Monthly Review - Degrowth and Socialism - Notes On Some Critical Junctures

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Degrowth and Socialism: Notes on Some Critical

Junctures
by Güney Işıkara and Özgür Narin
Topics: Capitalism  Ecology  Economic Theory  Marxist Ecology  Political Economy / (Jul 01, 2023)
Places: Global
The dialogue, or controversy, depending on how

one looks at it, between advocates of degrowth
and socialism over the past years has brought
about a partial convergence expressed in recent
synthesis-seeking contributions. At the same
1
time, salient differences between the two

currents, highly heterogeneous within
themselves, still persist. These pertain to their
imaginaries on how to overcome capitalism and
what to replace it with, which can easily be seen
even in the respective nomenclatures they
employ, namely a postcapitalist future of
degrowth versus socialism.
"DEGROWTH: COUNTER HEGEMONY
From a certain viewpoint, capitalism can be seen NOW," March 4, 2020. By Alarichall -
Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link.
as generalized commodity production where
individual production units make independent
decisions regarding what and how much to Güney Işıkara is a Clinical
produce, which combination of inputs and Assistant Professor at New York
technologies to employ, how to organize the University, Liberal Studies. Özgür
production process, and so forth. As individual Narin is an Assistant Professor of
https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/degrowth-and-socialism-notes-on-some-critical-junctures/ 1/20
productive units have no choice but to relate to Economics at Ordu University in

the rest of the picture through their products, Ordu, Türkiye.
value serves as the common ground where
commodities are equated in terms of the quantity of abstract labor they contain, and
where emerging profit differentials give cues on the rate and direction of new investment.
The pursuit of profit constitutes the regulating principle, and production at the aggregate
level is regulated as each excessive expansion or contraction sets in motion forces that
counteract the deviation.
Exploitation, reification of social relations, commodity fetishism, as well as an intensifying

disruption of the metabolic relationship with nonhuman natures are integral parts of the
(re)production process outlined above in a nutshell. They all exist in embryonic form in the
individual production unit in the form of surplus value extraction, or exploitation of labor.
Thus, a systemic alternative to capitalism must arise upon different social relations, and
offer a set of mechanisms and processes to regulate and coordinate the complex and
interdependent set of activities to reproduce life in its various dimensions.
Planning is one such alternative with a long history of theoretical discussions as well as
practical applications at different scales. Until recently, however, the degrowth literature
had been keeping a clear distance from the idea of planning. Instead, the transformation
ahead used to be outlined in terms of what one of the sources of inspiration for degrowth,
André Gorz, called “non-reformist reforms,” today manifested in proposals such as the
provision of universal basic income, reduced working hours, public finance, reclaiming and
expanding the realm of the commons and sharing, localizing production, and so on. The
2
question of their compatibility with accumulation-driven commodity production aside,

these reforms do not even remotely offer an alternative to the coordinating role of
markets in production.
Planning as a radically different way of organizing and coordinating production and social
reproduction has rarely been engaged with in past degrowth literature. This has been
changing with more radical degrowth thinkers increasingly taking up the question of
planning explicitly. In what follows, we focus on matters pertaining to planning which
constitute, in our opinion, critical nodes of the discussion.
Planned Production and Living Standards

Most degrowth thinkers agree that growth, as both a fact and a concept, is brought about
by capitalism. It is even acknowledged that growth is not the driver, but an outcome, the
3
“surface appearance or ‘fetish’ of an underlying process: capital accumulation.”4 One

