I haven’t read Saito’s books, or looked too deeply into degrowth as a movement. I just read this article and thought it made some good arguments against what it claims are Saito’s understandings of Marx. I’m not sure I agree with everything, but I thought it was interesting enough to share.
Thank you for that. I’d heard so much good stuff about Saito before this article, which is why I was so hesitant to trust that the author of this article was actually being genuine about Saito’s work. And since reading the article and posting it here, I’ve gotten a lot of comments informing me of the article-writer’s general opinions/tendencies, which make me distrust him even more.
But I think you’re the first person to actually critique the article itself, probably since you’ve actually read Saito! With this, I think now there is no part of this article that can be salvaged or defended. The author is trash, his general criticism of degrowth is trash, and his specific criticism of Saito is trash.