ABSTRACT
Neoliberal capitalism does not prioritize the sustaining of life but the creation and maximization of capital. The self-regulating market fuelled by the motive of self-interest has brought about ecological destruction, poverty, and decay of politics. A different incentive should inform economic agency which will put the economy in the service of life. Aristotle modelled citizens’ relations on friendship, namely a genuine mutual active concern for the others’ well-being which presupposed political equality and the limiting of economic inequalities. Marx situated political friendship in the economic territory by conceiving material production in terms of reciprocal non-alienated labour. The primordial conception of the good life that political friendship implies calls for autonomous political-democratic praxis within a thriving political community. This praxis in the economic field is translated into collective-democratic planning of production and distribution of social wealth, as well as of direct caring labour. Degrowth movement practises political friendship by deviating from the capitalist norm; however, it should decisively question basic capitalist institutions in order to accomplish the post-capitalist future that aspires. The liberating democratic action and spontaneous human sociality that political friendship encapsulates point to a decentralized-democratic economy of a low metabolism, a real economy meant as an Aristotelian household management.
