Tim Jackson - Post Growth: Life after Capitalism

With great sensitivity and wonderful insight, Tim Jackson shows us that there is life after the growth imperative and its a richer, more humane form of life. With its blend of science, history and biographical detail, Post Growth was a delight to read and gave me much to think about.

Svend Brinkmann Author of The Joy of Missing Out

Through the window of our pandemic lockdown Jackson sees both the sins of capitalism and the renewal of hope. An instructive and stimulating read!

Herman Daly Author of Steady State Economics

Tim Jacksons compelling postgrowth vision strikes at the heart of todays greatest existential challenge and human predicament: either we continue to propagate a capitalistic growth paradigm that fosters inequality, climate and health crises or we build our lives and livelihoods around a holistic system providing what is truly meaningful.

Sandrine Dixson-Declve Co-President, The Club of Rome

This book demonstrates that changing the current economic paradigm is not a crazy dream, but a real and absolutely essential possibility. For all of us. Right now. Taking the world towards the sustainable development we need is a revolution waiting to happen, if we only allow it.

Enrico Giovannini Former Chief Statistician, OECD

Post growth is one of the most important ideas of the 21st century, and Tim Jackson one of its most powerful proponents. Dont miss this brilliant new book.

Jason Hickel Author of Less is More

An unapologetic, clear-eyed vision, Post Growth challenges the reader to venture beyond the comforting certainty in the misguided economic myths of the past and present. Jackson weaves my father Robert Kennedys words into a comprehensive distillation of our core economic foundations and presents our assumptions about growth not as laws of nature but as flawed precepts in inescapable conflict with them. Post Growth is part grand historical narrative, part philosophical treatise, and taken fully, an invitation for readers to explore the deeper undercurrents of what can make a just, fulfilling and sustainable society.

Kerry Kennedy President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights

With a rare combination of incisive economic analysis and poetic imagination, Tim Jackson brilliantly exposes the flaws of our growth-addicted economies and reveals the profound truth that there will be indeed there must be life after capitalism. A thrilling intellectual journey towards a post growth world.

Roman Krznaric Author of The Good Ancestor

Some call Tim Jacksons thesis about capitalisms flaws, and proposed remedies, provocative. After two decades as a successful capitalist (or so they tell me) I dont find it provocative at all, rather an existential imperative.

Jeremy Leggett Founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid

Compelling in its critique of capitalisms relentless obsession with more, forensic in its analysis of the growth myths destruction of human flourishing and planetary wellbeing, and utterly inspiring in its vision of the better, fuller, more fulfilled lives that are possible, Post Growth is an urgent and eloquent plea for radical change.

Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party

Post Growth is a short book. Which means you can afford to re-read it, hungrily and rapidly, to get what you may not have got first time around. Tim Jackson does us the courtesy of not trotting out a well-meaning diatribe about the fatal inadequacies of growth-obsessed capitalism; he seeks rather to explain why it is that the minds of so many have been entirely captured by the language of growth and by the mantra of more, even now, on a planet that is imploding in front of our eyes. Its a tour de force, sinuous, disruptive and a masterpiece of measured rage and love.

Jonathon Porritt Author of Hope in Hell

Post Growth is an extraordinary, powerful and beautifully written book difficult to put down. Jackson names the beast in our midst that the coronavirus crisis has unmasked and makes a huge and timely contribution to humanity. A masterpiece!

Mamphela Ramphele Co-President, The Club of Rome

Economic wisdom wrapped up in poetry only Tim Jackson knows how to do that. A beautiful read.

Kate Raworth Author of Doughnut Economics

Being relatively agnostic about economic growth I took on Tim Jacksons Post Growth with a critical eye, but his razor-sharp analysis and powerful storytelling has convinced me more than ever that the myth of never ending conventional growth is crumbling. If you want to measure true value in life and our economies, this is your guidebook.

Johan Rockstrm Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

In trademark fashion, Tim Jackson offers up psychology, philosophy and economics through the lives of a series of extraordinary individuals who can guide us through the collapse of capitalism and the struggle to create something better. An expansive, wise and uplifting work that will reorient the conversation. Highly recommended.

Juliet Schor Author of After the Gig

Jackson is the great storyteller of economics of what economies can and should be. In this book he draws on the stories of original thinkers near and far to show that post growth a future beyond capitalism is not just necessary for our planet, but also to sustain our human spirit.

Julia Steinberger University of Lausanne

This is an important and urgent book. Tim Jackson exposes the cult of growth which is leading us down a path of human misery and destruction of the natural world. A book of questions, interwoven with stories and philosophy: our collective challenge is to create the answers.

Jo Swinson Director, Partners for a New Economy

Tim Jackson offers us a book that is both honest and hopeful. It gently lets its stark messages unfold through writing that is often more like poetry than political prose. As rich in imagery as it is grounded with examples and clear explanations of why our economy is in urgent need of recalibration, this is a book that future generations will be glad was written.

Katherine Trebeck Author of The Economics of Arrival

It is harder and harder to deny that we in the developed world are collectively prisoners of an addictive delusion the myth of constantly increasing economic growth. In this brief but weighty book, Tim Jackson exposes this myth with unambiguous clarity, and asks whether we are able to seize the opportunities for tough self-questioning prompted by the current global crisis.

Rowan Williams 104th Archbishop of Canterbury

At a time when the oligarchy is striving to greenwash its ecocidal ways, Jacksons empowering and elegiac new book takes the real fight to them, elegantly but forcefully: to flourish on a living planet, humanity must plan for life after capitalism. Not only a must-read but also a highly enjoyable one!

Yanis Varoufakis Author of Another Now

Tim Jackson

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Copyright Tim Jackson 2021

The right of Tim Jackson to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2021 by Polity Press

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