The need to align research on economic organisations with degrowth

For an ever-increasing number of scholars, the continued ecological degradation and intensified climate change are the result of the pursuit for economic growth. The degrowth discourse acknowledges that the growth imperative is due to capitalism’s need to accumulate. Businesses are forced to accumulate through continuous profit seeking in order to survive in the competition created and constantly facilitated by the capitalist economy. We argue that businesses can never become fully sustainable as they are the fundamental form of capitalist economic organisation. From a degrowth perspective, ‘true’ sustainability is inherently incompatible with capitalism, meaning businesses are thus similarly incompatible with degrowth. Utilising Gramsci’s terminology of hegemony, we argue that growth-based capitalism is society’s current hegemony whereas degrowth represents a sustainable counter-hegemony. Businesses therefore reproduce this unsustainable hegemony. This chapter argues there is a need for a research agenda on alternative forms of economic organisation in line with degrowth’s counter hegemony. This new research agenda must recognise degrowth’s incompatible with any capitalist economic manifestations on the microeconomic level. Hence, this research agenda means decidedly leaving behind any attempts to find a common ground between degrowth and capitalism, its structures and agents.
You are not authenticated to view the full text of this chapter or article.