
The Future Is Degrowth
A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Ulf Bjorklund
About this listen
Economic growth isn't working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it.
Not only in society at large, but also on the left, we are held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for emancipatory Green New Deals or postcapitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all.
This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. It discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy. It charts a path forward through policies that democratize the economy, "now-topias" that create free spaces for experimentation, and counter-hegemonic movements that make it possible to break with the logic of growth. Degrowth perspectives offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system.
©2022 Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
-
Less Is More
- How Degrowth Will Save the World
- By: Jason Hickel
- Narrated by: Ben Crystal, Clifford Samuel
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause. Capitalism demands perpetual expansion, which is devastating the living world. There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth.
-
-
Interesting
- By SEB24 on 04-13-25
By: Jason Hickel
-
End Times
- Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
- By: Peter Turchin
- Narrated by: Robin McAlpine
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
-
-
Boomer History
- By Kevin on 08-12-23
By: Peter Turchin
-
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
- By: Kate Raworth
- Narrated by: Kate Raworth
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That's why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.
-
-
Economic romanticizing, not economic thinking
- By LAM X LUU on 04-05-18
By: Kate Raworth
-
Not Too Late
- Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
- By: Rebecca Solnit - editor, Thelma Young Lutunatabua - editor
- Narrated by: Katherine Littrell, Robin Miles, Kyla Garcia, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An energizing case for hope about the climate comes from Rebecca Solnit, called “the voice of the resistance” by the New York Times, and climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, along with a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. T
-
-
Thank you!
- By Susan C. on 04-13-23
By: Rebecca Solnit - editor, and others
-
Bullshit Jobs
- A Theory
- By: David Graeber
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”. It went viral. After a million online views in 17 different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.
-
-
Incredibly disappointing...
- By Jordan Burton on 12-21-18
By: David Graeber
-
If We Burn
- The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
- By: Vincent Bevins
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
-
-
The final word on horizontalism on the left
- By Patrick Foote on 02-25-24
By: Vincent Bevins
-
Less Is More
- How Degrowth Will Save the World
- By: Jason Hickel
- Narrated by: Ben Crystal, Clifford Samuel
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause. Capitalism demands perpetual expansion, which is devastating the living world. There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth.
-
-
Interesting
- By SEB24 on 04-13-25
By: Jason Hickel
-
End Times
- Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
- By: Peter Turchin
- Narrated by: Robin McAlpine
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
-
-
Boomer History
- By Kevin on 08-12-23
By: Peter Turchin
-
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
- By: Kate Raworth
- Narrated by: Kate Raworth
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That's why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.
-
-
Economic romanticizing, not economic thinking
- By LAM X LUU on 04-05-18
By: Kate Raworth
-
Not Too Late
- Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
- By: Rebecca Solnit - editor, Thelma Young Lutunatabua - editor
- Narrated by: Katherine Littrell, Robin Miles, Kyla Garcia, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An energizing case for hope about the climate comes from Rebecca Solnit, called “the voice of the resistance” by the New York Times, and climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, along with a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. T
-
-
Thank you!
- By Susan C. on 04-13-23
By: Rebecca Solnit - editor, and others
-
Bullshit Jobs
- A Theory
- By: David Graeber
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”. It went viral. After a million online views in 17 different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.
-
-
Incredibly disappointing...
- By Jordan Burton on 12-21-18
By: David Graeber
-
If We Burn
- The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
- By: Vincent Bevins
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
-
-
The final word on horizontalism on the left
- By Patrick Foote on 02-25-24
By: Vincent Bevins
-
The Ministry for the Future
- A Novel
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
-
-
Great ideas, uneven narration
- By depthpsychologist on 12-09-20
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia
- By: David Graeber
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.
-
-
A fun historical analysis of Pirate political systems
- By Ian Turner on 01-30-23
By: David Graeber
-
The Heat Will Kill You First
- Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
- By: Jeff Goodell
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow.
-
-
Eminently Skipable for Climate Science Believers
- By Chad on 07-15-23
By: Jeff Goodell
-
Let This Radicalize You
- Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
- By: Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue, and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
-
-
together, we fight back
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-24
By: Kelly Hayes, and others
-
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer - translator
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 24 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
-
-
The Financial Times' Critique Doesn't Detract
- By Madeleine on 05-22-14
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
-
Utopia for Realists
- How We Can Build the Ideal World
- By: Rutger Bregman
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history and beyond the traditional left-right divides as he champions ideas whose time has come.
-
-
Doesn't address the real question
- By Jen on 07-06-19
By: Rutger Bregman
-
The Day the World Stops Shopping
- How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves
- By: J.B. MacKinnon
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The economy says we must always consume more. The planet says we consume too much. Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to Earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain.
-
-
Thought Provoking
- By Tyler on 06-29-24
By: J.B. MacKinnon
-
The Darker Nations
- A People's History of the Third World
- By: Vijay Prashad, Howard Zinn - editor
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement - the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the 20th century attempt to knit together the world's impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.
-
-
So informative!
- By krishna chaitanya on 01-03-22
By: Vijay Prashad, and others
-
The Three Ages of Water
- Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future
- By: Peter Gleick
- Narrated by: Jonathan Beville
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Three Ages of Water, Peter Gleick guides us through the long, fraught history of our relationship to this precious resource. Water has shaped civilizations and empires, and driven centuries of advances in science and technology—from agriculture to aqueducts, steam power to space exploration—and progress in health and medicine.
-
-
tries to do too much and ends up doing too little
- By Josh on 07-20-23
By: Peter Gleick
-
The Sovereign Individual
- Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
- By: James Dale Davidson, Peter Thiel - preface, William Rees-Mogg
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the best seller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization.
-
-
Unfortunately distopian for mosty of humanity
- By Phil on 09-29-20
By: James Dale Davidson, and others
-
Power and Progress
- Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity
- By: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout history, technological change — whether it takes the form of agricultural improvements in the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, or today’s artificial intelligence — has been viewed as a main driver of prosperity, working in the public interest. The reality, though, is that technology is shaped by what powerful people want and believe, generating riches, social respect, cultural prominence, and further political voice for those already powerful. For most of the rest of us, there is the illusion of progress.
-
-
A different take on Technology’s impact
- By Ricardo Ernst on 07-23-23
By: Daron Acemoglu, and others