What do Workers Want? Class, Desire and the Dark Side of the Force
Miriam Meissner
Based on presentation at the Affective Lives of Degrowth Symposium, Utrecht University, 5 May 2026
As someone who is into guilty pleasure pop-culture, I was lately often reminded of the film What Do Women Want. The film portrays a self-absorbed and sexist advertising executive who, after an electric shock from a hairdryer in his bathtub, suddenly hears what women think. Amazed by the intelligence and complexity of female thought and desire, he changes his perspective in the world—and, of course, falls in love with his co-protagonist.
Now, why was I reminded of that pop culture gem? I was reminded because, in the aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, but also in response to Matt Huber’s book Climate Change as Class War, I often asked myself the question:
What do workers want?
This already raises another question, namely: Am I not also a worker? After all, I’m certainly not part of the capitalist class. I don’t own productive capacities, nor do I own any other large income-generating assets. I must therefore sell my labor to make a living. According to Matt Huber, that kind of makes me part of the working class, but also not.
Putting an eco-twist on orthodox Marxism, Huber defines the working class as “a class not only separated from the means of production (as commonly said), but separated from the ecological means of life itself (most notably land)” (Huber 2022, p. 46)
This would make me working class—but with a caveat. According to Huber, I belong to that section of the non-capitalist class that he would call professional class, composed of “NGO staff, scientists, journalists, think tank analysts and aspirational professionals (students)” (Huber 2022, p. 4).
For Huber, people like me have dominated climate discourse and climate politics for too long. As a highly educated and economically privileged bourgeois middle class, we—the professional class—have a tendency of focusing climate politics on questions of knowledge and denial—rather than the material struggle over power and ownership over resources and productive means. Worse even, because people like me are relatively well off, we also have a large carbon footprint. Haunted by our own carbon guilt, we therefore make climate politics all about consumerist restriction, which does not fly well with the actual working class, whose main problem is not excess but deprivation.
This then, also explains why Huber considers degrowth a really bad idea. In his words: degrowth promotes a politics of less, which echoes the “neoliberal attack on wages and incomes of the last several decades” and “has no resonance for the vast majority of people already living precarious and insecure working class lives” (Huber 2022, p. 38).
Now, the point of my paper today is not to debunk Huber’s argument or defend degrowth from his criticism—because others have already done that quite well (cf. Akbulut 2023, Heron 2024, La Venia & Busk 2025, D’Alisa & Kallis 2025)
Rather, I want to pursue a question that is central to Huber’s argument and in my view does require further scrutiny—and that is the question “What do workers want?”—or, to put it more precisely:
“What would mobilize today’s working classes for a degrowth-oriented eco-socialist climate politics?”
As you may have noticed, I use the concept of working class in the plural because—unlike Huber—I don’t think that there is a one-and-only singular real working class. Instead, I think that the class that does not own major income-generating assets is extremely diverse. We have workers who earn their income through service and manual labor. Workers who do that in the creative and knowledge economy. We have workers living and working in the imperial core. Workers living and working in the imperial periphery. We have people engaged in care work and other forms of social reproduction. Et cetera, et cetera.
As I see it, all these people have an interest—as Huber would say “a real material interest”—in appropriating both land and productive capacities from the capitalist class (whether that be farmland, energy plants, hospitals, railways, and the list goes on). I also think that all these sub-sections of the working class have a real material interest in shifting to a degrowth-oriented eco-socialism that reduces the production of non-essential goods such as SUVs and private jets but increases the access towards essential goods such as housing, care and public transport.
Yet, the fact that all these kinds of workers have a material interest in such a transition does not mean that this will mobilize them for degrowth politics. If that was the case—that is if workers would orient their politics towards their objective material interest—then they wouldn’t vote for multibillionaires with track records of slashing workers’ rights.
There is no automatic conversion between workers’ “real material interests” and their mobilization for a politics operating these interests.
In a way, I’m just restating an argument that Stuart Hall already made 40 years ago when he wrote about “Marxism without guarantees”. In his words:
“What the economic cannot do is (a) to provide the contents of the particular thoughts of particular social classes or groups at any specific time; or (b) to fix or guarantee for all time which ideas will be made use of by which classes.” (Hall 2005 [1986], p. 44).
