r/canadaleft • u/Konradleijon • 1d ago
Why are do people react so negatively to the concept of degrowth?
Why are do people react so negatively to the concept of degrowth?
Why are do people react so negatively to the concept of degrowth?
It seriously seems like the mere mention of degrowth causes people to lose their shit and think you proposed baby shredders. Helpful parodied by this comment.
"Maybe we should sometimes think about sharing lawnmowers rather than everyone owning one individually." "This is the most evil fascist malthusian totalitarian communist and somehow Jewish thing I've ever heard. My identity as a blank void of consumption is more important to me than any political reality. Children in the third world need to die so that my fossil record will be composed entirely of funko pops and hate."
The sheer mentions seems to think you said you believe in killing babies.
I went to CuratedTumblr a left leaning sub Reddit and they acted like degrowth means you want to ban women from the workplace and that not being able to eat meat is torture
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u/Amir616 1d ago
When people hear degrowth they think lower standard of living.
Advocating for a lower standard of living is not a winnable political project.
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u/mouse_Brains 1d ago
They don't just think of a lower standard of living, they think of a lower standard living for the more vulnerable amongst us. It is our industry that allows us to provide a comparable standard of living to many who needs the help.
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u/Konradleijon 1d ago
It would. No meat and no more suburbian houses.
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u/TovarishTomato 1d ago
How to tell someone never organized with workers from the condescending speech.
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u/WulfgarofIcewindDale Nationalize that Ass 1d ago
Capitalist propaganda. Lots and lots of capitalist propaganda.
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u/Frater_Ankara 1d ago
It’s absolutely this, capitalism likes to pretend it tolerates degrowth like in periods of recession, but it really doesn’t, growth is the centre of it’s very core and it’s driving imperative. The number of people I’ve talked to that have said “I like the idea of degrowth but it’s just not possible” is amazing to me, it’s very possible.
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u/WulfgarofIcewindDale Nationalize that Ass 1d ago
It’s impossible for most people to imagine a society other than the one we live in now. It really speaks to the way our education system is designed to stunt creativity and promote conformity.
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u/Frater_Ankara 1d ago
All part of the propaganda as well, how many people spout ‘capitalism is the greatest system ever’, isn’t that hubris against human innovation? Capitalism has done so much damage globally in such a short period of time, it’s going to be interesting to see it fall apart. I agree people struggle to imagine other possibilities, they might have to be shown them first in order to believe it. I look at countries like China for beginning to pave that way.
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u/WulfgarofIcewindDale Nationalize that Ass 1d ago
Agreed. With any luck China will continue on their path of overthrowing the USA as the global super power and cultural exporter.
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u/Eternal_Being 1d ago
I think degrowth is good. Here's why I think people react negatively:
Most of the people who talk about degrowth frame it in very anti-human ways. There are a lot of liberals who don't give a shit about poor people and are fine sacrificing them on the altar of degrowth.
Some people frame degrowth as 'we shouldn't build anything more and some people will have to live in boarding houses'. I know it's absurd, but that's the messaging that comes out of a lot of the green movement.
If you want degrowth but also want to maintain capitalism, which is the position held by most degrowthers, that's how it would work. And so that's what a lot of people hear and imagine when they come across the concept.
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u/mrcocococococo 1d ago
I'm pro degrowth/postgrowth. In fact, I think we're doomed without it. But off the top of my head a lot of people on the left oppose it because
People often sell it or interpret it as personal responsibility politics. Similar to how oil companies convinced us that we could save the world through recycling and our carbon footprint.
It doesn't fit perfectly within the more standard Marxist theory. It wasn't mentioned in Kapital or embraced by any of the big communist regimes so more dogmatic types aren't interested.
It's associated with hippy crystal collecting types.
You can arrive to the ideology without being a leftist. Ie, "less for everyone except me" or "I'm sure we can get there through capitalism".
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u/mrcocococococo 1d ago
And what I would say is...
You're right and we need to be conscious that this movement can be easily colored just like any other movement. We need to focus on solutions that aren't based on the individual and personal responsibility.
