Post-Growth Living

For an Alternative Hedonism

240 pages

English language

Published April 8, 2020 by Verso Books.

ISBN:
978-1-78873-887-3
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1 star (1 review)

An urgent and passionate plea for a new and ecologically sustainable vision of the good life

The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities, isn’t only destroying the world, it is damaging us and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on?

In Alternative Prosperity, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth. Instead, Soper calls for renewed emphasis on the joys of being that are currently being denied, and shows the way to creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using …

1 edition

Terminal Capitalist Realism

1 star

For some reason, I've found myself reading a lot of radlib books this summer. This book, despite claiming to be leftist, certainly earns its spot with the other radlib books I've read. As my title says it is terminally capitalist realist in that even when it acknowledges the failures of postwar social democracy and correctly articulates that it failed because it gave the bourgeoise time to fight back against it, this book argues that a return to such a system, albeit with a lower consumption rate, is the best that we can hope for. Furthermore, although it correctly notes that degrowth is antithetical to capitalism, it still advocates for social democracy as a means for degrowth because then the capitalism will be "regulated". Finally, it advocates for class collaboration because "the bourgeoise will be affected by climate change too" and seems outright hostile to the idea of an organic working-class …