would then expect that the challenge to it and the imaginary of an alternative society
would be based on the negation of capitalism as a mode of production. Yet instead, growth
remains the focal point of the discussion.
The emphasis on growth as an aggregate phenomenon that emerged only with industrial
capitalism and turned into an unquestionable economic paradigm following the Second
World War is not trivial. It implies that growth as we know it is capitalist growth, or actually
accumulation of capital, constituted in processes of exploitation and expropriation peculiar
to capitalism, measured by indicators designed by and for capitalist societies. Why should
we then be so concerned with growth as such from the viewpoint of a socialist (or
postcapitalist) society? The degrowth position is that it mesmerizes and captivates
individual and social imaginaries, political movements, parties, and projects, including that
of socialism: “Growth is the child of capitalism, but the child outdid the parent, with the
pursuit of growth surviving the abolition of capitalist relations in socialist countries.”
5
The transplantation of growth from its capitalist historical context into a socialist future,
and thereby the problematization of growth as such—which supposedly transcends social
relations upon which societies are founded—can be justified only under one condition: if
all growth, regardless of the underlying relations of humans to both humans and
nonhuman natures, can be seen as homogeneous, or at least alike to a significant degree.
This is precisely what Giorgos Kallis puts forward: “socialist growth cannot be sustainable,
because no economic growth can be ecologically sustainable. Growth in the material
standard of living requires growth in the extraction of materials. This is unavoidably
damaging to the environment and ultimately undermines the conditions of production and
reproduction.”
6
The logical conclusion of this argument is that all human activity involving extraction,
transformation, and use of materials—that is, all human reproduction—is in direct conflict
with the environment as the former unavoidably damages the latter. This is a reversion to
crude materialism founded on the oppositional binary of nature and society. According to
Kallis, this conflict becomes unsustainable if material living standards keep growing.
Growth, however, is still understood in its meaning in the capitalist context, representing a
process of accumulation.
The qualitative difference between socialism and capitalism as two distinct modes of
production is highly relevant here. The primary function of production under socialism is to
provide all citizens with use values to satisfy a universal standard of basic needs
(essentials), which determines the length of the necessary working day. This comprises not
only shelter, basic food items, clean water supply, health care, education, and accessible
public transport, but also child and elder care, parks and recreation, basic cultural and
informational services, (possibly) ecological restoration activities, and the like.
Once any such set of essential needs is determined socially and mediated politically, the
number of total (direct and indirect) labor hours socially necessary to produce these
essentials can be easily calculated with the help of input-output data for a given set of
technologies and labor processes. This total amount could then be distributed across the
working-age population, taking social and political preferences, disabilities, and the
principle of work rotation into account. This constitutes the realm of necessity or sphere of
heteronomy, which constitutes the baseline labor required from each citizen in order to
reproduce a universally granted, decent standard of living for all. It is, at the same time, the
basis for the conviviality of an egalitarian society without struggle for essentials.
Note that each worker directly gets their share of labor-time after the deduction of the
common funds for other social necessities (contingency planning, disaster preparedness,
planned investment in scientific research and technological advance, and so forth). They
can use their remaining labor-time funds to acquire products beyond immediate
essentials, which implies working an additional number of hours, informed in turn by the
labor time socially necessary to produce their additional demand. By implication, exchange
(though not commodity exchange) could occur via digital labor certificates. The demand for
essentials would be relatively stable over time, while the relationship between the supply
of and demand for more personal, customized items could be easily tracked by an online
network connecting all stores, alerting planning agencies in case of a change or
imbalances.
Planned Control of Matter and Energy Use

What is at stake in planning is not abstract, alienated labor measured by monetary
categories peculiar to capitalism, but labor producing use values in conscious, voluntary,
and planned rotation. This is one of the distinctive features of socialism vis-à-vis diverse
social imaginaries, which do not clearly aim to abolish capitalist commodity production. It
is substantially different from demanding tax cuts (or tax raises for the rich), universal
basic income, or constraints to commodification from an alienated, sublime authority.
There is no ambiguity resulting from mystified categories of production and distribution
(value and price; wage, interest, rent, and profit; productive and unproductive sectors; and
so on).
The process of planning could be steered by a structure of nested councils, which connect
various collective bodies from lower to higher levels of overview, where workers actively
shape and validate diverse spatial and sectoral aspects of the overall plan. The aggregate
use of energy and matter at any given time can be managed by constraints determined in
a recursive fashion comprising bottom-up and top-down feedback mechanisms. These
constraints would result from political processes of deliberation in the light of the scientific
knowledge of the fullest possible range of consequences of our decisions, the pursuit of
the precautionary principle (since such knowledge is characterized by uncertainties), the

complexity of ecosystems, and the multiplicity of the evaluation criteria employed.
7
In socialist planning, the fact that social labor will no longer be wasted in branches such as
marketing and advertising, consulting, and financial services; accumulation strategies such
as planned obsolescence and food waste will cease to exist; ecologically destructive
industries (production of fossil fuels, arms, private jets, sport utility vehicles, and so forth)
will be massively scaled down or curtailed entirely, combined with the complete abolition
of unemployment and participation of all working citizens in producing and providing
essentials discussed above, implies that the labor time associated with the realm of
necessity will be significantly less than eight hours a day.
Depending on how narrowly or broadly the category of “essentials” is defined, its share in
the sphere of production is roughly in the interval of 45 to 70 percent, with significant
variation across countries. Thus, a direct implication of conscious steering of production is
8
a significant reduction in the throughput of matter and energy associated with the
cessation or phasing out of the activities mentioned above. This is a desired and expected
outcome common to imaginaries of degrowth and socialism. A line of demarcation,
however, persists when it comes to the question of institutionalizing degrowth: “Growth in
the material standard of living means, well, growth in the use of materials (and energy).
Whether the economy that produces such growth is capitalist, precapitalist, or socialist
makes no difference.”
9
We believe that a substantially higher amount of free time and the social and communal
organization of reproductive labor, combined with the universal access to essential
products in the broad sense (high-quality health, education, public transport, cultural and
informational services, and parks and recreation facilities, in addition to other material
aspects of life), do constitute a growth in the material standard of living for the vast majority
of the global population. This is the instance where degrowth advocates, by adopting a
notion of growth indifferent to the social form of organization, blur the relationship
between quantity and quality, or perhaps, suppress the question of quality and reduce the
discussion to the quantitative dimension.
The argument here is not that a socialist society would produce more of everything, and
yet still not be ecologically destructive due to its qualitative distinction. The degrowth
literature itself clearly argues that the question is not “more or less?” but rather “more of
what and less of what?” Furthermore, it is beyond doubt that in some parts of the world
most production activities need to be massively expanded to ensure a decent living
standard, while in some other places, it is a question of modifying the scale, direction, and
composition of production. In any event, however, it entails abolishing the capitalist mode
of production in favor of a social formation where social (re)production is planned and
steered consciously by empowered workers and citizens themselves. As admitted by its

