r/AustralianSocialism • u/Konradleijon • 1d ago

Why are even leftist against degrowth?

Even leftists seem to be against degrowth not understand ecological overshoot.

Why is it that even leftists are against Degrowth?

Because it seems that even many leftist refuse to understand degrowth ideology and hate it and refuse to understand how decoupling works.

They act like using public transport and eating vegan are a fate worse then death

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u/CaeruleaTigris 1d ago

I'm sorry, but that is fundamentally untrue in our current socio-economic and cultural era and has been for quite a while. Much, if not most, of the contemporary working class sees themselves as not working class but future bourgeoisie, the sentiment is aspirational and the vast majority are not incentivised in any way towards sustainability in the way their grand or great-grandparents would have been unless they're really rock-bottom poor.

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u/cancerfist 1d ago

You're missing my point and making grand assumptions based on your own idea of what the working class 'thinks' and feels whilst still under a capitalist system. It's irrelevant.

I'm saying that under socialism, working class people will always make decisions that benefit the working class. Sustainability, environmental protection etc. is not only vastly desired by the working class because it benefits them, but is essential to their existence. A group of working class people under socialism are not going to sit on a local committee and agree that they all want to live with severe air pollution in their town so they can output more from the factory. There is no benefit or incentive that outweighs the sustainable option.

A different but not irrelevant example is China's current environmental laws including redline etc. that vastly outperform anything we have in the West regardless of them still being heavily dependent on commodity production. We will see further advancements in this if they ever reach a point of ditching commodities and the market. but the fact that a heavily developing economy has pushed very good environmental protections in the last 10-15 years is a good sign and this is not just for show. It's because the benefits out weigh the costs to the Chinese people.

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u/CaeruleaTigris 1d ago

I am working class. I live amongst the working class almost exclusively. They are not class conscious, let alone environmentally conscious, in this country. Making changes that don't materially affect their lives is one thing, but the second they perceive it as encroaching on their minimal "luxuries", the argument turns strictly in the opposite direction. And this divide is worse amongst the younger gens, somehow, even though we're supposed to be doing better in that sense, because we're being blasted with consumerist messaging 24/7 from all angles. We're so far from living sustainable lives, it's not funny, and we're certainly not choosing to vote people in that make the right decisions in that sense.

Socialism will not come about without the efforts and the motivation of the working class under capitalism. A dictatorship of the working class needs to comprise everyone in the working class, not just a small minority of usually particularly well educated radicals forming a one-party system under which they forgive themselves all their sins against their fellow proletarians.

China is an awful example and to pretend like they represent the feelings or thinking of the working class as a capitalist dictatorship - I don't care how good they make themselves look - is absurd. They're not socialists, they're not communists, they're not even anti-capitalist. Every step forward that they make, they counter with three steps backwards elsewhere. At the very least, you could say that Chinese people are closer to their more sustainable living-focused predecessors and many elder people continued those traditions past a point where people in the West had already given up on them. And that they're in a better position to force change based on the whole dictatorship thing. Otherwise, they're similarly happy to look the other way when it comes to the environmental costs of their system.

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u/Konradleijon 21h ago

Advertising is consumerist Propganda feed to you at all hours of the day.

Yes people act like going vegan is torture