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'A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times ... If you're looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.' KATE RAWORTH, economist and author of Doughnut EconomicsA Financial Times Book of the Year______________________________________Our planet is in trouble. But how can we reverse the current crisis and create a sustainable future? The answer is: DEGROWTH.Less is More is the wake-up call we need. By shining a light on ecological breakdown and the system that's causing it, Hickel shows how we can bring our economy back into balance with the living world and build a thriving society for all. This is our chance to change course, but we must act now.______________________________________'A masterpiece... Less is More covers centuries and continents, spans academic disciplines, and connects contemporary and ancient events in a way which cannot be put down until it's finished.' DANNY DORLING, Professor of Geography, University of Oxford'Jason is able to personalise the global and swarm the mind in the way that insects used to in abundance but soon shan't unless we are able to heed his beautifully rendered warning.' RUSSELL BRAND'Jason Hickel shows that recovering the commons and decolonizing nature, cultures, and humanity are necessary conditions for hope of a common future in our common home.' VANDANA SHIVA, author of Making Peace With the Earth'This is a book we have all been waiting for. Jason Hickel dispels ecomodernist fantasies of "green growth". Only degrowth can avoid climate breakdown. The facts are indisputable and they are in this book.' GIORGIS KALLIS, author of Degrowth'Capitalism has robbed us of our ability to even imagine something different; Less is More gives us the ability to not only dream of another world, but also the tools by which we can make that vision real.' ASAD REHMAN, director of War on Want'One of the most important books I have read ... does something extremely rare: it outlines a clear path to a sustainable future for all.' RAOUL MARTINEZ, author of Creating Freedom'Jason Hickel takes us on a profound journey through the last 500 years of capitalism and into the current crisis of ecological collapse. Less is More is required reading for anyone interested in what it means to live in the Anthropocene, and what we can do about it.' ALNOOR LADHA, co-founder of The Rules'Excellent analysis...This book explores not only the systemic flaws but the deeply cultural beliefs that need to be uprooted and replaced.' ADELE WALTON

Review

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World is Jason Hickel's ambitious synthesis of ecological economics, world history, and political philosophy into a single, urgent argument: that perpetual economic growth under capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with a liveable planet. Drawing on his background as an economic anthropologist from Eswatini who has worked extensively in southern Africa, Hickel weaves together personal memory, rigorous data, and sweeping historical narrative to make the case that what we call the ecological crisis is really a crisis of our economic system — and, beneath that, a crisis of our very theory of being.

The book is structured in two halves. Part One, "More is Less," traces how capitalism arose not through some natural transition from feudalism but through organised violence — enclosure, colonisation, and the Atlantic slave trade — all of which depended on the philosophical project of separating humans from nature. Hickel's retelling of European history from the perspective of the peasant revolutions of the 1350s–1500s is particularly compelling. He shows that the "golden age of the European proletariat" — with high wages, short working hours, and democratic commons management — was deliberately crushed by elites who then created the conditions of artificial scarcity that became capitalism's engine. The chapter on dualism, tracing the intellectual line from Plato through Bacon and Descartes, demonstrates how nature had to be philosophically killed before it could be economically exploited.

Part Two, "Less is More," pivots to solutions. Hickel systematically dismantles the green growth fantasy — the idea that we can decouple GDP from resource use through technology alone. Drawing on studies by Dittrich, the UNEP, and Ward's team in Australia, he presents what amounts to a scientific consensus: absolute decoupling of GDP growth from material and energy use is not feasible on a global scale. The Jevons Paradox, wherein efficiency gains are swallowed by the growth imperative, is shown to operate as reliably now as it did in 1865. Hickel is equally devastating on BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage), the speculative technology on which the Paris Agreement's climate models quietly depend — a technology that even its inventor says has been "misused."

The constructive programme Hickel offers is carefully calibrated to seem neither utopian nor punitive. His five concrete steps — ending planned obsolescence, curbing advertising, shifting from ownership to usership, eliminating food waste, and scaling down ecologically destructive industries — are presented with empirical evidence showing they would reduce material throughput without harming human welfare. The proposal to shorten the working week, fund universal public services, and reduce inequality draws on extensive data from countries like Costa Rica, which achieves higher life expectancy than the United States with 80 percent less GDP per capita.

The book's most intellectually distinctive contribution is its insistence that the ecological crisis is ultimately an ontological crisis. Hickel argues that capitalism required — and still requires — dualism: the belief that humans are separate from and superior to nature. His final chapter on animism, drawing on ethnographic work with the Achuar of the Amazon, the Chewong of Malaysia, and recent science on mycorrhizal networks and plant intelligence, is not a sentimental appeal to "go back to nature" but a sophisticated argument that relational ontologies — seeing the living world as composed of persons rather than resources — are both scientifically grounded and practically essential for ecological survival.

Hickel writes with controlled passion and considerable skill at making complex economic and ecological arguments accessible. The prose moves fluidly between registers: from the intimacy of childhood memories of insects in Eswatini, to the dry precision of material footprint data, to the philosophical reach of debates about animism and consciousness. If there is a weakness, it lies in the relative brevity of the political strategy section — Hickel is more convincing on what needs to change than on how existing power structures might be overcome. But this is a book that succeeds in its central ambition: to show that degrowth is not about deprivation, but about abundance; not about limits, but about liberation from the artificial scarcity that capitalism creates and depends upon.

Reviewed 2026-04-06

Notable Quotes

GDP growth is an index of the welfare of capitalism, not of the welfare of humans.

Preface by XR. Capturing the book's central critique of growthism as ideology. — GDP, growthism, ideology, capitalism

We tend to take capitalism so much for granted that we just assume it has more or less always been around, at least in nascent form. When we think of capitalism we think of things like markets and trade, which seem natural and innocent enough. But this is a false equivalence.