advocates, degrowth is a project tailored for the Global North where an imperial mode of
living prevails. It is not a desirable and viable path for the Global South.
10
Escaping Entropy?
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s reading of economic questions from a thermodynamic
perspective, according to which all economic processes are irreversible and entropic, is a
cornerstone of degrowth thought. Natural processes move in a definite direction and
involve qualitative change insofar as all kinds of energy are gradually transformed into
heat, and heat dissipates until it cannot be used. The question of whether the universe is
11
finite and isolated or not, or whether the earth is a closed or an isolated system, is
interesting in its own right and has significant implications on the interpretation of the
entropy law in this context.
12
It is worth noting that a Nobel laureate chemist, Frederick Soddy, first wrote about entropy
in economics in 1926. Yet another Nobel laureate physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, pointed out
that life is negative-entropy in 1944. Life is an action against entropy. It is organizing
against disorder. The famous mathematician and engineer, Claude Shannon, discovered in
1948 that information, too, is a form of negative entropy. That is, information is an order
out of disorder, conveying a message. As human bipedalism acts against gravity, our living,
thinking, and communicating are against entropy, too.
To our current knowledge, the law of entropy, just like the law of gravity, is true for the
observable universe. It has been valid for 13.8 billion years, the entire history of the
universe, and will probably remain so in the future. Regardless of social formations and
modes of production we adopt, the universe will keep moving toward disorder. One can
surely make use of the entropy law to raise an ecological objection to the argument that
there is no real limit to compound capitalist growth. However, as Georgescu-Roegen
himself underlined, “the crucial error consists in not seeing that not only growth, but also a
zero-growth state, nay, even a declining state which does not converge toward annihilation
cannot exist forever in a finite environment.” No mode of production has a privileged
13
position under a strict consideration of the entropy law.
This is why using the entropy card actually diverts attention from the real political task of
exposing the capitalist mode of production in its totality—and not a transhistorical notion
of growth as such—as the root cause of social, economic and ecological grievances. The
application of a universal and transhistorical physics law to a given historical period as the
definitive constraint is not helpful. We agree that biophysical indicators are crucial and
must be taken into account in the planned production of use values. However, when it
comes to the assumption that there are significant limits to diversify energy resources and
increase energy return on (energy) investment in a sustainable way, why fall into such
dismay? Why rule out the tapping of enormous energy flux to the earth’s surface at higher
14
efficiency rates compared to photosynthesis or current technologies?
Our species was able to discover Albert Einstein’s energy-matter equation, why should it
not be capable of applying it or other discoveries in different ways? A socialist society that
can put its potential in use consciously, where research and the development of productive
forces is not led by the profit motive but purposeful and deliberative decisions of direct
producers, would certainly not count on future technologies to solve current social and
ecological problems, but also not assume away the possibility and give up the pursuit of
such advancement.
Beyond Dichotomies: Planning and Empowerment

As Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan admit in one of the most
comprehensive and profound representations of degrowth, “the reality of planning itself—
its primary actors, whether it is centralized or decentralized, participatory or imposed—is
rarely engaged with [by degrowth thinkers].” This almost deliberate avoidance of the
15
planning question can be partially attributed to the widespread reluctance of directly

