kohei Saito. Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. Astra House. New York. 2024 (Translated version).

Introduction: Ecology Is the Opiate of the Masses!

1. Climate Change and the Imperial Mode of Living

• The Sins of the Novel Prize in Economics
• Point of No Return
• The Damage Forecast for Developed Countries
• The Great Acceleration
• The Repeated Man-Made Disasters Inflicted on the Global South
• The Imperial Mode of Living is Based on the Sacrifice of Others
• Externalization Society Renders Sacrifice Invisible
• Both Workers and the Environment are Objects of Exploitation
• The Externalization of Environmental Burden
• The Denial of Wrongdoing and Procrastination's Just Deserts
• Are Developed Countries Kinder to the Environment? The Netherlands Fallacy
• The Anthropocene and the Exhaustion of the Periphery
• Wasting Time After the End of the Cold War
• Marx's Climate Crisis Prophecy
• Technological Shift -- Disturbing the Ecosystem
• Spatial Shift -- Externalization and Ecological Imperialism
• Temporal Shift -- Apres Moi. Le Deluge!
• The Periphery's Double Burden
• The World Will End Before Capitalism Does
• The Crisis Made Visible
• The Great Divergence

2. The Limits of Green Keynesianism

• The Green New Deal -- A New Hope?
• The Business Opportunity of "Green Economic Growth"
• SDGs -- Is Unlimited Growth Possible After All?
• Planetary Boundaries
• Can Carbon Dioxide Emissions be Reduced as the Economy Grows?
• What is Decoupling?
• The Need for Absolute Reduction of Emissions
• The Growth Trap
• The Productivity Trap
• Decoupling is an Illusion
• What's Really Happening is Recoupling
• Increasing Efficiency Increases Environmental Burden -- The Jevons Paradox
• The Power of the Market Cannot Stop Climate Change
• The Huge Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emitted By the Rich
• The True Cost of the Electric Car
• Ecological Imperialism in the Anthropocene
• Techno-Optimism is Not the Solution
• Can New Technologies Remove Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?
• The "Intellectual Game" Played By the IPCC
• The Road to Extinction is Paved With Good Intentions
• The Myth of Dematerialization
• Is Stopping Climate Change Impossible?
• Choosing Degrowth

3. Shooting Down Degrowth Capitalism

• From Economic Growth to Degrowth
• Doughnut Economics -- the Social Foundation and the Ecological Ceiling
• What is Needed to Rectify Injustice?
• Are Economic Growth and Happiness Really Correlated?
• Toward a Just Distribution of Resources
• Capitalism Can Never Bring About Global Justice
• Four Choices, Four Futures:
  1. Climate fascism
  2. Barbarism
  3. Climate Maoism
  4. X
• Why Can't We Achieve Degrowth Under Capitalism?
• Why Does Poverty Continue?
• Generation Z's Criticism of Capitalism
• The Green New Deal As Compromise
• Degrowth-Curious
• The Limits of the Degrowth Imagined By Previous Generations
• Japan's Degrowth Optimists
• The Starting Point For a New Theory of Degrowth
• Degrowth Capitalism Can Never Exist
• Were Japan's "Lost Decades" Degrowth?
• Reexamining the Meaning of Degrowth
• Toward a Free, Equal, and Just Theory of Degrowth!
• Resurrecting Marx in the Anthropocene

4. Marx in the Anthropocene

• Rehabilitating Marx
• A Third Way -- the Commons
• Managing the Commons Known as the Planet
• Reconstructing the Commons Through Communism
• Social Security Born of Free Association
• A New Collection of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels -- the Mega Project
• Early Marx As Productivist
• The Unfinished Capital and the Major Shift of Marx's Later Thought
• The Distinctive Features of the Progress View of History: Productivism and Eurocentrism
• The Problem with Productivism
• The Birth of Marx's Theory of Metabolism -- the Ecological Shift in Capital
• The Metabolic Disruption Caused By Capitalism
• The Irreparable Rift
• Marx's Deeper Research Into Ecology After Capital
• A Clean Break From Productivism
• Toward an Ecosocialism that Fosters Sustainable Economic Development
• Shaking the Foundations of the Progressive View of History
• Capital and Eurocentralism
• The Orientalism of Early Marx -- Said's Critique
• Looking to Non-Western and Precapitalist Societies
• Marx's Clean Break From Eurocentrism -- the Letter to Vera Zasulich
• The Evidence of the "Preface to the Second Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto"
• The New Face of Marx's Communism
• What Delayed Marx's Completion of Capital?
• Civilization Collapse and Communal Survival
• Encountering Egalitarianism in the Commune
• The Basis of a New Communism -- Sustainability and Social Equality
• Rereading the Letter to Zasulich -- an Ecological View
• Capitalism's Battle With Ecologists
• The New Rationalization -- Toward the Sustainable Management of the Earth
• The Real Theoretical Shift -- a Transformed Communism
• Marx's Movement Toward Degrowth
• Degrowth Communism as the Ultimate Goal
• This New Weapon Called Degrowth Communism
• A New Reading of the Critique of the Gotha Program
• Fulfilling Marx's Last Wish