Chapter One. Hickel distinguishes capitalism from markets, arguing capitalism is only about 500 years old. — capitalism, markets, ideology, history

The rebels did not content themselves with demanding some restrictions to feudal rule, nor did they only bargain for better living conditions. Their aim was to put an end to the power of the lords.

Chapter One, quoting historian Silvia Federici on the medieval peasant revolutions that destroyed feudalism. — revolution, feudalism, class struggle, history

Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.

Chapter One, quoting the agriculturalist Arthur Young in 1771 on the necessity of artificial scarcity. — artificial scarcity, poverty, capitalism, labor exploitation

Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth.

Chapter One, quoting Patrick Colquhoun on poverty as a precondition for capitalist growth. — poverty, artificial scarcity, capitalism, class

The image of the earth as a living organism and nurturing mother had served as a cultural constraint restricting the actions of human beings. One does not readily slay a mother, dig into her entrails for gold or mutilate her body.

Chapter One, quoting historian Carolyn Merchant on how animist ideas limited ecological exploitation before capitalism. — animism, dualism, ecology, nature

Science should as it were torture nature's secrets out of her.

Chapter One. Francis Bacon's vision of science as domination of nature, linking the torture of peasants to the conquest of the living world. — Bacon, dualism, science, domination of nature

Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing.

Chapter Two epigraph, quoting Murray Bookchin on the structural growth imperative. — growth imperative, capitalism, structural critique

The choice is stark: grow or die. And this expansionary drive puts other companies under pressure, too. Suddenly no one can be satisfied with a steady-state approach; if you don't push to expand, you'll get gobbled up by your competitors. Growth becomes an iron law to which all are captive.

Chapter Two. Hickel's explanation of why growth is a structural imperative, not a matter of individual greed. — growth imperative, competition, structural analysis, capitalism

We conclude that decoupling of GDP growth from resource use, whether relative or absolute, is at best only temporary. Permanent decoupling is impossible for essential, non-substitutable resources because the efficiency gains are ultimately governed by physical limits.

Chapter Three, quoting James Ward's team in Australia, whose research provides a 'robust rebuttal' to green growth claims. — green growth, decoupling, planetary boundaries, ecological economics

In a system where technological innovation is leveraged to expand extraction and production, it makes little sense to hope that yet more technological innovation will somehow magically do the opposite.

Chapter Three. Hickel on why the Jevons Paradox is not a paradox but a predictable feature of capitalism. — technology, Jevons Paradox, growth, efficiency

The historical record is clear that economic growth itself has no direct, necessary positive implications for population health. The most that can be said is that it creates the longer-term potential for population health improvements.

Chapter Four, quoting historian Simon Szreter, debunking the McKeown thesis that growth automatically drives progress. — growth, health, public goods, distribution

If Portugal has higher levels of human welfare than the United States with $38,000 less GDP per capita, then we can conclude that $38,000 of America's per capita income is effectively 'wasted'.

Chapter Four. Hickel's thought experiment demonstrating that excess GDP adds nothing to fundamentals of human welfare. — GDP, welfare, inequality, public goods

Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different. We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe.

Chapter Four, quoting Frantz Fanon on decolonising the imaginary of economic development. — decolonisation, development, Fanon, global South

Growth is a substitute for equality of income.

Chapter Four, quoting Henry Wallich, former member of the US Federal Reserve, which Hickel inverts: equality can be a substitute for growth. — equality, growth, distribution, political economy

Austerity calls for scarcity in order to generate more growth. Degrowth calls for abundance in order to render growth unnecessary.

Chapter Five. Hickel's crucial distinction between degrowth and austerity, inverting the common conflation. — degrowth, austerity, abundance, artificial scarcity

Capitalism transforms even the most spectacular gains in productivity and income not into abundance and human freedom, but into new forms of artificial scarcity. It must, or else it risks shutting down the engine of accumulation itself.

Chapter Five. The core of Hickel's theory of artificial scarcity as the engine of growth. — artificial scarcity, capitalism, growth, abundance

Compound interest is just a fiction, after all. And the nice thing about fictions is that we can change them.

Chapter Five, on debt cancellation, drawing on David Graeber's argument that money is a human arrangement. — debt, money, fiction, political possibility

Under democratic conditions, resources were sustained for future generations, at 100% capacity, indefinitely.

Chapter Five. Hickel describing the Harvard-Yale study showing that democracy produces ecologically sustainable outcomes. — democracy, sustainability, commons, political ecology

Capitalism has a tendency to be anti-democratic, and democracy has a tendency to be anti-capitalist.

Chapter Five. Hickel's summary of the fundamental tension between the growth imperative and democratic governance. — democracy, capitalism, political philosophy, growth

The world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and life is always lived in relationship with others.

Chapter Six, quoting Graham Harvey's definition of animism, which Hickel presents as both ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science. — animism, personhood, ecology, ontology

The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls.

Chapter Six. An Arctic shaman speaking to anthropologist Knud Rasmussen about the ethics of eating. — animism, reciprocity, ethics, food

Scientists estimate that 80% of the planet's biodiversity is to be found on territories stewarded by Indigenous peoples.

Chapter Six. Evidence that animist relational ontologies produce measurably better ecological outcomes. — Indigenous knowledge, biodiversity, animism, stewardship

What's unethical is to take more than you need, and more than you give back. What's unethical is exploitation, extraction and, perhaps worse still, waste.

Chapter Six. Hickel distilling the ethical core of animist ecology into principles for a post-capitalist economy. — ethics, reciprocity, waste, animism

We don't have a right to ask whether we are going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what's the right thing to do? What does this Earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?

Epigraph, quoting Wendell Berry. Sets the moral framework for the entire book. — ethics, ecology, responsibility, action