confronting capitalism as a mode of production. In a contribution to Degrowth: A Vocabulary
for a New Era, a foundational text in this literature, this reluctance is attributed to three
factors: first, the insistence of influential degrowth thinkers such as Serge Latouche on not
taking capitalism as the principal object of critique; second, the importance attached by
degrowth to voluntary association, decentralized and horizontal self-organization; and
third, a tactical avoidance of the historical baggage that comes along with explicit
anticapitalism and socialism.
16
The same reluctance is remarkable when it comes to the questions of organization, use of
force, and revolution. This is an important deficiency in the case for degrowth that cannot
be overlooked. Be it with respect to the energy infrastructure and use, throughput, or
making autonomous decisions on the size and composition of social product, all the
aforementioned transitions at stake presuppose a substantial shift in power relations that
entail (but are not confined to) the ownership of the means of production. The degrowth
literature advocates a variety of strategies such as non-reformist reforms, nowtopias,
counterhegemonic actions (blockades, interstitial spaces, and so on) that can coexist in a
symbiotic way. The question of organization and the monopoly of the state over use of
force is, however, neglected for the most part. Means of resistance and struggle, and
17
“non-reformist reforms” under capitalism, are usually connected with the discussion of
institutions and social processes belonging to a postcapitalist future, while the question of
revolution is comfortably circumvented.
There is thus a tension between the growing interest in planning and socialism on the part
of degrowth thinkers on the one hand, and the reluctance to contemplate a clear rupture
with capitalism, and discuss planning as the central pillar of an alternative to the market
mechanism on the other. We elaborate on three domains that pertain to this tension and
18
stand out as running themes in the degrowth literature: localization, autonomy, and
deliberation. We argue that degrowth thinkers draw attention to crucial issues, but their
analyses usually remain one-sided and fail to tackle the totality of capitalism as a mode of
production and, by implication, to offer a systemic alternative.
(Re)localization: Avoiding One-Sidedness

(Re)localization of production is one of the fundamental principles of degrowth, defined as
a “trajectory where the throughput (energy, materials and waste flows) of an economy
decreases while welfare, or well-being, improves.” This implies meeting local needs by
19
local production, or shorter production-trade-consumption circuits. What is at stake here

20
is, arguably, more than the mere reduction of energy and waste associated with trade
resulting from specialization and division of labor. It is connected to the equally important
emphasis degrowth puts on decentralized structures and horizontal organization, which
are assumed to be more compatible with local, small-scale production.
The first issue here is the problematization of scale rather than the underlying social
relations. Instead of asking what set of class, property, and power relations give rise to
unwarranted hierarchies attributed to large-scale organization, the latter is taken to be
self-constituted. It is, however, worth remembering Murray Bookchin’s call for caution
when it comes to presuming a direct relationship between scale and hierarchy:
“Decentralism, small-scale communities, local autonomy, even mutual aid and
communalism are not intrinsically ecological or emancipatory. Few societies were more
decentralized than European feudalism, which in fact was structured around small-scale
communities, mutual aid, and the communal use of land. Local autonomy was highly
prized and autarchy formed the economic key to feudal communities. Yet few societies
were more hierarchical.” Any given set of simple or complex technologies, small- or large-
21
scale organizations, or local, regional, national, and even global structures, unspecified for
social context and content, is necessarily either oppressive and exploitative on the one
hand, or emancipatory on the other.
The second question that arises from a potentially extensive localization of production is
that of the productivity loss associated with diminishing scale. Although this might be
welcomed by degrowth thinkers at large since productivity and large-scale production are
grasped as intrinsically related to the mindset of capital accumulation, we insist on
distinguishing labor productivity from various notions of efficiency defined by criteria
peculiar to capital accumulation. Socialism embraces an intended increase of labor
productivity, and the development of productive forces in general. A reduction in labor

22
productivity conflicts with another central objective of both the degrowth and socialist
imaginary, namely, the shortening of the workday necessary for the reproduction of life.
The latter was discussed by Marx as the realm of necessity upon which the true realm of
freedom can arise, and as the sphere of heteronomy, which cannot be abolished in any
social formation, but can be organized “with the maximum efficiency and the least
expenditure of effort and resources” in order to assure “the programmed and planned
production of everything necessary to individual and social life.” According to Gorz and
23
another pioneer of degrowth, Ivan Illich, the utmost expansion of the sphere of autonomy
is conditioned by the use of complex tools and advanced technologies in the sphere of
heteronomy. It is striking that this clear emphasis of two of the most influential degrowth
24
pioneers escapes the attention of contemporary degrowth advocates.
Once the matter is grasped in terms of this dual conception of labor, and the intrinsic
relationship between necessity and freedom, it becomes clear that what matters is the
social relations of production that condition the character, quality, and relative importance
of the two spheres. The main issue with the emphasis laid on localization is not the
economic, geographical, or administrative scale. It is rather the one-sidedness of the
argument in most of its forms.
Localness can only become an emancipatory virtue if it is nested in a broader, interwoven