But what’s the implication of that insight for degrowth and class politics? For Hall, building hegemony is an effort of appropriating and constructing. It is about appropriating ideas, aesthetics, desires and grievances that are present already in society and assembling them into what he calls “strategic alliances” as well as attaching them to a specific historical project, such as a degrowth-oriented eco-socialism.
And, crucially, this is not a uniform process. It might look different depending on target group. The result might be a political ideology that is incoherent. As Hall writes: “this is the illusion of the intellectual – that ideology must be coherent, every bit of it fitting together” (Hall 2017 [1987])
Now, I can further elaborate on Hall’s theory, but I’d rather give you an example. My own work of the last eight years explores how to mobilize working middle classes. I define them as classes that—unlike the capitalist class—cannot live off their assets but have enough material wealth for them to have something that they can reduce. To be very clear, these are not the only classes who would benefit from a degrowth transition.
Degrowth is often portrayed as a middle-class project, and yet it’s also deemed as deeply unattractive for the middle classes. Critics want to have it both ways, so it seems.
The reason why I focus on these middle classes is that they make up a big group in affluent societies of the imperial core, and because they are an ecological problem. In terms of their incomes, many (though not all) of them form part of the 10% of this planet who is responsible for 50% of all carbon emissions. The 10% of this planet who, on average, consumes nine times as much as would be in line with climate targets.
I explore these middle classes via a lifestyle trend that, in my view, is somewhat made for them—minimalism, aka: Decluttering TV-shows. Self-help manuals for becoming less busy. Manifestos for not giving a fuck. Spanning all these genres, minimalism targets a class who has too much and too little at the same time. The people in this class suffer from too much clutter, too many commitments, too much stress, too many emails, too much distraction. And yet, they also have too little: Too little space, too little time, too little concentration, too little real friendships, too little leisure, too little sleep.
And, quite often, this is a class that, while they may be materially affluent, they also suffer from precarity and specific forms of material deprivation. So, they might have enough income to buy themselves the newest techno-gadgets, but they don’t have enough income to afford a reasonably spacious home in a gentrifying city.
Or, they might indeed have an overflowing wardrobe, but at the same time lack a stable income. Moving from short-term employment to short-term employment, they might have to move frequently—which is more strenuous if you have to carry with you a lot of stuff.
Or they might in fact live the sub-urban American dream but with a lot of debt. To pay off that debt, the have to work jobs that come with a lot of stress and overtime. Combine this with complex caring obligations, and the result will be exhaustion, anxiety and a craving for simplicity.
Minimalism sets out to help these middle classes navigate their malaise. It teaches them how to live lightly, mindfully and with intention by decluttering their wardrobes, their agendas, their to-do lists, their digital devices, and the list goes on. Now, my critique of minimalism is that offers these classes individualized symptom cures for problems that are systemic and rooted in capitalist exploitation.
The fact that we have too much of certain things—from work and spam emails to outdated cables that clutter what Marie Kondo would call our “Komono” drawers—and too little of other things—from free unproductive time to focused attention and restful nights of sleep—is not just our own fault. It’s the result of living under the system of capitalist growthism, which extracts value from our labor, our attention, as well our consumer demand—for the profit of a small elite.
Capitalist growthism is a system that constantly forces or nudges us into working, consuming or paying attention. And yes, we can seek to individually refuse and withdraw from some of this—but our capacity to do so often hinges on privilege—and it won’t solve the root cause of the problem.
So, minimalism is not the solution. What I do think minimalism can help us with, however, is reveal certain desires that the capitalist growth economy leaves unmet among middle classes—the supposed beneficiaries of that system—desires that a degrowth project could appeal to and politicize. In my book, I profile five desires of this kind: The desire for less, the desire for resonance, the desire for lost experience, the desire for free idleness and the desire for liberation.
Now, instead of talking more about these desires, I actually want to address a doubt that came to me lately—more or less when my book was getting published. So here comes my doubt:
At a time when frustration, anger, depression, and resentment are widespread, is it actually wise to mobilize through desire?