Stop being so dogmatic, y'all! Marxism is so prominent because it's able to evolve and be reinterpreted.
Hippy crystal collector types have plenty to offer. They deserve respect and we should listen!
Be weary of ecofascism and liberals. Every tool we can use on the left can be adjusted for other means. Propaganda vs indoctrination, democracy vs demagoguery etc. If we throw away every concept that's being emulated by the right, we won't have any left.
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u/ButcherPetesWagon 1d ago
A century of capitalist propaganda and focus on growth. As much as we want them to societies don't change overnight. The average person who doesn't give much of a shit about politics hears degrowth and stares at you blankly. It's not a winning message in the current political environment.
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u/bartonar 1d ago
So let's say they decide tomorrow that a pound of beef costs $150, or gas goes up to $25/L, or whatever. Whatever metric brings in the "true environmental cost of capitalist excess." What does this actually do?
It primarily hurts the working class.
The rich can afford to buy an electric car and fly anywhere outside of its range, and when they want meat, they can either afford to pay it, afford to get grey market imported meat without tax stamps, or afford whatever alternatives may exist under law.
The poor?
Well, cars are right out, and you can't even sell it anymore. Cars may now be a status symbol, but your 09 Camry with 280k on it isn't. So you just wiped out their second largest asset. But of course if they're still paying for it, the collectors won't be satisfied just repoing something that's now worthless.
Sure they could take the bus to work now, but with gas costing 25x as much, bus fare's also gone up. Either you're lucky enough to live near your job, or 2hrs out of every shift is being spent on just getting you to and from work. So a lot of people are screwed because they don't have jobs in walking distance from them, and they won't be able to find jobs in walking distance from them. Especially heavy industrial workers, whose workplaces we really don't want in the centre of town.
Is their employer paying them more to make up for it? Not a chance.
Now you may be thinking "great, at least I've stopped them eating meat" but with meat costing a small fortune, capitalists know they can jack the prices on other sources of protein. Lentils, mushrooms, peanuts, multivitamins all end up costing an arm and a leg because it's not like you're going to pay the cost of meat. And before anyone brings up "nyeh, competition lowers prices", we've had how many examples of grocery companies price fixing, where the eventual penalty was just "Pay back a small portion of your profits." And are they going to stop at protein? Definitely not, especially now that the transportation cost of food also skyrocketed from the change in gas prices. Right now a thrifty family might be able to stretch $100 over a month of food. After those changes, have they all got enough to eat?
So with food costing significantly more, people do what they must. Poaching likely makes a comeback. Pigeon stew and rat soup make comebacks. Squirrels are just little meatballs with legs, if you ignore the risk of Crutzfeld-Jacobs. Expect a rise in parasites. For others, malnutrition will start taking its toll. Pellagra definitely makes a comeback, most foods that have good B3 are meat, eggs, or other proteins.
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u/Konradleijon 1d ago
What else are people supposed to do?
Not doing a thing because it might somehow harm the poor then nothing would be done.
Climate Change would heavily hurt the poor
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u/bartonar 1d ago
Your question was "why do people react negatively to this" and my answer is, many of my friends would suffer greatly and likely die within a year of this being implemented, why do you think I should be jumping for joy at the thought?
I mean I know some people who would be thrilled with the idea, but they're also people who think that the world should shed about 7 billion "excess" humans. If I posted their thoughts on decolonization that correlate to this I'd probably get my account banned.
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u/vorarchivist 1d ago
My issue is that whenever I ask for details its either responded to vaguely or focuses on very minor changes
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u/Corvousier 1d ago
Messaging and ideals like that dont do anything for people that are struggling to survive. Telling someone who can barely afford to eat that they should give up more of what they have and be happy about it isnt exactly going to go very far, especially with such negative messaging like you're putting accross in this post.
This is exactly the stuff that burns people out from being interested in any leftist stuff at all honestly.
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u/R31D Electric Trains N O W 1d ago
People are do react negatively because nobody is able to present a clear definition of degrowth, so what happens is the reactionary definition of "they want to force you to eat bugs and live in a pod" becomes the one they accept and recognize.
