Book Talk: Kohei Saito — Slow Down
Why, in our affluent society, do so many people live in poverty, without access to health care, working multiple jobs and are nevertheless unable to make ends meet, with no future prospects, while the planet is burning?
In his international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and climate change, subsequent calls for “sustainable growth” and a “Green New Deal” are a dangerous compromise. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity by pursuing profit based on the value of products rather than their usefulness and by putting perpetual growth above all else. It is therefore impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society–more: the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution.
Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production. In practical terms, he argues for:
the end of mass production and mass consumption
decarbonization through shorter working hours
the prioritization of essential labor over corporate profits
By returning to a system of social ownership, he argues, we can restore abundance and focus on those activities that are essential for human life, effectively reversing climate change and saving the planet.
Kohei Saito is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Tokyo. He received his PhD in philosophy from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in 2016. He was awarded the 2018 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize, the most prestigious academic award for Marxian studies, making Saito its youngest recipient. In 2020 the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science awarded him the highly prestigious JSPS prize, awarded to the top 25 scholars in the entire country under the age of 45. In 2021, Slow Down received the “Best Asian Books of the Year” prize from the Asia Book Awards.
Saito will be in conversation with Malcom Harris. Malcom Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit, and Kids These Days. His next book is about progressive political strategies and the climate crisis. He lives in DC.
