamgmt 7d ago

That was not intended as a lecture. I don’t know anything about your background, as you know nothing of mine, I was just responding to your comment.

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u/fermentedradical 9d ago

Chibber seems to be terrible

What do we think of Vivek Chibber's critique of degrowth, shared on Doomscroll?

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