I haven't read the article but there was an argument that I put to a small-time content creator who is an unaligned communist that is big on degrowth when they discussed how they hadn't seen anything from MLs on the necessity of degrowth.

My argument is as follows:

I live in a settler-colonial state that is "post"-industrial. She definitely does. You probably do too.

When the revolution comes, I see the absolute necessity of reindustrialisation of these countries because:

a) Blockades and grey zone warfare prosecuted by reactionary countries making self-reliance a material necessity

b) Even without the issue of economic warfare, a first world post-revolutionary society doesn't just get to rest on its laurels and be like "Welp, we have socialised the means of production here..." while relying on imports and the imperialist world order to ensure that we still get our cheap treats

c) There is an immense debt that my country owes the people who it colonised. There is another immense debt that it owes to the entire world by participating in imperialism and reaping its benefits. Your country probably has this debt too.

Let's just imagine that a so-called "service economy" could actually exist after the revolution. (I'm deeply skeptical about this but whatever.) A service economy is built upon the backbone of the worst forms of exploitation in the developing world.

What good are reparations if you're still exploiting those who you pay reparations to?

What does it even look like - do you turn a profit that is something like hundreds or thousands of times more than what you paid for the products and then return a portion back to those farmers, miners, factory workers etc in the developing world? Is that the model that we're fighting for? What about the colonised peoples - do we just smile at them and say "We achieved socialism - you're welcome! 🤗" and that's the end of it?

I'm not opposed to environmental protection efforts or anything. In fact, I think that if my country's domestic demand was largely met by its own domestic production, this would necessitate a radical reshaping of things like repairability and the repair industry, replaceability, planned longevity displacing planned obsolescence, and consumption as a whole because when the economic field is equalised it's simply not going to be viable for people to buy a get a new smartphone every year or two imo.

But I just don't buy the idea that degrowth is either the answer nor that it's a viable strategy.

Tbh I'm deeply suspicious of it because I believe that it's liable to be co-opted by imperialist countries so they can kick away the ladder and maintain their hegemonic position over the rest of the world. It's probably happening right now idk, I haven't been following it closely.