5. The Wishful Thinking Known as Accelerationism

• Toward Capital for the Anthropocene
• What is Accelerationism?
• Ecomodernism Strikes Back
• Whose Politics Are "Folk Politics"?
• The Wages of Politicalism -- Will going to the Polls Change the World?
• Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizens' Assemblies
• We, Whom Subsumption by Capital Has Rendered Powerless
• From Subsumption to Hegemony
• Technology and Power
• Andre Gorz on Technology
• Locking Technologies are Inadequate For Global Dangers
• Technology Robs Us of Our Imaginations
• Imagining a Different Abundance

6. Capitalism's Scarcity Communism's Abundance

• Capitalism Produces Scarcity
• Primitive Accumulation Creates Artificial Scarcity
• Dividing the Commons Made Capitalism Take Flight
• From the Commons of Hydropower to the Monopoly of Fossil Capital
• The Commons Were Abundant
• Private Riches Diminish Public Wealth
• The Opposition Between Use-Value and Value
• Not the Tragedy of the Commons, the Tragedy of the Commodity
• The Problem is Not Just Neoliberalism
• Scarcity and Disaster Capitalism
• Modern Workers are Wage Slaves
• The Power of Debt
• The Relative Scarcity Produced By Branding and Advertisements
• Reclaiming the Commons is Communism
• The "Private Citizen-ization of the Commons
• Workers' Co-ops -- Returning the Means of Production to the Commons
• Democratizing the Economy With Workers' Co-ops
• A Radical Abundance District From the GDP
• The Plentiful Economy of Degrowth Communism
• Good and Bad Freedom
• What the Natural Sciences Don't Teach
• Self-Limitation for the Future

7. Degrowth Communism Will Save the World

• The COVID-19 Pandemic is Another Product of the Anthropocene
• Democracy Sacrificed By the State
• The Dependence of the State Caused By Commodification
• When States Cease to Function
• Prioritizing Use-value Over Value
• Communism or Barbarism?
• Thomas Piketty's Conversion to Socialism
• The Crucial Importance of Self-Management and Comanagement
• How to Heal the Metabolic Rift
• Revolution Begins At the Site of Production and Labor
• Small Seeds of Change, Sown in Detroit
• Social Movements Allow Us to Transcend the Imperial Mode of Living
• Capital In the Anthropocene
• The First Pillar of Degrowth Communism: Transitioning to a Use-Value-Based Economy
• The Second Pillar of Degrowth Communism: Shortening Work Hours
• The Third Pillar of Degrowth Communism: Abolishing the Uniform Division of Labor
• The Fourth Pillar of Degrowth Communism: Democratizing the Production Process
• The Fifth Pillar of Degrowth Communism: Prioritizing Essential Work
• Bullshit Jobs Vs. Essential Work
• The Revolt of the Caring Classes
• Implementing Self-Management
• Degrowth Communism Will Heal the Metabolic Rift
• Not Back to Nature, But Toward a New Rationalization
• The Climate Emergency Declaration of the Fearless City, Barcelona
• From Social Movement To Local Political Party Countering Climate Change Creates Horizontal Solidarity
• Participatory Society Realized Through Cooperatives
• Toward an Economic Model That Brings About Climate Justice
• Municipalism Transcending National Borders
• Learning From the Global South
• The Ineffectiveness of Enlightenment
• Restoring Food Sovereignty
• From the Global South to the World
• Challenging the Imperial Mode of Living
• The Lever of Climate Justice
• Barcelona Aiming For Degrowth
• The Problem With the Current Left
• Toward Radical Abundance
• Rejecting the Politics of Buying Time
• Reforming the Trinity: Economics, Politics, and the Environment
• The Great Leap Toward a Sustainable, Just Society

Conclusion: How to Prevent the End of History