This question came to me through two experiences. One was reading Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism. In this book, Seymour argues that the far right today does not primarily mobilize masses through desire or hope for a better future. The main mechanism, rather, is resentment. The more we live in a world shaped by economic hardship, climate collapse, precariousness, inequality, war, and genocide, the more this mechanism seems to work. The more disaster— the more far-right nationalism. And the mechanism behind this, Seymour writes, is the mobilization of resentment and its projection onto concrete enemies: migrants, Muslims, antifa, communists, the oat milk elite—you name it.
As it stands, this strategy appears to be working tremendously well across a wide range of global contexts: from the US to Europe, from India to Brazil to the Philippines. So, can the left hope to defeat this dynamic simply by appealing to people’s desire for a better world?
When I first developed these thoughts, I immediately felt a need for self-censorship. The Western climate justice movement has—traditionally, at least—emphasized mobilizing through hope and optimism.
Of course, there have been revisions. From Extinction Rebellion’s “hope dies, action begins” to the more recent “collapse camp” there seems to be a growing consensus that hope, optimism, and the promise of a better world have their limits. And yet, I would say there remains a certain reluctance to embrace anger, resentment, and aggression. We may have come close at times—for instance, in campaigns targeting specific companies, such as Shell—but overall, this has been limited and episodic.
In a way, then, the green left sometimes behaves a bit like the Jedi in Star Wars. Emotions like anger and resentment belong to the “dark side of the force”. We mustn’t go there.
But I’m no longer so sure. Increasingly, when someone tells me to stay hopeful—to show “hope in the dark” for example—I feel frustrated, even somewhat patronized. Who are you to tell me what I should feel? Can I not decide this for myself, after taking in all available information?
And, all these workshops about climate grief—they’re not really my cup of tea either. I don’t want to grieve (yet). I want to fight. Yes, I do feel sadness about the loss and suffering already unfolding. But what I primarily feel these days is anger—anger toward shareholders, CEOs, lobbyists, investors, and the politicians who either promote or accommodate them. So the question I want to ask is:
Does degrowth need a politics that appeals to anger and resentment? Does degrowth need a dark side?
At the moment, I don’t see much of this. Some degrowthers might argue that it runs counter to the prefigurative ethos of degrowth—the idea of embodying in the present the kind of future we want to create: a caring, peaceful, and respectful society.
So perhaps degrowth is like the Jedi. But could it also be otherwise? Should it be otherwise?
The reason I ask is that I worry we are creating a kind of emotional hygiene within climate justice movements and academia—one that seeks to steer “dark” emotions toward positive ends, and in doing so, tames the force and agency those emotions might carry.
Let me give an example. In a podcast I recently listened to, Della Duncan—actually one of my favorite podcast hosts—asks the following question:
“You come to a point, where you’re like: ‘I could be resentful and bitter”’ And this is not just in our interpersonal relationships but also in our systems, in our activism, in our … livelihoods. And this is the question alive for me is how do we honor our emotions, our frustration, our anger, our grief? How do we honor those emotions and yet not turn to coldness or embitterment or resentment, and instead continue to, as Joanna Macy would say, turn towards life?” (podcast episode here)
She goes on to say that her 2026 word of the year is “kindness”… Now, please don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against kindness. I love kindness. And I don’t particularly want to be bitter or cold. But I do wonder whether kindness—or “life” (which, to me, is quite close to “hope for a better future”)—is really the only direction in which frustration and anger can be channeled. Could they not also be directed into aggression toward a specific adversary—an adversary which, in my view, clearly exists?
Or, to put it more concretely: If my employer treats me in an undignified and exploitative way—for instance by not even allowing for a toilet break—should my anger and frustration really be redirected toward kindness, or toward some vague notion of “life”? Shouldn’t they be directed against the company’s CEO and executives, and the politicians who promote them—and whom they, in turn, promote through financial contributions and media ownership (e.g. the Washington Post)?
Do I really need a grief workshop to figure that out? Or a “word of the year”? Shouldn’t I instead make use of the dark force that has been unleashed in me—by, for example, unionizing to confront this person and the wider class he is part of? The same class that bears a large share of responsibility for environmental degradation?