structure that is regulated and coordinated by collective bodies of workers.
Interdependence of localities under socialism would not imply a power asymmetry or
hierarchy between them, which is characteristic of capitalism, but rather represent the
source of their collective power. For instance, anticipated disruptions in food production
and projected shifts in agricultural practices due to the planetary crisis would not be met
by local self-sufficiency under socialism, but rather, by a condensation of coordination at
higher levels of planning, where a more global picture is available. The same can be said
for the expansion and scaling up of agroecological food systems, ecological restoration,
and earthcare labor.
The caveats raised above by no means imply that localization or localness has no place in
socialism. We believe that socialism is not characterized by a mere replacement of the
private ownership of means of production by social ownership and the abolition of the law
of value in favor of planned production. It also entails the empowerment of workers and
citizens, whose labor is constitutive of production, social reproduction, and environment-
making. Such empowerment enhances the autonomy of direct producers to the
25
maximum extent possible, yet does so without disregarding the necessity to integrate
autonomous localities into a broader, harmonious, and coherent plan at various scales.
Autonomy: Whither Capitalism?

Related to the emphasis on localization in degrowth thought is the centrality of the concept
of autonomy. The link between the two spheres is rooted in the commitment to the
26
notion that as the scale of economic activity grows, the ability to self-govern diminishes.
Gorz, who coined the term décroissance in 1972, argues that what matters is not the
hierarchical structure of the production process as such, but the elements that render
such hierarchy necessary, namely, the scale of productive units, their interdependence,
and the technical, social and regional division of labor that follows. Similarly, Illich argues
that autonomy and self-governance without the mediation of experts presupposes small-
scale systems and simple technologies. Large-scale social structures and big technologies
27
are in conflict with autonomy and self-governance.
Following Cornelius Castoriadis and Latouche, the degrowth literature associates

autonomy with the awareness on the part of the people, who they themselves make their
own laws and history, rather than certain external authorities (such as God, the Church,
and markets). In Latouche’s view, the “economy” as an ostensibly autonomous sphere
28
with its own laws and tendencies, and particularly the imaginaries of growth and
development (and not capitalism as such), is the main source of disruption. Thus, only by
29
emancipating themselves from the addictive imaginary of growth and productivism and
practicing conscious self-limitation can people set norms, rules, and values, and thereby
establish autonomy and democracy.
30
Local experiences of self-organization and self-governance are valuable and instructive.

However, the pursuit of autonomy as a revolutionary practice in a capitalist context has its
limits. True autonomy, in its own right, is not possible as the sphere of autonomy is bound
up and thus conditioned by the very forces from which it claims to be autonomous. If
31
capital and the state are grasped as static, hierarchical, and oppressive entities rather than
relations, and if the conflictual processes that are both effector and outcome of these
relations are not directly targeted and abolished, the best that can be achieved is a
suppression of the negative outcomes. Yet that which is repressed returns.
32
Autonomy from the state and capital (as a social relation) presumes the persistence of the
latter two. As such, the project of autonomy affirms the hegemony of capital through its
limited and partial negation, and thereby becomes part and parcel of this hegemony. This
is not to reject or underrate the invaluable experiences of La Vía Campesina, the EZLN, or
the autonomous Kurdish administration in Rojava, and the like. All these experiences are
characterized by idiosyncrasies and contain crucial lessons that are worth learning from in
their own right. All of them, however, share the common ground of being surrounded, or
even besieged, by the social, economic, and military forces from which they aim to be
autonomous. Avoiding market relations and commodification (partial decommodification

without abolishing commodity production) does not imply abolishing the relations of
production. Thus, the question of the totality of capitalism as a mode of production,
including its historically specific state form, can perhaps be suppressed, but not avoided for
good.
A maximum possible degree of self-management and autonomy (at diverse scales) is a

desired and necessary feature of a socialist society. What the “self” is autonomous from is
substantially different, though. It is not the juggernaut of capital accumulation, not the
social relation of capital that leaks into and bundles up all dimensions of being and life, but
rather higher and more central levels of coordination, planning, and management. The
very existence of the latter is a taboo for most degrowth thinkers, as it is associated with
hierarchical structures that are presumed to undermine autonomy. The integration of
lower and local units into a nested structure of councils and planning instances, however,
does not necessarily negate or suppress the local or its autonomy.
The local and the central presuppose each other to operate effectively and harmoniously:
on the one hand, in the absence of structures that oversee the overall system making use
of all available information, local units can fall into dissonance, and the resulting
disturbances can threaten the whole system. On the other hand, sacrificing workers’ self-
management starting with the workplace level and imposing a purely centralized decision-
making process not only risks the system by reducing its flexibility and adaptive capacity,
but also surrenders the very political content of socialism. The political process of self-
33
constitution and self-management, also referred to as deliberation in the degrowth

literature, thus requires both autonomous and integrated, local and central instances
simultaneously.
Deliberation: The Collective Worker Reappropriating

