Degrowth: A State of Expenditure

Degrowth is a challenge to the growth imaginary. It is a reflexive by-product of the European thoughts and socio-ecological struggles. However, it bridges with and search inspiration from sister movements that across the world struggle against the developmentalist regime and argue in favour of decolonial paths. In degrowth scholarship, the debate is open on how to implement a degrowth society. We try to suggest a specific path towards degrowth, particularly, inspired to Georges Bataille’s thought about dépense and (what he called) the “general economy”. A degrowth society, according to this key, cannot rely on the generalization of an individual effort of restraint. If we aim at escaping from the growth society, it is necessary to give back the managing of surplus at the collectivity. It is necessary to re-build a form of totality, defusing the particularization (individualization) at the basis of the bad infinity of growth. For this aim, we suggest “to use” existing institutions and state agencies, and to mobilize popular power to transform them, adopting Gramsci’s intellectual tools for thinking how a transition could evolve, overcoming a division between grassroots and policy, or bottom-up and top-down action.