And it’s worth noting that the podcast I just cited is far from an outlier. Take, for example, a podcast series by the well-known movement organizer adrienne maree brown. It includes episodes on developing hope as a muscle, embracing grief, moving toward a horizon of love. Again, all of this is good and valuable. But having spent eight years researching self-help literature, it also reminds me—somewhat uneasily—of popular psychology, often mixed in eclectic ways with appropriations of global spiritual and Indigenous traditions.
Here, talk of “holding difficult emotions” and “reconnecting with one’s inner voice” meets rituals of Zen Buddhism and animist shamanism—whatever that might mean in these contexts.
Setting aside critiques of cultural appropriation—I’m not even especially invested in that debate—my core question remains:
In degrowth politics, should we be providing therapy for our own and others’ “dark emotions”? Or should we be channeling them into political mobilization—much like the far right is currently doing, albeit in its own way, and with considerable success?
Of course, a psychologist might say these are not mutually exclusive. And that may be true. But movement studies suggest that, in practice, politics sometimes forces a choice about where to direct powerful emotions like anger. In her work on “the emotion work of movements” the sociologist Deborah Gould analyzes how the 1980s AIDS activist movement ACT UP
“marshaled grief, tethered it to anger, and linked both sentiments to confrontational AIDS activism; relocated the feeling of pride from a politics of respectability to a celebration of sexual difference and confrontational activism; and altered the subject and object of shame from gay shame about homosexuality to government shame about its response to the AIDS crisis.” (Gould 2015, p. 255)
Gould shows vividly how earlier gay and lesbian activism had developed a kind of habitus that steered anger toward gentler outlets—avoiding overt resentment and aggression. Examples include candlelight vigils commemorating those who died of AIDS-related complications. Or the Names Project Memorial Quilt, with its thousands of hand-made patches honoring the dead. Another example is the song “We Are a Gentle, Angry People”. And here is how one ACT UP organizer at the time reflected on it:
“When I realized Holly Near’s ‘We Are a Gentle, Angry People’ had become the unofficial anthem of the lesbian and gay movement, I was not proud. … Gentle anger, methinks, is repressed anger. … Too often in the lesbian and gay movement, we shy away from making a little noise, always fearful that we will lose more than we gain. … Pretending we are not angry … is the greatest tragedy that can befall us: it will keep us from being free. … The anger, that feeling of madness at the realization of how we’re denied, how we’re left to die, how we’re bleached out even when it’s impossible to totally erase us—that should never, ever be the gentle sort. Sure, it’s going to make some people a little scared, a little nervous. That’s OK.” (Achy Obejas 1987, quoted in Gould 2015)
Gould interprets this as a shift toward a different emotional habitus—one oriented around confrontational anger. Organizers became increasingly vocal about the limits of gentler emotional repertoires. Some described vigils as rituals marked by a “defeatist attitude.” Others remarked that George Bush—then president—would have preferred it if activists confined themselves to symbolic gestures: “George Bush would be happy if we all made Quilt panels” (Wentzy 1995, quoted in Gould 2015). Confronting the White House with the ashes of the dead, in contrast, was seen as a different thing: “We’re showing people what the White House has done: they’ve turned our loved ones into ashes and bones”(ibid).
So the question I want to end with is whether, in a degrowth-oriented eco-socialist politics, we should consider a similar transition towards embracing the dark side. Desire for a better world is certainly a powerful emotion among working people—and we can keep appealing to it—what about anger against those who exploit us? What about resentment against those who profit from war? What about confrontation with the Empire.
A shift in zeitgeist?
Interestingly, Star Wars itself has moved in the direction of the dark side in recent years, with newer franchises—such as Andor or The Acolyte—offering a more critical take on the classic Jedi stance. In an epic speech on resistance ethics, for example, Andor’s Luthen Rael laments how fighting the Empire required him to sacrifice calm, kindness, kinship, love and inner peace; how the fight against injustice condemned him to use the tools of his enemies in order to defeat them.
Is Disney capturing a change in zeitgeist here, or is this going too far? For sure, dark emotions have been fueling counter-hegemonic politics for a long time—from Audre Lorde’s Uses of Anger to Greta Thunberg’s How dare you? While degrowth and climate justice have so far focused on hope and desire, I think that fear and anger are prevalent enough today to give them a more prominent role in political mobilization strategies. The challenge is not to choose between hope and anger, but to harness the force of both in the struggle for a different future.