General Intellect
Deliberation stands for the notion that decisions, including in the environmental context,
are made through social institutions and processes that involve participation by all
potentially affected parties. Above all, this deliberative process implies that needs, desires,
and valuations are not taken as a given, but brought about by a social process of
negotiation that is constitutive of subjectivity. In other words, deliberation and self-
management are not mere means, but also ends in themselves. A further advantage of
such a process is to reveal diverging or conflicting valuations pertaining to different
dimensions of the environment and social product. This is essential according to degrowth
thinkers, since there is no single scale by which various values and qualities can be
measured, expressed, or calibrated. Use-value incommensurability necessitates multiple

evaluation criteria in combination with the existing scientific knowledge.
34
A shortcoming of the discussions around deliberation in degrowth literature is that they

remain unclear as to how (or whether) the class-based power relations will be transformed
or abolished. It is ambiguous whether the contentious and negotiated terrain of the
institutions of democratic decision mechanisms will still be based on clashing class
interests or mere “individuals” and “affected parties” who are willing to participate. This is
crucial since this process itself is actually the forming of organizational means and the
empowerment of the masses for participation. Questions of deliberation and planning
crucially depend on whether or not a rupture with existing power and property relations
has taken place (or is envisioned), and what the means of this rupture were.
One such experience of self-organization was the soviets and workers councils that formed
in class struggle as the means of taking over social production in the period leading up to
the October Revolution. The collective worker (Gesamtarbeiter), producing different parts of
the total social production, united in the councils and soviets, formed higher coordination
institutions, and delegated the control over production to central councils and planning.
This system of delegation was different from planning through top-down control. Central
planning did not exclude local initiatives, negotiations, and deliberation. Furthermore, it
was not perceived as a purely technical question about numbers, or designated as the area
of expertise of learned scholars.
35
For a constructive discussion with degrowth thinkers leaning toward deliberative planning,
we would like to point to the Soviet experience as an assembly of collective workers,
planning across scales, unifying different segments of working people (manufacturing,
logistics, engineers, scientists, and so on) beyond their partial class interests—that is, as an
attempt to unify the proletariat as a whole in controlling social (re)production. With all its
shortcomings, as well as strengths and achievements (the latter are usually neglected, if
not dismissed, by most degrowth thinkers), this history is rife with lessons for those
pondering planning as a systemic alternative to capitalist commodity production.
A century later, the reach of the collective worker had expanded significantly. So did the
knowledge pertaining to the totality of social (re)production. Data are extracted not only in
the production process, but also other circuits of the cycle, from production to
consumption and to daily life in the form of data extractivism and consumer profiling. This,
once divorced from its capitalist form, enhances our ability to contemplate an alternative
society. Most importantly, workers as a whole can reappropriate the production process
and its knowledge. This implies the reappropriation of the general intellect produced by
the collective worker and their self-organizations (soviets, assemblies, councils, and the
like).
With respect to the crucial problem of ecological boundaries—and questions of scale and
biophysical limits—scientific knowledge stands out as a central pillar. It is true that in our
capitalist societies, science can at times be glorified as the ultimate judge and employed to
shepherd people, and at other times, be totally disregarded as it pleases capital
accumulation. However, emerging currents such as science communication, public
understanding of science, open science, citizen science, and free software movements do
represent an alternative in embryonic form. Environmental decisions, and by implication,
production decisions, need to be informed by science, but remain primarily social and
political processes. The deliberation process must involve assemblies of collective labor,
united councils representing the (re)production of life, including science workers as well as
others who now possess knowledge of socialized production.
What is referred to as deliberation in the degrowth literature is, by all means, a central
tenet of empowerment of workers. Coexistence and clashes of partial interests, the
political processes through which such interests and valuations (of the social product,
environmental impacts, and the like) are mediated, and how agencies are constructed and
enabled, must be discussed and explored in practice by real movements. Yet equally
important are structures and processes that will oversee the viability and facilitate
adaptation of the overall system in case of sharp conflicts and possible obstruction, as was
in the case of propertied peasantry in the aftermath of 1917 and 1949. Issues correctly
identified as crucial (autonomy and deliberation) by degrowth were not missing in practical
experiences of twentieth-century socialist planning. That there were significant
shortcomings and mistakes is beyond doubt. This, however, should not be an excuse to
take a distance from socialism, but rather an opportunity to learn from it.
***
An alternative egalitarian society cannot be the design of the intellect. It must be based on
existing, real movements and conflicts, and result from the premises now in existence.
Degrowth identifies and feeds off of various movements and practices, autonomous
spaces, and laboratories that build people’s power and counterhegemony—all of which are
very valuable. Yet, what it lacks is a clearly revolutionary vision and commitment to tackle
the capitalist mode of production in its totality. Although it is not the subject of this piece,
degrowth remains ambiguous as to the questions of organization, the use of force, and the
revolutionary moment of rupture. Regarding the mechanisms and processes of planning to
displace capitalist commodity production, it shies away from confronting the need to
ground and complement local, autonomous instances with larger-scale, central ones. It
fetishizes growth, transplants it from its capitalist context, and hence fails to grasp
qualitative differences between capitalism and socialism as distinct modes of production.
All this does not mean that socialism and degrowth are absolutely incompatible. There are,
however, important discrepancies in means and ends, which are worth debating. We hope
that this piece contributes to such consideration and discourse.
Notes
1. ↩ Michael Löwy, “Ecosocialism and/or Degrowth?,” Climate and Capitalism, October 8,
2020; Michael Löwy, Bengi Akbulut, Sabrina Fernandes, and Giorgos Kallis, “For an
Ecosocialist Degrowth,” Monthly Review 73, no. 11 (April 2022): 56–58; Jason Hickel and
Samuel Miller-McDonald, “Ecosocialism is the Horizon, Degrowth is the Way: A Review of
Less Is More and an Interview with Jason Hickel,” The Trouble (blog), February 11, 2021;
Paul Murphy and Jess Spear, “The Necessity of Ecosocialist Degrowth,” Global Ecosocialist
Network, June 4, 2022; Timothée Parrique and Giorgos Kallis, “Socialism without Growth,”
Brave New Europe (blog), February 10, 2021.
2. ↩ André Gorz, Strategies for Labor (Boston: Beacon, 1967); Ekaterina Chertkovskaya,
Alexander Paulsson, and Stefania Barca, Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); Jason Hickel, Less Is More (London: Windmill Books,
2020); Giorgos Kallis, Degrowth (Newcastle: Agenda, 2018); Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson,
Giacomo D’Alisa, and Federico Demaria, The Case for Degrowth (Cambridge: Polity, 2020).
3. ↩ Hickel, Less Is More; Matthias Schmelzer, The Hegemony of Growth (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017).
4. ↩ Kallis, Degrowth, 73.
6. ↩ Giorgos Kallis, “Socialism without Growth,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 30, no. 2 (2017),
190.
7. ↩ Planning for Entropy, “Democratic Economic Planning, Social Metabolism and the
Environment,” Science & Society 86, no. 2 (2022): 291–313.
8. ↩ These figures include the production of means of production necessary to produce
the essentials. Details can be found in Güney Işıkara, “The Weight of Essentials in
Economic Activity,” Review of Radical Political Economics 53, no. 1 (2021): 95–115.
9. ↩ Giorgos Kallis “Capitalism, Socialism, Degrowth: A Rejoinder,” Capitalism Nature
Socialism 30, no. 2 (2019), 267.
10. ↩ Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan, The Future Is Degrowth (New
York: Verso, 2022), 25.
11. ↩ Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, “Energy and Economic Myths,” Southern Economic Journal
41, no. 3 (1975): 347–81.
12. ↩ David Schwartzman, “The Limits to Entropy,” Science & Society 72, no. 1 (2008): 43–62.
13. ↩ Georgescu-Roegen, “Energy and Economic Myths,” 367.

