ABSTRACT
Degrowth proposals have resulted in widespread debates, controversies, and critiques. This is not surprising, as degrowth questions the growth imperative: a goal that has shaped government policies and social organization explicitly for decades and implicitly for longer. Degrowth is still widely misunderstood as simply a decrease in gross domestic product and therefore misinterpreted as recession. However, degrowth is a planned social transformation to reduce material and energy throughput and stay within ecological limits. If capitalism is an economic system where there is private property, markets to distribute goods, and money used as a basis of exchange; then they are compatible. However, degrowth would likely increase the sharing of goods and alternative/local currencies. Degrowth represents a confrontation and critique of capitalism because it directly challenges the prioritization of profits, the “treadmill of production,” and the economic growth imperative.
