SLOW DOWN: THE DEGROWTH MANIFESTO
by Kohei Saito o-o-o-o-c
Exactly the right book at the very right time, although Kohei Saito's SLOW DOWN argues that we're getting dangerously close to no longer being able to mitigate the effects of climate change. We must act now, basically. No half-measures, no pretenses, and no avoiding the root of the matter—which isn't, as Saito makes clear, the human race in general as is often suggested by Anthropocene-narratives, nor is it one particular product of human activity, like say, carbon emissions, as is often suggested by advocates of “Green New Deal” policies, but rather it is a particular economic system that pushes for endless growth and thus insists on the kind of predatory resource extraction that spells doom for ecosystems and [eventually] the planet as a whole. The biggest beneficiaries and drivers of said particular economic system are of course the CEOs and very top executives of mega-corporations and financial institutions: the top 10% of the world's richest people. Saito backs his position with hard data, but is able to make his book anything but dry, with each chapter divided into short 1-to-2-page segments—each paragraph, each sentence sculpted down to minimal perfection. No word is too much and nowhere does Saito waste time dancing around his arguments. He gets to the core of the matter, just as we all should before it's too late.
The economic form that is the culprit of course is Capitalism, which Saito spells out from the get-go. About a third of the book gets into the details of how and why Capitalism and its top beneficiaries are the root cause of planetary destruction, another third towards how and why most proposed solutions to date avoid the root cause, and final third for paving the way towards the only solution we have in our arsenal: Degrowth Communism.
“Communism” is a word that is of course scary now due to its historical association with the Soviet Union, but Saito is able to separate his vision of Degrowth Communism from anything we might've known before; he envisions a system based on democratic management that works towards economic degrowth to levels that do not pose a heavy toll upon resources. A system that guarantees perpetual abundance for all through efficient distribution of said resources. A fine and actually achievable vision, the way Saito lays it all out, but any insistence on including the word “communism” in any vision for a just, fair world will only result in unnecessarily escalating the slope of what is too much of an uphill battle as it were. No need to waste time or energy on a clash of semantics. If there's one thing we can learn from Capitalism, it's knowing when to rebrand.
The other criticism I have of Saito is his utter idolization of the ground walked on by Karl Marx. The number of times you will read “Marx said this” or “Marx did that” can get a little tiresome. I understand that Saito's study of Marx's life, writing and notes helped inform much of his theories, but saying “because Marx did this then it must be right” isn't at all fruitful, and some parts of the book can certainly come off that way even if Saito doesn't say it outright. Luckily, his theories are backed by far more relevant data than the work of Marx, which helps make Saito's argument debate-proof in the face of potential opposition.
“Politics does not exist separately from the economy—rather, it is subordinate to it,” proclaims Kohei Saito, which means any attempt to affect change through the political mechanisms of representative democracy is doomed to fail. “Politicians are necessarily creatures who cannot think about problems outside their relevance to the next election,” says Saito. “Furthermore, their decision making is hindered by donations and lobbying by major industry.” In short, we need a revolution.
Kohei Saito's SLOW DOWN explains why, how, and to what end. A must read.
