ABSTRACT
In this chapter, John Barry addresses the dangerous orthodox fallacy of limitless economic growth and the need to think through the contours of a future ‘post-growth’ world. He sees a strong symbiosis between the demands of green political economy, republican-inspired arguments for workplace democratization, and critiques of the hedonist, instrumental view of work as a ‘disutility’. This is so because the foremost excuse for authoritarian managerialism and for blocking democracy in the workplace is efficiency and output maximization, that is, the productivist mantra of limitless growth directed towards consumption and profit rather than need. Against this, Barry argues that democratizing workplaces and production could, in facilitating the fulfilment of various internal goods of work (including cooperation, creativeness, personal autonomy, and democratic decision-making), counter ecologically damaging economic growth by fostering sustainable modes of human flourishing. Fostering sustainable modes of human flourishing also requires re-orienting debate away from understanding work solely in terms of formal employment and towards attention to the broader forms of unremunerated work that are vital to our social lives and ecology.