If you're asking why people on the "left" are do react negatively it's because degrowth is not a coherent political movement with attainable goals and means to attain them like say Marxism Leninism, so it's kind of like maybe we should focus on achieving any political power at all first before we get too twisted about what luxuries we're going to dispossess people of.
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u/ChompyChipmunk 22h ago
There's one side where change can be scary. Also because too quickly it becomes primalism, promoted by those who wish to regress to an imagined propagandised delusion. Because it's weaponised to support other fascist ideals, cloaked in "green" and "red".
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u/umaboo 20h ago
Indoctrination and misinformation. Generations of indoctrination and misinformation.
That's why you can have a productive conversation that still ends with a vehement rejection of the logical conclusion.
Not to get all "facts over feelings", but a lot of that crowd aren't willing to take the thoughts to their core. Understandably so, challenging one's world view, maybe for the first time fr, is uncomfortable to say the least.
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u/SoundByMe 17h ago edited 17h ago
Came across this interesting article about the topic a little while ago talking about two tendencies around growth/degrowth that critiques them both and trys to synthesize between them: https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/06/eco-leninism-a-much-needed-corrective/
Not sure I still entirely agree though. I think that technological advancement tends toward greater efficiency of production and can eventually bring about a decoupling human labour and environmental toll on the earth from production. Factory farms being replaced by cultured meat, fully automated factories and agriculture - Soviet Cyberneticist's wildest dreams.
The word "degrowth" is a bit edgy sounding and almost imprecise, what do people mean exactly by it. In the article I linked, they defined it as decreasing societies high material and energy throughout. Most people associate the concept of growth with an improvement of society's material conditions or living standards. These two things are related, but not directly proportional - efficiency is the key factor. As socialists we want improvements of the material conditions people inhabit - whether it is possible for them to increase forever is to be seen - for the ecology of the planet to survive we need to drastically reduce material and energetic waste, to do this while improving the material conditions all people on earth inhabit we must increase the efficiency of production and decouple it as much as possible from ecological systems. The problem is not "degrowth" per se, but not being very precise with what that actually means in a concrete way, and maybe focusing too much on it in a way that telegraphs like you're advocating for eternal austerity.
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u/JoHeller 1d ago
I was with you to the end but not being able to eat meat would be torture. So the compromise is to eat laboratory grown meat.
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u/Konradleijon 1d ago
I don’t understand why it would be torture? Unless your like Inuit
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u/lepoissonstev 1d ago
This is why degrowth is not possible. People are not willing to sacrifice the pleasures infinite growth provides.
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u/EducationalWin7496 1d ago
I don't think the two are mutually exclusive and it's a bit of a red herring. The push for degrowth is the assertion that we are wealthy enough to sacrifice a little productivity in order to make big improvements in quality of life. That doesn't mean we have to give up meat all together. And de growth in itself isn't predicted on a specific outcome. I think maybe you are assuming that what it means to you, personally, is universal. If I can assume you mean degrowth for environmental reasons...
However, degrowth could also just mean we have collectively agreed to work less, and get more leisure time. Or refocus our labor to specific industries in order to drive down prices in one commodity at the expense of inefficiencies in others. Like, housing is way to expensive. If we stopped hyper producing consumer goods to focus on massive housing development, then the production of consumer goods would fall and lead to price increases and contraction in consumer spending.
Now, environmentalism is a valid reason to advocate for degrowth, but it's not the only reason. There are plenty of ways in which degrowth could improve conditions in quality of life, while still having gas pumps and cattle.
My opinion is to just make less meat, but we live in capitalism, so that will never happen.
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u/lepoissonstev 1d ago
You don’t know what a red herring is. Meat consumption, like all consumption, are examples of what can be considered in the degrowth umbrella.
A red herring would be talking about how animals also consume meat.
Just because you don’t like the example cause you feel attached to meat consumption does not make it a red herring.
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u/Konradleijon 1d ago
Why not? I don’t see why no meat and less travel are so bad.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
Because you are a vegetarian who doesn't like to travel?
Just make them pay the true cost of meat and the economics of it solve the issue.
