-19
What do you guys think of the reddit alternatives?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
-19 points (22.9% liked)
Asklemmy
54391 readers
489 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
You argue that removing the profit motive removes overproduction, but you are treating "human needs" as a fixed, objective metric that planners can just calculate. Advancing industry inherently creates new needs. A hundred years ago, indoor plumbing was a luxury; now it is a basic need. As technology advances, the material baseline of what humans require to participate in society advances with it. A socialist state aiming to provide for an advancing society will have to extract the resources to meet those constantly expanding needs.
If your scientific planners realize that meeting those advancing needs will destroy the lithium salt flats or the deep sea, and they choose to restrict production to save the environment, they are intentionally limiting consumption. That is degrowth.
You say I am confusing capitalism with culture, but you are treating "scientific planning" like magic that can bypass thermodynamics. Planning how much to extract does not change the physical impact of the extraction itself. Whether a capitalist or a socialist planner orders the mining of cobalt, the local ecosystem is destroyed. Removing the profit motive changes who gets the wealth, but it does not change the physical reality that large scale industry consumes the natural world.
You are correct that the profit motive drives overproduction under capitalism. But once profit is gone, you still have a system that demands the continuous development of productive forces. Without a hard commitment to ecological limits, your planned economy will still consume the planet, just more equitably.
The "need motive" is not what you think it is. There is not an imperitive to endlessly expand. I am not treating scientific planning like it can bypass thermodynamics, that is a strawman. Profit doesn't just change distribution, it changes production, because profit needs more sales. This creates new demand that then is fulfilled, this is the basics of why socialist ecology is necessary.
Again, the "need motive" does not have the same endless feedback loop that the profit motive does.
You say the need motive does not have an endless feedback loop, but I think you are really ignoring how need scales with technological advancement. When socialism develops new medical treatments and/or better housing those immediately become new basic rights. The standard of living constantly rises which requires constant material input. Advancing society expands the definition of what people need to live a dignified life.
Even if we accept that the need motive lacks the artificial acceleration of the profit motive, you still have to face the baseline. Providing a modern, dignified standard of living for 8 billion people with housing, healthcare, and green energy already requires an ecological footprint that exceeds the Earth's capacity.
We do not need an endless feedback loop to hit ecological collapse. The starting line is already unsustainable. Stopping the profit loop just means we crash into the wall at a steady speed instead of accelerating. To actually live within planetary boundaries, we have to intentionally shrink the material baseline of our consumption. That is degrowth. You cannot simply assume that meeting human needs will automatically align with the Earth's carrying capacity, because right now, they do not.
I'm aware that advancements also elevate living standards. However, your conception of this necessitating destruction of the environment is incorrect, and this is not at all the same as capitalism's incessant drive towards accumulation. Degrowth as a focus is the wrong approach, advanced technology like developed rail systems actually save the environment more than car-centric infrastructure. We have to advance further to protect the environment, and combine that with climate-focuses approaches, not slow our advancement and stick with small-scale production, which is less environmentally efficient.
Degrowth is a trap. Environmentalist socialism is necessary, and is the actual way to protect and preserve the environment. Socialism will end fast fashion, incessant trinket production, and more that currently only serve to accelerate capital accumulation, while advancing technology that is more environmentally efficient.
It's really as simple as this.
It is not as simple as you make it sound, because you are treating advanced technology like it exists in a vacuum instead of recognizing the physical cost of building it.
You call degrowth a trap, but ignoring physical limits is the real trap. Degrowth doesn't mean abandoning rail for inefficient small-scale production. It means intentionally shrinking the total material throughput of the economy. We can advance rail while drastically degrowing destructive sectors like aviation, the military, and industrial meat.
The problem is that building your advanced green infrastructure still requires massive mining for copper, concrete, and rare earth metals. Those mines destroy real ecosystems whether a socialist planner orders them or a capitalist does. Efficiency per person does not change the absolute physical footprint of extracting resources for 8 billion people. If your environmentalist socialism refuses to shrink our total material consumption, it will just plan its way into the same ecological collapse.
I think if it must be put simply, your communism is just vastly more optimistic than mine.
You keep claiming that there are "physical limits," which isn't a magic spell. Of course there are physical limits, I'm not unaware of it. The problem with degrowth is that in an effort to not spend resources on improving efficiency and developing in a green direction, it counterintuitively costs more to the environment to try to keep present level technology and produce less. You inevitably end up in a Malthusian direction, turning to eco-fascism.
Yes, production of useless waste like fast fashion can and should end. Yes, much of what we produce is wasted and this must be eliminated. This is where I can align with degrowth. However, the idea that we need to work smaller and smaller rather than larger and more efficiently is where the math loses out for Degrowth.
Here's a handy example. For socialists, replacing cars with solar powered trains dramatically reduces emissions while improving transport and lowering resource cost. Degrowth doesn't take this position, though. Degrowth tries to lower present output without building onto newer. This is the trap. We can all agree on cutting out the bullshit, but the answer isn't to try to strip back what we already do.
This is why degrowth leads to ecofascism. With present output and methods, we are unsustainable headed to disaster. People do not want to lower their lifestyles significantly, yet for degrowth to work it needs a population collapse. This leads to Malthusian politics and a desire to eliminate large portions of humanity to live current lifestyles in a more sustainable manner.
The problem is, that doesn't even work. Killing off huge portions of humanity would still lead to collapse at present technology, without advancing it. People will inevitably advance, and grow again, and this time the world will well and truly end for Humanity.
I do agree that I'm more optimistic, but I also believe I am more realistic.
I think on the whole, we actually agree on the mechanics of what needs to happen: slash the destructive waste and build the green infrastructure. Functionally, eliminating massive sectors is degrowth. You call it "advancement" because of the new tech. I call it "degrowth" because the total material footprint has to physically shrink to make room for it.
Going all the way back to your original confusion, I hope I've at least cleared up what I meant by "moderately conservative communist" -> essentially someone whose primary focus is conserving the physical commons against the destructive march of both capital and unchecked productivism. Given that we've mapped out where our versions of communism diverge, do you think lemmy.ml is still a good home base for a degrowth communist like me, or is there another instance where this flavor of socialism fits better?
I think pretty much all socialists are ecological at the same time these days, so I'm not sure what identifying yourself as a degrowth communist adds, kinda like calling yourself a pro-LGBTQIA+ communist or an anticapitalist communist. Lemmy.ml is more than fine for you, I'd say, many will probably have similar issues with specifically aligning with degrowth as I did though.