15. ↩ Schmelzer, Vetter, and Vansintjan, The Future Is Degrowth, 295.
16. ↩ Diego Andreucci and Terrence McDonough, “Capitalism,” in Degrowth: A Vocabulary for
a New Era, eds. Giacomo D’Alisa, Federico Demaria, and Giorgos Kallis (New York:
Routledge, 2015), 59–62.
17. ↩ Schmelzer, Vetter, and Vansintjan, The Future Is Degrowth, 276.
18. ↩ Cédric Durand, Elena Hofferberth, and Matthias Schmelzer, “Planning beyond
Growth,” Political Economy Working Paper 2023/1, January 25, 2023; Parrique and Kallis,
“Socialism without Growth”; Löwy et al., “For an Ecosocialist Degrowth”; Schmelzer, Vetter,
and Vansintjan, The Future Is Degrowth.
20. ↩ Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 37–38; Kallis, Degrowth,
119.
21. ↩ Murray Bookchin, “Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology,” Green Perspectives, no. 4–5
(Summer 1987).
22. ↩ Although the term productive forces is usually reduced to technology and productivity,
its content is broader than that. See Güney Işıkara and Özgür Narin, “The Potentials and
Limits of Computing Technologies for Socialist Planning,” Science & Society 86, no. 2
(2022): 269–90 for a discussion of productive forces.
23. ↩ Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (London: Penguin, 1981), 959; André Gorz, Farewell to the
Working Class (London: Pluto, 1997), 94–104, 97.
24. ↩ Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, 96.
25. ↩ Işıkara and Narin, “The Potentials and Limits of Computing Technologies for Socialist
Planning.”
26. ↩ D’Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis, Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era.
27. ↩ Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, 30. Similarly, Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New
York: Harper and Row, 1973).
29. ↩ Latouche, Farewell to Growth.
30. ↩ Bengi Akbulut, “Degrowth,” Rethinking Marxism 33, no. 1 (2021), 101; Schmelzer,
Vetter, and Vansintjan, The Future Is Degrowth, 203–4.
31. ↩ Steffen Böhm, Ana C. Dinerstein, and André Spicer, “(Im)possibilities of Autonomy,”
Social Movement Studies 9, no. 1 (2010): 17–32.
32. ↩ Özgür Narin, “Otonomi Üzerine Değiniler [Some Thoughts on Autonomy]” in Karşı
İşgal, eds. Deniz Gürler and Ayşegül Sandıkçıoğlu Gürler (Istanbul: Siyah Beyaz Yayınları,
2016), 227–39.
33. ↩ Işıkara and Narin, “The Potentials and Limits of Computing Technologies for Socialist
Planning,” 285.
34. ↩ Planning for Entropy, “Democratic Economic Planning.”
35. ↩ The fate of planning in the USSR is not in scope of this article. It is a world-historic
event of abolishing (not avoiding) capitalist relations of production and property, and an
unprecedented experience of planning of social production in a large territory. However,
neither did the bottom-up dynamism of workers’ and peasants’ assemblies persist, nor
could the antagonism between intellectual and manual labor be eliminated. Most people
hence perceive planning as a technocratic process “and as a distant way of managing
resources and alienating people’s life.” Durand, Hofferberth, and Schmelzer, “Planning
beyond Growth.”
2023, Volume 75, Number 3 (July-August 2023)
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8/8/23, 02:06 Monthly Review | Degrowth and Socialism: Notes on Some Critical Junctures