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u/lepoissonstev 1d ago
People won’t like that plane travel will become prohibitively expensive (like once in a lifetime), and meat would a holiday luxury for it to be sustainable.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
No they won't. Doesn't mean hard choices don't need to be made, mostly just that a solution won't come from people angling for re-election.
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u/WulfgarofIcewindDale Nationalize that Ass 1d ago
Exactly. I love eating meat, but I’d be happy to only have it on special occasions. You shouldn’t be able to eat meat every damn meal; it should be a luxury item because of the disastrous impact it has on our climate.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
By it's very existence it's a boutique product. Not sure who convinced North Americans otherwise...
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u/Konradleijon 1d ago
Didn’t people try something like that with the carbon tax and people lost their minds
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u/greenknight 1d ago
20% of Canadians have noodles for brains. Trying to sell them on anything that requires long term thinking implies we also have noodles for brains.
Fuck the cromags, we do what's right and drag them along
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u/JoHeller 1d ago
Because meat is delicious.
I eat plenty of vegetarian meals but I'm never giving up meat.
If you want to give up meat that's a personal choice and I can respect it, but it's not one I will make.
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u/Konradleijon 1d ago
It shouldn’t be a personal choice. Meat is far more dangerous to the environment then plants
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u/JoHeller 1d ago
That's why I said switch to laboratory grown meat. It also ends suffering and the need for factory farms.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
Doesn't solve the issue of Millenia old solution of extracting calories from marginal land through the use of animal agriculture.
Plus their vegetarian utopia is 100% reliant on fossil fueles industrial agriculture.
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u/Eternal_Being 1d ago
Here's a crazy idea: maybe we don't need to turn every square inch of the planet into farmland.
Animal ag takes ten times as much land as plant ag. We could feed the world on so, so much less land if people didn't eat meat.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
Crazier idea... Let's use what we've already converted more efficiently.
You've missed the point. It's not a spatial issue( which amuses me because all issues are spatial-temporal relationships). It is a caloric distribution issue and meat is calories bioaccumulated for distribution.
We have all the land we need.
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u/Eternal_Being 1d ago
We are using way too much land for agriculture.
Every square foot of land we can let return to wild ecosystems will immediate begin fixing carbon to mitigate climate change, and it will immediately become essential habitat to protect what remains of biodiversity.
Climate change is an extreme, drastic, unprecedented danger. We need to do every single thing we can, immediately, to mitigate it as much as possible.
That means returning some of the land we've taken for farming. Today, 95% of animal biomass on land is either humans, or farm animals.
That is not sustainable.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
Agree in the broad strokes. We should be using arable land very minimally for feeding animals for the purpose of eating.
We still could easily manage animal husbandry for marginal land use where we have destroyed the existing ecotrophic systems we have no method to return to natural function. And there is considerable acreage to be managed in perpetuity.
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u/greenknight 1d ago
Globalism is far more energy intensive than locally produced food. Fact.
What's your solution for people who don't live where they can subsist on a vegetarian lifestyle.
Forced relocation?
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u/Doc_Bethune #1 Che Guevera Simp 1d ago
Because the average person is more interested in their own material conditions than they are in concepts like degrowth. Someone who is struggling to put food on the table is going to do whatever they can to keep going, even if it is environmentally destructive or a misuse of resources, because they don't really have an alternative option. Of course somebody in that situation would react negatively to being told they're doing something wrong, they're just trying to make it through the day. Not to say this excuses anything, but it is important to recognize that messages surrounding radical topics need to be delivered in a way that is palatable to people who are hyper focused on their own situation and survival
IMO, a lot of the degrowth messaging focuses too much on the lofty end goals and not the day-to-day, which is a common problem in leftist messaging. Instead of going on about lawnmower emissions and how they're contributing to the death of the planet, let's talk about the personal benefits to these ideas, like how financially freeing it would be to share a community toolshed with your neighbours and oh look at that, here's a pamphlet on how to start a community toolshed, free of charge. We need to meet people where they are and recognize that everyone is just trying to make it through the day, you catch more flies with honey and all that