bryceemanuel 's review for:

Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kōhei Saitō

5.0

challenging hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

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Completely floored by this book! Saito lays out a Marxist analysis of what the current social structure calls for, as it relates to a restructuring of the status quo. This is a robust manifesto filled with evidence based research to provide context for degrowth. Saito’s evidence is hard to balk at when examining the current economic climate and how economic inequality continues to grow exponentially, despite capitalisms promise to uplift the working class from this. Saito doesn’t just leave with theory either, there are specific tenets toward degrowth, that can and have been implemented across the world, such as democratization of the production process and cooperative management of municipal infrastructure. Change of this current system, economic and social, is a tough lift, but it’s not insurmountable. (ALSO LOVED how the environment was a central piece of this philosophy, we don’t need to spend time ideating on focusing on environmental issues specifically, because everything is an issue relating to sustainability. A ideological shift must occur.)