Degrowth argues that indefinite economic growth is both ecologically impossible on a finite planet and a poor proxy for well-being, and calls for a planned, democratic reduction of production and consumption in wealthy economies toward a steady-state economy that fits within ecological limits.
Its key distinction is between prosperity and throughput — the flow of energy and raw materials through the economy. Beyond a certain threshold, it argues, more output stops adding to human flourishing while still consuming the planet, so the aim becomes sufficiency rather than expansion: shorter working hours, universal public provision, repair over replacement, and well-being measured by health, security, and time rather than GDP.
It draws on older roots — the steady-state economics of Herman Daly, the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972), Georgescu-Roegen's thermodynamics of the economy — and revived as décroissance in France before becoming an international movement (Latouche, Hickel, Jackson) with a growing academic literature and its own conferences.
It is deliberately a direction rather than a fixed blueprint, and its proponents span reformist and anti-capitalist positions, united less by a single programme than by the rejection of growth as the organizing aim of economic life — which sets it against almost the entire existing political spectrum, left and right.
Its critics, including many on the left, argue that 'degrowth' is a self-defeating slogan, that green growth and rapid clean-energy deployment are the realistic path, and that deliberately shrinking output risks unemployment and hardship, especially for the poor; degrowthers reply that they target wealthy overconsumption and rich-world throughput, not the basic needs of the global South.
Like nearly every position it maps, the instrument quietly assumes a growing economy as the neutral background of politics. Degrowth attacks that background assumption itself, which is why it registers as an extreme rather than as the rejection of a shared premise the other entries never state.
Collective-leaning and liberty-side, emphasizing democratic and non-market provision over both central planning and the market.
Equality-leaning, pairing redistribution with sufficiency and relying heavily on participatory institutions as guarantors.
Strongly change-oriented, since it rejects an aim — growth — shared across almost the entire existing political spectrum.
Universalist, addressed to wealthy economies on behalf of the whole planet and future generations, with a thin solidaristic community.
Balanced, with positive duties framed as sufficiency and care, extended to future generations as much as to present members.
- Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth, 2007
- Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, 2020