Marx, materialism and degrowth communism

Kohei Satio, author of Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth

What are your thoughts on how the environmental movement has changed?

Actually, I was pro-growth, like green growth. I was into this idea of a Green New Deal. That along with the working class movement we can push states to invest more, shifting from its small government neoliberal thing to creating better jobs, but at the same time, creating more justice and decarbonisation.

I was very much inspired by the climate justice movements around Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and so on around 2019.

That was really the moment when very radical ideas were emerging. I really had to rethink my previous optimism about the idea that socialists take power, and then we can decarbonise and even create better jobs.

But after 2022, the war in Ukraine broke out and then inflation began, and energy and food prices went up. People’s consciousness went into how do I pay for gas, electricity, rent, and food? They were really overwhelmed by daily concerns.  

Quite a big part of your book is being critical of green capitalism and green growth, in particular. Why do you think green capitalism can’t work?

The problem of green growth is that it’s not radical enough. It presupposes the logic of today’s capitalism.

It says the economy is stagnating, we are facing climate crisis. Why don’t we solve these things together? Now we have a new frontier of capital accumulation by investing in renewable energies and electric vehicles and new green technologies.

Then that will create growth, jobs and stability of society.

That sounds really great. But I think there are two problems. One is that five years ago, we really had to decarbonise in 10 years. That was a really hard project, even at that time. But I think today it’s impossible anymore. So, we are overshooting.

To decarbonise as fast as possible, investing in big electric vehicles or just building new solar panels for the sake of mining Bitcoin doesn’t make sense at all.

We do need to invest in green technologies. But we also have to plan what we invest in. We can’t simply count on the market. The market brings profit for businesses, so they will invest more. They will produce more unnecessary things.

This really bad negative tendency is inherent to capital accumulation.

The other reason is if we continue this model of green growth in the Global North we have to strengthen the unequal exchange between the Global North and South. We would be mining more in Africa or Latin America or exploiting the Chinese or Vietnamese labour force.

That’s not really a just transition for everyone.

If we are really serious about climate justice, the only way to go is that the Global North, which is much more responsible for today’s climate crisis, has to decarbonise first by accepting this idea of degrowth.

That means that we downscale and slow down our economy for the sake of the new transition.

Do you have any thoughts about what organised workers can do? You talk about social movements generally, but I’d be interested in your thoughts on trade unions

I often get the criticism that I don’t really talk about the working class. If you read my book, it’s true that I don’t really describe the centrality of class struggle for an emancipatory future. 

Why? Antonio Negri’s and Michael Hardt’s book Empire was an influential book for me. I agree that today’s capitalist domination or exploitation doesn’t simply exist in the workplace, but also in other spheres of reproduction and consumption. 

The climate justice movement really demonstrates the importance of fighting outside the factory.

But at the same time, I think without support from the trade unions and the working class movement, the growth of the environmental justice movement would never succeed. 

I don’t necessarily think that degrowth is anti-working class, as Matt Huber criticises me, because degrowth is about the creation of radical abundance – free public transport, free internet, free education, free medical care.

And degrowth also demands reduced working hours, so that’s also good.

I think the majority of the working class would enjoy a better life in the degrowth society. But at the same time, in the process of the transformation, we also change our desires.

Creating more democratic spaces in the workplace and guaranteeing the democratic participation of everyone in decision making processes. These are the ideas that might create some conditions for enriching or cultivating different kinds of desires instead of consuming more because you feel lonely and you feel stressed.

I think degrowth really needs to provide a more positive vision of the future because degrowth as such is just a negation of growth.

You’ve been quite critical of the Soviet model of communism or socialism and I think of the Chinese state

Exactly, it’s very productivist and state-orientated.

David Graeber has a very good idea of baseline communism or everyday communism. We always have, even in capitalism, space of commons and community that don’t really seek profit maximisation.

People from the left often argue for going to elections and voting for more radical candidates like Jeremy Corbyn. But I think we should first focus on creating more spaces of radical commons outside of parliament.

Your book is about Marx as well. Why do you say that Marx was a degrowth communist?

I think that socialists should learn from the degrowth side. I have been advocating eco-socialism for 10 years now. But eco-socialism can be quite growth-orientated.

There is this idea that once you take power, once you overcome capitalism, you can invest in nuclear fusion. It’s always this kind of big, gigantic technology. It requires a big state with bureaucrats and it’s undemocratic. It also consumes a lot of energy and resources.

That is the reason I started studying degrowth literature. I had to rethink my own eco-socialist ideas. And then I went back to Marx. I have been doing some research on Marx’s notebooks on natural sciences, especially in the last 15 years of his life.

So I started reading his notebooks on non-Western pre-capitalist societies. These societies were often much more egalitarian but also more sustainable.

Marx used to have a much more Eurocentric view of historical progress, that an increase in the productive forces is the condition for socialism and so on. But he changed his view because higher forces of production in Western societies actually destroyed the environment and basically exploited workers even more.

This was a kind of crisis of Marx’s historical materialism.

In the final stages of his life, he recognised that Russia and other societies can have their own ways of developing towards socialism. Western society therefore needs to learn from those non-Western societies. He really abandons his Eurocentric views.

But it’s controversial when you say Marx abandoned historical materialism

When I say abandoned historical materialism I’m basically putting forward a very simple thing.

That progress of history is driven by the development of forces of production. If this is historical materialism, I think he abandoned this.

But if you understand historical materialism as a much wider thing, meaning you always have to look at metabolism as the basis of our society and how it transforms over time. It has different modes of production, and each mode has different relations of production and different forces of production.

I would say this is a more materialist understanding of our society. If you understand historical materialism in the latter way, I have no objection.

Do you have any comments on what Donald Trump’s presidency means for degrowth?

Because of Trump our world is much more in chaos.

Sometimes I get this criticism that what Trump is trying to do is actually degrowth.

They say these MAGA people are trying to realise Saito’s degrowth ideas. They want to cut ties with these cheap Chinese products, because Chinese factories are destroying jobs in the United States. They want to cut back on fast fashion and so on.

I agree that the excessive consumption of fast fashion and all those things needs to be fixed.

But both Trump and degrwoth are a reaction to excessive neoliberal globalisation in the last 40 years.

But obviously, the direction is much different. Degrowth actually distinguishes what is necessary and what is unnecessary. But Trump doesn’t.

Trump and Elon Musk try to cut all the necessary thing, like the budget for USAID, university research and many things that are very important. People are really suffering. It’s not creating a more equal society.

And that’s coupled with the sentiment of xenophobia and a very imperialist way of thinking that if the US is fine, we don’t care about other countries.

This is not really degrowth. Degrowth is about more equal sharing of necessary or essential goods and services.

But I think this chaos could create the conditions for other societies, maybe the European Union, but also Latin America and Africa, to realise this dependence on US imperialism is really a problem now.

African countries should have more chances to build their own economy independent from the US or other imperial states.

So, it’s just a couple of months since Trump’s reforms. But maybe that might be the way that this chaos creates conditions for a degrowth transformation.