Recession looms across the West, as central banks keep raising interest rates to battle inflation. This year, a short-lived British government tanked the U.K. economy in a desperate attempt to boost growth. And the climate crisis—fueled by the effects of economic activity—made its presence undeniably visible across the world. Meanwhile, rising inequality continues to demonstrate how years of economic growth have not delivered higher wages or better living standards for many people.
Little wonder that the debate around “degrowth”—abandoning economic growth as society’s goal—is flaring up these days.
In Japan, the Marxist academic and degrowth advocate Kohei Saito has unexpectedly become a best-selling author with an environmentally-driven call for limits on mass production and consumption: With over half a million copies sold in the generally conservative nation, Capital in the Anthropocene will become available in English next year. This year also saw the publication of Limits and Beyond, a 50-years-on update to the seminal and highly controversial report Limits to Growth, in which MIT scientists predicted societal collapse if growth trends in population and resource depletion are not abated.
