Dialectical Degrowth

Origins

The concept of dialectical degrowth was first articulated in the joint appeal "For an Ecosocialist Degrowth," published in the April 2022 issue of Monthly Review. Co-authored by Michael Löwy, Bengi Akbulut, Sabrina Fernandes, and Giorgos Kallis, the text argued for convergence between the degrowth movement and ecosocialism, declaring: "From an ecosocialist perspective, degrowth has to be understood in dialectical terms."

Löwy subsequently elaborated the concept in "Nine Theses on Ecosocialist Degrowth" (Monthly Review, July–August 2023). Thesis VI lays out the qualitative distinctions.

Core Logic

The crux of dialectical degrowth is that it refuses a purely quantitative conception of degrowth as undifferentiated reduction. It distinguishes itself both from strands of degrowth theory that call for uniform contraction and from techno-optimist promises of unlimited green growth.

Specific distinctions:

• Suppress/eliminate: fossil fuels, pesticides, nuclear submarines, the advertising industry
• Substantially reduce: private cars, meat production, air travel
• Expand/develop: organic food, public transport, carbon-neutral housing, renewable energy, health and education services

The criterion for these distinctions is not profit but genuine social need. On the question of how to distinguish artificial demand created by advertising from authentic needs, Löwy proposes a pragmatic test: needs that persist after the abolition of advertising.

Conditions for Realization

Dialectical degrowth is held to be unrealizable within capitalism, since capital cannot exist without growth. It therefore requires:

1. Social appropriation of the main means of production and reproduction
2. Democratic, participatory, ecological planning: not Soviet-style bureaucratic command economy, but planning from below in which the people themselves determine production and consumption priorities
3. Reduction of working time: converting productivity gains into free time rather than profit

Affiliations and Distinctions

Dialectical degrowth stands at the intersection of the degrowth movement and ecosocialism. From degrowth it takes the critique of the myth of unlimited growth on a finite planet; from ecosocialism it brings social ownership of the means of production and class analysis. It also seeks alliance with other anti-systemic ecological movements including ecofeminism, social ecology, Sumak Kawsay (the Indigenous "Good Life"), and Blockadia.