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Kantolope reviewed Less Is More by Jason Hickel

Stick to Your Thesis

3 stars

This book, ostensibly, argues that capital's endless pursuit of growth will only end in ecological catastrophe and that only by rejecting perpetual growth, and by extension capital, can we live truly fulfilling lives. I have no problem with this, and actually support this thesis. The problem arises when the author attempts to try his hand at history and bourgeois philosophy. As I've said previously, he attributes outright malevolence to actions that could easily be explained by trying to do well within imperialist/colonialist systems. Furthermore, it's painfully clear that the author has only read the wikipedia articles on the philosophies he critiques. This is doubly unfortunate because I actually agree with his conclusions regarding bourgeois philosophy and how it has historically been used. The analysis is just not up to snuff unfortunately. With a little more time and effort, this could have been great. As it is, it's just okay.

pdotb reviewed Less Is More by Jason Hickel

Might even be six stars

5 stars

Really readable introduction to degrowth. Covers the current state of climate change (which is, inevitably, pretty grim, but nowhere near Wallace-Wells), mentions the Anthropocene but then makes it clear that the term is misleading as it suggests we're all equally to blame. This segues into a history of capitalism through enclosure and colonialism which I found much more understandable than my previous attempts to read up on this. There's so much great stuff in here -- not necessarily new, but just well written -- about artificial scarcity and the growth imperative and the failings of GDP and so on. Also a nice discussion of ontology and the shift from animism to dualism, and how that makes exploiting the natural world seem, well, natural. The chapter on technology includes a disquieting explanation of BECCS and how that's the basis for so many mitigation plans, and also covers the problems of just …

Really readable introduction to degrowth. Covers the current state of climate change (which is, inevitably, pretty grim, but nowhere near Wallace-Wells), mentions the Anthropocene but then makes it clear that the term is misleading as it suggests we're all equally to blame. This segues into a history of capitalism through enclosure and colonialism which I found much more understandable than my previous attempts to read up on this. There's so much great stuff in here -- not necessarily new, but just well written -- about artificial scarcity and the growth imperative and the failings of GDP and so on. Also a nice discussion of ontology and the shift from animism to dualism, and how that makes exploiting the natural world seem, well, natural. The chapter on technology includes a disquieting explanation of BECCS and how that's the basis for so many mitigation plans, and also covers the problems of just greening growth by, say, extracting huge amounts of lithium for all the batteries we'd need.

The book turns much more positive/hopeful towards the end, as it points out how little value growth, past a certain point, provides for well-being. Really, it all becomes a matter of distribution and public services at that point, and that's what's missing under neoliberalism.

It's perhaps indicative of my experience of reading this book that I borrowed the ebook from the library and then realised that I'd highlighted about half the text! That might just be a failing in my highlighting technique, but I prefer to think that it's because I kept reading paragraphs and thinking "yes! that's it!".

Anyway, highly, highly recommended.