Degrowth and Socialism: Notes on Some Critical

The dialogue, or controversy, depending on how

time, salient differences between the two

productive units have no choice but to relate to Economics at Ordu University in

Exploitation, reification of social relations, commodity fetishism, as well as an intensifying

question of their compatibility with accumulation-driven commodity production aside,

Planned Production and Living Standards

“surface appearance or ‘fetish’ of an underlying process: capital accumulation.”4 One

Planned Control of Matter and Energy Use

the precautionary principle (since such knowledge is characterized by uncertainties), the

steered consciously by empowered workers and citizens themselves. As admitted by its

position under a strict consideration of the entropy law.

efficiency rates compared to photosynthesis or current technologies?

Beyond Dichotomies: Planning and Empowerment

planning question can be partially attributed to the widespread reluctance of directly

(Re)localization: Avoiding One-Sidedness

local production, or shorter production-trade-consumption circuits. What is at stake here

productivity, and the development of productive forces in general. A reduction in labor

pioneers escapes the attention of contemporary degrowth advocates.

Localness can only become an emancipatory virtue if it is nested in a broader, interwoven

Autonomy: Whither Capitalism?

are in conflict with autonomy and self-governance.

Following Cornelius Castoriadis and Latouche, the degrowth literature associates

Local experiences of self-organization and self-governance are valuable and instructive.

autonomous. Avoiding market relations and commodification (partial decommodification

A maximum possible degree of self-management and autonomy (at diverse scales) is a

constitution and self-management, also referred to as deliberation in the degrowth

Deliberation: The Collective Worker Reappropriating

measured, expressed, or calibrated. Use-value incommensurability necessitates multiple

A shortcoming of the discussions around deliberation in degrowth literature is that they

14. ↩ Kallis, Degrowth, 80.

 On Technology and Degrowth

Also in this issue

July-August 2023 (Volume 75, Number 3) , The Editors

On Technology and Degrowth , Jason Hickel

‘Where Danger Lies…’: The Communal Alternative in Venezuela , Chris Gilbert

Planning Degrowth: The Necessity, History, and Challenges , Kent A. Klitgaard

Planning and the Ecosocialist Mode of Cooperation , Nicolas Graham

Nine Theses on Ecosocialist Degrowth , Michael Löwy

Degrowth—What’s in a Name? Assessing Degrowth’s Political Implications , Ying Chen

1. Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

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Return to the Source: Selected Texts of Amilcar Cabral, New Expanded

The Hidden History of the Korean War: New Edition

The Fault in Our SARS: COVID-19 in the Biden Era

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 2023 MONTHLY REVIEW FOUNDATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Monthly Review | Tel: 212-691-2555

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